Prologue

Here's a story for you.

Single 23 year-old guy inherits small apartment complex, closed for renovations, from his grandfather, along with enough money to finish out the place, keep body and soul together for awhile. He decides to complete renovations on the place, rent the units to his friends and acquaintances, he and his girlfriend can move in together and manage the place, it'll be one big happy party happening, throw mini-raves around the pool, 'everybody conga, somebody grab my butt!'!

I must've been out of my goddamn mind!

Oh, the finishing out went okay, the renting to my friends and acquaintances, that went reasonably well, although I ended up holding a lot of "I'm good for it" instead of deposits and first month's rents.

That should have been a clue, don't you think?

Not for me.

So just six short months later, the complex and I were teetering on the edge of broke, I had units my 'friends and acquaintances' had trashed the unholy ever-living fuck out of because they were getting their 'never-paid-a-motherfucking-dime-of-rent' asses evicted that I couldn't afford to fix up and I couldn't rent as was, my girlfriend had left me for someone who, and I quote, "doesn't have his head so far up his ass he can see out of his own mouth" and I was seriously considering becoming a crack whore, just to make my tale of tragedy complete... of course, I'd have had to be able to afford the crack to start smoking... to become a crack whore... and I was living on Mac & Cheese.

Into the picture walked my father's youngest brother, pretty much the black sheep of my family, Uncle Al. Al's not that old, 35, has spent a lot of time making money in ways the family doesn't discuss in front of me... they may not discuss the subject at all. He's good looking in that slightly oily way that the best used-car salesmen have.

"Jimmy-"

"John, Uncle Al."

"Johnny-"

"John, Uncle Al, John."

"Sounds like a toilet but whatever, John... lemme give you a vision... you ever had a vision?"

I hadn't but I was getting one from him already and it was uncomfortably like a prison rape scene I'd watched in a movie.

"Uh, no."

"Alright, here's the vision... 'The Open Arms Apartments... Adults Only Living In A Tasteful Clothing-Optional Setting'."

"Uncle Al-"

"We're gonna be partners, I feel it in my bones, call me Al."

"Al... are you out of your fucking gourd? The only way this place is going to become clothing optional is when I don't have the money for clothes anymore! Not to mention if I did manage to pull enough money out of my ass somehow to get this dump repaired and up to spec and started renting units under those conditions... well, next family reunion they'd be burning both of us in effigy instead of just you... and while 'burning Uncle Al' is a fun tradition to watch, I never thought highly of becoming a part of it, if you know what I mean."

"Boy, there's two kinds of people in this world-"

"Really? Only two?"

"Only two you have to worry about right now, smart ass... the kind who are about to go bankrupt, and the kind who have large amounts of disposable income they need to hide."

Six months later I was ready to reopen the Open Arms as an Adults Only, Clothing Optional apartment complex. With Al as a silent, and mostly invisible, partner money hadn't been a problem... really, in spite of all my apprehension, there hadn't been any problems.

Al's interests were represented by Nora McBee, a gorgeous, stacked and racked brunette who was also our rental agent, office manager, and when no tenants were around, glowering cloud of ever-ready doom and destruction.

I hadn't learned how to read the signs, early on, and was feeling a little brave one evening, so I said, "Nona, you think you might like to go out with me to a-"

"Mr. Nolan... I work for your uncle, primarily, and you secondarily and if you ever even remotely consider propositioning me again, be it for anything as innocent as a cup of coffee or as torrid as a weekend in Tijuana with three whores and a goat I will rip your fucking nuts off and stuff them in your cheeks so you look like Bucky the cartoon squirrel. Do you understand me?"

I did and the subject never came up again... but I knew who was going to be dealing with difficult tenants and it wasn't going to be me.

Our on-site security was courtesy of Lyle Sampson, 6'6", 190 pounds of scary, muscular... ass-kicking muscular, not bodybuilding muscular... silent and I suspected deadly. He'd spent eight years in 2^nd Ranger Bat., 75^th Infantry, 18^th Airborne Division (although his job app had simply had '2/75 Airborne Infantry and I'd felt like an idiot getting him to explain it to me) and then seven years that his job application listed as 'freelance contracting' with absolutely no other details that he was extremely reticent to discuss. But he listed Uncle Al as one of his references and he assured me that Lyle was perfect for the job. All I knew was that even at thirty-seven, Lyle looked like he could whip anybody I'd ever met and that was good enough for me.

Then as we were all wandering around the complex naked, to get used to it before reopening, I saw him sans clothing and realized he could probably dick-whip me to death, so I was glad we got along.

Al even had me hire a maintenance man, even though I'd been handling the job myself and doing a pretty good job of it. Patrick Shaunnesy provided an interesting job application. I spent a day following him around the complex, watching him find things I didn't know were in need of repair, or were wearing out, but did and were, and handling them in a quarter of the time I could've managed. He did yearly maintenance on the HVAC units and had them purring like kittens... well, okay, lions... big, hot, noisy lions.