Chapter 5

The morning came bright and early, a clear and vibrant day. The sun was already beating down, and it was very, very hot. The A/C unit on my new truck kept it reasonable in here, but it felt like a day where it would be, perhaps, too hot to sell. Looking at my brand new Blackberry, I looked up the weather and and found that it was actually supposed to reach three figures today. Fuck that shit.

Once we got up and dressed, we walked to the truck stops restaurant, and sat down in a private booth looking for breakfast. I had something I wanted to discuss with her, and it was a huge decision. If we were going to spend the rest of out lives together we needed to discuss this.

"Yaz," I said, "I'm thinking of leaving the markets."

"Hmm?" she said, munching down some bland french toast.

"This lifestyle is too damned risky," I said, "And you do too damned much for too damned little. Besides, I was doing some graphing statistics on my computer the other day, and ... well, assuming the trend continues on its path according to the best fitting quadratic formula, we won't even be making enough to survive in four or five years time."

"Really?" she said, looking up at me with a little bit of surprise.

"Really," I said, "In fact, you're the only reason I didn't start pulling out last year."

"Ok," she said, "Now, lets assume you liquidate all of this stuff, and we buy a livable house, for you and me, and perhaps two kids. How much cash would we have left over?"

"I'm not exactly sure," I said truthfully, "But I'd say somewhere well south of half a million bucks. And that doesn't allow for us caring for your mother."

"So what do we do?" she asked, "If we need to still make money, what do we do?"

"We could open a real store," I said, "Like in a mall, or downtown, or something like that."

"Downtown," she said, "Definitely downtown. Malls fucking suck."

"I don't disagree with you, darlin', but I don't know which makes more business sense."

"Think about it," she said, "You can buy a store downtown, you have to rent from a mall. You do it right, and the downtown store can be pretty cheap, especially if you manage to rent out the apartments or offices above the store."

I blinked. "How the fuck do you know this stuff, kid?"

She glared at me.

"I'm not a fucking kid," she yelled at me, "I fu-" I clamped my hand over her mouth.

"Sweetie," I whispered to her, "You do realize we are in public and perhaps they shouldn't know that a 12 year girl is involved with me?"

"Sorry," she croaked, "Perhaps we should be discussing this back in our truck."

"Indeed," I said, downed my coffee, tossed the money on the table, and we went back to the truck to continue the discussion.

Once we got in the truck she pounced on me and gave me a big hug.

"Ok, Yaz," I said, "So you love me. Now about the future."

"Ok, ok," she said, "One of my cousins is involved in real estate speculation. He was talking about all this stuff at the dinner table once when we were over at his house for a holiday."

I nodded. I logged onto RealEstate.co, and went looking for property to buy. I found a neat little store in Reading, PA. Reading being a poor town, would probably be interested in the kind of value priced merchandise that I carried, and since Boscov's had moved out of downtown recently, and was no longer under family control, I actually had a chance to pick up the business.

The building was on Penn Avenue, and was four stories tall. The first floor had the store front, which offered 1500 square feet of merchandise display space, a decent storage area in the basement with elevator access, a loading dock at the rear, and some office space behind the store. The second floor had six rentable offices with exterior access. The third floor had 6 studio apartments, and the fourth floor had a pair of two bedroom apartments.

In the crazy and magical world of Reading real estate, this thing was only $150,000. Were I stupid enough to take out a mortgage on the thing, I would need to only fill a third of the buildings available space at going rates to cover the mortgage cost. Meaning that if I kept the building full, I could fund full employee help, run the store, and maintain fresh merchandise without selling a damned thing and still make money. Sold.

But not for $150,000. I put in an offer for $115,000. They came back with $135,000. I came back with $120,000. They came back with $130,000. I told them $120,000 in cash up front tomorrow or I wasn't buying it. It had been on the market for a year, and they took it.

Hey, I'm Jewish. Its part of my religion to not pay full price for anything. It says is right there in the holy Torah: And Thou shall not pay Retail or the Lord Shall Smite you.

Anyway, that happened really quickly over the phone with the seller, so Yaz and I called a Taxi and went to the hospital. You know where one of those two bedroom apartments were going, right? It even had an elevator to help her.

When we got to the hospital, we told Shekiah what we were going, and she seemed happy. It was a good distance to move from where we were, but it was time to consider doing something different with our lives. Not that I was planning on giving up on markets entirely. There are some good markets around Reading that I could use for getting rid of outdated or too heavily damaged merchandise.

