“Things were different there. There’s a reason he worked so hard to get out.”
“I guess.”
“So, yeah, it was tough to be older than everyone in school, especially because there was no way for me to hide it. I was taller than all the boys in my classes, and these boobs sure didn’t help. But I wanted to learn all I could. I wanted to be able to speak English without an accent.”
“It’s still hard for me to believe you weren’t born here. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were one of those rich LA Latinos who don’t even speak Spanish.”
Leila laughed. “Eres una tonta. Déjame demostrártelo.”
“That’s right, you have to prove it to me every once in a while.”
Leila hopped up from the bed.
“Come on, let’s go have lunch with Manny and Carmen.”
7
“Let’s make some money today, bitches!” shouted Cox as he blew into the open-walled hot box that was Arizona Prime Path Mortgage Company and knotted his tie.
It was 8:35, and the place was buzzing. Leila stood halfway up to look over the partition of her cubicle, across Dennis’s desk, just as Cox arrived at his seat on the other side.
“Mornin’, baby.”
She rolled her eyes. Cox winked at her before throwing his messenger bag off his shoulder and clapping his hands on the back of his cubicle partner. “Dennis, my man. Big five-oh this weekend, huh? I guess I’ll share my birthday with your sorry ass.”
Dennis winced from Cox’s grip on his shoulders. Leila knew Dennis Arkin would prefer to have been born nineteen years to the day before anyone other than Cox.
She sat back down and returned to her day’s lead list.
The office was set up with modular desks and only short walls between them. Noise echoed through the airy eighth-story space as the seven loan officers began to make calls. There had been eight loan officers until a sudden and dramatic dismissal in the days before Sedona. Samantha had her own office with a door and a view of downtown Phoenix. Against the far wall sat an empty set of cubicles piled high with junk and half-constructed loan files, neglected in hopes they would never face an audit.
A blank whiteboard hung on the wall with a line of black markers in the lip at its base. Next to it, mounted on a four-foot-tall platform, stood an elaborate red-and-gold Chinese gong.
“Yo, Tommy Wong,” Cox called to the next set of cubicles, “how many loans you locking this week?”
After a few minutes, Leila’s neighbor on the other side arrived.
“Hey, DeShawn.”
The tall man maneuvered into his chair, squeezing his knees under the desk.
“Another day, another dollar.” He smiled at her.
Samantha had hired DeShawn off the car-rental lot at Sky Harbor International Airport. His winning smile and witty personality sold Samantha right away, and in the eight months he had been there, he had sold just enough loans to make a good living. He had already passed Dennis in volume, even though Dennis had been in the business twenty-five years.
Dennis knew better than anyone how to structure a tricky mortgage loan. Leila often went to him for ideas, as did the other loan officers, but the way the business worked now, that kind of expertise wasn’t valued. Personality was what made the money these days. So, people like Leila and DeShawn were successful, while Dennis struggled to pull in the deals.
Meanwhile, nobody had as big a personality as Cox. “Whoa, there it is! First one of the week.” Cox leaped from his seat and ran to the far wall, grabbed the mallet, and whacked the gong with all his might. Next, he took a marker and wrote a name and number on the board: Mallenson, 103.2.
Samantha looked out from her office door. “Lock it, Sam!” she shouted.
Cox returned to his seat, gloating. The gong reverberated through the cavernous room.
Although she could not see him from where she sat, Leila sensed Dennis stewing across the thin wall from her. “Was that . . . John Mallenson?” he asked Cox.
“Yeah, why?”
“That was my lead. I’ve been working it for over a week.”
“Not hard enough, obviously. It took me one damn phone call.”
“Yeah, because I had him half-sold already. How did you get him?”
“Look, buddy, Samantha wants these leads sold, not worked. She wants them fucking closed. You had your chance. Better luck next time.”
“It’s not fair.” Dennis’ voice rose in pitch. “I wrote notes on my calls.”
Everyone was standing up or looking around the cubicle walls.
“Fair?” Cox pointed at the board. “Do you see that? 1-0-3-point-2, fool. You’re lucky to get 1-0-1 on your loans. That’s why Samantha transfers unsold leads to me. She wants to make money.”
“I practically had him sold on Thursday.” Dennis’s mustache and eyebrows twitched. His plump face had reddened.
“You can’t sell shit. You’re a walking fucking catastrophe in a shirt and tie.”
“You’re an asshole. I’ve been in this business longer than any of you.”
“Well, complain to Samantha. I’m sure she’ll be sympathetic.” Cox snickered.
“I will.” Dennis stood up with determination and walked his short frame across the office while everyone watched. The back of his dress shirt was creeping out of his ill-fitting pants.
The loan officers treated Samantha’s office like sacred ground. It was with fear that they answered a summons there, and few went in of their own volition. Dennis stood for a moment outside the door, waiting to be invited in. Leila half-expected him to remove his shoes before entering the holy of holies. Soon after he entered, the door slammed shut.
“Ooh,” Cox gasped.
There was silence on the phone lines. Everyone was riveted by the closed door. After about three minutes, Dennis came out, deflated. He walked in silence to his desk. Everyone still looked at the office. Samantha emerged—tall, beautiful, and fierce in her doorway.
