Imagine My Surprise! (14)

In which Kurt tries on a new look.

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14. Evolution of Kurt

Turns out Ed Lau from ZLO Finance was formerly a senator’s aide who helped write some very loose reverse mortgage legislation. Those classes in Hillsdale were the first classes taught about the new regulations of reverse mortgage broking, and I got a jump on a large chunk of the Bay Area business. It turned out to be mostly about pushing papers between homeowners in dire need, the banks who held the mortgages, and the federal government. I got a cut from every transaction.

These mortgages were usually taken out by elderly couples with liquidity problems. These couples are homeowners over the age of 62 with considerable equity in their property, and this equity is paid back to them in the form of a mortgage. They’re basically selling their equity (and property) back to the bank so they can have some money before they die. It was definitely a fear-based predatory practice that left nothing behind for relatives in the eventuality of the property owner’s death. I didn’t care. I had lost all pretence of earning money in any moral fashion. I even started advertising on AM radio, recording the spots on the same home studio set-up with which I used to record my music. My music recording equipment was finally paying for itself.

At a year or so into the reverse mortgage biz, I had a little storefront and two brokers working full time. Surging property values had rescued many elderly San Franciscan home owners from liquidity death, and many of those folks wanted to live in their homes but burn the money on their way to the grave. I was delighted to help them with that. My two employees were just the sociopaths for a job like this; they really knew how to leverage and manipulate people, banks, and the government by all means necessary: emotionally, financially, fearfully, perhaps even intellectually, although intelligence was rarely required.

One of my sociopaths became a certified broker very quickly, the other was in training while she managed the office. The full-timer was named Bart Montgomery. He was thirty-seven and a former petty criminal who’d gone straight(ish) after a stint in the pokey. At some point before I met him, he acquired a real estate license and skated by on the occasional sale. His prior experience and contacts in San Francisco real estate was invaluable in growing my business. It led me to meeting Franks and building my little gang. Again, I’m getting ahead of myself.

I actually met Bart during my one and only bar fight. Quick story.

I met a girl — we’ll call her Melissa — for a first date at a bar in the Mission, and I had left Melissa momentarily to relieve myself in the men’s room. When I came back, Bart had taken my seat and was chatting up my date. Bart, who had mocha-colored skin and a penciled-on goatee, declined to give up what was formerly my stool. I impressed upon him the need for polite behavior, and he finally relented. A little later, I was outside smoking a cigarette when Bart coolly came over and apologized, asking for a cigarette. As I was digging for my smokes, he swung at me and landed a glancing blow to my ear. Before both of us knew it, I reflexively kicked him in the knee, knocking him to the pavement. His head made fleshy slap on the cement. It happened in seconds.

“You fucking prick!” I shouted at him. “What the fuck is wrong with you?! Why did you make me do that?”

He stared up at me. “Shit, man. Jesus… I just thought… you looked like a chump.”

“Says the man flat on his back.” My ear rang and pulsed.

“Dude, I just…” He struggled up on all fours, touched his forehead where a bruise was already coming up. “I misjudged. I’ve been drinking. Sorry. Help me up.” And he reached out his hand.

I was dumbfounded. “You gotta be kidding me.”

“Dude, I think you blew out my ACL.” His hand was still outstretched.

“If you take a swing at me again, it’s going to be more than your fucking ACL.”

“You win, alright. I disrespected you. It’s the booze. You killed my buzz.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.” What a piece of work he was.

I helped him up, ready to swing again. He hopped on his right leg, testing his left knee. “Fuck.” He glanced at me. “Your ear is swole up.”

“You’ve got a lump on your forehead.” A beat. I asked, “What’s your name?”

“Bart,” he said, pausing. “Can I still bum a cigarette?”

I couldn’t believe his cheekiness. “I’m Kurt.” I dug out a smoke and lit myself another.

Melissa didn’t work out, but I hired Bart the following week.

