The Trapped Girl (Tracy Crosswhite #4)(25)
The third day, Graham came home with a bouquet of flowers and an apology. I almost wished he hadn’t. Just when I thought I’d figured out his mood for the week, it would swing again.
“I’m sorry I’ve been such a jerk,” he said, handing me the fragrant bouquet. “It’s just that you really caught me out of the blue at the bank and I felt like I’d been put in an embarrassing situation, you know? I mean, here I was getting ready to take out a bank loan, and I’m supposed to be a lawyer, and I didn’t even know my wife had this massive trust.”
“I should have told you,” I said, though it was more to appease him. “It’s just, like I said, I didn’t think it would make any difference since we can’t use it.”
“Then why did you bring it up?”
“I was nervous. I didn’t want you to lie on a bank application and say you were going to be made a partner of the firm.”
He smiled, but it was patronizing. “Andrea, you’re such a Goody Two-shoes. Nobody is going to check on that, but it’s cute that you were looking out for me. And I get it. We can’t use the trust for the business, but hey, it’s nice to know that we have it, right? I mean, it’s like we have a net under the trapeze.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, suddenly leery of where he was taking the conversation.
“I mean we can use it if things get a little tight getting the business up and running, or to do things like travel—or buy a boat, you know, fun things as a couple. Wouldn’t it be great to have a boat? I mean we can use it like that, can’t we?”
“I suppose,” I said, wary. “The interest anyway.”
He leaned closer. “Do you forgive me?”
“Sure,” I said. What else was I to do?
“You know what I want to do?” He moved quickly, the way he did when he had a thought that excited him. I was praying he wasn’t about to say, “Have sex.”
“I want to go out to dinner and celebrate our new business. Someplace special.”
With Graham I was learning that “special” meant “expensive,” and I already knew whose credit card we’d be using.
Over the next two months the bank approved the loan, and Graham searched for space to rent and researched inventory. He’d been energized, upbeat, and excited like the Graham I’d met and married. He couldn’t get enough of me either. We had sex all over the loft, and in creative ways. I’d tried to be optimistic that the business would succeed, but my doubt grew when Graham told me he’d found a small shop right there in the Pearl District, which was one of the highest-rent districts in Portland—and that was saying something. I’d read an article that said, since 2015, Portland’s residential and commercial rents had shot through the roof. All the newspapers lamented how Portland was losing its identity as longtime residents and small businesses were forced farther and farther out of the city core. The rent on my loft had skyrocketed from $900 a month to $1,250 in just three years, and the space Graham chose to open Genesis was $23 a square foot. I tried to persuade him to open the dispensary in a more industrial area where the rent was $11 a square foot, where we would have plenty of parking, and where we would be farther away from the medical dispensaries, but Graham dismissed it.
“It’s the first rule of real estate,” he said. “Location, location, location. We’re going to be in a prime location within walking distance of all the businesses and law firms, and that’s where the money is. Those are the people we are going to cater to. Besides, think of the money we’ll save by not having to drive.”
Between the bank loan payment, the rents on the loft and the building space, and Graham’s lease on his Porsche—which he renewed once we got the loan—we were going to have to clear close to $6,000 a month just to break even. That didn’t include our regular expenses or the cost of the business permit to sell marijuana, and Graham had pretty much blown through the loan on our portion of the tenant improvements and other start-up costs. He kept opting for upgrades like Brazilian hardwood floors and high-end glass cabinets with recessed lighting to display the different kinds of pot, as if it were jewelry.
“I want this place to shout ‘class’ when people come in,” he said. “I don’t want to be catering to some lowlife losers.”
I didn’t care who we catered to so long as those lowlife losers had real American dollars, but if I expressed any reservation or tried to get him to opt for a cheaper alternative, he’d just smile and say, “Relax, we have the trust income we can pull from if we’re a little short this month.”
Beyond all of that, I was worried because I’d been reading that city officials were contemplating allowing Portland’s medical marijuana dispensaries to sell to recreational users. It would be a huge windfall for the dispensaries. They wouldn’t have the same start-up costs and could drive down the price, not to mention increase competition. When I brought it up with Graham, however, he dismissed it. “Those places are pits. That is not our clientele. And our reputation is already spreading.”
And it seemed it was—to some extent anyway. They ran an article in the Portland Tribune—the free weekly paper—and it included a picture of Graham standing beneath the store entrance and green neon Genesis sign. Graham had framed the article and the photograph and hung both on a wall in the store.