Free Good Faith by Jane Smiley Page B

up and about by that time.”
    “Oh, who cares! He’s safer in his house.”
    In spite of the darkness and the CLOSED sign, I heard a knock on the door, then another sharper knock. I looked at my watch. It was not beyond the Sloans to come and find me if I was late, but I wasn’t late; I still had over an hour before I had to meet them. Felicity and I looked at each other and hunkered down, but there was still another knock, this one very insistent. I pulled on my jeans and shirt and went to the door. Through the blinds I could see two men standing on the porch. They looked like brothers, one slightly taller and heavier than the other. The shorter one was bending down and peering at one of the for-sale photos I had in the window, and the other, I saw, was looking at me.
    I opened the door and said, “Yes?”
    “Oh, I knew you were in there.”
    The other one stood up. He said, “We’re going to buy this house.” He put his finger on the window glass over the photo. I went out on the porch and looked. The house in question was a beat-up Colonial on Main Street in Deacon. It was big, but two hundred years of remodeling had not done it any favors. About ten years before, for example, the current owners had covered the old clapboards with aluminum siding and boxed in the decorated soffits. “A lot of work” didn’t begin to cover what it would take to get that place together. And the price was high.
    The taller one said, “We’ve already been over there and looked in the windows. I mean, the ones we could get to. The shrubs were monstrous. It was right out of the Addams family over there.”
    I said, “Central location.”
    “May we come in? It doesn’t matter what you were doing in there. Believe me, we’ve seen it all.”
    I looked in the door. Felicity was dressed and sitting at Bobby’s desk. She had kicked the clothes we’d been lying on back into a corner and turned on a light. When the two men followed me in, the shorter one said, “Oh, hi! What a surprise! I’m David and this is David. You must be Joe’s wife, right? Nice to meet you.” But it seemed by our glances and our smiles that we all knew Felicity was not my wife.
    I cleared my throat and attempted to become more businesslike. The shorter man said, “Your belt is unbuckled.”
    I buckled it.
    “All better now,” said the taller man.
    They were David John and David Pollock. Felicity introduced herself, and they drew up chairs near hers. David Pollock was the taller one. He said, “Well, Felicity, have you seen this house in Deacon?”
    “Not really. I can’t remember it.”
    “Want to go over there? I’m sure Joe would be happy to show it to the three of us, especially since we’ve practically bought it already.”
    I recollected that I was legally the seller’s agent and said nothing. David John looked at me. “I’m sure the place is sordidly run-down.”
    The other David: “Abominations to be uncovered on every floor. That’s why Joe is keeping mum, right, Joe?”
    “I can show you several promising properties.”
    “Joe, we always buy on impulse. We drive down a road or a street and we say, ‘Time to buy and that’s the one.’ Then we snoop around; then we call the Realtor. Five years ago, we bought a house in a town we had never been to before and moved there three weeks later, all the dogs, all the objets d’art, all the canned tomatoes and pickled peaches.”
    “We made forty percent in sixteen months on that one. Of course, that was California, but still.”
    “Our instincts are famous,” said David Pollock.
    I reached into a drawer and pulled out purchase offer forms.
    “But let’s say we see it anyway,” said David John.
    “Felicity,” said David Pollock, “you have great hair. Let’s go in our car.”
    The two men drove an Oldsmobile Toronado, from the sixties but perfectly maintained, upholstered in the brown leather of library sofas. Most of the roomy backseat was taken up by two dogs. “Marlin