"Can" B. Worth - Part Eight

"Can" B. Worth

Part Eight

            Purchase offers are not fun.  I prefer them done quickly and briskly.  Standing in the hallway, I had the history professor TOUCHING my back while my front was TOUCHING the closed “CLICK” – LATCH office door WITH my left hand retrieving the key to this office door from my jacket pocket, putting it into the door’s keyhole and “click”-LOCK that door while… reverse butt-blocking-backup into HIM, who yielded backwards and… said “Your leaving?”

            “Time to report to Mr. Lawyer.” I said… as I turned leftward to face DOWN THE HALL and STEPPED AWAY in that direction.

            “I thought that… but… YOUR cleaning out… IT?

            “Not yet I’m not.” I said moving away.

            “To be… TODAY?”

            “Maybe ten minutes.  Maybe tomorrow.  Maybe never.”  I didn’t like saying the last:  The old “never say never”. 

            The history professor said something else:  “Door isn’t OFFICE LOCK?” or something like that.  I didn’t respond.  I paced right out of there

            Out of the next hall.  Through the foyer.  Out the rear door.  To where the college people’s cars were parked.  To where my truck was parked.  To where the lawyer was parked next to me.

            He wasn’t in his car.  I could see him… about sixty feet away in the middle of a green space (mowed lawn with meticulously maintained ornamental trees each having an aluminum identification tag stuck into the lawn before it).  He was facing the cars and verbally hammering into his cell phone while gesturing with his free arm.  He saw me and started walking toward me …still hammering the cell… .  At twenty steps his arm dropped the cell from his ear and he strode onward staring down at it and thumbing the buttons.  “Great” was my mental qualification of the …making the purchase offer setting developing before me.  He peered hard and downward at the phone, squinting.  “Email” I mentally stated.  His eyes came up and on me… at fifteen feet.

            “Delivering PROGRESS I hope.” He said.

            “Progress?”

            “Your done?”

            “Yes.”

            “LOCKED it?

            “Here’s the key.” I said raising it from my left pocket.

            “KEEP the key.  How much?”

            Just to help this moment a little bit I give notice that this is… very much NOT the first time I have purchase offered …the gentleman.  In fact without the heritage of all of the other purchase offers… and the follow through servicing of those purchase offers… including the smack-dab “I DON’T WANT IT”… I wouldn’t even be here.  HE knows MY roulette wheel SPINS and the purchase offer slot “varies” (his word).  I KNOW he knows THAT.  I KNOW I can …count on THAT.  HE thinks it’s all a mystery WHAT the purchase offer roulette slot IS …unless “it” (the purposed purchase offer lot) happens to be something HE thinks HE knows “IS GOOD” (20^th century successful lawyer look brown faux rich looking furniture, decorative arts and… bland gold framed European – English “ART WORK AND PAINTINGS”.  That I “don’t want it” on that stuff… blows his mind.  So I told him all that stuff is “too good for me”, to get a better dealer (usually an auctioneer in the end) and… what great taste he has, etc. and et al.  “Show me the stuff you hate.” I tell him.  He does.  I thank him for doing that; he’s very professional.  This office lot is a perfect example of that kind of “pain in the ass” (his words) purchase lot.

I return to the purchase offer face off:  He’s at six feet away:

            “Twenty-two fifty.  CLEANED OUT by five.”

            “Can’t do that.  Tomorrow.  Twenty-two?”

            “FIVE.  Tomorrow?”

            “That’s your best?

            “I’m squeezing it”.

            “Squeeze it better?”

            “Eighteen fifty.”

            “Eighteen fifty?”

            “That’s what I want to pay.”

            “LESS?”

            “You didn’t like twenty-two five.”

            “I didn’t say THAT.  I said SQUEEZE IT”.

            “I just did”

            “The wrong way”.

            “Not for ME.  There’s HOURS in that shit.  That’s not pretty in there.  That’s fifty years MESS.  And God know what too.”

            “Twenty-two?”

            “EIGHTEEN FIFTY.  Squeezed.”

            “TWENTY-TWO FIFTY squeezed.

            “Ok; SIXTEEN-FIFTY SQUASHED.”

            Pause.

            “Your impossible:  NUT”.

            “You don’t have to do it.  What do you think?  It’s FREE?  I’m paying YOU money to clean out THAT SHIT PILE.”

            “That’s what you do.  I HIRE YOU TO DO THAT!”

            “SO HIRE ME.”

            “Twenty-two.”

            “Twenty-two.”

            “FIFTY!”

            “Fifty.”

            “He has a wife you know.”

            “SHE DOESN’T WANT ANY OF THAT SHIT”.

            I wrote the check.  I kept the key.  I promised to “TELL THE SECRETARY IN THE HISTORY OFFICE I’LL CALL HER RIGHT NOW. 

            “Don’t forget the PARKING TAGS I NEED THREE”.

            “Three?  Why three?”

            “Done by noon?”

            “Really?  Good.  Give the key back to the office.  LOCK THE DOOR.  Call my office.”  Mr. Lawyer was getting into his car.  He closed his door.  He didn’t look at me.  I stepped around the front of my truck.  He backed out and drove away.  I was alone… with an old dead professor emeritus’ office contents that I just spent two-K-plus on and… I COULDN’T EVEN GO IN TO IT AND START GETTING THE STUFF OUT OF THERE FOR …in twenty-four hours I would have the cleanout DONE… BUT:  “I have the key.  The keys: WHO HAS THE KEYS… to that office?”

            Twenty-four hours is a very, very, VERY long time to leave a purchased lot of antiques (and rare books) NOT GUARDED… especially if one doesn’t know “Who has a KEY?”

            There was nothing I could do about this… except “sweat it out”.  THERE IS NOTHING I CAN DO ABOUT THIS SITUATION-THAT-OCCURS-VERY-FREQUENTLY IN MY “estate buying”… except sweat it out.  OH do I HATE “sweating it out”.  But one has NO CHOICE for the simple route of assurance and safety is ATTRACT NO ATTENTION IN ANY WAY AT ALL…to a… the deal.  Attention attracted is TROUBLE.  “Risk” and “risk management” is the solution.  In the outside and benevolent world they have three day seminars on risk and risk management.  I burn risk and risk management as high octane fuel.  A three day seminar will do me no good.  I am ALWAYS in economic “fully exposed” free fall; jumping out of an airplane with a checkbook in my mouth (“better hope that sucker opens”).  Leaving that purchase lot “wide open” for, nearly exactly, twenty hours, was, for me… a classic “I HATE SWEATING IT OUT” normal.  If… one cannot write a check payment to an unattached third party (to the actual purchase lot) with NO anything including “a hand shake”, “promises-promises”, “paperwork” and “can I”… such is ‘not competitive’.  In fact, such is not even there… unless its such as “my aunt’s house (estate)” or a… some such phony setup. 

I went to the History Department office.