“Welcome to the mortgage business. Thanks for fucking playing.” She wheeled around and slammed the door behind her.
That would be the last time anyone complained about Cox stealing their leads.
Leila dove into her day’s work. She spent the majority of each day calling and recalling the leads she was given. It was monotonous. It took a lot of energy to be sharp again and again when only one out of twenty people even gave her the time to talk, but it was how you had to do it. She was making twice as many calls as Dennis or DeShawn on either side of her. Although she could not hear him over the office noise, it looked like Tommy Wong was doubling her own call volume.
Most of the afternoon was taken up by a crisis on one of Rosemary Grant’s closings. Samantha had to call in her first post-Sun Devils’ tickets favor from Christy at escrow while Rosemary dissolved in tears at her desk. Eventually, Mona Kearse, the processing lead, found a way to save the day.
Leila loved Mona, a stocky black woman in her late forties, wise, confident, and gay. She was the only one in the office who could stand up to Samantha. Samantha may not have liked Mona much, but she absolutely respected her.
The gong rang only once more that day, for Vicky Tran, but by five thirty, there were four loans written on the whiteboard. Tommy Wong never rang the gong for the two loans he locked. Leila hadn’t even seen him leave his seat, but there they were. Tommy was a machine.
“Tough day on the phones.” Leila heard DeShawn and looked up as he stood and gathered his things. “How’d you do?”
“I’m going to keep at it a little longer. People are just now starting to get home from work.”
“Good luck. See you tomorrow.”
A little past six, Leila reached one of the leads she had been working the week before. The office was more than half-empty by then.
“Have you thought about the refinance over the weekend?”
“Your timing is good,” said the man on the other end of the line. “I think I need to do this.”
Leil
a reentered her password and opened her mortgage application platform. It was a nice surprise to have interest after a whole day of dead ends.
She listened to the client, then explained the program she could do. He asked her to repeat her company’s name.
“Why do you call it that? I mean, you guys are a subprime shop, right?”
“Technically. But we don’t like the term subprime. The loan I want to put you in will put you on the path to being a prime A-paper borrower in a few years. That’s how we got our name—Prime Path. Your credit profile isn’t very good right now. You’re almost two months late on your mortgage, and those credit card payments are killing you.”
Cox had popped up on the other side of the cubicle with excitement on his face. Leila muffled the phone with one hand and gestured to him for a rate sheet.
He sprinted to the shared counter and returned, handing the convoluted eight-page stapled document to her.
“The loan I’m going to put you in is a 3/27 ARM. The rate is only fixed for the first three years. It’s the best I can do with your credit profile. This is a cash-out refinance, so we can roll all those credit card balances into the loan and give you a fresh start. Now, you have to promise me that over these next three years you won’t miss a payment on this mortgage and you won’t run up the balances on those cards again. Then in three years, call me back and I’ll refinance you into a thirty-year fixed rate mortgage.”
A long pause ensued.
“I’m not locking this rate until you promise.”
Cox was giddy, hopping up and down like a child in need of the bathroom. Finally, the man on the line gave his promise.
“Okay, I’ll lock it in now, Mr. Collins, and we will definitely get it closed before the end of April.”
As soon as Leila hung up the phone, Cox whooped with delight. Leila lifted up her feet and swung around in her office chair with her hand raised to meet his high five.
“That was good. Making him promise. How’d you come up with that shit?”
“I meant it. This loan gives him a fresh start on his finances, or at least it will if he takes it.”
“You’re such a saint.”
“You know I won’t do a loan I don’t believe in. I couldn’t live with myself.”
“Get up there to that board, girl.”
With a grin, she scampered up to hit the gong, then wrote her loan on the board. Samantha peeked out from her office and smiled. Tommy, the only other loan officer still there, barely glanced up from his desk.
Mona stood beside her desk, ready to leave for the day. Leila walked up to her.
“You’ll see that one hit your inbox in the morning,” Leila told her. “His current lender is going to start foreclosure proceedings on May first. As bad as his credit is now, if we don’t close it by the end of April, it will be shot for years.”
“I’ll get it done for you, hon.” She smiled. “I heard what you told him on the phone. You do this business the right way. I respect that.”
“Thanks, Mona.”
Leila returned to her desk. She was tired. It was almost seven o’clock. She entered the last of the data for her new loan, then shut down her computer.
Just as she stood up to leave, she heard Samantha’s voice.
“Leila, can you come in here for a sec?”
Leila forced herself not to sigh. Why now, just at the end of a long day? But there was no arguing with Samantha. She walked into her boss’s office.
“Good job today.” Samantha motioned for her to sit down. “I like to see people get rewarded by staying late and getting a loan. You understand how to succeed in this business.”
Leila nodded. Samantha leaned against the window frame with the lights in the buildings of downtown coming on behind her.
“Did you enjoy the trip to Sedona?”
“Yes.”
“I’m glad. I really liked having you there. You bring a touch of beauty and class, which is often sorely lacking at those events.”
