Chapter 21

The property we inspected in Las Vegas wasn't a hotel, motel, or casino, but rather an office building complex with one mid-rise tower and three four-story structures arranged around a central courtyard. It was well located on East Charleston Boulevard amid a cluster of other office buildings. The other buildings in the cluster were of a more recent vintage than the property that interested me, so obsolescence was its major drawback. The current owner and, from all indications, the previous owner hadn't corrected the obsolescence as it occurred, and because obsolescence drove tenants away, cash flow suffered, and then the owner complicated the problem by deferring maintenance, as well.

Josh, Andy and I had just completed our inspection tour and were enjoying an iced tea at a nearby coffee shop. Liz and Sandy were pampering themselves in the Spa at Bellagio, the ultra-luxurious hotel where Josh had booked our rooms. Josh, Sandy and I were staying in a two-bedroom penthouse suite, and Andy and Liz were occupying a similar, adjoining suite. Andy and Liz were here for my birthday party, but I'd also hoped I could interest Andy in being the architect for the office complex. Andy had joined the inspection tour reluctantly, and his thoughts finally gave me a clue why he'd hesitated. He didn't want his name associated with a half-assed remodeling project. I probed deeper and discovered he'd never handled a renovation.

"Waddaya think, Andy?" I asked.

"The time has come and gone for that complex."

Josh huffed a laugh. "Agreed, but is it fixable?"

Andy grinned. "Oh, yeah, but the fix won't be cheap." Andy looked me in the eye. "Some of the obsolescence isn't correctable, Nicole."

"Like the eight-foot ceiling heights?" I said.

"Uh-huh. New office buildings are giving tenants nine-foot ceilings; some offer ten. You don't have enough room in the plenum to move the dropped ceilings from eight to nine feet, but I was thinking more in terms of the overall appearance of the complex. It's dated in the early seventies when the complex was developed. It also has a parking problem."

"My research says I can move the ceiling height up six inches," I said.

"That'd help," Andy commented.

"Are you saying the overall appearance can't be altered to bring it more in line with the newer office buildings in the cluster?" I asked.

"Not unless you throw enough money at the problem."

I grinned. "That's what correcting obsolescence is all about, Andy. You haven't worked on a renovation like this one, have you?"

"Nope."

"Okay, let me tell you what I have in mind, starting with the interior public spaces. I see black marble floors and walls in the main lobby, included the security desk. Any contrasting materials, including the ceiling, will be stainless steel. Recessed spot lighting. A new, modern directory. Some sculpture, maybe a large painting or two, and live, potted trees and plants everywhere. The elevators are okay, and they've been maintained, but we'll redo the elevator cabs, using stainless steel walls and ceilings and Berber carpet on the floors. All new fixtures and hardware in the restrooms, and we'll continue the black marble and stainless steel motif from the main lobby to the restrooms and the lobbies on the upper floors. New, modern fluorescent lighting in the upper lobbies and corridors. Berber floor covering in the corridors on the upper floors. All new signage, and we'll make sure management understands and enforces tenant signage. This town is nuts about signs, and that attitude has crept into the office structures. All new, full-height solid-core doors, and new hardware. Oh, and glass sidelights at the entrance to each office.

"Inside the offices, we'll raise the ceiling heights as far as possible, put in new dropped ceilings, and new florescent lighting fixtures. Berber-like carpet with carpet baseboards, instead of rubber. New full-height doors. Thin-line Venetian blinds on the windows. Painted walls as the building standard. Anything more will be a tenant extra.

"Now lets move to the façade. It's vanilla, and you're correct, it's dated. I'd like to hire you to fix it, and I'd like to hire Liz to help me with the interiors. I see new heavily tinted glazing as one solution to the façade, perhaps combined with a new material to sheath the current pored-in-place and painted structural elements. I'll also hire a management company who knows how to manage and maintain office buildings, and a commercial real estate company that knows this market and how to move tenants from one building to another. I see the courtyard as a big plus, but it needs to look like a jungle instead of the alkali desert surrounding this town, and the courtyard should include a watercourse, fountains, and ponds and cozy seating areas with tables. I want the office tenants from miles around to enjoy their lunches in the courtyard.

