I was really tired and all I wanted to do was go to bed, but this was obviously the first taste I was getting of what real domestic life with a partner was about, so I made us both coffee and got Jessie to tell me what had happened.
With the late night coffee in hand, sitting on the fancy stools at our kitchen island she told me about how Melanie, her Mom, had gone back to their flat earlier that day. Tony had been on his way out to the gym that evening when he found her talking to Mrs Immelmann in the foyer of their building. That alone must have been incredibly awkward, but it got worse. Melanie had a suitcase with her and had planned to move back in. She just couldn’t find her keys to the flat, so that’s why she was talking to Mrs Immelmann who was undoubtedly trying to glean as much information as possible about where she’d been the past eighteen months.
When Melanie saw Tony come out of the lift she smiled, walked right up to him and planted a kiss on his lips. He didn’t know what to do, so he took her and her suitcase back upstairs and they sat down while she explained herself.
“Holy shit balls.” I said. “That is some soap opera drama if ever there was soap opera drama in real life.”
“Tell me about it. I honestly don’t know what to do. Daddy phoned me from the callbox at the café because she is still there at the flat, pretending like she belongs there.”
I asked Jessie where her Mom had been and she told me that she’d been living in a commune in the mountains with this weird guru like guy she’d met at work. It wasn’t working out so she thought it would be best if she came back home and tried to make her marriage to Tony work again.
“Just like that?” I asked.
“I know!” Jessie was incredulous.
“Do you think she heard about the money?”
“She must have. Somebody somewhere must have shown her the newspaper we were in and here we are, mother hen coming home to re-feather her nest.”
The implications of this unexpected arrival were huge. It was obvious to me that there was no love lost between Jessie and her mother, but now there was also this other woman in Tony’s life, not to mention how all this would affect him, seeing as he was just starting to get his world back on track.
“What does your Dad say?”
“He’s really pissed off. Apparently they had a ding dong shouting match before he went out to gym. He called me before he went home to let me know what was going on.”
“And is he going to let her stay, you think?”
Jessie shook her head as she finished her coffee. “I don’t know. He didn’t tell me. I offered to come over but he said it was best if I didn’t because it would just make the situation worse.”
“And how do you feel about the whole thing?”
“She can take a long run off that short pier, as far as I’m concerned. I want nothing to do with her, but I just know that she’s going to manipulate Daddy into letting her stay. He said he will fill me in on what happens tomorrow.”
It was tomorrow already and I was starting to feel the weight of the massive steak I’d eaten sap whatever energy I had left right out of me. The coffee hadn’t perked me up at all. I put my hand on her knee and she covered it with her own.
“Love, I am so sorry this has happened and you know I will support you in whatever you decide to do, but right now I am ready to conk. Can we talk some more in the morning?”
She looked at me a little pained that I wasn’t going to be able to sit up with her all night and ruminate on this situation, but after a moment she smiled.
“It’s OK. I understand. How was your dinner with Simon? Has he forgiven you for ghosting him?”
“He’s great. I think he’s going to get lucky tonight. He was chatting up the waitress who served us and I saw sparks. I invited them to the thing next weekend.”
Jessie put her head in her hands. “Oh God. The engagement party. That’s another complication to sort out.”
I took her by the hands and led her away from the kitchen. “Let’s go to bed.” I said. “Tomorrow’s trouble is for tomorrow.”
We went up to the bedroom, made sure we closed the curtains and got into bed. I slept like a log but I don’t think Jessie slept much at all. I found her downstairs in the kitchen when the sun was already high in the sky. She was fully dressed and ready to go out.
“Good morning, sleepy head. Make you a cup?” she said. I could hear that her voice sung a little lighter than it had been the night before, which was a good sign.
“Did you get any sleep?” I asked.
“Uh-huh.” She didn’t offer more detail so I took it that it was probably mostly sleepless.
She told me that Tony had called earlier that morning and let her know that he checked Melanie into a hotel for the night. He wasn’t having her back in the flat and she sure as hell wasn’t just going to re-establish herself in their lives without some deeper explanation. Or penance, at least. My thinking was that they needed to establish if she had come back because of the money Jessie had won. Tony hadn’t said anything to her about it and apparently she hadn’t even asked about where Jessie was living, so there was a chance she didn’t know about it at all. Or she could just be playing a disingenuous game.
Coming from a small family where there had never been any drama I didn’t know how to deal with this sort of thing, so I couldn’t offer any meaningful advice. I had no aunts or uncles and as a result there were no cousins in my life either. The closest I had gotten to family dramas was listening to the ladies in the bank gossip in the staff room during lunch breaks. I had eavesdropped through plenty of divorce and infidelity chit-chats but most women never spoke about reconciliation with their spouses if the divorce genie was out of the bottle. That was usually the Rubicon.
Jessie said that she was going to go down to this hotel and have it out with her mother.
“Do you want me to come with you?” I asked.
“No. This is a bit too personal, Love. I don’t want to exclude you, but we need to figure it all out ourselves. I don’t want you to get caught up in it, whichever way it goes.”
She kissed me and said that she would see me later, after lunch. She was wearing white jeans, white sneakers and a white blouse. I hoped that this wasn’t a sign of surrender. I pulled her closer to me and hugged her tightly. “I’m here if you need me, Love.”
The rest of my morning was comprised of a series of phone calls that I needed to make. I had some cereal for breakfast, got dressed in my new uniform of semi-casual business attire (being chinos and a golf shirt) and walked down the side street to my office. On the walk I thought about the implications of Melanie Lombard being back in the lives of her family. What would I do if I found out that she was siphoning money off Jessie? Would I risk confronting her and potentially upsetting my fiancé? Would I just stand by and watch an evil woman take advantage? There were so many questions I didn’t have the answer to. All I could do at that point was focus on building the fortune I’d been lucky enough to find and make damn sure that if Jessie lost hers I could still take care of her, no matter what.
