Black Ties and Lullabyes (16 page)

It wasn’t until he was wel into the living room that it dawned on him that they weren’t alone. Not by a long shot.

At least fifteen other people were in her apartment.

The guy with spiky red hair from the balcony across the way. A bleached blond with gigantic silver hoop earrings whose last makeup purchase must have sent Maybel ine stock soaring. A twenty-something guy wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt and five silver rings in his right eyebrow. A couple of old ladies, one in a leopard housecoat who looked approximately 130 years old.

A young Hispanic woman with a baby in her arms and a toddler beside her. One person who was so androgynous Jeremy couldn’t begin to tel what sex God had meant
it
to be. An assortment of Texas good ol’ boys in jeans and boots. Tattoos al around.

Jeremy stared in rapt disbelief, feeling as if he’d entered the Land of Misfit People.

“Folks,” Bernie said, “this is Jeremy Bridges, the new owner of Creekwood Apartments.” She turned to Jeremy with a sweet smile. “Mr. Bridges, these are your tenants. And they’re just dying to meet you.”

Jeremy seriously considered turning around and walking out exactly the way he’d come in, dragging Bernie along with him to give her a considerable piece of his mind. But then one of the old ladies offered him a chocolate chip cookie, and another one handed him a glass of punch, and before long everybody in the room was hitting him with their problems like machine-gun fire and escape became impossible.

For the next hour, Jeremy heard about everything that was wrong with Creekwood Apartments—its management, its landscaping, its appliances, its floor plans, its sidewalks, its lighting, its sewer system, its location, and its orientation to the sun at the summer solstice. That last complaint came from a New Age Looney Tune with frizzy blond hair and a row of silver stars and moons lining the curves of her ears, who also believed that the complex sat on a seventeenth-century Indian burial ground. And through it al , Jeremy nodded and pretended to listen, but inside his head something different was going on. He was seeing a very large, very loud bul dozer flattening this place until it was nothing more than a pile of rubble. Once the lot had been reduced to dirt, the dead Indians could ascend to the Great Spirit and his short but eventful career as a slumlord would come to a blessed end.

Final y he was able to maneuver people out the door by thanking them for coming and assuring them that their concerns would be addressed in due time, even though it was possible he’d be addressing them with the business end of that bul dozer. Then he had to endure every one of them shaking his hand on their way out and thanking him for showing up.

As if he’d chosen to deal with any of this.

Bernie closed her door behind the last person, then slowly turned to face him, stil wearing that infuriatingly smug, self-satisfied expression he was dying to wipe right off her face.

“That,” he said, stabbing his finger toward her, “was the most rotten, manipulative thing I’ve ever seen
anybody
do.”

“Coming from the master manipulator, I’l take that as a compliment.”

“What was the point of dragging me over here to hear in person what they griped about on the phone?”

“I didn’t drag you over here,” she said, circling her living room to pick up empty Styrofoam cups. “As I remember, you insisted on coming.”

“You told me
not
to come. What was with that?” She stopped in front of him, smiling sweetly. “It got you over here, didn’t it?”

As she continued into the kitchen, he felt like the biggest fool alive. With a few careful y calculated words, she’d lured him in like a matador waving a red cape in front of a charging bul .

“After what you just did,” he said, “you’re lucky I’m not sticking you six feet under with the dead Indians.”

“There may actual y be some truth to that Indian burial ground thing,” she said, dumping the cups in the trash. “I think that’s why the lights flicker around here.

Restless spirits.”

“The lights flicker because the wiring in this place
sucks
.”

“That’s okay. You’re going to fix it.”

“Wrong. I’m not fixing a damned thing.” Bernie frowned. “What do you mean, you’re not fixing anything? You could gold plate these buildings and never miss the money.”

“I didn’t get where I am by making bad business decisions.”

“So putting a fence around this place was a good decision?”

Jeremy opened his mouth to speak, only to shut it again.

“So you’re not above spending a ridiculous amount of money just to make a point, but you’d hate like hel to actual y do some good with it.”

“I donate to al kinds of causes, Bernie. You of al people should know that.”

“Right. If you give to a good cause, it’s because you’re schmoozing somebody on the board of directors you need to do business with. Have you ever thought of doing something good that
didn’t
further your bottom line?”

“These buildings are forty years old. Renovating them would be like putting a Band-Aid on a severed artery.”

