“Come on, let’s take this to the patio.”
They sit at the wrought-iron bistro table and drink. Here it is, their home. Their dream house, a restored Victorian in a neighborhood of restored Victorians, a perfect row of painted ladies. Theirs is yellow with sage trim, a pink-iced porch ceiling. They are bookended by other marzipan confections; their flowering backyard abuts other flowering yards. Their quarter acre is bordered by a lattice-top fence flush with hydrangea bushes and honeysuckle vines. Even the name of their road—Mercy—suits this particular kind of American paradise, this miniature encapsulation of English gardenhood. This is what had appealed to them, this manageable, modest utopia, this antithesis of trashy sprawl. It pains Mark to think that he has outgrown it so quickly.
It will take over a week to prepare an estimate for the Von Maurens. Mark sits in the garden each day with his laptop, staring at the bed of snapdragons Harris has planted. His head fills with fuzz, and his breath becomes shallow. Allergies, he wants to believe.
Three days later, he has not even finished an estimate for the kitchen. Harris returns from the store at six, like any commuting husband, portly and hungry, the king of his castle.
“The Von Maurens came in today. I told them how excited you are about the project.” He grins. “They put a deposit on the Windsor chairs. When I mentioned that the woodworker lives in town, they flipped. They want him to carve their initials into the chair combs. These people love to support their local craftsmen, you know.”
“And underpaid Mexicans, too.”
“Mark, I looked them up today. Do you know who these people are?”
“Um, no?”
“Gretchen is a rubber heiress. Her father is a Texas tire baron. And Caspar is an actual baron. From Liechtenstein.”
“Ha. I knew he was German.”
“No, Liechtensteinien.”
“Oh, please.”
“I’m going to invite them for drinks.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Why, Harris? What do we want with these people?”
“Honey, you need to think like a businessman. These people are top rung. They’re all over the gala pages. Your design could wind up in Town & Country.”
“God forbid.”
“Oh my God, when did you become such a snob?”
Mark opens his mouth but does not answer. It would be overly hostile to remind Harris that they’d come to this place with an understanding, a quiet contract, a shared touch of irony. They’d come as a pair of anthropologists to masquerade among the natives, or so Mark had thought, to mirror their culture and borrow from its abundance. They were not supposed to adopt it; they were not supposed to blend.
Harris opens a Bordeaux Blanc while the Von Maurens rave about the house and everything in it. Gretchen touches the objects on the tables, picks them up, turns them in her hands. She taps the Ghost chair with a fingernail and lowers herself finally into one of the antique fauteuils, letting her fingers splay upon the saffron Bergamo upholstery. She points to the flokati ottoman that rests like a sheepdog at her feet.
“Mark’s design,” Harris trumpets.
Through the avid eyes of visitors, Mark can’t help but be pleased with their home. They have achieved an impeccable mix of new and old, sleek and textured, Mark’s eye for classic symmetry counterbalancing Harris’s more exuberant tastes. Mark has had to hold him back from too much Jonathan Adler, tempting as it is. Already, he regrets rubber-stamping the eight-by-ten Union Jack rug in the living room. It dominates, limits their options. Also, he would like to sell the third-rate Hirst spin painting that they’d bought at the height of the market, but which has lost its dimension over the years and become a flat thing.
As the swooning continues, Mark becomes resentful. Perhaps he should take their fixation on decor as a compliment to his designer’s eye, but it is edging into a presumption that he and Harris have no other interests. He tries to change the topic of conversation to something political, global. It occurs to him that a Liechtenstein baron might have something to say about the EU crisis.
“The whole endeavor was misguided from the start,” Caspar responds without expression or gesture.
“I just have to say I love your window seat there.” Gretchen points. “Is that original to the house?”
Harris opens a second bottle of wine, a third. He is glowing. This is not what Mark had pictured when he’d pictured the parties they’d have. The baron seems to be relaxing a bit, leaning back in his fauteuil. Gretchen keeps touching Harris’s arm as they talk, as if she is hungry for something.
Harris is now cherub pink. He leans in, and in a breathlessly intimate voice says, “So, tell me. Are you two youngsters thinking of having a family?”
Mark stares at him. During the bubble of silence that follows, he feels himself levitate slightly.