Richard Ford - The Lay of the Land

“A new what?” I suspected it.

“A new lady friend.” He rises fractionally on the soles of his shoes. “You’ll like her.”

“What about your wife?” And your two kids at their laptops? Don’t they get to make the transition, too? What about the soulful, clear-sighted immigrant life that delivered you to me? And old-fashioned competence not breaking what isn’t broken? “I thought you two were reconciling.”

“No.” Mike tries to look tragic, but not too. He doesn’t want to go where what he’s said gets all blurred up with what he means. A true Republican.

But it’s okay with me. I don’t want to go there either.

“Love-based attachments,” Mike says indistinctly enough that I don’t hear the next thing he says — lost in the breeze — something about Sheela and the kids in the Amboys, the discarded part of his history the business biographers will gloss over in the cover stories once he and Benivalle break through to developer’s paradise: “Little Big Man: Tiny Tibetan Talks Turkey to Tantalize Trenders, Trenton to Tenafly.” But who could a new squeeze be — suitable for a forty-something Himalayan in the lower echelons of the realty trade? And in New Jersey? An arranged union, like Bagosh, with a Filipina daughter grown too long in the tooth for her own kind? A monied Paraguayan military widow seeking a young “protégé”? A Tibetan teen flown in like a pizza, on a pledge he’ll care for her always? I wonder what the Dalai Lama says in The Road to the Open Heart about monogamy. Probably not much, given his own curriculum vitae.

“So, is that all the news that’s fit to tell?” From my cold merry-go-round, I can address Mike at eye-level. His plaid cap has drifted down an inch and off to the side, so he looks once again like a pint-size mobster.

“No. I want to buy you out.” His now invisible eyes go grim as death. Then again his mouth cracks a big smile, as if what he’s just said was absolutely hilarious. Which it isn’t.

My own mouth opens to speak, but no words are ready.

“I’ve tamed myself,” Mike says, jubilant. A lone passing duck quacks one quack high in the misty sky, as if all the creatures agree, yes, he’s tamed himself.

“From what?” I manage. “I didn’t know you needed taming. I thought you were rounding up your courage.”

“They’re the same.” He, as usual, gets instantly giddy at talk like this — word riddles. “There’s some unhappiness never to be as rich as J. Paul Getty.” Another of Mike’s earthly deities. “Filthy rich,” he adds buoyantly. “But I can make money, too. Helping people this way can make money.”

He means helping them out of their cash. There’s a reason these people don’t get cancer in their countries. And there’s a reason we do. We make things too complicated.

“I believe you want to think about this proposal,” he says. His tough little hands are clasped priest-like. He likes being the presenter of a proposal. Believe, want, think —these are words used in new ways.

“I don’t want to sell you my business,” I say. “I like my business. You go develop McMansions for proctologists.”

“Yes,” he says, meaning no. “But if I make a good business proposal and pay you a lot of money, you can transfer ownership, and everything will stay the same.”

“Everything’s already the same. It ain’t broke. Due to old-fashioned competence. Mine.”

“I knew you’d say this,” Mike says happily. For the first time since I’ve known him, he’s talking like the departed Mr. Bagosh, with whom he shares, after all, a stronger regional bond than he shares with me. “I think we should agree, though. I’ve thought about this a great deal. It’ll give you time to travel.”

Travel is code for my compromised health status, which Mike is officially sensitive to, and means in Mike’s enlightened view — Buddhist crappolio — that I “need” to ready myself for the final conjugation by taking a voyage on the Queen Mary or the Love Boat. He’s “helping” me, in other words, by helping me out of business. “I’ve got time to travel,” I say. “Why don’t we not talk about this anymore. Okay?” I attempt a faint smile that feels unwelcome to my cold cheeks. Munificence is gone. I don’t like being strong-armed or felt sorry for.

“Yes! Okay!” Mike exults. “This is just what I thought. I’m satisfied.” It’s all about him, his confidence level, his satisfaction. I’m as good as out of work, a cat in need of herding.

“Me, too. Good. But I’m not going to sell you Realty-Wise.” I give my sore knees a try at prizing me up off the butt-froze planks. I hold onto the curved hang-on bar that wants to glide away and spill me over. Mike semi-casually secures a light grip on my sweatshirt sleeve. But I’m up and feel fine. The bay breeze cools my neck. My eyes feel like they’ve both just freshly opened all the way. Down Bay Drive, the boy-girl surveyors are walking side-by-side toward a yellow pickup parked farther along the curve, where houses are. One holds the collapsed tripod, the other the striped pole.

“So, you’re not going into business with what’s his name?” I say gruffly.

Mike dusts his little hands together as if dirt was on them. He’s pretending we didn’t have the conversation we just had, and that he feels good about something else. It’s possible he’ll never bring this subject up again. Intention is the same as action to these guys. “No,” he says, pseudo-sadly.

“That’s probably smart. I didn’t want to say that before.”

“I think so.” He gives his little Black Watch cap a straightening as we begin walking back to the cars.

Mike is pleased by my rebuff of his unfriendly takeover try. He knows I know it’s nothing more than what I did with old man Barber Featherstone and how the world always works. Plus, he’s smart. He knows he’s succumbed to the little leap into the normal limbo of life. That he’s facing down the big fear of “Is this it?” by agreeing “Yes, this is. ” He also knows I might sell him Realty-Wise after all, possibly even very soon, and that he can then start video-taping virtual tours, building Web-based rental connections, adding a new Arabic-speaking female associate, change the company name to Own It…TODAY!.com, subscribe to recondite business studies from Michigan State and concentrate more on lifestyle purchasing than essentialist residential clientele. In two to twelve years, when he’ll be my age now, he’ll be farting through silk. One hardly knows how or when or by what subtle mechanics the old values give way to new. It just happens.

T ommy Benivalle taught me some invaluable—” Mike’s maundering on as we trudge at my slower pace back up Timbuktu. Ahead, his new-values silver Infiniti and my broke-window, old-values, essentialist Suburban sit end to end in front of 118, perched sturdily up on its girders. “Only a fool—” Mike rattles on. I’m not interested. I was his mentor and am now his adversary — which probably mean the same thing, too. I admire him but don’t particularly like him today, or the fresh legions he commands. How much life do I have to accept? Does it all come in one day?

“So, are you putting on a big holiday feed bag with your new squeeze?” I say this just to be rude. We stand mid-street, looking exactly like what we are — a pair of realtors. Mike’s eyes move toward my Suburban. The duct-taped back window may be a worrisome sign that he needs to hurry up with his business proposal, get the deal nailed down before the mental-health boys show up. There was the puzzling scene at the August on Tuesday. I could be discovered tomorrow sitting silently in the office, “just thinking.” He could be forced to negotiate with Paul.