Chapter 80: Nest Hunting

Friday, January 20, 1984

School seemed to drag on again today. Jess seemed fine, at least, which made me happy.

And ... no. Jess didn’t seem ‘fine.’ Jess seemed just slightly better than fine, like a weight she’d been carrying for the last two weeks — one few of us (perhaps only me) would have seen — had been lifted at last.

I knew she would still have regrets. Who wouldn’t? But it had helped. Either that, or Jess had put up a little Steve-specific part of the onion to hide her pain from me. I wouldn’t count it out as an outside possibility, but I didn’t think Jess would do that. Not when I (along with Angie — and Jas and Paige, though Jess wouldn’t know that for sure) would be just about the only person in the world she could discuss it with.

Angie and Jess did indeed spend half an hour talking during lunch, but what I got was a thumbs-up and then a quiet reminder that girl talk was still girl talk. For all I know, they were comparing the guys we’d seen on the screen at the Village to guys at Memorial.

Which could include me.

I was perfectly happy to be far away from that conversation!

Jas, Angie, Paige, and I piled into my car, and we headed off to College Station just after school. If we hit the road right away, after all, we should be ahead of rush hour traffic.

It pretty much worked. We caught a few snags along the Northwest Freeway, but the whole drive took us only about two hours, which wasn’t bad at all.

That put us at our hotel just a bit after six. Unlike the last trip, everything in College Station was bustling. There were cars everywhere and groups of students walking to and fro, even well away from any of the university buildings.

It really put into perspective how dead the town was when the students were away. Over thirty thousand people will do that to a town. Even if perhaps six or seven thousand lived on campus, far more did not.

Our hotel, however, wasn’t all that busy. I imagined it was sold out every football weekend, and for other big events, but was often half-empty at best the rest of the year.

We checked in, put our bags away, and then headed off to dinner at The Grapevine. It’d been good before and all of us wanted to try it again.

We enjoyed it just as much this time. The clientele seemed to be a mix of people likely to be professors or perhaps grad students and some undergraduates, mostly on dates or with what I guessed were their parents. That fit what I’d expected; it was just a trifle too upscale to be an undergrad hangout.

As for us, I could see this being a fairly common indulgence, especially when we could order wine without worrying about them checking IDs. We didn’t try tonight, not after seeing a server carding two tables just before we ordered.

My guess was that this was a temporary thing. College-town businesses tend to get lax about alcohol unless they think the authorities are watching. It’s just the nature of things: there’s too much money in selling alcohol for a restaurant to voluntarily cut off many of their customers.

If you knew when the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission was watching, though, you got very strict, very quickly. They could, and did, routinely send in people posing as being underage. Fail to check IDs and the penalties were high, potentially as high as the loss of a liquor license. For many restaurants, that was tantamount to the kiss of death.

Things were only going to get worse as they raised the drinking age, though only Angie and I knew that as a fact.

We hung out talking (about Jess, about college, about school, about life in general) until nearly nine, when they officially closed. They hadn’t needed us to leave to free up the table or we’d have left sooner. Since they hadn’t, we enjoyed the evening.

When we got back to the hotel, we parted with hugs and kisses, planning to meet for breakfast around eight-thirty. Everyone felt like going to The Kettle again. It’s entirely possible that there were better places, maybe even close to us, but it’d been good and the convenience was unbeatable.

Jas and I took advantage of a relatively early bedtime and a relatively late breakfast for some much-desired dessert.

After we’d had seconds, Jas wound up snuggled up close, head on my shoulder.

“I needed that,” she said, giggling.

“Me, too!” I said.

She grinned. “After watching a porn movie? Of course you did!”

“We did not watch a porn movie!”

“But...”

“We watched a little over a third of a porn movie.”

“Oh,” she said, giggling, and blushing a bit, too.

“As I said to Jess, people usually aren’t going for the plot or the acting.”

“I ... can see that.”

“Well, not yet, but I can arrange it.”

She playfully bit my shoulder, then said, “Let me think about that.”

“Think about sex? I’m in favor.”

She bit my shoulder again. “Jerk!”

“That, too.”

It took her a second, and then she bopped me with a pillow. Then she got out of bed.

“Gotta pee! And, if you can take that out of context, don’t!”

“You’re safe there,” I called after her.

“Good!”

When she got back, we snuggled up, kissed, and were quickly asleep.

Saturday, January 21, 1984

We met in the lobby just before nine and headed over to the Kettle. It was just as we’d remembered it, except that it was crowded and we had a fifteen-minute wait. Even then, the service was prompt and attentive and we weren’t more than five minutes late for our meeting with Maxine Fletcher.