"As you mentioned, there's a parking problem, but it's solvable. The small strip-retail structure adjacent to the complex to the west is buyable, and the two remaining tenants are month-to-month. While you're redesigning the façade, please design a parking structure on the adjacent property as well as some space for some retail that will serve the office tenants, like a restaurant, and a copy center. Oh, I forgot. I want to offer the tenants a couple of meeting rooms, one intimate that looks like a high-end boardroom, the other large for seminars or training classes, and both rooms should offer state-of-the-art technology. Heck, if feasible, I'd like to turn the buildings into smart buildings. The training room can be put on the lower level of the tower where the maintenance personnel are storing all their junk. The meeting room should be on the second level overlooking the lobby. Andy, I don't want to bring that complex up to its competitors' standards, I want the complex to be the benchmark that new office buildings must meet or exceed to compete."

"Jesus!" Andy breathed. "Will the numbers work?"

"Yes, depending on what we pay for the complex and a few other issues, the most important being how Josh and I structure the financing."

"It's doable," Josh said. "Does the job interest you?"

Andy nodded. "Yeah, and Liz will have a ball. She's in what I call her black and white with splashes of pure color period. What about the existing tenants?"

"We'll work around them, relocate them, or buy out their leases, whatever it takes. It's a two-year job, Andy. A year to upgrade, and another to fill it with tenants. Hopefully, we'll buy at a fourteen percent cap rate using the low rents the complex can generate today to calculate the net operating income, and sell it at an eight or nine percent cap rate using the higher rental rates the renovated project can produce. Do you have any ideas that would upgrade the façade?"

"A few. We could... here, I'll do some sketches for you." The café used linen tablecloths, and Andy's pen started to create on its stark white surface. "The buildings aren't cohesive. With more parking available, we can add space between the buildings using skyways... like this."

"Yes!" I exclaimed. "I like it!"

"And the mid-rise tower is boring, basically a square tube. We could change the roofline... like this, and do the same with the low-rise buildings, but at different angles... like this." He paused. "You mentioned the courtyard. It's there, but that's it. It doesn't help the overall look." Andy quickly roughed in a site plan. "See how the courtyard serves the street, not the office buildings. I'd redesign it... something like this, and put a fountain at the street... here, which effectively closes the open end of the plaza and contains the courtyard, making it an integral part of the office complex. I'll consult with a landscape architect for the courtyard."

"What's about the tinted glazing?"

"Go green... for money, and copper, no stainless steel... I don't know off the top of my head. For some reason, I see the buildings sheathed in the patina of old copper, but it..."

He's hooked, Josh told me silently. Let him run with it. Liz, too. They'll turn this lemon into lemonade. I need to make some calls on the deal I have cooking. Wanna join me or hang with Andy?

I'll stay with Andy. I'm not stuck on the black marble/stainless steel look. Green glazing and the patina of old copper might be the way to go.

Okay, see you at the room later. Dinner at seven in Le Cirque, a snazzy restaurant in the hotel.

Interesting, I thought. Josh raised his shield. He wants privacy. Why?

I slumped, happy and content, on the plush sofa in our suite at Bellagio. The additional hour with Andy after Josh left made me feel better about my first real estate project. If everything went according to plan, my share of the deal when we sold it two years down the line would exceed a million dollars. I shivered with the thought. Josh thinks the wait might make me impatient. Hah! The career course I'd mapped for myself before I met Josh would've taken twenty years minimum, not two!

