A Builder’s Tale - Chapter Fifty - Four (combined with Fifty–Five)

New Chapter Fifty-Four of - A Builder’s Tale.

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                       A Builder’s Tale - Chapter Fifty - Four (combined with Fifty–Five)

                                               Chapter Fifty-Four
                                                 A Builder’s Tale.

May 1^st, 2000… May Day, and Wilson is thinking of mid-summer night’s dream and maids dancing round the Maypole.  Puck and Titania, Merry Olde England, before and beyond… June 21st in Beauville, the longest day of the year, the long light leaving as the season starts… How fleeting is this extra light and summer, combining with the thought, that he is fleeting, too. Until recently, he had never thought about it. 

     Middle age, maybe?  Midlife crisis… moving on…Perhaps… Again, to Colorado, or his boat, the Islands, and how to find a different platform for his creativity…  a different place for his muse to muscle. It all depends on initiative and money and if he can expand his talents?

     Possibly, his mortality is the source of the ennui behind the scene, his senses, his demon rumbling in the background with faint laughter.  Life progressing faster and faster…   laughter at the possibility… The fact… He was running out of time. 

     Until recently, he had never thought about it.  Could it be time’s clock? … His only measure, his days, and months, and years spent on the earth… Or something more… from deep in human DNA… Electricity, failing synapses, brain wiring. Why now… midlife crisis?  Was he that common? Just another sagging middle-aged goof suffering from biological clock awareness?… Probably.   

     These thoughts float in the background, filtering the scene before him.  Surreal, a word recently overused, the new Ubiquitous… Surreal.  Because here it fits, the songs and mood…  with Janet and her pals singing inside the gleaming perfection of his, of Daphne’s new high-ceilinged space. With its high coves and crowns… Bright, gleaming, and redolent of oil-based paints, the walls flat and the trim semi-gloss enamel. He had built an old saddle mansion, and inside it, Janet and her pals are conjuring fantasies from the old liberal left… Mayday, Labor and the Russian revolution. 

     Janet sits, slamming the keys, a red silk scarf around her neck, remembering labor and ‘the cause’, one she was never part of (and a cause that her lumber baron great grandfather would have, up by your bootstraps, fought against). Remembering the Russian revolution and then the Bolsheviks… Not for politics, but because it was fun!

     In four days, it will be Cynco de Mayo, two months later, the fourth of July… and after that, Bastille Day… all will arrive as an excuse to party, to sing and drink on a lovely afternoon. It is theater; it is pantomime with noise, and music… Surreal, because the scene before him is ridiculous.

     About the piano the singers wear their affectations, berets and scarves and floppy linen… larger, straighter, more attractive versions of a scarf draped Truman Capote.

     He listens… Well, at least she got the notes right.  This old coupon clipper now playing the Internationale… In a few weeks it will be another fete for the fourth, and ten days after that Bastille Day and the Marseilles. He thought Janet needs to work on her Edith Piaf… He has heard her attempts before… She is way too tall and long and lanky to play that part, also too rich and too American.   

     The Group about the piano is predominately female… The few men, hangers on and well-off idlers, charming, pleasant, and insignificant to the big wide world, with small trusts, and no initiative.

    Those with initiative have already departed Chateau Daphne for MacGuilties.  Meanwhile, the often-present Conrad is nowhere to be seen… occupied with a project.  He and the ‘Boy’ are finally attempting to clean Deer Haven’s mess of a drive and roundabout, removing the old Visqueen, stacking the spars, untangling old rigging, and separating firewood, unchanged since the Deer Haven fire truck boondoggle, Conrad’s busted leg, now almost two years previous…

    Time flies, thinks Wilson, then he sighs… What a fucking project!  He needs to head to MacGuilties, too.  He has promised Brown. And Brown awaits, his drinking days returned for good, unless he gets in trouble again, sinks a ship, or destroys another nonpaying client’s project!  The betting pool on this is fifty-fifty. 

