“Do you have time, now?”
“If I didn’t, what kind of girlfriend would I be?” Sam asked, and Bennie gathered the question was rhetorical.
An hour later, the glass surface of Sam’s desk was cluttered with all of Bennie’s financial records. Slippery stacks of smooth canceled checks, piles of trifold bank statements, thin rent bills, and time records on Rosato amp; Associates stationery. Sam sat behind the debris, ignoring the near-constant ringing of his telephones and expertly hitting keys on his adding machine. He frowned at the numbers on the white tape, which curled onto the rug. Styrofoam cups of coffee dotted the mess, and Bennie drained the cold brew from the closest cup just as Sam looked up from the tape, his eyes reddish from strain.
Bennie knew it was bad news. “How bad is it?”
“It could be worse.”
“How?”
Sam thought a minute.
“Told you.”
“You were right. You can’t get another cent out of this business. You have old receivables that total at most two hundred eighty-three dollars and thirty-four cents. You missed three quarterly tax payments, which you have to get current immediately, the interest and penalties will kill you. Your firm is overextended, heavily leveraged.” Sam was shaking his head, looking as forlorn as if it had been his own business. “Frankly, if you file, you can reorganize. Start over. Get back in business. Viable business.”
“You want me to file for bankruptcy?” Bennie felt a pang. “Absolutely not.”
“Why?”
“It’s failing.”
“It is not!”
“Then it’s cheating.”
“It’s not that either.” Sam’s eyes softened, their corners tilting down. “Honey, your business was in trouble before Finalil stiffed you, and now you have nothing. The bankruptcy laws were enacted for people like you.”
“I never understood the bankruptcy laws. What about my creditors? I leave everybody in the lurch? We wave a financial magic wand and presto? I don’t pay what I owe?”
“No, especially not with these new changes in the law. In simplest terms, your creditors get parked, in a way. You give them payout schedules. They settle or they wait for the full amount is all. Life goes on. It’s not personal, it’s just business.”
“Business
“No it isn’t. You always confuse the two.”
“It’s easy to do when your name is on the front door.”
“You have no other choice!” Sam flushed with frustration. “Your office fixtures won’t secure another line of commercial credit. Nobody will lend you another nickel with the business as collateral.”
“What about my house? I can put it up, can’t I?”
“For a business debt? Why would you? You don’t want to do that.”
“Looks like I have to.” Bennie shuffled though the papers on Sam’s desk and found her mortgage note. “This is my mortgage, what does it tell you?”
Sam looked it over. “You should have refinanced when the rates went down.”
“Can I borrow against it?”
“Okay, there is equity in the house.”
“Equity is good, equitable and all. I bought the house as a shell, what, seven years ago?”
Sam glanced at the paper. “Six, it says here.”
“Okay, and I renovated it completely, increased its value. And the neighborhood, which wasn’t that hot when I bought in, is trendy now. A house down the street went for sixty grand more than I paid.”
“I don’t think you should even consider doing this, Bennie. It’s deadly to commingle your assets, to use personal funds to pay business debts.” Sam set the mortgage aside. “You’ve been doing it for months now, buying office supplies on personal credit cards. Paying your associates out of personal savings. You’re eating your seed corn. Robbing Peter to pay Ramon.”
Bennie smiled. “You’re seeing him again?”
“No, usually it’s dark. Can’t see a damn thing.”
Bennie laughed, which felt momentarily good. “Now. How much can I get if I hock the house?”
“Ballpark?” Sam punched some numbers into the adding machine, then checked the tape. “I bet you can raise forty-five grand in a hurry, maybe fifty.”
“Fifty grand!” Bennie felt happy and sad, at once. She was pretty sure the word for this was “ambivalent,” but that didn’t begin to convey her internal conflict. “That would be enough to solve my cash-flow problems and keep me in business until the class action settles.”
“Don’t do it. It’s too risky.” Sam was shaking his neat little head. Behind him, outside his large office window, the sun was dropping in the sky, singeing the top of the skyscrapers and making fuzzy silhouettes of the Looney Tunes on the windowsill. Sam leaned forward. “This is a business debt, Bennie. Fold the business and start a new one. Keep your house. You love your house, and for Christ’s sake, you have to live somewhere. Are you even making the payments now?”
“Because if you don’t make the payments on the new loan, which will be higher, your business folds
“I know that, but-”
“The bank will take it as soon as you go into default. They’ll demand full payment and foreclose. Don’t think they won’t. You’ll lose everything.”
“Don’t worry, it’ll be okay. I won’t lose everything. I won’t lose you,” Bennie said, and Sam managed a smile
“True. You can’t lose me. Not ever.”
Bennie thanked him, but couldn’t feel the sentiment now. She couldn’t feel anything. She could only act, and suddenly the last resort had become the only course.
“Make it happen, Sam,” she said.
11
Bennie walked home from Grun amp; Chase, moving faster than the businesspeople who hadn’t been charged with felonies. She couldn’t wait to get home and see what her house looked like after the cops had tossed the place. She felt anxious. Disoriented. She kept looking behind her for Alice. The twin had to have been following her at least some of the time. She knew what Bennie wore. Alice could be somewhere in the crowd right now, or someone working with her. And it was almost dark.
Bennie checked behind her again. The same young man with spiky black hair, plugged into an MP3 player, with a JanSport backpack slung on one shoulder. Next to him a middle-aged man strode along, carrying his suit jacket over the handle of his briefcase, and a young woman walked behind him in spongy Nikes. Alice was nowhere in sight.
Bennie turned onto the Ben Franklin Parkway into a cool wind whipping down the boulevard from the Schuylkill River, which flowed behind the art museum. The giant multicolored flags of all nations flapped from stainless-steel poles lining the parkway, billowing in the gusts. She put down her head and braced herself against the wind. She’d get back on her feet when she mortgaged the house, and even have some room to breathe. Before she’d left Sam’s office, he’d called a gay banker he knew to get her house appraised and draw up the loan papers. With his connection and a little luck, she’d have the money in three weeks, and she could stall Linette that long. She was