Then I called another taxi and we got a ride to a rental car agency. Deciding that the best way to come into this was a position of strength, I rented a Lincoln Town Car. It wasn't a great luxury car, but I didn't want to deal with the sellers driving a Chevy or some shit like that.

The two of us then drove to my storage facility where I took out two hundred grand in cash, and then we set out on the long drive from where we were to Reading, PA. When we got to the city, we met in the real estate agents office with the couple, who seemed a little flighty until I took out a briefcase and handed it to them. In it was the $120,000 in cash, 24 neat stacks of 50 $100 bills each.

After fees and all that shit, the building was mine. I mean there was the mandatory attorney review period and all that shit, but there was no way they were backing down now after they had all that cash sitting in their hands. As was once said, one in the hand is worth two in the bush.

We then checked in to the beautiful Abraham Lincoln hotel. With our business future now secure, it was time to start looking for a house.

The Abraham Lincoln Hotel is a stunning historic hotel. Located at 100 North 5th Street in downtown Reading, the 18 story building, one of the tallest in the city, was opened in 1930, was then, and is still now, the city's premier hotel. Herbert Hoover once stayed there. And, of course, John Philips Sousa died there. Three cheers for the red white and blue, folks.

Anyway, the next day, after eating in the hotels magnificent restaurant, we went back to the real estate agent. With a budget of $150,000, we went house searching. But as I said, Reading as a real estate market is a magical place where the best can be found for nothing. We found a beautiful semi, with stunning stained glass, glorious wood work, fascinating detail work, and all that stuff, for just $119,000. After negotiations, we got it for $100k flat. More than big enough for us, and just stunning.

The next few months were very busy for us. Yaz's mom pulled through, although she lost both legs and had only bare use of one of her arms, although full use of the other. When we moved her into the nicer of the two apartments, she really liked it. We made it a really nice home for her.

We worked only our best two markets during the weekend, and were spending the rest of the week buying furniture, outfitting the store, and all that stuff. It took us two months to set up the store and the house. So we now set up an operation of moving inventory to the store. After two truckloads, though, we realized we didn't have enough space. We rented a few storage facilities just south of us in Shillington, and kept on moving.

After a total of three months of moving, we were ready to open the store. We put out advertisements in the local paper and on the store saying we were now hiring. You'd think we were giving away free 1ct diamonds or something. I interviewed hundreds of people for the four positions, mainly commission. I mean, college graduates here.

After a month of that, five months after making the decision to do this stuff, Josh's Best Value Clothing Emporium held its Grand Opening. We were mobbed. For the first week, we had so many people buying things, it was insane. Why hadn't I done this earlier?

But after another few months of being open, the traffic started to drop off a bit. By our six month opening anniversary, I was doing about 80% of the business I had been doing at the flea market. But of course, with much lower expenses. The building was practically free. We had all but one of the studios and two of the offices occupied. It was a gold mine in and of itself. We were making more then enough to pay for living in Reading. We were getting by without a car, and the truck was mostly just sitting except for occasional pickups or storage facility raids.

Yaz had fallen in love with our new house. Which made me very happy. We were eating better, as Yaz had discovered a hidden talent for cooking. We worked shorter hours. The store was opened from 10AM to 8PM. She opened it up in the morning, and I came in around 1PM to relieve her. She then went home and studied. The house was walkable, but we both generally took the bus. BARTA has a pretty decent service.

Contrary to common belief, if you stay out of a few minor ghettos towards the outskirts of the city, Reading is a very safe place. Its friendly, like all non-Pittsburgh/Philly Pennsylvania cities. The people are generally good natured, and crime is fairly low outside of the so called 'hoods. So many nights, instead of taking the bus, I'd either walk or jog home. Sometimes I'd miss the last bus to my stop anyway, so I got used to it.

Yaz spent some of her hours alone studying things, and some of it cleaning the house. We worked seven days a week, but it was less stress, and less work, then what we had been doing before.

However, and amazingly she was the one who noticed this, there was a large stock of things in the warehouse that just weren't salable at a store at reasonable prices. So we undertook a project. We sorted it into 'Low price salable' and 'unsalable' sections. The unsalable stuff got donated to charity, allowing us to close down one of our storage facilities.