The shop, everything. Start wherever you want. So, he did. He told her about starting at Donniey's at 26, two years after Deshawn was born when he needed something steady. And Donnie had given him a chance because Marcus could listen to an engine and tell you what was wrong with it, which Donnie said was a skill that couldn't be taught.
He told her about working up from apprentice to senior mechanic to the point where Donnie trusted him to open the shop in the morning and close it at night. He told her about the customers, Mrs. Delery who came in every 6 months and always brought banana bread. The guys from the construction company on Tuesday mornings, the teenagers with their first cars held together mostly by hope. He told her about the building getting sold and the 3 weeks notice and the morning after when he sat at his kitchen table and looked at his son eating cereal and made a decision that whatever happened, Deshawn would not see him give up.
Viven listened. She did not take notes. She did not glance at her phone. She listened the way Marcus had listened to Clare on Friday night fully without the restlessness of someone waiting for you to finish so they can say what they planned to say. When he was done, she was quiet for a moment.
You managed the shop's operations, she said. Beyond the mechanical work toward the end, yes. Scheduling inventory, some of the client relationship management. Donnie trusted me to handle problems when they came up. What kind of problems?
Equipment failures, staff conflicts, unhappy customers, billing disputes, he paused. The kind that don't have a manual. Those are the ones that matter, Viven said. She opened a folder on her desk, turned it around to face him. It was a property overview, specifications, photographs, a summary page.
I have a mixeduse development on the west side, she said. Commercial groundfloor residential above. 42 units, six commercial tenants. The property manager I hired 8 months ago was not the right fit. I let him go 3 weeks ago.
She tapped the folder. The maintenance operations side has been running without adequate oversight since then. I have a facilities coordinator, but she needs a manager above her who can actually see the full picture. Building systems, vendor relationships, tenant communication, the pieces that keep a property functioning when things go wrong. Marcus looked at the folder, looked up at her.
I'm not a property manager, he said. You managed a shop, scheduling inventory, client relationships, building systems, problem solving without a manual. She held his gaze. You're describing the same job with different systems. Systems are learnable, she said.
What isn't learnable is the part where someone has to make a call at 7 in the morning when a pipe has burst and six commercial tenants are calling and three of them are threatening to break their leases. What isn't learnable is the part where someone has to look a contractor in the eye and know when they're being lied to. She leaned back in her chair. I've hired people with property management certifications. I've watched them fold when the situation got complicated.
I've also watched people with no formal background run a building better than people who did it by the book. Her eyes were steady on him. Friday night, I watched you hold your ground against a woman who has made most people in this city nervous for 40 years. And you did it without raising your voice and without being disrespectful and without backing down. She paused.