Contrary Pleasure (25 page)

“I won’t.”

“You should, though. I’m a silly woman.”

“Look, girl. How about this. Let’s take a trip. The two of us. Talk
Bailey into staying here with Sandy.”

“Let’s!” she cried and looked up at him eagerly.

He looked at her, puzzled. “You know, you are a damn good-looking
female.”

“
Pish
and
tush
.”

An hour later
he drove up to the job on Hillside Heights where he was building four houses on
speculation. He hummed to himself as he parked the car and walked across the
raw dirt of an excavation. He stopped and looked around him. It did not look
the way it had looked yesterday. He had the feeling that he was not looking at
it with the same eyes he had used yesterday.

Janitz
, the foreman in charge of the job, came
out of the house. He was a bitter, spidery-looking man with continually angry
eyes.

“George, damn it, I don’t mind cull lumber. I don’t mind using scrap. But
look at this stuff we got to use for studding. It’s green. It leaks sap. It’s
going to warp so bad it’ll pull the nails the hell out.”

George beamed at him and said, “
Gooood
morning,
Herman.”

Herman
Janitz
stared at him. “What’s with you?”

“It is a fine, fat, lovely morning, Herman.”

“The big saw is broke again.”

“Smell that air, Herman.”

“McCarthy didn’t show again. I think he’s on another binge, George.”

“There’s nothing so rare as a day in June, Herman.”

“What’s with you? At this point you’re supposed to be jumping up and
down, George. You’re supposed to be cussing so loud they can hear you in town.”

“What’s with me? Herman, I do believe I’m in love.”

“Act your age, George.”

“I am acting my age. I was eighteen yesterday. Let’s see the lumber,
Herman. Get somebody to load the big saw in the back end of my car. If you see
McCarthy, tell him he picked a lovely time of year to get drunk.”

“You baffle me, George.”

They looked at the lumber. George clucked. “Have you used any?”

“Just that much.”

“Rip it out and restack it and I’ll have Federal pick it up when they
bring some decent stuff.”

“Are you sure you’re all right, George? You’re supposed to tell me to go
ahead and use it. You’re supposed to lean into my face and roar. You’re
supposed to tell me we’re in this business to make money.”

“Get the saw loaded, Herman.”

George walked slowly around the raw skeletal house. It was like looking
at the face of Alice. Like seeing it for the first time. But it had been
pleasant to look at her sleeping face. It was not pleasant to look at this
house. It was not a happy thing to look at something you were building with
greed and spit, just barely squeaking by the building code, setting up a white
elephant for some slob to spend the next twenty years carrying on his back. The
slob would just love his home when it was spanking new, when the paint and the
ulterior trim covered the hasty, rough carpentry. In a year there would be a
dozen things sticking and warping and crumbling. In three years the roof would
leak. The fine paint job might last a full year.
Wavery
flaws in the picture windows, scrap plywood under the kitchen-floor tiles.
Cheap labor that left owl eyes around all the
nailheads
.
Cheap glossy plumbing, with a chrome coat so thin it would start to flake
before he’d made his third mortgage payment. A nice margin in a deal like this.
You didn’t twist the slob’s arm. He wanted the house. He looked at it and liked
the smell of it and the newness and he wanted it, and his wife just adored the
gay colors of the kitchen.

The other builders knew what you were doing. So did your own crew. But
you were smart, all right. That George
Furmon
, by
God, he’s making it while he can. No experimentation. Slap ’
em
up and sell ’
em
and get out from under. They all knew
it, and it didn’t bother you a damn bit. You could go home every night and
forget it. Take on a nice comforting little load and forget it.

Herman came up and said, “The saw’s loaded.”

George gestured toward a pile of cinder block. “Have a seat, Herman. I’d
hate to see you fall down.”

Herman sat down warily, staring at George. George sat beside him and gave
him a cigar. They lit up. “Herman, what do you think about putting up some good
houses? I mean good. Make ’
em
just as good as we have
to when we have an architect who’s on the ball riding our tail. Good inside and
out.”