Maxine’s office was in a small strip center on Texas Avenue (the main route through Bryan and College Station, and the same street the Ramada was located on) about two miles north of the Ramada.

As we headed in, the bell on the door rang, and we heard a “Howdy!” from an open door in the back of the office. A few seconds later, a fortyish, slightly heavyset woman with teased-up, somewhat elaborate blonde hair came out and waved.

“Welcome, y’all! I’m Maxine. You must be Steve Marshall, and I have no idea of the rest of your names.”

She gave me a mock-glare. I probably should have given her their names in advance.

I stepped forward and offered my hand. “Steve Marshall. Nice to meet you, Ms. Fletcher.”

“Maxine! Please!”

The girls all introduced themselves.

After that, Maxine gestured to some chairs and a slightly battered couch in the front of the office. “Sit, please!” she said, taking a seat herself.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Maxine,” I said. “I’m probably the spokesman for our ragtag little band...”

The girls nodded.

“As you and I discussed, we’re looking for a house. We’ll be going to school here in the fall. The ideal — which may not exist — is a fairly large house with several bedrooms, good entertaining spaces, and a good kitchen not far from campus. Quiet is preferable, and we’re a quiet bunch ourselves.”

She nodded. “To buy, not to rent, correct? I feel like I need to double-check, considering.”

I nodded, then said, “I’m looking to buy the house. We may consider others later as investments. This one is to live in and as an investment.”

She nodded. “Your budget for this is around $90,000? Cash?”

“$90,000, maybe more,” I said. “Yes, cash.”

“There’s a timing restriction,” Angie said. “It’ll be awkward for us to close before mid-February. None of us are eighteen yet.”

Maxine smiled. “If I hadn’t talked to Mr. Branner — who’s very sharp, by the way — I’d be a trifle worried about you pulling my leg! He’s quite convincing, though. He was amused, and stressed that you weren’t at all the average kids.”

“None of us are,” I said. “The other thing is, we’re all expecting full scholarships. If that falls through, it probably means we’ll be talking to a realtor somewhere else.”

She chuckled. “We get that a lot. Some early birds start looking for housing before they have their I’s dotted or T’s crossed. That’s not just students, either. Professors are often looking for housing before the contract is final.”

“Makes perfect sense,” Angie said.

“I put together a list of ideas,” she said. “We can do this however you’d like, and I’m happy to, but I think it might help if we do a bit of an overview first, just so that you know what I’m not showing you. It helps rule out places that might look promising but aren’t.”

I looked at the girls, and they all nodded.

Angie said, “We’ll be here at least four years. Might as well get to know the area. We just don’t want to spend a lot of time on the wrong houses or areas.”

“All of which is exactly the point,” Maxine said, nodding. “Your price range is fine for some neighborhoods where you’ll never be at home. You could also buy a duplex or triplex, but you won’t like the location, and you probably won’t like the neighbors, either.”

“Good to know,” Angie said.

“If the neighbors aren’t too much of a problem, those sound like potential investment properties later,” I said.

She nodded. “They are. They definitely are. Most kids would be fine there, but y’all don’t seem the ‘drunken party at four in the morning’ types.”

“Nah. Definitely not,” Angie said, with the rest us of nodding.

“Let’s go, and I’ll show you around!” Maxine said, getting up. She locked the front door, then led us out the back door, locking that, too.

“My car should hold all of us,” she said, nodding to a Cadillac. “That’s usually how I do this.”

“That works for us,” I said, after the girls all nodded. They would have to share the back seat, but that was hardly a problem.

We got in, and she took off toward campus, starting up a constant narration of neighborhoods: where the good grocery stores were, how the campus bus lines worked, where you didn’t want to live, where you really didn’t want to live, and so forth.

“As I said, I’m intentionally starting with places you won’t want,” she said, “simply because I want you to get a feel for the traditional student housing experience. Not for you, but potentially for investment properties.”

“Thanks,” I said.

She drove down several major streets, pointing out sprawling apartment complexes, with houses (many of them rentals) behind them. They were on the bus routes, but the commute would cut down on spontaneity.

After that, we went into the area south of the campus but fairly close. It varied between older, smaller apartment complexes, standalone duplexes and triplexes, and neighborhoods of neat single-family homes that, as Maxine put it, ‘don’t cater to students.’

There was a small converted-house neighborhood behind the collection of shops and businesses on the south side of campus. They didn’t look particularly attractive, though.

She stopped at one. “This one’s rented, but they’re out of town and we have permission to look. I’m not expecting anyone to be home.”

We all nodded. She knocked and, after several minutes, we went in.

