Rise: How a House Built a Family(20)
Over the weekend I downplayed the rejections to the kids, playing it off like we had tons more options when I hadn’t thought of a single new possibility.
After Roman dropped off to sleep on Sunday night, I remembered something that Jag Fischer, my old boss and the wealthy owner of three magazines, had once told me. He was a small man with wide eyes, perfectly gelled gray hair, and a perfectly full money clip in his front left pocket.
“Banks are easy,” he had insisted. “Do two things and a bank will give you anything you want. First, you give them papers. Bury them with papers. Papers with dollar signs all over them mean you’re important. Doesn’t even matter if the dollar signs have little minus marks in front. To a bank, all dollar signs are golden.” He dropped his hand over his pocket, unconsciously patting his own dollar signs, something he did dozens of times a day. He was right; the dollars made him seem large and in charge. “Second, and this is most important, give the stuffy bastards a deadline. Time is money and you don’t want their old bank wasting yours. You need everything in two days—no more. Be eager and in charge. You make the rules, not them.” He had laughed, shaking his head and no doubt remembering a loan officer pushing his heavy glasses up and sweating over papers while Jag clapped and said, “Chop, chop! I don’t have all day. Gotta keep this money clip full.”
So I stayed up past bedtime gathering three years of tax returns, statements of intent, bills, royalty statements from a couple of small novels and newspapers, documents for energy-efficient roof decking, and a few manuscript pages from my latest mystery novel. It was an impressive stack, all neatly labeled in envelopes and folders. I added a completed loan application for an impressive-looking bank downtown where I had never had any type of account. I may have parked in their lot one time to dash into a nearby bookstore, but that was the closest thing to an affiliation I had with them.
Bright and early, I put on a gray skirt suit, one that had been a little tight until divorce stress claimed the last postbaby pounds. I wore a red shirt underneath, because red meant power, and also because red meant Caroline. After touching up my makeup, I added a simple pearl necklace and earrings. They were department-store pearls, not the sort you passed on to your daughters, but they looked real, and this was a day for appearances, not reality.
As soon as the kids left for school, I dropped Roman off at a day care. I stopped at a shipping store and bought a white cardboard tube to hold my plans, and then sat in the car for a half dozen deep breaths, wishing I could get my head between my knees in the cramped front seat. “Do or die, Cara.”
The car door stuck, but a solid shoulder whack knocked it open. I walked into the high-ceilinged bank lobby like I owned the place, my eyes straight ahead even when I sensed heads turning my way. If my skirt had a pocket, I would have patted it like it was filled with rolls of Benjamins. The loan officer at the floor desk shifted uncomfortably when he saw that I was headed for him. Before I said a word, he looked over his shoulder and waved me back to the head moneylender with the windowed office and heavy cherry door.
“Rothschild,” he said, shaking my hand without getting fully to his feet. “What can we do for you today?” His eyes drifted to his paperwork, so I placed my long cardboard tube on the desk, diagonally across whatever he had found slightly more interesting than me.
“I’m building a house, and I need you to help me cover some of the materials. The labor is taken care of and the land is free and clear. I’ll be the contractor.”
He tipped back in his chair, not exactly propping his feet on his desk but his posture saying that he would have if my cardboard tube weren’t in his way. “You can fill out an application and leave it with my assistant.” And there it was, that smirk they must teach in loan-officer school.
I handed him the completed application. Before he had time to scan much of it, I slid a thin stack of his papers over and dropped three neat folders with labeled tags protruding. “Three years of tax returns,” I said, then lifted the next folder, “and here’s an asset breakdown. The copy of my blueprint,” I tapped my fingertips on the tube, “is yours. I understand you’ll need it for the inspections.” I’d learned that at the last bank, the one that had turned me down before my seat was warm.
“And you’re a licensed contractor?” he asked, leaning forward in his chair, head down while he thumbed through my papers, eyes pausing on the dollar signs.
“I’ve pulled the permits. And while I’m not licensed, I have a lot of experience researching energy-efficient building models.” I added a folder of passive-solar designs to the stack, pretending that I had read as much of it as eleven-year-old Jada had.
But he was tilting back, stalled on the licensed-contractor nonsense. That quick, I’d lost him. The big fish was slipping right back into the pond.
So close. I had been so close.
“It’s vital that I have this by Wednesday—Thursday at the absolute latest. I’m ready to break ground immediately.” I raised my eyebrows, nodding my head. “You can do that for me, right? I was told you could—by Wednesday.”
Who was this damn cheeky girl? She was not me. She was not the Cara who listened in terror to the fi-fah of her husband’s breath while his thumbs pressed blue temporary tattoos on her skin. I had the irresistible urge to rub my neck, but redirected my hand to my clutch, a narrow leather bag that would have been more at home at a cocktail party. It had been that or my large bag filled with Cheerios remnants and tiny notebooks where I jotted down clever dialogue in the grocery line. I pulled out a tiny tin of mints, held it out. “Mr. Rothschild?”