Arturo continued explaining the terms of employment. “You start Monday. Be at the Five Star parking lot at five-thirty. Truck takes you out, brings you back. We got water. Bring a bottle to carry with you. Bring food. You’ll burn out there, so bring a hat.”
Russell nodded, not knowing how to get out of this without looking like a shirker.
“OK. You be there Monday at five-thirty.”
“All right,” said Manny as they walked to the car. “I feel better about that now.”
They drove slowly past the handsome estates on one of the town’s wide boulevards. Most dated from the nineteenth century: spacious old mansions set among towering maples and sycamores. Russell thought about the families and all the generations that had inhabited them, about stories told and lives lived.
“Hey, take him by the free house,” Carmela said.
Manny took an abrupt right.
“Free house?” Russell asked.
“Yeah, free if you can move it. You tell it, Manny.”
“I heard from some guys at work about this guy, Jim Ryan I think his name is, a businessman—”
Carmela interrupted with a little snort.
“What?” Manny asked.
She tried to explain. “Businessman. That word is funny to me.”
“What’s so funny about it?’” Manny wanted to know.
Russell gave her a knowing look and said, “Time zone.” They both giggled.
“What?” Manny said again, thoroughly perplexed. “You two talking in some kind of weird code now?”
“Some words are just funny,” Carmela said.
“Businessman,” Russell repeated, and she snickered.
Manny glanced at them and continued where he left off. “Anyway, this businessman—go ahead and laugh—he, well, owns a business, and he wants to expand to the next lot. So he buys it, but there’s this old house on it. Needs some work, nobody’s lived in it for a while, but it’s a nice old house and he really doesn’t want to tear it down. So he put out the word that anyone who’ll move it off the property can have it for free. He’s not going to expand till September, so someone’s got to take him up on it before then.”
They pulled up and idled in front of a peeling but proud Victorian house sitting in the middle of a yard gone to seed.
“How much to move it?” Russell asked.
“I heard someone say forty grand just to jack it up, then you have to move the utility lines, and haul it at, like, five miles an hour to wherever it’s going to go. It’d be pretty cool to see. Hell, I’d take it if I had a place to put it.”
Carmela liked that idea. “Oh, that’s good. You know how some people have cars up on blocks in their front yards? We could have houses up on blocks in our front yard! Lots of ‘em!”
They drove away and headed toward the center of town.
“Can you believe they wanted to tear down the train depot?” Carmela said as they passed by the stately old building.
“No,” Russell gasped. “Why did they want to do that?”
“Parking,” she responded with a disgusted tone. “This town is obsessed with parking. Tear it all down and pave it over!”
“Well,” Manny interjected, “the traffic is getting pretty bad. Sometimes you can’t find a decent spot anywhere.”
Carmela raised a finger. “But we can’t keep losing nice old houses and tearing down things like the train depot. Too much is getting bulldozed lately without too much getting said about it, if you ask me.”
“Run for office,” Manny said, as though they’d had this conversation before. “Run for mayor. I’d vote for you. I’d even work on your campaign a little.”
They cruised along Lincoln Way for a few blocks, then turned and went past the Masonic Temple and the old Rumacher Hotel.
“Now there’s something they’ve done right,” Manny said with civic pride. “Remember it used to be all worn down? Complete restoration, inside and out. It’s beautiful in that lobby, man. Go in there sometime and just sit. They’ve got these murals on the walls that tell the whole history of the region. It’s cool.”
“That was a good move,” Carmela agreed.
They continued meandering through the town. Russell took out his pocket watch, but it had stopped. He reset it and wound it.
“Got someplace to be?” Manny asked.
“Oh, no. I thought if it was earlier I’d ask to get back to your guys’ place so I could call Helen, but it’s too late to call now.” He sighed, disappointed in himself for blowing her off, even if it was inadvertent.
“Helen?” Carmela asked. “Didn’t you call her from Mom and Dad’s?”
Russell frowned. “I tried, only I didn’t have her number with me, and it’s unlisted. I just saw her today and I told her I’d call her tonight.” He trailed off into a shrug.
“You brought her to our wedding, didn’t you?” Carmela asked. “I remember her dancing barefoot.”
Russell smiled at the recollection.
“So you guys are still friends?”
Russell rolled his eyes. “I hope so. I haven’t talked to her in a while, but looked her up this morning and ran into her later, downtown. It was good to see her, and I hate dogging her tonight.”
Manny and Carmela exchanged a look.
“Should we get home?” she suggested.
“Oh, not on my account,” Russell insisted. “I’m liking this little drive. I’ll call her tomorrow.”
They resumed their slow cruise.
“So, you never did tell me about you and Gloria,” Carmela prompted Russell, who immediately began to squirm.
“Oh, God—do I have to talk about that?”
Manny chuckled. “Women, Russ—they love to get the dirt on one another.”
Carmela swatted him. “You’re in fine form tonight.” She turned her attention to Russell and said, “I’m afraid you bring out the worst in him.”
Manny winked. “You’re a bad influence.”
They stopped at a red light.
“Aah!” Carmela cried. Both men jumped.
“What?”
“Oh, whew,” she whispered, holding her hand to her breast. “It was nothing. Just that guy, see him?” They followed her pointing finger to a man wearing camouflage fatigues. She began to giggle as she continued. “I couldn’t see his body—it was completely camouflaged—I just saw this head go floating by.”
Manny wiped his brow. “Damn it, woman, don’t do shit like that. You make me all nervous.”
“If it gets any greener it’ll puke on ya!” Carmela taunted Manny as he lagged behind the changing light. She was giggling hard now.
“All right, all right,” he said, slowly pulling into the intersection. “Not like I’m holding anyone up.”
“Look out!” Russell shouted in alarm as a big old boat of a car hurtled through the intersection on an obvious collision course.