Page 65 of Your Every Wish
As much as I’d like to spend the rest of the morning outside, I go in, answer a few emails, sign off on my edits for tomorrow’s column, and leave a message for my mom, who’s with a patient.
I can hear Kennedy’s blow dryer in the other room and run a comb through my own hair. While we’re in town, I’ll hit the market and buy steaks for when Dex comes. There’s a grill in the backyard that looks like it’s been out of commission for a while. But if I can get it going and it isn’t too cold outside, it might be nice to barbeque.
Kennedy pops her head in my room. “Ready?”
“You’re all dressed up.”
“I thought it would be good to look professional.”
“Why?” I pin her with a look.You promised. “Remember what we talked about, Kennedy.”
She holds her hands up in surrender. “It’s just a fact-gathering mission, that’s all.”
She is so full of it.
“Let’s go. I don’t want to be late.”
I follow her out to the car, dreading this trip. What if the agent says she has a buyer who has the money to fix everything that’s broken? Then what? It wouldn’t be fair to keep the park if someone else could give the residents what they deserve. Worse yet, what if she says she has a group of investors who are willing to pay millions upon millions in cash for the property, but there’s no guarantee that they won’t evict everyone and turn Cedar Pines into a Walmart shopping center?
This is exactly why I shouldn’t have let Kennedy coerce me into this stupid meeting.
“Did you see those articles I sent you?” I say.
“No, what articles?”
“I told you. The one about the trailer park in Malibu. There’s also one in the Hamptons. They’ve become so coveted that spaces sell for millions of dollars and attract the likes of Matthew McConaughey and Chance the Rapper. At the one in the Hamptons, every evening at around five, the residents meet for a progressive happy hour. It sounds so fun. We could do something like that here. There’s no reason that with a little work and some branding we couldn’t also become a blue-chip property.”
Kennedy snorts. “Yes, because everyone is dying to have a vacation home in Ghost. Emma, do you know what real estate goes for in the Hamptons and Malibu? Even a shack sells for over a mill. Let me guess, those trailer parks you’re talking about are right on the water. Am I right?”
I nod. “But so is Cedar Pines.”
“How could I forget? The very desirable Puta Creek. And that swamp they call a pond.”
“You’re overlooking the fact that we’re only an hour away from Lake Tahoe,” I argue. “You can’t touch anything there for less than a million dollars. Cedar Pines Estates could be the next best thing.”
“And monkeys could fly out of my ass.”
“I give up. But your lack of vision makes me sad.”
“Would you look at that, we’re here.” Kennedy pulls into the parking lot of Sierra Foothills Real Estate.
From the outside, the office is underwhelming. Just your basic strip-mall storefront with decorative beds of gas-station flowers along the walkway, and printer copies of real estate listings taped to the plate glass window.
Clearly, Kennedy is as unimpressed as I am because she goes on the offensive. “According to everything I’ve read, they’re the go-to people for commercial property around here.”
We stop for a few minutes to peruse the listings on the window. A gas station in South County, a bed-and-breakfast two miles out of Ghost, a working horse ranch on twenty-six acres, and a defunct campground on Fall Lake, which looks amazing.
Inside, the office is equally bland: blue carpet, white walls, and two rows of desks. There’s a glass conference room and a coffee station with a basket of snacks in the back.
We tell the receptionist that we’re here to meet Sheila Bruin. We’re invited to help ourselves to something to drink while we wait. She’ll be right with us.
Kennedy continues to examine more listings posted on the wall while I help myself to a bottled water and a bag of Goldfish. A few minutes later, Sheila breezes through the door in a prim navy-blue skirt and white blouse.
She shakes our hands vigorously, then escorts us to the conference room for “privacy.”
“Cedar Pines,” she says while flipping through a three-ring binder. “The trailer park off Ghost Highway, right?”
“Yes,” Kennedy says. She’s designated herself the lead on this, which is fine with me. I don’t even want to be here.