It was indeed occupied, and the students who lived here didn’t seem particularly concerned with cleaning up before heading out of town. That said, it was merely messy, not horrifying. It was subdivided into three small ‘apartments’, but those were just a bedroom, bathroom, and closet. The kitchen was shared.

We’d have no problem with that, but it lacked ... well, a lot, really. It’d absolutely do in a pinch, but it wasn’t what we wanted.

That said, I’d have no problem with renting it to other students. Compared to most of the apartments, it was in easy biking or even walking distance of campus.

Angie and Jas took a few pictures, perhaps out of obligation.

Maxine was watching us, of course. When we got to the car, she said, “I was pretty sure that wasn’t what you wanted.”

Jas said, “I was imagining it without the mess. It’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with it. It just didn’t feel ... special.”

“Yeah,” Paige said. “In some ways, it’s nicer than my house, but it’s not special.”

Angie said, “It feels like what it is — a rental in a neighborhood of rentals.”

“Maybe we should break for lunch?” Maxine said. “I know a nice place that’s close, and it’d give you a chance to talk, or us to talk. Or both. I’m used to making myself scarce and giving clients room.”

“All of us at first,” Angie said. “I’m sure you’d have a lot to share about living here.”

Everyone else nodded. We were all ready for lunch.

Maxine headed north on Wellborn Avenue. A railroad cut right through the campus paralleling Wellborn, separating ‘Main campus’ from ‘West campus’. Fortunately, they’d built some pedestrian-friendly crossings. Without them this would be a real mess, since ‘West campus’ had a number of buildings plus many sports fields and huge parking lots, mostly for those commuting from apartments.

Maxine turned down University and took us to a place called Gideon’s Farmer’s Market. It was just down the street a bit from the Dixie Chicken (or ‘the Chicken’, as Maxine put it). They had soup, sandwiches, and a sign that said ‘new menu coming soon!’

We all ordered sandwiches, then picked a table near the windows. The place was about two-thirds full of students. Most were either reading or talking quietly with friends. It was decidedly not a rowdy place, at least not on a Saturday afternoon in January.

The food was good. We talked as we ate, getting to know each other. Maxine was forty and had been a realtor for fifteen years, all of it in the Bryan/College Station area. She loved finding the right place for her clients. Either that, or she was good at faking it, but I think she was like Dad and wanted happy clients, not just selling something to collect her cut. I’m sure that collecting her cut figured into it, though.

Of course, the great majority of her business was not with students. We weren’t the only students to look at buying property, but it’d been five years since she’d had a student house-hunting without parents basically running things.

We went over what we were planning to study and some of what we’d done in high school. She seemed curious about all of it.

By the time we were done, I think we all genuinely liked Maxine. I hoped she’d find us a great house, not just so that we had one, but so that she would get her cut, too. I could see working with her on a long-term basis, at least if her real recommendations (the ones we had yet to see) lived up to the impression I was getting of her.

After lunch, we headed back to Maxine’s Cadillac.

“I think you’ll like the next neighborhood better,” Maxine said.

She headed down University, then turned left, down a few blocks, and then left again, paralleling University north of Northgate. The houses here were older, bigger, and mostly two story. The bike racks and A&M flags were the best indication that these were student residences.

Maxine said, “Twenty or thirty years ago, this area was mostly professors and professionals. Northgate was here, but A&M was a tenth the size, and most students lived on the south side. The Corps of Cadets is based down there, and everyone was in the Corps back then. Twenty years later, and people who aren’t in the Corps are still called ‘non-regs’, even though they’re the vast majority.”

“I knew it was all military,” Paige said. “‘Non-regs?’”

“Not under military regulations, I think,” Maxine said. “It was basically their way of saying ‘Don’t blame us for not following the rules!’”

“Ah!” Paige said. “Makes sense!”

“These don’t sell that often. I’ve got two to show you, though. They’re almost across the street, but not quite. Different owners, different stories.”

She took us to a two-story with a small front porch. It was obviously occupied. A girl in her early twenties answered the doorbell. She nodded when Maxine asked if we could look the place over, and told us everyone was moving out in May.

This house was more thoroughly converted to apartments. Each bedroom (there were three) had a mini-kitchen and reasonable bathroom and closet space. They were close to ‘mother-in-law’ units, if not quite. The shared living areas were spacious, and the main kitchen was fairly modern.

“This one’s on the market for $92,000,” Maxine said. “The owner is tired of it, basically. It’d make enough in rentals to cover the payments on it, but you couldn’t get a mortgage. Still, if you could buy it, you’d have cash flow. Like almost all of these, the leases are structured so that you pass through utilities to the tenants. Maintenance is on you, of course, once it’s more than changing light bulbs or replacing toilet paper or other consumables.”