It wasn’t until Matthew left for the navy in January, their fifth year in the farmhouse, that Carmen took the real estate course at Macomb County Community College and went to work for Nelson Davies Realty. Wayne said if it made her happy, fine. She sold her first house in April. Wayne took her to Henry’s for dinner and listened to her tell how she’d closed the deal, Carmen glowing, excited, telling him what a wonderful feeling it was, like being your own boss. By June Carmen was offering the idea that real estate was the kind of thing they could maybe even do together, work as a team; it’d be fun. Wayne said he could see himself going back to school, Jesus. By August Carmen had him looking into the future, playing with the idea of eventually starting their own company. Wayne said, paperwork being so much fun. Now it was October and Carmen had Wayne at least agreeing to talk to Nelson Davies, a man who’d made millions in the business and wasn’t much older than Wayne. Wayne said he could hardly wait.
Carmen got home first and parked in the garage. A few minutes later, in the kitchen putting groceries away, she looked outside and saw Wayne’s pickup in the drive. It was half past six, getting dark. Wayne had been coming home earlier since Matthew left. Carmen went out to the porch. She was wearing her “closing suit,” a tailored navy; it was lightweight and she folded her arms against the evening chill in the air. Wayne was lifting fat paper sacks from the pickup bed, bringing four of them over to the porch steps.
“Sweet Feed,” Wayne said, looking up at Carmen on the porch. “It’s corn and oats, but that’s
what they call it.”
“I thought you meant me.”
“You’re tastier’n corn and oats. How’d it go?”
“I closed on a three-bedroom in Wildwood.”
“That’s the way.”
Wayne was wearing his ironworkers build america jacket. Carmen watched him turn to the truck, lift out a twenty-five-pound block of salt and place it on the grass next to the gravel drive. As Wayne straightened he said, “I saw Walter out on the road. He showed me whitetail tracks going all the way across his seeding to the state land.”
Walter, their neighbor, grew sod for suburban lawns. Carmen would think it was a strange way to make a living, watching grass grow.
Wayne came over to the steps with two more bags of Sweet Feed. “They love this stuff.”
“They think what a nice guy you are,” Carmen said. “Then you shoot them.”
“You don’t want to eat live venison,” Wayne said. “They’re hard to hold, and it’s not good for your digestion.” He stepped over to the truck, reached into the cab window and came out with paper sacks he handed up to Carmen. “This goes in the house.” She could tell from the weight what was inside. Boxes of 12-gauge hollow-point slugs.
“I don’t see how you can shoot them.”
“I can’t, less I get within fifty yards. Not with a slug barrel.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I don’t see them as little Walt Disney creatures,” Wayne said, rolling up the cab window. “That’s the difference. You shoot some in the fall or they starve in the winter. Look at it that way.”
This was an annual exchange, Carmen giving her view without making a moral issue of it; Wayne seeing deer as meat, now and then citing a fact of ecology. Carmen raised her face as he came up on the porch. They kissed on the mouth, taking their time, and let their eyes hold a moment or so after. Twenty years and it was still good. She asked him how his job was going.
“I’m finished at Standard Federal. They want to put me on the detail gang, plumbing up, I said no way, I’m a connector, I’m not doing any tit work.”
“You didn’t.”
“I told ’em that—I want to take a few days off.”
“Good.”
“I’m gonna look at another job next week.” He told her there was a new basketball arena going up in Auburn Hills, fairly close by, except it was all precast, so he’d most likely go to work on the One-Fifty Jefferson project in Detroit, he believed was to be a hotel, thirty-two levels. He said he’d rather drive all the way downtown to a story job than work precast across the street. He said, “Lionel’s coming by tomorrow, we’re gonna look for antler scrapings.”
Carmen said, “Wayne?”
He moved past her and was holding the door open. “Let’s have a cold one. What do you say?”
“You promised you’d see Nelson tomorrow.”
“I did?”
“Come on, now don’t pull that.”
“I forgot, that’s all. What time?”
“Two o’clock.”
“That’s fine, Lionel’s not coming till four. He’s gonna take a look, see if there’s any white oak out there. I read that deer eat white-oak acorns like potato chips. They can’t stop eating them. I know there’s plenty of red oak.”
Carmen placed the sack of shells on the kitchen counter. Wayne got two cans of beer from the refrigerator, popped them open and handed her one. “You look nice. I’d buy a house off you even if I already had one.”
Carmen said, “You’re really going to talk to Nelson?”
“I can’t wait. You know how I love working for assholes.”
“Wayne, try. Okay?”
“You’re gonna be there, aren’t you?”
“I’ll be in the office. What’re you going to wear?”
“I don’t know—I have to get dressed up?”
“I think you should wear a suit.”
Wayne stepped to the counter, put his beer down and opened the sack. “I could. Or my sport coat.”
“And a tie?”
Wayne said, “I’ll wear a tie if you want,” taking the boxes of shotgun slugs from the sack. “I’m trying three- inch magnums this year. Lionel says they’ll ‘bull the brush,’ nothing like it out to fifty yards. Hit a buck you hear it slap home.”
Carmen said, “Wayne?”
“What?”
“How you look is important. The impression you make.”
He paused. She could see his mind still out in the woods for a moment. He took a sip of beer, the can almost hidden in his big hand, his wedding band, a speck of gold, catching light from the window. She would see him in the bathroom shaving, a pair of skimpy briefs low on his hard body and would think,
“Wear what you want,” Carmen said, “be comfortable.”
“I wear my blue suit,” Wayne said, “and you wear yours, will that impress him?”
“Forget I said that, okay?”
Wayne sipped his beer, staring at her. He seemed to grin. “I like that short skirt on you. I bet Nelson does too.”
“If he does,” Carmen said, “it’s because when hemlines go up, so does the stock market. Nobody knows why. Then interest rates go down and we sell more homes.”
“Like the moon and the tides,” Wayne said, “is that it? Or the seasons of the year. Did you know hunting season comes when the does are in heat?” He reached into the sack again and took out a small plastic bottle fixed to a display card. “The bucks know it. They’re ready, so you use some of this. Foggy Mountain ‘Hot’ Doe Buck Lure.” He held it for Carmen to see, then read from the card. “‘A secret blend with pure urine collected from live doe deer during the hottest hours of the estrus cycle.’ ”
“You’re kidding,” Carmen said. “You put that on you?”
“You can, or sprinkle it around your blind. The buck smells it, he goes, ‘Man, I’m gonna get laid,’ and comes tearing through the woods. ...I was thinking,” Wayne said, “if we could invent something like this for the real estate business ...You know what I mean? Something you sprinkle on a house and all these buyers come running? What do