    Brown requires plans for cottages, small ones, for now… Three Founders want an escape and hide away atop the bluff, that they can add on to later, if it fits, and this requires a discussion of both the designs, and who’s going to build them. He has not told Brown, ‘It will not be me’… that he plans on leaving… He is not certain of this himself… However, that possibility is trending. 

     He nears the exit door as a man is walking in… A balding little fellow with a sunburned pate, emerging, first climbing the stone steps, and then strutting, as if sure of himself, head thrust back, chin pointed forward, with an ‘I own the world’ march about him, entering, gazing left and right, ignoring Wilson as if Wilson is a two by four, or a piece of Daphne’s covered antique furniture. Following the man comes Grace, who smiles and half whispers, “that’s him,” as Wilson squints and frowns.  How did she know, or is this only chance?  He has little time to think on this as his mood goes dark and sour.  Grace… they were supposed to have finally been an item…

      And her presence may not be as casual as it seems, because now coming from the water…    Arrive Feely and Kitty Rottendorf. They have wandered round the house, and now they too are entering and gazing about, as Janet waves and bangs, and starts a different tune of welcome…Boisterous, heavy, and loud, the Beatles song, Love Is All You Need, reverberates from the piano.  The bond trader smiles, thinking the song is for him and Grace. 

     It is not. Janet and Kitty are old pals.  And Janet knows the score. The tune is for her ever- since-childhood friend, Kitty, who smiles as Feely leaves the great room, searching for an exit.  Love lasts just long enough to be confusing, until for no apparent reason, but with an energy that may be the reason, or in anticipation of Bastille Day, and getting back to her gathering’s theme, and the revolution after the revolution.  It is Les Miss and the 1860s, and Janet, not known for musical subtlety, surprises, commencing first slow and soft and then with increasing tempo, until all those round the Piano, caterwaul the pedantic theme repeatedly… until the fake beams above, resonate with noise… hearing the people sing, like some misery from a karaoke bar.

     Nothing good for me here, thinks Wilson, who, amidst the choral chaos, and the Bosendorfer banging, slips out the door and heads off to MacGuilties and Brown.  Wondering… Grace, Feely, Kitty, the bond trader… Chance?  Maybe, maybe not?  In the distance, through an open window, faint, as his engine starts, the ‘people’ are still at it…singing.

     Wilson-

      Late afternoon, with light that will remain until after nine, lingering after a sunset near 8:30… In fifty-one days, the sun will meet the north with the longest day and sunset at 9:15, then, as if achieving its goal, turn back south toward winter.  So often, of late, he hears and sees, and imagines, gathering from bombarding senses… Comedy.  And not stand up… But the comedy of life… with a thought that the entire shebang, from birth to death, was in Universe time and terms, an eye blink joke.  The recent crash a part of this… He knew from his college study of political economy that in the American or the Western capitalist systems, panics were routine, occurring often, and that today, they continued, even though state banks could no longer conjure currency. Life, money, the economy… It all seemed like some frantic race to wait at the bridge and then hurry on and then wait again, then death… In history.  In the past, in life, in Beauville. In where ever he ended up… A comedy assured by death. Meaningless, why the worry, why the striving… past mere survival…past physical comfort… Why?

     His mind is full of middle-age as he pulls into MacGuilties. The screen door is ajar and Friday noise reverberates from the entrance, an edge of the rolled roofing separated from the winter winds, curls above his head in shabby welcome. Inside, he finds a normal Friday jubilation.  It is early, but even if it were late, fights are rare at MacGuilties.  If you wish to fight, they say, just down the road you may find one in the Rangler Bar, near the entrance to Boyd City.  Wilson never goes there.

