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" 'I don't know' isn't right, wook," I said after a while. "I do know. I want us to get a house where we can be still and quiet and alone together for a long time."
She turned to me once more. "Are you talking about commitment?"
"Yes."
She left her chair, sat down with me in the inch of desert settled on our floor, kissed me softly.
After a long time, she spoke. "Any particular place in mind?"
I nodded. "Unless you feel strongly otherwise, wook, I'd hope we might find a place with a lot more water and a lot less sand."
thirty-nine
M. T TOOK three months' soaking in a torrent of real-estate catalogs, maps and out-of-town newspapers; it took weeks of flying, looking down from the Meyers for the perfect place to live, towns with names like Sweet Home and Happy Camp and Rhododendron. But the day came at last when the trailer windows that had framed sagebrush and rocks and a seared crust of desert now looked out on flower-spangled spring-color meadows, steep green forests, a river of water.
The Little Applegate Valley, Oregon. From the top of our hill we could see twenty miles around, and scarcely another house in sight. Houses there were, hidden by trees and slopes, but here we felt alone and blessed quiet; here we would build our home.
A little ho
me, first; one room with loft, while the IRS negotiations continued. Later, with the problem solved,
we'd build our permanent house alongside and call the little one a guesthouse.
The Revenue Service growled to itself, trying to unravel my new offer, while months slid into years. It was an offer a child might make, nothing denied. I felt like a visitor in a foreign country, unfamiliar with the money. I owed a bill, didn't know how to pay, so held out everything I owned and asked IRS to take whatever it wanted.
My offer passed to the desk of yet another agent in Los Angeles, who asked for a current financial statement. He got one. We heard nothing for months. The case was transferred. The new agent asked for an updated financial statement. She got one. More months passed. Another agent, another financial statement. Agents went by like leaves of a calendar, turning.
In the trailer, Leslie looked up sadly from the latest request for a new financial statement. I heard the same little voice that I had heard long-distance in Madrid, two and a half years before. "Oh, Richie, if only I had known you before you got into this mess! It wouldn't have happened. . . ."
"We met as early as we could have met," I said. "Earlier than that, you know it-I would have destroyed you or run away from you or you wouldn't have had the patience, you would have walked out on me, with good reason. It never would have worked; I had to learn my way through that mess. I'd never do it again, but I'm not that person anymore."
"Thank the Maker," she said. "Well, I'm here now. If we survive this, I promise you, our future is going to look nothing like your past!"
The clock ticked; the IRS neither noticed nor cared that our lives were stalled.
Bankruptcy, the attorney had said. Perhaps John Mar-quart's bizarre theory was right, after all. Not a pretty ending, I thought, but better than stalemate, better than making these same moves over and over through eternity.
We tried to consider it, but hi the end we couldn't. Bankruptcy. Such a desperate thing to do. Never!
Instead of a tour through Paris and Rome and Tokyo, we began construction at the top of the hill.
The day after the foundation was poured, buying groceries in town, my eye was caught by a new business on the mall: Custom Computer.
I walked inside.
"Leslie, I know that you are going to call me a silly goose," I said when I got back to the trailer.
She was covered with dirt, from back-filling water-pipe trenches for the solar panels on the hilltop, from running her Bobcat earth-mover mixing topsoils, carving gardens, from lavishing care and love into this final place we'd chosen to live.
So beautiful, I thought, as if the makeup department had streaked dust to accent her cheekbones. She didn't care. She was going to take her shower anyway.
"I know I went to town to buy us a loaf of bread," I said, "and to get milk and lettuce and tomatoes if I could find any good tomatoes. But do you know what I got instead?"
She sat down before she spoke. "Oh, no. Richard, you are not going to tell me you got . . . magic beans?"
"A gift for my darling!" I said.
"Richard, please! What did you get? We don't have room! Is there time to take it back?"