I heard a knock at the door and pushed myself to my feet, and then noticed the knock came from the adjoining room, not the main door to the suite. Andy wanted to talk some more. No, he wanted to do a little more than talk. He was at loose ends. Sandy and Liz were still bein' pampered at the spa, and Josh... I didn't know where Josh was. His shield was still in place.

I opened the door. Andy grinned and said, "I'd like a drink, and I don't drink alone. It's a hard, fast rule of mine."

I smiled and gestured for him to enter. "Scotch?"

"Yeah, over ice with a twist of lemon."

"I'll call room service. A dry white wine sounds good to me."

He settled on the sofa, and as I made the call I realized I hadn't had sex with Andy without Josh in the room with us, and sex with me was what was drifting through Andy's mind. My project had excited him, and his excitement needed an outlet. Not very romantic, perhaps, but sex for the fun of it didn't need to be romantic. Yeah, I definitely felt some tingles here and there, mostly in my pussy.

I wasn't dressed to seduce. I wore a business pantsuit. My white blouse was sheer, and I wore no bra, so I removed the jacket and draped it over the sofa before I sat next to Andy. His eyes took in my pert breasts, vaguely visible under the blouse.

Josh believed I wasn't into games, but he was wrong. Oh, I didn't set up games like Sandy, but I thoroughly enjoyed the games played by a man and woman along the path to seduction. I liked to arouse the man, and then back off, tease, if you will. Sex didn't work well for me if the man's mind wasn't engaged because I preferred sex that started and ended in the mind with the sex act in between, bracketed by the mental bookends.

Andy and I discussed the project until the drinks arrived. The waiter made Andy's drink and opened the bottle of chilled white wine. After the waiter left, I decided to bring our discussion around to the subject in Andy's mind.

"I'm curious. Liz is older than you by a couple of years. Sandy's two years older than Josh. Do you think sibling incest works better if the female is slightly older than the male?"

"Maybe." He huffed a laugh. "Statistics are virtually nonexistent regarding successful incestuous relationships. Sexologists and therapists delve into the dark side of the subject and blithely ignore the bright side."

"Why is that, do you think?"

"Because it's a morality issue. Incest is wrong. Everybody says so, including the law, so successful incestuous relationships shouldn't exist. To compile statistics for something that shouldn't exist would fly in the face of our culture's current state of morality."

"You said you and Liz have loved each other for years. How many?"

"From my side since my early adolescence. Liz was the object of my first schoolboy crush. I loved the look of her..."

"You share many features. That you are siblings is obvious. Because you look so much alike, have you ever confused self-love with your love for her."

"Not really. We share genes, but Liz is very feminine. I'm..."

"All man," I said with a grin as I interrupted him.

I slipped a couple of buttons loose on my blouse. Andy noticed.

He smiled. "Thanks."

"When did Liz fall in love with you?"

"I asked her the same question recently. She's wasn't sure, said there was no one moment, no sudden revelation." He grunted a laugh. "For Liz, our relationship was about sex at first, not love. She was my sexual mentor, although I found out later that, for the most part, she learned along with me, stayed just ahead of me like a teacher assigned to teach a subject out of her area of expertise. When she noticed how committed I was to her, she cut me off, told me we couldn't have sex with each other until I'd had sex with another girl." He grinned wickedly. "I lied. I told her I'd had sex with a girl named Gloria. Supposedly, Gloria was easy, round heels, etcetera. I asked her out; she accepted, and we talked. No sex, just talk. I didn't even kiss her. My ploy worked. Liz fucked me half to death. She'd missed the sex as much as I. Then Liz and I talked, really talked for the first time. We talked about love and sex and incest and how we were with each other, and that night was a turning point for both of us."

My hand caressed my chest above my breasts, which made the open blouse gape wider.

"In what way?" I asked.

"We believed we'd solved the problem. Because we were brother and sister, we couldn't be a couple, but we were lovers, and we wanted to remain lovers, so we agreed that we'd date and have sex with others."

"A reasonable solution that didn't work from what you said."