‘Yeah, well if you can afford them then we’re paying you too much.’ Jack slapped him on the back a little harder than was necessary and left him droning on to his audience of one about a unique infusion process, something to do with an entire bottle of cognac. The guy was a total idiot.
Jack found their accountant, Nigel, also smoking a cigar but much more pleasant to talk to.
‘How’s the house you bought, Jack? In New Haven, isn’t it?
‘That’s right. I haven’t done much with it yet. It’s in bad shape, which is why I could buy it so cheap.’
‘Don’t tell me you’re going to move into it yourself. It’s hardly commuter distance.’
‘Some people do the commute, I’m sure.’
‘Yeah, those who do it in exchange for space, a family home. But there’s only one of you.’
Jack grew irritated at the reference to his bachelor status. He liked to keep a firm line between the business and his personal life. ‘I was going to fix it up and rent it out for a while, or I could keep it as a weekend home.’
‘So why buy in New Haven and not here in Manhattan? If you’re going down the rental route, you could’ve made a lot of money.’
For some it was always about the mighty dollar, but not for Jack. ‘I’m sure I could, Nigel, but I have my condo in the city. I saw this house by coincidence when I was passing through on my way to Hazelbrook, and well, I was impressed.’
The truth was, he’d fallen for the place, but he wasn’t going to elaborate. He could imagine the blank faces if he talked about how the day he’d closed on the house the fall colours of New England had made him catch his breath, how the russet red and gold leaves skittering across the road in a kaleidoscope of colours and the crinkling sounds passing through his open car window as he looked at the house, had ignited a passion in him that he hadn’t felt for years. The sunlight bathed across the roof of the dilapidated house had dared him to imagine another life, a life separate from the one he was standing in now. With a large front porch, an attic at the very top with a latticed window and an overgrown garden that he longed to trim back, it was like a fresh start being dangled in front of him.
‘Well, when you’re ready to start work on the place, let me know,’ Nigel insisted. ‘I’ve got a list of contractors as long as my arm and it’s always best to go by recommendation.’
‘I’m sure it is. And thank you.’ In the first burst of excitement after buying the property, Jack had dreamed of doing all the work himself, but never having tackled anything more manual than lifting boxes of jewellery before, he suspected renovating a property would be as new to him as talking was to a baby.
Jack’s head hurt by the time the party ended and he left the house, but it felt good to be out in the cold air now. It’d been a full few days leading up to Thanksgiving, with back-to-back meetings yesterday with buyers from some of the major department stores in Lower Manhattan.
He turned the street corner, and pulling his coat tightly around him, he looked up at the moon hovering above as the air around him threatened more snow. Even now he loved to look at it. His mother had had a fascination with astrology and loved to talk about how the sun, moon, stars and planets could influence human actions. She’d talk about it for hours, Jack and Cameron would giggle, and their father would roll his eyes even though you knew he secretly loved the passion in his wife’s voice. Every night, all four of them would wait for the sun to go down and the moon to come out from its hiding place, and they’d stand out on the front steps of the townhouse and look up to the skies blanketing Manhattan. They’d talk about how far the moon was, whether there was any life there, which was a topic of endless fascination for Jack when he was younger, the shape of it—crescent, full, a sliver—and they’d desperately try to see beyond the buildings and skyscrapers that hid the stars too well, the lights of the city that made it almost impossible to distinguish between mother nature and what western civilisation had added.
Jack treasured his memories, and when the moon was as full as it was tonight, shining as if to say ‘look at me, Jack, I’m still here, what happened to you?’ he’d remember those times. Tonight, his memories were with him as he reached his condo ready to sleep off the dinner and the cigars, and tomorrow he’d make his escape out to Hollyhock Farm, the only place his life seemed to make sense.