My new office was still in a state of semi-chaos. I’d had Diane’s input on what I should do with it, decor-wise and decided to implement a few of her suggestions. The open plan space was littered with new modern desks that still needed to be assembled and filing cabinets wrapped in cling film that were standing around like single people at a dance.
My enclosed office, however, was looking sharp. I had a large L-shaped desk with a leather insert for writing and a credenza behind it. I didn’t have any certificates or awards to put on the wall behind me, like Verne Brown did, so I had a large aerial photograph of the city printed out and framed to hang there instead. It looked pretty sweet. My office furniture was super modern stuff that had come at a ridiculous price, but after looking at the interest payments I was receiving on my capital every month I just signed a cheque and gave it to Diane. It was starting to look like tycoon central in here and I loved it.
My first call was to the recruitment agency I had tasked with finding me some experienced staff to run my business. I needed a full time secretary come bookkeeper and I also needed a property manager who’s job would be to maintain tenant / landlord relations, sort out maintenance issues in the flats I had bought and also keep an eye out for future investment opportunities. The agency said that they had narrowed down the applicants for each position to five possibles after the initial interviews but would be sending me no more than three for each position to personally interview.
I had no idea what the hell I was doing when it came to interviewing people who would likely be older than me, but the recruitment lady, Susan, said that she would attend and lead the interviews with me being present. I didn’t have to worry about that aspect. These were going to be set up for next week across three different days so I’d need to have my office space fully sorted out by then. How hard could it be?
Call number two was to a catering company. I wanted the engagement party to be a casual, but fun affair for our guests. Not a sit down dinner, but rather a cozy evening under the stars on the rooftop that we didn’t have to do any cooking for. There were some options involving a lamb on the spit, but with only about 12 people coming that would be overkill, so I asked for some alternatives that would fit the group size a little better. The young lady I spoke with said that she would get back to me or Jessie. I gave her our home number too.
We were also going to require the services of a full time housekeeper. Most of the time these African ladies would be personally recommended by people who were moving out of buildings and needed to help their maids find new employment, but since we were one of only about 10 sets of residents who had moved into The Sentinel so far the pickings were slim. We would have to find somebody on our own. I didn’t know who I could call for that so for now we were going to have to do the cleaning ourselves.
I called my Mom and gave her the news about our engagement. She was very happy for us and couldn’t wait to come over and see our ‘flat’ (I don’t think she had any idea what she was in for).
I ticked off all the things I had to do in my dairy and leaned back in my fancy office chair, putting my shoes on the desk. Nobody was going to freak out if I did that but I supposed that once I had employees working here I would need to set an example. For now I was the alpha dog so feet on the desk was allowed.
My wallet was on the desk and I could see something unfamiliar poking out of it. I opened it to find the black business card with the gold Sykes & Co lettering and remembered the unwanted table visit by the guy with the Freddie Mercury moustache last night. Cheeky bugger, I thought as I pulled the card out of my wallet. I wondered if he was a legit developer or if he was just another business card toting parasite? The company name I could look up in the Yellow Pages, so I opened a desk drawer and pulled out the big chunky book of all registered businesses. Sykes & Co. I looked under construction companies but couldn’t find anything with that name. What would they be listed under? Real estate? I looked in that part too but came up empty handed again.
I opened up the telephone directory and flipped to the back of the book looking for the last of the S listings. There were quite a few Sykes but no business called Sykes & Co. Interesting. I put the card in my drawer along with the Yellow Pages and phone book. I was going to have to get one of those business card holders at some point.
I returned my thoughts to Jessie’s dilemma of her mother showing up unexpectedly. I wondered how her meeting with this woman of thin commitments would go. Maybe she’d changed? I didn’t know her, so I had no idea.
The rest of the day went by slowly. I bought a newspaper and a small lunch roll from the supermarket and poured over the property classifieds, looking specifically for flats in the beachfront area under the forty thousand mark. There were quite a few so I set about making contact with the agents representing them. Rhonda was a very busy agent and she tended to focus on the upper end of the market. What I had learned from my short time in the bank was that buying flats at the lower end was relatively easy.
As the landlord your objective was to find reliable tenants and keep them there. This would provide a steady stream of never ending income, but over the long term your properties would increase in value, meaning that your net worth was growing too. It’s a simple concept. The trouble for most people is that they didn’t have the financial means of putting down a ten percent deposit on the flat they lived in, so they couldn’t get the mortgage finance they needed to buy the sectional title. I would buy the flats for cash money, negotiating a better price, keep the tenants in there for around 5-8 years and then offer them an option of buying the unit from me at market prices. The market was growing at around ten percent annually, but the banks were expecting a property boom to happen soon. When it did I would be in the pound seats again if I played my cards right.
My plan was to start with about ten flats in the two bedroom category. These were the easiest to find tenants for because especially in the south end there was a school (Jessie and I’s old school), a hospital and easy access to the harbour where large numbers of dock workers could be found. All those people working in the area would need a place to stay. I made some calls and set up appointments to view three flats the next day. By 5pm I was ready to go back home and see what had transpired with Jessie and her mother, Melanie.
The air was crisp in spite of it being typically sunny for the time of year. Pretty soon I would need to start wearing a jacket or jersey. I walked into the building and waved to Stanton, the security guard. He beamed back a smile at me, waving enthusiastically. I entered the lift and leaned back on the railing, waiting for the machine to deposit me on my private floor.
The front door to the penthouse was open and I could hear voices coming from within. I walked in, closing the door behind me. Nobody was in the living room so I walked to the front of the T shaped bottom floor to find Jessie, Tony and Melanie Lombard sitting, talking at the bar.
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