     Smiles are everywhere, from those he knows, and some he does not.  Brown, Walshinksi and Woodbine, gesture from a table adjacent to the dunce cap, and Joanie smiles, waves and beckons from the bar. “Wilson, what you having, the usual?”  She grabs a bottle. “J D Brown, I’m out of Old Draper.  You’re the only one who drinks it… almost… the expense.”  Quick as a scratch she fills a tumbler, three inches of amber brown, inquiring “Becks or Bud.”  “Thirst quenching,” he replies… “Old Milwaukee will do the trick.”   “Is your magnificent monster finished?” she inquires, gesturing across the road and south… “Almost, they’re over there singing off key accompanied by that noise Janet produces on the piano.”  

     “I’ve heard.”

     “Wainright and her crowd have captured my client.” 

     “Just as well, that someone is being friendly.  That lady needs some friends. She may have started out uppity… downstate, rich…  She was, the one time I met her… But that poor woman. What she’s been through. Her money couldn’t protect from that!

     “Wainright’s decided to turn her into a project…

     “Janet’s not that bad. She often means well.   So, almost done, is it?  Then what? Leaving us again?”

    Wilson downs half the fingers and chugs most of the beer.  “Maybe… Another please… Beer, no whiskey.”

     “Another it is…” And their conversation continues until Wilson says, “Gotta talk to Brown about some Founders’ cottages.”  At this, Tweedle laughs. She has Brown’s number, also Camp Hopes’… “Founders.” then more laughter.

       “Later,” says Wilson.

      “I’ll send another whiskey your way, in a bit.”

      “No thanks,” replies Wilson. “This will be just alright.” Remembering time spent in the Islands, and that little black man, Jay, a man who shrugged his shoulders at the drownings… always energetic… who smiled wider than his teeth.

     Momentarily pausing in his thoughts, and conversation… Maybe I should sail away, take the boat, small perhaps.  A forty, even a forty-five-footer, would be better for all his crap.  A lot more money too…  The Anomie would certainly make it to Hog Island (today called Paradise).  Faintly in the background, he hears his demon… “Capsize.”

      He then moves towards the dunce-cap and the boys.  Woodbine, who would like to get him in trouble, starts in with women, and then Grace, and how Wilson must be horny, he knows a few, and willing. “If you’re using that sock of yours too much.” This suggestion, followed by laughter.

    Wilson ignores him.  Walshinksi smiles, and Brown is businesslike, as he unrolls a topo.

     “Here, and here, and here… top of the bluff… north.  These three lots.” …  Brown’s thick fingers expand across the paper, emphasizing the what and where.  “I need those plans, and soon.   Have you thought about building something they can easily expand… add on to, remodel?”

     “Yes,” says Wilson, “Phase 1 and 2, and even a possible 3… All in my mind… and referenced in the Phase 1 drawings, without details… modestly priced too.  Or will these eventually be ‘Wainwrights’, referring to Deer Haven, imagining that sprawling old wreck with its long veranda atop the bluff, dominating like a small version of the porch expansive, ‘Grand Hotel’, of Mackinac Island?

     “We…  You… will need to inquire.” 

     “Another meeting?” says Wilson.  “I’m about and will be until Daphne’s is done…  Set it up.” 

     “When?” 

     “Early next week…”

     “Done and gotcha.”

     “Next week it is.”  Then focusing on the table… Rising.  “Guys, be well. Happy Friday. I’m out a here.  My house, old draper and music, and you’re welcome.”

      “Hippie shit or country?” asks Woodbine.

      “No, Gustav Mahler.”

      “I’d need more drinks for that. If it is anything like that junk, we made you stop playing the other day… Got any Garth Brooks?”

      “No!

Wilson turns to the other men. “If you change your minds, don’t let him drive!”  Then he rubs Woodbine’s head, waves at Joanie, and walks out the door.

     While Wilson has been at MacGuilties, Grace and Kitty have been chatting in Daphne’s new kitchen, where Janet’s notes are present but filtered by the space… Not so noisy, not so loud… they can hear each other, and converse without shouting.  They are old acquaintances.  Kitty once had her appraise a tapestry.  And in Beauville… People who are aware of each other tend to meet, random, at fetes, and strolling… Their acquaintance stretches almost twenty years.

     “So, you decided to like my Mr. Feely,” she says

     “Charming man, and sexy.

