Gladiator-At-Law

Chapter Five

Reverse your telescope. Point the small end at a sign that is neither here nor now, a long way off in space and as many years past as it has been since the end of World War II.

The sign is in a dozen chromatic colors, a picture of a vine-covered cottage with a curl of smoke winding from a fieldstone chimney, and an impossibly long-legged girl waving from the door. The giant letters read:

BELLE REVE ESTATES

"Gracious Living for America's Heroes" VETS! OWN YOUR OWN HOME! $350 cash, $40.25 monthly, pays all

FREE!

3-speed washer, home freezer fifteen-foot picture window

Before the paint on the sign was dry, three cars were parked in the muddy ruts in front of it and three couples were being guided through the model home by Belle Reve salesmen— estate managers, they preferred to be called.

Their technique was identical. If any one of them had lost his voice, or been blasted to charcoal by a resentful God, any of the others could have taken his place in mid-syllable. And their movements were as exact as a ballet troupe; when salesman A brought his charges into a room, salesman B was just on the way out. The rooms were handsomely made and cutely furnished, but the sales director didn't like to have too many people in a room at one time—gave the impression the rooms were small.

When the salesman had finished, a prospect got back to the sparkling kitchen, where the closing desk was, under the dizzy impression that somehow he could move into the place tomorrow, furnished as it was, simply by signing his name and handing over the twenty-dollar binder. And a swimming pool would be on their lawn the day after to be shared with another nice couple like them, and the children could gambol on the grassy sward unmenaced by city traffic, and they would spit right in the eye of the city apartment-house janitor after telling him they were getting out of the crowded, evil-smelling, budget-devouring, paper-walled, sticky-windowed, airless, lightless, privacyless hole in the wall forever. They were going Home to Belle Reve. They signed and paid.

Time passed.

Belle Reve receded before them always like a mirage. The four-color circulars continued to arrive, and the statements of their down-payment balance due. Plus title-search fee. Plus handling charge. Plus interest. Plus legal fee. Plus sewer assessment. Plus land tax. Plus road tax. They paid.

Time passed.

Their house was built; their hour had struck! The kids wailed, "Is that it?" and began to cry. Whichever was weaker, the wife or husband, sagged shoulders and stared in horror at the sea of mud, the minute house riding it like an ark, like one ark in a fleet of identical arks drawn up rank by rank for review by a snickering deity. Whichever was stronger, the husband or wife, squared shoulders and said loudly, "It may not look like much now, but give us a few weekends and we'll have it just like the demonstration place. And we'll be working for ourselves, not some landlord. This place isn't an expense; it's an asset."

Time passed.

Sod was laid on the mud. It sank in curious hummocks and swales when it rained. Takes a little time to settle, honey. Fill was dumped on the sod, and topsoil on the fill. Grass was planted on the topsoil to burn and die in the summer. Honey, we can't water it this year because of the water rates. In a normal year, sure, but we have a few non-recurring charges, and once they're out of the way—The sewer assessment. The road assessment. The school tax. And we ought to do something about the foundation, I guess. You catch these little cracks early and you never have trouble again. Every house settles a little, honey.

Time passed.

The place isn't an expense, honey; it's an asset. Do you realize we have an equity of eight thousand dollars in this house we can recover at the drop of a hat if we can find somebody to buy the place and if there was some place else to go? It makes a man feel mighty good to know he has eight thousand dollars to his name. I know it runs a little higher than anybody figured, but things are up all over. Insurance, sewer assessment, road tax, fuel oil, interest, assessment in that stockholders' suit whatever it was about—it isn't more than a hundred twenty-five a month, if that. If I get the raise and swing that note on the car we can have the roof repaired before the November rams, and then get right to work on the oil heater—please don't cry, honey. Besides. There's. No. Place. Else. To. Go.

Tune passed.

You've got to talk to her, dear. Coming in past midnight after she was out with God-knows-who and telling me there isn't any use asking her to entertain at home because we'd be right on top of her because the place is so small you can't sneeze without blowing somebody's hat off you've got to talk to her I'm going out of my mind with worry she could get in trouble and so are all the other mothers I know the place isn't very attractive but can't you get it painted somehow even if you aren't as young as you once were she's ashamed of the place and she's right about it being too small and the washer's broken again and I'm not as young as I once was and I can't keep hauling water all my life and when are we going to fix the picture window it looks horrible with a big crack right down the middle not that I blame the Elliston boy the poor kid doesn't have any place to play trapped like a rat here in Belle Reve like the rest of us in chicken coops crumbling around us while we watch but they never quite fall down as long as we keep patching and patching and patching and paying and paying and paying. . . .

Time passed.

Over the back fence (patched and peeling; leaning this way and that, inadequate to keep the children in the yard or the prowling, huge rats out): I heard of them and I saw the ads. I don't read much these days because of my eyes but he came home with the paper, for once he wasn't gray and tired. G.M.L. Houses, he said. Wonderful G.M.L. bubble-houses— a complete departure. He said he knew it had to come some day, a complete break with tradition the way it said in the ad. It has something to do with contracts. They lease the machines to the companies, I think, or something, and the companies build the houses for people who work for them. It gets around taxes or something. He was sure the company would lease the machines and we could get a G.M.L., but it didn't come to anything because he doesn't have a contract and they just build them for their contract people. But heavens he's lucky to have a job the way things are going; the boy's been looking and looking and there doesn't seem to be anything, I don't know how we'd get by if it wasn't for the allowance. . . .

Time passed.

Steady, pop, don't snop your top. I swear I'll cool ya if ya give me more than a sufficiency of that cack. Me get a job? Some cack, ya old track! What have I got that a little black box hasn't got more and better? Gimme that "fifty years with the company" once more and you'll be flat on your bat. You get the allowance for me, don't ya? If ya didn't have crap in your cap you'd be a contract man and we'd be in a bubble for double instead of my being a lousy slave from Belly Rave. Me hitch to the city and look for work? Pterodactyl cack! Tell ya what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna have a big breakfast and hitch a ride to the Stadium. Good show today—Rocky Granatino, Rocky Bolderoni, Rocky Schistman and Kid Louis in a blindfold free-for-all with spiked gloves after the regular bouts. Then I'm gonna pick up a surrounded cavity and we'll find a nice, empty dump here in Belly Rave and shove some love. Maybe the Wexley place down the street so you won't worry about me getting lost. Old Man Wexley made contract grade last week after fifteen years in night school, so he took off for Monmouth G.M.L. City like he had a fire in his lire. I bet the beds are still made, which might come in handy. Any questions?

No; there were no questions. And the boy swaggered out across the screeching floorboards, the house trembling to his stride. The old man said, "Fifty years with the company," and began to cry. He had been replaced last Friday by a little black box that never made mistakes, never got tired, never took a coffee break. From now on the allowance check would be tripled; as head of a family he had that coming to him. And he owned the house outright, almost. In just a few years it would be his, as soon as he cleared up the sewer assessments outstanding. I'll sell, he schemed craftily, forgetting to cry. At the top of the market. Not right now, things were too dull. A few of the places on the street were empty, abandoned by owners who had made contract grade and won entitlement to a G.M.L. house. A kind of funny element was moving in; not the kind of people you talked to much. Bad for the children. He was sure that passing the abandoned Samuels place he had smelled something like the raw reek of alcohol and glimpsed shining copper pots and tubing through the ill-shuttered picture window. Sometimes police cars and copters descended on Belly Rave and left loaded—but that was on the outskirts, the neighborhood would pick up, the old man told himself sternly. And then he'd sell at the top of the market—

Time passed. . . .

More than a century.