by Jess Bentley
“That was fun,” Ethan grins as he collects the basketballs and puts them back on the rolling PE rack.
“Yeah,” I agree. “Let’s get on home so I can make dinner.”
“Oh, right. I’ve got homework, too,” he scowls.
I don’t know why it feels so good, just this rather mundane interaction. But it does. Solid. Wholesome or something. It feels great.
Chapter 20
Penny
As soon as Clay leaves the subdivision, my stomach twinges. Should I feel bad about this? Just letting him pick Ethan up and taking his sales meeting?
Well, it might not be entirely fair, but it feels awesome. It feels right. Somebody holding up the other end of the teeter-totter? It’s great.
Just to be safe, I strategically wander around the entrance to our subdivision, because I didn’t ask who I was meeting. But since it is later in the afternoon, I presume anybody who comes by this way is probably my contact person.
Looking back from the top of the hill, with the development stretching out below me, I feel a swell of pride. No, I don’t own it, but I did shape its outcome. Yes, it had great bones. But the renewables and the reclaimed materials were my influence. Even the storm gardens, meant to catch rain overflow during the wet periods instead of sending it into the sewers was my influence. It makes for a nice walking experience too, very parklike.
When a bright red Jeep approaches the entrance, I assume this is my contact person and raise my hand in greeting. The Jeep slows and pulls up alongside of me with the window rolling slowly down. To my surprise, Elise greets me with a chipper salute and a wink.
“Oh, hey!” I smile back. “Are you looking for Wanda? I was just waiting for a client. I think she’s in the last bank of row houses, at the bottom of the hill. If you just go—”
“No, I’m here to meet my salesperson? Is that you?”
She grins widely, revealing that adorable gap between her teeth.
“Wow, yes! This is a surprise! Just pull into the driveway here and we will go on a tour, okay?”
“Sounds great!” she answers, rolling the Jeep ahead and pulling into the first driveway. I hear the grind of an emergency brake and realize she is driving a stick-shift Jeep. I wonder if she could teach me. I have always wanted to learn.
As she climbs down from the driver’s seat, I admire her sensible Mary Janes and the vintage poplin dress in cornflower blue. It really brings out the candy hue of her hair.
“I thought we could just take a walk, check out some of the models? March through some of the construction if you are interested?”
She slides on a pair of spiffy sunglasses. “Sounds terrific. My boss had a late appointment but I have her power of attorney and everything. I’m excited to see what you guys have been working on! Are you really already half sold?”
Gesturing forward, I guide her toward the sidewalk so we can start our nice, picturesque walk as I explain. I’ve done this walk a hundred times, marveling at how simple changes improve the livability of the development.
“As you can see, houses are arranged around shared green spaces, and the curved roadways discourage speeding and encourage pedestrian traffic,” I explain, gesturing like a flight attendant.
“And this is retail here? This small group?” she asks, nodding appreciatively.
“Exactly,” I answer. “We are looking for grocery stores, small eateries, general merchandise. The sort of thing that reduce a neighborhood’s need to drive. Is your company interested in the residential units or commercial?”
“Primarily the commercial,” she answers shyly. “We have good prospects to lease the space already. Clay already sent the specifications. But I’d also like to see residential. My boss was interested in the Zephyr model that Clay mentioned, and then I’d like to look at… um…”
“Oh! Well, sure. The Zephyrs are all completed so I can show you this one right here. And then you wanted something… else?”
Her pace slows, and she turns to me with a modest shrug. “Well, I’d like to see the two-bedroom, single-family home. Maybe not right next door to the one my boss wants, if you know what I mean?”
“Oh, absolutely!” I laugh. “I can show you this Zephyr, and then we can look at the Tradewind model in Phase 4. We might even run into Wanda. That will put you on opposite ends of the development. Far enough?”
“Perfect!” She rolls her eyes. “I love my job, but my boss loves her job. Like in a gross way. If her bedroom window faced my bedroom window, she would throw pebbles at mine first thing in the morning to wake me up.”
“Wow, that’s dedication. Let me to show you around here,” I suggest, gesturing toward the front entrance of our largest, most impressive model. “There are only three of these in the development, meant to be sort of the flagships. Not everyone really needs a five-bedroom house, and studies have shown that scaling developments more toward the average family size saves on building materials.”
“Oh, this is nice,” she coos as she marches up the reclaimed brick entry. “Sophia will love this. She has great taste.”
“I’m glad!” I smile as I open the front door, pointing out that it was repurposed from a commercial space built in 1963. “Reclaiming materials not only saves on building costs, it also reduces the carbon footprint of the development by not diverting our construction to the production of new materials. A lot of these things were just going to end up in a landfill if we didn’t repurpose them.”
“I can tell you really have a lot of vision,” she murmurs as she strolls through the kitchen, tipping her head back to check out the high ceilings and barn wood paneling. “You should have your own development.”
“I don’t know. I kind of feel like I had a lot of input here,” I answer, aware that I sound defensive.
“Oh, I didn’t mean anything by that,” she apologizes. “It’s just that you would be good at it, I think. I can sense that about you.”
