The Run Around

by Bernadette Franklin

  Margaret’s eyes widened, and she covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh. Holy Mary, Mother of God.”

  That was one way to put it. “Why is the toilet in the kitchen, Margaret?” On closer look, what could only be a ceiling shower promised to rain hell dangerously close to high-powered appliances. “Why is the shower in the kitchen? What’s going on here? Why would anyone do this? This is wrong.”

  I wanted to run back to her office, get in my car, hide in the back, grab a comfortable blanket, and suck my thumb for a while. I didn’t even care what sucking my thumb would do to my teeth. Biting my lip, I retrieved my phone, took a picture of the disaster waiting to happen, and dared to step closer to investigate.

  Everything went well until I reached the stove. The floor squished, and before I could adjust my weight, my foot punched through the cheap linoleum. I yelped, went down like a ton of bricks, and somehow kept my cell from taking flight at the cost of my knees and ankle, which twisted as the hole refused to release me.

  Margaret spewed curses that’d make a pastor faint, dropped her briefcase, crouched beside me, and went for my ankle, grabbing my leg to hold it still while surveying the damage. “Your foot’s caught on the flooring. Give me a sec, and I’ll get you out of there.”

  “It’s wet, Margaret.”

  “It looks like their creative bathroom scheme has sprung a rather unfortunate leak.”

  Gross. “I’m looking at the bright side. I didn’t break my phone.” I braced my weight on one palm and a throbbing knee, holding the device out to her. “Please take photographs of this monstrosity.”

  She obeyed. “I’m taking a few pictures, too. I’ll call the front desk and have them document their shitty maintenance. I’m going to hold these jackasses liable for this bullshit.”

  With her help, I freed my foot and stood. My ankle made its unhappiness known, but I’d sprained my ankle enough over the years to recognize how I’d managed to hurt myself. Sighing, I took a picture of my foot near the hole, and as I felt sorry for myself, I texted it to Rick with a notice a New Yorker headline would be in the works.

  Within moments, my phone rang. Blinking, I answered, “Hello?”

  “What happened?” Rick demanded.

  “Wait, you’re awake?”

  “I’m at your brother’s place, Hope. He’s glaring at me, as I told him I was talking to you, just as you requested. He looks like he wants to try to take the phone, but Annabel Lee growls whenever he approaches. I’m not in the mood to correct her about it. I’m not in Japan anymore, although if I were, it’d be nine in the morning there.”

  Oh, right. He had been crashing out on my brother’s couch with his dog. “I forgot. This may have triggered memory loss. Sorry. I’m about to send you another picture. You can help me figure out the headline for this one. I’m apartment searching.” Careful to keep from hanging up on him, I sent him the pictures of the bathroom-kitchen horror show. “There. I just sent it.”

  “Don’t rent that apartment would be my first recommendation. What am I looking at?”

  “The future electrocution of a tenant, who won’t be me. The floor ate my foot.”

  “So I saw. Are you all right?”

  “A mild sprain probably. I’ll survive.” I regarded the hole with a scowl. “You can show my brother the pictures, and you can tell him if he hadn’t been an asshole, I wouldn’t have put my foot through the floor of some dingy apartment building. As my brother is there, is his wife there, too?”

  “She’s off visiting some of her uncles north of my current location. I’ll show him the pictures. Anything else you’d like to get off your chest?”

  “Give me a second. Hey, Margaret? What’s the rent on this place?”

  “Just under three thousand a month,” she reported. “It has higher than normal square footage for this area.”

  “It also has a bathroom in the kitchen,” I muttered. “That’s just highway robbery.”

  She nodded. “It really is.”

  “Sorry about that, Rick. Apparently, this wonderful place costs just under three thousand a month. A cockroach flew in my face when we got here. I’m going to the nearest pharmacy, buying a gallon of hand sanitizer and a cheap pair of shoes, and disinfecting my foot. Give me a good headline for that. I’ll call you back in a few hours, assuming I survive my apartment search.”

  Before Rick could get a word in edgewise, I hung up, silenced my phone, and shoved it into my purse. Rick’s warning that Amy was north of his location bothered me. “Where is the nearest pharmacy?”

  “Right down the street not far from where I’m parked. Will your ankle be all right?”

  “If not, I know exactly who I’m sending the bill to.”

  “Should it come to that, I’ll be happy to stand as a witness and provide all documentation from our scheduled appointment.” Margaret huffed and glared at the rotten hole in the floor. “Would you prefer to wait in my car while I have a discussion with the gentleman in the leasing office? I can bring it around and find another place to park.”

  While I appreciated the courtesy, I shook my head. “Thank you, but I’ll take my chances with the flying cockroaches in the lobby. At least there’ll be another witness if he tries to do something stupid.”

  “He won’t, not unless he’s been hitting up some drugs or something, but I doubt it. He looked disinterested more than anything else. He could be stoned out of his mind, though. Stoners are mostly harmless.”

  Moving to New York was turning out to be more of an adventure than I’d expected, and all I could do was pray the next apartment wouldn’t try to kill me, too.

