Chapter 26

Cal woke up the next morning feeling like he hadn’t been to sleep at all. He stretched and then propped himself up on his elbow and then realized that, in fact, he had only slept a few hours.

Yes, he’d gone to bed early, but that didn’t mean anything about being asleep. He glanced at the lighted dial on the clock. It wasn’t even five in the morning. Ed would be waiting for him soon in the barn with a herd of Holsteins to milk.

“I think that cheeseburger last night at the Bluebird gave me a case of heartburn,” he said out loud.

Perhaps the four walls of his bedroom could be convinced, but Cal wasn’t buying any of it—even if he was the salesman. The weekend had been a rough one. Somewhere among his being hijacked to New York City, his aborted date with Roxie and his father’s near heart attack, lay the threshold from aggravation to heartburn and he knew he’d leapt across without even noticing when it happened.

“I should have had the chicken croquettes.”

He hadn’t quite given up on blaming the cheeseburger.

Thinking about the chicken dish reminded him of Roxie and what might have been. He had really been looking forward to taking her out and he had been so sure that everything was going to go so well. He would have bet that there would have been a second date and then, who knows, maybe something intimate between the two of them.

For better or worse, Roxie had made her choice. He wondered where she was, but also reminded himself that it wasn’t any of his business. Roxie had thrown away her job, her home and her friends for an adventure with a maverick trucker. Cal knew that someday she would regret it.

“I suppose it’s partly my fault,” he had to admit to himself.

There were a few minutes to spare so Cal decided to make some breakfast before driving out to the farm. He stumbled downstairs and into the kitchen. He realized that he was hungry.

“What shall I make?” he asked himself.

While he decided he poured himself an orange juice and gulped it down.

“Maybe eggs; maybe French toast...”

He was hungry, but didn’t want to get involved with pots and pans.

“I need something crunchy,” he decided.

So, he reached into the cupboard and drew out the box of corn flakes, poured himself out a bowl and splashed on a bit of milk. As he munched the cereal he thought about how the weekend, despite all the difficulties, hadn’t been a total loss.

He felt that the Annex Project was on the cusp of a breakthrough. He and Edwin—or, that is, Ed—had patched things up in a big way and Cal thought that this time it might stick. Even his dad’s episode might have been a blessing. He had long wondered how long it might have been before his father’s extra weight and vegetable-free diet would catch up with him. He knew that his mother would make him heed the warning.

So, as always, Cal weighed the good and the bad. He wasn’t sure where the balance on the scale fell. One thing was certain. The bad parts were things that had already happened and the good ones were promises of things that might come about.

He gobbled up what was left of his cereal and ran upstairs to put on his barn clothes.

Cal had heard the weather forecast the night before and the bright sun in the early morning July sky confirmed that the day was going to be a hot one. He started to pack up his clothes for the office to change into at the farmhouse when he was done helping with the milking. He began to reach for his navy suit in his closet, which would have been his standard Monday uniform of the day. The promised hot and humid weather made him think twice.

“Do I have to?”

He decided that ‘no, he didn’t’ and took out, instead, a seersucker jacket that he hadn’t touched in over a year. He tried it on and was glad to see that it still fit. So it would be the jacket and a pair of navy slacks and a navy tie.

In a few minutes he was wearing his barn clothes. He picked up the garment bag that contained his office clothes to change into. In a few minutes more he was on the State road, heading toward the farm.

While Cal was driving back to town from the farm he was thinking over whether he might park his car at his house and walk to the office. It would have been nice on the pleasant summer morning, but he just didn’t have the time. He arrived in his office at eight, before the central business district of Appleton woke up for the morning. He put on a pot of coffee to brew and then went to his desk to look at his calendar for the day.

There were two appointments scheduled, one at eleven and another at one o’clock, framing the lunch hour. They appeared to be routine matters. That would give him some time to move the dial on the Annex project. He took out a pad and made a few calculations.

“Should have made these before I talked to Mr. Tanaka,” he admitted to himself.

He retrieved the appraisal report from his desk drawer and he already knew the property tax rate. He double checked the math.

“I think that will work. It never hurts to be lucky.”

He stood up and went to the outer office to retrieve his first cup of coffee for the day. He brought it back to his desk and sat down. He raised the steaming cup to his lips and it tasted good. It was a bit stronger than Delores would have made it, or he would have had in the Bluebird. It was to his liking and he remarked to himself, again, that the coffee tasted good.

It was just past eight-thirty. George Lambe’s secretary would be opening the office for the day. He picked up the phone and called over.

“Hi, Jeanne! It’s Cal Tucker. Can you put me on George’s calendar for today? I need about an hour.”

“Hi Cal,” came the answer at the other end. “George is here right now. He says to come right over.”

“Cal, how did you ever allow yourself to be put in that situation?” George asked.

His tone gave away more than a bit of exasperation.

Cal had just described his Saturday trip to Mr. Tanaka’s suite in Manhattan and how his date with Roxie didn’t come off.

“I asked myself that a number of times,” Cal explained. “At first, it was just going to be a quick trip to Syracuse. Then, when Kondo asked me to get into the plane I couldn’t help myself. It seemed like it was going to be vital to the Project. I didn’t want to go, but I felt that something big was just around the corner–so, I went for it.”

