The Abstinence Teacher (27 page)

Come on
, he occasionally found himself thinking.
If you ’re gonna sin, at least do something interesting
.

Though he had to admit, he did like Aimee’s tattoo. He’d meant to turn away, but there was something riveting about the sight of an attractive young woman unbuttoning her pants in the middle of an office. She only tugged them down a couple of inches in the back, just far enough to reveal the sweet slope of her hips, the triangle of a pink cotton thong, and three fairly large Chinese characters, which she said stood for Strength, Loyalty, and Perseverance. He didn’t look for long—just enough to admire the thickness, precision, and startling blackness of the calligraphy, and to trade an appreciative glance with Antonio Morris, the only other male witness—but it was apparently long enough for the image to sear itself permanently into his brain, so he could conjure it at will in those odd moments when something like that came in handy.

HE LEFT
the office around eleven for his twelve o’clock lunch with George Dykstra of DBH Design & Build, one of the bigger residential developers in the area. It was an important meeting for him, a rare face-to-face with a serious player in the industry, and he thought it would be a good idea to take a little walk beforehand, to clear his head and think about how he wanted to present himself.

As ironic as it was for someone with his abysmal credit history to be working as a loan officer, Tim enjoyed his job and considered himself pretty good at it. He’d gotten into the business four years earlier, after building the kind of spotty résumé that might have been expected from a musician with two years of college and a problem with substance abuse: a little temping here, some construction work there, a failed attempt at running his own landscaping business, followed by a hodgepodge of retail and restaurant jobs, and capped off by a three-year stint as an agent for Lucky Rent-A-Car, during the sober, responsible period that followed Abby’s birth. It wasn’t a terrible gig, and he
drew frequent praise from his superiors for his ability to calm irate customers. There was talk about a possible promotion to Assistant Manager, but it died down around the time he returned to his true vocation of snorting coke, at which point the job stopped looking like a stepping-stone to better things and revealed itself to be a deeply annoying distraction from the serious business of getting high and fully deserving of the contempt with which he began to treat it.

Divorced and precariously sober at the age of thirty-seven, he was searching for a new career path when he came across the classified ad in the
Bulletin-Chronicle
—“Mortgage Professional, Experience Preferred, Will Train”—and decided that he had nothing to lose by applying. His timing couldn’t have been better: shockingly low interest rates had triggered a tsunami of residential refinancing, and warm bodies were needed throughout the industry to perform the humble but nonetheless critical work of matching eager borrowers with appropriate (or at least willing) lenders.

Within a week he was on the phone, identifying himself to prospective clients—their names and numbers had been purchased from a telemarketer—as a representative of the Dream House Mortgage Company, a start-up run by three former frat brothers in their mid-twenties who didn’t seem to notice, or at least weren’t overly concerned about, the hard-to-explain gaps in Tim’s employment history. His “training” consisted of a quick lesson on how to read a rate sheet and price a loan, a one-day seminar at the Warrenton Marriott, and whatever on-the-fly advice he could grab from his bosses, who didn’t spend as much time in the office as he might have expected.

For two full years, Tim stayed afloat doing one ReFi after another. With rates hovering around 5 percent, the decision was a no-brainer for most homeowners. All you had to do was lay out the facts, no arm-twisting necessary. You felt like you were doing your clients a favor, arranging things so they had hundreds more dollars in their pocket every
month, while making a nice little commission in the process. It was one of those rare situations in life where everyone came out a winner.

Dream House went out of business around the time rates began creeping up—one of the partners moved to Florida, and another decided to go to physical therapy school—and Tim made the jump to Loanergy, a more established firm, signing on as “Senior Mortgage Consultant.” With the ReFi market losing steam, he had no choice but to shift his focus to purchases, transactions that were more satisfying on a personal level—he got to work much more closely with his clients—but also fraught with pressure and the potential for bad feelings. Deals fell apart all the time, due to unpredictable contingencies, rigid deadlines, and the sometimes unreasonable demands of lawyers, sellers’ agents, and lenders, not to mention good old human error (Tim learned the hard way what happened when you failed to lock in a good rate the day before the Chairman of the Federal Reserve made a big announcement). But deals got made all the time as well—the papers got signed, the checks got written, the property changed hands. His income varied widely from month to month, but on the whole he was doing better than he’d imagined possible when he’d started.