     “I’ve heard that.”

     “I’m surprised we’d never conversed.  I was aware he was the local banker, but never.  So, now you’ve done it. Was that your intent?

      “Maybe.”

      “If it was, you succeeded.  What have you done to me?  I’m old and in love… How can that be? …

Grace smiles as Kitty continues.

      “I’m too old for lust to last.  So, it must be love.  I thought it might be a casual encounter. That night you introduced us… But.”

     “You never told me.”

     “Didn’t wish to.  But now it’s sure, and you may shout it to the world…”

     “I’ll stick to Beauville, and you know Beauville. I’m sure it’s already out there.”

     “Of all things, I’m hanging with your Beauville Banker, Feely… That’s what we did when I was a girl… summers with the locals, a brief fling, but then we always dumped them.  How odd.  In middle age, I’m marrying one.”

     “When?

     “It’s in the planning stages.  If it happens, you’ll receive an invitation, might be here, or maybe Cincinnati?”

Wilson-

     Home relaxed on his couch, the adagio from Mahler’s 5th, Alma’s theme, peaceful uplifting, softly glorious in the background, a dollop of Old Draper before him… A sense of satisfaction rolls across Wilson’s countenance as he realizes he is at the point on the curve where he has reached the apex… With the options, staying on the curve to travel downward and maybe rise again, or to jump ship, jump curves, and begin another…   a new chart, with a flat curve awaiting generation on the horizon… doing what?

     He sips and sips again… amazed… He has survived!... He has survived this bizarre project, and now the mansion stretches wide and tall, and for a monster, flowing, appreciated even by him…Mr. Potato Head embellished, a statement on the point… Perhaps the only home that will ever be built there, if Indian Dick’s last prediction is correct.  Today, but for a month of touch ups and the final shucks-by-gollies…  Chateau Daphne is finished. In such a statement that old Wainwright, next door, is cleaning, clearing and repairing.

     He will never build another like it.  That’s for sure, and he realizes his achievement.  Looking about his house, contemplating his many designs… As much of an achievement as this?  Perhaps he thinks, and more so… because when he was building his house, he had funds and freedom and no one to tell him what to do.  That was supposed to have continued, from spec house to spec house, freedom and finance for the next project and the next.  Creativity, without the despair, the force, the misery of clients.  But leaving him with the hard work, lifting, hammering and sawing, mind and body building of a house which was, for him, so far, the epitome of his talents.  Of course, impossible without the crew and subs who helped him build them.  Indian Dick and Randy, and the others who had worked for him in the mountains, without whom the accomplishment of his designs would have been and be impossible.  Will he find some new talents, equally fulfilling…  A long stretch, but maybe?

    Comfortable… at peace, he would have not heard the noise, if he’d had bombast playing, there is a rumble, which stops with a mistimed cylinder, and then a faint creak, a door slams… steps on gravel, then steps on his entrance stairs.   Who… What now?  The banging is vigorous as he rises and moves to where he can see who it is.  Anticipating trouble, he then hears joyful inebriation, a man and woman, and through the glass and opening the door, as he gestures enter. It is Feely and Kitty… 

     We were on our way to town, and Kitty asked to stop, asked if you would mind.

     “I don’t… Welcome.”

     “After you left, I became weary of Janet’s singing.  I went exploring.  I am impressed.  That’s a beautiful home.  I wanted to see yours again. Compare.  How could you have designed that and this,” she points up and out…  “The buildings are not even cousins.”

     “The attention to detail is the same.  If you noticed, and you must, this one has no trim.  In this house, by necessity, things must be perfect.  On Daphne’s… On those old mansions, trim and layered details reign… too much for my taste… He pauses… Normally the trim is there to amaze and to cover up.   Daphne’s… Her’s is just as accurate as this one underneath… Didn’t have to be.  But the guys are used to building proper.  I could not very well tell them. Build that shitty, this one is going to be ‘Old Saddle’… covered up.”   He pauses for a moment… “Not how they roll.”