“You bring that yourself.” Leila jumped on the opportunity to flatter her boss.
Samantha smiled. “I hope you will be there again next year.”
Here it comes.
“You know I only bring two loan officers. Cox is always so far ahead, he’ll be there every year. But Tommy’s already over a million ahead of you this year. If he’d had a full year, he would have caught you last year, even as well as you did.”
As long as she still made good money, Leila really didn’t care if Tommy Wong beat her for second place—but she couldn’t say that to Samantha.
“You’re doing some things exactly right. Tonight showed that. But I think you need some fresh competitive motivation. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you in here making calls on a Saturday. I know that’s what Tommy was doing that weekend we were all up in Sedona.”
Leila’s exhilaration from helping Mr. Collins get out of a bad spot faded. Samantha clearly didn’t want her to start feeling too comfortable.
Samantha walked over and took Leila’s hand. “You’re doing great. That’s the only reason I’m talking to you. I want to see you do even better, and I know you have it in you.”
The boss’s cell phone buzzed on her desk. She glanced over at it. “I’ve got to go, and I’m sure you’re exhausted. My son’s waiting for me downstairs.”
“Your son’s picking you up?” Leila mentally kicked herself for sounding so intrigued.
“Sounds silly, doesn’t it?” Samantha laughed. “I loaned him my car for the day while his is being repaired. I don’t know why he doesn’t let me buy him a new car. He’s as stubborn as I am sometimes.”
8
LEILA GATHERED HER things and left the office. Everyone but Samantha was already gone.
Wow, leaving later than Cox and Tommy. That’s rare.
Wait. Why was she congratulating herself? She never wanted to think that way. That kind of mindset would squeeze all semblance of balance out of her life, making her like Samantha. But the boss was not a model for the kind of woman Leila wanted to be.
As the elevator doors closed in front of her, she saw Samantha’s office light go out. She didn’t hold the elevator. Samantha always fussed around before leaving, and Leila really wanted to get home.
There was nothing to hurry for. She would heat up the leftovers Carmen sent her home with yesterday, have a cup of tea, and put herself to sleep with a Gabriel García Márquez story. She enjoyed the simple pleasures of her nights after the clamor and chaos of her days.
That was what she had worked for. No use complaining now that she had it.
The elevator clunked to the bottom. Leila stepped out the back door of the building into the parking lot. She stopped. She had spotted Ashford. Their eyes locked. He was parked in an SUV across the lot with the window rolled down.
His face registered recognition, and he straightened in his seat. His crisp blue eyes pierced through the shadows. His expression made it clear that he had thought of her once or twice since their encounter in Sedona.
She stood for a moment beneath the sharp cone of light on the doorstep, holding his eyes. It would be polite to go and say hello. But Samantha might already be in the elevator behind her. She didn’t like the idea of her boss coming out of the building right then and learning that they knew each other. That hint of secrecy was strangely stimulating. She smiled at Ashford, then dipped out of the lighted doorway and walked to her car.
It was a small moment. It would be a stretch to call it a flirtation, but it had been a long time since she had given someone that kind of smile. She enjoyed it.
The broad streets were quiet, even for a Monday evening. The spring training crowds had dispersed, vanishing as quickly as they had descended upon the Phoenix valley a month before.
As she drove into Scottsdale, she caught herself still smiling. She laughed.
Her life must be really boring if such a little thing could excite her. But a boring life was what she wanted. She was better off with
out excitement, which had proven to be a double-edged sword. The last thing she needed was any excitement involving her boss’s son. Her life was too steadily speeding down the right track. Things were just where she wanted them.
Her friends called it a lonely life, but she didn’t like that. Loneliness was a form of self-pity in which she chose not to indulge. She had other priorities.
Yet she couldn’t help being drawn by the image of those blue eyes shining out of the shadows and the face of a young man she barely knew.
She pulled her Toyota into the desert-tan apartment complex, parked, quickly glanced around the empty lot from her car, then got out of it and hurried up the outer staircase to her second-floor unit. An indignant meow greeted her as soon as she opened the door, and a black shadow darted away toward the bedroom.
“Romeo, come say hello.”
When she had put down her things and taken off her shoes, the cat came back and rubbed against her legs, crying for his dinner. Her tardiness would be forgiven after a can of tuna.
She had lived in this same little apartment since saving up enough money waiting tables after high school to move out. It was an easy drive to work and to her father’s house. Now that she was doing so well, everyone told her she should buy her own house—mortgages were her business, and she could afford it. But home prices had increased so much in Phoenix this last year that she was hesitant. So, she saved as much money as she could, content with her little rental.
After eating her leftovers, she opened her coat closet and took out the guitar case that leaned upright inside. She took the instrument out and checked the tuning. Close enough. She sat back down and plucked out one of the Colombian folk songs she remembered from her childhood. The beauty of her homeland tugged at her heart through the song.
It was a children’s song, a lullaby. She wondered how she heard it the first time and who might have sung it to her. She had barely known her mother, who died when she was so young. Leila remembered her through feelings more than images. She liked to think her mother had sung this song to her as an infant.
The Exile Page 4