George shook his head and then looked down into his coffee cup. He didn’t move for several seconds and didn’t say a word. Cal knew what was coming.

“I heard that Roxie Pringle took off with some trucker from Pennsylvania yesterday,” George said at last. “I wonder what got into her.”

Cal knew that George liked Roxie.

“I don’t know what got into her, George. Millie tried to blame it on me because our date didn’t come off, but I don’t think it’s fair for her to do that.”

“No, it’s not fair, but I know Roxie,” George said. “She’s seen a lot and been through a lot. She must have had something big on her mind to pick up and take off like that. Something must have made her say ‘to hell with everything’.”

“I know that she and my brother split up. I didn’t think they had much of a bond between them. Maybe...”

George shook his head again.

“Roxie and your brother had broken up and got back together more than the pieces in a jigsaw puzzle at the old folks’ home,” he said. “There’s got to be more than that. We’ll find out what it was when she comes back.”

“You mean if she comes back,” Cal replied.

“Oh, she’ll be back. I’m sure of it,” George declared. “She’ll get whatever’s eating at her out of her system and then she’ll be back. The big question is how will people treat her when she is back.”

Cal shifted in his chair. It didn’t feel comfortable.

“We’ll just have to see, George,” he answered.

“We should treat her like we’re glad she’s back,” George said. “Hear her out. Maybe she’s got a story to tell.”

“I think that you’re suggesting that I...” Cal started to say.

“It’s just an old man giving some advice to a young one,” George said. “I’ve been looking after the people in this county for a lot of years. Some go through life on the freeway and others hit a few bumps in the road.”

Cal drew a breath to answer George back. He was going to tell George about how he had given Roxie a chance, despite all the times she’d been with his brother. And there was her less-than-perfect reputation that he’d overlooked, not to mention the car loan that he’d cosigned.

George began talking again before Cal could get a word out.

“I just like to see people get all the chances they can get—until they make good. Sometimes they don’t make good, no matter how many chances they get. But, a lot of times they do.”

“And you think that Roxie will?” Cal asked.

“I don’t know—no one does. Not even Roxie.”

“Well, let’s see what happens...”

“Just think about what I said,” George said. “You’ve got some time to think it over. Just don’t be afraid to make up our own mind.”

George fell silent, but his eyes were staring right through Cal’s.

“Okay, George. I’ll think it over. I will—I promise.”

George took a deep breath and straightened up in his chair. He cracked his knuckles.

So, tell me what happened in your meeting with Tanaka.”

Cal’s mood brightened.

“Now we can talk about something more positive,” Cal announced.

George lifted his eyebrows.

“First, I convinced Tanaka to switch $375,000 from the cable and phone installation to building the access road. The utilities have already agreed to foot the bill for the installation, so I wanted to keep that part of Tanaka’s money committed instead of having him put it back in his pocket.”

“Okay!” George exclaimed. “That will help a lot.”

“There’s more,” Cal said. “When I was in the plane flying down to New York I had a chance to figure this out. It has to do with the environmental waiver and the property tax break.”

“I’m all ears,” George said, and sat back in his chair.

“I knew that Tanaka would be stuck on the waiver and I was remembering our conversation about it, too. I was right. It was the first thing he wanted to talk about. The waiver is a ‘yes or no’, so there’s no way to compromise.”

“Right,” George said.

“Then, I remembered the appraisal from Bennett Associates. I asked myself if we really needed to sell Midco the property. Why not a long-term lease? If Midco doesn’t own the Annex they can’t care if there’s a waiver or not. The liability would go with the city, which would own it. The whole waiver question goes away just like that.”

Cal snapped his fingers to make the point and George was rubbing his chin.

“What about Homer and the City Council,” he asked. “What do you think they’ll say about this?”

“They won’t be able to refuse,” Cal went on. “The annual lease payments by Midco will be more than the property taxes they would collect if Midco buys it.”

George was squinting at Cal.

“Cal, are you sure about this?” he asked.

“Yes I am,” Cal answered at once. “The appraisal came in at two hundred and fifty thousand as is and Midco’s budget for renovations is a million-seven fifty. That makes the total valuation at move-in at two million. At current rates, that would put the property taxes take at somewhere around $100,000 per year. Tanaka agreed to a lease amount of one-fifty per year for the whole fifteen year duration of the lease.”

“You got him to agree to that?”

“Sure, because it solves the problem and he can deduct the lease payments as an expense, instead of depreciating the whole thing over thirty years. That part of his overhead will be frozen, so it will inoculate Midco from tax rate escalation. All we have to do is give Midco first right of refusal in case the City wants to sell it and an option to buy it for fair market value at the end of the lease.”

“And, who pays for the cost of the upkeep?” George asked.

“Midco does,” Cal answered. “It’s a triple net lease—or double-net, since there won’t be any taxes to pay. There’s a buyout provision in case they want to get out of the lease early.”

“The City Council will have to approve it. And, the school district will want a cut.”

Cal nodded.

“Sure, but it’s a lot easier to divide up $150,000 every year than divide zero.”

George was rubbing his chin again. Cal watched him as he sat in silence.