Call to Adventure

Seconf Chapter of Second Tango

Chapter Two �" Call to Adventure

Drew had seriously overindulged on his midday repast as usual. He desperately needed an antacid or something laced with calcium carbonate to quiet the bubbling insurrection in his stomach. His dyspepsia was one of the reasons he generally quickly exited the mall after he ate and stood outside for a few minutes before getting into his car. Waiting a few minutes in the open air until his dyspepsia passed was more effective at maintaining the “new car smell” than driving with the windows open. He routinely parked his car in front of what had been the duplex movie theater when the mall had first been constructed. He had watched many movies there when his daughters were children. It pained him to see it all shuttered up. Still, it was a movie theater and not a live theater like the ones he had spent his life operating and managing. Movie theaters did not have the spirit, the joie-de-vivre, of live theaters. No matter how grand the movie theater or how puny the live theater, the live theater was real and the movie theater was a chimera. It was something beautiful but lacking substance, like the northern lights silently dancing in the cold inhospitable darkness of the arctic tundra.

He sighed. His arrogance was on display. Real theater or not, he and the girls had enjoyed coming here for a respite from reality, and he longed for the days when they were little and they were all still together.

Drew stood and watched the clouds gather for the afternoon rain. Drew stood debating what he should do next. He had told his wife he was going to the library, but with his e-reader, he really didn’t need the library. He hadn’t been to a bookstore since he’d bought the ereader and even the allure of the free books at the library did not hold the attraction it once did. The backlit e-reader with its useradjustable font sizes inspired him to read more than he ever had, and he enjoyed the new opportunities. Still, reading was a sedentary activity and he had spent his entire life on his feet supporting and managing live events and the venues that housed them. He had worked with his share of household names in his career. He had long ago lost track of how many concerts he had worked. In busy years, he could do over fifty in a year. In slower years, the number was around twenty. Of course, there were the faith healers and itinerant evangelists and other flim-flam artists and charlatans that had rented the spaces in the buildings where he worked.

Not all of it had been bad. Some of it was great, but mostly it was forgettable.

To Drew, being sedentary was more than a state of activity. It was a state of mind. He called it “fat person attitude.” One of his most cutting insults to his staff had been that they were thinking like a fat person. He had often commented that he walked five to ten miles a day at work without ever leaving the building or the parking lot. Therefore, there was no “fat-itude” for him. Drew hated the thought that he might become sedentary himself. He might as well die. If he didn’t do something soon, he would. The image of himself doddering down the street leaning on a cane jolted him out of his thoughts. He had been to the retirement communities. He had not liked what he had seen.

Large raindrops splattered on the already wet pavement. As Drew gazed out over the rain soaked parking lot from the protection of the old theater’s marquee, the background music in his mind changed from the soft, melancholy harmony of the Righteous Brothers to the rough and ragged lyrics of the Doors. In spite of a lifetime of exposure to the latest and greatest from the world of music, it was the music of his youth that was woven into the tapestry of his mind.

For the last twenty years of his career, Drew had managed an arts center with five performance spaces. The three thousand seat grand hall had hosted the symphony, operas and nationally known touring artists. Much of the world’s best music was performed there. Drew had loved being part of that. The fifteen hundred seat second theater hosted the youth symphony, the ballet and a steady stream of lesser known entertainers. The thousand-seat director’s theater hosted an ambitious schedule with locally produced plays and musicals as well as hosting touring shows for schoolchildren on weekday mornings. The two hundred-seat black box theater and the fifty-seat actor’s studio were home to a wide range of smaller locally produced projects. Including matinee performances, Drew could have as many as twenty programs in a weekend in the busy season. One would think that with all that music, Drew’s taste would have changed over the years, but it had not.

The music in the back of Drew’s head was born of the Vietnam protest songs and the early works of Jefferson Airplane, Cream, Barry McGuire, Buffy St. Marie, Tom Rush, the Beatles and, most of all, the Doors. So, with the Doors firmly lodged in the rhythm of his walk, he turned to go back inside the mall.

