"I don't know how to do anything slowly," she said. She had her hands around the mug. "In business, you get 11 minutes to decide and then you decide. I'm good at that. I've never once been good at the other thing."
She put her hand on top of his on the counter. Daniel didn't move it. Fast isn't always wrong, he said. Depends what you're building.
What are we building? Something that stands up. He turned his hand over under hers. It's the only kind I know how to make.
She got up and wrote the gate code on the back of a grocery receipt and gave it to him. Don't lose it. I'm not in the habit of losing keys, Daniel said. And as he said it, his free hand went to the ring on his belt loop and found the old one worn smooth and closed around it without his deciding to. Catherine saw him do it.
She didn't say anything. He called the listing agent on Delaney Street on a Monday from the cab of the truck. The number the man gave him was $41,000 more than Daniel had let himself imagine. And there was a second thing which the agent mentioned, the way agents do, as encouragement. I'll be straight with you.
There's a development group circling. They've got two other parcels on that block and they want the whole run for surface parking. They'd tear it down. They're cash buyers, so if you're financing, you'd want to move. Daniel said he'd get back to him.
He spent that night at the kitchen table with the plastic bin of invoices, and what he built out of it was the best case he could make. Every job record he had kept. Three signed maintenance agreements, letters from Ray Alden and from Marcus and from a property manager in Hensley who'd used him 11 times. Thursday morning, he put on the one collared shirt he owned and drove to the credit union on Post Road and sat down across from a loan officer named Karen Voss who was pleasant to him for 40 minutes. She went through the folder page by page.
She said the letters were good. She said the maintenance agreements were good. Then she said the rest of it. Income was seasonal and inconsistent on paper because he was paid in checks that arrived when they arrived. There was no collateral because the house had been refinanced to its limit in the year Sarah was sick and had not recovered.
And there were two years in the middle of his credit history where everything had gone to a hospital and the file did not know why and the file did not care why. "You could try again in 18 months," Karen Voss said, and she meant it kindly. Daniel thanked her and shook her hand and walked out to the truck. He sat in the parking lot with the folder on the passenger seat. He didn't hit the wheel.