CHAPTER 2 #2
Excitement quietly builds in the restaurant.
Hope, too, I think. I can’t deny it, his numbers sound amazing.
If I just woke up and went to the bakery and had customers coming in every few minutes?
Wow. And in one photo he showed a line waiting to check out at some fake counter.
If I had a line? If I didn’t have to scrape, beg, borrow and steal my way to getting Dad a few extra Valentine’s customers?
Shelly sighs. Carl sits back in his seat. Steven is vibrating and Miles next to him has his calculator app open. It really feels like we might be saved. Maybe I misjudged the jackhole.
“Wait!” Tyrone says.
Aiden presses through a few more slides, then looks over at us. I look away. But Tyrone speaks up.
“Back a few slides, Mr. Moneybags. Where is da other half town?”
“Listen, if you—” the billionaire tries, but the room is spinning up again.
“Half of town, what?”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t see it.”
“Go back!”
Reluctantly, Aiden does flip back.
And there it is.
Our Main Street, half gone.
The Roasted Chestnut, vanished.
And turned into a parking lot.
“We’ll preserve as much of the east side of the town as we can, but the west—”
“For parking? You want to tear down my great granddaddy’s shop for parking?” Shelly shrieks.
Everyone on the west side of the street joins in.
The east side of the street has a few shops before the street turns residential.
There’s the historic Sap Hill mansion and some brownstones.
Before the mansion, the west side of the street ends in a sort of cul-d-sac, where the gazebo and the grassy knoll sit.
A few outliers in the room join Shelly, people who want our beloved gazebo to stand. People who want the town square to stay a full square, er, circle. People who want, you know, actual Juniper Falls, to still exist!
I clench my fists, silently cheering on everyone yelling and pointing. Tell him, guys!
But the man just stands and waits, cool as a tomato, unbothered. Like we’re a bunch of toddlers and he’s letting us have our tantrum. His unflappable stance and hard-set, chiseled jaw are not attractive. They’re annoying! So annoying.
Eventually everyone settles and stares at him, waiting.
“I want Juniper Falls to adapt. The resort is positioned on the land for maximum use of the mountain slopes and views. It has to be in order to charge the right prices and make back my almost one billion dollar investment. And I’m the only hope you have.
Unless you’ve similar offers piling up somewhere?
” He pauses to look at Miles, whose poker face is as bad as mine.
Then he gives his staff a nod. They begin packing up.
“Right. Because no one else has the capital, resources or portfolio of past acquisitions exactly like this one. This is what I want, and my offer to you. Your town lives, or it doesn’t.
I look forward to hearing your answer soon so we can be operational in under a year. ”
He taps the table once and leaves.
Just…leaves.
His staffers quietly follow.
The grill door slams and the room explodes.
Poor Miles, who was handed the giant leather-bound binder of information, is all but attacked.
I’m still frozen in my chair.
He didn’t even take questions. Didn’t offer any sort of compromise or leeway. No window for negotiations. Just his way or no way.
“We can’t,” I say out loud.
Tyrone, probably surprised to hear my voice in the turmoil, turns to me. “What’s that?”
“We can’t let him take over. He didn’t even let us ask questions.”
“No he sure didn’t,” the sweet old man replies, sounding a bit dumb-struck.
“Because we don’t have any other options,” Shelly says. She’s still stuck in her chair like me, while everyone else has moved to hover over Miles' shoulder.
“Well, we’ll have to come up with some,” I say.
“We will? Who is we, sister? You and me and this ol’ hippie?” She gestures at Tyrone, who does, in this moment, look exactly like a big black man from Jamaica who owns a record store, and probably has some weed on his person right now, would look. He just laughs.
“Stockings was gone too,” I say, remembering the image.
“Yeah, but the Newmans are ready to retire, no kids to leave the grocery store to. Plus they have their rentals around town. They’re gonna fold,” Shelly sighs.
“Where’s Maxine?”
“Maxine!” I say, pointing at Tyrone as he asks about her. “She won’t stand for this. She’s at a market this week.”
“Great. So you, me, Tyrone and the crazy cat lady,” Shelly scoffs.
“Just because she has a lot of cats doesn’t make her crazy,” I say. The two just stare at me.
“Babygirl, she has six cats inside the gift shop. God only knows how many she has in her house,” Steven says, joining our conversation suddenly.
“What do you think?” Shelly asks him.
“I think it’s bittersweet. Good for my business, good for all of us as homeowners, bad for the nostalgia. And the environment, probably. Sad to see it all go.”
“But what about tourism?” Mrs. Newman wonders, everyone listening in now, “Isn’t the charm of our town the whole reason people come here?”
“Came here,” Ron corrects her, clearly on board with the resort. The resort which, notably, leaves his side of the street intact. “Past tense.”
“So that’s it? You’re on Team Take Down Town Square, just like that?”
Ron shrugs, Tyrone laughs and says, “Yeah, yeah, we’ll see what team you’re on when Texas Roadhouse and Olive Garden buy up the big empty plots to the south.”
“They wouldn’t,” Ron pales a bit.
“They would. Just like Chili’s did in Cedar Point,” Gary says, visibly excited and clearly on team Take Down. “Think of the schools, the parks, the roads, everything gets funds.”
“Everything that isn’t torn down!” Shelly argues.
And so the conversation explodes again, around and around.
There are fair points made on all sides.
By the end, we help Ron clean up and file out, exhausted and mostly sad.
After reviewing every angle, they’re all too sharp.
We’re all feeling gutted. No one loves either option that His Royal Dictator laid out, accept or die.
One thing is clear, to me, at least.
That beautiful—terrible!—terrible but very well-dressed man, is a bully.
I’ve lived with one of those before.
And we simply cannot let him take over our town.
I can’t let that happen. I have to make sure we stand up to him. Find another way, with someone else or by some other means. Somehow, I will find the strength to say so. Audibly.