The infrastructure’s marginal . . . no retail component anywhere nearby . . .
Ryan bullies them and gets the third loan, but there will not be another. It should be enough. That, added to some liquidated longer-term investments . . . his broker will squeal that the money is for his future, but Ryan doesn’t care. She is his future.
The contractors finish the framing. The smell of fresh pine is one of the best smells Ryan knows. It’s the same smell that disinfectants have, and Ryan always associates new framing with cleanliness. Old ugly hidden things, invisible squirming vermin being scorched away, burned away, sterilized.
One of Ryan’s brutally efficient Russian workers, a framer, is named Sergei. He leaves behind a plate of bread and salt one night, which Ryan stumbles over. Ryan swears roughly at Sergei; while the Russian is much bigger than he is, it’s always good to look tough to one’s people.
“What the hell is this?” Ryan picks up the plate of bread and salt and shakes it in the big man’s face. “We got the rats cleared out of here months ago, you want them back?”
“This will not attract rats,” Sergei shrugs. “She will not let it.”
“She?” Ryan looks at him. “Who?”
“The building,” Sergei says. “The domovoi.” Seeing that Ryan does not understand, Sergei gently takes the plate of bread and salt from him and puts it down carefully.
“The domovoi is the spirit of the building. Its soul. This building’s soul is sad and in pain. I thought to comfort her.”
“Comfort her?” Ryan clenches his teeth, remembering Winnie bearing down on him with the wood. “I’m not paying you to comfort the goddamn building.” He kicks at the plate of bread and salt, sending it scattering across the plywood flooring.
Sergei shrugs, and turns to go. Ryan calls after him:
“Can they be killed?”
Sergei turns slowly, looks at him through narrowed eyes.
“Killed?” he says.
“Yes,” Ryan says curtly. “Killed. Eradicated. Exorcised.”
“I have heard that they can be moved,” Sergei says thoughtfully. “By carrying hearth coals to a new home. If the domovoi likes it there . . .”
“I didn’t say moved,” Ryan interrupts him sharply. “I said killed. Can they be killed?”
Sergei shrugs, looks around at the clean-smelling new pine framing.
“I suppose this is the way to do it,” he says.
Winnie does not show herself again until month four.
The contractors are putting in bamboo flooring and installing energy-efficient double-paned glass windows. The money is running thin, but Ryan will not cut corners. He runs up bills that he knows he will not pay. This does not concern him in the least.
Visitors from the bank begin showing up at the worksite, at odd hours of the day. Taking notes.
Ryan is in a room that will become the master bedroom of the most expensive loft, eight thousand square feet of exposed concrete and thick hewn beams. The room is large and airy, with wiring for a ceiling fan and arched windows that look out over the street. He’s looking down at the street, his hands clasped behind his back. On the street, there’s a man leaning against a blue Camaro, selling drugs.
“Please stop.” The words come from behind him. He turns slowly.
She looks much thinner now, her face sleek and shining. Her hair is smoothed back from a soft, placid face. She’s wearing a suit of grey silk. He looks her up and down, approvingly.
“It hurts,” she says. “Please stop.”
“I’m too far along now,” he says. The words make her wince visibly.
A vague premonition of worry crosses his mind. What is the pain in his chest, what is the ineffable regret? He doesn’t understand it; he dismisses it with a curt gesture of his hand.
“You’re just afraid of change,” he says, more harshly than he intends to.
“It hurts,” Winnie says again.
“Good things sometimes hurt,” Ryan says, careful to make his tone soft. He wants her to understand, he wants her to stop fighting. He wants her to let him have her, to give him access and permission. “Medicine hurts. It hurts, but it heals.”
“You are not healing me, you are killing me,” she whispers. “I don’t know what I am anymore.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he says. “I know what you are.”
“I hate you,” she whispers, tears gleaming slick in her oil-colored eyes.
Ryan smiles down at her sadly. She doesn’t hate him. He knows it, just knows it. She doesn’t hate him. She can’t hate him.
“You hate the idea of changing,” he says. “You hate the idea of being changed. You hate the idea of letting someone else help you.”
“I never asked for your help,” Winnie says.
“But you did. By decaying, by getting old, by letting yourself fall to ruin,” Ryan strokes her hair. “But I will make it better. I will take care of you.”
“It hurts,” Winnie says finally, and then she’s gone, and Ryan’s arms encircle nothing.
After six months, the renovation is complete. The Windsor Machine Works rehab is finished. It is clean, sterile, perfect. There are no secrets left.
Every item on the punch list has been checked off, and the Russians have been paid, even if there are other bills that never will be.
There are five vast condo lofts on the top floor, each with a prime view of the surrounding neighborhood. The ramshackle houses that haven’t been painted in years, the rusting cars in their driveways and side-yards, the drug dealers and prostitutes in their blue Camaros. Who said there wasn’t a viable retail component?
Ryan has had a dozen calls from the real-estate agency he usually uses to broker his properties. They’re trying to back out. They want nothing to do with marketing this one. He enjoys listening to the voice mails, how they get progressively screechier.
There is 15,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor, lease ready. The blonde wood floors and cool white lighting are perfect for the Starbucks and the Gap and the Old Navy that will never come.
Ryan takes one last walk through the building, but he does not enjoy it. He feels so strange. The familiar joy, the pride and feeling of completion, the post-orgasmic relaxation of tense energy pleasantly spent, is nowhere to be felt. Instead he feels keyed up, anxious and annoyed. Frustrated. Stifled. Twitchy.
He comes into the room where he last saw Winnie. This is the display model; it has been decorated so that perky sales agents can inspire prospective residents with visions of the kind of life their exorbitantly high mortgage can purchase for them. The walls have been painted a soothing shade of mint green. There is a comfortable arrangement of camel-colored suede furniture in one corner. One chair is draped with a fuzzy, avocado-hued chenille throw. Ryan tries to imagine getting comfortable in this room. He can’t. The thought gives him a headache.
There is also a large white bed, a cast-iron four-poster looped with gauze that (Ryan knows from experience) will have to be washed every goddamn week to keep from getting dusty. More meaningless garniture. More curls of shaved beet. He imagines making love to his fiancée in that bed, in that engulfing marshmallow-soft nest. Imagines her yielding body, her blank eyes staring up at him.
What is wrong with him? He presses his fingers to the bridge of his nose. These things sell. These are what people want. Why should they annoy him so? Why does he suddenly long for the smell of motor oil and rust and honey?
“Winnie!” he whispers loudly, looking wildly about the room. “Winnie, for God’s sake!”