ONE

From the fifth floor of the Valhalla, I looked down onto the small courtyard. The slow dazzle of the sun on the pool, the palm fronds and sunloungers, the absolute stillness of the desert. I had been there for some time, waiting. I was sweating, shirtless. My running shoes were unlaced and the men were late. Without them, I couldn’t leave. They arrived and then I went. It was the way it worked.

Eventually, they pushed through the double doors, talking and jostling. Some passed out beers from a coolbox, others opened buckets of fried chicken, many took their places on loungers by the pool. Their work finished for the week, money in the pockets of their overalls, the men formed loose groups: the younger ones in the sunshine, bills of caps and Ray-Bans shading their eyes; the older ones, bellies lolling over belt buckles, under the wooden awning. Cigarettes were produced from rolled-up sleeves, balls were tossed lazily over the water, card games were played with the mildest of intensity. Every week the same.

I’d given some of them names: Stevedore, the foreman; Moustache, one of the plasterers; Skinny, who wore the tightest of jeans; and Baggy, whose underwear was constantly on show. Sometimes I’d wave at them, even though they could not see me, but I was too tired to wave then. Instead I put my hand on the glass and looked for Stevedore. He was not in his usual place, but standing in close communion with another of the older guys. His arms were expressive; his companion nodding slowly along with him. It looked like conspiracy, or paranoia. Stevedore became increasingly animated, his hands making fists, then relaxing. He stopped talking and shook his head.

Over by the lazy palms, Moustache had emerged, a ghetto-blaster mounted on his sloping shoulder. The music must have been loud. All I could hear was the usual gymnasium noises: the machines, the air conditioning, the silent televisions. But down there, some of the older men were putting fingers in their ears and Moustache was nodding his head in time to the music. He nodded and then began to dance.

Moustache danced towards Stevedore, swaying his hips left and right. Some of the old men got up from their loungers, but they didn’t try to stop him. He moved provocatively, like he was trying to impress a girl after drinking too much. Beside the pool, the younger men started clapping and Moustache rewarded them with a shake of his behind.

Stevedore could have been a football player once, the shape he was in. When he wasn’t wearing protective headgear he always wore a cowboy hat. O’Neil and I were a little afraid of him; Moustache didn’t seem to care, though.

Moustache shimmied until he was right in front of Stevedore, then grabbed at his own crotch and began pumping his hips. The younger crowd continued to applaud. They clapped until the first beer can was thrown.

Moustache fielded missiles from both sides; laughing, one hand on his crotch, the other covering his eyes. He was still laughing when he took a can of Bud Lite to the face. There was no blood when he touched his hand to his head. Another can hit him on the arm, but he didn’t seem to notice. The men stayed still, paused. Moustache kept touching his head. Stevedore looked at the ground, his wide smile slowly diminishing.

Momentarily the sun reflected off the pool, shining directly into my eyes. I looked the other way and buried my head into a towel. When I finally looked back the men were gone. The only sign they’d been there at all was the cans and long-necked bottles spilling out from the litter bin. I looked left and right, but couldn’t see a baseball cap or ghetto-blaster anywhere. The pool was still, the palms splayed. There was just the courtyard and the desert, dimmed by the smoked glass of the Valhalla.

‘Makes you want to jump right in, doesn’t it?’ Edith said. I saw her pale reflection in the glass, her head cocked to one side. I looked down. My shorts were wet at the crotch and at the seat.

‘There were . . .’ I said, turning to Edith. ‘I don’t know, but there was just . . .’ But I didn’t know what to say about the men. Perhaps there was nothing to say.

‘Am I late?’ I looked at where my watch should have been.

‘Later than usual,’ Edith said. She pushed herself away from me and walked across the floorboards. ‘I went up to your room and no one was home. Figured you’d be here.’ She paused by the treadmill and picked up my T-shirt. She balled it up and threw it at me.

‘Come on,’ she said, ‘time’s a-ticking.’