Herman studied the wet end of his cigar. “I would say maybe you are
getting smart, George, and I would say I don’t know whether it’s too late or
not.”

“What do you mean, Herman?”

Herman studied the cigar for long seconds and then hurled it away. It hit
and bounced. He turned and stared at George and his small eyes were angry. “I
was on my own. You know that. I had pride. I did a house. It meant something.
The name meant something. Go look at my houses. Twenty years ago I built them.
Like rocks they are. I made a little money on every one. A little, George. Not
as much again as it cost me to build. Okay, I’m a foreman. Does that mean no
pride, George? My pride is in my hands. Look, George. These hands. Putting up
cheap shacks for people to live in. A hundred times a day I want to puke. I say
I can get used to it. I say I don’t have to live in them. Is that any good?
Never, George. I’m never used to it. I won’t be. I have to try to do just as
good as I can with the crummy materials and the punk labor you give me. I have
to keep trying to get better stuff, and you lean in my face and yell about not
being in business for love.

“Maybe I am in business for love, George. Maybe that’s what it’s all
about. But you better not be kidding me, George. You better mean this. Like I
said, maybe it’s too late. You don’t think I know? Stockton Savings won’t take
the paper on your houses anymore. That gets around, George. The little people
talk. A guy comes to buy. He knows something about building. He looks around.
He looks where other people don’t look. And then he looks at me, George. It
makes me ashamed. It makes me so my food doesn’t sit good on my stomach,
George. A
Furmon
house. It meant something. Now what?
Does any architect tell the customer to get you to build? Not anymore, and you
know it. Those jobs come only when the customer knows you personal. So don’t
give me any cigar and make jokes and then start roaring and leaning in my face,
because this time I quit for good.”

George sat for a long time. He scuffed sand with the side of his shoe.

“I’m ashamed, Herman.”

“That’s good, George. You should be.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before, Herman?”

“Tell you! Tell you? Have you ever listened? For three years I’ve been
telling you.
Janitz
. What does he know? A foreman?
Yell in his face. You know what I do? I go home. I build cabinets. Fine wood.
Things that are nice to touch. Things for a hundred years. Two hundred. Then
I’m happy.”

“What can we do about these four, Herman?”

“Burn down the bastards.”

“I can’t do that. Can’t afford it. We’ll have to use the materials we
can’t return. Let’s us take a look at the bill of materials and the
specifications and see what we can do.”

“How about labor? Punks and drunks?”

“Can you get some of the old ones back?”

“I think so. I can try.”

“I was going to try to move these at seventeen five, Herman.”

“So?”

“They’ll move better at fifteen.”

“Good. That takes away some shame.” Both men were standing. Herman stuck
out his hand. George took it. Herman said, “It isn’t a mistake, George. Believe
me. You know the cream is off the market. They got to be good to move. And they
got to be better to live in. Good materials. These houses, George, they are
dull. Little rooms like boxes. We can make them like that one we did on
Treydon
Road.”

“The Wilcox house? Stop dreaming, Herman. That was an eighty-five
thousand dollar job.”

Herman frowned. “Here is what I mean. That house had air, light, a good
place to live. So does the wood have to be redwood? Does the glass have to be
Duo-
therm
? Does there have to be rubber tile, not
asphalt? Does the stone have to come from some bottom of a lake out in
Michigan, for God’s sake. And can’t there be two bedrooms, not five? The
materials, they can be honest. These houses, George, twenty years ago I was
building the same design only better.”

“See what you can dream up. With cost estimate, Herman.”

Later, when George left, Herman stood with his hands on his hips watching
him go. “What did you say happened to you, George?”

“I told you, Herman. I fell in love.”

“That’s bad stuff for a married man, George. Especially with kids.”

“I fell in love with my wife, Herman.”

“George, you better wear a hat out in the sun like this. Even if you are
crazy, it is a good thing. Second thought, George—skip the hat. Get lots of
sun.”