A shadow of an ephemeral idea began to solidify from the fog, the clouds, the ethereal darkness in the innermost recess in the vacuum in the back of his mind, the scary part. Not unlike the low smoke generator we used for the ballet. Not formed, wispy, amorphous, floating, but with some substance, pierced by the occasional ray of white light, perhaps enough substance to engender activity, but then it was too soon to tell if any of this made sense or was even possible, let alone practical. A direction was clear, but there were many twists and turns with obstacles and solutions, challenges and ripostes, stroke versus counterstrike, spy versus spy. The path may lie open ahead or end abruptly in the haze from which it emerged. He would never know if he never tried. “You lose 100% of what you don’t go out for.”

“Anthony, where is the mall’s rental office?”

“Something wrong?”

“No, I had an idea. Wanted to talk to them about it.”

“Can I help?”

“You will. I’m counting on it.”

Drew smiled as one piece of the path ahead revealed itself. There was a light ahead and it was not an oncoming freight train.

“It’s in the strip mall across from Flagship Bank.”

“Thanks.”

* * * * *

A morbidly obese man attempted to stand from behind his desk when Drew was ushered into the mall manager’s office. Serious case of fat-itude. Drew looked at the computer on the credenza behind the desk. A day trading site was up on the screen. Lazy fat-assed fat-itude. Something-for-nothing f*****g bullshit fat-itude. Drew had a deep-seated, long-standing hatred of day trading. In his mind, it was a manifestation of the degenerative disorder plaguing the American society’s financial health. Seeing the site instantly inspired an aggressively hostile opinion of this flaccid florid rubicund porker before either had said a word. Drew’s opinions on both obesity and day trading bordered on radical fanaticism, and he almost let them dominate him. To have this monstrosity exhibit both was almost more than he could abide. Drew carried a few extra pounds, mostly in his gut, but if this guy lost half of his current corpulent body, he would still be overweight. He wondered if the tubbo could even take a s**t in a public restroom without breaking the stall door or the toilet. Drew would need to give serious consideration to the size of the toilets in the project he was contemplating. A few of his potential clients could be this large, though he hoped not. Still, business was business and one did not turn down a paying customer over their girth, although the thought of a person as fat as this one on the dance floor did set Drew back for a few seconds.

They shook hands and the mall manager fell back into his chair gasping and wheezing while motioning for Drew to sit. A quick examination of the day trading site on the computer only aggravated Drew’s animosity for this lard butt he had only just met and who had not said a word. The mall manager pulled a singleservingsize package of cheese from a bag under his desk. I’ll bet you sit there and fart all day, too. Is that why I smell so much air-freshener? The mall manager, to whom Drew had already applied the moniker “Chunky,” offered one to Drew who refused it, still full from lunch. Chunky took the wrapper off the cheese, carefully flexing his think fingers to rip the serrated edge of the package, and popped the entire thing in his mouth before returning his attention to Drew.

“What brings you to my office?”

No introduction, no pleasantries, no small talk. Not even slowing down long enough to taste what he is eating.

“I was thinking of renting and renovating the old movie theater and turning it into an entertainment venue.”

“You mean like a strip club?”

“No,” Drew answered quickly. His low opinion of the man sank even lower. Drew was stunned that anything could lower his opinion of this sorry specimen of humanity. Probably the only way you’d ever get close to a woman, Chunky. Is your dick as fat as the rest of you?

“Too bad.” The mall manager took a long haul on the straw in his oversized, conveniencestore soft drink. “I’d like a strip club; piss off the people in that church down the street always clogging up my parking lot. What kind of entertainment?”

Drew shook his head before he answered. This man was hard to believe. “Concerts and dancing.” The concept had morphed in the interval between leaving the mall and Drew’s arrival at the office.

“I’ll need to get approval from the owners. Come back in a week.”

Drew was not about to let this gaseous pockmarked bulbous quivering piece of s**t sit in his way. Drew doubted that the tubbo could stand in his way without falling over, but he could sit there farting and making ugly faces, showing his yellowing and misshapen teeth.

“That is not an acceptable answer. Call your boss on the phone and let me talk to him if you don’t have the balls to do it.”

The mall manager took another slug on his soda. “No.”

“Is your boss not available? Is he playing golf somewhere, or is he shacked up in a back room with some hooker?” Not an option for you, Chunky, unless she was on top.

