Chapter 8 - The Weight of Avoidance
By the time I left Apartment 4B, the sun had gone down.
I carried the envelope in the inside pocket of my coat.
For the first time in years, I drove without turning on the radio.
The city passed around me in streaks of headlights and illuminated windows.
I kept thinking about my mother.
When I was young, I had believed money was the thing standing between us and happiness.
Every unpaid bill had seemed like an enemy.
Every repair we couldn’t afford.
Every pair of shoes she made last one more winter.
Every time she told me she wasn’t hungry and let me finish what was left.
So I had decided, very early, that I would never be poor again.
I worked.
I borrowed.
I failed.
I worked more.
By thirty-five, I owned two buildings.
By forty, fourteen.
By fifty, I had stopped counting them as buildings and started calling them assets.
Somewhere along the way, the boy who knew the exact price of a carton of milk had become a man whose assistant handled personal grocery deliveries.
That night, I drove past my house twice before realizing I had missed the turn.
The letter stayed unopened.
The next morning, Daniel was waiting outside my office with a folder.
“You asked for the maintenance history on Cedar Street.”
“That was fast.”
“I value sleep, so I started early.”
He dropped the folder on my desk.
I opened it.
Roof patching.
Pipe repairs.
Heating complaints.
Window replacements deferred.
More heating complaints.
I frowned.
“Why was half of this deferred?”
“Budget allocation.”
“Whose decision?”
“Property management.”
“Based on?”
Daniel hesitated.
“Annual return targets.”
“Mine?”
He looked at me.
“You own the company.”
That answer annoyed me again.
Also because it was true.
I kept reading.
Apartment 4B had submitted three heating complaints the previous winter.
Two were marked resolved.
One was marked tenant unavailable.
“Was this repaired?”
“I don’t know.”
“Find out.”
Daniel folded his arms.
“What happened yesterday?”
“Nothing.”
“You personally visited a delinquent tenant, froze an eviction, requested five years of maintenance files, and asked what we spend on decorative shrubs.”
“They’re not decorative shrubs.”
“Then what are they?”
“I don’t know. Expensive shrubs.”
Daniel waited.
He had worked for me for eight years.
He was one of the few people who had learned that silence annoyed me more than questions.
“I knew her mother,” I finally said.
“The tenant?”
“Her mother knew mine.”
“That explains some of it.”
“Some?”
Daniel looked at the maintenance folder.
“Not all.”
I closed it.
“How many units in our lower-income buildings are currently behind on repairs?”
“That’s not a number I have memorized.”
“Find out.”
“How many buildings?”
“All of them.”
He stared at me.
“Is this about one tenant?”
“No.”
He nodded slowly.
May you like
“That sounds more complicated.”
“It probably is.”
