4: 4
At nine at night, the streetlights at the edge of the village went dark.
To save on the electric bill, East Village had them shut off automatically after nine.
The thirty-two-foot box truck rolled up to the bend in the village road with its lights off. Ethel jumped down from the passenger seat and jogged over to me.
"Owen, everyone's here."
All five of the longtime staff, not one missing, stood at the back door of the old house.
Ethel ran down the list for them.
"Twelve guest rooms, forty-six pieces of furniture total."
"Six old elm-wood platform beds. All of them come apart."
"Eight tea tables, twenty floor lamps, thirty-two gray-brick collage pieces, and the pomegranate tree in the courtyard..."
"Light fixtures, curtains, rugs, all of it packed up."
"Kitchen equipment's already counted. The big items go before dawn. Strip the soft furnishings as far as we can. Done by daybreak."
That old elm platform bed, I'd bought it out in the country. Three thousand for the bed, five thousand to ship it.
When I bought it, Rick had laughed at me, said what was so special about scrap wood, that his family had brand-new planks on their sleeping bench.
Now he wanted it.
I clamped the flashlight between my teeth and bent down to pry the gray-brick collage off the courtyard wall.
That piece was a mosaic. More than three hundred broken bricks. I'd lain flat on the ground fitting them together for two full days.
Every brick in that wall, I'd handled with my own hands.
The basin in the corner, I'd dug it myself.
The stone path across the courtyard, I'd hauled it back one slab at a time from the riverbank.
"Owen, the guest rooms are clear."
Ethel leaned out from the corridor.
"On to the main hall next?"
"Do it."
I stood, set the brick in my hand into a foam crate, closed the lid, and sealed it with tape.
At two in the morning, the lights were still on at Miles's country diner.
One of our staff was over there helping out and filmed a video, sent it to me.
In the shot, Rick sat in the seat of honor, his face as red as the braised pork on the table.
He had a cup in his hand, grinning ear to ear.
Miles was pouring drinks beside him, Arthur was passing out cigarettes, the table a wreck of cups and plates.
Miles had the loudest voice of them all.
"Rick, nobody's got the touch like you!"
"That Yates guy didn't even dare squeak. Just handed the place right over!"
Rick said, "Good riddance. You think we'd let some out-of-town nobody skim the money out of our village?"
At four-ten in the morning, the last floor lamp went into the truck bed.
All that was left on the walls were the nail holes where the pictures had hung.
The whole house looked like it had been skinned, back to the way it was three years ago.
"Owen, it's all clear. We didn't leave so much as a loose thread."
Ethel put a check on the last page of the ledger.
"Let's go."
The truck started up and rolled slowly out along the village road.
East Village was still asleep. The farmhouse courtyards along both sides were shut tight, the letters on their signs catching the headlights.
The words on Miles's diner sign read AUTHENTIC FARM CHICKEN, one corner of it hanging crooked.
I opened my phone. On the platform, the inn's status had already been changed to closed.
Just past the edge of the village, the truck pulled onto the highway, and a thin white line showed at the edge of the sky.
Rick called. He must have gone out to inspect his prize, pleased with himself, and then he saw it: the inn stripped back to what it used to be.
Ethel sent me a voice message.
"Rick saw the inn had nothing left and dropped straight down onto the doorstep."
"Now he's calling you like a madman."
I dragged Rick's number into the block list.
I wanted to see, honestly, what kind of inn he could run out of it.
