“Don’t get holy with me! If the deal’s too sticky for you, fine. Someone else can buy the building. Someone else will.”
“I don’t know, bumping tenants and all.”
“Your lawyer does it, not you. And the negative stuff’s only temporary. There are positive aspects I haven’t even mentioned.”
“Go on.”
It had grown warm in the car. With a squirm she removed her jacket, releasing perfume smells and unveiling a barely undulant vista of cream silk blouse. She was flat-chested and thus Carrie Donley’s physical opposite—that distinction alone aroused me. Of the hormone disturbances caused by lust, the main one is presumption. The more you lust the more you presume, until at last the girl has no say at all: You will fuck her and she will love it. This dilation of ego and blood vessels climaxes, for men, in constriction; for women (I gather), in a powerful blooming, like a flower fed too much plant food. I underwent such a process in Susan’s car. My face warmed when she removed her jacket, my self-approval soared. Yet as if in spasm, my throat clenched all too quickly and my eyelids squeezed shut in pleasurable shame. I seemed to have ravished her in my mind and already was on to regretting it. Glancing up from redoing a button, Susan smiled, pleased to think she knew my thoughts. To conceal my embarrassment I too squirmed out of my coat. She helped with one sleeve, and if worsted wool were human skin I would have needed a towel right there, to mop up. My knotted stomach growled.
“Was that you?” she said.
“I’m a pig, I know.”
Her laugh was motherly. “We’ll take a tour, then we’ll eat. Somewhere else.”
Our coats on our arms, we walked around the building. Two floors, a flat roof, three thousand square feet—a nice starter project, she called it. The advantage, she said, was that most of the groundwork for upgrading the property had been completed. Technical drawings, planning and zoning approval—all secured and paid for. She bid me imagine the white-painted brick sandblasted back to red, the light fixtures replaced with brass sconces, the alley and rear parking lot resurfaced and edged with plantings. She said the garages in back would be razed to expand the lot. As the garages abutted a steep earth embankment, this seemed a costly improvement.
“For offices you need the added parking. If you’re gonna be cheap about it you’re wasting my time and yours. You gotta spend money to make money.” Her tone pissed me off. I felt like buying the building just to show her who’s boss.
Cast-iron stairs led to a balcony outside the upstairs apartments, the apartment doors side by side, a never-used ten-speed next to mine. Susan bounded up the stairs without touching the rusted railing. “Let’s inspect the Bakes place.”
“We can’t do that!”
“I have a key.”
“What if she’s home?”
“What if she is? I haven’t been inside. I should know what I’m selling.” Her knock was answered as I reached the balcony. She handed her business card to the old woman. “Susan Epstein-Graulig, Gray Realtors. May we come in?”
“Yes?” the woman said with a heavy accent. She wore a black dress, black stockings, lavender slippers. Seeing me she smiled, “Hi, Philly.”
“Hello, Mrs. Bakes. How are you?”
“Okay. You need metches?”
“No, no matches today. We’re here—why are we here, Susan?”
“To inspect the apartment. As you asked.”
“Right.” In the past, Mrs. Bakes had received me only as far as her doorway. Her kitchen, I saw now, was bigger than my whole place, with curtains and matching wallpaper, a spotless stove, a pitcher of cut flowers. Peering into the living room, where Susan already was, I saw slipcovered furniture and a plastic sheet running over the carpet. The bedrooms were to the left, the apartment in an L-shape around my corner studio. “Nice place,” I said to Mrs. Bakes. It amazed and shamed me; except for my files and Quotron machine carefully arranged on my kitchenette table, my apartment was a fanciful version of Calcuttan squalor, as I thought befitted anyone forced to make a home on a noisy city boulevard above a pizza parlor.
The old woman smiled, waiting. “Thenk you.”
Susan returned to the kitchen. “Two full baths,” she noted.
“One is shower,” Mrs. Bakes said. “I no use.”
“That’ll help your renovation costs,” Susan told me. “For medical offices, you need extra plumbing.” She asked Mrs. Bakes, “The pipes are good?”
“Nikos, he fix. What is medical?”
