A Builder's Tale - Chapter Fifty-Three
Feely and Kitty Visit. Is She interested? with audio.
Chapter Fifty - Three
A Builder’s Tale.
Feely and Kitty Visit.
Is She interested?
April 20th, 2000. Feely’s smile stretches wider than the room. Wilson has never seen him so full of himself, satisfied and happy. The obvious reason for this sits at his dining room table. It is, of course, Kitty. Without phoning, beaming, laughing and with an energy that could fill a crowd with joy… Minutes before, Feely and Kitty had arrived at his door unannounced, exuberant and shouting. “Wilson, we came to see the house… Wilson.”
Feely’s had a few, thinks Wilson, appraising himself dripping from the shower, sagging middle-aged before the mirror. Fortunately for Wilson, he is behind Feely on the booze, not yet three sheets to the wind-wrecked, lounging and listening to ‘The Girl of The Golden West’… His intended destination, Puccini, Old Draper, and the couch… Before Feely and Kitty’s surprise arrival.
But before that second shot, and the lounging listening, satisfied with the day, he had needed a shower to remove the construction grime and clean the goo that covered his fingers. That is what he got for helping Ransom. He knows from experience, for most goo and grime, the best removal process was simply to take a shampoo shower.
He hears the noise, hears two voices, and recognizes Feely’s. “I’m in the shower,” he shouts as he grabs a towel. “Make yourself at home. Be down in a minute… Feely… It is Feely, right.” He barely hears Feely’s reply… “Who else?” Then he senses footsteps, stairs he thinks, fearing they are heading up… but then Feely’s conversation fades… He and Kitty checking out the lower level…he surmises, turning to the mirror and taking in the pink the white the steam and his expanding middle age. He had planned to don sweats and a rugby, now thinking company, Feely and the new one, the Rottendorf who might be buying, impossible, he puts on khakis and a long-sleeved Lands’ End, rolling up the sleeves for casual. He checks his face, rubs sun tan lotion about the wrinkles, and wanders down the stairs.
A thousand times and more… yet every time he leaves the master bedroom to watch the house expand and the great room soar before him, first hidden, then expanding in view descending the switch back stairs, the hall passing the garage, solid glass towards the forest, then four stairs hall-wide… more… he is always pleased, sometimes still amazed by his achievement. In a fair world, he would be able to keep his creation, move on… but not need to sell it… Not for him, that lifestyle was for Rottendorfs. What was it Indian Dick said… if wishes were horses… He would miss his home. More than likely, he would never again live in something so interesting and contemporary grand, or a home so filled with his own craftsmanship. But if by chance she bought the place… well, that would mean freedom until creativity’s cage again trapped him… If he let it? He wondered if it would bother him to visit Feely, living in this house… He thought probably, and probably he should tell him! It reeked of America; the unfairness baked into his country’s egalitarian pretensions!
As he meets the great room, coming down… Climbing up to his right, and commenting on the hibiscus growing in the planter, “That’s beautiful, but the watering.” Comes Kitty Rottendorf followed by Feely. “It’s self-watering, on a timer,” says Wilson… and “Howdy, how do you do?”
“How did you figure this all out?” Kitty thrusts her hand up and out and down, a gesture meant to encompass the entire house. “It came to me one evening when I was in the mountains. This hillside let me build a mountain house, one that steps and falls and rises.”
“He told me, Kitty. Whiskey and a tilted folded napkin gave him the roof, and the rest followed, more roofs, up and down, connecting,” says Feely, adding, “Wilson had a hell of a time getting it approved, the land was not supposed to perk, but he snookered them. Didn’t you?”
“You could say that. I found a perc site with sand where there was not supposed to be one. I had examined the land and noticed the old patterns of beaches and a sea shore. See them.” He points toward the water and the soft rolled ridges that fall and climb the hillside… out and down and north. “I dug there, three hundred feet from the road, searching where no one had before, digging by hand, a shovel and a post hole digger. I remember it was late November and snowing. It had been five hours… And then I found the vein of sand. I was hot, steaming, with sweat dripping down my face and soaking my t-shirt. The snow was falling. Twenty degrees, just before thanksgiving, and it was my last gasp, my last of this, my last of that… I was done, finished, and then… It was like finding gold. No one had ever bothered to work or look there. They had just brought in backhoes and punched a hole in the ground by the road…Lazy!”
“The health department assured everyone that this site was unbuildable,” says Feely. “I remember. I suggested that Wilson acquire an option that allowed for digging anywhere he wished.”
“Unbuildable, they said. Then I found sand, eight feet deep, too much for them to deny the septic.”
Kitty looks about the room, east and north… south.
“That’s a story… I don’t know if it is me, but I like it. You are very creative.”
“Thanks… Wine, beer, whisky, gin, something else… what would you like?” Wilson pours more whiskey and Kitty says gin-dry-martini, and Feely asks for beer.
So, Wilson makes a show of it, finding his never used shaker and some ice, “Like James Bond?” he asks… “Shaken, stirred.”
“Whatever,” she replies, then laughs, “The English.”
And Wilson shakes the container, imagining islands, steel drums. He tries but lacks the rhythm, though it does not harm the martini he hands to Kitty. “For you,” and to Feely, “More beer in the fridge downstairs.”
Kitty continues. “Leonard tells me you’re selling. Why?”
