Chapter 39

Saturday, March 30, 2002

It was after midnight on Friday evening when Dave saw the lights of Shae's Taurus pulling into the driveway. This wasn't unexpected; when she'd called for the boys' bedtime story she explained they'd had to shoot later in the afternoon than planned, but was going to drive right straight through from the minute Avalon had wrapped for the day. Dave saved the open file on the novel -- having an unexpected weekend in Bradford gave him a little more time than he had been anticipating, so he had a chance to work on it -- and headed outside to greet her.

He'd barely made it out the front door when he saw Shae rushing toward him. He spread his arms to greet her, but got an unexpected response. "Out of my way, Dave," she said anxiously. "Never get between a pregnant woman and a bathroom. I've got to pee so bad it isn't funny."

"First things first," he laughed, stepping aside. He headed out to her car, to discover her suitcase lying on the back seat. He grabbed it and headed inside, leaving it on the dresser of the big bedroom. He was just getting back to the living room when she came out of the downstairs bathroom. "Oh, damn!" she exclaimed. "That feels so much better!"

"You know, there is a service plaza on the turnpike not far back," he teased. "You didn't have to press on regardless."

"Hell, I stopped there," she said. "Christ, I'm going to be glad when these commutes to see you are over with. Is everything set up?"

"As much as can be," he nodded.

It had been a busy couple days back on Tuesday and Wednesday, but things had gone pretty well. As it turned out, Lloyd had hit his prediction about Court right on the nose. Well, nearly -- he'd taken off for a couple hours to do some odds and ends, but was back at the big table with a cup of coffee, killing time till lunch when the two of them walked in. Right from the beginning, Dave remembered Jerry, but until that moment wouldn't have been able to put the name together with his face. He was in his late fifties, a few inches shorter than Dave, lean and muscular, with short-cropped gray hair and black horn-rimmed glasses. Lloyd had made the introductions and explained how Dave was thinking about having a house built. The problem, as Lloyd put it, was that Dave's ducks were all over the place though they showed signs of getting into a row. Court told him that he could handle it, but it was going to be a case of first come, first served, although there was nothing else right at the moment that looked like it might come out of the woodwork to get in the way.

While Court said he could handle building the house, designing it was another issue. He explained that he preferred to not design anything much more complicated than a two-car garage, but there was a good designer, Steve Grimes, he often worked with who could handle that part of it. "He's actually just a draftsman," Court had explained. "But he's kind of a jack-leg architect. He'll be quicker and less expensive than if you hired the real thing, and you'll probably get a more-livable space out of it."

Not only did Court recommend Grimes, he took Dave over to meet the guy. He was about Court's age, give or take, shorter yet, with thin hair plastered firmly onto a nearly bald head. He assured Dave that putting something together in a hurry wouldn't be a problem. He had literally tens of thousands of floor plans available and could order prints to go with them fairly cheaply, and also make any needed modifications to the prints. "One tricky thing," Dave told them. "I want ten-foot ceilings all through the house, and eight-foot doors. I realize those may have to be custom made, but don't go talking standard-sized doors to me. Cabinets and countertops will probably have to be made special, too. We'll have to sit down with my fiancée and get her input on things, and go from there." Dave also pointed out he was still had to be sure about getting the land he wanted, but if things could be worked out they made a tentative appointment for Saturday morning to work on the details.

When Dave and Lloyd got back to the office, Dave tried Don Paxton again; Emily had had the phone number after all, but there wasn't any answer when he called the first time. This time there was; he'd just gotten in off the golf course. Paxton told him he'd finally gotten the worst of the insurance issues worked out. "Hey," he said. "When those insurance guys tell you they're quick to settle a claim they are full of shit to the eyeballs. Don't ever believe it." He told Dave he thought it was unwise to sell the property before the insurance issues were settled, but now that they were, he was planning to list the place the next time he was in Bradford, which wouldn't be before summer. "I don't mind not paying a commission to a real estate agent," he said. Dave offered to pay the price of a fair appraisal, when it could be worked out, but he needed a few more days to run it by Shae and straighten out a few other things before he could close the deal.

With that done, Dave called Michelle in the Dunlap and Fyre office, to ascertain there wasn't anything waiting for him that couldn't be put off a while. He hadn't wanted to tell her what really was going on -- building a house was a sure sign he wouldn't be back working in New York, and he wanted to keep his options open as long as he could. But, she accepted his explanation that "something has come up here" and let it go at that, and no, there wasn't anything at their end that couldn't wait for a week or two.

The next call was to Aaron Tietelbaum, who told him that buying a house was a great tax move. "It'll actually work better if you take out a mortgage on it," Aaron said. "You can always pay it off early, but there's a lot of things we can do with homesteads. Oh, and make sure you get a fixed rate mortgage. Adjustable rates are a good deal right now and will probably go lower, but sooner or later the bottom is going to drop out of the market, and we'll be looking at double digits. If you have a fixed rate, you can just sit back and grin at the poor people trying to make those huge balloon payments."

Only then did Dave talk to Shae for the third time that day to tell her their ducks were starting to line up and they had to deal with things on Saturday. His previous call, before heading out to the Chicago with Lloyd, was to bounce the general idea off of her, and to tell her the Paxton property might be available for a home site. "God, that would be so neat," she said. "We had a lot of fun there in the old days. Is the pool still there?"

