Chapter 19: The Offer

The letter on my mat was two pages long, on thick paper, with a developer's name in raised gold at the top.

I read it standing in the hall in Perry's sweatshirt, and by the end of the first page I had stopped being sleepy.

Gordon Culverhouse was offering me a job.

Property manager, it said, for the new building to be built on the site of the Linden Arms.

Seventy-eight thousand dollars a year, a studio apartment in the tower, and a signing bonus of ten thousand dollars.

The second page said what it cost.

I would ask each of my neighbors to sign a waiver of the right to match.

I would deliver twenty signatures by the tenth of March.

"What does it say?" Perry asked from the bedroom door.

"I'm being bought," I said.

He read it over my shoulder, and I felt him go very still.

"Do I tell you what to do?" he said.

"No."

"I wanted to check. I wasn't sure it was allowed."

"It isn't," I said. "Go and get dressed, because I'm going to want you in the lobby."

I got dressed in my work jacket and my tool belt, and I rang the spoon on the glass myself.

It took two minutes for the tenants to come down.

Ida arrived first, in her cardigan, and the twins came with their cereal bowls.

Gordon walked in through the front doors at ten.

He wore his navy quarter-zip and carried a leather folder.

By then there were twenty people on the stairs.

He stopped in the middle of the lobby.

"Ms. Keller," he said. "I thought we might speak in private."

"This is private," I said. "It's my building."

"It's my building."

"For twelve more days, according to section fourteen."

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