“I saw Nick’s picture on your bureau. Frank’s, too. I’m sorry about the trouble in your family.”
Mrs. Bakes gazed upward prayerfully. “Is bad for Frank. He is confuse very much. The wife she is a tramp. Nikos will learn.”
“It’s always the woman,” Susan muttered harshly.
“What is medical?” the woman asked again.
“Perhaps we should go,” I said to Susan.
“She ought to be told. The building’s converting to medical offices, Mrs. Bakes. Apartment leases will not be renewed.”
“My son Frank say I can stay always.”
“Frank is selling. He’ll have no power to help you.”
“You buy?”
“I’m the broker.”
“You buy, Philly? For medical?” Mrs. Bakes gripped Susan’s business card like a dreaded telegram. Before I could answer, the woman began pushing us out the door. “Please to go, you and you. I call Frank now. He say I can stay, okay?” But Susan wouldn’t quit:
“Make plans, I’m telling you. Find a new place.” As the door swung shut she plucked her card from Mrs. Bakes’s hand and snapped it in her purse.
“Why did you do that?” I asked her.
“To keep anonymous. These Greeks are hotheads.”
“The other, I’m talking about. Why did you torture her?”
“I did her a favor. The sooner she accepts the inevitable, the better for her. There’s no alternative.”
“You can’t say that. She may talk to Frank, convince him not to sell. She may heal the rift with his brother, you don’t know.”
“Sure, coddle the boys and blame the tramp. It’s always the same with these old-country biddies, these mountain peasants—they hate women!”
“I hope Frank lets her stay. I hope he doesn’t sell.”
“You don’t understand. The building’s already been sold.”
“Then why did you bring me here?”
“Because the new owner wants to turn it over. Immediately.”
“For a quick profit.”
“Not at all. He’s hoping to break even at best.”
“Why is he selling, then?”
“Because of Nick Bakes,” Susan said. “And because of Mrs. Bakes—and because of you, when he thought you might be poor and feeble. As the new owner he doesn’t want to do what is required to make money with this property: throw them out. I’m talking about Neil Gray, my boss.”
“Your father-in-law has bought the building?”
She nodded. “They’ve gone to contract, him and Frank. Now Neil’s having second thoughts. But he’s already put ten percent down, and if he breaks the deal, he’ll lose the down payment. So he’s decided to buy the property and sell it right away, as is. To make the deal more attractive, he’ll cut the commission to three percent instead of six. Which means I’ll get paid but the company won’t.”
“That’s the bait?”
“That and the price, which is super-low. Plus, as I said, most of the prep work’s been done.”
“Less the matter of evicting an old foreign lady and her lovestruck son.”
“You’re in the right legally. But granted, it’ll take some balls.”
“Chutzpah.”
“If you like.”
“Which Neil lacks? Why do I doubt that?”
“My husband’s been working on him, calling him slumlord. Neil’s selling the place to prove him wrong. Dominique’s none too thrilled about it. She realizes it’s a guaranteed moneymaker.”
/> “I feel I know these people.”
She smiled. “You’re funny.”
“You’re pretty.”
“My. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
A pause. “Well?”
“Well what?” Play dumb, I thought. It worked with Carrie.
“You want it?”
This seemed crude. “Who wouldn’t?” I said uncertainly.
She took a step forward. Terrified to look down, I sensed that she was more bosomy than I’d first thought, judging from the tension of air compressed between us. “We’ll start right away.”
“Gee,” I retreated, “I was hoping we could eat first.”
After a heartbeat’s hesitation, her eyes narrowed but her smile surprisingly broadened, gathering power like a bear trap being pried open. My monkey grin ached on my face. “You little punk,” she said, not unkindly, and jabbed my chest with her long-nailed forefinger. She clanged down the iron stairs, laughing over her shoulder, “I never come second, Mr. Halsey. Least of all to lunch!”
Sorry for offending her, I gave chase, even offered to buy the stupid building. “We’ll call it square, okay?” She hopped in her car and screeched away in a seemingly permanent gesture.
