It just seemed an awful strange thing to say, he thought, even if it was only a dream. He’d ponder it more later, but now he had to get going. Mel would be waiting for him.
He made sure his keys were in his hand, then closed the kitchen door behind him. In his car, he stared straight ahead while the garage door opened so he could back out. He had a weird and very unsettling feeling that to look back right now, he would see his mother in the back seat, and as soon as he did she’d start that shrieking again to get out of the house, get out of the house, Brian, get out of the house.
He backed out from memory this time, refusing to look behind him or even into the rearview mirror, then made the drive to St. Joe with his eyes forward and the music blasting. This time it was Skid Row’s Slave to the Grind album, but just the first three songs on repeat until he got to Mel’s street and turned down the volume. He was looking forward to having her in the car. He felt like, with her there too, he could look behind him and reassure himself there was no one there. He was tempted to steal a quick glance anyway, but he didn’t dare do it. Not until there was someone else in the car with him. He wouldn’t be able to take the sound of that voice again, not like that. It would literally drive him insane.
Everyone showed for the visitation, except Steven who couldn’t get off work and make it to St. Joe in time, but he had talked to Brian earlier and paid his condolences already. Mike and Brian showed up about the same time. Mike said sorry to Mel, then she went inside, and Mike and Brian stayed outside for a few minutes, talking. Mike told him how bad he felt for him and Brian said, “Thanks. It’s just so weird, you know? I get up and I do my regular thing, and stuff like that, and I keep waiting for them to say something or come in the room, you know?”
“Yeah,” Mike said. “I bet it’s hard to get used to.”
“It’s only been a day so far, so it’s still hitting me, but it just feels like I can go out to the kitchen and they’ll be there, like maybe if I expect it enough, it’ll happen.”
“Then you get out there and--.”
“Yeah, nothing. Hey, what was it you wanted to talk about?”
“Seriously,” Mike said, shaking his head, “it’s not anything that can’t wait. You just deal with this, and in a couple days we’ll talk.”
“I’m dealing already, and if it’s something to help get my mind off it, and stuff like that, then I’m all for it.”
Mike hesitated anyway. Despite Brian’s insistence, this wasn’t the place to bring up a new business venture, and can you put up $17,000?
“Naw, it’s cool, we’ll talk about it later.”
That’s when Keith pulled into the lot, parked and came over to them.
“What’s up?” Keith asked and Brian and Mike both echoed him, “What’s up?”
“Man, this is nuts,” Keith said. “I can’t believe they’re just gone like that. That sucks. You need anything, hit me up.”
“Thanks,” Brian said. “Can you make Mike tell me his big thing he doesn’t want to discuss right now?”
Keith shrugged and said, “I don’t know. What big thing?’
“Nothing,” Mike said, “that stuff we were talking about yesterday.”
“Oh, Keith knows and I don’t? Does Steven?”
“Maybe.”
“Then just tell me. What, you picked up a hitchhiker and she blew you while you drove her home?”
“No,” Mike said, “that’s the kind of thing that happens to Keith.”
“That’s never happened to me. I did have one a couple weeks ago, though. I was over at the bar in White Cloud and this girl over there I used to bang, Trisha, she’s there and I’m talking her up, trying to get her to come back home with me, and then one of my other ho’s, Aurelia, comes in. So I’m sitting there talking to both of em and then this Shelly girl was there. She’s the owner’s daughter, and she’s always trying to get me to bang her, but she’s a crazy bitch and I keep saying no, but she’s over there sitting with all of us and we’re all getting pretty drunked up.”
“And you were wondering,” Mike said, “how to get them all together at once.”
Keith broke out laughing and said, “Yeah, I was sitting thinking about it, thinking I know there’s a way to pull this off, I just have to find the right angle to come at it from.”
Brian was laughing too, and it felt good to forget for a moment.
Mike asked, “So did you?”
Keith shook his head and said, “No, I never did get em all to agree to leave with me. So I banged that Shelly girl instead after they closed.”
“I thought you said she was crazy,” Brian said.
“Crazy girls are the best lays, he says,” Mike told him.
Keith just nodded and smiled.
“Anyway,” Mike said, “no, that’s not the thing I wanted to talk about. Seriously, it’ll wait.”
“Just tell him,” Keith said. “He wants to know, you might as well.”
“I could use the distraction.”
Mike shook his head and sighed a, “Fine!”
Brian was all ears.
“You know that house for sale over on Irving? Across from the park?”
Brian didn’t know it.
“There’s a house there for sale.”
“I gathered that much so far,” Brian said.
“Anyway, I had this idea. You know, I don’t have a job. Keith doesn’t have a job. You hate your job, Steven doesn’t like his either.’
“So we’re gonna buy a house together and live there with only two of us working? Where’s this going?”
“No,” Mike said, “that’s not it. My idea was, we form a company. It’s all four of us, equal money, equal shares. We’ll get a lawyer to draw up a contract for us as equal partners. We start with this house, put our money together and buy it, then decide on a design plan and a budget. Since you guys work, Keith and I can be the onsite guys to hire the contractor, make sure everything’s going like it should, you know?”
