The Means: a Novel by Amy Fusselman

Author:Amy Fusselman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-09-06T00:00:00+00:00

11

George and I went to Marianne’s office because she wanted to speak in person about what she called “next steps.” Now that we had the house down on paper, we needed to talk to the contractors in Vermont who would be tricking out the containers. She had set up a call with them.

When we walked into her office, I saw that her conference table had accumulated even more papers and samples. Marianne was dressed impeccably in a black blouse that jutted out from the sides like it had armature underneath it. Her glasses had a red stripe running along the top and looked Italian and costly. She wore them on top of her head.

As we sat down, she told us the workers’ names: Vinnie and Frank. She leaned in. “They’re furries,” she added, smiling.

George laughed.

“What’s a furry?” I asked.

“They’re like the ComicCon people,” George explained. We had been to several ComicCons with Jack and Clementine. The attendees who dressed up in character were my favorite part.

“I think you’ll like them,” Marianne added, fussing with the computer.

“How did you get connected with contractor furries?” I asked Marianne.

Marianne pulled her glasses down over her eyes to look at me. “I met them through another container job,” she said. “They’re very inexpensive.”

I didn’t argue with that.

The screen pinged. Marianne adjusted the brightness as the image came to life. “Hi, you two!” she exclaimed, grinning.

Vinnie and Frank appeared. They were fresh-faced white guys. I was surprised by how young they looked—they seemed only a little older than Jack. Vinnie was dark-haired and chubby and had acne, while Frank was skinny with a sweet face and blond hair that stuck straight up. I wondered what kinds of animals they were, in their furry lives. I could picture them both as woodland creatures: a fox and a rabbit.

“Let’s talk about beach houses!” Marianne yelled, like a game show host.

Vinnie and Frank seemed easygoing and excited about the project. They explained how the four containers would be stacked, two on top of two. Windows would be installed on the two far ends of this container-made box, Frank explained. You couldn’t put much of any windows on the sides, he said, because if you did, the structure would collapse on itself like a bubble.

After going over some more details, we said goodbye to them. I was feeling pretty good about it all as Marianne spread her renderings out on the table. I took a closer look.

“Wait, aren’t we missing some elements here?” I asked, alarmed.

Marianne spread her palms over the drawings and looked at me. “I cut two of the bedrooms and two of the baths because it just wasn’t feasible given the container configuration and your budget,” she said coolly.

My jaw dropped. “When were you going to tell us that?!”

“I’m telling you now,” she said, pushing her glasses higher on her nose. “And the granite kitchen counter you chose is prohibitively expensive,” she added, passing me another paper with the estimates. “So that had to go, too.”

Marianne

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