  As promised, the next apartment complex was located near my work, and it was a mix of apartments and condominiums, with the condominiums taking up the upper ten floors of the skyscraper and the apartments taking up ten floors beneath that. Several businesses occupied the lower floors, with a clubhouse offering a limited buffer between the commercial and residential floors. To give me a better feel of the area, Margaret walked me around the building, showing me where the grocery store, coffee shop, and bookstore were before giving me a rundown of the building’s history. “I didn’t know they mixed buildings like this.”

  “In New York, anything’s possible with enough money. This building is an oddity, but it works out well. The landlord was required to install soundproofing between the residential and commercial floors, and the commercial floors have certain restrictions and a different zoning than the residential floors, but it works. There’s odd stuff like this all over Manhattan, but they’re all odd in different ways. Don’t ask.”

  “Oh! Like those stores in the basement of townhouses I saw driving in?”

  “Exactly. You’ll see a lot of that here. This building is pretty nice, as the landlord keeps everything maintained. Pricy, but you get good service for what you pay. There is a commercial entry on the other side of the building, but this is just for residents. Remember that condominium I told you about? It’s on the top floor of this building. The penthouse owners have their own entrance and a private garage, too.”

  “That is really cool. Can’t let the riffraff mingle with the rich and famous, right?”

  Margaret chuckled. “Right. The apartment entry is this way. The condo entry is right around the corner, so sometimes you’ll cross paths with your other neighbors, but that won’t be often. They usually use their private garage and elevator rather than share space with the apartment dwellers. But don’t feel too badly about that. You get a similar security team and concierge. You’ll have to check in any guests or have them on an allowed list, as it’s a part of the requirements for leasing here. This property is touted as one of the safest in the area, and they do a background check of all tenants. A criminal record won’t bar your application, but they are rather picky about who they will accept. They will not allow anyone who has been convicted of a violent crime of any sort to rent a unit, and being found guilty of a violent crime is grounds for lease termination.”

&n
bsp; “That’s legal?”

  “It is. The Federal Fair Housing Act doesn’t bar landlords from denying tenants guilty of violent crimes. A landlord can’t realistically bar someone with a single conviction from a decade ago necessarily, but they have a lot of leeway if they think the tenant might bring violence to other tenants in the building, as the landlord does have a base responsibility to provide a safe environment for residents. He’s particularly strict regarding domestic violence, and he has evicted tenants for violence to their partner in the past. That’s actually why this apartment opened. The tenant beat his girlfriend, and he was evicted as a risk to others and for breaking the terms of lease, which strictly bars violence on grounds. He provided an attorney for the young woman, as the incident happened in an elevator and had been reported by security.”

  Damn. “That’s terrible. Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine. The landlord moved her to a different complex he owns and has made a renting arrangement for her, as she was the boyfriend’s dependent.”

  “But why were you told about this?”

  “There’s some repair work that will need to be done, as the resident decided to take his fist to the wall after it was over. The unit just opened. It hasn’t even been listed yet, but I’d given him a call to see if he had apartments available, and as we’ve worked together before, he offered an advanced viewing. That does mean there’ll be some renovation work right before you move in, but he’ll work to your timetable or around you as needed.”

  I could handle some renovation work being done, especially as I’d be working long hours for a while. “That won’t be a problem.”

  “That’s great. This could be a really good home for you. It should be large enough for you to be able to have two dogs or three cats. He limits to two dogs because they tend to need more room than cats do. There is a rooftop dog park available for your use as well. That’s shared with the condominium owners. One of the perks is a dog walker if you need to leave your dog at home, too. They’ll come by three times a day to walk your pets. You can even get them to play with your cats. It’s thirty dollars a day for that service. They’ll even give your pets medications if needed, included in the fee.”

  My brows shot up at this. “Is this a pet heaven?”

  “Basically. Pet owners love this place. The landlord? He runs an animal shelter as a charity. It’s a no-kill shelter, and he only euthanizes if the animal absolutely cannot be saved.”

  I hadn’t met the man, but I loved him already. “Who is this man? He sounds too good to be true.”

  Margaret laughed. “Oh, he’s an interesting fellow. His name is Jacob, he’s half Italian, and he cracks jokes about not paying any protection rackets because his uncle is a crime lord and likes him the best. Nobody knows if he’s serious, but nobody cares, either.”

  I bit my lip so I wouldn’t giggle. “That’s different.”

  “It sure is. Just don’t let him invite you to his office for a drink. He has one on the clubhouse floor, and that’s how you get drunk and need security to escort you home. It won’t be the first or last time a tenant has needed to be helped back to their home after being invited to the leasing office.”

  Okay. I could work with that. “How does one get an invite, and should I bring a bottle of wine as a gift?”

  “I see this idea doesn’t bother you in the slightest.”

  “Margaret, he sounds absolutely hilarious. I’d be drunk and laughing my ass off. What’s there not to like?”

  “I never thought an honest warning about the perils of being invited to the landlord’s office would be a selling point,” she admitted.

  “What can I say? It’s been a long life.”

  Eleven

  Sensible landlords exist?

