“Business is personal.”
“No it isn’t. You always confuse the two.”
“It’s easy to do when your name is on the front door.”
“You have no other choice!” Sam flushed with frustration. “Your office fixtures won’t secure another line of commercial credit. Nobody will lend you another nickel with the business as collateral.”
“What about my house? I can put it up, can’t I?”
“For a business debt? Why would you? You don’t want to do that.”
“Looks like I have to.” Bennie shuffled though the papers on Sam’s desk and found her mortgage note. “This is my mortgage, what does it tell you?”
Sam looked it over. “You should have refinanced when the rates went down.”
“Can I borrow against it?”
“Okay, there is equity in the house.”
“Equity is good, equitable and all. I bought the house as a shell, what, seven years ago?”
Sam glanced at the paper. “Six, it says here.”
“Okay, and I renovated it completely, increased its value. And the neighborhood, which wasn’t that hot when I bought in, is trendy now. A house down the street went for sixty grand more than I paid.”
“I don’t think you should even consider doing this, Bennie. It’s deadly to commingle your assets, to use personal funds to pay business debts.” Sam set the mortgage aside. “You’ve been doing it for months now, buying office supplies on personal credit cards. Paying your associates out of personal savings. You’re eating your seed corn. Robbing Peter to pay Ramon.”
Bennie smiled. “You’re seeing him again?”
“No, usually it’s dark. Can’t see a damn thing.”
Bennie laughed, which felt momentarily good. “Now. How much can I get if I hock the house?”
“Ballpark?” Sam punched some numbers into the adding machine, then checked the tape. “I bet you can raise forty-five grand in a hurry, maybe fifty.”
“Fifty grand!” Bennie felt happy and sad, at once. She was pretty sure the word for this was “ambivalent,” but that didn’t begin to convey her internal conflict. “That would be enough to solve my cash-flow problems and keep me in business until the class action settles.”
“Don’t do it. It’s too risky.” Sam was shaking his neat little head. Behind him, outside his large office window, the sun was dropping in the sky, singeing the top of the skyscrapers and making fuzzy silhouettes of the Looney Tunes on the windowsill. Sam leaned forward. “This is a business debt, Bennie. Fold the business and start a new one. Keep your house. You love your house, and for Christ’s sake, you have to live somewhere. Are you even making the payments now?”
Barely. “Yes. And if I have the equity, why not use it?”
“Because if you don’t make the payments on the new loan, which will be higher, your business folds and you’re out on the street. There will always be another business, another job. They come and go.” Sam paused, searching for the words to persuade her. “But your house is your home. You never put that up. You practically built the damn thing yourself.”
“I know that, but-”
“The bank will take it as soon as you go into default. They’ll demand full payment and foreclose. Don’t think they won’t. You’ll lose everything.”
“Don’t worry, it’ll be okay. I won’t lose everything. I won’t lose you,” Bennie said, and Sam managed a smile
“True. You can’t lose me. Not ever.”
Bennie thanked him, but couldn’t feel the sentiment now. She couldn’t feel anything. She could only act, and suddenly the last resort had become the only course.
“Make it happen, Sam,” she said.
11
Bennie walked home from Grun amp; Chase, moving faster than the businesspeople who hadn’t been charged with felonies. She couldn’t wait to get home and see what her house looked like after the cops had tossed the place. She felt anxious. Disoriented. She kept looking behind her for Alice. The twin had to have been following her at least some of the time. She knew what Bennie wore. Alice could be somewhere in the crowd right now, or someone working with her. And it was almost dark.
Bennie checked behind her again. The same young man with spiky black hair, plugged into an MP3 player, with a JanSport backpack slung on one shoulder. Next to him a middle-aged man strode along, carrying his suit jacket over the handle of his briefcase, and a young woman walked behind him in spongy Nikes. Alice was nowhere in sight.
Bennie turned onto the Ben Franklin Parkway into a cool wind whipping down the boulevard from the Schuylkill River, which flowed behind the art museum. The giant multicolored flags of all nations flapped from stainless-steel poles lining the parkway, billowing in the gusts. She put down her head and braced herself against the wind. She’d get back on her feet when she mortgaged the house, and even have some room to breathe. Before she’d left Sam’s office, he’d called a gay banker he knew to get her house appraised and draw up the loan papers. With his connection and a little luck, she’d have the money in three weeks, and she could stall Linette that long. She was back in business, at least temporarily.
Crak! The flag flapped in a sudden gust, and Bennie started, glancing around. She didn’t see Alice, but there were fewer people around her now, since only those heading toward her Fairmount neighborhood would be going this way. She felt exposed. Vulnerable. She picked up the pace and found herself on her street in no time, jogging to get to her house. As she got closer, she could see that her front door had been broken. She hustled to her stoop, and the sight hurt her heart.
Wood splintered from two long cracks in the varnished oak of her front door, running almost its length. The cops had sledgehammered the lock to get in, then had nailed the door shut to secure it. Bennie gritted her teeth. She climbed up the stairs, stuffed her briefcase and bag under her arm, and ran a finger over the splintered oak of the door, which she had hung and varnished herself. It had taken almost all day, with Grady’s help. Goddamn it! Doggy scratching broke her spate of self-pity, and Bennie felt her smile return. The cops didn’t have to break the door; Bennie had a golden retriever who would have unlocked it for them and fixed meat loaf.
“Hang on, Bear!” she said, then stopped. She couldn’t get in the front; she’d have to go around the back. So she climbed down the steps, went around to the alley, and hurried back to her house, slipping a key into the back French door. Bear jumped on her instantly with his rag-mop front paws, wondering if this was some new game.
“Bear! No! Bad dog!” she said, but they both knew her heart wasn’t in it. She dropped her stuff, closed the door, and scanned her dining room with dismay. Her stereo system in the corner had been torn apart, the cardboard backs taken off the speakers, and the CDs spilled from their teak racks and left all over the floor. The kitchen cabinets hung open, every one, and all of her groceries-cereal boxes, flour and sugar bags, cans of peas, and even a box of baking soda-had been dumped on the counters. All the kitchen drawers had been pulled out, the silverware reshuffled and knives slid from the knife rack. Even the dishwasher was open and the blue plastic racks rolled out. The search warrant had authorized the cops to look in everything, since an item like earrings was so small. She didn’t want to think about what they’d done to her mustard.
She walked into the living room, where the scene was the same. The cushion on the sofa had been upended, novels had been torn from the bookshelves, and magazines and newspapers lay scattered on the coffee table. It would take hours to put the place back together, and she hadn’t been upstairs yet. Her bedroom. Her bathroom. She even had a tube of Clearasil in her medicine chest. At her age, it was humiliating. Bear bounded obliviously over the debris, a hundred pounds of fur carrying a denuded tennis ball. His wetly pink tongue lolled out behind the ball, challenging both the laws of physics and the rules of etiquette.