“Get out of my office.”

* * * * *

Drew went to the county courthouse. A quick survey of the property records located the real estate developer who owned the mall. Given the unprofessional nature of the reception he had received at the manager’s office, Drew was surprised to find that it was a relatively large regional company that specialized in small malls and industrial buildings.

Drew spent the next hour on his cell phone wending his way through a telephone answering system with as many branches and loop-backs as a hundredyearold banyan tree. As it turned out, the state headquarters for the mall development company was less than an hour’s drive away.

Still in his after-gym sweats, Drew drove to the office building where the mall developer occupied the fourth floor.

The receptionist greeted the news that Drew did not have an appointment with a cold stare. She made him wait half an hour before ushering him into the office of a man who spent way too much time in a tanning booth. Nobody wanted skin that color unless they were a total jerk.

“Mr. Bartlett, what brings you to my office?”

Well, at least Chunky was maintaining the company protocol. The greeting was even colder than Chunky’s had been.

“It’s Barnett, and I have a business proposition for you.”

“And how much will this cost us?”

Drew wondered if he was doomed to spend the rest of his life working with a******s. No wonder the mall was failing.

“I wish to rent and renovate the movie theaters in the Sand Lake Square Mall and re-open them as concert venues.”

“And how much investment are you expecting from us?”

At least this a*****e wasn’t as fat as the last a*****e Drew had dealt with. This one could actually use a normalsized public restroom. And he asked legitimate questions. How bizarre!

“None, depending on the condition of the building. If the building is structurally sound and the mechanical systems work, I will make the changes at my own expense.”

“You will need to discuss this with my mall manager. Here is his business card.”

The card directed him to the office he had just left. Chunky couldn’t find his corpulent a*s with both hands and a grenade.

“No, he wouldn’t give me an answer, so I came to you.” Drew was about to make a comment about day trading on company time when he saw the same day trading site on the screen on the credenza.

Drew stood. He stepped back without breaking eye contact. “I can see that you have absolutely no interest in bringing the mall to profitability again. That is indeed unfortunate.”

Drew put his hands on the man’s desk and leaned forward. “I will encounter and confront you at the shareholders’ meeting next month. I am sure the concerned institutional stockholders that hold the majority of your stock, and the rating agencies that everyone else seems to think have a clue about your pathetic little enterprise, will have a change of opinion on your performance once I inform them of the substance, or lack thereof, pertaining to our stalled negotiations today.”

Drew left the room. He smiled at the receptionist and wished her a nice day. He felt sorry for her having such a jerk for a boss. Of course, there had been a time when he had been the jerk boss. He hadn’t understood then, but he did now.

* * * * *

Drew was less than halfway home when Chunky called. Drew laughed aloud when he read the caller ID on his cell phone. He had not expected the call so soon. He had expected to have to wait until morning. Lobbing an insult or a threat like the one he had lobbed at Chunky’s boss was one thing, but proper delivery was everything, and with his acting training, Drew knew exactly how to deliver such a line. God it felt good. Still got my acting chops! College had been a long time ago, but Drew remembered his acting classes. Drew struggled to hide the smirk in his tone when he answered the phone. Would Drew be so kind as to meet him and his boss at the mall in the food court so they could discuss Drew’s plans?

* * * * *

Drew went to the food court.

“Anthony, I am meeting two men here. When they arrive, bring me one of your biggest pizzas all the way, no fish, and your biggest soft drink.”

“For you?”

“Nope, the mall manager.”

Anthony puffed out his cheeks and bulged his eyes and they both laughed. Drew liked Anthony and looked forward to bringing him into the plan. His ready laugh and loud, boisterous manner would work well in tense situations of which there portended to be plenty.

“Yeah and I need to talk to the salad lady next door.”

“For why?”

“Chunky’s boss.”

“I’ve never met him. You must really have kicked the hornet’s nest.”

“Oh, yeah.” Drew grinned that old “s**t-eating grin” he learned in basic training almost half a century ago. The current term might be a “gotcha grin” but a “gotcha” was not shared in the same way the other was. “Yeah, I did and it was fun. We’ll see where it goes from here.”

“Do you know what you’re doing?”

