HOT PROPERTY

My parents named me Vesta, after the Roman goddess of the hearth. It has been one hell of a name to be saddled with and for a long time it put me off domesticity. I sold houses but I didn’t live in them, choosing instead to rent a series of anonymous white-walled apartments. But when I hit thirty-five, something shifted. My married friends had fanned off to the suburbs, and while I still had a core group of women to hang out, the group was steadily thinning. It soon seemed that I might be the last girl standing.
I was finally ready for something that felt like a real home. Unfortunately, because I’d sold real estate for the last ten years, I knew exactly what the market was like. Most of the suburbs around Boston had little to offer besides overpriced center-entrance colonials. I had more exotic dreams, Town and Country fantasies of city lofts or escapist cabins, anything but those mid-range developments of family-ready homes.
When I went home for Easter and the annual discussion of Dad’s retirement land came up, it felt like fate. His plot of land in New Hampshire was a long-standing family joke. He had bought it before marrying my mother, when he imagined that he would retire up there. My mother, who had a house of her own and no plans to ever move, nixed that idea right away. But the land was nearly worthless so Dad just held onto it. Each year when Mom paid the property taxes, she threatened to sell it out from under him. This year she was more vehement than ever, and somewhere between the glazed ham and Mom’s coconut cake, Dad offered the land to me.
In Gone with the Wind, Scarlett’s father tells her land is the only thing that matters. More than love or money, it is land that sustains. Believing in the wisdom often encased in tearjerker movies, I took Dad up on his offer and bought the land for a dollar. Mom glared at him but she handed me the property tax bill with a tight smile. “It’s your problem, now.”
I was a city girl with a plot of country land. Working as a real estate broker had taught me nothing about the actual building of a house, having never seen any under construction except for the soulless townhouses and development clones I was sometimes forced to peddle. I knew a lot about houses, about styles, mortgages, locations—all the things that made a property a dream to show or impossible to unload. But I didn’t have a house; I had only a square of dirt that I had never even seen. I needed an architect but instead of going to the phone book, I went to my local pub.
Casey’s Landing had been my bar of choice for years. My friends and I had a tradition of going on Wednesday nights to listen to the Easy Aces play their rockabilly surf music. We called it girl time but it was hardly that since most of the time our eyes were swiveling around the room to look for which of our current crushes had straggled in. I had my eye on Miles, the loner architect. Sometimes he would come in with a group of people but most nights he drifted in around closing time, ordered a scotch and hid in the back of the room, avoiding everyone’s gaze. The moody misanthrope act has always worked on me. And my new acquisition presented the perfect opportunity to have a real conversation with him. By the time he arrived, I was three ciders into my evening. Drunk enough to be sociable but sober enough to have a shot at forming complete sentences.
He was the only truly odd-eyed person I had ever met, one green and one blue. The shapes of the eyes were different too; his blue eye was round, whereas his green eye was more almond-shaped. From either side of his face he looked like a whole different person. My friends and I often debated over which side was more attractive, deciding that if he had two blue eyes he might be better looking. As it was, he seemed lop-sided and off.
“I’m going over,” I said to my friend Caroline.
“Waste of time.”
It was always my opinion that Caroline couldn’t get a man because she didn’t work hard enough. She had a better body than anyone I knew but her attitude was pessimistic and dry. It made her great fun to hang out with but waking up beside that might be a bit much.
I sauntered over to Miles. No point in being coy. “Hey, Miles. Good band tonight.”
“Vesta, you hear them every Wednesday.” He looked up from his drink and lifted his lips into a barely-curved smile. I loved the way he said my name, giving it a soft pursed-lip start instead of a more vibratory thrum.
“I was wondering if you could help me with something.” I looked him straight in the eyes. “I recently bought some land in New Hampshire. I know you are an architect, do you think you could recommend some one who could help me with building a cabin?”
Miles was instantly alert. Both eyes on me now and a full smile to boot. “Sit down.” The chair his feet had been resting on was made instantly available. “What kind of cabin?” He leaned in close to be sure he caught my answer above the metallic din of the band.