     “Daphne’s is fresh in my mind.  Do you care if I walk about and compare?” 

     “Would you like a drink to take with you?

     “No, I’ve had enough.”  Then, looking at Wilson. “It’s Ok?” she gestures to the stairs, both up and down.

     “Of course, anywhere, for as long as you wish.”   

Feely shrugs and Kitty gazes again about the Great Room, then she proceeds downstairs.

     “I’ll take one,” says Feely.  To which Wilson replies, “You may fetch or make your own.”

     “Could you put on some different music?”

     “You pick.”

Feely looks at the CD’s.  “These are all classical.” 

     “Lower shelf,” replies Wilson.  “Anything you want…” 

     “Dylan, you have Dylan… The Doors, the Beatles… David Bowie… The Butterfield Blues Band?  I know these.”   

       Wilson is not paying close attention, his mind drifting. Might she have been serious about his house? Feely selects a CD.

     “You sure? I’ve picked Dylan,” holding up the boxed set, placing a disk in the tray. 

     “Hippie days Dylan,” inquires Wilson?

     “Before that, before he went electric…  Blowing in the wind, begins to play.

     “But you’re a Republican, says Wilson…A banker… Dylan?”

     “I wasn’t then,” says Feely. “I grew up.  You didn’t.”

     “Dylan,” questions Kitty, coming up the stairs and then moving past the men and toward the top level.

     “She’s going to make you an offer,” says Feely

      “No,” says Wilson.  And then his gears are whirling faster, and his demon is putting on his party hat.  Dylan halts their conversation… both men looking wistful, both men middle age. Until Feely asks, “Mind if I follow?” 
     “It’s yours and hers to appreciate… Sample. Do whatever you want.  Turn on the hot-tub…then with a smile and nod… Go for it, sample the master… the bed has clean sheets.”  Then he slouches into the couch thinking… impossible! 

      Twenty-five minutes. They have returned to the main level, wet-haired… Feely, proud and beaming, and Kitty appearing embarrassed at Wilson’s look. “We sampled,” says Feely. “That’ll take the ache out of you.”  Leaning against the kitchen bar. “So, ask him… ask him.”  As Kitty then inquires.  “How much, if I buy it today?”  With Wilson replying, “To my thinking, the house is unique, no price, but I wanted 1.2 million and then the realtors got me down to 1.1.  Make me an offer…”

     Kitty turns to Feely, who says, “You should sleep on it, and maybe for a week or two.”

She listens, then responds…  “I’ll let you know, if not tomorrow, within the week.”  Moments later they are out the door, as Wilson’s demon cautions… ‘Don’t get excited, no need to be thinking bittersweet, not yet.’  And Wilson decides that Monday, he will need to visit Feely.

Two days later Wilson is outside on his great room’s deck, after work, examining spring, regarding the Anomie, and sipping a post shot beer while listening to Korngold’s theme from Robin Hood, before moving inside, shivering, goose-bumped from an Eastern breeze turned frigid by its passage across the bay’s spring cold water.  -

     He turns up the heat and turns off Korngold, replacing him with Rimsky Korsakov’s   Scheherazade.  Comfortable, he wanders to the counter and pours an inch of Draper in a tumbler, then opens another beer… Sipping pensive, listening to the music…  There is so much music, and Korsakov is another Russian, and the story another love story.  So often, it was love. And this bit of music is of survival and storytelling, of love from night to night, and a clever lady turned creative so she does not die… remaining alive for a thousand nights of stories, until the Sultan decides not to do away with her… First captured by her tales and then by her… Her name… Scheherazade. 

     His mind wanders to women and Grace. She has probably repaired a tapestry created from scenes of these Arabian Nights, a turbaned Aladin? Djinns? Forty thieves?... at some point?  Damn… He cannot escape her.  Probably because he had thought that finally, they would last… and now here he is, returned to thoughts on the reality of nevermore.  