“Not a clue. That’s what makes it exciting.”

“You, my friend, are a crazy man.”

“Always have been.”

Anthony shook his head as he turned to assemble the pizza Drew had ordered.

* * * * *

Drew never drank beer in the afternoon, but he ordered one from Anthony while he waited for Chunky and Tan-Man. Chunky and Tan-Man had names and Drew knew what they were, but his first step in a negotiation was to dehumanize his quarry so that he could divest himself of feelings for his enemies. If they thought he had been drinking, perhaps they might let their guard down enough that he could get concessions from them. Drew knew from painful experience that it was considerably safer to overestimate your enemy’s strength than to underestimate it. He had spent way too much time in ornate opulent overstuffed pretentious self-aggrandizing wood-paneled corporate boardrooms populated with people with inflated opinions of themselves and dressed in suits that cost more than his operating costs for a week battling for his budgets to think otherwise. He intended to force them to underestimate him. Experience and treachery would beat youth and valor every time. A little psychological sleight of hand and magical misdirection could work to Drew’s favor.

Chunky trailed behind Tan-Man huffing and puffing as he trudged across the expanse of the mall’s center corridor in the direction of the food court. Drew imagined that he felt the floor shudder under each of Chunky’s steps, except that Chunky shuffled more than he stepped. Although, truth be told, Drew thought of Chunky’s walk as more of a slosh than a shuffle. His maternal grandmother had walked like that and Drew had not liked his grandmother very much. Actually, he disliked her intensely except that she cooked better than his mother did. She had moved in with them when Drew was in sixth grade. Her arrival had not necessarily been welcomed by all members of the household. Drew believed that his father had agreed to the arrangement under duress. Her presence, rather than being the uplifting, multi-generational love-fest so often pictured on television, was the source of constant strife and tension. Drew’s father took the brunt of this, especially when money was tight and there was not enough to go around. Drew’s grandmother rarely had anything good to say to or about Drew, his father, or his uncles and the old traumas lingered. Drew would not find out until long after he had left home that she did not hate him in particular. She had a dim view of the entire male population. Apparently, his grandfather had justified that attitude. She came by her animosity honestly. By the time Drew made that discovery, the damage had been done to the sensitive insecure scrawny awkward socially inept child that Drew was most of the time she was alive.

Since Chunky shuffled instead of walked, he made no solid impact, for such an impact would have caused all his “wobbly bits” to lurch and fly about painfully. Chunky might be well advised to wear a bra. At least that way he could somewhat reduce the tsunami-intensity tremors coursing across his body. Anthony arrived with the pizza as Chunky thudded down into a chair much too small for the bulbous a*s that landed on it. Anthony placed the pizza and a soft drink in front of Chunky. The salad lady arrived moments later with a salad and a bottle of water, which she placed in front of Tan-Man.

Drew said, “In order to show that I have no hard feelings from our first meeting this afternoon, I present you with these peace offerings.”

Chunky dug into the pizza without uttering a word of greeting and Tan-Man snarled. He knew he’d been had. Drew had noticed Chunky’s misshapen and discolored teeth earlier, but as he devoured the pizza, Drew could not help but wonder at what stage in Chunky’s life an orthodontist might have been able to rescue his appearance. Drew wondered how much his appearance had fostered the recurring cycle of rejection and overeating and rejection again. Even if his teeth could not be repaired, whitening would help his countenance, his visage, and probably, therefore, his demeanor from his improved appearance. As he was, he made a most unappealing sight. In spite of his animosity toward overweight people, Drew found himself pitying this man. Not good. You don’t pity someone you are about to negotiate with and whom you intend to get the better of. Sympathy makes a bad bargaining tool.

Tan-Man pushed the salad aside and opened the bottled water. “Mr. Bartlett-”

“BarNETT.”

“Um, yes, um, sorry. Mr. Barnett, what exactly do you intend to do with the theater? All my associate could tell me was that it was not a strip club.”

