A lot happens here in Chapter 14. David moves into a new home, and he pursues a new relationship that is very different from his old ones. How would you react if you had a lover who treated you the way Victoria treats David?
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Things got crazy for a while.
There was too much to do. Not enough time to do it. It takes work to get any start-up going, and that is especially true of charitable foundations. Donors expect you to kiss their asses. Constantly. They expect to be invited to black-tie banquets. To schmooze with celebrities. To hear an unending string of compliments reminding them they are great people. It made me want to puke. In theory, I could use the sonic stimulator to dispense with all that crap, but it was too dangerous. People would become suspicious. I had to do a good job pretending the Gaia Foundation was a normal charity that operated in a normal way. God, give me strength.
The best news was that Victoria accepted my job offer, and she threw herself into the work. She acted like a woman on a mission, but that was understandable because SHE WAS a woman on a mission. She came in early, stayed late, and thought of all kinds of important things I never would have considered. I kept having to force her to hire more assistants. She acted as though we were operating under stringent financial restrictions, and it didn't seem to matter how often I told her that she could count on me to raise any amount of money required. I finally gave up. The only way to reassure Victoria was to raise money faster than she could ever spend it. That would teach her to trust me.
I hadn't yet met Victoria's parents, so I never had the pleasure of watching their reaction to seeing their daughter achieve success far beyond anything they had ever done. But I did get second-hand reports that were very satisfying. Schadenfreude, anyone?
I started courting Victoria. It felt like being in high school again. We went on all kinds of nice dates, which were usually recommended by Mary. She thought this whole situation was hilarious. Here I was, a guy having hot sex with several hot women, and I was trying to convince a virgin to let me touch her boobs. That took forever. We'd go out somewhere, end the evening making out on a couch in her apartment, then she'd send me home with another case of blue balls. Mary derived an unseemly amount of pleasure relieving my sexual frustation. It was incredible how much Victoria aroused me. Our relationship was moving so slow I felt like I'd go crazy before she finally let me take her to bed. I never considered using the sonic stimulator to hurry things along. That was NOT going to happen with Victoria.
Lots of other things were happening with the foundation. Use your imagination. It was a lot of tedious but necessary crap that drove me absolutely nuts. One task that became more significant than I expected involved the need to find a new place to live. My old apartment had always been inadequate. We needed something nicer, and we could afford it. There was no reason to keep delaying the purchase.
Since I had such limited time, I asked Mary to hire a realtor and look for properties. I wanted something located near space we could eventually lease for the offices of the Gaia Foundation. I had no time to waste commuting. Victoria was operating the business out of an office park that offered space for start-ups. We knew we'd find a permanent location later, but we didn't know when or where.
Most of the homes the realtor showed Mary were mini-mansions in far-flung suburban neighborhoods. We hated them. We are city people, and neither of us were interested in long commutes to work. Unfortunately, there were limited options in the city.
We finally found a home that was unlike any place I've ever lived.
It was a penthouse on top of a luxury condo development right in the heart of downtown. The building used to be a sprawling industrial complex, but the developers used tax credits to finance a state-of-the-art multi-use facility that offered every important amenity to urban homesteaders. The first floor consisted of high-end retail, restaurants, boutiques, and a cute little grocery store where residents could get a jug of milk, a loaf of bread, and a wide selection of overpriced imported wine. There was a big daycare center. Are you getting the picture? Urban Nirvana.
The next three levels were for commercial/office tenants. Then, the next 12 floors consisted of 432 luxury condos of all kinds. Lofts. Studios. Spacious townhouses. There was almost any kind of housing a person could want. The architects did a nice job filling a fairly complicated building with first-class housing.
There was a big athletic club. Banquet facilities. And on top of it all was a penthouse that looked like something a billionaire would buy. It had everything Mary and I would ever want. The complex was a cutting edge development when it opened, and the units were extremely popular places to live.
At least, that was true when the place opened 19 years ago. It no longer appealed to folks who like having the latest and greatest. When the realtor showed us the penthouse, she said the space needed to be "refreshed." I love that word. Refreshed. That's the way realtors describe housing where nothing is really wrong, but it has become unfashionable. The countertops are granite, not quartz. Some flooring is expensive tile instead of expensive hardwood. The appliances work fine, but aren't the kind seen in the latest edition of
Better Homes and Gardens.
The complex had a vacancy rate of almost 20 percent, so everything was priced to sell. That was especially true of the penthouse; the people who spend big money for such things were gravitating to newer developments.
One thing I particularly loved was the fact that the Gaia Foundation could move into office space somewhere on the lower floors. Commuting to work in an elevator sounded great. And it was increasingly clear that a lot of the people who would be assisted by the Gaia Foundation were women who needed housing, at least for a while. There were more than enough vacant units, and the women wouldn't give a damn that their units needed to be "refreshed." In almost all cases, some paint and new carpeting was more than enough to get the condos ready.