“Good,” John replies. “Solid.”
He leads them back down the stairs, feeling a flick of pleasure in the sound of footsteps tapping obediently behind him. The second floor of the house is clearly an addition, fitted upon the old house like a plastic lid. It is a classic layout, devoid of interest: three bedrooms with a shared full bath and, at the east end of the floor, a vast master bedroom with triple exposure, skylight, walk-in closet, crown molding. The Tuscan-tiled master bath features a Jacuzzi, towel warmer, and half-moon window with a view of treetops.
There is no texture to any of these rooms, no place for defects to hide. John spends no more than a few minutes in each, checking the registers, feeling the frigid central air pushing through. He moves independently of the group now, hearing snippets of the wife’s comments as the group serpentines slowly behind him.
“I love this little catwalk balcony,” she says brightly. “And I love that the laundry room is upstairs.”
Lori murmurs encouragingly. John is relieved to be alone as he tests the water pressure in the master bathroom sink. He flushes the toilet. He takes the bottle of fluorescent tracer dye from his fanny pack, measures and pours the liquid into the bowl, flushes again. He tests the showerhead, then moves to the Jacuzzi tub. It is degrading, he feels, for a serious home inspector to examine a Jacuzzi—to stoop to a brass faucet embellished like the knob of a palace entry and wait for the jets to gush. This is a gray area in ASHI’s standards of practice, something he could justify omitting, but he senses that these buyers would not appreciate that. As he stands watching the tub fill, he allows himself to picture the wife introducing a toe to scalding water, then easing her leg in so that the skin turns a slow scarlet. Gingerly, she would lower her body into the water until only her head and neck cleared the surface. Then she would relax and survey the vista beyond the arched window, the trees and sky every inch her own.
The jets come on strong and sure. John drains the water, leaves the bathroom, and moves downstairs. In the kitchen, he turns on the tap and leaves it running for the septic dye test.
“Beautiful cabinets,” Lori is saying. “You can tell they were just done.”
The wife nods. “They’re gorgeous. And I love the tiled backsplash, don’t you, honey?”
The husband stands vacantly at the far side of the kitchen island, his hands deep in his pockets. He does not reply at once. His gaze is abstracted, perhaps focused on an evening in his future when he’ll come home to this kitchen and greet his family. When John catches the man’s eye, he thinks he sees a flicker of apprehension.
“They’re very nice,” the husband replies.
If all goes well with the inspection, this man will live here. This will be the landscape upon which fresh chapters of his life and marriage will play out, for better or worse. John doesn’t purport to be a gauge of the intimate lives of others, but he imagines that this couple is vulnerable to the same blights as any. Perhaps this wife will become callous and antagonistic like Diana. Perhaps all women do, eventually. If John were a different sort of man, he might beckon the husband into a corner and caution him about wives turning against husbands without warning. He might alert him to the perverse importance of talking. He might tell him how he’d always believed he and Diana were viscerally linked, that she’d been as much a part of him as his lungs or liver, that their communication had approached telepathy. So then, how, in nineteen years of marriage, had he failed to notice what she one day referred to as a “brick wall” between them? All at once, it was too late for endearments; all the talking they’d ever done was meaningless, abruptly sealed away behind them.
John opens the cabinet doors beneath the kitchen sink. Bottles of cleaning fluid are organized around beautiful new PVC piping. There is still sawdust in the corners of the cabinetwork. He turns off the tap and circles the kitchen, opening and closing drawers. He checks the countertops, above and below, feeling the weight of Lori’s eyes on him.
“Granite,” John mumbles. “There’s a small possibility of radon, in case you’d like to order a test.”
When he looks up, he sees the wife leaning against the counter, her inflated middle tapering to the implausible pair of tanned legs.
“No, I think we’ll pass,” the husband says.
John clears his throat. “Otherwise everything looks clean.”
“Oh, good.” The woman smiles and, after a moment, asks, “So, how long have you been an inspector?”
John hesitates before answering. He is unable to tell from the tone of her voice whether she is asking out of polite curiosity or skepticism.
“About twenty years,” he says. “Truth is, I know more about the houses in this town than anyone should be allowed to know.”