“I thought that might be stranger, though. Or frightening.” The woman tried to catch Clay’s eye.
Their near-unison seemed charming to the point of comedy, like Powell and Loy. Clay’s adrenaline fermented into annoyance. “Can we . . . help you?” He hadn’t even heard their car, if they had come by car, but how else would they have come?
Clay had said we, and so, telephone tight in her hand like a child’s favored plush toy, Amanda stepped into the foyer. They were probably lost motorists, or had a flat tire. Occam’s razor and all that. “Hi!” She forced in some cheer, as though she’d been waiting for them.
“Good evening.” The man wanted to underscore that he was a gentleman. That was part of the plan.
“You startled us. We weren’t expecting anyone.” Amanda didn’t mind admitting it. She calculated that it might establish her upper hand. She thought it might say This is our house, now what do you want?
There was wind, and it sounded like a chorus of voices. The trees swayed, their heads tossed with abandon. A storm was coming or out there somewhere.
The woman shivered. Her linen clothes could not keep her warm. She seemed pitiable, elderly, ill prepared. She was smart, and she’d been counting on this.
Clay could not help feeling bad, or rude. The woman was old enough to be his mother, though his own mother was long dead. Good manners were a tool that helped you deal with moments this strange. “You caught us by surprise. But what can we do for you?”
The black man looked at Amanda, and his smile warmed further. “Well, you must be Amanda. Right? Amanda. I’m sorry, but—” The breeze eddied around them, through their summer clothes. He said her name a third time because he knew it would be effective. “Amanda, do you think we could come inside?”
8
RECOGNIZING PEOPLE WAS ONE OF AMANDA’S SKILLS. SHE bought cocktails for the apparatchiks from Minneapolis and Columbus and St. Louis who paid her. She remembered who was who and asked after their families. This was a point of pride. She looked at the man and saw only a black man she had never seen before.
“You know one another!” Clay was reassured. The breeze raised the hair on his legs.
“We’ve not had the pleasure of meeting face-to-face.” The man had the practice of a salesman which was, ultimately, what he was. “I’m G. H.”
The letters meant nothing to her. Amanda couldn’t figure whether he was trying to spell something.
“George.” The woman thought the name more gentle than the initials, and this was a moment when they needed to seem human. You never knew who had guns and was ready to stand their ground. “He’s George.”
He thought of himself as George. He spoke of himself as G. H. “—George, right, I’m George. This is our house.”
Possession was some fraction of the law, and Amanda had deluded herself. She’d been pretending that this was their house! “I’m sorry?”
“This is our house,” he said again. “We emailed back and forth—about the house?” He tried to sound firm but also gentle.
Amanda remembered, then: [email protected]—the formal opacity of those initials. The place was comfortable but sufficiently anonymous that she had not bothered to try to picture its owners, and now, seeing them, she knew that if she had bothered to picture them, her picture would have been incorrect. This didn’t seem to her like the sort of house where black people lived. But what did she mean by that? “This is—your house?”
Clay was disappointed. They were paying for the illusion of ownership. They were on vacation. He closed the door, leaving the world out there, where it belonged.
“We’re so sorry to bother you.” Ruth still had her hand on George’s shoulder. Well, they were inside; they’d accomplished something.
Why had Clay closed the door, invited these people in? It was so like him. He always wanted to handle the business of life but was not fully prepared to do so. Amanda wanted proof. She wanted to inspect the mortgage, a photo ID. These people and their disheveled clothes could be—well, they looked more like evangelists than criminals, hopeful pamphleteers come to witness Jehovah.
“You gave us a bit of a fright!” Clay didn’t mind confessing his own cowardice, since it had passed. A bit barely counted, and it was, importantly, their fault. “Goodness, it’s cold out all of a sudden.”
“It is.” G. H. was as good as anyone at predicting how other people would behave. But it took time. They were inside. That was what mattered. “Summer storm? Maybe it’ll pass.”
They were four adults standing about awkwardly as in those last anticipatory moments at an orgy.
Amanda was furious at everyone, Clay most of all. She twitched, certain one of these people would produce a gun, a knife, a demand. She wished she’d still been holding the telephone, though who could say how long it would take for the local precinct to get to their beautiful house in the deep of the woods. She didn’t even say anything.
G. H. was ready. He had prepared, tried to guess how these people might react. “I understand how strange it must be for you, us turning up like this unannounced.”
“Unannounced.” Amanda inspected the word, and it didn’t hold up to scrutiny.
“We’d have called, you see, but the phones—”
They’d have called? Did these people have her number?
“I’m Ruth.” She extended a hand. Every couple apportioned labor by strength, even or especially at such moments. Her role was to shake hands and make nice and put these people at ease so they could get what they wanted.
“Clay.” He shook her hand.
“And you’re Amanda.” Ruth smiled.
Amanda took the stranger’s manicured hand. If calluses meant honest labor, did softness imply dishonesty? “Yes,” she said.
“And I’m G. H., again. Clay, nice to meet you.”
Clay applied more pressure than he normally might have, as he had a point to prove.
“And Amanda, it’s nice to meet face-to-face.”
Amanda crossed arms over her chest. “Yes. Though I have to admit that I wasn’t expecting to meet you at all.”
“No, of course not.”
“Maybe we should—sit?” It was their house, what was Clay supposed to do?
“That would be lovely.” Ruth had the smile of a politician’s wife.
“Sit? Yes. Fine.” Amanda tried to communicate something to her husband, but one look couldn’t contain it. “Maybe in the kitchen. We’ll have to be quiet, though, the children are sleeping.”
“The children. Of course. I hope we didn’t wake them.” G. H. should have guessed there would be children, but maybe that helped the situation.
“Archie could sleep through a nuclear bomb. I’m sure they’re fine.” Clay was his usual joking self.
“I think I’ll just go check on them.” Amanda was icy, and tried to imply that it was her habit to peer in at her sleeping children every so often.
“They’re fine.” Clay couldn’t understand what she was up to.
“I’m just going to go check on them. Why don’t you—” She didn’t know how to complete the thought, and so she did not bother.