Independence Day by Richard Ford Page A

sheets then to the windows. This has often been the point when Joe announces he’s seen quite enough.
    “Is that it?” Phyllis says.
    “It’s our sign,” I say, turning in the driveway and pulling up halfway. Rain has stopped now. Beyond the old Merc, at the end of the drive behind the house, a detached wooden garage is visible, plus an enticing angle-slice of green from the shaded back yard. No crime bars are on any windows or doors.
    “What’s the heating?” Joe—veteran Vermonter—says, squinting out the windshield, his listing sheet in his lap.
    “Circulating hot water, electric baseboards in the den,” I say verbatim from the same sheet.
    “How old?”
    “Nineteen twenty-four. Not in the floodplain, and the side lot’s buildable if you ever want to sell or add on.”
    Joe casts a dark frown of ecological betrayal at me, as if the very idea of parceling off vacant lots was a crime of rain-forest-type gravity which no one should even be allowed to conceptualize. (He himself would more than conceptualize it if he ever needed the money, or were getting divorced. I of course conceptualize it all the time.)
    “It has a nice front yard,” I say. “Shade’s your hidden asset.”
    “What kind of trees?” Joe says, scowling and concentrating on the side yard.
    “Let’s see,” I say, leaning and looking out past his thick, hairmatte chest. “One’s a copper beech. That one’s a split-leaf maple, I’d say. One’s a sugar maple—which you should like. There’s a red oak. And one may be a ginkgo. It’s a good mix soilwise.”
    “Ginkgoes stink,” Joe says, fixed in his seat, as is Phyllis, neither one offering to get out. “What’s it border on the back side?”
    “We’ll need to look at that,” I say, though of course I know.
    “Is that the owner?” Phyllis says, looking out.
    A figure has come to the door and is rubbernecking from behind the shadowy screen: a man—not large—in a shirt and tie with no jacket. I’m not sure he even sees us.
    “We’ll just have to find that out,” I say, hoping not, but easing the car a notch farther up the drive before shutting it off and immediately opening my door to the summer heat.
    O nce out, Phyllis steams right up the walk, moving with the same wobble-gaited unwieldiness as before, toes slightly out, arms working, intent on loving as much as possible before Joe can weigh in with the bad news.
    Joe, though, in his silver shorts, flip-flops and pathetic muscle shirt, hangs back with me, then stops stock-still on the walk to survey the lawn, the street and the neighboring houses, which are Fifties constructions and cheaper, but with fewer maintenance worries and more modest, less burdensome lawns. The Houlihans’ is in fact the nicest house on the street, which can become a scratchy price issue with an experienced buyer but probably will not be today.
    I have grabbed my clipboard and put on my red nylon windbreaker from the back seat. The jacket has the Lauren-Schwindell Societas Progressioni Commissa crest on the breast and a big white stenciled REALTOR across the back, like an FBI agent’s. I’m wearing it today in spite of the heat and humidity to get a point across to the Markhams: I’m not their friend; it’s business, not a hobby; there’s something at issue. Time’s a-wastin’.
    “It ain’t Vermont, is it?” Joe muses as we stand side by side in the last drippy moments of the morning’s wet weather. This is exactly what he’s said at similar moments outside any number of other houses in the last four months, though he probably doesn’t remember. And what he means is: Well, fuck this. If you can’t show me Vermont , then why the hell are you showing me a goddamned thing? After which, often before Phyllis has even made it to the front door, we’ve turned around and left. This is why Phyllis caught fire to get inside. I, however, am frankly glad just to get Joe out of the car and this far, no matter what his objections might later