This was the important part. Any veering into the wrong style could throw him. “Modern?”
“Really. Excellent. I’ve always wanted to do that. Take the most spare and sophisticated design and plunk it right in the middle of the deep woods.”
“Wow. I didn’t know that.” Lucky guess.
“I could build it for you.”
“You have time?” It was all going so swimmingly I was afraid to breathe. Afraid to look up and see Caroline watching from across the room or an ex-boyfriend waltzing in at the most inopportune moment.
“Something truly unique,” he went on. “There aren’t any restrictions on the land, are there?” His hair was so close that it nearly brushed against my cheek. He smelled like wet newspaper and smoke. I inhaled deeply.
“I’ll check but I don’t think so.”
“And you’re serious?”
“Of course. I need to do something with that land.”
“Let’s meet when we’re sober.”
“I’m fine,” I said, instinctively clutching the tabletop for support.
“Tomorrow night? Seven? We can meet for coffee.”
Coffee? Boring. I wanted to suggest a drink in a cozy little bar but thought that might give him the wrong impression. Time to prove I could do real conversation.

He wasn’t as cute by sober light. Acne scars pitted his skin. A mole that seemed on its way to melanoma clung to his chin. Funny how alcohol and low lighting can glow up a person. But this was Miles, I reminded myself.
I had not known he was a tea drinker. It seemed unmanly to me. Was a girl’s heart really safe in the hands of a man who held a tea cup versus a coffee mug? Of course at the cafe, both tea and coffee came in cardboard cups, but it was a stylistic concern, a vision of Sunday paper perfection.
He brought books. Elongated floppy trade paperbacks thick with drawings and a couple of coffee table books with thick glossy pages. Yellow Post-Its bristled from the pages. We had barely sat down before he whisked me into a brief tour of modernism.
“Did you ever read The Fountainhead?” He had closed the books and was now ready to talk with me instead of at me.
“I think I saw the movie. Gary Cooper, Patricia Neal, all skyscrapers and scorching glances.”
“Well, yes, there’s that. Will you read it? While I design the house?”
I wanted a boyfriend, not a professor. Maybe he didn’t have much experience with women. His face seemed slightly pinker. Was that desire or hot tea? “I could read it.”

The next weekend, Miles and I went to look at the land. Our first trip together. I wore golden suede pants, an ivory raw silk shirt. Neither suede nor silk should be worn on road trips in an old Jeep on an unseasonably warm March day. I had imagined that Miles drove a Volvo or perhaps a used BMW. Something tweedy and classic. But the Jeep was good, too. Romantic in a rugged way.
We reached the development and followed the faded map Dad had given me. Lot 656. I wasn’t sure how you are supposed to feel about land, even when it’s “your” land. I walked around the square plot, making little noises like I was imagining places the house would go. Miles took a different approach. He started at one corner and marched across the lot, heel to toe the whole way. Then he squatted in the corners, looking off into each direction. After a few minutes, he drew a large square in the dirt with the heel of his shoe. “Here,” he said, finally looking over at me, “this is where your house should go.”
I came over and stood beside him. His unruly hair was falling over his green eye, so only his blue eye was visible. His hands were shoved deep in his khaki pants. From this angle, he resembled the fall ads for Banana Republic. I looked around the lot, trying to figure out why this spot was the one. “What do you see?”
“Something different, a modern age cabin. I can’t describe it in words, but I can see it so clearly.” He pushed his hair back off his forehead and his mismatched eyes stared off into space.
I wondered what the world must look like through his eyes. Was it different through the green one? Did he ever close one eye and look out of the other, just to gauge the effect? “I’m sure it will be amazing,” I said.

I figured the house would take ages to build. It could be all the time in the world as far as I was concerned. We would have lingering design conversations over coffee. He would make me dinner in his small but perfectly appointed carriage house. One night we would talk late into the night and he would ask me to stay. Then, together we would work on our house. Our weekend house.
“I can’t imagine you up in the boondocks,” Caroline said when I told her about the cabin.
