Page 110 of Diego

Mostly because the view from behind is spectacular.

By the time I get back to the house, I have been dealing with other people for nearly fourteen hours and have reached the point where I would happily pay someone an ungodly amount of money to guarantee that no one speaks to me for the rest of the night. Hell, the rest of the week.

The house is quieter than usual when I come in, which I take as a gift. I hear a television somewhere downstairs and voices farther back toward the kitchen, but nobody intercepts me on the way upstairs. I make it to the bedroom, shut the door behind me, strip off my jacket and tie, and sit in a surprisingly comfortable armchair for a minute without doing anything at all.

Peace.

Finally.

I am tired enough that I consider showering and going directly to sleep, but my phone buzzes in my pocket before I can commit to either plan.

The inspection report is supposed to be coming in about now.

That wakes me up.

I pick up the phone and open the email immediately. The crew finished the interior yesterday while Ricardo, Blair, and I were there, then spent most of today going through the building systems available to them, the exterior documentation, and the portions of the penthouse envelope they could access with building management.

I scroll past the summary.

Electrical is good.

Plumbing is good.

HVAC is good.

Fire protection is good.

Elevators are fine.

No moisture where there shouldn’t be moisture. No hidden problems in the walls.

Then I reach the windows.

“Fuck.”

I sit forward.

The curtain-wall system itself is sound, but the exterior perimeter sealant around several sections of the penthouse glazing has deteriorated enough that the water-penetration test failed in two locations. There is no significant interior damage yet, which is the only good news in the entire paragraph, but under sustained wind-driven rain, water is getting past the exterior seal.

I keep reading.

Two of the insulated glass units also have compromised seals. Nothing dangerous, nothing that requires tearing apart the building, but the recommendation is explicit: reseal the affected sections from the exterior, replace the two failed units, then perform another water test before closing.

I drop backward onto the chair.

“Fuck.”

Of course.

Of course it is the windows.

The fucking wall of windows I love.

The same windows that sold me on the place before Blair and I created several additional memories involving them that have absolutely nothing to do with real estate.

I scroll farther.

Building management already has an approved facade contractor. The work itself should take three or four days once they can get a crew scheduled, but because the exterior access requires a suspended platform and building approval, the realistic timeline is ten business days before repairs and retesting are complete.