by Craig Birk
Chapter Seven
Work
4:27 p.m.
“You see that building? I bought that building ten years ago. My first real estate deal. Sold it two years later, made an $800,000 profit. It was better than sex. At the time I thought that was all the money in the world. Now it's a day's pay.”
– Gordon Gekko, Wall Street
Twenty minutes after Roger passed out in the back seat, the mood in the car was better, though still somewhat subdued. Traffic had thinned and Alex noted with satisfaction that the needle on the speedometer was slowly creeping past the orange 80.
It turned out that during the disagreement, traffic had cleared, and they had made decent progress. The group was now just a few miles from Temecula, where Gary had almost bought a house while he and Blair were engaged. Just five years ago, they would have been able to afford a four-bedroom place in Temecula with a pool in the back and a nice view of the hills. Today, the same house would cost nearly $400,000 more. Blair occasionally brought this up during arguments because she had been the one who wanted to buy the house rather than waiting until they could afford something closer to the city. Few things pissed Gary off more, because he was the one who would have had to deal with the ninety-minute commute every day. So while he occasionally regretted missing out on some of the gains in the housing market over the past few years, he knew that it was worth waiting because he probably would have gone crazy and lost his marriage if they had lived in Temecula. And financially they were still doing fine with their current house.
Entering the city, a large sign declared Temecula to be a place of “Old Traditions, New Opportunities.” As they passed through the suburb, Gary noticed that while it still seemed like a fairly nice place, the negatives of sprawl from Los Angeles and San Diego were starting to show. There were occasional patches of graffiti on the brick walls lining the freeway and a few patches of shitty-looking townhouses and condos had appeared. The graffiti on this particular stretch consisted of one XIV in huge black letters and, to the right, in red, a rhetorical question, “Bush, WTF?” He also noticed a new Del Taco, which he considered a welcome addition to any neighborhood.
Alex broke the silence, or at least spoke over Avril Lavine who was singing about stealing a skater boy from a prissy chick. “Hey Mike,” he asked, making eye contact with him in the rearview mirror, “how’s work going?”
Mike: “Fine. How about you?”
Alex: “Cool, man. They keep paying me anyway. G-Balls?”
Gary turned back from staring out the window and thinking about how much Del Taco he would eat if he did live in Temecula: “Oh, its good. We have a big case and if it goes well and then I work four more years of seventy-plus-hour weeks I may have a good chance for Junior Partner.”
Neither Alex nor Mike had any idea if he was being serious or sarcastic. They responded in unison: “Cool.”