Save the Date

Chapter 49

49

“You did what?” Cara had been about to take a bite of her sandwich, but instead she put it down on her paper plate and picked up the sheaf of papers he’d just presented with a flourish.

The look on her face was not anything like what he’d pictured. Her jaw tightened and her eyes narrowed as she skimmed the sales contract for West Jones Street. Her face paled when she got to the page with the sales price.

“Is this some kind of joke?” she demanded. “Because if it is, I don’t get the punch line.”

“It’s no joke. I bought it. Sylvia Bradley was my piano teacher when I was a kid. I went to see her yesterday morning, and I bought this building. For you.”

Cara stabbed at the contract with her fingertip. “You paid twice what it’s worth! Are you crazy? Where would you get that kind of money?”

Now Jack put down his own sandwich. He was confused. Where was the jumping up and down? Where were the screams of joy and wild kisses of gratitude he’d been anticipating for the past two days?

***

Earlier that day, Jack and a helper arrived at Forty-fourth Street at dawn. They carted Sylvia’s ancient rusted Kenmore washer and dryer down the crumbling driveway and into the back of Jack’s truck for the trip to the dump. It took only a couple hours to tear down Sylvia Bradley’s mud porch. He was shocked that it hadn’t just fallen off of its own accord.

Even with a cane, the old lady was pretty spry, and she stood in the weedy backyard, in her flower-print blouse and old-school Keds, and supervised as they tossed the rotted timbers into the Dumpster he’d rented.

Late Wednesday morning, after she could see the yellow pine skeleton of her new porch, Sylvia finally called him into the kitchen, offered him a paper cup of warm Hawaiian Punch and the sales contract for West Jones Street.

He reached into the pocket of his cargo shorts and brought out a white envelope with the cashier’s check for the earnest money inside, just as he’d offered those five-dollar envelopes from his mother every Wednesday the year he was ten. As he handed this one over to Sylvia Bradley, he halfway expected her to ask him if he’d been practicing his finger exercises.

She ripped open the envelope and studied the check, running a swollen forefinger over the embossed bank logo.

“How did you leave things with Cullen Kane?” he asked, signing the contract with a flourish.

“Never you mind,” Sylvia said. She opened a kitchen drawer and rummaged around among the rubber bands, balls of string, and nubs of pencils until she found a set of keys with a white plastic CS Bank key fob. “Here are the keys. My father bought that building in 1953. He was always partial to West Jones Street.”

Jack pocketed the keys. “I’m partial to it too. Thank you, Miss Sylvia.”

At lunchtime, Jack picked up sandwiches and chips at a deli on Habersham Street, and he headed over to Bloom to share the good news with Cara, and bask in the warmth of her admiration.

***

“You must be insane,” Cara said, shaking the contract, as though she might shake the numbers right off the paper. “This is a lot of money.”

“It is a lot of money, but no, I’m not crazy,” Jack said calmly. “The price is a little on the high side, but it’s not terribly out of line with comparable prices in the district. I checked the tax records. It’s a decent deal, Cara.”

And it might have been considered a decent deal, if you didn’t factor in the cost of rebuilding Sylva Bradley’s mud porch, replacing her washer and dryer, and having his painters sand, prime, and repaint her house. But those were details he didn’t feel the need to share with Cara at this time.

“Where did you get the money to buy this building?” Cara asked. “You told me that you and Ryan were struggling to keep your business afloat, just like me.”

“That’s right. It was a struggle. Still is. But my dad helped us out a little. In a business like ours, we’re sometimes in the position to pick up a house or a building on the cheap. So that’s what we did. We bought crappy houses and crappy buildings for pennies on the dollar, fixed them up, and resold for a good profit. Right now, I’m not doing a lot of flipping, so a property like West Jones, that’s one I want to keep. I’m not saying we’re rich, but we’ve done okay.”

Cara tossed the papers back in his face. “I didn’t ask you to do this. I didn’t want you to do this.”

He was dumbfounded. “I wanted to do it. For you. You were so upset the other night, about having to move and everything. And I’d been thinking about it, ever since I found out Sylvia Bradley owned your building. So I went to see her yesterday.”

“Without even asking me. You just took it upon yourself to go behind my back and buy my building. Just like Cullen Kane did. And you expect me to be happy about that?”

“Hell yeah,” he said. “I thought you’d be delirious. Don’t you see? Now you don’t have to move out. I’ll start working on the building right away. Well, right after we finish up the Strayhorns’ barn. We’ll have to run new electrical first, and then I’ll get my HVAC guy over here to see what kind of tonnage he recommends, especially if we open up the third floor.”

“We’ll run the electric. We’ll open up the third floor? Who is this magical ‘we’? You and your brother? When were you going to consult me? Or were you just going to show up here one day and start tearing down the walls?”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Jack held his hands up in surrender. “Don’t go getting your panties all in a bunch. It’s just a figure of speech. Of course I was going to consult you before I started any work. But we talked about this. The day I helped you put in that window unit, we talked about how much work this place needed.”

“No. You talked about it. And you decided what would be best for me. Just like the Colonel. Just like my ex-husband. Poor, helpless Cara is too dumb to figure out life for herself, so we’ll just step in and take charge and tell her how to run her life.”

“It’s not like that!” Jack exclaimed. “You’re twisting everything all around. I thought we could fix this place up together.”

“With you supplying all the money and most of the labor,” Cara said. “Did it occur to you that after you make all these amazing improvements I won’t be able to afford the rent here? Or were you planning to go looking for a new tenant and move me to another building in your vast array of real-estate ventures?”

“Cara, for Chrissake—I don’t understand why you’re getting so worked up about all this. You know I’m not going to raise your rent or kick you out. I care about you, not the money. That’s the only reason I got into this.”

She felt the rage bubbling up from her gut. “Men always say that, and they always lie. Because it’s always about the money. Look at my father. He loans me money, and when I run into problems repaying it, he starts with the emotional blackmail. It’s not about the money, he says. It’s about financial responsibility. What he really means is, it’s about control. And as long as I’m in his debt, I’m in his control. We’ve slept together what, Jack, five times? And you’re just going to give me a building that you spent three-quarters of a million dollars to buy? How do you amortize that out? About a hundred and fifty thousand per fuck? I had no idea I was that good.”

“Since you seem to be keeping track, we’ve slept together exactly three times,” Jack said quietly. He pushed away from the table and gathered up the lunch wrappers, tossing them into the waste basket. “So it looks like you’ve undervalued yourself. And underestimated me, and my motives.”

“Guess I’m just a typical flighty female. No head for numbers,” Cara shot back. She took the sales contract, shoved it into the manila folder he’d brought it in, and held it out.

“Here. You can keep your building,” she said. “I can be out of here in by the end of the month. I don’t want any more gifts from any more men.”

“Fine.” He grabbed the envelope and headed for the shop door. “But you owe me six bucks for the lunch.”