Up in the Air

There’s a hand on my shoulder—I turn in its direction. The face is a jolt, collapsing time and space. Its white poreless nose hooks almost to its lips and the eyes have a blind and stony quality, like the eyes on Masonic temples and dollar bills. It’s the face of my ex-wife’s husband, my replacement, with whom she had two children, just like that, proving that I, not Lori, was the barren one. She took his last name after refusing mine, and from everything I know about their life together, the highest councils of heaven have sanctioned the match. I was merely a pit stop, a wrong turn, on the way to their preordained union.

“Mark,” I say. I take his extended hand and briefly squeeze it. His other hand grips the handle of a briefcase. Antiqued nickel hardware, natural, top-grain hide. One of Boulder’s top real estate salesmen, and still rising.

“How are the girls?”

“They’re fabulous. They’re dolls. Little Amy is quite the marksman, for her age. That’s our family obsession lately: shooting sports.”

“Lori, too? I thought she hated guns.”

“It must be the country air. We’re out of town now. Sixty acres up against the foothills. I subdivided the old Lazy W Ranch and took a nice slice for myself. You have to visit.”

“Lori firing a gun. I can’t imagine.”

“Still renting that one-bedroom?”

“I gave it up.”

“You own now?”

“No.”

“But you’re looking?”

“Not really. No.”

Mark’s face twists in on itself. He bites his lip. Homeownership is his church, and he feels sorry for me. He divides the world into two camps, those with equity and those without, and his calling is to unite them. A noble soul.

“There’s something I’d like to show you. An opportunity. Do you have a minute to sit and hear me out?”

I do, and he knows it; the airport’s at a standstill, pent up under an iron lid of clouds. The soft leather couch is like sitting on a body as we settle in diagonally, knee to knee, and Mark snaps open his case and reaches inside with a smooth and lotioned hand. This is the man who took up where I left off and carried my wife past a biological threshold that I lacked the strength for. His confidence is spellbinding. If I didn’t dislike him so, I’d hire him to stand up at hotel banquets and teach his system. I doubt he has one, though. Mark is all instinct and genetic mastery, shot from a cannon at birth. If he had antlers, they’d spread past his shoulders. He’s my natural superior.

He opens a folder and lays it flat between us. “These homes will go in the high four hundreds soon, but until the community’s finished—and be aware of this, it is a community, not just a development—we’re slipping people in in the mid-threes.” He gives me a moment to absorb the photos; crisp early-morning shots of pillared facades surrounded by spindly staked aspens and split-rail fences. The houses are set at odd angles to one another as though they grew up without a plan, organically, and each has a horse paddock with a lone brown steed that I’d swear is the same animal, duplicated. I detect a computer graphics program at work, but I’m charmed and drawn in despite myself. These happiness professionals know their jobs, and theirs is the sort of art I most admire, because it’s effective, because it gets things done.

“The concept is turnkey everything,” Mark says. “You buy a maintenance contract with the home. You’re traveling five days a week? It doesn’t matter. We’ll whack your weeds, we’ll even change your lightbulbs. Furniture? Buy your own or choose a package. High-speed Internet, too.”

“Garages?”

“Hidden. A seamless traditionalism, yet all the perks.”

I’m interested, though I’m not sure if it’s sincere. Part of me might like to signal Lori through Mark that not only do I qualify financially to own a burnished cube of paradise, but that I’m actually capable of filling it. She knew me just as I was starting to fly and developing my system for compact living, for keeping a portable and tidy camp. She accused me of smallness, of tightness. It wasn’t fair. If anything, my spirit was too far-flung. I lived out of a pack because I owned the plains.

“You’re concerned about interest rates,” Mark says. “Aren’t we all? You can’t think short term, though. This is an investment. How are your stocks doing?”

“Miserably.”

“I’m sorry. Do you have any tangible assets?”

“Not to speak of. A ’96 Camry in a long-term parking lot.”

I’m trying to sound pathetic on purpose now, to test the depths of Mark’s pity. He’s always liked me. He met my ex in a supermarket aisle a month before our divorce was finalized, but instead of asking her out immediately, he came to me for permission. Unprecedented.

“Here’s what you do if you’re interested,” he says. “Put down some earnest money, any amount, and I’ll hold a unit until you can come see it. I have one in mind. The viewscape’s just spectacular.”

“I may be relocating soon. To Omaha.”