  Glass, steel, and marble collided in a mix of new and old, and the pair of security guards keeping an eye on the lobby would have gotten hired at Chippendales without question. Unlike the first apartment building, they wore classic suits, the kind my brother liked as they made him feel professional and worth his keep. That kind of suit had lured Amy right to Mat’s doorstep, I bet. Mat’s friendship with Rick, who seemed like the kind to have millions, had likely factored, too.

  Maybe Amy wasn’t a gold digger, but we wouldn’t be playing sisters anytime soon, not after her stint as a bridezilla and losing so much of my brother’s money, money he couldn’t really afford to throw away for nothing.

  We didn’t have a million bucks, but my brother certainly looked it when he decided he wanted to impress somebody. Sometimes, I wondered if Mat’s tendency to make friends with the rich and famous had drawn Amy to him. If his wife expected a life of riches and leisure, she’d be in for a nasty surprise.

  He’d only had the money for the wedding because he’d worked hard to save for it. I’d always found it charming he’d wanted a fairytale wedding as much as most women. Despite everything, I hoped it would be a fairytale marriage rather than the prelude to a nightmare. Maybe Amy would change. Maybe she wouldn’t.

  Mat would do everything he could to turn any nightmares into fairytales. That was what Mat did when he got backed into a corner. When he got it into his head to be ruthless, he could take that to extremes as well.

  His next move would be to recruit our parents to do his dirty work, and I had a harder time telling them no. They’d taken us in when no one else would, and they’d kept us together. I remembered being told there were good chances we’d be separated. Too many families had only wanted one child or a younger child. I would’ve been easier to adopt than my brother, as I’d still been baby-cute and well-behaved, where Mat had understood our parents had died and they wouldn’t be coming back. If we had other blood relatives, none of them had cared enough to even meet us.

  The entry to the apartment complex would stir a lot of memories every time I stepped through the doors, but after a moment of thought, I decided I appreciated the reminders of everything I’d gained and lost over the years.

  “I’ll show you the lobby floor first, which has some amenities for guests. After we take the tour, we’ll meet with the representative. I don’t know who we’ll get. Sometimes, the owner decides he wants to meet the tenants at the viewing, and since this one isn’t quite ready for habitation, we might see him today.” Margaret gestured to the far wall, which had a bank of elevators. “You can’t see them well from here, but there’s a doorway back there.”

  She waved at the security guards, who gave her a nod and a smile.

  “Do you come here a lot?”

  “With surprising frequency. The condominiums are in high demand, and when they sell faster than my clients can buy, they often ask to see the apartments because they like the building. Because Jacob treats the apartments with as much care as he treats the condos, he will make arrangements to have a prospective future owner rent from him until there’s an opening at one of his buildings. He just bought another complex not far from here that he’s fixing up to be half apartments and half condos. If he follows this model, he’ll put in an office complex below the units. That’ll take work on the zoning, but he runs a tight operation and rarely has issues with the rental board. That’s a good thing for you. He does raise rent yearly, but his increases are reasonable. He doesn’t want to lose good tenants. He’ll do the max increases for tenants who break his rules, though.”

  “Sensible landlords exist?”

  My real estate agent laughed. “Shockingly, yes. So, the lobby floor has a few interesting offerings you might like. First, if you’ve notified the front desk you’re having a guest coming to visit you, security will let them into the lounge, where they can grab a drink, watch television, or just enjoy the fireplace. Not all apartments or condominiums have fireplaces, so residents will come and enjoy the fire, especially in the middle of winter.”

  “There are apartments with fireplaces here?”

  “I don’t know if the unit we’re visiting today has a fireplace, but some of them do, yes. It costs an extra two hundred a mont
h for the fireplace, as the extra rent goes to specifically maintaining your fireplace. You also get a supply of wood or slow-burning logs as a part of the rent. If you go the slow-burning log route, you’ll get enough to burn one log a day as part of your rent.”

  “No kidding?”

  “No kidding. He buys them at a major discount and distributes them to residents, as he finds it allows him to control the amount burned. He’ll even help provide and store the wood, as he is very picky about what sort of firewood comes into the building. He does a lot of work to keep pests out of the building. He even will have security come and remove spiders. He has them taken outside or to other places spiders are encouraged to live rather than in the units.”

  Unable to help myself, I laughed. “My rent will include spider removal?”

  “He hates killing innocent wildlife, even spiders. Jacob’s a weird one, but he’s a good man.”

  “It sounds like it. Just hit me with the damage. What is the rent going to cost me a month?”

  “I was pitched $6,202.02, but it’s negotiable due to the damage in the unit. He usually charges a little higher for the units, but it’s a reasonable rate for what you’re getting. He’s all about making the rent worth the bill. Don’t get me wrong, he’ll be making a tidy profit off you, but he prefers when his tenants feel they’re somewhat getting their money’s worth. Jacob likes the number two, and he makes sure it’s present at least once in every number he’s involved with. I’ve seen him lower invoices just so he could have a two in the bill. As I said, he’s a weird one.”

  Margaret led me to the elevator bank, and she tapped a number into a keypad. While the intercom activated, the door buzzed and unlocked. “If you forget your card key to get in here, they’ll let you in with a code or escort you themselves. I have a code since I’m here so often doing tours with prospective buyers.”