“That’s—” he began, once he’d swallowed, but it was clear this was the kind of conversation where he was not supposed to participate with actual replies, because Abraham talked over him.
“She uses a website. It seems that once one gets the units up and running, they rather pay for themselves. And they must require very little intervention. She travels a lot.”
There was that lapel-smoothing again. Abraham was the only doctor in the ED who even wore the white coat with any regularity, which up until this minute Will had always chalked up to the man’s pathological insistence on something he called “professional rectitude.” But clearly there was also a lapel-smoothing pathology happening, too.
It was a good idea, a short-term rental. He’d stayed in a few during his fourth year of med school, four weeks at a time at various programs where he’d done his acting internships. But those places had been bland and sterile, the furniture inside neutral and inoffensive, the hallways outside entirely absent of dangly chandeliers and cherubic sconces and textured wallpaper.
He thought of the woman on the balcony again, felt that stubborn hiccup in his heart.
“I’ll call her for you,” Abraham said.
Will blinked. “Wait, who?”
Abraham broke the no eye-contact rule to look over and up at him, his expression annoyed. “My ex-wife,” he snapped.
“Right,” Will said, the back of his neck heating. “My apologies.”
My apologies, Christ. He pushed up his glasses. Itwasa good idea, the short-term rental. Maybe exactly the right idea. It was absolutely more productive than insomnia, or than thinking compulsively about ten minutes of conversation with a woman who’d made him feel like a teenager.
“It couldn’t hurt to take a phone call,” Abraham said. He was using his full-on “professional rectitude” voice, which meant Will was taking too long to answer.
“No,” he said finally. “It couldn’t.”
A phone call was the least of it.
At the end of his shift, Will was back in the cafeteria, sitting across from a small, brightly clothed woman who’d introduced herself as “Sally no-longer-Abraham” and who preferred hugs to handshakes as a form of greeting. She was a day and a half away from a two-week Caribbean vacation, and despite Will’s insistence in their initial phone call—during which Dr. Abraham had stayed unnervingly close—that there was nothing urgent about his situation, she’d insisted on an in-person meeting.
“Time is money!” she’d said, assuring Will that she loved nothing more than “talking about the biz.”
And based on the way this meeting had gone so far, that was . . . absolutely true.
She had not stopped.
Sally’s three units were all in Wicker Park: a basement apartment on North Elk Grove, quiet but close to a bunch of shops on Milwaukee; one on West Le Moyne; a “problem child” for its window AC and its unreliable building elevator; and finally, her prized showpiece, a loft on Western Avenue with free parking and a per-night price that soared in the summertime. She had pictures of each one on her tablet, queued up on the rental website she used and ready for Will’s inspection, and as he swiped through, she provided commentary that could only be described asthorough. Will now knew where she’d gotten every carefully chosen area rug; he also now knew, incidentally, about the incredibly detailed thought processes Sally had for placement of said area rugs. He might not have needed to know about the area rug placement, but he appreciated it, all the detail. Already he felt invested in this idea, focused on it.
But he was still harboring some doubts, especially when Sally handed the tablet over so that he could scroll through the truly impressive number of five-star reviews she’d racked up on each unit, even the window AC one. As Will scanned the all-caps parade of them (“AMAZING!” “CHARMING!” “STEPS FROM THE BLUE LINE!”), he started to feel guilty, as though it was his fault that there was such a gigantic, insurmountable gap between Donny’s apartment and the ones Sally was so deservedly proud to show him.
He felt like he was about to break bad news to a patient.
He set down the tablet, cleared his throat.
“The thing is,” he said, while she paged through a neon-pink three-ring binder she’d brought along, “the place I have . . . it’s not in as good of shape as what you’re showing me here. It needs a lot of work.”
Sally waved a hand, used the other to reach over the binder to take the tablet back. “That’s easy. I’ve got names of contractors out the wazoo, and they’re loyal to me. You could have it fixed up before I get back from sunning myself in paradise!”
He shifted in his chair, the bad-news-breaking feeling even heavier now.
“That’s probably not in the cards,” he said, trying to keep his voice light. He couldn’t blame her for thinking that hiring a bunch of contractors to do speedy work would be easy for him. A lot of people thought doctors wiped their asses with money, and Will guessed some of them probably did. But that was so far from his own experience it was almost comical. “I wouldn’t have a lot of start-up costs for something like this.”
Sally looked up at him, fixed him with a problem-solving stare. Will thought the contractors were probably a little afraid of her, in addition to being loyal. He almost wished Dr. Abraham had come down to this meeting, too. It might’ve been nice to see the guy get put in his place, for once.
“Do you have time? Because time is almost as good as money when it comes to something like this. My places”—she tapped at the tablet with her index finger—“they look sharp now, but they didn’t always.”
She turned the tablet, showing a picture from her personal photo gallery—the cluttered living room of what he thought was the North Elk Grove place. It looked dark and neglected, the furniture sagging and the walls stained. It looked . . . not all that different from Donny’s place.
Sally swiped once, revealed the same room, freshly painted, light-colored furniture in a different arrangement.
“Bright walls and sturdy slipcovers did a lot for this one. After a while I started to turn enough profit that I could do more, but at first it was only me and my elbow grease.”
