The Drip, a novel by Michael Gullo
“Heya Tommy.”
“What are you doin’ here, Meathead?”
“Well, sir, I came to take your little girl to dinner if you’ll allow it.”
“Well, I’ll allow it, but don’t you think just cuz you’s two is married you can bring her back here all hours.”
“No sir. Wouldn’t consider it. How you doin, buddy?”
“Been busy as all. We was on a deck t’ar out today, and I ain’t young like I used to be.”
“Are you serious? You can’t… You shouldn’t do that kinda stuff.”
“Got no choice. Mike took the job, help out lady lives down the way, and me and Stephen’s all he’s got to do the work.”
“Sounds like Clover’s gonna kick that door in if I don’t get in there and say hello.”
“Stefanie prolly itchin’ too. All she does ever night just sit in the house watch Jeopardy and the Wheel of Fortune with me and Karen.”
“It’s been a long month.”
“Feels like two.”
“It takes some getting used to, that’s for sure. We’re a month into it, and other than a couple dinners and one date night, the phone is all we got.”
“I’ll let Clover out.”
“No, don’t. That way I don’t gotta stand in there wagging my own tail to get her movin’.”
“At least Maddron’s on board now.”
“What? She didn’t tell me that. She was going to ask him last night, but she never told me he was on board.”
“I may’a just gave up a surprise.”
“Oh, man. Drop it. Here she comes.”
“Hey, Stef, this man show up in my driveway, claim he got a date with you tonight. That right?”
“Hi, Clover. That’s my face. Easy puppy. Okay, okay, get in the truck, there you go. Wow, she’s fired up. Hi, babe. You sure look pretty.”
“And you look homeless.”
“It’s just a coincidence.”
“You gonna coincide with a shower this week?”
“It’s been a busy week.”
“Yeah, but you haven’t showered in four days.”
“Alrighty, then.”
“It’s gross.”
“Don’t look at me. I try and tell ya you got a big mouth.”
“Buddy, all’s I said was she looked pretty.”
“Well, you showed up for date night, look like you just fell out the machine into pile, and you gonna get it like that.”
“Thanks for the help, buddy.”
“Pleasure’s all mine.”
“My love, hop in. We gotta eat, and now I need to plot and scheme a make-up date.”
“You got that right.”
“I’ll have her back early Mr. Cotter, sir.”
“Looks like.”
“Get in, Sweathog. I’m hungry.”
“Watch your feet. Tommy, behave yourself while we’re gone. That forked tongue ain’t as selective as you hope it is.”
“She’s an angel, and long’s I got you, I got safe harbor.”
“Seeya in a few hours, buddy --- My love, what’s for dinner?”
“Well, I thought we’d sit down and eat somewhere, but maybe drive-thru.”
“Take it up to the Drip?”
“No way. That shed smells like an ashtray.”
“Smells worse than that.”
“Nope, ashtray.”
“Truck’s not much better. I had to sleep in here again last night.”
“I know it doesn’t help with the cold nights, right now, but you’ll be in the clear by fall. I talked to Maddron last night, and he said he’d do it.”
“Are you kidding? That’s awesome! What’d he say?”
“Said he’d do it.”
“Enthusiastic?”
“I mean, he said he’s really busy.”
“So a delay.”
“No. He wants to set up lunch Friday.”
“Oh man, this is big! So this is a celebration dinner?”
“It was.”
“I’m sorry babe. I didn’t realize.”
“It never occurred to me you’d go on our only date night, and you wouldn’t plan a shower first.”
“Yeah, I see that now.”
“You’re gonna get scabies or something if you don’t straighten up.”
“I think you have to be in contact with scabies to catch scabies.”
“A rash, then.”
“Do you wanna go back to the house, and I can wash up, and grab some clothes out of my clean laundry?”
“I don’t have any laundry for you.”
“Okay, we meet Maddron tomorrow and show him the site and the plans and come to terms, and we’ll go out to dinner like humans Saturday.”
“I have State training all weekend.”
“This two-agency stuff is a pain in the ass.”
“State’s got us on Red-dots now, and we’ve got training all weekend.”
“Great way to take a ninety-eight shooter and turn her into a stumbling idiot.”
“FBI put Phil on them last year, and he says he got used to it.”
“That guy’s got too many jobs. Sevierville, Revenue, and FBI.”
“Two kids, wife, and he still finds time for a shower.”
“There’s the flaw in that surprise plan.”
“How long will it be if Maddron gets started right away?”
“Gotta figure it’s a month to get in the ground.”
“You’re already in the ground.”
“That’s evident, but I mean with footers. He’s gotta get drawings done, get permits, line up trades. That first month’s a lotta phone time. And it’s what I pay the fifteen-percent for.”
“Twenty-five percent.”
“What?”
“He said it’s cost plus twenty-five.”
“No wonder.”
“No wonder, what?”
“That’s a big nut.”
“Want me to tell him no?”
