Just Add Water (1) (13 page)

22

The next day I made a beeline for
the bank, and my new future.

Aline Watson, my good friend, was a
loan officer at Wells Fargo. She listened to what I wanted, raised a finely
tweezed, decidedly
un
-bankerly brow, fixed me with skeptical green eyes,
and shook her curly platinum locks.

“Let me see if I understand this,
Hetta. You want to sell your three thousand square foot home, buy a forty-five
foot boat, and then
live
on it.” It
wasn’t a question, but a statement delivered in a monotone that sounded as if
she had said, “So, you recently stepped off a space ship and you want me to give
you money?”

“Yep, you’ve got
it, Aline. I’ve made out a financial statement.” I shoved a folder across her
desk. “My house is on the market, and I’ve entered the asking price, which my
real estate lady says I’m sure to get, and the price of the boat. There’s also
a copy of my last three IRS tax returns. What else will I need?”

She did a quick perusal of my
paperwork, leaned across her desk and whispered, “A fuckin’ miracle.”

“What? You prequalified me for a
two hundred and fifty thousand dollar condo a couple of years ago.”

“That was before you lost your
mind,” she said, then remembered we weren’t sitting in my hot tub and put on
her professional face. “Hetta, I don’t want to rain on your parade, but let’s
go over this point by point. A boat is not a house. Nor is it a condo. The
rules are different.”

“How different?”

“First and foremost, boats, unlike
houses, can sink.”

“Ha! You haven’t been to
my
house lately, have you?”

 
She ignored me and continued. “Boats are considered a bigger
financial risk. Also, the maximum period I can finance one for you would
probably be fifteen years. They don’t appreciate like real estate, you know.”

I whipped out the handy payment
spread sheet furnished by my handy realtor. “Okay, so if I want to finance a
hundred grand at eight percent for twenty years, that’s nine fifty six a month.
That’s two hundred bucks less than my present house payment.”

“Not exactly. You can’t get a boat
loan for eight percent. More like ten. And you have to rent or buy a dock.”

“Okay, at the yacht club I can get
a deal, two hundred a month,” I said smugly. “We’re still up to only a little
over twelve hundred. And there’s no property tax.”

“True, but you have to pay
personal
property tax, insurance, and
then you have to pay for the water you displace.”

“Excuse me?”

“In the Bay Area some
brain-challenged bureaucrat at the BCDC—that’s the Bay Conservation and
Development Commission—came up with the idea that a boat is landfill and you
have to pay accordingly. Now,” she punched numbers into her computer at the
speed of light, “with insurance, we’re already up around thirteen hundred a
month.”

“Which is, with my house insurance
and all, about the same as I’m paying now,” I said stubbornly and a bit
defensively. “Jesus, this reminds me of what it was like years ago when I
bought my first house as a single woman. The bankers went bonkers, but I
finally got my loan.”

“Hetta, there’s no discrimination
here. Trust me, you’re being treated like any man who came in here with the
same problem.”

“A few minutes ago it was a request
for a loan and now it’s a problem?”

“You
are
self-employed. That could be a problem, but let’s sit here and
work through it. If we’re even close, I’ll go to bat for you, but we really
need to talk about these credit cards.”

* * *

Steam rising from the hot tub
almost obscured Jan’s round-eyed reaction. “You are shittin’ me,” she said.
“Charge cards are a liability? What are these folks? Communists?”

“Worse. Bankers. And they obviously
don’t understand the basic principles of capitalism.”

“Yeah, and we’re certainly
superficially shallow and overextended enough to qualify as bona fide
capitalists. What’s wrong with those people?” She took a sip of wine and lifted
her glass. “Here’s to us, us, us.”

“Hear, hear,” I said, clinking her
Waterford with my Waterford. “Anyhow, they say I have to pay off all the
plastic, then cancel most of them because the max limit on each card you own is
considered a liability.”

“How many do you have?”

“Only twenty.”

Jan almost choked on her wine.
“Twenty credit cards? You’re kidding. You owe on all of them?”

“No silly, only on half. You know,
two hundred to Macy’s, same to Sears. A grand on a couple on Visas, five
hundred to Neiman Mar …”

“Neiman’s? You tell me Neiman’s is
overpriced. You call them Needless Markup. What did you buy there?”

“Escargot Helper? Hell, I don’t
know. What a wake up call. Aline tried her best, but she told me I should be
looking for a cheaper boat. Actually, she said I should be looking for a
shrink, but she’s sooo conservative. She finally admitted she could probably
push the loan through, mainly because the boat is being purchased way under
market value and I actually do have a great credit rating despite the credit
cards—
if
I were not self-employed.
I’ll have to fax her a copy of my latest contract with the Seattle folks, then
she’ll see what she can do. So, I wait. With any luck,
Sea Cock
will be mine.”

“That name definitely has to go.”