“Part-time.” I ordered another glass of merlot from the waiter. “Like a country house. With him. And then the city on the weekdays. I think it’s so important for children to grow up with both urban and country experiences.”
“So now you’ve joined the baby fever masses? I was hoping you were the last great hold out for a future of non-maternal conversations.”
“Miles is special. When you find the right one everything changes.”
“He hasn’t even kissed you. Are you sure he’s interested?”
“He’s just focused. On architecture. He’s got me reading The Fountainhead.”
“Your house comes with a reading list?”
“A philosophy. Sort of a utilitarian ideal. He’s really into modern stuff.”
“I’m guessing it won’t be a log cabin.”
“No,” I said, frowning over my tuna carpaccio. “It will still be nice though.” I hadn’t thought about the materials. No logs. Concrete and glass, more likely. So much for the Adirondack-style love nest that had been floating around my brain.
“I heard you sold the Morgan place. How did you unload that dump?”
“There is a buyer for every house. It’s just that they don’t know it when they come in. But I do. Sometimes it’s just about showing them the potential of something.”
“The commission will help you pay for the construction.”
The commission wouldn’t even make a dent. Miles had already given me an estimate that made me queasy. Apparently, simplicity was expensive. But I couldn’t tell Caroline that I had spent my carefully saved house downpayment money on a cabin in the middle of nowhere. An investment in my future. I always say you can’t sell someone a house unless you can get him in the door.

The love relationship in The Fountainhead was pathologically confrontational. They thwarted each other at every turn. Was this what Miles wanted from me? I sat up late at night in bed reading and tried to sort it out. This is just about the house, I told myself. Nothing else. Still, I found myself deeply envious of the elegant ice-queen Dominique Francon. She didn’t worry about catching a man. She dangled several of them by the short hairs, treated them all horribly and none seemed to mind. I could do that with a house. Talk it up on all sides, play one buyer against another. I could be brazen with a mansard-roofed Victorian. People always wanted houses. I just wasn’t as sure that someone would ever want me.

Miles wouldn’t show me the plans. He agreed not to charge me for his services and have me pay only for the construction but only if he could do it on his own. It felt like care taking, a rather heightened form of romance. He was building me a house. I’d catch him shoving pieces of paper or photographs into folders whenever I came to his dingy studio apartment before heading out to dinner. His place wasn’t messy. Instead it was nearly too clean, the lonely fastidiousness of the aging bachelor. But the walls were devoid of art, of personal attachment, of anything that proclaimed his individuality or presence.
“Am I ever going to get to see it?” I made a great show of not looking as he organized the plans and tucked them into a flat file.
“When it’s built. You haven’t been going out to the land have you?”
“I promised I wouldn’t. How about sushi for dinner?”
“You know I’m a vegetarian. I eat fish sometimes but not raw. Let’s go get Indian.”
I nodded, bidding a reluctant farewell to dreams of fresh yellowtail slathered with wasabi and tiny cups of warm sake. Miles would be worth the sacrifice.

Having my own house on the way, made me better at selling other houses. I imagined it was like being pregnant and finding yourself becoming attentive and kind to other people’s children. Even the dullest of subdivisions was imbued with fresh magic for me. “Just look at these countertops,” I would murmur, unable to keep my hands from stroking chair rails and doorjambs. I used to believe that not having a house made me a more successful salesperson. I was free to love other houses without bias. But now, flushed with the knowledge that I would soon be a homeowner myself, I treated each house with love and each potential buyer with the gentle reverence shown to brides in wedding shops.
I wondered too, if I could do the work of owning a house. Not the physical maintenance but the commitment. Plenty of women I knew seemed to manage a house, kids, and a husband. I wondered if I had chosen to get a house because of the three it seemed the least likely to uproot my life. At night, I sat in my charming apartment on the Fenway, staring at the lights of the city and imagining what it would be like when I wasn’t in the city anymore. The thought always made me want to run down to the Italian restaurant on the corner and drown my fears in fettucine carbonara and Chianti.
