Let Me Be Frank With You by Richard Ford Read Free Book Online Page A

already—now that it’s vacant—and utilizing the beach as they have and should. Possibly sooner than anyone’s predicting, complex life will resume here, and time will march on.
    â€œSo. The guy says to me. This putz speculator,” Arnie says. We’re at a distance from each other. Forces of officialdom have spray-painted a red circle on the broke-open side wall of the house, then divided it into pie-shaped thirds, and inscribed mysterious numbers and letters—code for the structure’s present state of body and future. Total loss being the gist of it. Arnie’s carrying on talking. It could be to anyone—if anyone else was here. I notice he’s lost his old nyak-nyak Maine accent. “. . . he says, this speculator, ‘We’ll buy your lot, pay to have the derelict hauled off. Write you a check on the spot. ’Cause you’re gonna be payin’ taxes on the fucker, house or no house. Insurance won’t pay. Rates’ll be sky high if you do rebuild—assuming anybody’ll insure you at all. And once the new flood map’s issued by fuckin’ Obama’s lackeys, you’ll be sitting on unbuildable ground. If it’s not already flooded again . Plus the goddamn thing’ll have to be up on fucking stilts. Who wants that kind of African rig-up? Beachfront. BFD.’” Arnie shakes his head, staring up at the vacant husk. He sniffs, clears his throat, coughs in the new, approved CDCway—into his elbow. No doubt his new wife has schooled him in this. He would never do it otherwise. “So what’s your view, Frank? A disinterested observer? What would you do? I said ix-nay to three million exactly one year ago. And that was a shit market. I’m fucked, is how you spell it.”
    â€œWhat’s the guy offering?” Arnie’s a few feet up the berm. I’m not sure I’m being heard.
    â€œFive and change. I told you,” Arnie says bitterly. “I was leavin’ the place to the kids. My daughter’s a diplomat in India. Got her own car and a fuckin’ armed driver.”
    â€œDo you need the money?” I’ve come to within a few feet of him, but I’m still talking up .
    The cotton-y whiteness of the fog has made a cloud of vitreous swimmers swarm my vision, slightly disorienting me. Tiny tadpoles of blood cells, like space junk, shift and subside in my vision—the result of an old Marine Corps cudgel-stick blow to the eye that sent me reeling. They’re harmless and would be pretty if they didn’t feel like vertigo.
    Arnie obviously believes that the money question doesn’t require an answer, because he’s stuck his hands in his pockets and extended his big chin like Mussolini.
    â€œWas the place paid off, Arnie?” As I said, I haven’t consulted my records. I believe cash was exchanged—though a second mortgage is possible.
    â€œNah,” Arnie says. “F-N-C. I paid you cash. You’re slippin’, Frank.” He swivels around and looks at me dismissively, a few paces back down the berm from him. There’s, of course, a standard calculator for “calamity expense”: take the rebuild off the value of the house the day before disaster struck (October 28th); add twenty-five K as an inconvenience surcharge, then don’t sell the sucker for a farthing less. That, of course, may not work if you can’t be certain the ground will be ground and not seawater in ten years. Normally I counsel patience in most things. Patience, though, is a pre-lapsarian concept in a post-lapsarian world.
    â€œIf one of these speculators suffered what I’ve suffered here, you know what would happen to him?” Arnie’s turned and started back down the berm, his loafers taking on sand. He’s stared at his ruin for long enough. He doesn’t really want my advice.
    â€œHe’d get richer, Arn,” I say.
    â€œSo fuck it,” Arnie