Empire Falls

a point,” Miles said, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “I am left without a house in all this. Speaking of which.”
    “Don’t.” Janine pointed the spoon at him. “Don’t go there.”
    “Okay,” he agreed, since he’d already gone there and Janine knew it.
    Janine had promised to talk to Walt about the house. The sensible, fair thing, she agreed, would be for Walt to buy out Miles’s share—or what would have been his share if he had one. The settlement would award Janine the house and Miles had been instructed to continue paying half of the mortgage until such time as the property sold or she remarried. Privately, he and Janine had agreed that when the house did sell, they would divide what was left of the equity. The money they’d used for a down payment had been his, but it didn’t amount to that much, and he’d decided not to make an issue of it, or anything else. His instructions to his lawyer had been simple: let her have what she wants. In truth, there was embarrassingly little to quibble over, and even if he’d felt like it, he couldn’t be small with Janine without being small with Tick. Not an option.
    However, the divorce would soon be final, allowing for Janine’s long postponed nuptials, and Miles was beginning to wonder if he should have listened to his lawyer’s advice. Walt Comeau, the lawyer had correctly predicted, would rent his own house and move in with Janine. “Is that what you want? For the man who stole your wife to live with her in your house, sleeping in your bed, all of it rent-free?” Well, of course Miles hadn’t wanted that, but at the time such a scenario seemed far-fetched. What sort of man would behave that way? But then Miles wouldn’t have predicted that Walt Comeau would also become a regular at the grill, dropping in every afternoon to drink coffee and play gin with Horace and offer Miles business tips. Just today he’d suggested that Miles add an “e” to the word “Grill” to make the place sound classier. Every time Walt made one of his proposals, two things occurred to Miles. First, strange as it seemed, was that Walt’s purpose was not to inspire Miles to homicide. Walt Comeau truly believed his suggestions to be valuable. And second, he was probably offering them in lieu of rent. Most people, Miles had come to understand, went about their business logically enough if you granted them a couple fundamental assumptions. No court had ordered Walt to pay rent on Miles’s house, so he wouldn’t. Still, he couldn’t help but feel sorry for the man whose wife he’d stolen—fair and square, Walt would consider it, the better man having won—and so, even without obligation to do so, he would continue to look for little opportunities to make it up to Miles. In fact, he seemed increasingly determined to help out in any way he could. No doubt he thought his free advice was worth thousands of dollars, yet Miles stubbornly refused to implement any of it. What could you do? Talk about leading a horse to water. No, if Miles were to die in his sleep tonight, Walt would tell every last mourner that he’d tried everything he could think of to turn the Empire Grill into a profitable enterprise. Miles was a hell of a nice guy, he would conclude, but he had no head for business. Nothing about any of this would strike the Silver Fox as outrageous.
    “I did speak to him about it,” Janine finally said, staring at her reflection in the window. “He said …” Here she paused again, as if she herself could hardly credit what she was about to report. “He said he’s not sure that real estate here is that good an investment right now.”
    “Really,” Miles said. “He figured that out?”
    “He says he doesn’t want to tie up his money until he’s sure about his next move.”
    “When will that be?”
    “I don’t know, Miles. I really don’t,” she admitted, suddenly dropping the pretense of being angry. “Have you ever noticed the way he scratches his chin when he plays cards? When he’s trying to figure out what Horace is holding? It’s almost like time stops. Like you’re watching a still life.”
    “Janine—”
    “I mean, who knows? One minute he’s talking about expanding the club, putting in more indoor tennis courts, then the next he’s saying we should build a place out by the lake. There’s a half acre of waterfront property he’s had his eye on, but when I ask him where exactly, he gets all secretive, like I’m