Catharine Bramkamp - Real Estate Diva 05 - A 380 Degree View

by Catharine Bramkamp

  I knew how she felt.

  But I worked hard to not burden her, she had the wedding to plan and issues of her own to scrupulously avoid. She didn’t have the energy to help me avoid my own problems.

  “And how is Ben?” Prue broke into my thoughts. She leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes, but she was listening. The gesture was worrisome. Had she always been this tired? I glanced at my dashboard; it was going on noon, hardly nap-time.

  I sped up, anxious to get her home and more comfortable.

  By the time I cleaned Prue’s refrigerator, threw out the suspicious milk, flat soda water and liquefied lettuce and shopped for replacement milk, soda and tonic, ground two weeks of coffee and shoved in and extracted five loads of laundry, the afternoon was almost finished.

  I felt good, despite the fact that I hadn’t called a single old prospect; I hadn’t even e-mailed old friends to shake them down for real estate prospects. I also had not indulged in doing anything for myself. I virtuously worked for my grandmother. It felt good and bad simultaneously. I knew I should be working, even if it was really just for show. Some of what is necessary for work, is just show, career theater. I knew Inez had not been kidding, I may be asked to leave and that did not bode well for my prospects at other offices in Sonoma County. I’ve never been out of work. But I just couldn’t get motivated to do anything about it. So I did laundry.

  I hefted up the last load of clean clothes to Prue’s room and put away the thick sensible socks and heavy sensible cotton panties. I couldn’t do this forever.

  Damn, I was stuck.

  I trailed down stairs where I had left Prue with her foot up and any stray marijuana out of reach. She could take Aleve and Advil like the rest of us.

  “Thank you Allison, now we can go to the play.” Prue announced as I rounded the door from the hallway.

  “What play?” I knew it was a rather silly question. There was always a play or event in Claim Jump, just not usually in the winter.

  “Summer Theater is putting on the Wizard of Oz and we are all supporting Sarah Miller. We made her an honorary member of the Brotherhood, you know.”

  I nodded as if I knew Sarah Miller. I have found, over the years, it’s easier to nod and simply allow the person in question to unfold before me like a well-written novel. I had little doubt that this Sarah Miller would be revealed to me in the course of the evening and it is easier to learn the players in order of appearance than to ask the question and thus submit to a full biography delivered in one breathless recitation.

  “Good, I don’t know how well Sarah is doing with the part. Summer seems to think she’s just fine.” Prue struggled with her walking cast cover. It was like watching a toddler wrestle with velco tennis shoes. I helped Prue re-attach her own senior set of Velcro straps.

  Summer Johnson is the theater director and calls her group, tongue in cheek, Summer Theater. The actors perform year round if they can. Since Summer is on the City Council and currently acting as mayor (the position rotates around council members; mayors serve for one year), I supposed she could do what she pleased. Summer and I used to run into each other at the river. Summer dyes her hair, mine is almost naturally blond. We know this little detail about each other.

  I closed my eyes. “So we’re off to see the Wizard?”

  “Don’t look so disgusted.” Prue chided me. “Besides, Brick, Raul, Pat and Mike are coming too.”

  All the boys. My grandmother is a card-carrying fag hag. I should find one (a card, she has enough gay men in her life) and laminate it for her, if she thought that would be funny. I think she would.

  There really wasn’t more discussion than that. I helped Prue clean up and change into fresh black slacks teamed with a cheerful yellow tunic. She slipped on a yellow gardening clog that wasn’t too disreputable, once I hosed it off outside.

  At the appointed time (early, since parking is always a problem, according to Prue), we all bundled up in our warm (and unfashionable, it’s difficult to dress simultaneously warmly and elegantly unless you wear fur and I was not going to do that with this group). After coats, gloves and scarves were found, the theater-goers, now warm, piled into my Lexus SUV.

  Brick and Raul made it their mission to attend all the performances of Summer Theater. Brick is a retired high school PE teacher and always seems to know at least half the cast. Raul is a wizard himself, of the web variety. He had rigged up a half dozen web cams in the theater with Summer’s blessing. He broadcasts the plays on his web site in real time. Wasn’t Summer concerned about losing audience share to the web?

