“I’m not saying we should never do it,” Harris continues. “But there’s plenty of time. We’re still getting settled here, the store’s just taking off.” He pauses, then adds, “And your business is starting to blossom.”
Mark nods his head, does not argue. On the Peace Corps website, there is a whole section detailing the strain on romantic relationships for volunteers who serve without their partners. Twenty-seven months is a long time. There are many scenarios to consider before one partner should embark without the other, many eventualities to discuss before sending in a solo application.
When he and Harris were first in love, they sometimes played a game called “Deal Breaker.” What degree of sin or betrayal would make the other leave?
“What if I kissed your brother?” Mark would ask.
“What if I put up Laura Ashley drapes?” Harris would counter, laughing.
“What if I wanted a threesome with a woman?”
“What if I wore whale-print golf pants?”
It has been a long time since they’ve played “Deal Breaker.” There is a comfortable formality to their evenings now, the two of them reading in bed, a stack of books and magazines upon each nightstand, a sense that every waking moment must be squeezed for gain of further information. Mark can’t help but contrast this with their first helium weeks together, holed up in Harris’s Bond Street apartment, lightened by the exertion of talk and sex, when he wondered if he would ever read a book again.
Harris accompanies Mark on his consultation visit with the Von Maurens. Together, they drive away from the dollhouse center of town, through softer acres with gated residences hidden in the trees. It’s true that Mark loves the aesthetic refinement of this area. He loves the exquisitely restored farmhouses, the expensive masonry that makes new stone walls appear old, the blanketed show horses. He can’t help but thrill to the effortless elegance of the weathered barns, the convertible sports cars—to his sheer proximity to this most rarefied class, peppered with private film stars, financiers, icons of fashion and design. There is an aphrodisiac in this aura of informal exclusivity that is absent from the city and its brassy rivalry.
They pull up to number 430, a flat-faced white saltbox with an ugly blue tarp on the roof. The Ezekiel Slater house, according to the plaque at the side of the door, built in 1740. The date alone, Mark admits, gives him a frisson. He has never worked on anything predating the Victorian era.
Gretchen opens the plank door before he and Harris can knock, her jeweled ears and neck discordant in the rustic doorframe.
She pulls them inside and begins talking. “The elderly woman who lived here didn’t do anything to the house. I don’t think anything’s been changed for forty years.” She clips over the wood floor in snakeskin pumps. “Anyway, we interviewed designers in the city, but none of them had a feeling for the history. They wanted to do everything new. Then we had a problem with the roof, as you can see, and the historical commission got involved. So now we’re in the middle of a big exterior restoration in keeping with their guidelines. Of course that won’t affect what we do to the interior.”
Mark nods. “But you’ll want to be sensitive, regardless.”
“Of course,” Gretchen chimes. “Anyway, let me show you what we’re thinking, then you let us know if you can make it work.”
She turns away, and Mark rolls his eyes at Harris, who smirks. They follow her up the narrow staircase, its steps groaning with age. Harris trails behind, his knee joints blasted by late-stage Lyme disease. Probably picked up in the garden during their first weeks in the house, before they’d learned to wear kneesocks.
Caspar Von Mauren appears silently at the top of the staircase, an apparition in white linen. The attic would become his home office. The walls separating the two smaller bedrooms would vanish to create a master suite, and the third bedroom would become a his-and-hers bath. The kitchen pantry would morph into a powder room, and the kitchen itself would grow a glassed-in sunroom.
“The front has to stay the same, I know that. We wouldn’t want to change that.” Gretchen looks at her husband, as if for confirmation. “And I’m already picturing some of the things from the store in here. The barn-door table right here in the dining room, with the Windsor chairs around it. Also, I’d love to enlarge some of the windows in the back, get some more light in here.”
Mark makes notes on his little pad with a metal pen. He fills pages. If these people are serious about their plans, the job will take a good year.
At home, Harris opens a ’93 Dom.
Mark shakes his head. “It’s not official yet.”
“Oh, you know it is. Cheers, and kudos to me for matchmaking.”
“Thank you.”