“Yet you bought the place,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “And you cal yourself a businessman?” God, how he wanted to kick the crap out of himself for that. Yeah, he’d gotten this place for next to nothing, but when it was worth nothing,
next
to nothing was paying a premium. It was true he’d never miss the money. The problem was that he’d led with his emotions instead of his brain, and Bernie was making sure he paid the price for it.

“What about Charmin?” Bernie asked. “Does she stil have a job?”

“The manager? She’s staying on, at least for now.”

“Have you actual y met her?”

“Not yet. But Farnsworth said she’s just the person I need.”

“Right. This is the woman who found a potato chip that looked like Jesus and spent an entire afternoon in her office taking pictures of it so she could list it on eBay.”

“She comes cheap.”

“That’s because she goes out of her way to do nothing. She locks the office door for two hours every afternoon so she can watch her soap operas. And when somebody complained once that her smoke alarm wasn’t working, Charmin told her if that was true, maybe she ought to think twice about smoking in bed. That’s the kind of crap these tenants have to deal with.”

“Nothing’s stopping them from moving somewhere else.”

“You said it yourself. Any other place at this price is a slum.”

“That’s not my problem.”

“Wel , let me tel you what
is
your problem. You never look at anything from somebody else’s point of view. Lupe Alvarez’s, for instance. The woman with the two little kids. Do you know she works two jobs just to make ends meet? Al she wants is a working stove so she can feed her kids a hot meal.”

“Bernie—”

“And Frieda Jackson. The older lady in the flowered pants. She’s on Social Security, and she can’t even afford the heart medication she needs, much less afford to live someplace else. You know. Someplace where the owner wil make sure her kitchen sink drains like it’s supposed to.”

“Bernie—”

“And the skinny guy in the cowboy boots. Do you know he—”

“Bernie!” Jeremy said, holding up his palm. “Wil you stop? This isn’t a damned telethon.” Bernie glared at him. “Doesn’t matter if it is or not.

You wouldn’t donate a dime.”

“Where’s al this coming from? You’ve never struck me as the bleeding-heart type.”

“I’m not. It’s just that the only problems that ever seem to get fixed around here are the ones I complain about. People found that out, so these days I pretty much do the complaining for everyone.”

“And an interesting group of people they are,” he said.

“Frankly, I had the same reaction when I moved in. I was in the military for years, where everything’s uptight, upright, and squeaky clean. Then I started to figure out that what you see isn’t always what you get.

Yeah, there are a couple of rotten people who live here, but most of them are just people who are trying to get by. Don’t you have any sympathy for them at al ?”

“I’m going to say it one more time. I’m a businessman. And that’s about it.”

“So where you’re concerned, what I see is
exactly
what I get.”

“That’s right.”

“A heartless son of a bitch who puts money above everything else.”

Jeremy felt a spark of anger. “Hey, I didn’t ask for al this personal interaction. You’re the one who shoved that on me.”

Bernie’s expression went cold. “Why did you have to buy this place? You could have just left wel enough alone, but no. Now these people think you’re actual y going to do something for them.”

“And that’s my fault? Aren’t you the one who handed out my phone numbers, invited them over for punch and cookies, and then duped me into coming over here?” He glared at her. “You did al that just to piss me off.”

“Wrong. I did it because I hoped if you met the tenants face to face you’d see how much they need your help and you might actual y
do
something about their problems.”

“I’m a businessman, not a social worker. Why is that so hard to understand?”

Bernie gritted her teeth, glaring at him as if he were the most despicable human being ever to draw breath. “You know what? You’re right. You have absolutely no obligation to these people at al . You’ve made your point. Wil you just go?”

“Bernie—”

“No. Seriously. I want you to leave.” Frustration ate away at Jeremy until he wanted to hit something. He’d be a complete fool to spend the amount of money it would take to renovate this place, no matter how many people wished he would. Why didn’t she get that?”

“Okay, Bernie. I’m out of here. Just understand that things aren’t as simple as you make them out to be.”

“You’re filthy rich. Everything is simple for you, and to hel with the rest of us.”

With that, she disappeared into her bedroom and closed the door behind her.

Jeremy stood there for a moment, fuming mad. He was right, of course. The best thing he could do with this place was to level it. It was within a few blocks of the train station, which meant the land was actual y worth something. How much, he didn’t know, but even a total moron could see that the buildings that sat on this land were liabilities, not assets.

