by Dale Rogers
Her business card was bright gold. The thick, black, Gothic letters read: Marcia Scott, Realtor, 800-555-SOLD. Centered under her name was, Anything for a sale. This was a motto that she had learned from her father over twenty years ago, when she first decided to become a real estate agent. And in all these years, it had never failed her.
Of course, because she was very good at what she did - some would say the best - 99 percent of her clients never really put her to the test. There was the time when the Saluccis asked her to watch their pet boa constrictor while they went out of town for a week in order to close up their old house. Then there was Brenda Mason, who had Marcia chauffer her bratty teenagers back and forth to school while she got settled into her new job as CEO of Flamingo Enterprises.
And there was Richard Gandolph, who had made several million dollars writing successful screenplays. His friends and his agent finally convinced him to move out of his palatial home in provincial Central City and relocate to Beverly Hills. She'd had to earn that contract by performing fellatio on the middle-aged man. But, looking back, he was an interesting and reasonably good looking man, and she would probably have done it anyway if he had just taken her to dinner. The fact that she earned a fifty thousand dollar commission out of a single blow job made it all the sweeter.
Wasn't she just prostituting herself, she would sometimes ask. Of course, she was. But then, she reasoned, in the end, doesn't everyone? She worked hard; she provided a valuable service that people needed; she treated her clients honestly and fairly; and she made a lot of money. She lived a good life and she loved what she did, even if it did consume nearly all of her time.
The one downside to the success was that her hectic lifestyle didn't leave her with much time to establish a relationship or even date. However, that didn't really seem to matter either. She did occasionally see and sleep with Mike Malinowski, an airline pilot who often flew to Europe and the Far East. Sometimes he was gone for weeks at a time. Like Marcia, his career was his only true love. Naturally, they fit well together.
At 41 years old, she had a lean, trim figure with a perpetual tan. Her fine, over styled hair was artificially blonde, but no one seemed to notice or complain. Perhaps she used a bit too much makeup, but that went along with the image of a tough, driven entrepreneur, who had to use every weapon she possessed in order to compete in a man's world. She drove a Lexus sedan with leather seats and vanity license plates emblazoned with the word 'SUCCESS'. When she was alone in her well-appointed office suite or in her million dollar lakefront bungalow, she would smoke an occasional cigarette and down an occasional shot of Scotch; however, like sex with Mike, these were not habits or addictions, but rather indulgences.
Anyone glimpsing through a window into her life would probably think that it was hectic at the least, and possibly closer to frantic or even manic. However, in reality, Marcia Scott's life was well-ordered, with time scheduled down to the minute for the most part. If something wasn't written in her appointment book, she simply didn't do it. Likewise, everything she did, even eating and sleeping, had to, in some way, contribute to her success - make her more productive, give her an edge on her competition, etc.
This approach had worked so well that, over time, she had come to believe that the well-oiled machinery of her life could never malfunction, let alone grind to a halt. She was, of course, wrong. The first ping in the machine came quietly - so quietly that she barely noticed it. Times were good in Central City. The economy was humming and a new class of upper level business executives was building, buying, and selling upscale homes at a record pace.
Naturally, Marcia was right in the middle of it all, selling as much as a million dollars a month in real estate and earning five figure commissions. Of course, some weeks she worked in excess of 90 hours stretched out over all seven days. She ate breakfast with sellers, ate lunch with bankers, and ate dinner with buyers. She became so consumed with the combination of money and real estate that she hardly slept. Unconsciously, she began to drink more and, because she now had no time at all to spend with Mike or any other man, she masturbated more. But even this indulgence was quick and to the point, performed only to take her mind off of sex completely so that she could maintain her 'edge' as she put it.
If she had stopped at this point, if she had taken the time to listen to the sound of her own engine, she might have avoided the breakdown that insidiously threatened her. But she didn't. It was on a rainy Thursday afternoon in September when the real trouble began. It was close to five o'clock and she was alone in the office, preparing for a dinner meeting with John and Cindy Palister. John had recently been promoted to vice-president and chief financial officer of the Starkey Investment Group. The couple, childless and in their early thirties, was looking to move from their hundred and fifty thousand dollar split level to a four bedroom colonial costing twice as much in the new Fairhope Hill subdivision.
Melinda, the receptionist, had gone home for the day, and Jenny, the assistant Marcia had been forced to hire, was spending the afternoon at the courthouse, meeting with lawyers and researching titles. She was reviewing files near Melinda's desk when the door opened and in walked a tall, stocky man with a full black beard. He was dressed in blue jeans and a flannel shirt, and his dark hair, wet from the rain, hung down to his broad shoulders.
