Chapter 46

November 11, 1978

This year things were very different for Benny. In the past, he would have worked at the office building every evening from 5:00 until 7:30. It was as regular as clockwork, and brought the four of them together every workday. The four would often eat dinner together after work, but without exception Benny ate dinner with Tim. Since they had sold the business, Benny didn’t have that hanging over his head. Sandra and Cathy were still working there, but were now answering to Terrance.

With Sandra, Cathy, and Benny in college, but taking different subjects, their daily schedules were all over the map. They were seldom able to meet as a group since someone was always working, in a class, or a lab. Benny’s schedule was particularly bad since he was taking three sciences classes, which that meant he was also taking three lab classes. He was spending most of his day in classrooms.

Tim was busy with working on houses workdays, until 5:00. He had a crew of three working for him. With four people on the job, he could get a lot of work done. However, fixing a house takes time. When he was sure that he’d have five days of clear weather, he had his crew tearing off the exterior of the house and replacing it. It took five full days to pull off the exterior, put in place a layer of plywood, the moisture barrier, the foam insulation, and the exterior wood sheathing. After a week of work, the house still needed to be painted.

Painting took four days. One day was spent caulking and preparing the house to be painted. The second day would be putting down the primer - and that wood sheathing could suck up the primer like you wouldn’t believe. The third day would be spent painting with the finish paint using the spray and back roller approach. The fourth day would be spent painting the trim. He couldn’t rush the work or it would look terrible.

After working all day, Tim would go home and work on his own house. He would work until 9:00 or so and then return to his parent’s house. The only days he could spend a full day on his house, was Saturday, but that was often cut short for his date with Lily. So the progress on fixing his house was keeping pace with a snail.

With Cathy and Sandra still working the office cleaning business, they weren’t available to help Tim work on his house. Benny would go over to Tim’s house to help fix up the place. They would work a couple of hours and then Tim would head home.

Benny was no longer having fake dates with Cathy on the weekends, since Cathy and Sandra could visit each other at any time without anyone questioning what they were doing. Tim was busy dating Lily on Friday and Saturday nights.

That meant Benny was on his own most days of the week. He wasn’t lonely, because most of his time was spent studying. Unlike a lot of students, he didn’t complain about a heavy course load. He reveled in it. He could easily get lost in his head for hours and days at a time. That was the source of his problem. Benny was studying too much. He was skipping meals and not sleeping. He was spending all of his free time lost in his text books at his desk.

At first it wasn’t noticeable that he wasn’t taking care of himself. He lost a little weight, looked a little pale, and had bags under his eyes. That didn’t seem too remarkable since he wasn’t doing all of that outdoor work and everyone looked a little tired with late night studying. It wasn’t until Cathy had gone a week without seeing him that she saw he was looking emaciated. Once she pointed it out, everyone realized that Benny was a physical wreck.

Benny, of course, denied that there was anything wrong. He was spending more time lost in his head than ever before and he was loving every minute of it. How could there be something wrong when he was feeling so happy? As far as he was concerned, life was great!

Tim settled immediately into his role as Benny’s protector. Tim took to staying over the night at the house. It usually was three nights a week, but when things were particularly busy for Benny at school, it was nearly every school night.

When he stayed overnight, Tim prepared breakfast in the morning. He made sure that Benny ate it before heading off to school. When he didn’t spend the night, he made sure that there were donuts, sweet rolls, or some other instant breakfast type food. Most mornings the food he left out the night before was gone.

Since Benny was on campus during most of the day, he was on his own for lunch. Tim didn’t know if Benny was eating or not. It was highly likely that he was, since Benny was going from one class to another without an opportunity to get lost in his head.

When Benny returned from school, there was a hot dinner waiting for him. Tim started doing this even on those nights when he wasn’t staying over. It actually solved a problem Tim was having about eating dinner. He had been having too many nights with fast food so that he could return to work on the house.

Tim would put a plate of snacks on the desk by Benny before heading to bed or leaving the house to head to his parent’s house. Sometimes it was nothing more than a big bowl of potato chips. Most times it was raw veggies like carrots, celery, and broccoli. He took to keeping a bowl filled with fruit on Benny’s desk. The snacks disappeared and Benny started putting on weight.

