Broker's Pocus

Rachel arrived at Mason's home. She had barely stepped out of her car when Mason yelled from the kitchen window, “Stay off the grass, alright. They just aerated it.” She flashed a thumb’s-up while rolling her eyes. She knew about the lawn. Everyone did. His two-acre, socks-only, monoculture utopia. His little billion-blade green army always at attention. The native broadleaf buccaneers knew about it, too, and they had the self-awareness to stay away, lest they'd be savagely doused with whatever carcinogen the lawn guy had left in the shed. It took a whole lot of gumption to germinate in that discriminatory environment.

Mason scaled the spiral stairs up to his office suite, a sprawling area on the top floor of his home where he performed his “broker’s pocus”, as he called it. He lowered the blinds to shut out the late afternoon sun. With the hum of the central air as the soundtrack and triple espresso on tap, and with three computer screens side-by-side-by-side, he surgically worked over the spreadsheets for several hours. He punched numbers like Tyson punched faces.

In truth, Mason rarely took ‘no’ for an answer. Not from his numbers, not from his girlfriend, not from his potential buyers. He learned the miracle of turning no’s into yes’s from his father, who, interestingly, is the only one Mason would accept a “no” from. The old man was the “Furbacher” of Furbacher & Son Brokerage. Founder, CEO, boss. Mussolini, Stalin, Cosmo G. Spacely. In 2004 Mason became the ‘Son’. It was his destiny.

Destiny— that rose-lipped, sugar-tongued harlot— first whispered to him on Tuesday May 14, 2001. Mason’s junior year of college was officially in the books and he had just driven home to St. Paul for summer break. He had wanted to stay around Philadelphia for the summer, or perhaps spend another summer making bad choices at the Jersey Shore. But Mason’s father had convinced him to come home and earn some real money. With his car one deep pothole away from a highway Jenga scene, he begrudgingly agreed. Soon after arriving home, his father asked if he’d go with him somewhere to talk. The somewhere he had in mind happened to be a couple thousand feet in the air. He figured his Cessna single engine prop was as good a place as any to catch up with his son.

The sky was Indian Ocean blue as far as the eye could see. The plane hovered around 4,200 feet. Zero turbulence. As the Twin Cities came into focus below, his father looked over at him with eyes that matched the color and breadth of the sky and told him: “Son, all this could be yours.”

As Mason looked down at the cities, he traced the profile of the buildings with his finger. He wondered what his father was talking about. "You know, Mason, business is good these days– real good. Properties are flying off the shelf. Remember what I told you last semester. Offer still stands. There's a project in the pipeline for this summer. I penciled your name on it. Life-changing money, if it's in you. Let's see if it's in you. What do you say? No rush. I'll give you twenty-four hours to make a decision on this."