I was rather taken by it almost from the moment we got out of the car. It was much newer than the other two places, maybe a couple of years old at most. The town houses were in odd shaped three or four house clumps on winding streets. As we pulled in I noticed a van belonging to a yard maintenance company that was hauling a trailer with a couple of large platform mowers. At the place in Ridgely I’d either have to buy a lawn mower or pay somebody; here it seemed it was part of the amenities.
Way back when, on my first trip through, when I was 14 I had my own lawn business. I mowed five lawns every week, one a day, and made decent money for a kid. I also learned I detested mowing lawns! The following year I gave the business to Hamilton, who promptly ran it into the ground and went out of business.
Andrea took us to an end unit and let us inside. It was very new and clean and white. The only problem was that it had multiple levels. You walked into the living room level on one side. To the left and down half a level was the kitchen and dining room, to the left and up half a level were two bedrooms and a bath, and up another half level, over the living room, was the master suite. In the long run my knee was going to be an issue, but for a year, we could handle it. “I thought these places were like condos, you had to buy them?” I asked.
Andrea said, “Eh, yes and no. There’s usually a few units available for rent, or with a lease arrangement. I think the idea is that you move in, fall in love, and decide to buy at some point down the road. Do you like it?”
“Give us a few minutes.” With my wife carrying Charlie, we went from floor to floor and looked it over. Up in the master bedroom, which was fairly roomy, I asked Marilyn, “What do you think?”
“I like it, but what about your leg?”
“Unless it gets really bad, I’ll be fine. I wouldn’t want to live here forever, but we can hack it until we get something else,” I answered.
Marilyn asked, “How long will that be?”
I shrugged. I had never built in Maryland before, but I had built homes for customers in New York. “Probably a year. Let’s ask. Could you see yourself living here?”
She nodded. “Yes, at least until we build a place of our own.”
“Keep thinking about that. Let’s ask.”
We headed back down the stairs to find Andrea in the living room, smiling. I don’t know if she had heard us, or just could read our expressions. “I get the funny feeling you like it,” she said.
“Yes, actually we do. What’s the rent going to be like?” The rent proved to be a couple of hundred higher than anything else we had looked at, but this was partly because of ‘homeowner’s association expenses’; the cost of having the lawns mowed and maintenance fees. Otherwise it was still a bit on the high side, but not outlandishly so. It was also larger than the other two places.
Marilyn asked how long it would take to build a home. She knew something about homes, but only because Big Bob sold trailers. What we were planning wasn’t a trailer!
Andrea answered, “Well, first we have to find you a piece of land. There’s at least thirty days before we could close on it, what with title searches and financing and escrow…”
“No financing. This will be a pure cash purchase. The same goes towards construction,” I interjected.
Andrea didn’t bat an eye. “That certainly simplifies things. We’ll run the escrow through the agency in any case. Anyway, after the land clears, you’ll need an engineer or architect to sign off on the plans, and then the contractor can get a building permit.” She kept on with some different steps, all of which I was familiar with. The bottom line was that we could probably move in sometime next year, in the spring of 1983.
This was rather disheartening to Marilyn, but quite natural to me. I took her hand and squeezed it reassuringly. “This is nothing I wasn’t expecting, honey. I’ll make a deal with you. We’ll take this place, I’ll look for land with Andrea, you tell the movers where to put everything, and then we take a nice vacation.”
“You’re going to look for land and I’m going to move furniture! That sounds like a really lousy deal!” she said, laughing.
I bent down and whispered in her ear, “I bet I can make the bed move!”
That got a squawk and a smack to the arm, but Marilyn smiled. For the next few minutes we were tied up in paperwork, signing some papers Andrea had in her briefcase. Some were for the townhouse and some were for a brokerage agreement to buy property. As per my instructions, she had run everything through John Steiner ahead of time, and I could see his initials on several of the pages. More time was taken when Charlie decided to fill his diaper, drink a bottle of formula, use up a second diaper, and then throw up his formula. It just wasn’t his day!
We concluded the day by agreeing to meet Andrea on Monday to look for properties. Then we went back to the Holiday Inn, where I called the moving company and gave them our new address.
Sunday we went over to Tusker and Tessa’s place for dinner and a chance to play with Bucky. We made sure to stop at a ToysRUs and picked him up a few toys. They were still in their little apartment that they had moved into back before they got married. All of their money had gone into school and their business.
Tessa opened the door for us and immediately took possession of Charlie. (Now, if I could only figure out how to do that for the next 18 years or so…) “It is so good to see you again! I’m so sorry we couldn’t talk the other day!” she said.
“Well, you were busy,” said Marilyn.
“Is it always like that?” I asked.
“Well, not always, but most of the time. Tusker’s doing a lot of service work and rebuilds, as well as buying and selling the used bikes. I mean, you wouldn’t believe what he gets when he does a rebuild and then sells it.”
“What wouldn’t they believe?” asked Tusker, coming into the living room. Over in the corner little Bucky was watching Bugs Bunny on the VCR, so we all retired to sit around the kitchen table. Tusker pulled some National Bohemians out of the refrigerator and we all sat down and relaxed.
“About your rebuilds and resales on the used stuff!”
My friend gave a wry smiled and nodded. “It’s true. I’ll pick up some old bike that somebody wants to dump for a few hundred, maybe a grand, strip it down and clean it, rebuild it, repaint it, and BOOM! Classic motorcycle! I’ll make ten times what I paid for it.”
“Wow! None of that means anything to me, but it sounds good.” Tusker knew I wasn’t a biker. The only time I ever rode a motorcycle back on the first go, I ended up laying it in the gravel. That wasn’t enjoyable, but the bad part was when Marilyn landed on me and broke two of my ribs and put me in the hospital for a couple of days. In Aruba! I learned my lesson! “That pays for the place in Timonium?”
“The service work pays for it. The bike resales and rebuilds are the profit,” answered Tessa.
Tusker grinned. “She’s the real businessperson in the room. I can follow along easily enough, but she’s the brains of the operation.”
That was it for the time being. We talked about old times and new, about my getting out of the army and moving back up to Maryland. We told them about getting an apartment in Cockeysville and made them promise to come up as soon as we got our furniture moved in.
Tusker smiled at Marilyn. “You’re going to love it here. The weather’s great. You can ride almost ten months a year.”
“You can ride. I’ll drive, thank you,” she said.
“I don’t know, honey. I think you’d look pretty hot in your leathers and colors, with Charlie in the sidecar. Talk about your motorcycle mamas! You and Tessa can form your own gang!” I teased.
Tessa started laughing at that, and she got up and went into their laundry room, coming back out a minute later with a tee shirt of her husband’s. On the back it read, ‘IF YOU CAN READ THIS, MY BITCH FELL OFF!’