The hallway was dark-the lightbulbs in the ceiling fixture were burned out-but he knew the way by heart. He could navigate the house blindfolded. He found the broom closet and located a tangle of plastic shopping bags but no brooms. And an old carpet sweeper that, even if it still worked, wouldn’t pick up most of the shards of glass anyway. He looked around the kitchen. More beer cans here, and beer bottles, and discarded Big Mac cartons.
“Don’t move, asshole!” someone shouted.
Rick jumped, startled. He spun around, saw a tall, skinny, balding man in a barn coat, jeans, and boots.
“Oh, it’s you,” the man said. “Hey, man, good to see you, Rick!”
“Oh, hey, Jeff.” He smiled with relief. “Been a while.”
“Sorry, dude, didn’t mean to scare you. I thought it was those damned Rindge and Latin kids again.” He held up a key ring and jingled it. “Wendy gave me a set of keys a couple, three years back and asked me to keep an eye on the place.”
“No problem.” Rick shook his head. “And listen, I really appreciate it.”
Jeff Hollenbeck lived next door, had grown up there and inherited the house after his parents’ death. He was a year or so younger than Rick. He and Rick weren’t friends, exactly, but used to play a lot of one-on-one basketball in Jeff’s parents’ driveway using the hoop mounted to their garage. Jeff, always tall and skinny and athletic, usually won. When Jeff went to Rindge and Latin, the local public high school, Rick had gone off to the Linwood Academy, a private school, so their already minimal friendship had been attenuated further. Also, Jeff began to make fun of Rick’s “faggoty uniform”-the blue blazer, white shirt, and striped crimson-and-gray repp tie. All legitimate grounds for ruthless teenage mockery, but not great for their friendship either.
Apparently, Jeff had gone through a druggy phase in high school, came close to being expelled once, but straightened up in time to go to Bunker Hill Community College. Rick didn’t remember what Jeff did for a living-something in the construction trade, maybe? His balding head was close-cropped on the sides. As a teenager he’d worn it down to his shoulders. Now, as if to compensate for the hairlessness up top, he had a goatee, wiry, gray-flecked. His eyes were a watery blue-gray.
“I think the word got around the high school that the house is empty, and there’s this gang of kids who use it for partying and screwing and whatever whatever. If I ever hear them, I show up and shoo ’em away. How’s your dad doing?”
Rick smiled sadly, shook his head. “Same.”
“Same, yeah? I guess he’s-still in that nursing home?”
Rick nodded. “He eats and gets parked in front of the TV all day and that’s his life, you know…?” It was beyond sad, actually. It was heartbreaking the way his father had ended up.
“Wendy still out in Oregon?”
“Washington, but yeah.”
“And you’re the grand pooh-bah of BostonMagazine?”
Rick shrugged, too weary to correct Jeff on the name of the magazine, which would also mean setting him straight on Rick’s job title, which was no longer any title at all. Plus, there was something enjoyable about being out in the real world, where the news of his firing actually hadn’t made it. It was refreshing to visit a place where no one could hear the low beating of the tom-toms.
Which he himself hadn’t heard until it was too late.
He was the last person to figure out he was going to get sacked. His numbers-subscriptions and newsstand sales, anyway-were looking great. He’d told Holly he was expecting a raise. There was even talk of end-of-the-year bonuses if the magazine was “ahead of plan.”
Later, of course, he found out that the gossip that his days were numbered had been burning up the wires for weeks. Mort had made a couple of disastrous market calls. He’d lost a big bet on a gold mining company and a Chinese timber firm. His fortune had gone poof, just like that. Or so the rumors had it.
Rick found out over breakfast at the Four Seasons, after he’d ordered, before he’d finished his first cup of coffee.
It wasn’t that he was being fired, that wasn’t it at all; his job was being eliminated. Mort was discontinuing the print edition. He could no longer afford the fat salaries and the expense accounts. Anyway, the luxe strategy wasn’t working. The ad guys were always having to discount to fill the pages, too obviously stuffing the remnant space with house ads. Time for some disruptive innovation! He was slashing the payroll, letting his overpaid editors go. Staffers were getting converted to freelance, paid by the piece, meaning by the post. Rick was certainly free to pitch stories to the new editor/publisher, a loathsome little squirrel in Chuck Taylors and Ben Sherman and ironic Buddy Holly glasses whom Rick had hired as a web editor a year earlier.
By the time his prosciutto-and-roasted-asparagus omelet had arrived, Rick had lost his appetite.
“Still living across the river?” Jeff said.
“Nah, I’m moving out.” Rick didn’t want to get into the gory details. Not with Jeff Hollenbeck, anyway.
An arched brow. “Moving in here?”
Rick shook his head. “I mean, for a little while, yeah, but it’s time to sell.”
“They’ve been showing it for a while now. I guess no bites, huh?”
Rick spread out his hands. “We got one lowball offer. Place is a shithole.”
“Definitely needs work. But it’s got good bones. Someone wanted to invest some time and money into it, it could be sweet.”
“That’s sorta what I’m thinking. Maybe get a carpenter in here, a plasterer, sand the floors, new paint…”
“You’re not thinking of doing it yourself, are you?”
“No way. Not my skill set.”
“You hire someone yet?”
He shook his head again. “Bank account’s a little light. Maybe a couple of months down the road.” He said it in an offhand way, as if it was only a matter of time before a tsunami of money started pouring in.
Jeff shifted his weight from foot to foot. “I wouldn’t mind taking a crack at it. You know that’s what I do, right?”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Builder, carpentry, gut renovations, the whole nine yards.” He pulled a business card from the front pocket of his barn coat and handed it to Rick. It said JEFF HOLLENBECK BUILDERS. “Got a couple guys working for me now. I don’t know what kind of quotes you’re getting, but I don’t mind giving you a break, you know-childhood friends, all that.”
“Huh.” He’d never thought about Jeff as a serious adult, let alone a successful builder.
“You wouldn’t believe what houses on this block are selling for, man. It’s crazy. It’s like-you know the D’Agostino place across the street?”
“Sure.”
“I think they got one-point-five mil for that place, and it’s not nearly as nice as this… could be, I mean.”
“A million and a half bucks? For that dump?”
“I know, it’s crazy. I mean, you put some good work into this place, you could get two mil easy. More, even.”
“I don’t really have the… liquidity, I gotta be honest with you.”
Jeff nodded. “We could do a deal, maybe. Like, my company does the work and I get a cut of the sale. Work out something that’s good for both of us.” He took out a pack of Marlboros and a Zippo. “Mind?”