“First thing I’ll do, trust me. But
I’m a long way from changing boat names. I gotta lotta creative financial stuff
to pull off and debts to dump. I think I’ll sell the Beemer. It won’t do it any
good to sit in a waterfront parking lot, and besides, I can use RJ’s car. It’s
paid for.”

RJ’s ears perked at hearing his
name. He wagged his tail and tried to stand up, but yelped when he put weight
on his bad leg. My heart sank as both Jan and I moved quickly to hold and
soothe him while he whined in pain.

 
“It’s okay, boy. Stay still and Mommy will get you a pain pill,” I
whimpered.

“You stay with him, Hetta. I’ll get
it. What’s he taking?”

“Vicodin,” I said, nuzzling the
soft fur behind his ear with my nose. “Shit, bring me one, too.”

23

Other than the bank loan debacle
and RJ’s failing health, things settled back to normal. I checked the new
padlock on the dog jail daily, making sure my key still worked. Naturally the
breather, whom I was sure was Hudson, had stopped calling just as the cops
began monitoring the phone. And the fool in Seattle seemed to let up on his
barrage of memos accusing me of everything from price-fixing to cronyism.

I threw myself into putting
together bid proposals, attempting to snag a new project before this one ran
out, all the while dodging lookyloo would-be buyers my real estate agent ran
through my house on what seemed to be an hourly basis.

In my spare time, I tried to figure
out a way to finance
Sea Cock.
It
wasn’t going to be easy. I called Morris Terry one day when I had to admit to
myself that my abilities at financial wizardry were severely lacking. “Morris,
this is Hetta Coffey, and I’m afraid I have some bad news. As much as I want
her, I’m having a problem getting financing for the other hundred thou on
Sea Cock
.”

“Credit problems?”

“I didn’t think so. I have a triple
A credit rating and could qualify for a comparable condo, but not a boat. At
least not your boat. I guess I’ll have to be realistic and start looking at
condos.”

“Any bites on your house?”

“Lots. According to my real estate lady,
it’s only a matter of days until I receive an offer. I’m about to join the
residentially challenged. That’s Sanfran-speak for homeless. I can’t even rent
a decent apartment ‘cause I’ve got a dog.” I don’t know why I was telling this
poor man my problems. All he wanted to do was sell his damned boat.

“Hey,” Morris said, “don’t give up
your dreams. I’m a patient man and you are a clever gal. You’ll get what you
want. Meanwhile, don’t worry too much. Things have a way of changing.”

Boy, he wasn’t kidding.

Ten minutes later I lost my job.

* * *

According to the tersely worded,
one page fax I found in my office, the services of Hetta Coffey,
S.I.,
were no longer required
.
I had to laugh in spite of the
devastating news. Didn’t
anyone
pick
up on my little joke? I tacked the
S.I.
title on my card for
Civil Engineer,
and not one soul had ever asked me what it stood for.

Anyway, I was off the Seattle
project. I could expect, via courier service this very day, a check covering
any expenses incurred to date, a prorated percentage of my total contract, and
an extra ten grand to offset any inconvenience caused by early termination of
the contract. Damn! The bastards followed the terms of the contract exactly as
I’d written them.

Some quick numbers crunching told
me I was okay for three months if really careful. Because I was self-employed,
I always kept “screw you” money in reserve for house payments and bills, but my
financial future was looking downright grisly. And it didn’t take a Mensa
member to figure out that any
Sea Cock
deal had to be put on the back burner. No wonder the banks hated me. It was
people like me who gave me a bad name.

I called Seattle and got stonewalled. I
left messages, but no one returned my calls. I sent faxes. I sent e-mails.
Nada. The promised courier arrived with a check and a sheaf of legalese
stipulating when I endorsed and cashed the check I was, in effect, agreeing to
the terms of my dismissal. Don’t call us, we’ll call you. No further
explanation as to why, but I smelled a rat named Dale.

“Well shit, RJ, we’ve been fired!”
I’d never been fired, not even when I got in hot
misu
with Baxter Brothers, my former employers who-em I’d royally
pissed off in Japan.

It was time to call in the Trob.

Fidel Wontrobski—his dad was a
Polish communist, thus the name—still worked for Baxter Brothers Engineering
and remained my friend despite my lousy track record there. A few years my
junior, Fidel was skinny and topped six-five if he’d unfold his horrible
posture. With a hooked nose, a black scruffy topknot of frizzy hair, and an
entire wardrobe of baggy black clothing, he looks like a buzzard. A buzzard
savant.

The Trob, engineering genius,
headed up a think tank from the exclusive top floor of the Baxter Building.
Only the elite, such as the brothers Baxter and a couple of former high-ranking
politicos, shared his lofty location. Which was amazing, in light of the fact
that Fidel possessed not a single social or political skill. But corporate
heads, former Secretaries of State, and their minions all deferred to Fidel
Wontrobski’s brilliance.