     He downs the shot.  Then heads upstairs to take a shower.  Beginning to scrub, he hears a banging and then a shout.  Company again… who, what now?  Stomping, human, and by the sounds of the footsteps, more than one… People entering his house. It must be someone he knows, few would so presume… Indian Dick and Liz perhaps, or again Feely with the Rottendorf.  

     “Wilson, Wilson, where are you, Wilson? I’ve brought David.  He wants to see the house. We were down the road at Daphne’s…”   Damn, he thinks… Then…Fuck.  And she has brought him with her.  The little-bald from New York with the manicured hands.

      “I’m de-grime-ing,” he shouts.  “Make yourself at home… Down in a couple minutes.”  He scrubs harder, as if a punishment.  Then… drying off… a shirt, clean pants. He combs his hair… From the reflection in the mirror… presentable… then musing his hair a bit, to promote the curls.

       The main floor fills his view. Forty-five feet away, sits his dining table.  Then as he reaches the entry, still out of sight, he pauses and turns east, trying to listen to Grace and the Runt… a wisp of conversation.  If he’s heard correctly, she is describing his creativity, the purpose of the architecture. She knows the loads and how it works. She has been explaining as he might.     

     “You will not find this in New York City, nor in those Hamptons where the buildings are more like Daphne’s.  He doesn’t care for those much, refers to them as Old Saddle… he’s professional though… And I think underneath his protests he loves it.”

     “Sounds complicated… confused.”

     “Maybe, probably… Anyway, it is one of the reasons we never worked, and there were many.  And now I’m with you.  All for the better… but I liked living in this house. I would again… You should buy it. We cannot live in my church when were in Beauville. That’s my rainy day.”

      At this, he rounds the corner.  “Howdy, well… I guess you're visiting.”  Not bothering to say you could have called… “So, welcome. What’s up?”

      “David needs a house, and I suggested yours.”

Then turning to the Runt, she says.  “Wilson’s moving back to Colorado.”

      “Quiet on that,” he says.  “That’s your thought.  And even if I’m leaving… For now, I’m keeping it to myself.”

Turning to the Runt.  “So please keep it to yourself.”   “Who would I tell,” says the Runt.  As Wilson continues, “and who knows, I might take the boat and go north for the summer, then return and out the intra-coastal.  I’ve always wanted to do that.  Head to the Islands from the lakes.”

       “He’s moving back to Colorado,” says Grace, “and he doesn’t need the house.”  Repeating, “you should buy it.”

     The Runt turns this way and that, appraising, saying nothing more, then he wanders north west examining the details, eventually sitting at his dining table.

    “I thought David should examine the difference,” she says.  Speaking of him as if the Runt is not there. About him, not with or at him.  “David needs a house here.  I’ve told him it cannot be mine. We are shopping.  I told him how much I appreciated this one.”

     Her arms expand pushing up and out and in, gesturing about the great room, then towards the floors above and below… She then smiles at the Runt who is now thirty feet away.  “I think he should buy it.”  Grace winks at Wilson, then stops talking.

     “It’s different,” says the Runt… “It would make a statement.”  Then he looks east, and out the window… “That your boat?” 

     “The Anomie,” replies Wilson, as David nods.  “Durkheim.”  as the reference surprises Wilson, thinking this David is less one-dimensional money than he imagined

     “Nice setup you got here.  How deep is it out there?” 

     “Fifteen feet where the boat is, deeper as you travel south…” He gestures south toward greater Lake Arnaud. 

       Then the Runt turns to Grace… “I will need a boat, if I’m… When we’re in Beauville.”         

“Certainly Dear.”  He hears Grace reply… “Of course you will.”

     Wilson turns away from David.  He needs to stop thinking of him as the Runt… not good for conversation…not good for communication…  Certainly not good for selling?  His eyes are now on Grace… askance.   He knows what she thinks about boats, or at least his boats… Swell… Ok for the Runt… but not for her and him… Why?  What game is she playing?   She agrees to his boat, and she gets her gallery?  He has no idea, but Grace can be a manipulator when it comes to men… a plotter unrecognized.  Of this, he is well aware.  Then he wonders if he should mention Feely and Kitty and Kitty’s interest in his house.