I taught him how to be a reverse mortgage broker and paid for his licensing. He was as tenacious as a pit bull and had a predilection for vice that made me look like a freaking altar boy. We became fast friends. He was too-slick in that criminal way, whip-thin and possessed the ability to be candy-cane-nice one moment and junkyard-dog-mean the next.

My other employee’s story is less interesting. Her name was Clara Horowitz and she was another web-date gone awry. We didn’t hit it off romantically, but I quickly found out that she was pathologically overbearing and had a talent for both bookkeeping and deception, which was perfect for my current line of work. So, while finishing her broker certification, she played office manager.

This leads me to the day I met Dolly. I know: this is a lot of names. Keep up.

I was sitting in the back office listening to AM talk radio, waiting to hear my self-produced Seven Hills Brokerage ad. It was about two in the afternoon and I sipped a beer at my desk while lazily signing my name to a stack of reverse mortgage applications. Birds twittered through the big open window behind me.

My office was more a prop than anything else. It was a study in peacefulness and safety: greens and beiges, with a few scenic San Francisco and California prints, comfortable chairs, a comfortable moss-colored leather couch, plenty of house plants, good lighting coming in from the communal backyard. There was a well-stocked liquor cabinet and beer and wine in the mini-fridge.

There was also a steady supply of coke and pot in my desk. My employees loved me.

I yelled through my open door: “Bart, did you close the Berger thing yet? That jackass downtown keeps calling me.”

“Bart’s on the phone,” Clara yelled back.

“Did he close it, yet?”

She poked her head into my doorway. “I think he’s talking to her now.”

Bart said, “Look, if you don’t think your house is worth saving, that is another option.”

“Bingo,” I said. Clara’s head disappeared.

Bart’s voice was wistful. “Mrs. Berger — Janet — you’ve poured your life into that garden of yours. Do you really want to leave it for the banks to take care of? They can’t even take care of themselves!”

Bart was a good closer. I sat back down and looked at some online porn for a while until I heard my latest Seven Hills radio ad come on. I shouted to the office, “The ad is on the radio!” I turned it up.

The radio spot opened with a sinister synth chord.

I performed the voice-over myself, and the irony didn’t escape me that years of performing had finally paid off. These little radio spots grew my business by a hundred percent. The voice-over went like this: “Times are tough. A lot of us got thrown some real curveballs in the last few years. You didn’t build a life just to turn around and not enjoy it.” Then the music changed into a fun folksy picked acoustic guitar. “Hi, I’m Kurt Houston, president of Seven Hills Brokerage. At Seven Hills, we specialize not only in government funded bailout re-financing, but also reverse mortgages for senior homeowners over sixty-two facing the challenges of the current economic climate. Enjoy the golden years in style. Call 415–555–0916 or log onto Seven-Hills-Brokers-dot-com for more information. Take back the good life. You deserve it.”

“Whoo-hoo!” Bart hollered. He and Clara came and loitered in my doorway. Bart held up a white whipping cream dispenser in his hand. There was no cream in this dispenser, just nitrous oxide. He hissed its contents into his lungs.

My smile faltered. “What have I told you about huffing at work?”

Bart shrugged.

“Very effective radio spot, Kurt,” Clara complemented. “Really kicks ’em in the nuts, then hands them a bag of ice.” Clara took the bottle of nitrous oxide from Bart and inhaled. Bart let out a peal of deep, nitrous-augmented laughter behind her.

“Yeah, it does kind of grab and twist, doesn’t it,” I agreed.

I was about to huff some nitrous myself when the metal bell on the front door jangled, signaling that we had a customer.

“Oh, shit. Somebody get that and close my door.” I emptied the rest of the canister and set it on the window sill behind my desk. I popped a breath mint. There was a light knock on the door.

“Yeah?”

Clara poked her head through. “There’s a lady and her nurse here who want to take out a reverse mortgage.” Then she whispered emphatically, “…on a house in St. Francis Wood.”

My head swam from the nitrous. “I’m…can’t Bart take care of it?”

“St. Francis Wood, Kurt,” she repeated. Clara peeked back into the office, then back at me. “I think you’ll want to handle this yourself, boss.” She grinned and winked.