Brian was nodding, but had a strange look in his eye and Mike wondered if he’d lost him already, so he just talked faster.
“We get it fixed up, we sell it for profit, and split it four ways. Then we do it again. There’s people all over doing this every day, and making tons of money at it. They’ve got TV shows dedicated to showing people doing this, it’s their only job, and they’re fucking loaded, man. It really is a do-able idea, but Keith and I, we can’t just go into it together on our own. But split four ways, we could. And when it takes off, you guys quit your jobs and we expand, so we’ve got two of us at a time on different sites, and we can just grow even bigger and make even more money and never really have to work a day at all. Because we’ve got contractors who hire the work out. We just supervise. We all know that’s my thing anyway. But this way I’d be supervising something I have a stake in, too.”
“You want us to go in together to buy a house?” Brian asked.
“Buy it, fix it up, then sell it again. The people on these shows, they do one house in maybe six weeks and make forty grand profit.”
“That’s only ten thousand each.”
“That’s ten thousand in six weeks. Do you make that much in six weeks as a strand operator?”
“Not even close. But that’s not a guaranteed sale, and that’s not a guaranteed profit.”
“You’re right,” Mike said. “Sometimes it’s more. You can buy a house, put five thousand into the kitchen, another thousand or two in the bathroom, and that automatically adds an easy twenty thousand to the value of the house. I know how to do this, man. We can make this work.”
Brian threw a glance at Keith who was just looking at him with a half-smirk. Keith shrugged and said, “I already told him if you guys are in, I’m in. I got nothing else to do all day, Mike doesn’t either. And we can do some of the work ourselves and save labor costs. I think it’s a good investment.”
“How much are we talking?” Brian asked.
“Brian!” a voice called from behind
him and he jumped for a moment, sure his mother had caught him at something he wasn’t supposed to be doing, but then he realized it hadn’t been his mother, because she was dead inside and that’s where he was supposed to be. It was Mel.
He looked back at her and held up his finger, indicating he would be there in a minute, then said, “I’m coming. Hang on.” He turned back to his friends and asked again, “How much?”
“Would we all need to put in?”
Brian nodded.
“About seventeen a piece.”
“Hundred?”
“Thousand.”
“Oh. Damn. Okay, look, I’m gonna think about it, but I have to get inside and do this. You guys coming?”
“Right behind you,” Keith said, and they all turned and filed into the building.
Brian had kissed and thanked more people in the first ten minutes than he’d talked to one on one, other than his three friends, in a year. He didn’t know half of them and wondered not only who they were, but how they’d wound up here. Who had told them his parents had died?
He caught up to Mel eventually and asked her, and she said, “You really didn’t know Mom and Dad at all, did you?”
“Of course I did, I lived with them longer than you did.”
“Because you’re a loser. They had friends, you know. They had a life outside of that house.”
“I guess I was too busy working all the time to pay the bills,” Brian said.
“That’s your fault. You should have taken that money and got your own place.”
“And what would they have done?”
“Dad would have had to get a job, I guess.”
“You think he didn’t try?”
“Honestly?” Mel asked. “No. I don’t. Because he didn’t have to. He had worked hard enough to raise you and give you a good life, and once he saw the chance to stop and let you carry the burden instead, that’s just what happened. But yes, they had a life, and these were their friends. Some were just acquaintances and some are relatives you’ve never met, but they all knew Mom and Dad, don’t worry about that.”
“I had a dream about her, you know,” Brian finally confessed. “Just before I left to come get you, I fell asleep and dreamed they weren’t really dead. But they were buried and I had to dig them up and Mom kept yelling about getting out of the house, about being in the house was going to kill me.”
“That’s a little extreme, don’t you think?” Mel said, nodding, smiling and thanking an old woman with yellow glasses who had stopped to offer condolences.
“Who was that?”
“Mom’s aunt,” Mel said. “You’re hopeless.”
Brian couldn’t argue with that.
“You wonder if maybe that dream was a warning and stuff like that, maybe telling me to get a life?”
“You don’t need a dream to tell you that. I’d think your life is nightmare enough as it is.”
“Go to hell,” Brian said.
“No,” Mel said, “I don’t think our dead mother was telling you, from beyond the grave, that you need to get out of the house and get a life. I do, however, think your own subconscious might have been telling you that. You should probably listen to it.”
Mel withdrew and vanished into a crowd of people he was pretty sure were his dad’s cousins while Brian turned toward the caskets at the front of the room.
He had been avoiding going to them. This was the last place he wanted to start crying. But he couldn’t put it off any longer, he had to say goodbye.
He looked around and spotted Mike and Keith near the back of the room. Keith was talking to Brian’s cousin Nikki. Man, Keith had radar for sluts or something. He wanted to go tell him not to waste the moves on her, that was a sure thing already, but Keith was on his own.
He went to his parents and looked down at them.
He hadn’t seen them after the accident, and didn’t know the extent of the damage, but they both looked perfectly fine, he thought.