     “I told David he should buy your house, when we were at Daphne’s,” says Grace.  Wilson squints and half frowns, as if a headache awaits.  His demon is waking up and waving flags…

     No one interested for over a year, and now two…interested… And in one week.  Maybe he was meant to travel west again. The fates?  Or is it Grace and plotting… trying to achieve her goal, whatever that is… he doubts if it is love…  Is it some new agenda, her talking the Runt into buying his house…?

     ‘Boo Hoo… And now you're sad,’ says the demon, as Wilson thinks… Bittersweet.  The demon chortling…  ‘It’s weird man, weird!   Loss and weird combined and you’re offended? Grace living in your house with someone else!’  More internal laughter.  Then emerging from this momentary demon chortling revery… “You may be too late.  Feely was here two days ago with his new love, informing me… She was going to buy it!”  The demon is now singing his meeting song in his head.  Then he thinks, a bidding war, a contest… imagining a rising price.  

     “Ok, make me an offer.”

     “I think I will examine a few more houses first,” says the Runt… Grace glowering at David with a frustrated, I’m the teacher, you’re the pupil, glance, says.  “Absolutely, don’t listen to me,” as the David responds with pleading eyes.    While Wilson thinks… all this to get me out of town, as his demon continues to hum another fucking meeting from the other side of his brain.  

     Then the Runt turns to Wilson, “Why are you selling?” “I told you,” says Grace. “He’s moving back to the mountains. It’s where he belongs…” 

      So now, it is not… Will he move back to the mountains?  Now Grace is proclaiming his departure as a fact.  And maybe she knows more of his future than he does.  There have been moments lately when his thought has been… Of course, and when, and then other moments of… not yet, and not so much.   

     However, at this moment, he confirms this Grace fact, adding.  “I hate to sell it.  It’s my best effort so far.  It may be my best effort ever…Always?   It’s a wonderful house to live in… but for the need for enough money to pay for it, and finance another project, too.” 

     “Everything, everyone… people and possessions… goals… They all have costs…prices.  Do you mind if I wander about?”

     “Of course, he doesn’t.” says Grace.  “Come on,” she points to the stairs and then the hall that leads upwards… “Upstairs or down?”

     “For now, I want to examine… study this place unbiased, without your opinions… Ok…?”

Wilson watches signs of trouble for the Runt, appear on Grace’s face, thinking ‘you better watch out, don’t piss her off, you idiot… I’ve been there.’

     “Later, if I think I’m buying, then you and I… Then I will want to hear your thoughts… Not now.” Looking at Grace’s expanding frown… adding  “Of course, I will want your advice, before I make an offer,”  as this last statement calms her countenance.

     Switching to a salesman, Wilson replies. “Go where ever you wish… And you must return at dusk, with night, this evening or tomorrow… you need to see the house at night. With lights.” he points to the hidden cans that shine both up and down… “With these you can mold the space… mood adjustable.    I was surprised how well it worked the first time I played with it… And since.” … pointing to the switches.

      “Ok, says David.    I’ll head downward first…”  Wilson observes this little man, who oddly, it seems Grace is attracted to, thinking… and it’s not just his money…  watching David move to the stairs, pausing to examine the flowers in their planter, then vanishing into the lower level.  

      As soon as he is certain David cannot hear him, he asks Grace.

     “What are you up to now?” 

     “I’m getting you back to the mountains… with money in your pocket.  You know what I think about you affording this house.” 

     And he did. He starts to say it will be strange you living in my house with someone else… but then he pauses… it is too, too, weird, even without that conversation. And for some bizarre reason, his demon is singing Old Lang Syne .

    It’s still Wilson’s house, but Grace is in charge of both men. 