Marcia stood up and quickly scanned the visitor. "May I help you," she asked rather impatiently.
The visitor returned her gaze. "Yes, ma'am," he replied in an accent that suggested that he was not from anywhere around Central City. "I'm looking for Marcia Scott."
Marcia closed the file drawer and turned her whole body to face him. "I'm Marcia Scott," she said.
"May I speak with you for a few minutes, ma'am?" he returned softly.
She continued to study him, not really liking what she saw. "What about?"
He took out a large blue bandana and wiped the water from his face. "Well, I need to sell a house," he said. Marcia nodded wearily but said nothing. "You see," he continued after an awkward pause, "my uncle died three days ago and left me his house. But I don't want to live in it. I already have a house somewhere else."
Yeah - probably in Shitsville, Mississippi, Marcia said to herself. Then she leveled her hazel eyes at the visitor. "Where is the house, Mister...?"
"Oh, it's Buck, Buck Phillips," he said. "The house is at sixty-four ten Willow Street."
That was no surprise. Willow Street was in one of the old sections of Central City. Even though she hadn't been in that area for several years, she was well aware that the average price of a house was far below anything she would consider trying to sell. "Well, Mr. Phillips..."
"Please call me Buck," he interjected hopefully.
Marcia couldn't suppress a slight grimace. "Okay... Buck... I'm pretty busy right now. I'm not sure I really have the time to give your property the attention it deserves. There are several other realties in Central City. Perhaps one of them could help you."
Buck's mouth puckered slightly and his dark eyes went quickly from hopeful to sad. "You mean you won't help me sell my uncle's house?" he asked as though he had somehow misunderstood what she had just said.
The realtor scowled. "I mean I really don't have the time right now, Buck," she said. "At the moment, I am involved in six property transactions. I'm not sure when I would have the time to even evaluate your uncle's property and get it on the market."
The man, who appeared as though he would be more at home in a mountain cabin than in a big city, stared at Marcia for a long time. More than once he opened his mouth to speak but stopped. Finally, with a look of dejection on his weathered face, he turned toward the door. "Well, thank you for your time, ma'am," he said as he put his hand on the doorknob.
Marcia managed a small, insincere smile. "I'm sorry I couldn't help you, Buck. Good luck." He didn't return her smile as he opened the door and disappeared into the corridor outside the suite.
It was after ten o'clock when Marcia finally arrived home. Her dinner with the Palisters had gone well, and she was certain she would be able to sell their old house quickly and then get them settled into a house that was just being built. She would earn a full commission on the one sale, and a partial on the other; altogether, about sixteen thousand dollars for a relatively easy arrangement. Yes, she was definitely on a roll, she thought, as she stripped to her underwear and lay back on her bed with the newspaper.
She was about to scan the real estate pages when a headline on page two caught her eye: 'Wealthy Eccentric Dies. Leaves estate to nephew.' As she read the story, she quickly learned that the 'wealthy eccentric' was Abraham Tate, who came to Central City about twenty years ago from someplace down south. He brought with him over a million dollars, acquired in a way no one ever understood. He had no wife or children. His only living relative was a nephew from his hometown. The nephew's name was Buck Phillips.
Now nearly breathless with amazement, Marcia flipped through the Central City white pages until she came to the listing for Abraham Tate. The address was 6410 Willow. Then she remembered: even though that was one of the oldest parts of the city, a couple of the houses had been large and impressive. Perhaps Abraham Tate had purchased one of those houses and restored it; it could be worth a considerable amount of money and would probably be easy to sell, she mused. She resolved that she couldn't let an opportunity like this pass. She would have to take the time to check it out.
The next morning dawned sunny and warm. Except for a few lingering puddles, there was no trace of the rain that had soaked the area the day before. Right after an early breakfast with a new client, Marcia Scott drove over to the old part of Central City, a neighborhood which had come to be called Smithton Bluff, after the first family to move into the area a 150 years earlier. She was quite surprised to find that the streets and houses didn't look nearly as bad as she remembered. Obviously, there was an attempt to renovate the properties, she thought as she drove slowly along Crane Street on her way to Willow. Renovation meant money and appeal to 30-year-old yuppies who fancied themselves urban homesteaders.
When she reached Willow Street, her sense of surprise heightened. Instead of a sad looking street filled with rundown houses populated by low-end wage earners, she found a crisp, clean neighborhood sitting on the edge of a small rise. The driveways contained mostly newer model automobiles, a mixture of minivans and pickup trucks, with a few SUVs. Not exactly rich, she said to herself, but definitely not poor.
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