"Yeah, but no water in it," Dave told her. "I don't know if they pumped it out for fire fighting, or it leaked out, or what. I didn't even take much of a look to see what kind of shape it was in. I just wanted to re-familiarize myself with the property."

All of the running around made Tuesday a day he was likely to remember for a long time. That evening, during the late call after story time, they brainstormed a little on what they wanted in the house. Dave had hoped Shae would have some reaction to the deadline ultimatum she had for the producers, but it hadn't worked. Sean had made himself scarce for the rest of the afternoon; in the nightly phone calls she reported he'd spent most of the time at the network offices or hiding in a hole or something.

Now, Shae was here, and they could talk about some of those things without having to do it on the phone. It was still going to be a busy weekend. "I've opened negotiations with the bank here about a construction loan," Dave told her. "They're like any bank, they're going to drag ass till the cows come home, but I talked to Aaron, and we can kite money around as we need to until the bank figures out what they're doing. They drag it out too long, and I'll just pay cash and eat the tax bite, but I'd rather have the cash in mutual funds getting eight and nine percent while I'm only paying six percent on a mortgage. I made that pretty clear to them, and I think it will speed things up some. That's one thing about having money, it smooths out a lot of the horse shit."

"Funny how that works, isn't it?" Shae smiled, still walking around the living room to get some of the road kinks out. "I appreciate your keeping me informed on this stuff. I realize it's pretty much your money, but it's going to be our house."

"Well, I'm just glad you could take the trip here this weekend when it wasn't your turn," he said. "Just because of the season, we need to be getting hot on this, but if everything goes all right, we should be able to move in by the time the snow flies. No promises about it being before the baby comes, but there's a chance."

"It would be nice," she sighed. "But however it works out, I'm going to enjoy being here with you for the summer, and even if we don't get to live in the house right away, it'll be nice to know it's there waiting."

The thought almost stopped him. "You mean they may actually meet the deadline?"

"Actually, I doubt it," she told him. "I finally got to Sean over lunch hour today. He, uh, he tried to sneak out without talking to me, but I sort of blocked the door until I said my piece," she giggled. "Needless to say, he's not happy to be told to shit or get off the pot. That's what he does to other people. Anyway, he told me everything is still up in the air. There still is no decision about next year. Anyway, with what came down this week, I told him August 1 and I wasn't planning on dragging it out a day past that. I also reminded him I've been working without a contract for months, and there's nothing to keep me from not even showing up Monday. So, yeah, there is a chance there could be another year of Avalon."

"Damn," he frowned. "I guess I've pretty well got things settled in my mind that we're both going to be here for the next school year. But, I haven't exactly burned my bridges at Dunlap and Fyre yet, either, just in case I have to spend a winter in the city with you. It's going to be harder to do it with a nice new house sitting here in Bradford."

"Yeah," she sighed. "I just wish the hell now that I'd told him June 1 and let it go at that. Well, there's still the Charlie's House solution."

"Huh? That one went past me."

"Oh, you remember me telling you how Charlie's House became Avalon. A couple of the principals decided to hold out for more money than they were willing to pay. Since I don't have a contract, they might have to make it worth my while to keep me, and the price is going to go up the longer they drag their ass. But I don't think I want to give up the lease on the apartment before August, just on general principles."

"You know what?" he said. "It sounds like someone wants to kill it but have someone else to blame for doing the dirty work."

"Yeah, God, don't you just love office politics?"

"Oh, yeah," he shook his head. "That's the one thing I hated about not doing the trip to the city this weekend. I wanted to find out how it's going in our own little internecine struggle. What with all the stuff at the Courier and my regular job, I haven't been able to work on the book much in the last month or so. I try to write a few hundred words each day just to keep up progress, but I don't always manage it. I would really like to have it completed and able to run it by Michelle, and maybe Dick and Rob before any changeover comes. If Rayme is running fiction, I think it'll get dropped like a hot potato. If they want it, I'd like to have it pretty well accepted and under contract before Rayme gets any say. Originally, I wanted to present them with a completed book, but now I think it'll have to be fifteen to twenty chapters and a synopsis and outline. I think I want to do it sooner rather than later, too, and especially before they find out I'm building a big new house out in the heart of flyover country."

"I don't know," she sighed. "Maybe we ought to hold off on the house."

"It would simplify things," he shook his head. "But on the other hand, everything else is falling into place. Frankly, if we don't get something nailed down with Court, it could be a year before we could even get another contractor onto the site, and I'm not sure we want to wait that long. Face it Shae, we're trying to hang onto the strings of still believing we're New Yorkers when we're really trying to just get the hell out of there in the best shape possible."

"Yeah," she said. "You're right about that. But isn't hanging around Dunlap and Fyre going to help you with your book?"

"It would, if the timing works out right," he said. "If it doesn't, there's plenty of other places I can shop it around and still have an inside track. I think I'm editor enough to know it's pretty good, but if it doesn't fly there are other things I can do without hanging around what the truckers out at the truck stop call 'the dirty side'. And it includes sitting around the house watching reruns of my wife playing a little girl giantess while I dandle our baby on my knee."

"It'd drive you nuts," she said flatly. "It sounds good, but after a few weeks you'd go out of your tree."