Richard Ford - The Lay of the Land

“Bagosh,” this good man says into the Barnegat breezes, far from Rangoon, here now on Timbuktu. He must’ve thought it’d be warm here.

“Bascombe,” I say in the same robust spirit.

“Yes. Wonderful.” We clasp hands. He gives me his two-hander, which is okay this time. “Mr. Mahoney has told me superior things about you.”

Bingo! But Mahoney ? I wouldn’t have guessed it. I extend to Mr. Mahoney an affirming business associate’s smile. Mike. All is normal again. We at least know who we are.

“I love your house!” Mr. Bagosh nearly shouts with pleasure. In his toddling way, he half-turns and regards 118 up on its severe machinery, as if it was a piece of rare sculpture he was connoisseur to. “I want to buy it right now. Just as we see it here. Up on its big boats. Whatever they are.” He leans back and beams, as if saying “its big boats” afforded him inexpressible pleasure.

“Well, that’s what we’re here for.” I nod at Mr. Mahoney at my side. He’s re-examining his listing sheets and looking more confident. I have the rich, ineradicable fetor of English Leather burning in my nostrils and also, I believe, on my hand. It’s no doubt Mr. Bagosh’s signature scent since his school days in Rajpur or some such outpost.

“We’re down from the Buffalo area, Mr. Bascombe,” Mr. Bagosh says pridefully. “I own an awards and trophies business, and my business has been good this year.” He has twinkling black eyes, and his fine white hair has been choreographed into a swirling comb-down from the far reaches that complements a little goatee, which is not so different from my son Paul’s beard-stache, only presentable. On anyone but an Indian — if that’s what he is — this configuration would make him look like a masseur. The three of us, me in my block-M and Nikes, Mike in his Scotch get-up, Bagosh in his tropical lounging-wear, are probably the strangest things anyone on Timbuktu — a street of cops, firemen, Kinko’s managers and plumbers — has yet witnessed, and might make them all less sorry to see the house head down the road.

“I’m not sure what that is,” meaning the “awards business,” though I have an idea.

“Oh, well,” Mr. Bagosh says expansively in a plummy accent. “If you become a salesman of the year in New Jersey. And you receive a wonderful awahd for this honor. We supply this awahd — in the Buffalo area. In Erie, as well. We’re a chain of six. So.” His mouse-brown face virtually glows. Possibly he’s five eight and sixty, and obviously happy to see the complex world in terms of bestowing awards on inhabitants and to make a ton of money doing it. “We say ours is a rewarding business. But it has been very profitable.” This is his standard joke and makes him lower his eyes to stifle a look of pleasure.

“That’s great.” I pass an eye over his Town Car, which has all gold accessories — gold door handles, gold side mirrors, gold and silver hubcaps and gold window frames. Even the famed Lincoln hood ornament is gold-encrusted. It is the car I saw at the office yesterday. In the passenger’s seat, a swarthy Madonna-faced woman with dense black hair and a pastel scarf covering part of her head is talking non-stop into a cell phone and paying no attention to what we’re doing. In the back I count possibly three sub-teen faces (there could be more). A large-eyed girl peers at me through the tinted window. The others — two slender boys with vulpine expressions — are fidgeting with handheld video gizmos as though they don’t know they’re in a car in New Jersey. The dog is not to be seen.

But ecce homo —Bagosh. Family number two is my guess. The cell-phone Madonna looks not much older than Clarissa and is probably a mail-order delivery from the old country, where she may have been unmarriageable in ways Buffalo residents couldn’t care less about. A young widow.

“I guess a lot more people are getting awards now,” I say.

“Oh my, yes. It’s very good today. Very positive. When my father started in the business in 1961, everyone said, ‘Oh, Sura, my God. This doesn’t make sense. There’s no possible way for you. You’re mad as a hatter.’ But he was smart, you know? When I finished at Eastman and came into the firm, he had two stores. And now I have six. Two more next year, maybe.” Mr. Bagosh links his manicured fingers across the belted front of his Raj cabana jacket and rests them on his prosperous little belly — one pinkie wears a raucous diamond Mike is probably envious of. He’s a better candidate for one of the mansionettes Mike’s planning in Montmorency County than for 118. Though he may already have one of those in Buffalo, and maybe in Cozumel. In any case, the first commandment of residential sales is never to question the buyer’s motives. Leave that for the lawyers and the bankruptcy referees, who get paid to do it.

“Is there anything I can tell you about the house?” I have to say something to merit being here. I look down at my Nike toes and actually give the asphalt a tiny Gary Cooperish nudge.

“Oh no, my goodness,” Mr. Bagosh exults. His teeth are straight and white and uniform — top of the line, in dental terms. “Your Mike here has done his job splendidly. I could use twenty of him.”

Stood off to the side so the two of us can talk, Mike, I see, is unsmiling. Being commodified in front of me is distasteful to him and will make skinning money off this gentleman less than a hardship. I’m certain he’s reciting his Ahimsa, since he’s begun gazing up into the sky as if a passing pelican was his soul dispersing to bliss. When reason ends, anger begins. Mike’s little flat face, I think, looks weary.

“Have you even been in the house?” I say for no particular reason.

“No, no. But I really don’t—”

“Let’s just have a look,” I say. “You don’t want any surprises once it’s yours.”

“Well—” Bagosh shoots a dubious look at Mike and then over to the Lincoln, where his girlfriend, wife, daughter, granddaughter is still yakking on the phone. A hurry-the-hell-up frown wrinkles her features, as if she’s wanting lunch and to be rid of the kids. I see the dog now, a black Standard Poodle seated beside her in the driver’s seat, staring out toward Barnegat Bay, a block and a half away, where a late-staying pair of Tundra swans browses on the weedy shore. In his doggy mind, they are his future. “It’s conceivably not safe, I think,” Bagosh says, his smile gone measly. In fact, both the house and the red girdering have PELIGRO! NO ENTRADA! painted on in big, crude, no-nonsense letters. Except I know the Bolivians crawl these houses like lemurs and the whole rigamarole’s solid as a bank.

“ I’m gonna have a look,” I say. “I think you should, too. It’s just good business.” I’m only doing this to put chain-store, second-family Bagosh through some hands-on experience he won’t enjoy — this, because he gloated over Mike’s subaltern status (and voted for Bush). Though it’s Mike’s fault for thinking he can sell a house to an Indian and not feel cheated. Last year, he sold a condo to a Chinese family and accepted an invitation to dinner once they moved in. I asked him how it had gone, and he answered that the little man-god no longer opposes Chinese sovereignty and that Buddhists bear exile well.

Mike projects a beetled expression and definitely does not support a trip inside the house or hauling his customer up with me. He’s worried what the place looks like — huge cracks in the ceilings, floor joists compromised by wet rot — the cold vastness of all that’s unknown but not good and therefore peligro. Only a nitwit would expose a client to the unexpected when cash is smiling at you. Despite being a Buddhist — full of human compassion for all that lives, and who views real estate as a means of helping others — when it comes to clinching deals, Mike sees clients as rolls of cash that happen to be able to talk. He is no more bothered by Bagosh’s undervaluing his essence than if Bagosh fell down and barked like a dog. To Mike — eyes blinking, hands thrust into his absurd sweater pockets — Bagosh is “Mr. Equity Takeover.” “Mr. Increased Disposable Income.” It wouldn’t matter if he was a Navajo. I’ve never felt exactly that way in fifteen years of selling houses. But I’m not an immigrant, either.