“I went to school!” Seth protested loudly, as if he’d already been arguing about the question for several minutes.
“I know,” said his mother, slowly, carefully, trying to look her son in the eyes. “They called because you fell asleep in class again. You’re not in trouble. They are worried.”
“I’m fine!” Seth said.
Maria took a deep breath.
“I’m worried, too,” she said. “I don’t know where you go at night. By myself, I can’t really do anything about it. You’re too big now for me. If you won’t take care of yourself, I—”
“Mom, I’m fine,” said Seth, wholly exhausted and in need of sleep, responding to the emotion in his mother’s voice like a sponge soaking up water until it can hold no more, feeling some of what she felt: changes just up ahead, the end of something.
“Well, I hope so,” she said, wishing she had something stronger than hope on hand, knowing better than to look too hard for whatever that stronger thing might be.
FOREIGN INFLUENCE
He looks for signs of construction as he’s landing this time. From the air, sites look like something out of a Lego kit—uniform geometric spaces identical to one another in shape if not always in size, interrupted occasionally by yellow cranes in their wet clay pits, the search like a scavenger hunt whose rewards are great but as yet intangible, and then the plane gets cleared for landing, at which point he takes note of the occasional swimming pool. The presence of people who can afford swimming pools is a great sign, he thinks—people who’ll spend their money on luxuries won’t hesitate to buy an improved property in a developing neighborhood. He takes a confident attitude toward the future prospects he intends to finalize on this visit; he’s done his research. The Bay Area is on the move. All property appreciates over time. Real estate, held long enough, is immune to cycles of boom and bust. Progress is real. It’s the chances you don’t take that you’ll remember.
But the cashier’s check for “earnest money” that’s in his briefcase in the overhead rack keeps interrupting his reverie. You can’t get that money back; once you hand it over, it’s gone. If anything goes wrong down the line, it’s a sunken cost. And Buckler, as they’d put it in the churches near the property he intends to buy, is stepping out in faith. Back home, he’s walked through plenty of properties, and he talks a good game: but he’s an amateur. It nags at him. He knows that once he turns that crucial first property around it will be easy; he has friends who say it’s like taking candy from a baby.
Up late at night, he’s watched hour-long infomercials whose hosts speak to him from the decks of yachts, surrounded by women in bathing suits and well-wishers hoisting flutes of champagne.
He looks at the buildings below as they grow larger, the plane descending, and imagines owning whole developments, selling them off by parcel, outbidding every over-educated asshole on prime locations in the market until everybody knows his name.
A BENEDICTION
I’m too smart to be doing this, Derrick thought to himself. I’m too smart and I have too much riding on me staying out of trouble. I’m too old to be doing this, he thought to himself, still working patiently although he’d assured his parents he was only going out to ride his bike: remaining aware of his surroundings, sauntering casually around the corner of the building from time to time, trying to blend into the general scenery for a minute or two if he happened to spot an idle interloper walking nearby; and then, when the danger seemed past, ambling gently back to his station, as if attending to some quotidian duty. Repeating this process several times as the afternoon progressed to dusk: at school everybody had ideas about when it was safest to be out and about doing things that might get you noticed. Guys who’d run into trouble once or twice said lunch break and dinner break were your best bets.
Trying not to be seen while still getting it right; staying focused but remaining on guard—the handicap gave an edge to his work. Every time he returned to his station at the door, that edge sharpened some, leaving direct evidence of its bite. Seth and Alex and Angela hadn’t had time for the facade of the property; they’d been too busy all night attending to the interior, where the chances of getting caught were lower. Slowly, now, Derrick was finishing the job, using the worn stub of chalk left from a piece Seth used for the outlines on the floor.
For his contribution, Derrick meditated a moment on the things that make people afraid to enter a place. In his literature class, when they did Edgar Allan Poe, they spent almost the whole time talking about fear of the unknown; to him this was a sort of training-wheels fear. The unknown is too vast and shapeless to be a threat. To Derrick, harm, the prospect of it, was the deciding quantity: the possibility that something inside will hurt you. That’s the stuff that makes you cross the street to avoid a house. It’s the chance that there’s something inside that might leave a mark on you. You’d be even more scared if you knew what it was.