“No, no. Not that. I’ve done this take-off every way possible, and I bought the lumber list with the house plan, so I sent that to Tindell’s when I ordered the trusses for the workshop.”
“Wait, what? When did you order the workshop trusses?”
“Surprise?”
“Nope. No. We agreed the workshop waits until the house is built.”
“I was trying to get a few things in advance. The stuff that takes time.”
“How much were the trusses?”
“You don’t look at the LMA do you? I bought the trusses for the imagined workshop because those take like six weeks to produce, and I don’t want to get to the point where I’m ready for that building and hurry up to wait.”
“How much, Michael?”
“Five thousand. But that’s not the point. I needed to get a price for the lumber package, and I wanted to talk them into a good price, and I offered up the package for the workshop too.”
“Wait, you didn’t buy the lumber for the workshop, did you? No wait. You’re not building this house. Why are you getting lumber package prices?”
“I gotta estimate, Stefanie.”
“Why? That’s the contractor’s job.”
“Yeah, but I gotta buy the service, and how do I negotiate if I don’t know what it costs?”
“It’s Maddron.”
“It wasn’t Maddron Monday when I submitted the request.”
“No, Michael.”
“Yes, Stefanie. I already ordered the trusses for the shop, and even if Maddron does build the house, he’s not building the workshop.”
“Michael, my whole job is mixed receipts. Every one of these little geniuses thinks that if he can commingle the cash count, they can confound the case file. I don’t fall for it at work, and I won’t fall for it at home either.”
“I’m not doing that.”
“You are. You think if you put the Trusses on an expense line with the lumber bid you can prove the price difference and fool me into letting you build the house.”
“Honey, I’ve met a bunch of contractors up there, and the only one used real prices is the one that’s about to be out of work building the exact house that we’re building. That house is almost done.”
“He’s not a licensed contractor.”
“So what? Every licensed contractor you call hires the same guys, barely English speaking dude’s got no driver license, three social security numbers, and is getting paid less by the contractor than he would if he worked for me directly. I met a guy just yesterday proves exactly the point.”
“Maddron, Michael.”
“Yeah, his name’s Michael. So?”
“Good try. Listen. You’re not building this house, and your little plan to get the permits yourself and let Enrique build it, that’s not happening!”
“Which way am I turning?”
“I don’t care.”
“Stef. We gotta eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Come on, don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad.”
“I’m not going to play guess-my-emotion with you. You’re affected, and it’s because you have an ideal in your mind, and I’m bending every nerve in my body to accommodate it, but you just keep getting harder and harder. I live in a shed, Stefanie. You live in your childhood bed. We have about half as much of the money that we need to build this place, and I’m looking at a calendar with real weather in it – weather that matters to me.”
“Don’t talk to me like that.”
“Stefanie, we’re a month into this, and it’s planned by wish list. I agreed to your GC idea, to Maddron – twenty-five-percent, that’s concierge pricing.”
“What’s concierge pricing?”
“There’s guys out there that get twenty-five, but the going rate is fifteen. Twenty-five is what you charge the guy that’s five states away and has nothing but time and budget to spare.”
“It’s also what you have to charge when you really don’t have time to do a thing, but you can’t say no to your friend.”
“Fair, but you gotta understand. We have six-hundred to build this house, and that means we have to get the house finished for $480,000.00.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Four-eighty plus twenty-five-percent is six-hundred. And now that Tindell’s estimate really proves itself. A contractor generally gets a framer for seven or eight bucks a foot for the labor, and the lumber package generally runs five to fifteen a foot depending on the truss complexity, but we bought the two-by-six framed drawing, and our roof is almost forty-five squares and complicated truss works with the vaulted living room.”
“Michael, you’re mathing me.”
“It’s numbers, and they don’t change. The truss package was thirty-eight thousand, and the framing package was twenty-seven, that’s sixty-five thousand just for the sticks.”
“That’s still four-hundred-fifteen left.”
“So you are mathing. The foundation is two-hundred-ninety linear feet of ICF at ten-inches thick, cheap that’s twenty-five in concrete and ten for the forms, thirty-five before the first labor check is written.”
“Three-eighty.”
“Fine. Now let’s pay the framers. Eight a foot for the house, four-thousand feet of walls, that’s thirty-two and the roof, that’s firty-five- hundred at two bucks, nine thousand.”
“Forty-one? That’s three-thirty-nine.”
“Now we need the concrete labor. That’s a wide range. Make pretend the concrete man has his own pump; he’s not pouring this house for a penny less than match the materials – thirty-five for the month.”
“Month?”
“Yup. It’ll take a month to pour the footers, place the forms, support them and to pour. Lucky, it’s only about nine trucks, so we can pour one day continuous, and we won’t end up with cold joints all over the place like we did in Hardin Valley.”
“So thirty-five?”
“Call it thirty.”
“Three-hundred and nine.”
