A House Among the Trees

Tommy never did get to interrogate Nicholas Greene about the movie, the details of its narrative. She had meant to ask if he would let her look over the script, which she had seen him toss on a chair in the den the day he arrived. How much she agonized about that only a few days ago; now, how little she cares.

“So.” Franklin’s back is to the picture window, its postcard view of the house and the bright sky surrounding him; Tommy can’t read his expression. Yesterday she spent two hours with him in his office, explaining what she hopes they can accomplish together—and how she hopes to free herself, within a year if she can.

Now she claps her hands, just to break the portentous silence. “Let’s do this thing, shall we? I called the alarm company ten minutes ago. And remind me to text them the code right after.”

Franklin lifts the case off its shelf, high over Morty’s main desk. He places it in the center of the empty conference table where, after a dry run with Tommy, Morty always presented a new book to his agent, editor, and art director.

She produces the futuristic key and the card bearing the combination. The numbers on the tumbler are small, and her eyesight is growing miserly. She borrows Franklin’s reading glasses to unlock the plexiglass box. Franklin removes the vessel. Once it’s sitting in the open, they both exhale audibly, a mixture of awe and relief—as if it might have slumped into a pile of shards once released from its prison.

“Who gave it to him?” asks Franklin. “I still can’t believe it was a gift.”

“Before my time,” says Tommy. “Sometimes I forget I haven’t always been with Morty. I missed all the fuss when Colorquake came out. It must have included a lovestruck shipping tycoon. Or a cunning art thief. I asked him once, when he decided to have it alarmed.”

“What did he say?”

“Something dismissive, like ‘A profligate scoundrel. Another life. You wouldn’t want to know.’?” Tommy hears herself mimicking Morty as she’s done for decades, even to his face. She imagines she’ll be quoting him, reaching for the gruff voice of his last years, for the rest of her life. It’s the voice he left her with.

Franklin peers into the narrow mouth of the vase. The body of the vessel is nearly a globe, eight or ten inches across at the middle, its neck a shallow collar. Using three fingers like pincers, he draws out a sheet of paper folded several times. As Tommy expected, though only based on Morty’s say-so, here is the certificate of provenance, printed on letterhead from a gallery with addresses in Athens and Mykonos.

Tommy texts the designated code to the alarm company, then picks up the paper. She’s reading the English translation typed below the original Greek when she looks up to see Franklin still peering into the vase.

He teases out a small envelope, the size that fits a personal check or a mannerly thank-you note. He hands it to Tommy, but he’s still looking inside the vase. “Huh.”

A second envelope emerges, a third.

All are addressed to Morty, here in Orne, all postmarked Tucson. The handwriting looks pained and skews downhill. The return address is a post-office box.

Tommy sets them aside and tells Franklin she’ll look at them later. “I doubt they have anything to do with the pot.”

Franklin looks at her skeptically but shrugs. “All yours.”

The auctioneer is due in an hour. He will look at this object, first and foremost, but also at the Alice collection, a few pieces of early American furniture in the house, and then, because it suddenly occurred to Tommy (how obvious) that a market would emerge for Mortabilia, too, the whimsical necktie collection. She has Nicholas Greene to thank for bringing it to her attention.

Tomorrow, when only Tommy will be here—God, so she hopes—the broker will come. Tommy doesn’t want Franklin to know, not yet, that she’s thinking of selling the house, not that she can do it until the estate clears probate. He assumes she regards it as her home for the near future, if not indefinitely. A glance out the back of the studio toward the useless, accusatory pool reminds her that she regards it as neither.



Nick wakes to the repugnant sensation of his cheek mashed flat and numb against the cold, sticky window. He peels his face away from the plexi and rubs the nerve endings back to life. The landscape below is flat and obstinately brown, divided into rectangular plots like a counterpane made of worn-out tweeds. He’s flown this route so many times by now that even without the tracking map on the seatback in front of him, he could place a hefty wager on their being two and a quarter hours short of L.A. The fellow beside him (well scrubbed, thank heaven; the state in which some people travel is hygienically hazardous!) leans close to his computer, mesmerized by muted gunplay in some film—more likely a television show. These days, films seem almost parenthetical.

“I envy you,” the man says to Nick without taking his eyes off the screen. “You can actually sleep on a plane.”

“Occupational necessity,” he says, and then, “Oh God, did I snore?”

The man laughs, pulls out an earbud, and looks directly at Nick. “Wouldn’t know. But can I ask you something?”

Nick smiles politely. “Quarters are too close for me to say no.”

“Are you somebody important?”

“Hardly, mate.”

“Three of the flight attendants joined forces to watch you for a few minutes while you were out. I gave them the evil eye and they backed off.”

“I’m one of those people who’s cursed to look like somebody else,” Nick says. “Like your Uncle Mick or a bloke from the office.”

The man gives him a smirk of disbelief. “You don’t look like anybody I know.”

Hoping to deflect attention from his face, Nick asks what the man is watching. It’s a series Nick’s heard of but hasn’t seen. He lets his neighbor tell him all about why he can’t afford to miss it. “And I’d watch anything with Derek Unwin. Even though I’ve read he’s one of those creepy Scientologists.” The man glances at the frozen image on his screen. He points to another actor, who looks like he’s about to shoot Derek Unwin square in the face. “And he’s supposedly bisexual. Jesus, you could not pay me to do what these guys do, I don’t care if they can get any babe they want—or, I guess, any guy. No judgment, of course. To each his own.”

“I hear you,” says Nick. “Well, go right on back to it. I’ll be sure to give the show a once-over when I’m home.” If he’s ever home again.

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