“New ideas, new projects, I need the money to move on… Time and place… And for me, it’s time for a change…”
“I don’t think it’s me,” she says again, “but good luck.” Bummer thinks Wilson, but not that great a bummer because selling is bittersweet… He might have had to face it. “Are you staying for dinner?” he asks. “I have steaks, a couple lobster tails, I could make a run for perch, whitefish, lake trout. I prepare it the old-fashioned way… simple… While you enjoy the house. It’s nice out there.” He gestures to the deck and opens one of the many sliders. As they move outside, Wilson makes Kitty another martini, delivers it to Kitty, and tells Feely he can fetch his own beer.
“So, dinner.”
“If you don’t mind? The perch, I think.”
“Good choice. I’ll be back in a half hour, maybe less, maybe more, depends on the bridge.”
“You sure?” she says… “We barge into your house and now you’re leaving to get us dinner?”
“I was thinking of perch, anyway,” he fibs.
And this is good. If there exists even a spark of interest in Kitty for his house, she needs to perceive it through Feely’s eyes, without Wilson. And this had been his intention.
Enjoy yourself. If you wish, I can set the timer on the hot tub.
“No,” says Kitty. “The deck and this space… downstairs will be fine.” Music crescendos in the background, then dwindles back to strings. “This music.”
“It’s the design, the resonance… Listen.” He cranks it up, and the sound reverberates, filling the room, mimicking a concert hall… then he points to the light valence running round the room, which is also the header for the first level of glass before higher trapezoid expanses meet the upper header beam and ceiling, twenty-one feet off the floor. In line with the massive central beams that carry the centered ridge, rest on this valence, two speakers filling the room with sound. “It’s all from those two high speakers and that large subwoofer.” He points across the room to a large oak box serving as a side table.
In a normal room, his sound system sounded great, low-end audiophile expensive. His house design, with the angles and the dual pitched roof, made that sound exceptional as Kitty was about to hear, as she and Feely searched Wilson’s music, turning off The Girl of The Golden West, and replacing it with Miles Davis, more her taste… (which also sounded amazing).
Wilson missed the bridge. As he approached main drag Beauville, the lights were flashing, the bells ringing, the barricades closing… The Emerald Isle was departing with few people and loads of lumber and supplies for Beaver Island. He watched it leave and waited…This added fifteen minutes to his trip, and by the time he reached the fish market and returned home (this time the bridge was down), over an hour had passed.
Meanwhile, Feely and Kitty had gone exploring, up to the tippy top and down the lower level, examining, exclaiming, Kitty delighted by this and delighted by that, saying “I don’t care for contemporary much, but this place… It’s different. Warmer, and I am beginning to see what he did here. The way this building or buildings step and hug the land, the way the trees have been preserved.”
“That alone makes this special,” says Feely. “No one, I mean no one, would have kept the trees as Wilson did. It is like he dropped the entire house into this location, harming nothing… from a giant crane or helicopter.”
“It’s growing on me.”
By the time Wilson has returned, Kitty knows the house much better. For a while he wanders with her, eventually leaving Kitty to her perusal, as he lounged in the great room, sipping his beer, while she explored more and everywhere, repeating… “I don’t like contemporary, and it’s growing on me,” both in transit, passing Feely, and muttering to herself.
The dinner is successful. Kitty praises his cuisine, as she and Wilson and Feely get sufficiently sloshed to become exuberant… As evening turns to night, when the lighting system in Wilson’s house astounds them with its shadows and textures and setting flexibility. Making the dining table cozy and the central great room, great - expansive. By the time they have finished eating and dimmed the lights, chatting. Wilson decides he likes Kitty well enough that perhaps he and she and Feely might work for cruising… He does not ask, but the idea will arrive again.
Had it been only Feely visiting, both men would have continued drinking, discussing and debating into the wee hours, with Feely, too high to drive, then spending the night downstairs in the office or guest bedroom, or fallen asleep in the media space. This had been their pattern. But not with Kitty. So, fairly early, Feely announced they must be going. He and Kitty departing and Kitty repeating how the house was growing on her…and perhaps, and then with surprised look on her face, a maybe… “Maybe?”
Wilson changes the music to Russian, and not because he is depressed, but his choice is a powerful moody composition that now first haunts, then sends joy tingling up his spine. Amazing Prokofiev… so good he wants to shout… ‘Alexander Nevsky’!
The next morning, Wilson awakened on the living room couch. He often ended asleep downstairs but rarely in the Great room… The Brahms Violin and Old Draper had been his lullaby. As eastern light arrays the walls with shadows of ash and oak, pulling at his senses… half asleep he senses peace, fulfillment, satisfaction a general feeling of well-being, its reason unknown, until after a minute or two he remembers… Kitty, she might, she might not? No doubt his future is ‘a-shifting’. And soon, he will be wrapping up. Certainly, by June, all but the final ‘shucks by golly’s’ will have been attended to. Daphne has told him she is moving in no matter what. Mayday approaches and then Memorial Day… and with this, that same weekend, Janet Wainwright’s fete for Beauville, Daphne, and Daphne’s new house, approaches as advertised… a few weeks hence on Saturday. For all to come and ooh and aah, to celebrate late spring, and another summer, the playing and selling season, Beauville and the Abernathy wonder on the point. Chateau Daphne… How grand.