The house was ready less than six months later, destroying the planning of my subtle seduction. I still had not slept with Miles. We saw movies together and talked on the phone. We took day trips to art museums and did city tours through historic neighborhoods. But our friendship remained firmly non-physical. He couldn’t have been seeing anyone else. The whole time he was completely accountable to me. When we weren’t together, he was either at work or at the house. On Sunday nights, after he had spent the weekend up at the land supervising the building, we met for dinner. A curvy smile tilted up one side of his face. “I can’t wait until you see it,” he said. Sometimes, if he was truly excited he might grab my hand or touch my shoulder in what seemed to be an affectionate gesture. Caroline said that I should make the first move, but I disagreed. It’s important for a man to be the aggressor. If they think it’s all your idea then they feel too secure.
All the time the house was being built, I had thought about it in a vague way, focusing on the nights I would spend there with Miles, or our quiet mornings over coffee. Somehow, I had blocked out the hour-long commute along clogged roadways, the lack of wine shops and gourmet grocery stores, and the unending folksiness of Southern New Hampshire. As Miles and I drove up, in my Volkswagen Jetta this time, I watched civilization fade slowly from my view.
The house sat in a great pit of scarred land. The sandy soil had been turned and mashed so that all around there were bulldozer tracks and piles of jagged rock. In the middle, my cube of grey metal and glass gleamed dully. “Wow, it’s different,” I said slowly.
“I knew you’d love it. Most people wouldn’t get what I was trying to do.”
It seemed an affront to the land. Most cabins echo the tone and color of the landscape. This one defied it, offered up instead its own solid lines as an idea of what living space should be. Miles brought me into the house and I stood in the center, not quite sure what to say. There was no need to wander from room to room. Kitchen and living room formed one open space and the bedroom was delineated with a half-wall that allowed a person standing at the front door to see all the way to the back of the house.
The entire place had been designed to be devoid of color, of warmth. No matter, I could cute it up with my Pottery Barn furniture and my Tibetan wallhangings. Except there were hardly any walls to hang things on, each wall was a window, making the inhabitant of the house open to the wonders of the woods. I would be living inside a glass box.
When I was a teenager, I wrote a series of dire poems built around the fact that I was enclosed in a glass box. Typical angst-ridden, alienated girl stuff where I imagined shattering the box and declaring myself free. Now, the glass box had become a physical reality. I sat on the floor and looked at the perfect square lines of my neo-cabin, not sure if in building this for me, Miles was a savior or a sadist.

I would commute the hour to my office once I got settled in but I took the first week off. My movers arrived late in the afternoon, dropped off my furniture and headed back to the city. Exhausted by hours of frantic packing, I collapsed on the unmade bed.
Morning in the house was a festival of light. It was as if the sun was rising all around me. I was one with Nature. My house, my land. I managed to dig out my coffee pot and had a breakfast of coffee and chocolate chip cookies while sitting cross-legged on my platform bed. I was Snow White in the glass coffin, a hermetically sealed princess. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all. I could live here and be happy.
By noon I had changed my opinion. The house heated up amazingly fast, I was drenched in sweat. Drawing the curtains only made it worse, it was like the house was sweating too, the air was thick and condensation formed on the windows. I grabbed the pole and pushed open the ceiling vents. Cooler air floated in but it was quickly overwhelmed by the relentless sunlight kicking up the dust motes in my perfect chamber.
I spent the day in a tank top and boxers; it was too hot for anything more, too hot to get any work done. At night, finally, blessed cool air began to pour in through the vents. Unfortunately, so did mosquitoes. After the first few itchy welts appeared on my arm, I got wise and shut the vents. That was the wrong move. I had trapped a mini-swarm in the house with me. They buzzed back and forth past my ears and pinged against the glass. Eventually, I got rid of them by opening the vents and shutting off all the lights. I sat in the darkness, wrapped in a sheet to protect myself from bites, waiting until I heard the last one make its meandering journey out into the night.
This was not the way I had imagined my first night in my new home. I picked up the phone and called Miles. “There is something wrong with the house. It’s too hot.”
“Did you open the vents?”
“Bugs came in.”
