1.
They spent just over a million on that house, which seems like a lot for two people with pretty ordinary jobs. A big chunk of that price tag was for the lot—on the corner, close to the lake, best one in the Magpie Court development. Not a huge piece of land, not the rolling hills that the mansions on the shoreline have, but theirs is the only spot on the street that gets you views of the lake and the sailboats lined up outside the Shoreby Club.
The whole street is brand-new, with only five houses on it, all variations on the same style: sharp angles to the roofs, and exteriors in local stone and wood so dark that when it rains the surface gleams like metal. In summer, the landscaping is fat with green hydrangea and bushy rows of lavender, and in the winter the place looks like a little pioneer town. Two rows of (seven-figure) cabins lined up cozy in the snow, the glowing windows like paintings:Emptying Miele Dishwasher, oil on canvas, 2022.
Even the neighbors farther away in the mansions, your plastic surgeons and your tech magnates and your battle-scarred bankers who have taken on the upkeep of the estates built by the great Cleveland industrialists, even some of those guys must sit in their train-station houses with leaky roofs and outdated paneling and envy these sleek new builds. Most people would take a custom kitchen and a first-floor master over a chilly ballroom and a cracked swimming pool any day of the week.
The downside to the houses in Magpie Court is the name: The developers insist on referring to them as “cluster homes,” on account of the smaller parcels of land. This is a terrible piece of marketing if you ask me. Only bad things come in clusters: headaches, viruses, bombs.
Fucks too, and not the good kind.
2.
Mack
The mail, always a highlight of Mack’s day in the summer months, was mostly of a financial nature.
There was a letter from Duke University’s Annual Fund, begging him to make a difference and donate now, and helpfully pointing him in the direction of an app that would make doing this easier. Mack read that he was the missing piece of the alumni puzzle, which was a shame, because he would have to remain a hole in the thousand-piece collegiate landscape: he was (unfortunately) living in every cent of his disposable income, having blown a small fortune on marble countertops, luxury bathroom fixtures, and hand-painted wallpaper. He took the identical letter addressed to Hailey and balled them up together.
There was also an invoice for the Wakefields’ window, $4,789.25 from PaneLess Glass Repair, with a note attached on Betsy’s initialed, plaid-bordered stationery:Mack, please pay them directly. ASAP please and thanks. Thanks, ESW.
Mack had been expecting this. Betsy Wakefield had been pretty gracious when he sliced his golf ball through her great room window, all things considered, even though she’d been hosting a party when he sheepishly presented himself at her front door, still holding his five iron. One of her guests, a woman Mack vaguely recognized from the Shoreby Club pool, had an angry red oval blooming right between her eyes, and for a second Mack feared the worst—Hailey was right, he never should have been hitting golf balls in such close proximity to the neighbors. He could’ve killed this woman. Then he noticed red swelling down the side of another lady’s jawline, and, in the living room, an ice pack being held to a forehead. This surely must have been the most powerful drive he’d ever hit, to go through a window and still ricochet like that. He could’ve made the PGA tour after all.
“It’s a Botox party,” Betsy had whispered, her finger to her lips. “Shhh, don’t tell anyone.”
“Your secret is safe with me,” Mack told her, and it had been. He hadn’t even told his wife, who, Mack thought as he surveyed the freshly Botoxed faces more carefully, must’ve been the only neighbor not invited. Not that he was surprised.
He tucked Betsy’s expensive note under his armpit.
The final piece of mail was a brown envelope with one of those clear plastic windows for the address, and it must have come straight from the golf gods, because it more than made up for the damage to next door’s window: It was a check for $5,000, from a company called Sunshine Enterprises, Ltd., and it was made out to him, Malcolm P. Evans.
Mack turned the thin paper—pretty much a relic in this day and age—over in his hands. There was only the machine-generated check, with a bar code and some serial numbers. No statement, no return address. The postmark was from Newark, New Jersey.
As he ran through the list of their pensions and investments in his head—and unfortunately for Duke University, it was a very short list—Mack felt the tightening of something deep in his ribs. He had no idea what kind of business Sunshine Enterprises was in, but already, in the brief seconds that had passed since he opened the envelope, Mack had formed his suspicions about its provenance.
He had also decided that he was damn well going to deposit this check, if, given how long it had been since he’d dealt in anything but Venmo and direct deposits, he could even remember how to do it. He had a vague notion that Hailey kept the checkbook and deposit slips in the desk drawer in the kitchen.
He stuffed the check in his back pocket and padded through the cavernous front hall in his socks. In the kitchen he bypassed the $2,000 coffee maker—it had been broken since their second morning in the house—and made himself a giant travel mug of instant. He took two quick finger scoops of peanut butter, polished off half a tub of blueberry yogurt using Mabel’s dirty spoon from breakfast, and made his way downstairs. He had three hours before he had to pick up the girls from camp and a lot of ground to cover. As an assistant professor of English at a college that was famous for science and technology, for Mack summer breaks meant occasionally checking his emails to remind himself that the mothership did in fact still exist. But this summer was not like other summers. This summer Mack was going to be conscientious. He was going to polish his lesson plans and lectures until they shone, like the serious academic that he was. That would show them, those doubters at Cleveland Tech. That would shut them up once and for all.
Down in the basement he passed through the lushly carpeted playroom, stepping over Lego and Hailey’s vintage My Little Ponies, now among his daughters’ most prized possessions. He closed the door to civilization behind him as he passed into the underbelly of the new house, through the exposed, still-gleaming pipes and the giant hot water tanks. On the far side of the boiler room was the raw wooden door to his office.
The big inhale for the sigh Mack was about to give brought three scents to his nostrils as he stepped into his lair. First, the routine skunk of the marijuana that he was growing on the sill of the high, narrow window (just a single sickly plant, not enough to land him in prison but sufficient to allow him to cling to the last vestiges of his adolescence). Next came the not-unpleasant odor of sunbaked dachshund. He’d left Gulliver snoozing in here earlier this morning, shut the door on him, and forgotten about him entirely. Which explained the third smell: on the concrete floor under Mack’s desk there was a big puddle of fresh dog piss.
He had neither the time nor the materials to clean it up with; he was already six minutes late for his Zoom. Carefully placing a foot on either side of Gulliver’s urine, Mack sat down and logged on.
“There he is!” An unnaturally white set of teeth filled his screen, then sticky pink lipstick, a mouth encased in deep lines. “I said to myself, I said, he’s a good boy. Mack Evans wouldn’t forget about lunch with his mommy, no sir. He never forgets. You got a sandwich?”
“I ate already,” Mack said, as the lips were replaced with an extreme close-up of a sun-leathered bosom bursting out of white polyester. Mack shifted in his chair and felt dog pee seep into the inside edges of his socks.
“Okay, well, we’re having Subway over here today,” the bosom said, and was swiftly replaced on the screen by a turkey sub wrapped in logoed paper, thrust toward the camera. “You look so handsome, Mackie. You got some sun on ya. You been playin’ a lot of golf?”
“Only in the backyard.”
“And how’s the house?”
“Still good.”
“And Hailey and the girls? I was thinking the other day, Mabel and Gigi must be getting so big. I’d love to see them sometime.”
