He isn’t even mentioning it. And everybody watching this Saturday night is going to lift their beers to Lonnie, and there might even be a swell of applause for him, probably his first one ever.
“And then, do you know what he did?” Deacon Samuels says. “I’d forgotten the world could work like this, that it had ever been this small. He—he stepped out into the street and waved at someone having coffee at this perfect little diner, Dot’s”—another round of applause here, surely—“and who he was calling over was a realtor, a Mrs. Christy.”
Misty Christy takes a bow here, from whatever float she’s on.
“And, and of course there’s plots of land available here, but that’s not what I’m talking about. What I’m talking about is…
it’s the clarity of the water, Theo. This isn’t like Boston Harbor. And, Lew, the air here, I think it’d be good for Lemmy. Mars, I know Macy likes to birdwatch, doesn’t she?
And aren’t the girls on the swim team? And Galatea, Ross, there’s so much up here for her to photograph. But it’s not just what to do, you can do stuff anywhere, it’s… it’s like, do you remember that old movie The Land That Time Forgot? Theo, I know you do, I think you own it now. This is like an idyllic little part of the world that’s stayed safe and pristine, that hasn’t been touched. And, I don’t want to presume, but I think if we were to pool our resources and connections… Mars, this is more your domain, but we could—”
Jade’s face is slack now.
This is Deacon Samuels, out driving across America, and stumbling into Proofrock, and falling in love with it, and trying to… not to sell it to his friends, but to get them to see it as he does.
He’s a realtor, a salesman, Jade reminds herself.
But still.
“How could we have said no?” another voice comes in now.
It’s Lewellyn Singleton, the banker. He’s stepping out from the mahogany locker he was sort of leaning against, and the camera’s close on him now. His hands are working the twisted ends of the towel slung across his neck.
“This place was and is everything Deacon said it was,”
Lewellyn goes on, “and more. Yes, this high mountain air has done wonders for my son’s lung condition. Who’d have thought that a nineteenth-century cure would still work in the twenty-first century?” He smiles, shrugs. “But it’s been good for me, too. I feel like I’ve finally found home, which I know has to sound like… most of you have been here your whole lives, it’s your home, we understand that. But”—he rolls his lips in, looks away like trying to keep his eyes busy—“I don’t know how you define ‘home,’ that’s… I know interest rates and long-term this and that, it doesn’t matter. My little dog of fourteen years, though, Princess Leia, we brought her with us last time we were here, and—and now she’s buried over here in Terra Nova. That’s how I define it, that’s how I define ‘home.’ ”
He shrugs, steps back, and Jade’s arms are crossed now.
Because she’s trying to resist this.
“Hi,” Ross Pangborne says, raising his hand and stepping forward, then evidently taking direction from whoever’s behind the camera. He steps over, more into the center of the frame, waves all over again. “First, let me say that I’m not reading any of your direct messages,” he says with a guilty smile, referencing a recent privacy scandal his social media empire just went through. Jade can’t help it, has to smile with him here. He’s so awkward, so vulnerable, so not the raging, power-mad tycoon. “Second, and much more important, I want to thank you for welcoming us not just into your beautiful town, but your lives. And I want to personally apologize for the—the process of building across the lake, here, which is leaving industrial scars, I know. But we want you all to know, and this is a promise, there’s going to be a park there next summer, and it will be fully accessible, and the —the county won’t have to support it. That’s going to be our job. You’ll see one of us out there every weekend, collecting any gum wrappers, any soda bottles. That’s our guarantee.
Thank you.”
Jade shakes her head no, this isn’t happening, this can’t be happening.
Mr. Holmes was right. He has to be. The Founders are evil, they’re capitalism in human form, they’re only in Proofrock because mountain towns are in style for their tax bracket this year.