The Infinite Tides (35 page)

When they talked later via the laptop while he was in orbit they did not mention the argument. Instead they both acted as if it had never occurred, their conversation a variety of pointless small talk. She and her mother were going on a vacation to Atlanta to visit Grandma. She had some cousins there that she was looking forward to seeing. Yes, she could take his car. Yes, cheer camp was going well. Nothing beyond such wandering and pointless topics but even these he now wished he could have recorded, wished he could play them back in the gray shadow of the days and weeks and indeed the years to come after, as if the whole of his memory had become a floating haze of detritus the
outer reaches of which only tangentially obeyed him, circling, instead, some other false center, as if the brightness that had fallen from that distance would, at any moment, come rocketing in from the outer dark with its pale and luminescent shift dragging out behind it like a gown.

Over the subsequent days the field metamorphosed into something else entirely. He had only been visiting the vacant lot for four weeks but even that short time had left him with a feeling of nostalgia. Now that time was over. It had become the standard endpoint of his day and very nearly the only thing he had come to look forward to, not only Peter’s company but the ceremony of it: the telescope providing the justification for being in the dark field and the drinking and smoking providing the impetus to relax into that moment. Certainly there were other empty fields somewhere in the vicinity but it would not be the same as simply walking out the front door to the end of the cul-de-sac. The ease of it was gone and any other solution would be complicated, not only by distance but by effort. He would walk from his house to the empty lot and would sit on the sofa and would drink and would talk to his neighbor idly about whatever came to mind. But would he drive somewhere to do that? He thought it unlikely.

That evening, he stood at the edge of the cul-de-sac in the early hours of the night and stared into the darkness beyond the reach of the streetlamps. The lot was perfectly flat now and completely bare of any vegetation and it occurred to him that previous to the arrival of the tractors the field must have been leveled in preparation to build on and then the economy had crashed and all plans had been abandoned to grass and thistle and weeds. Weirdly, the sofa remained in the same location where he and Peter had first positioned it: in the relative center of the lot, the tractors flanking it like guards. Above flooded the black sky: Cassiopeia’s flattened W tilting on end as Earth rotated around its axis and Polaris unmoving as if it were the pin upon which the planet was affixed to the universe itself.

So it had begun and so would it end. He could not fathom who would have the wherewithal to actually build a house now, given the economic situation that was, according to the newspaper he occasionally read at Starbucks, the worst since the Great Depression, but there was no other explanation for it: the two tractors were there and the plot had been scraped clean and soon there would be gravel and forms for concrete and then the concrete itself and the thing would start to take shape. It was engineering elemental and basic and he could see it all in his mind even in the dark. Perhaps the entire house would be built around the sofa and it would ever remain in its geographic center.

He might have imagined the telescope there between the giant machines but instead there was only a dark shadow between the hulking silhouettes, the tractor windows reflecting the streetlight that glowed just behind him, his own shadow stretching out over the bare moonscape like an arrow pointing toward the impenetrable darkness beyond.

Sally Erler called him late the following day while he was once again at Starbucks. He thought at first that the vibrating phone indicated that Barb had found his new phone number and he very nearly did not even look at the screen, doing so only after a long pause in which
he hoped to silence it by sheer force of will, as if by ignoring the sound and concentrating instead on his coffee he might somehow erase the marriage. But of course such things do not happen at Starbucks. Indeed such things do not happen at all, and at last he glanced down at the screen and then flipped the phone open and answered.

“Hello, Sally,” he said.

“Keith, it’s Sally Erler,” she said, her standard response to anything he could open with.

“Yes, I know.” He was smiling. At least there was that.

“We have a little glitch. Maybe nothing but it’s a glitch.”

“OK.”

“Well, it’s about the termite inspection. Have you seen the results?”

“Oh,” he said. Had he? “I don’t think so.”

“Well, they probably mailed you a copy so it will be there soon. It’s not good news.”

“No?”

“No, it’s bad news,” Sally said.

“Oh,” he said, his syntax devolving to single words. “What? Termites?”

“Yes, the report says there might be significant damage.”

“Significant damage?”

“Yes, significant damage.”

“I’m sorry. That’s surprising. It’s a new house.”

“Yes, it’s surprising but it’s on the report and that’s a big problem. It needs to be addressed before we can move on with the sale.”

“Addressed how?”

“Repaired.”

“Really? Christ,” he said. It was not the first expletive that came to mind. “How much does this kind of thing cost?”

“Well, I have to tell you that it can be quite expensive.”

“Expensive like what?”

“I don’t know. I’ve seen them tent houses though. Drill into foundations. That kind of thing. It can … kill a sale.” These last words
weak, as if she was on the verge of tears. And indeed it could be that she was.

“Kill the sale?” he repeated.

“Let’s look on the bright side. We don’t know much yet so call the termite inspection company and talk to them and we’ll find out how extensive the damage is and they can come and give you a pest eradication bid and then you should call a contractor to come out to see what kind of repairs need to be done. Maybe it won’t end up costing very much. I don’t know.”

“Come on, Sally,” he said. “This is a deal breaker, right?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that.” These were her words but her tone said otherwise. “I still want to sell the house for you.”

“Don’t they leave holes or sawdust or something? I haven’t seen anything.”

“They said it was in the garage. Maybe you didn’t notice.”

“The garage?”

“That’s what it says.”

They exchanged a few more sentences and then the conversation ended and he clicked the phone closed. His coffee cooling toward room temperature. The newspaper unfolded on the table. The cruelty of the joke was that he had finally accepted the notion that the house would be sold and that he would move somewhere else, would have a different life in some other place, and then this. There was no accounting for anything, as if all had become enslaved to a center of gravity around which he spun without cease. He found himself wondering what Hoffmann would say about this. He had told him that the goal was for him to move through his experiences and yet every experience continued to appear as another full and complete stop, a wall, an impasse.

