“Hey, what’s wrong?” Michelle asked Karin when she got over
to the table. Karin sat back down in her chair.
“It’s been ten years, Shel,” Karin said, her voice shaking.
“I should be over him.” She turned her face up toward her friend, with a look
of helplessness. “But, I’m not.”
Michelle sat down next to her friend. Karin put her head in
her hands. “I’m totally not,” she said.
“You want to get out of here?” Michelle asked and Karin
nodded. They walked down the street to Karin’s office where they had left their
cars parked.
“I’m really sorry about tonight,” Michelle said when they
were back at Karin’s apartment. The downstairs unit of an old downtown
Victorian made the perfect spot for Karin’s office front and she’d seen no
reason to live anywhere else, so she set up house in the back half of the
apartment. The kitchen looked out over a small fenced in back yard and the
small 1880’s style servant’s quarters just off the kitchen made for a cozy
private bedroom. Karin made a pot of coffee and joined Michelle in the grand
parlor at the front of the house, a room she’d designed for business meetings
and entertaining guests.
“I thought going out and having a few drinks would be just
what you need,” Michelle said.
“I know you were just trying to take my mind off things,”
Karin said. “But, I don’t need to wash away my troubles in a bottle. I need to
deal with them.” They sat quietly through a cup of coffee and then Michelle
said goodbye and headed home.
Karin, left alone with her thoughts, and no one to put up a
good front for, cleaned up the front area of the office and poured herself
another cup of coffee in the kitchen. She changed into her painting clothes,
put the rest of the coffee in a carafe and went to Birch Run, where there was a
kitchen waiting to be painted.
She put on her headphones and turned the music up full
blast, the old nineteen eighties and nineties big hair bands played love
ballads for her and she got lost in the memories that these songs from her
childhood carried with them. Her mother had listened to these bands and their
sad, sad songs had filled their home. It was as though every song was being
sung to her.
The mindless task of rolling paint on cupboard doors and
touching up trim seemed to be done almost too quickly, until she realized that
the sun would be rising by the time she got home. She didn’t want to see it.
Karin cleaned up her supplies and loaded everything onto a
tarp in her trunk. The apartment was ready for showing, and she was proud of
herself, but she wanted to be in bed before the sun came up over the city.
She parked her car in the garage and hung the “Out on
Appointment – Call back Later” sign on the front door. She stripped out of her
painting clothes and slid between her soft sheets. Her bed had never felt so
comfortable. Before she slipped off to sleep, she thought about the men who had
abandoned her in life and she thought about Jay, and how much of her
perspective on relationships had been skewed by that young love. She thought
about her mother, the woman she didn’t want to become and Mrs. Bennett and Mrs.
Marquette, the strong women mentors who she would desperately miss. She let
just one tear hit her pillow before sleep took over.
The street outside Karin’s office began to wake up just a
couple of hours after she fell asleep. The avenue is especially busy during the
summer months as it leads directly to the public beach on the west end and to
the on-ramp for the expressway at the east end. It was also busy with foot
traffic as specialty boutiques, bed and breakfasts and motels lined the street.
It was an active place both night and day, which was why Karin had lined her
bedroom with sound proofing insulation and covered her windows with
light-reducing blinds and heavy drapes. But, as the neighboring street shops
opened their doors, and the upstairs tenants left for work, Karin was woken
from her slumber. She rolled over and checked the alarm clock. It was nearly
nine in the morning and she’d slept a solid five hours undisturbed.
She took a shower, made coffee and took the sign off the
door. She checked her calendar and was grateful that it was a light day. She
checked her email, and the few phone messages that had come in while she slept.
She had two empty units and a third coming up at the end of the month. As she
reviewed applications that had come in for the vacancies, she was also thinking
about ways to expand her business.
As she went through her emails, she saw one from Troy
Bennett, thanking her for her help and including funeral information. It got
her thinking about the Bennett properties and wondering how much they would go
for. Ideally, she wanted to buy buildings herself as she’d done with the one
she worked in, and rent them out.
But, with her current business model and
income to debt ratio, she couldn’t reasonably expect to get another mortgage. She
would need to take on a significant number of new clients at the current
commission rate in order to raise enough capital to buy another building.
She took out her most recent copy of the Multiple Listing
Service sold book and laid it out on the maple top of her desk. She wanted to
check for comparable sales, mostly out of curiosity. Prices were lower than
they had been when she first bought her building. But, rents were still high,
which made it a good time to buy, but she already knew that.
She saw the paperboy ride by on his bicycle from her front
window. She put the MLS book away and brought the newspaper in. She pulled out
the classifieds, and went straight to the homes for rent section. She confirmed
that her ads all had the correct information and then she read through the
competition’s advertisements. She always looked to compare rent prices, but
also for out of town phone numbers, as those were the owners most likely to be
interested in hiring a local property manager.
She prospected this way on a daily basis, but actually
making cold calls and going for a hard sell was something she found impossible
to do. She had waited tables and worked in sales at the local Re/Max office
while she saved up enough to buy her own building and start managing rentals.
Mrs. Marquette had encouraged her and had been her first client. Karin still
managed fifteen units for the Marquette estate and that was her biggest client.
Others had come along by word of mouth and she’d gradually given up waitressing
and then quit working in sales just before the housing market took a nose dive
in her area. She’d paid a premium for her avenue Victorian, compared to the
current prices, but she wasn’t in over her head and she had an income from her
upstairs tenants that helped cover the expenses on the building.
Karin was about to put the newspaper aside to read later
when an ad at the bottom corner of the page caught her eye:
PIERMONT COMPLEX
UNDER NEW OWNERSHIP
PROPERTY MANAGER
WANTED
ALL COMPETETIVE PROPOSALS
WILL BE CONSIDERED
She circled the ad with her pen. She’d never written a
formal proposal before, but Mrs. Marquette had helped her create a contract –
that was a good place to start. Piermont Complex was a seventy unit monster of
a building, just blocks from the beach, but without a view. It had been run by
Finley Properties as low income housing for years. It was a market she
understood, but her experience with government subsidies was limited. She began
to make a list of all the reasons why she would be the best person for the job.
Then, she remembered that this was not an old friend from
the Dunewood Landlord’s Association, and tried to research the ‘new’ owners.
All she could find out was that it appeared to be part of some estate.
“Probably someone who inherited it and has no clue what to
do with it?” she said out loud, “But, then why not just stick with Finley
Properties?” she wondered.
Finley Properties was an international company with
resources she couldn’t possibly compete with. She cut the ad out of the paper
and pinned it to her bulletin board. Next to it, she pinned a note “OPPORTUNITY?
OR PIPE DREAM?”
Find out what happens next here
Find out what happens next here
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