     Over the next twenty minutes, David examines the house, upstairs-downstairs, returning with questions, then moving on, more questions, then up and down again.  Finally, he is finished.  “It’s interesting.  It would make a statement to my New York friends.  And with a yacht out front.”   David turns to the east, pointing.  

     “Can I put a dock down there?”

    “Not unless it’s for a rowboat,” says Wilson, who ponders for a moment. “Well… Maybe… Maybe you could do a Brown, if you’re thinking a power boat… It’s too shallow, close to shore for any large sailboat…  the draft.”

     “What’s that?” Says the Runt… “A Brown?”

     Wilson turns to Grace, “Take him back to Longbottom Land… Camp Hope… and show him…Show him Brown’s barge.”  

      “There calling it Longbottom’s Loss,” says Grace.

     “Who is?” says Wilson.  “The Dirt Pimps,” she replies

     “Where’s that,” says the Runt.

     “We were just there.”

     “What’s a Dirt Pimp?”

     “You don’t want to know.”

     And they are out the door… for now.

     For the next week. Wilson hears little from anyone.  He has not visited Feely, fearful of the finality of a yes or no.  Bittersweet is haunting.  And with no new noise from Kitty or from Grace and David, he begins to think… Fickle folks, and just more uproar… a flash in the pan of hope, as he spends time on Brown’s Founder’s Bluff, and ideas for Brown’s cottages.  Occasionally checking in with Dick and Randy, who with Waltner are proceeding through Chateau Daphne’s final checklist while attending to any neglected ‘shucks by gollies’. 

    Daphne is moving in permanently, and when he drops by, he realizes the house is now hers.  Finishing is satisfying.  It is also sad… more years gone…what next?  No more building for a while, that is certain.  His crew, they will need to find jobs elsewhere.  And as summer wanes, Wilson decides that no later than October, he will move back to Colorado, sale or no sale… no matter what.  And though his thoughts sometimes drift to his boat and islands. The mountains are out the door and waiting.  Art’s studio is available… I-75, then I-80 beckons.  There sits certain satisfaction, at least until next year’s spring. Load the smaller tool trailer, tune up the jeep, put the boat in dry dock, and away you go…

     He speaks with Smythe, providing him specifics, and a limited negotiating power of attorney, and a minimum price. Should nothing come from Kitty or Grace and David’s interest, or if they offer a price too small?  He will sell his house for not less than one million dollars.  Should they decide to purchase in the fall, after he’s skedaddled? 

     And if by small chance, after he’s left town, Longbottom shows up with some new client.  Smythe is to say Wilson will accept no less than one million bucks, meaning for Wilson, that after he pays off his buddy banker Feely, he will have, free and clear, deposited in Feely’s bank-short term… almost six hundred thousand dollars…. and that would be… Whoopie and easier to stomach, if he is already gone, and living in Colorado… His finest achievement, a past part of his life… departed. 
    Not enough money for forever, but enough for years if he lives on hamburger and J T Brown… No lobsters, steaks or old draper, or extra fetes, frolics or fancy restaurant meals … Then, Skiing and summer bike riding, and gas enough to drive to the reservoir to sailboard… That and nothing else but the necessities of life… skis and ski clothes period… like when he was young.  He has decided he would enjoy a lack of worry… no more money hassles, with no new construction projects, unless he wishes to trap himself again, on the hamster wheel of design build life… this time in the mountains… Too busy to ski… What would be the point?  
    He has thought it out… And if his house still sits empty two seasons off and spring… who knows, perhaps he will return for another summer, and really attempt to peddle the place, acquiesce, agree to build a Brown’s Bluff Extravagance… another Potato Head… A possibility… But he does not think so… at least not now, as summer flows to fall, anticipating, out a here.

     Puttering about, day sailing and free of worry, short term, until next year, but free of what he now realizes was two years of amazing soul insecurity and angst… This becomes the plan. 
     Take what he has saved and Daphne’s final payment and skip town… he and Ivy, once more across the great plains… This now appears to be fall’s future.  And maybe it is, and maybe it is not.