Of course they rarely encouraged
the Trob to interact with other employees and certainly never let him talk to
clients. Fidel was a prisoner of his own intelligence. A thirty-three-year-old
wunderkind. Lunch was delivered to his office and, most nights, dinner. He
lived in a nearby hotel, slept only four hours a night—midnight to four—and was
the first one in the Baxter employees’ cafeteria for breakfast each morning. I
was usually second.

For weeks after I first joined the
firm, the Trob and I sat at opposite ends of the mostly empty cafeteria,
studiously ignoring one another. Then one morning as I was passing his table,
we experienced a power failure. Hearing a frightened whimper, I reached in my
purse, pulled out a flashlight, and sat with him until an emergency generator
kicked in and the lights came back on. We ate breakfast together that day and
every workday until I was shipped out to Japan.

We also fell into the habit of,
after breakfast, taking a very private elevator car to his tower of wisdom,
where we’d play dominoes until I had to join the lesser grunts at eight. I
never won a single game.

After I left for Tokyo, we called
each other regularly on the company’s dime and if I had a work problem, he’d
help me out. And when I had my
big
problem, Wontrobski saved my ass. Maybe he could do it again. Or at least find
out what the hell was going on.

“Yo, Trob,” I said when he picked
up the phone, “wanna play some dominoes?”

“Right now?”

“No, dear, I’m in Oakland and
you’re in San Francisco right now. I was thinking of meeting you for breakfast
tomorrow morning and we could play then.”

“Oh.”

“Do you want to or not?” Talking to
the Trob was often times like conversing with a four-year-old.”

“Okay.”

“Fidel, you need to leave a pass
with the front desk guard so I can get into the cafeteria. Okay?”

“Oh.”

“Are you gonna do it?”

“Okay.”

“Bye now.”

“Bye.”

I hung up and screamed. You can see
why the Trob doesn’t get invited out much. Monosyllabic to the point of
appearing simple, yes, but give him a keyboard and a modem and the man can
communicate like a Dale Carnegie. Dale Carnegie with unlimited cyber-contacts
in the engineering world and computer equipment nonpareil.

The next morning we had breakfast,
played dominoes, and then I laid out my problem, writing down the names of all
the players. When I left, Fidel was already absorbed by his monitor screen,
performing electronic magic. By the time I got home, he had sent me a three
page e-mail. Even by Trob standards, this was fast. And, as I suspected, Dale
Stevens, the guy I’d burned in Seattle, was the culprit. The son of a bitch was
playing by my rules. What a dirt bag.
 

One of the things I’ve learned over
the years is that buttering up chief execs and the like is a waste of time, but
their secretaries—most of them called “executive assistants” now—are another
matter. A rose here, a little sincere sympathy for their difficult, thankless,
underpaid jobs there usually greased the skids when needed. This time was no
exception.

After Audrey, the Seattle project
manager’s right hand gal, had told me, officially, for the fourth time in so
many hours that her boss was in a meeting, she called me, unofficially, from a
pay phone during her break.

“Hetta,” she whispered, “he’s
really not in a meeting.”

“Surprise, surprise.”

“You’ve got a problem, Hetta Honey.
Check your e-mail. Gotta go.” Deep Throat in Laura Ashley florals hung up.

Her e-mail had three attachments,
all bad. I was being accused of bid package tampering and pandering to favored
bidders. Two memos, written by GUESS WHO, said I had unnecessarily complicated
the bid request packages, thereby jacking the price and insuring my own
handpicked bidder won the contract. Dale the Dork had stopped just short of
accusing me of receiving kickbacks, but the implications were clear.

Attachment number three was a copy
of an old letter on Baxter Brothers corporate letterhead stationery summarizing
their never-proven suspicions that I was disloyal to Baxter in my dealings with
Superior Oil, the client in Japan. Presumably this little tidbit was presented
to my Seattle client as further proof of my nefarious nature.

I forwarded the blasphemous
documents to the Trob, then called Jan.

“I’ve already heard,” she said.
“Bad news travels fast. My boss is talking to lawyers as we speak.”

“And?”

“Nothing yet, but other than being
a big pain in the ass, he thinks we’re dealing with a nuisance thing. The fact
that you and I are friends is beside the point. We bid it fair and square, we
got the purchase order and shipped the goods. It’s the goods that are being
questioned by your now-ex-client; you know, whether all the equipment you
spec’d out was necessary. The boss is writing a rebuttal letter as we speak.
Defending your honor, I might add.”

“Tell him thanks, but I’m a big
girl. I’ll handle it.”

“What are you gonna do, Hetta?”

“I’m going to Seattle and whup up
on Dale.”

Jan giggled. “Now that’s mature and
businesslike.”

“Okay, maybe not, but it sure would
make
me
feel better. I don’t know yet
what to do, but I’ll be damned if I’ll take this besmirchment lying down.”

“Atta girl. You going to get a
lawyer?”

“I’m going to call Allison. She’s
meaner’n a rattlesnake with a tummy ache.”

“You go, girl. See you tonight?”

“Yep. Hot tub huddle, comin’ up.”