“Mendez?” she called out, reading the name typed into the first appointment slot on the calendar.
A woman in her seventies stood.
Dr. Norden nodded.
Sandy sighed and picked up her clipboard. “Glad you’re here, honey,” she said.
felt some sense of normalcy return to her. She pushed the thought of her disturbing morning far from her mind as she scanned the schedule, and located the 9:15 client.
“Amirault?” she said.
Another patient stood.
It wasn’t until lunch hour that had time to think about the notice again.
She and Sandy sat in the staff room, the microwave buzzing as it heated Sandy’s tomato soup.
twisted the top off of her shake.
“Tell me… what was up with you this morning?” Sandy said, pulling a spoon and paper napkin from a drawer beside the sink. The whole room started to smell like tomato soup. “You sounded good on the phone, and then you come in looking like you just saw a ghost.”
sighed. She had been doing her best to avoid thinking about the notice.
I can’t avoid this, she thought to herself. I need to take action. A month isn’t a long time.
“My landlord stopped by,” she said. “Right when I was leaving. He says he sold the building, and that I have to move out.”
“Really?” Sandy asked. The microwave made a ding ding sound, and Sandy opened the door with a pop. “Haven’t you been in that place since you moved to the city? For as long as I’ve known you, anyways,” Sandy said.
nodded. She reached for her bag and pulled out the notice.
Just seeing it made her stomach flip flop. The sips of shake she’d already drank sat heavy in her stomach, and the drink was no longer appetizing. Even the smell of tomato soup, which had been good at first, now made her slightly nauseated.
“I’ve been there for ten years,” said. “I love my place. I can’t believe this is happening, but I think it really is. My landlord said something about a guy offering him a price he couldn’t refuse.”
“Landlords can be such assholes,” Sandy said empathetically, stirring the steaming red liquid in the bowl in front of her.
“Not my landlord,” said. “I mean, yeah, this is an asshole move… but usually he’s a decent guy. I think he tried to say no. But the… buyer…” she scanned the letter, trying to locate the name of the person that Frank said was going to buy the place. “… some prick named Martin Cable, kept on him… offering more and more it sounds like. I know Frank tried to say no at first. He said this guy—” She located the name again on the typed sheet, boring her gaze into the paper “Cable—wouldn’t give up.”
“Cable. Martin Cable… that name sounds familiar,” Sandy said. She gazed up to the ceiling, but then shook her head. “Can’t think of it now,” she said. “It might come to me.”
read the letter word for word as Sandy slurped soup. It explained that the building was going to be torn down, to make way for a more modern, private residence.
“This guy Cable is going to level the place,” said as she finished reading.
“And put up something new?” Sandy asked.
“Yes. Figures. Something more modern.”
“Maybe you can get a unit in the new complex,” Sandy suggested.
“I was thinking that too,” said. “But it doesn’t look like it’s going to be apartments. Here it says, ‘one unified private residence’. This guy is basically taking a six story apartment building with fifteen units and turning it into his house.”
“He must be rich,” Sandy said. She started keying something into her phone, which lay on the break room table beside her soup.
After a minute she spoke again. “Yeah,” she said, staring into her phone. “He’s loaded. I just found him on a list of Forbes’ ‘The World’s Billionaires’ list. The guy’s a billionaire.”
This made even more upset. “What in the world is he doing buying my apartment building? He could have anything. He could own any piece of property in the world.”
“And he probably already does,” interjected Sandy. “I’m looking now at a place he has in Greece.”
scooted her chair closer to Sandy and peered over her friend’s shoulder.
The mansion she saw on the screen was gorgeous. She mentally compared it to her small, apartment building. It made her apartment building look like a shack.
Sandy scrolled through a few images quickly.
Suddenly an image of a handsome man filled the screen. Sandy kept on scrolling, and more images of the same man populated the phone.
“Damn,” Sandy said, voicing ’s own sentiment. “The man’s good looking.”
“He is,” admitted, sitting back and crossing her arms.
She didn’t want to look at images of Martin Cable any more. “But that doesn’t make him any less of a prick. He has his choice of properties. And he had to pick one that fifteen families and individuals live in—including me. We’re all going to have to move. All because he feels like living where we do. He’s not even going to keep the structure!”
She imagined the walls that she’d grown to love so much crumbling down to the earth. The old Gothic architecture… the brickwork that had been in place since the early 1900s. “He doesn’t even care,” she said. “Why can’t he just put up his house somewhere else? Somewhere that no one’s living. It’s not fair.”