Mark Costello - Big If

Meredith said, “Yes. Thank you, Jens.”

“ Yes ?” said Jens. “How can you sit there and say, Yes ?”

Meredith spoke very softly, as if talking to a child in the dark. She said, “A corporation is a forest, Jens, and I’m the forester. In forests you have lightning strikes, and fires, and many trees are burned, but the forest is renewed. But it’s over now — or it will be as soon as Davey Tabor shows his face and we can eighty-six his ass in person. Relax, Jens, the fire passed you by. Do me a favor — go home and get some sleep, or whatever it is that you need. I promise I’ll look at your shadow later.”

The roadblock was on Hanover Street,police cars nose to nose across four lanes of traffic, cops in yellow ponchos waving motorists away. Jens slowed, ran his window down.

“What’s happening?” he asked.

“Big rally,” said the cop. “Where you headed?”

“To the square.”

“Park it by the library. You’ll have to walk from there.”

Jens took the detour to the right, came all the way around again to the public library, parked his car. He dropped three quarters in the meter, set it ticking with a crank.

The sidewalks turned to brick coming into Market Square, the streetlights turned to gaslamps, and the shops and offices took on the look of Dickens’ Christmas without snow. A crowd was forming on the cobblestones and workmen were assembling a scaffolding out of tube aluminum. Jens saw a news van parked the wrong way on the street, a small dish antenna slowly rising on a mast.

Moss Properties was on the harbor end of Market Square, a building called the Moss Block, a stately brick Bulfinch with a bow facade between the Aran Isle knit store and the new patisserie. Jens stood outside the realtors for a moment, looking at the ships in the window, a model wooden frigate and a schooner named the Sally Ann , and the other toy-sized relics from the age of sail, a two-pound anchor on a coiled chain, brass cannons, and a polished sextant, and, higher up, a cork-board for new listings, snapshots of properties and two-sentence blurbs, stock phrases of the trade: move in now — your country hideaway — stone’s throw to the beaches.

Peta was in her office with Daphne Jaffe, the rotundly pregnant wife of BigIf’s corporate counsel. Daphne Jaffe was sitting in a rocker, one hand on her belly, leafing through a binder. Peta was on the phone, pacing back and forth.

Jens said, “Good morning.”

Daphne recognized his face, he saw, but couldn’t place him. She smiled slightly and went back to the binder, as Peta turned and looked at Jens and made a face like You? She was talking to a Kenny, somebody named Kenny, as she made the face at Jens.

“Kenny, it’s a madhouse here,” she was saying. “Just check your book and tell me if noon works for you. You’re beautiful. Goodbye.”

Peta did the introductions, Daphne Jaffe to Jens, Jens to Daphne Jaffe, a tongue-twisterish introduction, but Peta brought it off with her usual aplomb.

“Nice to meet you,” Daphne said.

Jens said, “You already met me. At the BigIf Christmas party. I got your husband in the Secret Santa draw. I’m the one who gave him the case of Glucola.”

“Yes of course,” said Daphne.

“Don’t mind my husband, Daph,” Peta said. “Just go through the binder. I’ll be back.”

Peta took Jens into the corridor. She said evenly, “This is a surprise. Why aren’t you at work?”

“Meredith gave me the day off.”

“Why would she do that?”

“I think it’s her idea of a peace offering,” said Jens.

“Hope you locked your desk. I don’t trust that wench one bit.”

“Meredith’s okay — we had a long talk. Let’s get a cup of coffee, Pet. Better yet, let’s get two — one for each of us.”

It was an old Jens joke. He’d used it on their first, fourth, and eighth dates.

“Let me deal with Daphne,” Peta said. “She’s due any day now and she’s renting presently. Hang out in the conference room. It’ll be a couple minutes.”

Noel Moss was in the conference room with his lobbyists, discussing what sounded like the overthrow of Cuba, so Jens waited in the corridor, looking at the noble oil portraits of the Mosses on the wall, Grampa, Noel’s uncles and his father, five portraits in a line, middle-class conquistadores, storms on their foreheads, lightning in their eyes, pork chops on their minds. Jens had come to tell Peta that everything was going to be all right now. He felt it in his chest as he waited in the hall, new health and peace. He would get back to work and finish Monster Todd, the school shooter whom other kids could hunt through the halls.

Daphne Jaffe, showing great quickness for a woman of her size, left Peta’s office, nodded at the secretaries and at Jens, and went out the door.

Peta stood behind her desk, doing seven things at once, making notes on Daphne’s nascent househunt, pressing speed-dial B (Lauren Czoll’s cell phone), kicking off her pumps, shouting around the corner to Claus, looking through her tote bag for the number of Anthony Bordique, the carpentry contractor, finding instead a dented can of seltzer. She opened the seltzer. Much shaken from her travels, it burst like a grenade, spraying seltzer on her lap. She left a message: “Shit!”—for the seltzer—“Oh hey, Lauren. It’s Peta, honey, listen, I’ve found the perfect house. It’s everything you’re looking for, Greek Revival, sea views, a gazebo, humidor with net access. They have several offers, so we’ve got to shake a leg. I’m trying to organize a showing at noon. Page me when you get this, okay bye.”

Claus came around the corner, dressed like a kommando, big black roll-neck sweater, polished boots and black cargo pants, bearing Peta’s rolodex. They called Anthony Bordique, the old carpenter, on the speakerphone. Bordique was on a rush job for Moss Properties.

“What’s the status?” Peta asked.

“We’re getting there,” said Anthony Bordique, talking over the sounds of table saws and nail guns, a gazebo with a sea view going up in record time.

“I have a call in to the client now,” said Peta. “Tell me you’ll be done by noon.”

“I’ll do my best,” said Anthony Bordique, “but it won’t be dry, the stain. Don’t let her touch it, whatever you do.”

“I’ll handle it,” said Peta.

As Peta talked gazebo with Anthony Bordique, Jens walked around her new and spacious office, Peta’s reward for dealing with the madness at the Dental Building. Jens remembered when Peta was a junior broker for Noel Moss, camping in a cubicle, flogging unattractive fixer-uppers and vacant bodegas in North Portsmouth. He would come into town after an all-nighter at BigIf, or a double back-to-backer, forty hours at a terminal, writing rivers, moons, and monsters. He’d call Peta from a pay phone and say, “Let’s go somewhere.” They would sneak back to The Bluffs in the era before Kai, spend an hour in the bed in the afternoon. Later, as Peta climbed the ladder as a realtor, it was harder for her to slip away without a reason, so Jens would call Moss Properties posing as a client, doing funny voices, doing accents, using code names (Mr. Twillis was a favorite name), setting up an appointment to see a house. She would meet him at the listing (empty for a showing, Peta had the keys). They made love, made the bed, often without speaking, kissed and dressed and separated, Peta going back to Moss, Jens returning to his code. The houses grew bigger over time. They went to bed in palaces, almost, and this was how Jens knew that his wife was a success.

Peta finished with the carpenter. “Try Lauren at the fight gym,” she told Claus. “I think she had a three-round bout against Chappie Xing this morning. Jens and I are going out for coffee. Beep me if you need me.”