From the Hillside Heights project George drove into the hills south of
Stockton, to a fashionable residential district where a crew
foremanned
by Dug Lister was putting up, on a bid basis, a
house for some friends named Duffy. The house had been designed by a clever
young architect named Raymond Riker. The bid had been fifty-four thousand, six
hundred, and George knew he had been on the invitation list only through the
insistence of Duffy. He had put in the low bid, banking on Dug Lister to take
full advantage of the relative inexperience of Raymond Riker. But it wasn’t
working out too well. Riker seemed to have a knack of arriving on the job at
the critical moments. George had begun to worry about breaking even.

He parked by the house, went in. Dug Lister was a burly man with a very
small head. An old throat injury had reduced his voice, long ago, to a husky
whisper. And Lister had seemingly acquired all the conspiratorial mannerisms to
go with his confidential voice. He was a man with a habit of looking back over
his shoulder with quick nervous movements of his head. He was not one to
inspire confidence. Yet on this sort of a project he was invaluable.

Lister nodded at George and came over and they went outside together.

“I was hoping you’d show, George.” He squatted on the ground and unrolled
a set of the prints and put stones on it to hold it open. “That damn kid hasn’t
showed yet, George. I’m stalling a little. I want him to come and look around
and go. Then we can do this,” he whispered. George, hunkering down beside him,
listened while Dug explained. It was a clever evasion of the specifications,
done in such a way that the evidence could be concealed quickly and thoroughly.
George estimated that it would save somewhere around five hundred dollars.

“The
kid’ll
have to ask us to rip it out again,
here and here, before he can check it. And I don’t think he’ll do that, George.
He’d look too damn simple if it turned out he was wrong. He won’t take that
chance. What do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“Hell, the house will be just as good. These kids over-specify
everything. They think they’re designing the
Taj
Mahal
or something.”

“Lister, I think we better stick to the prints. All the way.”

Lister stared at him. “Is there something I don’t know, George?”

“Yes, I think I can say there’s something you don’t know.”

“Are you sore about something?”

“No.”

“Oh, I get it. You got another job lined up through the kid. And you
don’t want to take the chance. I thought for a minute there you were sore about
something.”

“No short cuts, Dug. None.”

“I get it. Sure, boss. Just like the prints from here on in.” He nudged
George with his elbow. “But we’ve saved a little, haven’t we?”

“Not enough, Dug. We’ll be over.”

“I’ll keep it down as much as I can.”

“But stay with the specs.”

“I got you.”

They stood up. A small maroon convertible turned into the slanting
driveway. Raymond Riker got out. He had a set of the prints with him. He spoke
politely enough, but he didn’t smile. “Good morning, Mr.
Furmon
.
Hello, Lister.” He went on into the house.

“You better go on in, Dug.”

George waited in his car. Riker was in the house for a full half hour.
When he came out, George strolled over to the convertible. Riker got inside and
started the motor. George leaned on the door. “Do you like the way it’s going?”

“It seems all right, Mr.
Furmon
. I check it
frequently.”

“I know.”

Riker gunned the car motor impatiently. George said, “I want to say something
to you, Ray. Is that what people call you?”

Riker turned off the motor. “I might as well tell you right now, Mr.
Furmon
, that I have no intention of making any kind of a
deal whatsoever. I know very well you’re going over the bid. I can’t help that.
I protect my client.”

“You think I’d try to pay you to goof off?”

Riker shrugged. “I might as well be frank. I don’t like the work you’ve
done in the past. When you got the bid, I knew I was going to have to do a lot
of checking. I’ve kept the job tight. You won’t make the bid. You’ll lose money
on the job. I expected that. So what
could
you want to talk about?”

“Open up your prints, Ray. I want to show you something.”

Riker shrugged. “Sure.” He unrolled the prints, held them flat against
the steering wheel. George had him turn to the third sheet. He explained
quickly what Lister had suggested.

“What would you have done, Ray?”

Ray frowned. “Frankly, that hadn’t occurred to me. It would have worked.
Why are you showing me?”