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The two houses were both in North Denver, and were put on the market within two days of our arrival. They really were not too bad as early depression era houses go, but they were too far from where I could reasonably set up my business, and I didn't look forward to driving miles in horrendous traffic simply to get to work. Greater Denver, you should know, sprawls all over the place. There is nothing to stop the urban expansion in any direction whatsoever, if you include all the 'burbs, excepting if you go west far enough. Even the Platte River could probably be covered over inasmuch as you virtually can walk across it most of the time. Some of the newer suburbs have crawled up to practically cover the foothills. But the Continental Divide is reached at last, so I suppose all those 14,000-foot peaks will slow it down some. It was never really explained to me why downtown Denver is catawampous to the rest of the city which was basically laid out north-to-south and east-to-west, but the business section of the place was diagonally platted. Perhaps the railroad tracks first laid generally followed the flow of the Platte River, thus creating this hitch in the city's gitalong. The little brick building that was now mine on the edge of the business district was part of this slantwise conformation, but several blocks generally east and a few more north of downtown proper. It had been built in 1898, and was full of many of the touches of careful craftsmanship and pride seen in most construction from that era. There was also a slightly weedy but well-graveled parking space that could hold two or three cars in a pinch to the right of the building front as you faced it, and that's where the van was at the moment. My uncle had paid to have the building's two stories of dark red brick spruced up both inside and out in anticipation of the neighborhood gentrification that was oozing this direction, although such progress abruptly halted during the recession in the middle and late eighties. That's not to say that the neighborhood descended to slums, only that the property values did not go through the roof as he had thought they would. From what I could see around here, however, the move to soaring property values was again in gear, spit and polish being liberally applied everywhere in the neighborhood. I could only hope the ensuing tax escalation wouldn't give me a coronary. My uncle had seen to the cleaning, painting, reglazing, rewiring and the addition of just enough amenities to suit my dual purposes. There was no sybaritic bath -- something my tired bones simply demanded be in my home -- but that's what plumbers are for. Today I just stood in the middle of that loftlike space, overwhelmed with mental images of what I could do with all this room and light. And, of course, what I made on one of the houses when it sold would take care of the whole shebang, and then some. Across the street was a diner with a public phone in the front window. I located Fuzz snooping around in the neat little corner kitchenette upstairs, deposited him back in the locked van and jaywalked over to Perry's Place. I ordered a sandwich and got change for the phone. While waiting for my lunch I made several calls in regard to things that all came under the heading of "Do Me First!" such as: turn on the power, connect the phone and take out a yellow page ad for the next edition, take out two weeks of ads in both local daily newspapers, and start bugging the real estate agent about the houses. Never too soon to let a realtor know the best way to have peace is to get the place sold! The other stuff -- the permits, licenses, and so forth -- would simply have to wait until my phones were working. I wolfed down my lunch, saving a snack for Fuzz. The food was good, and the place was, according to the sign, open sixteen hours a day. Nice to know, considering the hours I keep. Back to the exploration of my new digs. The downstairs rectangle of the building was divided in half, from side to side, and then the front half was divided again, front to back. One half of the part that faced the street was taken up with the entrance, very Victorian (so help me) wainscoting and marble, plus the rococo, open cage of a wrought iron elevator! It ran only between the two floors, no cellar, which really seemed like overkill. There were no stairs visible to the loft from the front door; the only stairway was from the alley side of the loft, one flight straight down to what turned out to be the garage. It occurred to me I would have to give some very serious thought to security. After all, investigators by their very nosy natures raise the hackles of some pretty unpleasant individuals who might, if sufficiently oiled or merely provoked, decide to vent a little of their displeasure some dark and lonely night. It never does to jig up and down and holler "Here I am!" too much, nor to have a front door easily forced by any reasonably robust ninety-year-old. Well, I hadn't intruded my busybody self into anyone's business yet, so the good stout security deadbolt that was already on the front door should do for now. The other side of the front was going to be my office. It was now bare as a bodkin, but the local discount and near-new establishments in a city of this size would soon remedy that. Nothing wrong with used furniture, you realize. Too much obviously shiny new equipment leads a prospective customer to the unsettling thought that you are most likely soaking wet at the back of your listening mechanisms and, ergo, worthy of less per diem than you are demanding with a straight face. At least that's true in these environs; on the 38th floor of The Pompous Palace, or some such, I suppose they renovate completely once a year or so, but their fancy clients expect it. Well, good for them. Anyway, the surprise I was to discover was in the rear half of the old building. In there, within the windowless room, behind heavy steel garage doors, under a plastic car cover and up on blocks, was an absolutely cherry AMX -- a 1969 Piranha! It said it had a minuscule 47,632.1 miles on the odometer, barely sufficient to break in a car of this pedigree. It was an iridescent light green, nearly glowing in the dark. My eyes virtually rolled in my head as I oohed and aahed, making a complete circle of it before I draped myself lovingly over its metallic green hood and patted it. Fuzz, not for the first time, would have thought me thoroughly demented. Now, in case that car and model leaves you puzzled, get yourself to a classic car buff, one preferably addicted to really hot automobiles, and get educated. If you aren't curious enough to go to all that bother, then you probably don't really care as much about automobiles as you profess. It should be enough to state to the rest of you that this sleek little gem is rare, only a mere handful of them ever being built. It was the hottest thing on the road in its day, made by American Motors, had a 390-cubic inch engine that produced 340 horsepower, and ran only on Ethyl -- premium unleaded in this day and age. Tucked under the wiper was an envelope addressed, "To My Favorite Niece." The