He set the cup on the counter and Audrey said, “How’s Peter?” and he mumbled something neutral in response. She might have said something else as he passed but if so he did not hear her.

.  .  .

When he arrived home he entered through the front door and set his keys on the counter and moved through the kitchen and into the laundry room. He had no explanation for why he had not yet opened the door there, the door that led into the garage, and now the fact that he had not done so struck him as feeble and strange.

And so standing before the thin white door that connected the garage to the house like a priest preparing to enter the vestibule of some spiritual mystery and even hesitating for a moment upon that glorious threshold before grasping the yellow faux-brass handle and, at long last, pulling open the door.

And of course the garage was empty. How else could it be?

He looked for a long time without entering, his eyes blinking in the blazing heat of the room, light leaking through the metal roll-up door, the air inside smelling of paint and sawdust and not unlike a tomb or an oven, the space a collection of hard angles and concrete and unfinished drywall with the tape and texture still visible. Not even a single cabinet to hide a box in. Not even that. Bare walls and concrete floor and a lightbulb screwed into the ceiling socket. The steel bar of the garage door opener across the ceiling. A few thin wires poorly plastered into a hole there.

He took a step inside and then moved to the center of the room and stood glancing around in silence. A window on one wall, the blinds closed and covered in cobwebs. Dead flies on the concrete.

An occasional insect fluttered past him lethargically. Along the wall that shared the door he had stepped through were a series of thin black lines a foot off the floor and running the length of that wall and when he stepped closer he realized that they were channels in the drywall, the concrete there a platform for tiny hills of white and tan sawdust. Termites. He reentered the house, returning to the air-conditioned rooms that were nearly as empty as the garage, and picked up his phone and dialed and when Barb answered he said: “Where’s all my stuff?”

“What?”

“Where’s my stuff, Barb? Where’s all my stuff?”

“At the mini storage,” she said.

“What mini storage?”

“The mini storage down the street.”

“What’s it doing there?”

“Wait, you’re just now wondering where your stuff is?”

“What’s their number?”

“I don’t know. It’s on the bill.”

“What bill?”

“What do you mean ‘what bill’? The bill. The bill. What do you want me to say? You change the bank account and I have no money and now you’re calling to ask about the mini storage?”

“Yes, that’s what I’m doing,” he said. He had already gone to the pile of mail on the counter and was rifling through it now. He had paid the phone bill and the power and the gas and the mortgage. But there was a sizable stack of mail there, much of it three months old, that he had not even looked at.

“What’s it called?” he said.

Perhaps she had been talking. “Are you even listening to me?” she said. “I don’t remember what it’s called. Something storage. It’s right up the street. I don’t get it. You’re just now noticing that your stuff isn’t there?”

“I haven’t been in the garage,” he said.

“Why not?”

“I just haven’t.”

“Are you serious?”

“How does it work? Is there a key here or something?”

“I left it on the counter along with the mailbox key and the extra house key.”

He looked at his keys. There was the one key he had never used and now he knew what it was for. The mini storage padlock.

“Why did you move everything to the mini storage?”

“Because I thought you were going to sell the house. I didn’t think you’d be hanging out there for months.”

He did not say anything in response.

“I hope you’ve been paying the bill.”

Again, his silence. Then he said, “I think I’d better call them.”

“I’m not done talking,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “I’ll call you back.”

She started to say something but he mumbled a quick good-bye and clicked the phone shut. He had found a bill that read “EZ Storage” and then another and yet another, some with red letters under the address indicating “First Notice” and “Second Notice” and one marked in bold, triple-underlined and in all capital letters: “FINAL NOTICE.” He opened that envelope and searched for the number and dialed. The bill was in his hand and he read through it as the phone began to ring. One hundred and twenty days overdue. There was a letter enclosed and he had just unfolded it when the line clicked and the call was answered.

He was asked his name and the account number and the storage unit number and because Barb had opened it they asked for her social security number, birth date, and home address for verification and he gave them that information from memory. The voice on the other line asked him to hold and then the line clicked and he sat and listened to Bob Marley being piped through the telephone speaker. He had spread the letter on the table, a document that described, in as precise terms as possible, the extent of the disaster were he to fail to pay the enclosed bill within thirty days. He slid the chair closer to the kitchen counter and retrieved the envelope and looked at its mailing date. Six weeks ago. Shit.

Bob Marley was singing forever and would never stop.

Then there was an abrupt click on the line and a voice returned. “Mr. Corcoran?” it said.

“Yes,” he said.

“I’m sorry to inform you that your storage unit has been closed for lack of payment,” the man said. There was a faint hint of a Middle Eastern accent, but it was so subtle as to sound more like cultural refinement
than ethnicity, as if the careful pronunciation of English words was exacted to the standards of a private university education.

“I don’t understand,” Keith said.

“The account was not paid for one hundred and twenty days. Even then we waited another thirty days after we sent the final notice. It’s not a free storage unit. It’s a business.”

“I understand that,” Keith said. “I’ve been out of town. I’d like to go ahead and pay the full bill now.”

“Sir, we appreciate that, but we have sent your account to the collection agency so you would need to speak with them about the eventuality of your payment.”

“OK,” he said. “Let me ask you this: How long before I can straighten this out and get my stuff out of the storage unit?”

“You misunderstand me, sir. There’s nothing in the unit anymore. Your account is closed and that unit is now occupied by a new renter.”

“Where’s my stuff, then?”

“Sir, I’m sorry to have to inform you that the items in the storage were auctioned.”

“Auctioned to who?”

“Sir, I cannot give you that information even if I had it, which I do not.”