“Yeah, sorry. I didn’t mean to get testy with you. I actually tried to bid on this development, but couldn’t quite pay the premium. Still, I’m really glad I’m involved. It’s been a great experience.”
She winks at me again, apparently kind of a personal brand thing. As she swishes through the room with her hands in the pockets of her skirt, I’m all over her suggestion. I guess I still have some feelings about not winning that auction. I thought I was over it, but the knot in my stomach says differently.
“Yeah, Sophia’s gonna love this,” she finally announces, poking her head in the master bathroom and admiring the pebbled shower floor.
“Great! I can have Clay send a contract or…”
“No, can we do it today? Like I said, I have her power of attorney, so I was hoping we could just get this all locked up today. This and the commercial spaces.”
My eyebrows go up. “Which commercial spaces were those?”
Her eyebrows also go up. “The ones Clay sent over?”
“Um… you don’t mean…”
She nods emphatically. “All of them, right. All the commercial, this Zephyr model, and you say there’s a Tradewind with my name on it?”
I smile tensely and hang on to the railing while my stomach does backflips. Mentally I go into automatic calculations, adding up my commission and… holy cow.
This will double my savings. This would be enough to keep going to maybe even try again at another auction. There’s one on Sunday, I heard.
Taking a deep breath, I gesture back toward the front door. I don’t want to come off sounding like a bubbly schoolgirl but… yippee!
I have to tell myself over and over again to take it slow, take it easy, and not babble as we meander through the subdivision sidewalks. I point out the prairie plants and our small water filtration system. Elise gives me encouragement and definitely seems intrigued, but that might just be her personality. Maybe she’s just extremely nice. Some people are like that, I hear.
“It really is gorgeous,” she sighs as we stroll. “Surrounded by farmla
nd, right? With just that small patch of forest right there?”
“Well, there is a single unimproved lot at the back, and I am trying to petition Ron to put in a fruit tree park instead of more houses. It could even be organic! Everybody would be able to share the apples and cherries and whatnot, and the association fees would go in part toward hiring a full-time gardener and arborist.”
“Okay, now you’re just showing off!” Elise chuckles. “That’s amazing! There is nothing like this around here. It’s really one-of-a-kind.”
I beam proudly, unable to formulate a response.
“Seriously,” she continues, “you should have your own development company. You really shouldn’t be giving your ideas away for free to Ron, don’t you think?”
Helplessly, I gesture at the home in front of us, trying to keep a straight face. Even with the commission, I’m looking at starting small. Maybe something half this size? Maybe even finding homes in neighborhoods to just rehabilitate one by one? She’s talking about a giant investment, way beyond what I could accomplish at this point.
“Like, maybe you should be pitching for partners?” she continues energetically, galloping way ahead of me mentally. “With three or four investors, and at least half a dozen abandoned developments more or less just like this one, you could be looking at something really big. Like really transformative in this area.”
“Wait, half a dozen abandoned developments? Is that for real?”
She shrugs, pivoting toward the front door and climbing the steps with a jaunty bounce.
“Yeah, the housing recession just destroyed us in around 2008, 2010. There are a lot of starts that you could probably pick up for a song. And if your whole brand is revolutionary like this, you could be looking at going national!”
The front door swings open and Wanda steps out, holstering an eight-pound hammer in her very butch toolbelt and wiping her palms on the back of her jeans.
“Hey, there, sweetie!” she croons, and I realize she’s not talking to me when Elise skips up the stairs and plants a big, emphatic kiss on Wanda’s waiting lips.
“I love this place!” Elise confides. “Is this mine? Is this for me? Did you build it just for me?”
Wanda rolls her eyes. “Oh yeah, I just knew there was going to be an adorable redhead in my future. I hope you like pink!”
Elise wrinkles her nose and Wanda taps her on the freckles playfully.
“Okay, I was just kidding about the pink. Would you like to see it? What are we talking about?”
“Oh, I was just trying to convince Penny that she should grab some investors and take her revolutionary living designs to a national audience!”
Wanda looks back over her shoulder at me with her eyebrows up sarcastically. “Oh? And how is that going?”
“All right, quit it,” I huff as I enter the building.
“Don’t take it personally, sweet thing,” Wanda sighs. “Lots of people have tried to convince Penny to expand, or even get her own business, but she just won’t take the plunge.”
Elise swoops around the living room, dragging her fingertips across everything excitedly.
“Okay, does the whole place look like this? Because this is amazing!” she announces.
“Two words… sunken bathtub!” Wanda announces dramatically.
I follow them, trying to keep my distance from the explosion of love pheromones they are currently spraying in every direction. Sure, they are cute, but this is intense. I get the feeling that Wanda may have had Elise in mind when she made changes to this unit, after all. She definitely had a lot of design opinions that got implemented without question. Of course, it is difficult to say no to her.
Elise spins around, shaking her head in disbelief. “Tell me again why you are not a national company, Penny? Is it a religious objection? Because anything short of that and you are just throwing away an opportunity!”