  “Oh no, the theater is a live art form, we are just advertising the product. Do you not agree Allison?” Raul happily snuggled against Brick in the back of the car.

  Mike and Pat greeted us at the theater door. They distributed the tickets and we turned and gave them up to the young man standing directly behind Mike. It seemed a redundant gesture, but maybe there were official theater rules.

  “Allison darling.” Mike and Pat kissed and hugged and kissed and hugged again. “Darling so what are you running away from now?” Mike asked.

  “I’m not running away, Prue asked me to help her.”

  “Of course you are.” Pat said. I often confuse Pat and Mike, they are both tall rather handsome men, for their age, and they often dress alike. For instance tonight they both wore heavy green sweaters and dark jeans, outfits that pass for understaded elegance in Claim Jump.

  “I understand you had a bad Christmas.” Both men, forever friends of my grandmother, gazed at me in honest sympathy. Even if Prue had not told them everything, and I know she does, my Christmas activities were gruesome enough to be quite a sensation on the Internet. Patricia, the receptionist for New Century, had created a blog devoted to describing the serial murders, how the victims were cut into pieces, and my involvement with the whole situation. I refused her offer to link to my real estate website.

  The men nodded. It was not my favorite subject, since I narrowly missed making the news myself as one of the victims. I was all done, no more murder for Allison.

  “Allison and Ben are moving in together.” Prue announced.

  “Ah, that fabulous Ben Stone.” Raul crooned. “He looks so lovely on camera, don’t you think?”

  “Yes.” I frowned. Where had Raul seen Ben on camera? Was there a cam in my bedroom? Were there cameras placed around the guest apartment over the garage? Were there cameras in the guest bathroom? Shit, I’d have to do a sweep when I returned to Prue’s.

  The old theater in Claim Jump is marvelous. It was not the oldest theater in the state, it was the second oldest, but it did have the requisite leaky roof and bad plumbing to give the whole place historic credibility.

  Summer was in the lobby to greet her audience.

  Summer looked more like winter had blown in. Her solid blue-black hair was strident, cut into a perfect symmetrical bob. She favored dark eyeliner extended a half-inch from the corners of her gray eyes. She wore high-heeled boots, which helped make her taller than me. A fake fox stole was carefully “tossed” over her navy suit and gave her a contradictory air, garden club Goth. She could be the elder twin of Patricia, our completely Goth office manager. I always felt that after a certain age, a look as extreme as Goth was rather unsustainable. Apparently not. In Claim Jump, it does not matter what decade you choose to honor, no one cares, so few residents actually acknowledge that fashion changes from one decade to the next, they chose one, and stick with it.

  “Dorothy better make it to Oz before 9:00 PM.” Mike greeted Summer with an air kiss in the general direction of both her cheeks. She didn’t look particularly happy but she put up with all four men. Donors, all of them.

  “Don’t worry, you know we always take the needs of our audience into consideration when we stage the plays.” Summer worked with the neighboring restaurants. If she released her audience by 9:00 PM, they agreed to take dinner orders until 9:30. Her voice was smooth and modulated, practiced. Summer had tr
od the boards in an earlier life. She looked like she could make a convincing Wicked Witch, but clearly, she was not playing that part tonight.

  “Hello Summer, how are the permits going?” Prue took Summer’s hand, but the other woman didn’t really acknowledge Prue.

  “Fine.” she said absently, she focused on the front doors, eyeing the audience members, clearly disappointed with what she saw or didn’t see.

  “Looking for someone more important?” Prue asked caustically.

  “Lucky was supposed to come tonight.” Summer answered without rancor. “You know he told me he created a CRT with the theater as the recipient. Which is just wonderful!” She trailed off. “I just wanted to confirm … excuse me.”

  She left us standing in the center of the lobby, not feeling as important as when we entered.

  “I suppose to get more attention I’ll have to increase my donation level.” Mike complained.

