Crossing the Bridge (13 page)

“I’m with Chase on this one, Richard,” Tricia said. “Love the raptor, by the way.” To punctuate this, she pressed the button to activate the sound chip and the raptor squealed. This drew the attention of a young boy who had just entered the store with his mother. I just shook my head as the kid told the woman that this was the dinosaur he wanted and as she asked Tricia to hold it aside for her while she finished her shopping. As they walked to the back of the store, Tricia and Chase high-fived while my father took the other items and put them on display.

“That was purely coincidental,” he said, grinning. He stopped and looked accusingly at Chase. “You set that up, didn’t you?”

Chase held up his hands to express his innocence.

“I’ll talk to the distributor about getting some of this stuff in January,” my father said, grinning.

The process of taking the back wall of the store down to replace it was even more excruciatingly slow than described in advance. Since it was a load-bearing wall, the contractor couldn’t simply knock it down and put up a new one. Instead, he had to strip it down to its beams. This meant days of plaster in the air, footprints on the carpet, and dust on the cards in spite of the plastic we’d put up to segregate the work area. Given that the tourist season wasn’t yet in full swing, it was just about as good a
time as any for the store to go through this.

It was not, however, a good time for Howard Crest to bring a potential buyer to visit.

I was standing in the back of the store surveying the work the carpenter was doing when I heard Howard’s halting voice.

“Oh, there you are, Hugh. Can I have a bit of your time?”

I turned around to see him approaching me with his hand outstretched. He was a fragile-looking man who seemed to vibrate slightly as he talked. My father knew him from the Chamber of Commerce and was certain of his competence, even though I’d seen little evidence of this in my first few meetings with him. I knew Howard was well aware of the repairs we were doing at the store, as I had called him about them myself. I shook his hand and then eyed him warily when I saw that someone was with him.

“Hugh, this is Mitch Ricks. He’d like to take look at the store. Can you give us some time?”

“Sure,” I said, casting another glance at Howard. He clearly wasn’t as concerned about doing this under these circumstances as I was. The man walked past me and up to the plastic covering behind which the carpenters worked.

“What’s going on here?” he asked.

“We had a pipe explode on us. It did a lot of damage, but we’re doing the repairs now.” I looked over at Howard again. “All of it will be finished before any new buyer comes in.”

The man looked down at the floor and scuffed up a streak of plaster dust.

“Carpet, too?”

“We’re replacing the entire back portion,” I said.

The tour was off to a rousing start. I took Ricks through the store, telling him as much as I knew about traffic, turns, and the strongest revenue streams. Howard said nothing the entire time other than mentioning that he’d bought his granddaughter one of the kites we had on sale. Since the back office was unavailable, we settled behind the counter and I answered some more of Ricks’ questions. They weren’t particularly probing and he seemed preoccupied with the sounds coming from the other end of the store. Fifteen minutes after he’d arrived, he was gone. I was relatively certain I wouldn’t see him again. When Howard shook my hand as he was leaving, I still wasn’t sure that he understood that he should have at least given me some advance warning.

For the rest of the morning and into the early afternoon, I remained miffed at the broker. My situation was frustrating enough without being complicated by the bungling of this man.

By 3:00, I was still peeved. Even Tyler’s buying me a caramel brownie at the bakery across the street (a place I’d come to think of as Iris’ bakery) didn’t make me feel better. I finally decided that I needed to go see Crest.

Howard’s office was on River Road, the other major commercial street in town, and the one that led directly to the Pine River Bridge. This was a funkier spot, with a number of bars and ethnic restaurants scattered between office buildings. The company Howard worked for dealt in both commercial and residential real estate, and Howard was the head of the commercial
division. I’d never been in this office before, and as I drove over to it, I half expected to find it disheveled and uninviting, with cigarette-burned desktops, coffee-stained floors, and a couple of distracted brokers ineffectually shuffling through piles of papers. Instead, the place was crisply appointed, with each broker’s work area partitioned by glass bricks, and original local art on the walls. I think the biggest discrepancy between my image of the business and reality came when I arrived at Howard’s mahogany-accented office off the main floor. He sat in a high-backed leather chair, speaking on the phone in his clipped manner when I entered his doorway. He gestured me in and then held up a finger to indicate that he would be finished shortly.

“I had a feeling I might see you today,” he said after he hung up. “I was planning to give you a call, but things got crazy.” Even in this environment that attested to his success, he seemed unusually skittish.

The setting threw me off for a minute, but now that I had Howard in front of me, my irritation returned.

“I assume your client wasn’t interested,” I said.

“I don’t think so, no.”

“Howard, you knew about the work going on in the store. What made you think you should just drop in like that?”

He reached for a can of Diet Coke, took a sip, and then shook his head.

“I know,” he said. “You told me about all of the water damage and I should have come in to see it myself before I brought anyone with me.”

“Or at least called to let me know you were coming so we could clean things up a little.”

