L.A. Success (35 page)

“You'll never believe who I just got
a call from,” he said.

“Was it Dennis from jail, calling
you to bail him out for having stuck a fake gun in a movie director's face?”
asked Gertie. He looked shocked that we could know such a thing.

“Exactly. He said he'd forget
everything that had happened between us if I'd bail him out. As if I was going
to believe that.” He handed me the ecologically friendly grocery bag. I handed
him the envelope with the photos. He took it, looked at the contents, and
smiled as though he had been set free from prison.

“I know I don't need to thank you
since I'm paying you, but thanks all the same,” he said.

“
No
problem,” I said. “Hey, I've been wondering about something. Why did you have
me follow Gertie around anyway?”

“
When
I was talking to you that day, I saw her name on the for-sale sign in the yard
down the street from Dennis' house and figured if you were out following her
around it would give me enough time to slip into the house and get what I
wanted.”

“
So
all this happened for no real reason at all,” I said, thinking about my new job
and all the things I had done to get that far.

“Next time you need to buy or sell
property, we're your team,” said Gertie, whipping out a business card and
handing it to Ignacio. “You've seen that we'll stop at nothing. No matter what
you want sold, we can find a way to do it.”

“She means 'sell it',” I added.

“I'll definitely call you. It looks
like a family member's health is declining rapidly. I'll have a house to sell
very quickly after he passes away.” He gave a little wave and pocketed the
card. Then he turned and walked back into the building.

We started off toward Gertie's bank.
I opened the sack and pulled out a stack of one-hundred-dollar bills and ran my
thumb over the edge.

“When are we going to buy the
house?” I asked.

“I've got three potential properties
I'll take you by next week. All of them are in Santa Monica. I'll let you
choose the one you want, partner.”

“I've got one change I'd like to
make to the plan,” I said.

“What is it?”

“I'm not going to live in it
immediately. Maybe never. It won't be up to me.”

19

A couple of weeks later I pulled up
to our new house in my hybrid, which Gertie had strategically chosen for me
since any luxury item I was missing at the beginning of my career could then be
justified by saying I was trying to save the planet, and since that was going
to be really fashionable for at least two more years, it would give an aura of
caring to my real-estate persona. I was early, so I stepped out of the car and
did a little light stretching. My back had been killing me lately. With my dad
now sleeping in my room, I had moved into the living room. After one week on
the couch, I had bought a sleeper sofa, but that was no better.

After a while I saw Helen's car
driving slowly down the street. She was looking at the numbers on the houses,
trying to find the address I had given her. When she got closer she saw me,
waved and pulled over to the curb. As she walked over to me, she took a look at
the house. I could see that she thought I was being ridiculous.

“There's no way I can afford
anything like this,” she said and gave me a hug. “Is this your car?”

“Yes. It gets great gas mileage.”

“Huh,” she said.

“Let me show you the place. The guy
is desperate to have you move in.”

We walked around the property and
then into the house. Helen wasn't looking seriously at anything. I could tell that
she loved it but that she didn't want to have to go through the usual process
of loving a place and then slinking away once she was told the price. We made
our way through the house, starting with the living room. It had the usual
fireplace that only people from L.A. can understand the utility of having here,
since to us anything below 70 degrees is close to freezing. Next we visited the
three bedrooms, each of which had its own bathroom. And finally we checked out
the open kitchen, which had Italian tiling and an elaborate gas stove covered
by a vent two times larger than what seemed necessary.

“So when do you want to move in?” I
asked once we had finished the tour and were back in the living room.

“Yeah, right. Look, I know this is
your universe now, but it almost seems cruel to show me something like this
when you know I can't afford it. I visited a one-bedroom not far from here last
month that was more than I could afford, so there's no way I'll be able to pay
for a house.”

“This one is yours,” I said, holding
out the keys, which she didn't take. “Don't get me wrong. You can't have it,
because it's not entirely mine. But I invested in it with Gertie, and we're
going to sit on it until the market clears up. That'll be at least four or five
years from now, so until then, I want to put someone in it I can trust.”

“But I can't pay the rent here,” she
said.

“I'm paying the rent. I want you to
let me do this,” I said.

“But—” she began.

“No. It's okay. I'm not trying to
buy you. I want you to let me do this because I can't stand what I did before,
and this will help me apologize. I had a shot at having a future with you, but
I just weaseled free rent out of the situation and continued bouncing through
life like nothing mattered. So think of this as my part of the rent from the
last couple of years—just a little late.”

“You...are you going to move in
here?” she asked, less bothered by the idea than I would have imagined.

“I'm going to stay at my place. If
you never want me to come over, it'll be okay. I mean, I'll understand. But let
me do this. There are no strings attached.”

She looked at the house and could
barely contain a smile. Then she regained her composure and seemed to push the
idea out of her head.

“It's too much...” she said.

I tossed the keys up in the air in
front of her. Before she had time to think, she reached out with her hand and
grabbed them.

“I left the lease in the kitchen.
Sign and initial every page and mail it to me. I had to put the official rent
amount as one dollar, but don't worry about paying it.”

I walked over to the door, opened
it, and then turned back to say goodbye. Helen was looking over toward me, but
in a way she hadn't looked at me before. I'm not talking about a
deeper-kind-of-love look, but rather a look that seemed to indicate she was
having a hard time connecting the current image of me with the former one she
had been carrying around with her.

“I hope you like living here,” I
said.

“I think I will.”

20

I soon took over most of the
day-to-day activities of Gertie's business. As planned, Gertie started an
ESL-certification program as soon as Tommy had moved on, so she was happy to
see me take over. I still called her in for the big negotiations, but she let
me cut my teeth on the smaller deals, and, after she had approved my staging, I
was in control of most of the open houses.

My new tenant gave me that dollar a
month after all, at first over lunch, and then eventually over dinner. She also
gave me books on poodle grooming, chess, and do-it-yourself projects, the
latter being Gertie’s idea, who said that we, and by that she meant I, should
look into saving money on renovations. And after some time, well, you knew it
had to happen—like I said before, every story pretty much ends the same way.
But I'm not going to describe that. I mean, you don’t really think that I'm the
kind of guy who talks about that sort of thing, do you?