There was a long pause. I could hear the ghost of another conversation intruding, two guys making plans to meet at a club. I found myself listening to that conversation, wondering where they lived, where they were going. I was fifteen miles from the nearest liquor store.
“Are you still there? Did you get the bugs out?”
“Eventually. You need to come out to the house, I want to show you stuff.”

I wanted the man but I hated the house. At night, enclosed in my terrarium, I fantasized about telling him, watching his face fall. The one thing that would wound him above all else. I didn’t want to hurt him, but I couldn’t conceive of night after night, year after year, in my glass box. Maybe he would appreciate it. After all, in The Fountainhead, Dominque Francon acted like she hated Roark’s work. But underneath, she really loved it and believed in him. I couldn’t make the same claim.
Saturday afternoon he drove out to the house. I could hear his car rolling up the road a good twenty minutes before he was in my line of sight.
“I brought dinner,” Miles said, tucking his head a bit and shoving a paper bag into my arms. “We’ll have to cook it. How’s the house?” He was off wandering around the foundation before I could reply. Had he even been asking me? Or was he asking the house itself, the way a dog owner says “how’s my boy?” whenever greeting Rover.
I unpacked the paper bag. Two bottles of Shiraz, some sort of fish wrapped in white paper, portobello mushrooms, red peppers. At least he brought me fish. No dessert. Men never seem to consider the importance of dessert, the pleasant way it rounds off the end of a meal. No matter, I could whip up a sponge cake and make a sauce from blueberries in the freezer.
“She’s holding up great.” Miles came in and leaned over the counter. “Don’t you just love it?”
“Will you open the wine, please?” I handed him the bottle and the corkscrew then went back to chopping vegetables. “I think I miss the city a bit.”
“Boston? Are you nuts? Nothing but traffic jams and gray buildings. No, this is real.” He gestured around the room, nearly spilling the wine as he poured our glasses.
I accepted the wine. “Thanks for coming out here,” I clinked my glass against his.
“Ow,” Miles swatted his leg. “I think I just got bitten.”
“Really? Perhaps I left the vents open.”
“I’ll shut them.” Miles set his glass down and proceeded to shut the windows. By the time he closed the last one I could feel sweat beading on my forehead but I said nothing. He was going to have to come to it on his own.
I poached the salmon then we sat down to dinner. Steam clouded the windows, gathering in the skylights and dropping down around us. Miles pretended all was normal, even when he lifted his wine glass and fog rolled out of the bowl, swirling toward his face.
We couldn’t see out. Without comment, he took a dishtowel and wiped a space clean on the window. It immediately began to cloud over again. A vertical furrow of worry appeared between his brows. I wanted to tell him the house was wonderful, perfect in fact, and it would be an honor to live in it the rest of my life.
“It gets a little steamy in here, sometimes.” I watched him across the table, waiting for him to speak.
“I can see that.”
“And there aren’t any closets. The fireplace whistles at night. There aren’t any places to hang pictures. No curtain rods. I’m in the woods. I can’t have cable TV. The cabinets are already warping from the steam. I’m miserable.” It was out before I could take it back. Tears formed at the corners of my eyes. Rage, frustration, sorrow, I wasn’t sure. I felt flat and drained, rendered nearly two-dimensional by the power of my outburst. “I’m sorry, I’m just tired.”
“No. This is good. I need to hear this.” He bit the words out in solid metallic chunks. “I failed my client.”
“Not me, Miles. You never failed me.” I stood up and went over to smooth his hair. He rested his head against my chest and I wrapped an arm around him. I kissed the top of his head.
“I’m sorry.” He looked up me. Emotions unreadable. Only a sense of palpable pain, which seemed to stretch across and link us heart to heart. I leaned my head down and kissed him.
We clung together and stumbled toward the bedroom. Busied ourselves for hours with mouths and hands, condoms and positioning. A storm of sexual activity that came out of nowhere and did not abate until we were too tired to do anything but sleep.
In the morning, I was afraid to open my eyes. Usually, on the first morning a man sleeps over at my house I make him breakfast. I tiptoe quietly into the kitchen and whip up a batch of eggs Florentine and plank-sliced home fries. Then I bring him cinnamon-laced coffee in bed. It never fails.
