Stay Up With Me by Tom Barbash Page B

girlfriend says it’s the Adirondacks. It’s a special part of the country. And it is. Six million acres. Almost half of it unmarked, not even a logging road or snowmobile trail. The Hudson River starts up not too far from here in Lake Tear-of-the-Clouds. It’s a lake almost a mile high, and I’ve been swimming there.
    It’s not as if we’re building factories or a toxic waste dump. The houses and cabins we build are beautiful, state of the art: high ceilings, fireplaces, wraparound porches. And the outsides are left their natural wood color, or painted brown or grass green so they blend in with the earth. The way Eddie tells it, we’re giving people their retirement and we are, but we’re also making some coin. Like the Berners’ three hundred acres. We’ll split it into eight lots, each with a calendar picture of unspoiled Adirondack riverfront, and each selling for about four times what we’ll pay the Berners. Our company places ads in the New York Times with pictures of the Oswegatchie, of the triple falls, the water dropping into spruce green eddies. “Five hours from the city and you’re in God’s backyard.” People can’t afford to buy beachfront anymore. They’re sick of the suburbs, the shopping malls. We’re giving them what they’ve been missing their whole lives. There’s an interview process for the people who want to buy. “We want people who will respect the land,” Eddie says, “who love the outdoors; people who will be good neighbors.” I’ve never seen him turn down a buyer because he thought he’d be a bad neighbor. But people like to be interviewed. They want to think they’ve passed a test.
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    â€œWhere’d you go?” he asks on the drive from the Berners’.
    â€œI wasn’t feeling that well.”
    â€œI think they’re very interested. You need to get to know them. It’s like I’ve been saying, low pressure. No one wants some salesman breathing down their neck. They don’t trust that. Call them up in a few days just to talk. Don’t ask her anything except how she’s doing, the weather, Mr. Berner, and things like that and she’ll invite you in for pie—I guarantee. And tell her about yourself a little. Ask her advice on something. I swear, it changes everything. Get them involved in your life a little. The sale has got to be secondary. You push too fast, like you were starting to in there, and people smell a rat.”
    We pass through rugged forest on our way into town.
    â€œWhat kind of things do I tell her about myself?”
    â€œTell her about your family, about your mom and dad and how you worry about them from time to time. Tell her about visiting them. What that does is it makes you into a son . You’re a salesman here, but you’re also somebody’s son. See what I’m saying?”
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    I am renting a three-room apartment directly above Latrell’s General Store and across Collins Street from the post office. In the mornings I buy a cup of coffee and I sit in the back with the regulars, a bunch of old guys in baseball caps who smell like cigarettes. Vern Latrell knows me by my name now on most mornings, though once he called me Andy and another time Patrick. I corrected him both times because I want him to remember me. I want everyone around here to remember me because I will be here for a while. Eddie introduced me around my first week here. They all like Eddie. A couple of them have gone fishing with him. One old guy took him hunting. Eddie Callahan from Westchester County gumming around the woods hunting for deer. I tried to talk the way Eddie talked with them, loose and comfortable, one of the gang, but the words always came out wrong, stiff and unnatural, or else exaggerated, as though I were mimicking them. Now Eddie’s moved away to meet another town full of homeowners, and he’s left me behind as