“Quite right,” Drew replied. He leaned forward with academic professorial intensity. He pictured himself wearing a sweater with elbow patches and plasticframed glasses. He laid on his best Paper Chase persona. For this conversation, he would be John Houseman facing a bunch of freshmen to be whipped into shape. He placed his hands flat on the table in his best and most convincing conciliatory gesture. Even though his thoughts resembled those of a hustler or, more likely, a con artist, his body language screamed, “I have nothing to hide.” He smiled ingratiatingly before delivering his onslaught. “While a strip club would probably do well in this neighborhood, they generally are better in smaller, more intimate spaces than the one I intend to use. Properly managed and marketed, strip clubs can be immensely profitable compared to their footprint. In fact, you might wish to contact the owners of the big strip clubs downtown and see if they might consider using the space the pharmacy abandoned. It’s about the right size and the low ceiling could be beneficial. Might actually raise property values around here.”

Tan-Man choked on his water. “Would you want a strip club for a neighbor?”

Drew smiled while he waited for Tan-Man to quit sputtering and gagging before continuing. “Not particularly. They draw a crowd that would be a problem for the people I wish to attract. For my business I was contemplating creating a dance theater, potentially with dance lessons incorporated into the regular program of entertainment. Or at least that was my original idea, but it has grown a bit since then. Still, that’s the core and all I intend to do at the start.”

“What kind of dance?” Tan-Man asked.

“Tango, mambo, a lot of Latin, some country and whatever else is popular with the middleaged drinking crowd these days. My demographic will be older than the typical bar in this area. I would stay away from hip-hop since there is enough of that in town, and from ballroom because that is a much more specialized form of dance. This is not a dance school, but a club where those who can’t dance can learn and have fun at the same time.”

“How will you generate revenue?” Tan-Man asked.

“The majority of the revenue will come from food and drink sales. Some will come from cover charges. I will probably charge a cover all the time due to the nature and expense of the entertainment. Besides, a cover keeps out some of the less-desirable elements of our society. The rest will come from rentals of the space for dance instruction or dance conventions.”

“Dance conventions?” Chunky asked with his mouth full of pizza.

Drew was astounded with the speed with which the pizza disappeared. Chunky had virtually inhaled it. Tan-Man had barely nibbled on his salad.

“Yes. Not being in the arts, you would, of course, be somewhat distant from this potentially lucrative market. Since dance conventions bring people from out of the area, the Convention and Visitors Bureau may be able to help with some of the marketing. There is a bewildering array of dance clubs and associations, such as the swing dance associations, that rent space all the time. I managed an art center and over the years many of them contacted us about renting our space. After reviewing their specifications and then tendering proposals, they found out that we did not have a wooden floor and generally went elsewhere.”

“The theater has a concrete floor,” Chunky pointed out.

Drew was impressed that Chunky stopped eating long enough to speak again and actually had something intelligent to add to the conversation.

“And it slopes,” Tan-Man added.

Another astute observation. Maybe there is hope for these two morons. “Yes, which would require that the floor be built up and leveled. That construction would be part of my investment in the property.”

“What about the seats?” Tan-Man asked.

“The standards can be sold to a seating company.”

“Standards?” Chunky asked.

“The structural part that bolts to the floor.”

“Thanks.”

“Some of the metal could be recycled. The seat and back cushions are probably headed for the landfill.”

“Who gets the revenue from the sale of the seat parts?” Tan-Man asked.

“You do and therefore the more I sell, the more money you make, and I get a lower trash-hauling bill.”

“Sounds fair,” Chunky said as he polished off the last of the pizza.

“What about the labor to remove the seats?” Tan-Man asked, looking askance at his subordinate.

“Negotiable. If I decide to proceed with the project, that is one of many items we will negotiate.”

“Fair enough. What do you need from us now?”

“Your permission to begin researching the project’s feasibility, and contact information on the architect who built the building.”

“Who bears the expense of this research?” Tan-Man asked.

“I will bear most of it. You will only be responsible for the cost of whatever time your staff puts into the project. Although I suspect, judging by what I saw on your computer monitors in your offices, neither of you is so busy you can’t devote the paltry few hours this will involve without busting your meager staffing budgets.”

Drew enjoyed the delicately delivered barb at least as much as any other of his carefully honed and often-practiced vocal techniques. Managing a performance facility gave him lots of practice.

Tan-Man opened his mouth to speak but thought the better of it. He extended his hand. “You have a deal.”