He yanked open the door and stepped out onto the landing, stopping short when he saw he wasn’t alone.

The old lady in the leopard housecoat was leaning against the wal , puffing away on a cigarette. He thought he remembered her name was Ruby.

“You two were real y having it out in there,” she said.

Jeremy shut Bernie’s door, then turned back to the old lady. “Do you always eavesdrop?”

“Yep. Every chance I get.” She took a long drag off her cigarette. “So I guess you’re just gonna let the place rot like Farnsworth did.”

How had this happened? How had he gotten himself into this situation up to his neck? A week ago, his life had been going along just fine. Then Bernie had shown up pregnant, and everything had gone to hel .

“I haven’t decided what I’m going to do with it,” he told her.

“She helps us out a lot, you know.”

“Bernie?”

“Uh-huh. Ever since she moved in. Why she lives in this godawful place, I don’t know, because I think she could do better. But we’re al pretty glad she’s here.” That was becoming more and more evident with every moment that passed. Jeremy had never once thought of Bernie as a do-gooder, but he did think of her as somebody who took no crap from anyone.

Maybe in this instance those two things were one and the same.

“She said you’d help us, too,” the old lady said.

“Guess she was wrong.”

“I wouldn’t hold that against her.”

“I’m not holding it against her. I’m holding it against you.”

Jeremy looked down the stairs and across the scraggly lawn, where an old man waited for his Boston terrier to pee on a hol y bush. It was getting dark, and the shadows of dusk made the stained stucco on the building behind him look even more ugly and depressing.

“It’s just business,” he told Ruby.

“Hmm. With you being the father of Bernie’s babies and al , it seems to me it’s not business. It’s more like family.”

So she knew. He wondered who else Bernie had told. Then again, did it real y matter? His relationship to her wasn’t the issue here.

So why couldn’t he get that word out of his mind?

Family.
It was a concept he’d always had such a hard time grasping, and as the years passed, it seemed to move farther and farther away, until it felt like a dream he’d had once that he couldn’t quite remember.

“She’s good to us,” the old lady repeated. “So you’d better be good to her.”

With that, she waddled back into her apartment, shutting the door behind her.

Jeremy couldn’t believe it. Another threat? First Max, and now Ruby? How many more people were there out there who would come after him with torches and pitchforks if he so much as raised his voice to Bernie?

Shaking his head, Jeremy trotted down the stairs.

Max stood leaning against the car, his arms folded, and there wasn’t a potential car thief in sight. He opened the back door for Jeremy, then circled around and got into the driver’s seat. As he drove out of the complex, Jeremy couldn’t stand the silence any longer.

“I bought this place, you know,” he said.

Max flicked his gaze to the rearview mirror.

“Yeah, that’s right. I own this godawful apartment complex. She wouldn’t move, so I bought it and put up the fence so she’d be at least halfway safe.” Max moved his eyes back to the road again.

“I bet you’re wondering what was going on in Bernie’s apartment.”

Max was silent.

“She ambushed me,” Jeremy said. “Had a bunch of tenants there with every complaint in the book. She thinks I should renovate the entire complex, even though it’d cost me an arm and a leg and leave me in an even worse negative position. The smartest thing I could do would be to bul doze the place. Then the land might actual y be worth something.”

More silence.

“Okay. It’s true I’d never miss the money. But how can Bernie expect me to pour money down a rat hole? I’m a businessman. That’s bad business.”

“Do you want to make her happy?” Max said.

Jeremy blinked, startled that Max had final y spoken. And he was even more startled by the question he asked. Now it was Jeremy’s turn to say nothing, mainly because he didn’t know how to respond. What was Max asking him, exactly? If he wanted to get stuck with an underperforming asset just to make Bernie happy? Commit to months of construction and repairs just to bring a smile to her face? Spend thousands upon thousands of dol ars to prove to her he actual y had a heart? Was
that
what Max was asking him?

“Yes,” Jeremy said. “I want to make her happy.”

“Then you know what to do, don’t you?” Jeremy sat back in his seat, his shoulders slumping with resignation, unable to believe it had come to this.

If he did what Bernie wanted him to, it meant his spine had morphed into a wet noodle, his intel igence had been neutralized, and his wel -honed business sense had deserted him completely.

Good Lord. If any of his business rivals ever discovered what a sap he was, his professional life was over.