Episode 4: Exposure
Time couldn't move quickly enough.
When Friday arrived, Ivan was up even earlier than usual, eager to hit the gym and get down to his fathers place to get it prepped for listing... and his impending meeting with Serafine. He felt a sense of smug satisfaction at the thought of selling the house. The idea had only occurred to him recently, when it became clear that whatever was going on with his inheritance wasn't going to be resolved anytime soon.
He needed cash, and the house was old and valuable - and, crucially - not part of the corporate assets that were tied up in an unending battle with the board, so he figured he'd be able to get rid of it free and clear.
Nobody would question him about it at the brokerage. It should be easy. Couple weeks, max.
He was still waiting on one of the girls from the office to pull the title for him, but he'd spent the week since his visit to the Conservatory scheduling cleaners, having the houses exterior paint retouched, windows washed, the cobblestone driveway power washed, and a long list of other little updates, hoping to get the place looking as good as possible for photos.
When he arrived at the property that afternoon to check on the progress, the sky was overcast gray and the wrought iron gates were already open, several cars parked in the courtyard.
Admittedly, the house was stunning, an old stone Romanesque mansion, wedged between much newer skyscrapers and apartment buildings in downtown Chicago, like it was somehow trapped in time.
It was the same place he'd passed out in a couple nights ago after leaving the Playpen, but it felt much different in the daytime. Dreamy and serene, with birds chirping from the greenery like a countryside villa.
He was vaguely aware that it had been built by some famous architect, years ago, and he knew that buildings like this were exceedingly rare in the city, and almost never came up for sale. If he did his part right, it could sell for tens of millions.
I can't wait to see the look on Jo's face when he finds out it's been sold,
he thought.
You just can't put a price on something like that.
Passing a large flowerbed, he nodded approvingly at a few landscapers who were tidying up the shrubbery before his attention landed on a greenish-blue minivan with a dent on one side. His eyes narrowed when he recognized a cat-shaped air freshener hanging from the rear view mirror, a spur of disdain making him cock his neck to one side until the bones cracked.
Not Bernice,
he thought.
When he'd told the brokerage to send someone out to take photos of the property, he meant someone capable. Someone who understood the importance of a listing like this.
From day one, he'd been suspicious that Tonio only hired Bernice for the purpose of some long-tail joke. Given that he kept the brokerage full of young, fresh, almost model-worthy female agents at all times, and Bernice's soft, middle-aged body fell far below their usual standards...but if so, they'd yet to get to the part where it was funny.
It wasn't that Ivan didn't like working with women. On the contrary, he found them to be very useful when matched with work that suited their feminine qualities, like staging a house or luring in more male clientele with their bodies, but anything that required rational thought, a firm will, or creative problem solving was obviously better suited to a man. The roles of the two genders had simply evolved too differently to see it any other way.
Bernice hadn't done anything specific to garner his distaste. It was how all the little interactions he'd had with her since she was hired to do the brokerage's photo/video work added up that now made his hands clench and unclench unconsciously. Every time he worked with her, he'd wind up sending back tens of photos for obvious revisions - too dark, too grainy, not focused on the part of the room that mattered.
He could do without the added stress on this listing.
We could've hired my neighbor's teenage son and gotten this done faster and better,
he thought, but then shook his head, reminding himself to stay professional. She couldn't help it, after all. Society expected so little from women outside of rearing children, he was sometimes surprised they could do anything else at all.
It was men who faced all the pressure to aspire to greatness in life, and as one of those men, he didn't like when his time was wasted repeating himself and managing people, but he tried to stay optimistic. Maybe she'd done her job right this time. Maybe she was learning.
When he opened the door to the house, it looked much different than it had last time he'd seen the place, the furniture draped with drop cloth and some of the walls still covered by a thin layer of plastic film. There were some cleaning supplies propped in one corner, and as he walked deeper into the mansion, he passed a stack of boards wrapped in brown paper that he knew to be paintings.
The presence of several large black studio lights made him pause at a wood-paneled cigar room just off the main foyer, where he found a woman dressed in a brightly patterned skirt and blouse bending over to get pictures of a leather seating area. For a moment, he watched her in silence, carefully managing the feelings of derision that came bubbling to the surface at the sight of her overweight body, but as soon as she saw him, her face lit up and she lowered her camera.
"Oh, good afternoon, Ivan. I wasn't expecting you."
"Likewise," he said.
"You want to take a look at what I got so far?" she enthused. "I know you're very particular."
"Please," he said, extending a hand to take the camera.
He wasn't particular, she was just blind,
he reflected, scrolling through the photos.
"I tried to get some exterior shots earlier, but the overcast lighting is just terrible. I think I'll have to come back again when the weathers better."
"Mmn," Ivan responded noncommittally, the doubts he'd felt earlier now returning to make his muscles tense all over again.
The outdoor photos were gray and flat, but worse, the indoor photos featured hundreds of shots of rooms with dusty furniture, cleaning supplies, and harsh shadows. A few that must have been taken much earlier in the day featured two men dressed in overalls bending over baseboards in the shot.
Fucking
carpenters?
So, she'd been here for at least three hours and these were the results?
There were a few decent photos -- but then, the cigar room, foyer, and expansive stone kitchen were pretty hard to fuck up. Most of the rooms were so well-designed that no special photography tricks were needed. She should have known better than to spend any time on the rooms still being cleaned, but then he reminded himself,
no, she probably didn't know any better.
His expectations were exactly where they'd always been. At precisely zero.
"Maybe get a few of the entry," he suggested, trying to keep his voice light. "And try keep the cleaning supplies out of the shot, yeah?"
"Oh, yeah, no problem," she smiled. "But honestly I wouldn't worry about that kinda stuff too much. We can fix it in post."
Ivan handed her back the camera with a tight smile.
He suspected that her artistic approach had a lot more to do with billable hours, but decided not to say anything, instead reaching for his phone to fire off a message to Tonio, before walking away to check out the condition of the rest of the property.