About six months ago, though, after years of booming, the real-estate market went flat. Houses sat all spring and summer with
FOR SALE
signs planted in their front yards. The buyers disappeared. Ever since he’d started at Loanergy, he’d gotten most of his leads through the Tabernacle—Pastor Dennis encouraged his flock to do business with other believers whenever possible—but it was just too small a niche to keep him going. Feeling the need to branch out, he got new business cards, did some mass mailings, even started buying lists from telemarketers again. He tried making inroads into some of the other evangelical churches in the area, but it turned out that Pete Gorman of Faith Financial had them pretty well locked up.

With the slow winter season looming, Tim had come to see the
situation as urgent, if not dire. He still had some savings, and Carrie had a steady job. Allison and Mitchell were rolling in money, so he figured no one would begrudge him a missed child support payment or two if he explained his situation. But that was just the short term. Taking the long view, it was clear that the profession was about to undergo a contraction, and that a fair number of people weren’t going to survive. Tim was determined not to be among those left behind. It wasn’t just that he liked his job; he
needed
it. Because he could imagine all too well what it would feel like to wake up in the morning with nowhere to go, the whole day stretching empty in front of him, and the Devil hovering at his shoulder, whispering all sorts of suggestions as to how a guy like Tim might want to fill it.

THE HOSTESS
at Cosmo’s Diner directed him to a window booth where a barrel-chested guy dressed like a construction worker was squinting at
The Wall Street Journal
through a pair of half-frame glasses perched on the tip of his nose. It took Tim a second or two to connect this formidable figure with George Dykstra, the sunburned goofball in board shorts and wraparound shades he’d met a couple of months ago at an instructional clinic for youth soccer coaches.

“Hey,” said Tim. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

George waved off the apology and folded up his paper.

“You’re not late,” he grunted, gripping the edge of the table and beginning the arduous process of extricating himself from the booth, which clearly hadn’t been designed to accommodate torsos of unusual girth. “I was early.”

George led Tim through an elaborate series of greetings—handshake, back slap, manly hug, hair tousle—before sucking in his gut and wedging himself back into his seat. As Tim followed suit, George drew his attention to the young, olive-skinned waitress in tight black pants filling water glasses at a nearby table. He admired her for a moment, then leaned forward with a confidential air.

“I’m telling you, Timmy. I don’t know who does the hiring around here, but I’d like to write him a thank-you note.”

“She’s a nice-looking girl,” Tim observed.

“I think she’s Greek. Cute little accent.” George’s eyes narrowed with calculation. “Wonder if Cosmo’s slipping her the old souvlaki. I wouldn’t put it past the bastard. Bring ‘em in on the boat, ship ’em out when you get bored. Pretty good deal, eh?”

Tim replied with a noncommittal bob of the head, doing his best to maintain a neutral expression. George removed his reading glasses and tucked them in his shirt pocket. Deprived of their senatorial gravity, his face looked shrewd and boyish, suddenly familiar.

“I’m just curious,” he said. “You ever fuck a Bulgarian?”

“Not that I know of,” said Tim.

George nodded slowly, as if pondering a subject of great complexity.

“Only reason I ask, I dated this crazy chick for a while before I got married. Yanka. That was her actual name if you can believe it.” He gave a nostalgic chuckle. “Total nympho. Used to claw at my back and thrash her head around like she was having a fit. Loud, too. Touch her in the right place, and she’d scream like the Russians were invading. I could never tell if it was just her, or something they put in the water over there.”

Tim forced a smile, thinking that it would be a good idea to find some gentle way of cluing George in to the fact that he was a Christian. They’d spent a whole morning together at the coaches’ clinic, but the subject of faith hadn’t come up, and George had clearly developed a mistaken impression of what kind of guy he was. It would spare them both some awkwardness if he came clean, but how to do it without casting a chill over the meeting was a thornier question. Sometimes the wiser course was just to let things unfold naturally and wait for the right opening to present itself.