I try to keep my expression neutral, but this is bordering on harassment.
“Guys, I need to start small. You have to be patient with me, okay? I’ll do something. You don’t have to push me quite so hard.”
“I’m not pushing you,” Wanda observes as she crosses her arms. Her stubborn body language is reflected infinitely in all the mirrors in this beautiful bathroom.
“I am pushing you a little bit!” Elise interjects. “Seriously, if it’s not a religious objection, it can probably be ignored, right?”
“It’s just money, Elise,” I shrug, backing away. “Just a whole lot of money. I’ll get there eventually.”
Elise and Wanda exchange glances. Their habit of psychic communication is a little annoying.
“I could totally be an investor,” Elise shrugs. “Or if you like something more impersonal, I can find you investors. I have friends. They have more money than they know what to do with. Let me help you!”
“You know what? Let’s talk about this in a little while. I think my phone is ringing.”
Lame, I know, but I needed a reason to get out of that bathroom. All those reflections are making me nauseous.
As I leave the bedroom to take my fake phone call, I hear Wanda from far away.
“That’s just how she is,” she observes sarcastically. “Determined to shoot herself in the foot with both barrels.”
“You know what?” I call out as they walk farther into the house, totally into each other and not even hearing me. “I might surprise you one of these days! I might only use one barrel!”
Irritated, I walk back out onto the driveway, peering up and down the street at my development. Because it is my development, just like Elise said. These are my ideas, and I’m giving them away to Ron like they’re nothing.
I would love to have my own company. I have a whole raft of ideas that haven’t even seen the light of day yet. I could do it. Well, maybe not yet. But I could, maybe someday.
I might even surprise myself one day.
Chapter 21
Clay
I set the bags on the counter, careful to not let the contents spill out. I’m a little bit later than I meant to be, but this will totally be worth it.
“Hey, Pen, I got us some of these giant shrimp from the fish market. How about I make us some—oh, jeez.”
She looks up at me, startled, from where she’s half-seated at the dining room table. Her eyes are narrow, one hand twisted in the hair behind her head.
“What? What are you saying?” she mutters in a distracted, irritable tone.
I back away cautiously, considering my options.
“Never mind,” I follow up quickly. “You just do… whatever it is you’re doing. I’ve got this. No worries.”
She squints at me suspiciously. “Why are you talking to me like that? Is everything okay?”
“Well, because you look crazy right now. You’ve got that look in your eye, Pen. You’re on a mission. I know how this works. I will just stay out of your way.”
Her nostrils flare as she breathes quickly, probably considering whether to go back to whatever it is she was doing on her laptop or come into the kitchen and tussle with me. I like teasing her and everything, but this is a whole other level of the Penny Experience. She is not to be toyed with at this moment.
“Did you know that it’s sexist to call a woman crazy?”
Keeping my eyes down, I get the shrimp into a colander in the sink.
“I did not know that,” I reply in a calm tone, “but I will keep that in mind for the future.”
Temporarily satisfied, she goes back to her project. I know that I can cook for her and she will eat. This kind of thing usually lasts anywhere from a couple of hours to a few days until she tuckers herself out. It’s best just to let her see it through until she comes to some kind of conclusion.
Happily cooking, I do keep an eye on her to make sure she’s okay. Maybe I should give her a glass of wine? No. That can wait until dinner is ready. But wine makes her thoroughly horny, so I have quite a lot of it on hand now.
In college, she would
go on these benders of frenzied activity every once in a while. Usually at completely inconvenient times, like in the middle of finals or something, she would suddenly get the idea that the cabinets all needed to be rehabbed. One time I came home and found her waist-deep in the shrubbery outside our windows, trimming the tops of the dense, prickly bushes with a pair of evil-looking farm implements she had gotten at a thrift store. She said the scratching noise kept her up at night and she wanted the branches below her window line.
It’s crazy, but not completely crazy. Sort of a sensible idea, just with a bat-out-of-hell kind of execution.
But the shrimp look amazing. I hope she’s going to be in the right frame of mind to eat them with me. I dress them with some simple olive oil and white wine and garlic, turning them over when they are just pink. I’ve got some pancetta and spinach to go with them. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.
Cautiously I get it all plated up then walk over to the table and slide her dinner to the edge of her laptop with a napkin and fork. Silently, I settle into a chair across from her.
She squints at the screen, gnawing on her upper lip. Her fingers tap lightly against the keys and stroke the touchpad.
“You’re staring at me,” she mumbles.
“You’re pretty,” I shrug, chewing happily. “And your dinner is amazing. But you don’t have to eat it right now. I can warm it up for you again later or whatever…”
Finally she looks up at me, though it takes her eyes just a moment to focus.
“You really don’t know that it’s sexist to call a woman crazy?”
“Honestly, I never even thought about it, but if you say that it is I believe you.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“Penny, I promise you that I am much too scared of you right now to make fun of you,” I smile.
She opens her mouth to say something, then closes it again. After looking around for a few seconds, her posture noticeably slackens, and she allows herself a half of a smile.