Free Independence Day by Richard Ford Page B

that’s completely armored with shiny hubcaps. One of them is laughing about something, his arms crossed over his big belly, swaying side to side. The other seems not to hear, just stares at Phyllis and me as if some different kind of transaction were going on.
    “That’s exactly what I was going to tell him anyway,” I say, and try to smile again. Phyllis and Joe are obviously nearing a realty meltdown, and the threat is they may just dribble off elsewhere, feeling the need for an unattainable fresh start, and end up buying the first shitty split-level they see with another agent.
    Phyllis says nothing, as if she hasn’t heard me, and just looks morose and steps out of the way, hugging her arms as I head for the pink door, feeling oddly jaunty with the breeze at my back.
    I half tap, half push on the door, which is ajar. It’s dark and warm inside and smells like roach dope and Phyllis’s coconut shampoo. “Howzit goin’ in here?” I say into the gloom, my voice, if not full of confidence, at least half full of false confidence. The door to a lighted bathroom is open; a suitcase and some strewn clothes are on top of an unmade bed. I have the feeling Joe might be on the crapper and I may have to conduct a serious conversation about housing possibilities with him there.
    Though I make him out then. He’s sitting in a big plastic-covered recliner chair back in a shadowed corner between the bed and the curtained window where I saw his face before. He’s wearing—I can make out—turquoise flip-flops, tight silver Mylar-looking stretch shorts and some sort of singlet muscle shirt. His short, meaty arms are on the recliner’s arms, his feet on the elevated footrest and his head firmly back on the cushion, so that he looks like an astronaut waiting for the first big G thrust to drive him into oblivion.
    “Sooou,” Joe says meanly in his Aliquippa accent. “You got a house you want to sell me? Some dump?”
    “Well, I do think I’ve got something you ought to see, Joe, I really do.” I am just addressing the room, not specifically Joe. I would sell a house to anyone who happened to be here.
    “Like what?” Joe is unmoving in his spaceship chair.
    “Well. Like pre-war,” I say, trying to bring back to memory what Joe wants in a house. “A yard on the side and in back and in front too. Mature plantings. Inside, I think you’ll like it.” I’ve never been inside, of course. My info comes from the rap sheet. Though I may have driven past with an agents’ cavalcade, in which case you can pretty well guess about the inside.
    “It’s just your shitty job to say that, Bascombe.” Joe has never called me “Bascombe” before, and I don’t like it. Joe, I notice, has the beginnings of an aggressive little goatee encircling his small red mouth, which makes it seem both smaller and redder, as though it served some different function. Joe’s muscle shirt, I also see, has Potters Do It With Their Fingers stenciled on the front. It’s clear he and Phyllis are suffering some pronounced personality and appearance alterations—not that unusual in advanced stages of house hunting.
    I’m self-conscious peeking in the dark doorway with the warm, blustery storm breeze whipping at my backside. I wish Joe would just get the hell on with what we’re all here for.
    “D’you know what I want?” Joe’s begun to fiddle for something on the table beside him—a package of generic cigarettes. As far as I know, Joe hasn’t been a smoker until this morning. He lights up now though, using a cheap little plastic lighter, and blows a huge cloud of smoke into the dark. I’m certain Joe considers himself a ladies’ man in this outfit.
    “I thought you came down here to buy a house,” I say.
    “What I want is for reality to set in,” Joe says in a smug voice, setting his lighter down. “I’ve been kidding myself about all this bullshit down here. The whole goddamn mess. I feel like my whole goddamn life has been in