Free The O'Briens by Peter Behrens

be giving me reasons not to buy.”
    â€œWell, we do have the electric cars. It’s only fifty-two minutes to Los Angeles. I want to give you the whole picture. Venice hasn’t worked the way Mr. Kinney had in mind. I shouldn’t say so, but I believe he’s tired of the whole thing. People just aren’t interested in beauty — not his idea of beauty, anyway — so he has to give them fun parks and crazy rides and the Pier. A person like you might be happier living in Ocean Park or Santa Monica.”
    â€œA person like me? What sort of person is that?”
    â€œWell, Santa Monica’s more civilized, that’s all I mean. There’s not a lot going on at the office — you may have noticed. All the other salesmen have quit, and I’m thinking about it. Nothing to do all day gets kind of lonely.”
    â€œHow can you be lonely with the biggest dancehall in world?” she teased. “And a roller-skating rink!”
    â€œYou ought to meet my wife,” he said. “She could tell you what it’s like out here.”
    Iseult turned away, let her fingers dabble in the water. Her throat felt tight and dry.
    â€œYou’ll hear coyotes at night,” he was saying.
    Wild sun, hard blue sky, the slip of the hull through green water. Not a very sensible place to live.
    The gondolier was humming and every now and then burst out with a stanza in Italian. Was he singing for her, she wondered, was it part of his job? Did it matter? No. Shutting her eyes, she let the music float by as the sun stroked her face.
    What she was most conscious of was animal will: a jump of desire. Grattan, slender and crisp. She longed to bite him, taste his skin.
    ~
    He showed her through a pair of bungalows on the Howland Canal, then one on the Linnie, all three built to the same pattern. Inside they smelled of raw wood, sawdust, grout, and stale new paint. Squirrels or raccoons had gotten inside one of the Howlands and made a nest of rags, dry grass, and twigs on the kitchen floor.
    Big white New England houses could be iron chains around the necks of their inhabitants, and she had watched her father being dragged to his death by the gloom and weight of such a house, until he had climbed up to the attic one Sunday afternoon and blown out his brains with a Colt Navy pistol his own father had carried through the Civil War.
    She liked the Linnie Canal cottage best. Maybe it was just the name. Linnie sounded like a pretty girl, Howland bleak and masculine. It was strange to stand in an empty house alone with a young man, a stranger. She felt vulnerable and open, without edges.
    Grattan said, “I guess I don’t understand why people are so keen for houses in the first place.”
    â€œEveryone needs a home, Mr. O’Brien.”
    â€œDo they? I think I carry my home inside my head.”
    â€œWhat does your wife think?”
    â€œOh, she wants us to buy a house,” he said gloomily. “We live in her studio right on Windward. Above the Chink laundry. She says it won’t be good for the baby. She’s due in a couple of months.”
    â€œCongratulations.”
    â€œI’d like to feel I can up stakes whenever I choose. All rooms are boring, sooner or later. I like the outside.”
    Mr. Grattan O’Brien was restless. She wondered if it worried his wife.
    It took only a minute to see everything. Dirty windows, plaster dust, stale air. She tried to ignore her lewd feelings and pay heed to the space, the way the light worked within the small rooms. The kitchen sink, brightly tiled counters, yellow and black. Icebox. Bathtub, porcelain toilet, sink, white tiles on the floor. Windows in the sitting room looked out to the green glint of the canal. Could she make a home for herself?
    â€œI guess you like it or you don’t,” he said. “It’s a nice time of day out here, though, isn’t it? The way the light cuts in. These houses are very bright