*

Edith never spoke to fill a silence. She was always careful with her words, as though they were precious commodities, niggardly rationed. Usually I was comfortable with that. As we took the lift up to my apartment the atmosphere was thin enough to split. As usual she was dressed impeccably. But she wore her slim black trousers, white blouse and pale blue necktie somewhat stiffly, like they were borrowed clothes. Her hair was loosely tied back and I could smell tobacco beneath the perfume she’d used to disguise it. When the doors opened, Edith looked up as if to say something, then thought better of it. Instead she hummed a tune. She was still humming as we walked down the corridor towards my apartment.

The tune sounded familiar and I hummed along with her, following her lead. She looked at me with irritation and I fell silent. She started again, this time on her own. I shook my head and opened the door.

‘You could have tidied up,’ she said, ‘you live like a pig.’

She thought this was funny: my rooms were always neat to the point of fastidiousness. The apartment was cool from the air conditioning and darkened by Venetian blinds. It was a vast octagonal space scented with pine cones and wax polish. On one wall were two Rothko prints, their colours complementing the scarlet rugs and pitch-pine floorboards; on the other a large television. The other rooms, all vast, were similarly clinical.

Edith settled herself on the far end of the sofa and removed a series of files from her tote bag. I went to the kitchen area to make coffee. As I opened the cupboard she continued to hum her ten-note tune.

‘What is that?’ I said, heaping coffee grounds into the filter paper. She looked up. Her eyes were framed by thick-rimmed spectacles. There was a quick look of panic behind the lenses, then a tightening of the mouth.

‘What’s what?’ Edith said.

‘That tune you’ve been humming.’ I hummed back the notes.

‘I don’t know,’ she said and shrugged. ‘Just a song I heard, I guess.’ She picked up a file and placed it on the coffee table, as if to close the matter.

‘Oh come on, Edie,’ – she scowled – ‘you’ve been humming it all morning. You must have some idea.’

Edith shook her head.

‘Please try to remember,’ I said, joining her on the sofa. ‘I know that I know it. It’s going to drive me crazy otherwise.’

‘I told you I don’t know,’ Edith said. She handed me a file. ‘Now shush. Time for work.’

*

My partner O’Neil took to calling these ‘strategy and intelligence meetings’. It was a private joke from back when we worked in the over-ripe sales offices of Brooklyn. In those days every meeting had a fancy name. Strategy and intelligence. Research and implementation. Experience and expectation. The names changed, but the content remained broadly the same: lay down the targets; belittle the weak; talk about the money.

The Valhalla was different. O’Neil may have joked about their names, but all the meetings were taken with the utmost seriousness. Selling the concept of the Valhalla was all about the details. The minutiae. The added knowledge that could force through a sale. We were selling a dream, after all. The guy who owned it, Mac – a man we had never seen or met – had been a whale watcher before he made it big: a slave to the whims of the high rollers whom casinos were desperate to keep happy. According to Paul, back at head office, Mac had become frustrated at not being able to give his clients everything they desired, so he’d quit. The Valhalla was his answer. By 2003, he’d sold over three-quarters of the apartments. It had become the place where dreams really could become reality.

*

‘This is Brooks,’ Edith said, passing me a photograph. It was a black-and-white shot of an expensively styled man. He was in his late thirties and his white-toothed grin looked stolen from a magazine. I leafed through his file. The only missing information was his place and date of birth, his contact details and real name. Otherwise it was a disturbingly frank picture of a man’s interior life.

Originally, or so Paul told me, Mac had made the clients fill out a long questionnaire. They’d checked boxes – their interests, sexual preferences and other requirements – but the results had been mixed. There had been no way of gauging whether buyers were getting what they really wanted. Mac wanted them to be surprised by the sophistication of their desires; needed them to think that their fantasies could only come true at the Valhalla. For the first months, sales were sluggish to the point of total collapse. In the end, Paul hit upon an idea. Sex-line operators. One phone call from a breathy, coaxing voice was enough to reveal even the darkest of customers’ wishes.