Saturday and Sunday, Benny would help work on the house. Tim would often send Benny home to take a nap. It was the only way he could ensure that Benny was getting sleep. Maybe he didn’t sleep much during the weekdays, but he did get sleep over the weekend. The physical work on weekends and a few evenings helped restore some of the muscle tone that Benny had lost. It also helped him sleep. The body did have its needs.

This morning, Benny woke up and went down to get his morning cup of coffee. He wandered into the kitchen wearing his briefs and robe. Tim was there making pancakes. His pancakes tended to be misshapen oblong things rather than nice circles. They were small rather than those large things served at restaurants. At IHOP, they called the size pancake he made silver dollars. They were bigger than silver dollars. Regardless of their appearance, they still stacked on a plate as they were supposed to, and tasted good with the artificial maple syrup running down the sides. Benny watched him cooking for a minute and then filled his coffee cup with the precious black liquid.

“Good morning, sunshine,” Tim said with a grin.

“You’re cheerful this morning.”

“We’re going to the office today to meet with Cathy and Sandra. We haven’t been watching the books like we should.”

“It’s Sunday, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is. However, Cathy said that we had to deal with some issues, and it couldn’t wait.”

“But we work on your house on Sundays.”

“I know. We can skip a day. I think it is important that we check on our businesses. It’s been more than a month since we’ve looked at the books.”

“It’s hard to believe it has been that long. It feels like we did it yesterday.”

“It’s been a while.”

“I hope we’re not bankrupt.”

“I’m sure she would have told us if we were going bankrupt.”

Tim used up the last of the batter and carried the plate of pancakes out to the table. They sat down and ate without talking. There were always more pancakes than they could eat. Like every other cook in the world, Tim had never figured out how to use half an egg. It made it very difficult to scale a recipe for four down to two.

He froze the left over pancakes. They could heat them up in the toaster although that wasn’t the best way to reheat pancakes.

“Benny.”

“What?”

“You need to buy a microwave oven.”

“They’re kind of expensive, aren’t they?”

“So?”

“Well, they’re kind of expensive.”

“I’m freezing a bunch of pancakes. We can reheat them using the microwave and have them for breakfast in the middle of the week.”

“Okay. I’ll see about getting one.”

Tim washed the dishes while Benny dressed. Tim was done cleaning up the kitchen by the time Benny came downstairs. Benny had discovered that it was time for him to do laundry. He also realized it was time for him to do a little house cleaning. He would do that after the meeting.

They arrived at the office a little before Cathy and Sandra. They went in hardly recognizing the place. Cynthia was there getting ready for her day. Like most real estate agents, her busiest days of the week were Saturdays and Sundays.

“Hello, Cynthia. How are you doing?”

“I’m doing great. I’ve got six showings today.”

“That’s good.”

“Yes. They’re all flippers.”

“That’s even better.”

“How are sales?”

“Wonderful. This summer I closed on 24 houses. Even at this time of year, I’m closing on two or three properties a month. Some of them are pretty low cost places because they’re getting bought by flippers, but it’s still money.”

“That’s really great,” Tim said.

Cynthia said, “I’m thinking of bringing on a couple of sales associates.”

“That’s good news.”

Tim was reminded about the miserable position she held a couple years ago. Her boss had been a real jerk, and she was living on starvation wages considering how few commissions she received and how small they were. He could tell by the clothes she was wearing and the car in the driveway, that she was doing a lot better now. He wondered how the old realty company was doing.

“I’m going to have to move out of here. There’s no space for a couple more people.”

“Don’t let us hold you back. When you’re ready to make your move, make it. We’ll survive without your rent.”

“It’s more than that. I’ve relied upon Cathy and Sandra to handle the office work.”

“Oh. I see.”

“The fact is, your business isn’t keeping them busy. It’s more of a part-time job for them now.”

Benny slipped off into his world of thought without Cynthia or Tim being aware of it. Tim and Cynthia were busy discussing the logistics of how the move would have to be handled.

“We let her rent this office,” Benny said out of the blue.

“What did you say?” Tim asked.

“We give up this office. We don’t need the main room of the house as office space now. She does. So she moves her new people in here. She keeps her old office.

“We move into the file room. We’ve filled about one filing cabinet with papers and the book cases are empty. We can cram two desks in there. Sandra and Cathy stay in this room working for her full time, and us part-time.”

Tim said, “That works for me.”

“That’s a good idea, Benny.”