I was intrigued. “Really?” I straightened my bowling shirt and tested my breath.

“The ol’ lady’s name is Mrs. Lazarus.”

I popped another mint.

“Send the nice Mrs. Lazarus in.”

Clara opened the door for Mrs. Lazarus. Pushing in on a fancy walker, she wore a slightly rumpled vintage Chanel dress topped with a matching sun-damaged hat. At her side was a pretty young nurse pushing her oxygen tank. A very pretty young nurse.

“Greetings, Mrs. Lazarus. Have a seat. How can I help you?”

She stopped in her walker tracks. “How do you know my name?”

“My assistant told me — “

“Are you the fella on the radio I heard yesterday?”

“Most probably. Kurt Houston, Seven Hills Brokers. Have a seat.” The nurse, who had longish dark brown hair, wheeled the oxygen up next to Mrs. Lazarus and helped her into one of the seats in front of my desk. The nurse was dressed, well, nurse-like, fetishistically so. She even had the white hat thing on her head. This was Dolly. She told me later that the old broad had instructed her: “Dress like a nurse! I don’t want anyone thinking you’re my friend.”

I beckoned to the nurse to sit as well. “Please, have a seat, Miss…”

“I’m Dolly. That’s okay. I’ll stand.” She stood behind Mrs. Lazarus as though she were ready to restart her heart if it suddenly failed. Dolly smelled faintly of amber. I resumed my seat behind the desk.

“Houston? Like the city?” blurted Mrs. Lazarus.

“Yes…” I watched Clara close the door, shutting us in. “Houston, Texas. Right. Now, Mrs. Lazarus, what can Seven Hills do for you?”

“I read about this reverse mortgage thing and then I heard your awful ad on the radio,” she said.

“Ah, yes, my awful ad,” I agreed. I took a good look at Mrs. Lazarus. Her wrinkled skin looked hard as porcelain, her hair thinner than mine. She was a haughty eighty-year-old West Coast blue blood — Getty style, or Hearst. But cash poor.

Her dry, papery voice spoke in rapid fire. “I brought all my records. The dump is on Maywood Drive. Thirty-seven hundred square feet. Last appraised at three-point-five. Worth more now, I expect. I’ve got about eighty-percent equity in it but Harold didn’t leave me any cash.”

“Uh…um,” was all I could say. The nurse, Dolly was trying to get my attention. I saw her nod toward the whipping cream canister I’d forgotten to clear from the window sill. Shit! I casually stood up and meandered to it as if to straighten the mortgage broking licenses on my wall. I said, “So, I always ask my clients to consider a few things before going through the reverse mortgage process.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that crap,” Mrs. Lazarus said. She clutched an accordion file atop her knees. “Dolly and I here are going to take a trip, then I’m going to blow out of San Francisco forever. Place is filled with homos! Screw Max.”

I casually backed into the nitrous bottle, knocking it outside the window into the geraniums; I sat my ass on the sill. “Max?” I asked her.

“Her son,” Dolly said. Her voice was silk with an ever-so-slight Mission District accent.

“Her son — your son.”

“He’s not my son! Not anymore!”

“Anne,” Dolly soothed, “It’s okay. Mr. Houston is here to help us.”

Mrs. Lazarus leaned toward me. “I think he became a gay. And an artist! I’m cutting him off. And me — I’m going to … to whereabouts unknown!” She laughed a crisp, vindictive laugh and heaved the heavy accordion file onto my desk with a thud. “You figure it out, Texas. Where’s the toilet?”

“Right outside the door there,” I replied. I felt elation tinged with fear.

Dolly helped her matron stand up, and situated the walker.

I grabbed the accordion file. “It’s on the left. If you need any help, ask Clara. I’ll just look over your records.”

As Dolly helped Mrs. Lazarus toward the bathroom, she cast a glance back at me and gave me a lingering once over, following it with a half-grin that I would soon know and love. She said, “Thanks for your help, Mr. Houston.”