  “I thought you were a symphony man,” Prue pointed out. Need I say it? In the summer there is county-wide music festival.

  “Symphony, theater, ballet so many arts, so little funding.” Mike said with a wave of his hand. “I suppose to get attention now, I’ll have to name the theater in my will like Lucky apparently did. Come on, I understand the beleaguered Sarah Miller is starring as Dorothy.”

  “She was terrible in Music Man.” Prue commented.

  Then why are we here? I did not say that out loud, but followed the crowd like a good girl.

  “Where else can Summer find a bona fined ingénue in this town who isn’t in school full time? And doesn’t look,” he paused searching for the word. “Shopworn?”

  “True, and Sarah has been a trooper for years.” Mike held Prue’s arm as we filed into our designated seats.

  “And an ingénue for longer than that.”

  “Any day now she’ll have to take the part of the mother.” Prue settled down on the aisle seat and gingerly extended her leg.

  “Or the wicked witch,” Raul wiggled his eye brows. “Excuse, I must check the cameras.”

  I love the Claim Jump Theater. When I was a kid, Prue signed me up for summer drama classes. I loved those classes (a whole lot better than the ballet lessons the summer before). I loved showing off and I loved escaping my older brothers and parents. In my eyes, nostalgia and affection trumps any realistic depiction of the small theater house. The seats are very old; the original red velvet has worn to a threadbare pink. The house only seats about two hundred audience members, which contributes to Summer’s claim that her performances sell out every night.

  But a theater does not make the rent on ticket sales. There was a good reason Summer was searching for Lucky Masters, the most successful developer in the county, as well as the wealthiest.

  I glanced up as a woman dressed in a costume straight from the summer of love galumphed down the aisle barely missing Prue’s casted foot.

  “That’s Debbie Smith.” Mike whispered.

  “Local?” I asked.

  Pat shook his head. “She’s only been here a few years.”

  “Debbie needs to update her look.” Mike, to my left, mused.

  “I lost to her.” Prue commented.

  “Her? I thought you lost to a high powered attorney from the city.”

  Prue and Mike nodded simultaneously.

  If Debbie Smith was a high-powered attorney, I was a runway model. Ms Smith was not built for speed, she was low to the ground, full figured and possibly quite buoyant in water. She was dressed in a long oversized blazer that was fashionable in the late ‘80s but not beyond. Under the blazer she sported a bright orange and yellow tie-dyed tee. The fashion magazines would say that the shirt “popped”, as in a pop of color. But this pop was more of the illegal BB gun pop than a moment of true fashion savvy.

  “She wants to do everything by the book.” Prue complained.

  “Has anyone in Claim Jump found the book?” I was accustomed to Claim Jump residents doing what they wanted, when they wanted, with small regard to permits, EPA, even water restrictions, and so were most of the older residents. I was surprised anyone cared about doing it by the book at this late date.

  “She actually wants to prosecute Lucky for violating about 30 years of EPA restrictions. She even wants Hank to fix his sidewalk.”

  “Hank’s sidewalk has always been like that,” I commented. Hank’s Roadhouse was a fixture on Main Street, as was the rather large bump in the sidewalk right in front of his entrance. Tourists hit the bump and it magically sends them careening through the doors of the roadhouse. At night, patrons staggered and hit the bump on the way out. If they fell down, the police chief Tom Marten was justified in asking for a sobriety test. Denizens of Hank’s learned to be light on their feet.

  “Even so, we all know to step over the hump, but she sees lawsuit everywhere she looks.”

  A hammer thinks every problem is a nail. Wow, I can come up with my own pillow worthy clichés. Prue must be rubbing off on me.

  “So what’s the solution?”

  “The problem was almost solved when she first moved here, her rental house caught fire.” Pat leaned over Mike to whisper, more or less, in my ear.

  “What is it with you guys and fire?”

  Prue shrugged. “Old houses, old wiring; we all know fire is a danger.”

  And so, don’t smoke in bed. But I kept that option to myself.

