Up in the Air

“I gave it up.”

“You own now?”

“No.”

“But you’re looking?”

“Not really. No.”

Mark’s face twists in on itself. He bites his lip. Homeownership is his church, and he feels sorry for me. He divides the world into two camps, those with equity and those without, and his calling is to unite them. A noble soul.

“There’s something I’d like to show you. An opportunity. Do you have a minute to sit and hear me out?”

I do, and he knows it; the airport’s at a standstill, pent up under an iron lid of clouds. The soft leather couch is like sitting on a body as we settle in diagonally, knee to knee, and Mark snaps open his case and reaches inside with a smooth and lotioned hand. This is the man who took up where I left off and carried my wife past a biological threshold that I lacked the strength for. His confidence is spellbinding. If I didn’t dislike him so, I’d hire him to stand up at hotel banquets and teach his system. I doubt he has one, though. Mark is all instinct and genetic mastery, shot from a cannon at birth. If he had antlers, they’d spread past his shoulders. He’s my natural superior.

He opens a folder and lays it flat between us. “These homes will go in the high four hundreds soon, but until the community’s finished—and be aware of this, it is a community, not just a development—we’re slipping people in in the mid-threes.” He gives me a moment to absorb the photos; crisp early-morning shots of pillared facades surrounded by spindly staked aspens and split-rail fences. The houses are set at odd angles to one another as though they grew up without a plan, organically, and each has a horse paddock with a lone brown steed that I’d swear is the same animal, duplicated. I detect a computer graphics program at work, but I’m charmed and drawn in despite myself. These happiness professionals know their jobs, and theirs is the sort of art I most admire, because it’s effective, because it gets things done.

“The concept is turnkey everything,” Mark says. “You buy a maintenance contract with the home. You’re traveling five days a week? It doesn’t matter. We’ll whack your weeds, we’ll even change your lightbulbs. Furniture? Buy your own or choose a package. High-speed Internet, too.”

“Garages?”

“Hidden. A seamless traditionalism, yet all the perks.”

I’m interested, though I’m not sure if it’s sincere. Part of me might like to signal Lori through Mark that not only do I qualify financially to own a burnished cube of paradise, but that I’m actually capable of filling it. She knew me just as I was starting to fly and developing my system for compact living, for keeping a portable and tidy camp. She accused me of smallness, of tightness. It wasn’t fair. If anything, my spirit was too far-flung. I lived out of a pack because I owned the plains.

“You’re concerned about interest rates,” Mark says. “Aren’t we all? You can’t think short term, though. This is an investment. How are your stocks doing?”

“Miserably.”

“I’m sorry. Do you have any tangible assets?”

“Not to speak of. A ’96 Camry in a long-term parking lot.”

I’m trying to sound pathetic on purpose now, to test the depths of Mark’s pity. He’s always liked me. He met my ex in a supermarket aisle a month before our divorce was finalized, but instead of asking her out immediately, he came to me for permission. Unprecedented.

“Here’s what you do if you’re interested,” he says. “Put down some earnest money, any amount, and I’ll hold a unit until you can come see it. I have one in mind. The viewscape’s just spectacular.”

“I may be relocating soon. To Omaha.”

“You hold this house six months, you’ll clear a profit. That’s guaranteed. If you don’t, I’ll buy it back. Ryan, we all need a place to call our own. This is America. This is what we’re promised.” He pushes the folder closer. “Are you all right?”

“Something strange is happening.”

Mark leans closer. His breath has the sweetness of a man who jogs, who squeezes his own juice and eats his vegetables. He may be too sane for what I’m going to tell him.

If you fly enough and chat with enough strangers, you hear some crazy things. They stretch your sense of what’s possible. Some examples. That a study was done about forty years ago of the chemical makeup of the soil in major American grain-producing regions which found that due to the overuse of fertilizers the soil was bereft of certain key particles and was therefore incapable of yielding even minimally nutritious food. That a science exists by the name of psychotronics which seeks to influence mass human behavior via the beaming of powerful radio waves from a network of secret transmitters located above the Arctic Circle and aimed at Russia during the cold war. That the American Medical Association, soon after issuing warnings about the effects of sodium consumption on high blood pressure, realized that there was no evidence for the warning but declined to retract it out of stubbornness. That contrary to popular belief, cocaine remained an ingredient in cola drinks well into the 1950s. That the odds of winning at blackjack in Las Vegas shift ever so slightly in favor of the player for an average of seven weeks per year and that there exists a high-priced newsletter which alerts well-heeled gamblers to these trends.

Now it’s my turn to float a far-fetched theory. Though not as far-fetched as Pinter’s dream reports.

“I think someone high up is toying with me.”

“Who?”

“It might be the airline. Or ISM. It might be an outfit in Omaha. Or all of them.”

Mark’s eyes go wide and tender. “Toying how?”

“You know how biologists will tag an elk so they can follow and analyze it’s movements? They do this with people, too. Not always openly. One of the Big Three auto companies hired my firm once to follow five new car buyers for their first three months of ownership. How fast did they drive? Did they change their oil on schedule?