“You’re right. It was stupid. But when this man came in and told me what he was looking for, he seemed so right for your father’s store. I have to admit that I leaped at the opportunity and did it without even thinking.” He looked down and then took another sip from his can. “There hasn’t been much activity on this.”

“All the more reason to be careful about how we present it when we get some.”

He held up his hands. “You’re right. Completely. I just really want to do this for your dad.”

It was difficult to continue to be angry with Howard when he was being this contrite. I simply shook my head. “
Why
has there been so little activity. Is the market slow right now?”

“No, the market isn’t slow at all. Like I said, things have been crazy around here. It usually is. But when people think of buying a business on Russet Avenue, they think of galleries or jewelry stores or gourmet shops.”

“But the store has been doing okay, hasn’t it?”

“It’s been fine by all indications. Not sensational, but fine. But if I can be honest with you, Hugh, stationery stores aren’t exactly what people dream about owning.”

“Tell me about it.” Howard Crest was perhaps the last person on the planet I wanted underscoring this point for me. I’d come into his office charged with annoyance. Now I felt as drained as a Duracell that had been sitting in a child’s toy for ten years. “Are there any other prospects?”

“Nothing at the moment. You never know, though. That’s one of the good things about this business.”

I nodded. I didn’t want to take up any more of Howard’s time. But I also really didn’t want to go back to the store after this soul-sapping conversation. When it was clear that Howard didn’t have anything more to say to me, I stood up, shook his hand, and left. Before I got back into my car, I took a walk down River Road, looking into the shops. So few of the storefronts were the same as they were when I was last there. A restaurant menu seemed interesting and one of the bars had live blues on the weekend. At some point, it might be worth going to one or both of them.

Considering how long it might take Howard to sell the store, it seemed wise to re-familiarize myself with the area.

I didn’t say anything about the episode with Howard to my father that night. We ate dinner on tray tables in the den, as my parents did every night now, while
The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
played. My mother didn’t even suggest eating in the dining room any longer, and the sofa bed was open all the time.

When we finished eating, I helped my mother bring the dishes into the kitchen.

“We struck out with a potential buyer for the store today,” I said while she loaded the dishwasher.

“Too bad,” she said, concentrating on her task.

“Howard brought the guy into the store while the carpenters were banging away and there was plaster dust everywhere. He picked the worst possible time.”

“Howard knows what he’s doing.”

She moved over to the stove to get a pot. My mother had been stiff and disengaged since I’d come back to town. I assumed that this had something to do with my father’s illness. But she had rarely made eye contact with me since his return from the hospital and I was starting to take it personally. I’d begun to wonder if this was a response to my refusal to take over the store. In this context, she would of course have little sympathy for how Howard’s error scuttled my day.

“He might know what he’s doing most of the time, but he certainly didn’t know what he was doing today. The store is a mess. If he had given me some warning, I could have at least made the place look reasonably presentable.”

She continued to wash the dishes without saying a word. I brought a mixing spoon and another pan over to the sink for her. When she was finished washing these, she shut the water off and turned in my direction.

“You know,” she said, looking past me rather than at me, “I don’t think we’ve ever had a pipe burst in that store before.”

I understood the implication and decided not to get into it with her. If she was angry with me for making the only appropriate decision I could make, she was going to have to work this out for herself. I left the kitchen and went up to my room, planning to go out for a drink. I picked up the copy of
Couples
I was reading. It was now obvious to me that I would indeed finish all of Updike’s novels before the store
sold. Perhaps months before the store sold. Maybe I’d move to the Faulkner canon next.

I put the book back on my dresser and headed out the door.

The next Wednesday was the opening night of the new production by the Lenox Ensemble. I’d spoken with Iris once since the last time I saw her, and the days leading up to the premiere had been predictably chaotic for her. We were probably on the phone for ten minutes, though I don’t think I actually spoke with her for more than two of those. About halfway in, I could almost guess when the next midsentence interruption was going to occur.

Other than the sound of the carpenters, the store was very quiet. In addition to the usual midweek slump, there had been a perceptible decline in sales since the water damage occurred. Since my father didn’t keep detailed reports of his revenue stream, it was difficult to know whether this was because of the merchandise that wasn’t available in the back of the store or because of the environment created by the contractor. Though I usually stayed until the early evening and sometimes even closed the store, it had become clear to me that my presence wasn’t necessary during the trough of the week. Faced with the option of another catatonic dinner in front of the
television with my parents or a drive to surprise Iris, I chose the latter.

I had dinner in downtown Lenox before going over to the barn. While I ate, I read a copy of the local paper, the
Berkshire Eagle
, skipping through the national news to get a better sense of the community. There was so much going on here, and there was a brimming sense of anticipation for the approaching summer season and the performances, festivals, and fairs that would accompany it. I found a small article about the premiere by the Ensemble. The artistic director had several quotes in the piece, and though I’d never met the man, his voice came into my head with the intonation that Iris gave to her own voice when she spoke about him.