“So how bout it, mom?” he asked, staring down at her. “Get out of the house? Get a life? Go out and see the world?”
She didn’t respond. Thank God.
Or maybe just listen when I hear the sound of opportunity knocking? Is this deal with Mike what you meant? Take it and run with it? Is this my chance to be a big boy finally?
He looked over at his father. He hadn’t had many kind words for the man while he was living, he certainly couldn’t think of many now.
“Maybe it was my subconscious,” he said. “Maybe it was you, telling me to take this chance and do something with it. What do you think? Yes? No?”
He looked over at his friends again and tried to imagine what it would be like, being his own boss, making something out of himself, being a successful businessman. He liked the sound of it.
“I think I will,” Brian said. “Thanks, Mom. I think you were right. I have to get out and live. I have to get out of that house and do something, for God’s sake. Thanks for making sure I heard you.”
He leaned down, kissed his mother’s forehead and said, “Goodbye, Mom. I’m going to miss you.” He did the same to his father and said, “You too, Dad. I’m sorry for the bad things I thought, and said. I said them out of frustration. But the truth is, I like my life, and I wouldn’t change it for anything. But now it’s time for what’s next. I love you both.”
With that, he turned away, found his sister again, and stopped to give her the biggest hug he could ever remember giving her, leaving her speechless and more than a little confused. Then he went over to Mike and Keith and said, “I’m in,” and the three of them shook on it.
Chapter Three
The realtor was an older woman, probably fifty, with short grey hair and a big smile that she used to greet Mike and Brian when they showed up at the house for a tour.
There were greetings and hand shakings. The realtor, whose name was Lynette, didn’t remember Mike, but she had been his composition teacher his senior year of high school. He didn’t bother to remind her.
They met on the street in a patch of sunlight on a cloudy day toward the end of April. Brian looked tired, but Mike had tried to tell him he could get one of the others to come with him. Brian insisted, though, saying if they were going to make a go of this, everyone should be here.
Mike couldn’t disagree with that, but he also felt such a pull toward this house, such a feeling of enthusiasm, he feared the others may not share his drive and may back out if they saw it. The house wasn’t anything special. Now. But Mike saw the potential.
He just hoped Brian saw it, too. And if Brian didn’t, Mike hoped he could convince him otherwise.
“The house is an REO,” Lynette said.
“What’s that?” Brian asked.
“It’s real estate owned,” she explained. “So there’s no homeowner to go through. It was up for auction, but didn’t sell. The door is unlocked, so just go on in.”
“You’re not coming?” Mike asked.
Lynette shook her head and said, “I’ve got a couple calls to make on some other houses, but I’ll be here when you’re done.”
Mike and Brian nodded and went up the few steps to the walkway, then over to the porch on the east side of the house. They climbed the four steps to the small concrete porch and opened the door, which creaked and made Brian laugh.
“That’s not ominous.”
“Yeah, welcome to Hell,” Mike said.
The front door opened to a small entryway, maybe three feet by three feet, then a left turn led to the living room. They stepped inside and shivered.
“Is the AC on?” Brian asked.
“Nothing’s on,” Mike said, flipping a light switch by the door and showing no lights came on. “It’s just cold in here.”
“Probably needs to be all insulated and stuff like that,” Brian said.
Don’t ruin it, Mike thought. You haven’t even seen the place.
The living room was spacious, made even bigger by the bay windows in front. The walls were c
overed in a wallpaper pattern, solid grey lines running in parallel rows from top to bottom, with black fleur de lis separating them. The floors were hardwood but would need to be refinished.
The air smelled of dust and Mike wanted to sneeze.
A right turn from the living room led to a double-wide arch doorway into the dining room, painted off-white and in need of another coat. A smell emanated from somewhere in here and Mike thought there might be something dead in the walls or under the floor.
Another door to the right led to a small bedroom which had only one small window and it was covered over with a sheet of cardboard.
“I wonder if the pane is broken behind that,” Mike said, motioning to it.
“We can look outside,” Brian said.
With the window covered the room felt like a cave. Another doorway in here, to the left, led to a smaller bedroom that didn’t feel as if it had been used as a bedroom. This felt like a home office, Mike thought.
Another doorway from the smaller room led to the kitchen, which in turn led back to the dining room.
The kitchen would need a lot of updating, Mike thought. The cabinets were painted light blue against stark white walls, but the floor was a yellow sheet of linoleum which was pulling up in the corner leading to the hall. The bathroom was accessible from the hallway, tucked behind the kitchen.
“Man, this is a weird set-up,” Brian said, peeking into the bathroom.
With no power, they couldn’t see much; there was only one very small window directly behind the toilet and it had been covered with an old towel stapled in place. There was the standard three-piece. No shower, but Mike thought they should definitely add one.
“It’s got potential, though,” Brian said. “Just needs some paint and stuff like that.”
“Needs more than paint, but, yeah, it’s got good bones. We could probably make it even more open concept. The bathroom’s messing with me, though.”
The Flip (An Angel Hill novel) Page 6