The Pacific and Other Stories by Mark Helprin Page B

the roof redone.
    “Let’s go down,” said Lilly’s mother, the coldest, and they gladly descended to the first of Lilly’s floors, the building’s fourth, where they gathered to talk, in a room lit by the dim light that came from across the river, as the radiator hissed and the pipes knocked.
    “Do you have an architect?” Fitch asked.
    “Do I need one?” Lilly asked back.
    “An architect would think so, but it depends on what you want to do and how much you trust me. An architect will tell you that without him I’ll pad the job, use inferior materials, and run with the money. And many contractors would do exactly that.”
    “You won’t,” she said. “When we redid the kitchen it was the architect who cheated us, not you, and you easily could have, couldn’t you.”
    “Yes,” said Fitch. “I wouldn’t have done a good job of cheating, but I’ve been cheated enough to know the rudiments.”
    “I heard you say something then,” Lilly told him, “that you didn’t know I heard.”
    Fitch waited.
    “You didn’t know I had come in, because one of your men was on his way out and the door opened and closed just once as we passed each other. I was taking off my coat, and you were talking to … the foreman. Gustavo?”
    “Gustavo.”
    “And you said, ‘I
hate
liars.’ You were angry. You were very angry. You see, I trust you. And I’m not going to give you a huge amount of money to start.”
    “What I can do depends on what you want to do. What do you want to do?”
    She told him: the kitchen, baths, changing the bedroom dimensions, painting, repairing the little things that were broken, bookshelves everywhere.“My husband and I have many more books now than even what you saw in the apartment two years ago. We moved them from our parents’ houses, and they just keep coming in.”
    Fitch was pleased to discover that it seemed there had been no divorce. “I’ll work up an estimate,” he said, taking out a little notebook. “Give me a fax number.”
    She did. It had a 914 area code.
    “In a few days, you’ll get a rough picture of what I can do and for what price.” He had completely forgotten the impact upon his schedule that this job would have. “Then you can add, subtract, replace, modify, and we’ll go back and forth until I can show you some plans, and cut sheets for materials, fixtures, and appliances. Is that okay?”
    “Yes, that’s fine,” she said. The parents said nothing.
    Fitch was hungry. He wanted to get home and eat. He needed to talk to Gustavo and Georgy. He needed a hot bath. But he wanted to leave with less abruptness than the sudden silence suggested, so he took a step toward the windows of the living room, his face lit by the skyscraper light, and said, “On September eleventh, we were working on Joralemon Street. When we heard that the first plane had hit, we went up on the roof. Everyone kept on saying, ‘Jesus, Jesus,’ and we stayed up there, and watched the towers come down. The dust on the windows is from the Trade Center. It will have to be washed down very carefully, or the mineral grit will scratch and fog the glass. And it will have to be done respectfully, because the clouds of dust that floated against these windows were more than merely inanimate.”
    When he turned back to them, only the father was there. He could hear Lilly on the stairs, and her mother following. Fitch thought this was somewhat ungracious. Then her father moved a step toward him and took him lightly by the elbow, the way men of that generation do. His tweed coat reminded Fitch of old New York; that is, of the twenties and thirties, when the buildings were faced in stone the color of tweed, when the light was warmer and dimmer, and when in much of the city, for much of the time, there was silence.
    “Her husband was in the south tower,” the father said quietly. “He didn’t get out.” Then he turned and went after his daughter, walking stiffly down the stairs, like a