But when I went to Gray Realtors the next day (no earring), I found a contract prepared with my name at the bottom, awaiting my signature and a one-percent binder. Susan tilted her chair and eyed me triumphantly. I felt naked before her. The feeling made me desire her more, for there is something behind ironic postures that loves to be debunked. Any pretense of roguishness thoroughly trashed, I preened in mute expectancy before this pushy female. Like a fawn on wobbly legs I awaited her, my vigilant doe, to nuzzle up and nurse me.
But Susan didn’t want to mother. On the contrary, she was, in a phrase, looking for daddy. Which leads me to the following theorem: If you’re going to abase yourself with someone, it helps to despise them a little. My buying the building merely to save face gave Susan the cause for contempt she needed, the confidence to relax, unbutton, uncoil. Then there was the cruelty aspect. Once I signed the purchase agreement, I set about evicting Mrs. Bakes and Nick’s Pizza with impressive resolution. Emotional ardor is so easily faked these days, certain proofs have arisen by which we confirm what people feel about us, proofs ranging from valentines to suicide; and childish as these are, who isn’t someway touched by them? Susan was touched, for in a world of hollow gestures, here was I, through eviction proceedings, ready and willing to hurt people who didn’t deserve it. My combination of naiveté and meanness appealed to her. We take poets to bed in the hope they’ll turn savage, in a poetic sort of way.
A few weeks later, Susan asked me to bind her wrists and spank her. The next day I asked Carrie to spank me. Life is a journey.
9
Before that summer of ‘83, I’d mixed business and pleasure like ingredients of a cocktail; sipped daily yet in moderation, the mixture kept me mildly buzzed, kept me interesting to myself. The added dose of Susan and my real estate endeavor jostled my equilibrium. The puritan in me imposed recovery measures. When I ran out of marijuana one day I didn’t resupply. Six-packs remained unopened in my refrigerator for weeks. An awareness of clutter set me to cleaning my room. But truly it was my head becoming cluttered, a mist becoming fog, so with a willful tilt of mind I plunged full speed ahead.
As in a maze of mirrors, things reflected other things too perversely to believe. At the brokerage I watched Timmy and my money, but saw Carrie and my building; with Susan, I dwelled as much on business matters as on master/maid sex dramatics. And always one woman reflected the other, myself the lens between them, the transparency through which their images were inverted. I kept them in the dark about each other, though having made no promises there were no promises to break. (I did promise to stay free of disease. Carrie feared herpes. Susan was the first person I ever heard mention AIDS in connection with herself and not only with some afflicted minority. I assumed her comment was another gay gibe aimed at me, but she was thinking presciently of heterosexual carriers. For their part, the women promised not to get pregnant. The Boy Scout motto or the Seventh Commandment is the moral here.)
Within a maze of mirrors, smudges tell where not to go. I was Carrie and Susan’s smudge, and Peter Rice was mine. Peter was the executive who’d scolded me for using the receptionist’s phone my first afternoon at the brokerage. He managed office operations and several preferred accounts. I’d much disliked him that first day. My opinion had since modified: still a turd, but smart.
The secretaries called him Peter in a manner I thought unseemly. When he spoke to the oldsters and me in the lobby, he dispensed his wisdom like bread crumbs. In time, however, he took deferring tones with me. “As Mr. Halsey could tell you,” he’d say to a new broker. Or, “As Phil here well knows …” I liked it. My investment success had never translated to fancy clothes and foreign cars, my street act calling for Salvation Army style. But someone else waving my flag was fine. I was good at what I did. Effort and knack had come together in a facsimile of ease, of luck sustained three years running and netting out, before the building and Peter Rice, at $400,000 plus. Beyond my own account I was now managing Timmy’s as well, holding his hand through various moves while he sang the cuckold blues. His superiors had given him a raise. Where was my reward?
Peter knew I’d been helping Timmy. Several times he’d noted how Timmy’s turnaround coincided with my arrival. “You must be good luck,” he winked. He was stroking me, and some weeks before I bought the building he proffered his first carrot. We were pissing side by side in the men’s room. “Tomorrow,” he said to the tile wall, “Bradley-Burke will offer thirty-five a share for Cleary Brothers.” And as he zipped up: “You’re welcome.”