Brooks was the primary lead for the sale. The rest of the group were there to make up the numbers. They would probably invest in one of the smaller properties on the ninth or twelfth floors. After three nights at the Valhalla, very few now opted against some form of investment. But Brooks was the key: he had the money and the hubris to spare. We hoped he’d go for the one remaining penthouse.

‘And this is Boulder, Miller and Hooper,’ Edith said passing me three more portraits. They were nondescript, bored-looking: white and wealthy. I returned to Brooks. He was like a cross between the Hooded Claw and a young Jimmy Stewart. His face belonged behind the curtain of a nightmare.

‘Are you there, Joe?’ Edith said.

‘Was I humming?’ I said.

Edith took off her glasses and kneaded her eyes.

‘No, Joe. You just weren’t paying attention.’

‘I was,’ I said, ‘I was just . . . you know earlier on, when I was in the gym? I was looking out of the window and I saw these, well, workmen, down in the courtyard by the pool, and they were drinking and eating. And I just thought: how simple is that? Imagine that.’

It wasn’t what I was thinking. I was still humming; humming and thinking about the picture of Brooks.

‘What are you talking about, Joe?’ she said. ‘Workmen by the pool? You’re picking these guys up in two hours.’ She got up from the sofa and made for the kitchen. There were two loud bangs as she slammed down a pair of coffee mugs.

‘I’m losing the will to live here, Joe,’ she shouted from behind the breakfast bar. ‘If you’re testing me, you’re winning, okay?’

Edith filled the mugs and brought them over to the table. She put them down but didn’t sit. Instead she looked down on me. Her cheeks coloured a little and something went off in her eyes. She picked up the stack of files and threw them to the floor. The papers and photos and photocopies scattered everywhere.

‘I’ve tried so hard with you,’ she said. ‘So help me God, Joe, if I haven’t tried my best, but the way you treat me? The way you act . . . ?’

There was a portrait near to me – Boulder, I think – and I moved to pick it up.

‘Don’t touch it, okay? Just fucking leave it where it is, okay . . . And don’t give me that look. It’s like you think I’m a piece of shit, you know that?’

It was probably the first time Edith had sworn in my company. She picked up her mug, blew on her coffee. I looked at the television, then at the window, then the files on the floor. I thought that maybe she was cracking up. I’d never thought that she’d be the first one to freak.

‘I can’t keep on excusing you,’ she said and started fishing in her purse. ‘Excusing you and letting others excuse you too. I don’t see why it is that you get a free ride when the rest of us—’

‘Hold on, Edith,’ I said. ‘What am I supposed to have done?’ She kept rummaging in her bag and then took out a packet of cigarettes.

‘It’s everything, Joe,’ she said. ‘Every week the same: you look at me as if I’m stupid. Like you’re the only one that knows anything in the whole world. And no one says anything. No one! And I’m sick of it.’

She lit her cigarette with a book of Peppermill Restaurant and Bar matches and wandered off towards the windows. She coughed, then looked back over her shoulder, a look of anger and pity.

‘You’re not making any sense, Edith. I don’t know what’s wrong, but—’

She started picking up the photos and files with a conviction bordering on aggression.

‘You want to know what’s wrong?’ she said, laughing, her head bowed and the paper scraping on the floor. She looked up. ‘You want to know what’s wrong, Joe? You really want to know? You go ask O’Neil, okay? You go ask him.’

‘What the hell does that mean?’ I said, but she ignored me and bundled up the papers in her arms and dumped them on the table. She rubbed her hands on her trousers like she was wiping off something unpleasant.

‘You have work to do,’ she said calmly. ‘Maybe afterwards it’ll all become clear.’

She crossed the room and slammed the door. I hummed the tune again and then I heard the words. You won’t know what you’re missing.