  It probably was a pretty prevalent problem. For too many years remodels were executed without the help of any professionals whatsoever. Homeowners armed with their Time-Life series of do-it-yourself books, did the job themselves. No one bothered with codes and permits. Locals considered the lack of surety part of the price paid for independence. No one complained, but new homes not up to code could be a different matter entirely. It’s one thing to hang the drywall in your own house; it’s another to unintentionally buy substandard housing. How ironic for a lawyer from the City to be caught up in the problem.

  I watched the apparently odious Debbie Smith pause and exchange a couple words with Summer who, for her part, was still looking for someone else. Debbie shook her head and Summer clutched her arm momentarily, and then quickly released it.

  Could the exchange between Debbie and Summer be more than business? The councilwoman and the mayor? There were too many possibilities. Maybe it was as simple as love. Would they hyphenate and be Summer-Debbie? I suspected there was far more drama out in the lobby than would appear on the stage all evening.

  My evil thoughts were interrupted by the recorded overture.

  There is no need to describe the play, the plot or anything else. Sarah Miller was pretty, engaging and a terrible vocalist. I cringed when she reached vainly for the high notes in Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

  The munchkins were played by local children who either enjoyed too little rehearsal time, or never listened to direction in the first place (I played a child in Music Man, so I know). The munchkins milled around on stage, looking like a crowd with no one to lynch. It worked fine, cute can still carry a scene. Dorothy was game and focused, but it seemed Sarah was losing her edge. She looked weary, as if she had already spent too much time working on the Kansas property.

  I snuck a peek at my phone in case Carrie had called back. No messages unless you count the four from the office. I ignored those.

  As soon as the curtain fell completing the first act, a young man, (young by Claim Jump standards) stood and applauded. The rest of the audience murmured and cautiously scooted to the lobby. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road played softly in the background as we all regrouped for a short intermission.

  “That’s him,” Prue whispered.

  “What’s him?”

  “That’s the boy who just put in a bid to buy the Library.”

  “He can’t do that.” I said automatically. “It’s state owned.”

  “No, no, the old library.”

  “My library!”

  Prue rolled her eyes. “Yes, your library. Anyway there he is.”

/>   “Very cute.” Raul observed. “Should we call on him?” He glanced at Brick who studiously looked through the advertising in the program; he showed great interest in a picture of lawn furniture.

  “You could,” Prue encouraged. “So far he only has met the members of the Brotherhood of Cornish Men.”

  “Mores the pity, that’s a formidable group. I’m surprised they didn’t frighten the poor boy away.”

  “They tried, no luck. They, I mean we, are not happy with having to put the building on sale, if that’s what you mean. Lucky put in the competing bid, the state can’t support it anymore.”

  I did not ask how my grandmother knew who put in a sealed bid for a former state-owned property. She herself was a member of the Brotherhood of Cornish Men, and they knew everything there was to know in Claim Jump.

  The young man in question was attractive in a rakish, irresponsible way. He gave the impression he never really held a job. I automatically compared him to Mr. Ben Stone (Rock Solid Service), no comparison.

  I did know Sarah Miller after all. But once I saw her, I remembered more about her. Sarah is a player in the long narrative that is Claim Jump. Sarah was born here and never left. Her mother left both Claim Jump and baby Sarah and moved to the Ridge in a haze of pot smoke and acromony. The grandparents, being most excellent Christians, took in the baby even while they disowned their own daughter.

  Prue shook her head. “I don’t know what will happen to her when her grandparents die. She has no job, fewer prospects.”

  That’s Prue, always looking on the bright side.

  Summer was back. She clutched a plastic glass of Charles Shaw red and stalked around the lobby. She periodically dashed out to the sidewalk, checked, then returned with a dejected expression on her face.

  The theater lobby is small and hot. Winter or summer, the audience spills out the entrance doors to the sidewalk. Some patrons wander all the way down the sidewalk to the Mine Shaft bar and never return. One year, during a particularly painful interpretation of Fiddler on the Roof, a majority, enough to be noticeable, never returned for the second act. Summer actually walked down to the bar and rounded up a good dozen members of her audience and forced marched them back to the theater. We all knew then how the residents of Anatevka must have felt.