fact that I was his only niece has nothing to do with it; I would have been his favorite anyway -- or so he always assured me. Inside was a note in his crabbed handwriting, the gist of which is not important except in reference to the car. It said, "Remember back when I wouldn't let you drive this? Well, I was right. If you had driven it at 17, it wouldn't have been here waiting for you now." He was right. He followed with a few things causing me blurry vision and a tight throat, and concluded with the name and address of the mechanic who had always serviced this car and who, as a matter of fact, had the keys to it and was holding the title for me. I would have to deal with him before I could really call it mine. That was certainly going to be an early visit. With great reluctance I covered her back up and tore myself away -- much to do, and I'd better get to it. Perry's Place had a sign in the window which said "Work Wanted," and when I had asked the waitress who wanted to work, she jabbed an elbow towards the rear room which had a few game tables and a lot of smoke. Thinking about all the stuff in the van that somehow needed to be muscled into the elevator and up to the loft, I headed back once again to the diner, ignoring Fuzz' face in first the passenger window and then the driver's window, telling me as plainly as he knew how that it was time to be freed from his confinement. It was that, but I was busy. When I nodded to the waitress and motioned towards the rear, she waved a hand and went back to her customers. I stopped in the open doorway, announcing to the tops of a lot of heads that I needed a few strong backs to move a small vanload of furniture into an elevator just across the street, that the pieces didn't even need to be set up, and the whole thing should take probably two to three hours at the most. If I had anticipated the bunch of them would leap up in unfettered joy at the prospect, I would have been sorely disappointed. After some card shuffling and a little chair scraping, one scrawny fellow growled, "How much, lady?" "How much do you think you're worth?" Ever the snappy comeback, that's me. "Well, that depends on what you really want me for," he grinned, starting to rise, one missing front tooth making me wonder when the forked black tongue would suddenly protrude and begin to wave up and down at me through the gap. "What I want is for you to stay in your seat, buster. If there's anybody here who has plans for a few bucks in his pockets tonight, come over to the van in the next fifteen minutes -- anybody except you," pointing to the smartmouth. "If nobody wants to work, just stay here and breath in a few more carcinogens. I can always find somebody else." I turned around and left the premises, not really expecting any takers. Before I even got Fuzz out of the cab of the van, one of the larger of the young men was slouching across the street. He was heavily muscled, something new among young men, I've found, these days. Many seem to feel a cadaverous chest atop a skinny behind, shoulders and rump each sporting two unwashed pipestem limbs, all surmounted by a fright-wig framing an angry and sullen mug complete with pendulous lower lip all proclaimed, "I yam a man." Well, I got those directions sort of scrambled, but you know what I mean, I imagine. This kid looked okay. His expression was neither surly nor friendly, and he got right to business. "Ma'am, I do want to work. We'd all like more than just a few hours, but something is better than nothing. I'm willing to work. I just want to get paid fairly for the work. That sound okay to you? Looking at him for a moment, I said, "And what do you consider 'fair'?" "I'll leave it up to you. I really do need the work." "Sounds good to me. What's your name?" He stuck out his hand and replied, "Ted Trump. And before you ask, no, Donald is no relative." I laughed and shook his hand, told him my name was Sheila Casey, to my knowledge there had never been a baseball legend in the family, and then set about opening up the van and the building. For the next three hours the two of us worked our tails off. Ted said that we should probably put everything in the middle of the open space generally until I had time to decide just what part of the place would be the designated "room" for the furniture. Made good sense to me. He also said that if I didn't get some more chairs and other miscellaneous stuff, I was going to rattle around in here like a pea in a bucket. And I needed color and posters or something on those enormous off-white walls. Right again. By the time we had the place as livable as it was going to get for the time being, I knew a lot about the kid. He was reasonably well educated, having attended Denver University for two years. He could have continued until he graduated, his parents being fairly well-heeled. But like even the best of them, he got a burr under his saddle one day and removed himself from the family home, determined to ask nobody for anything. He was unmarried, bunked in the basement of a married brother in Aurora, one of the older of the suburbs, and rode his beloved Harley Davidson to wherever he could find work, no matter how far. He was quite personable, bright, clean, remarkably solid -- although probably considered insufferably square by his peers -- and so far had no luck at all in finding work. Not an atypical story these days. When I asked him in my usual heavy-footed way if he had a girl, he said he didn't, not any more. I didn't pursue that. It was running on towards dinner time, and I offered to treat him to a good meal on top of what he had earned. He declined, adding he had better be going. I gave him forty bucks which he took without looking, and put it away. "You better check to see if that's enough, Ted," I said, to which he replied, "I said I'd trust your judgment." Nice kid -- either very naive or too clever by half. "When I need work again, I'll certainly call on you, Ted. You do good work." He smiled for the first time, casually flipped a wave, and took his leave. After unpacking the box marked "Bed" in black marker I made up the bed; that was going to be the extent of my labor today. Eventually I planned to replace this old bedstead with a waterbed; both Fuzz and I thought we'd died and gone to heaven when on the road we found a motel that had one. Yes, I know such sleeping facilities aren't provided by such places for the comfort they provide to such as us, surrounded as it was by lots of red velvet and black satin, but that doesn't matter. It was almost obscenely comfortable, and we both slept like the dead on it. Still, we were going to be able to sleep in our own bed tonight, water-filled or not. Once that was taken care of, I left Fuzz to his own devices while I went across the street for the third time that day and got our dinner. We dined in high style that evening, a utility candle stuck to the kitchen counter flickering in our eyes. We still didn't have the power on, but both the utilities I had contacted today promised service first thing in the morning. The street lights outside made it not too hazardous to feel my way to bed, and after walking Fuzz briefly, I did just that. |