But this morning, I lingered, covers over head, my body turned sideways away from him. He was sleeping on his back and his hand, either errant or deliberate, curved around my hip. Daylight had been filling the room for hours and the heat was rising. A thin trickle of sweat ran down my side. I should have made him leave at night. Claimed some womanly prerogative of safety or autonomy. It would have been better for him to think I was crazy than to witness the morning hours of rising inescapable heat and the utter failure of this house as shelter.
Eventually, driven by boredom and the urgent need to pee, I stumbled off toward the bathroom. The day would have to begin no matter how much I was dreading it. When I got back, he was sitting up in bed, shaking his head against the oppressive heat.
“This is all wrong.”
“It’s been a warm few days.”
“I’ll get you your money back. I’ll pay you. Not all at first but eventually.”
“Shhh. It’s okay.” I leaned in to kiss him.
“I’m not Roark. I think I thought I was. But the truth is that I am Keating. No, less than a Keating, I couldn’t even design a functional house.” He ran his hands through his tangled hair.
“It’s a book. You aren’t either one.” Tell me last night was great, I silently willed to him. Tell me I’m beautiful. Stop talking about the damn house.
“I really thought I could design a house. I did take some architecture classes.”
“You’re not an architect?” I sat up and shook off my romantic fantasies.
“I took architecture classes.”
“You work in an architecture firm.”
“As a project manager.”
Shatter. I felt as if the walls of the house would cave in on me. Neatly, one after another, stacking me neatly under four layers of paned pressure. Woman under glass.
“You’re angry. I misled you.”
“I’m okay.” I willed my hand to stroke his shoulder, noticing for the first time the scattered dark hairs that sprouted there. Not even an architect. “I’m going to make coffee.”
In the kitchen, I fussed with filters and spoons. No career, no fancy car, no fancy house. I had pursued him with no knowledge of who he really was. It served me right.
I made a full pot of coffee before I remembered he was a tea drinker. More caffeine for me. I put a kettle on to boil.
“I guess I should head out.” Miles appeared in the doorway, fully dressed with his backpack slung over his shoulder.
“If you want.” I took the kettle off the stove and set it down hard on the counter.
“I’m sorry about last night. I took advantage.”
“Please. I’ve been trying to get you in bed for at least a year.” I strove for offhand insouciance but my words were laced with hurt.
“Then I should stay?” His voice had just the slightest waver of eagerness in it. Two mismatched eyes stared at me with the crinkles of a smile forming at their edges. That adorable smile. My brain began to work overtime. I could sell this house and recoup some of the money; we could live somewhere else together.
“You should stay,” I said as I put the kettle back on the stove.
“And the house?’
“It’s a beautiful house. I just don’t like the location. I’m more of an urban girl.”
“I could buy it.”
“But then you’d be here.” As soon as I said it, I realized that last night had not been a beginning at all; it was an ending. The house had belonged to him all along, his dream and not mine. The end of The Fountainhead flashed through my mind. Sure, Dominque Francon ended up with Roark, but only after she’d married other people, stabbed herself with glass and nearly died for him and his ideals. Miles might want to be Roark, but I had no desire to be her.
“You could visit, if you wanted.” He was scanning the room, already visualizing where his furniture would go and how to fix the ventilation problem. I began to calculate how much money I would need to recoup my investment and make a tidy profit. Miles was a hooked buyer who would bid as high as his mortgage company would allow, and I had become a motivated seller.
“You’ll need financing,” I said quickly. We were on my territory now. “I know some great mortgage brokers I can pair you up with.”
“Whatever you think is best.” I could feel him receding from me, retreating into his house.
It would all work out perfectly. I could take the profit from the house and rent a sunny little apartment on Beacon Hill. I imagined myself stepping lightly up the brick-lined walkways with a paper cone of flowers in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other. Perhaps Mr. Right would be at the coffee shop on Sundays, earnestly flipping through the NY Times. I always told my clients that home buying was just a matter of persistence and averages. The most important thing was to keep looking.