Remember the year: 1983. The market, mildly bullish, was nowhere near the boomtown mode of 1986. The recession was just passing; recovery brought more talk of interest rate relief than of corporate acquisitions. Acquisitions happened, of course. Stocks soared, fortunes multiplied on the swell of rumors and tips. Rumors and tips they remained, however, not yet the pejorative “inside information” they would become later. More than a description, a crime needs a criminal, a major malefactor to clarify, by example, extremes of bad behavior. Deceit has Judas, the worst has Hitler, greed now has Michael Milken—but not in ‘83. I lacked a role model, you could say.
I’d heard tips like Peter’s before, and chasing them had never paid off. So I was plenty amazed when, after the next day’s close, it came over the wire that Bradley-Burke indeed had bid thirty-five dollars per share for Cleary. Cleary’s stock was up four points on takeover rumors; its options likewise had jumped and likely would triple tomorrow, as the arbitrageurs moved in. But for most investors the game already was closed. When Peter and I met again, he asked how well I’d done. I told him I hadn’t bothered.
“For shame.” His grin was the hood ornament on his British sports-car face. Too, there was a trace of Britain in his speech, a congenital affectation. I learned later that Peter was the scion of Manhattan money so old it had grown envious and petty, young again, rejuvenated by the effrontery of immigrant wealth and vitality. “You may get another shot,” he told me.
I shrugged indifferently, but found myself hoping I would.
In the parking lot a few days later he murmured in my ear, “Ellard and Technograf.”
“Ellard bid what, sixty? That’s old news.”
“The deal is off. The announcement comes Thursday.”
“How do you know?”
“The better question is, why am I telling you?” Again the smile as he answered the question: “We took an instant dislike to each other. It’s the classic start of a fine relationship.”
“I don’t want a relationship with you.”
“Business, kid! A golden goose. But it takes two.” Carrie called me kid when we were in bed sometimes. The benefits of letting her outweighed the brief belittlement, which was my rationale for letting Peter, too.
“T-graf puts should fly,” he explained. “They trade on the Pacific exchange.”
“I know where they trade.”
“Then snap to it. This news is hundred proof.”
“Peter,” I said, not to be bullied, “you should know that I still dislike you.”
“But do you love me?”
“I beg your pardon?” He was out of my league, I concede now.
“Because you’re going to love me, Philip. Love and adore.”
I acted on his tip. As a gimmick of autonomy, however, I changed the play somewhat. Rather than short Technograf I went long on Ellard Systems. Industry analysts considered Ellard’s bid for Technograf too high—the deal falling through would cause its stock to rise. Wednesday I bought near-term calls for $10,000. On news of no deal, the stock ticked up and my options followed. Friday at the open I sold for $14,000. Then I checked Technograf. The stock had been trading around 56. The announcement sent it plummeting, nine points by midafternoon when traders covering their calls bought in to staunch the bloodflow. Ten grand worth of puts at 50 would have made me a hundred grand minimum. I’d hooked myself, is what I’d done. A hundred grand had got away and left me feeling teased and cheapened. Even for dealing with Peter Rice, $100,000 was respectable; $4,000 was an insult. I was torn. I wanted another try at a jackpot but I dreaded his collusion. Not for moral reasons; it was the man himself, his flirty way with money and me. I decided to stand pat. Do nothing; react. Then I met Susan Epstein-Graulig and bought her building. After that, it didn’t take long for me to see I should make love to Peter Rice, figuratively speaking.
10
In many ways my real estate move was timely. To raise cash for the purchase, I got out near my highs on Damon and Diebold. The prime rate had dipped to ten-and-a-half, so mortgage rates were relatively reasonable. I required a portfolio yield of thirteen percent annually to carry the empty building, and, since I needed to vacate my old place, to support myself in a new apartment. Maintaining such a performance wouldn’t be easy, though I’d bettered that over three years of recession. Of course I’d pay no income tax, and once the building was online I’d collect $7,000 a month in rents. The difficulty was getting the property refurbished and occupied fast. Susan said no problem.
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