“It’s nice to see you,” he said, hoping to steer the conversation in a healthier direction. “I really appreciate you meeting with me.”

George was staring at the waitress again, his gaze so insistent that she put down the pitcher and asked if he needed something. He grinned and shook his head, then turned back to Tim.

“Sorry I had to cancel on you last week. We had a big disaster out at Fox Hollow. Whole shipment of granite countertops came in, and they were all too big. Had to send ’em all back to the quarry. Now my tile guys gotta sit around for two weeks with their thumbs up their asses while the counters get recut. That job’s been one headache after another.”

“I hear it’s a pretty big development.”

“Twenty units. Almost all presold, thank God. Just got in under the wire. I know some guys who are all set to break ground on big projects next spring, and believe me, they’re all shitting their pants. Nobody’s buying jack.”

“It’s a tough market. I’m feeling it on my end, that’s for sure.”

“You wanna know who’s really fucked? My cousin Billy. Asshole bought himself a Hummer dealership. Try selling a fucking Hummer these days. I warned him, but he’s a stubborn little prick. Serves him right.”

“It’s a weird time, all right. Kinda scary.”

After the waitress took their orders, George excused himself to go to the restroom. Tim took advantage of his absence to remind himself of his strategy for this meeting, which wasn’t to whine about hard times but to sell himself as an experienced, up-and-coming, can-do loan officer with a solid client base, someone a guy like George Dykstra could be proud to be in business with. Not that he was expecting much, at least not right off the bat; he understood all too well that a high-volume developer like DBH probably had long-standing relationships with a whole stable of mortgage brokers. All he really wanted was a foot in the door, a chance to prove himself, to show that he could play with the big boys.

“Damn,” George said, as he squeezed back into the booth. “Those
fucking mochaccinos are worse than beer. I’m pissing every ten minutes.”

Tim sat up straight, preparing to make his pitch, but a strange feeling of self-consciousness came over him before he could begin. The moment seemed wrong somehow, but he couldn’t tell if this was an accurate reading of the situation or just an excuse for avoiding the unpleasantness of asking a favor from a person who wasn’t really even a friend. He turned to look out the window, as if the answer might be found in the passing traffic on River Street.

“How’s your team doing?” George asked.

“Not bad,” Tim replied, feeling simultaneously relieved and disappointed to be let off the hook. “We had a rocky start, but we’re finishing strong. As of this week, we’re tied for first in our division.”

“Lucky bastard.” George looked dejected. “We did just the opposite—started out like gangbusters, then we fell apart. It’s gotta be my fault, but I can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong.”

“There’s only so much you can do,” Tim reminded him. “You gotta work with the players you got.”

“I got the players,” George insisted. “At least on paper. But some of these kids, they got attitude problems. The other team scores one lousy goal, and they just give up.
We stink, we never win, can we just go home?
It drives me crazy.”

“I’m lucky that way. I’m coaching the A team, and my girls are totally motivated. They hustle, they come to practice on time, they cheer each other on, they give a hundred percent every game. I really couldn’t ask for a better bunch.”

When George’s cell phone rang, it played the theme from
Rocky
. He withdrew it from the leather holster attached to his belt, checked the caller ID, and muttered something under his breath.

“Lemme put this thing on vibrate,” he said, pressing some buttons and setting the phone on the table. “You know who my biggest problem is? George, Jr. Last year, I swear, he was incredible. Leading scorer
on the team, Charlie Hustle. His coach loved him, said he woulda been happy to have a whole team of little Georgies. Now this year, it’s like he can barely drag his ass up and down the field. I don’t know, maybe he’s depressed or something. But he sure looks happy enough when he’s banging away on that goddam Xbox.”

“It’s tough with your own kid,” Tim agreed. “My daughter’s not playing up to her potential, either. I try to talk to her about it, she just tunes me out.”