“So one-seventy-one gets us a foundation, a frame, and a roof deck. Roof is fifteen for the materials, and you can bet your cute little ass it’s another ten to put it down.”
“Two-eighty-four.”
“Windows, fifty.”
“Two-thirty-four.”
“Exterior doors, three singles, two doubles, and the two main entry. If we cheap those two, we might get away with twenty installed.”
“Two-fourteen.”
“Now we live in a plywood box with a roof and doors. No plumbing, electrical, HVAC, appliances, bathroom tiles, kitchen counters, cabinets, stairs, bedroom doors, garage doors, deck, and there goes your two-fourteen.”
“I see it. But that’s not as far as I thought.”
“That’s cost, plus twenty-five. Lands right at our six-hundred if everything goes perfect. And every penny of overage comes out of the LMA buffer and our salaries, and those are already spoken for by the infrastructure work.”
“You’re not building the house, Michael. I’m not going from living in one construction site to living in the next.”
“It’s close, Stefanie. Real close. Even with all of this, I haven’t accounted for painting, door and window trim, baseboard, the workshop, the solar; I imagine two sets of vent works because we need gas heat as a backup, and they don’t make a truly efficient dual fuel geothermal system.”
“Michael.”
“Okay, let’s back-burner this. We’ve been through it, and I at least gotta get a slice and a salad, or my stomach’s gonna eat my backbone.”
“I don’t like this place.”
“Can you just get a slice and we’ll go to dinner Saturday?”
“I have training Saturday night, and I already told Emma I would help out at the community center.”
“What’s she got planned for you?”
“She’s got a bunch of people getting together for a clean-up and paint job. You should come.”
“Um. Boy, I’m glad it was you asking and not her.”
“Yeah, she would have seen that for sure.”
“Subtle, ha? I don’t want to work on the community center right now, and I have a million of our own things to get done – especially now.”
“Mmhmm.”
“What time is Maddron tomorrow?”
“I haven’t set it up yet, but he said lunch.”
“Seymour Grill?”
“That’s fine.”
“Set it up. I’ll stop in at the model house and see if I can make contact with the owner for permission to tour the site with our contractor --- I can’t believe I just said that.”
“Will he let you do that?”
“I’m sure he would. It’s a construction site.”
“Is it still a construction site?”
“I haven’t been by in a while, but probably. Do we need a check for Maddron tomorrow?”
“I mean, bring one, but we didn’t discuss that. He said he’d try to get a rough contract together – at least something to look at.”
“It’s about to get real. I spent like thirty-thousand this week already, and once…”
“How the hell did you spend thirty thousand dollars in a week?”
“First, there’s the rock, honey. There’s an enormous knob of blue rock uneroded shale right in the middle of the house seat. We rented a machine with a rock hammer, and I ordered our own rock hammer from Ag-Pro.”
“A rock hammer costs thirty-thousand dollars?”
“No. The rental was two-thousand, and the rock hammer was eight.”
“Don’t stop there. That’s only ten-thousand.”
“I hear you, Stefanie. I do. But you have to understand.”
“I don’t understand, and I won’t understand…”
“You have to. Now listen. You’re attacking the line items and the cost, but you’re not incorporating the information to knowledge.”
“You’re right. I’m stupid.”
“Come on. Cut it out. Stop it right now.”
“Don’t talk to me like that.”
“I have to. You’re talking to me like I’m spending money on Pokemon cards or something. It’s our home, honey, and one way or another it has to get built.”
“Thirty-thousand in three days, Michael.”
“Three days? It’s not three days.”
“We just did this from the exact same restaurant parking lot three days ago.”
“Yeah, but the actual spends aren’t all in those three days. The culvert pipe is a bill. We talked about it before, and now we have to pay for it.”
“Trusses, Michael.”
“Yeah, so those are three days. Technically.”
“I don’t know what technically means, but you better get somewhere with this.”
“Okay. Listen. I spent about fourteen-thousand on the LMA, Payroll cleared on Tuesday, seven-thousand, but that came out of my salary still. And I spent nine-thousand on the card.”
“You have to be kidding me! You already had over sixty on there.”
“Stop. We’re going to spend a lot of money. A lot. Like a real lot. There will be many thousands of items on thousands of receipts over hundreds of days. You can’t micro-measure me to death. I spent nine thousand on the card. I bought the erosion fencing and the eel for around the pond, and a machine rental, but that hasn’t charged yet.”
“That puts the credit card over seventy-thousand.”
“I know, babe, but it’s easier to swipe the card than write a check – are we really spending our whole date on this?”
“Pay the card down with the LMA. I’m not this person.”
“You’re not the person spending it.”
“Pay it off… You really should answer your phone.”
“It’s just another spam call.”
“It never quits ringing.”
“Get it. It fell down next to your seat.”
“It’s Cody.”
“Cody?”
“This’ll be interesting. Hey, Cody.”
“Hey, Bossman. I’m sorry I haven’t called. I been sick.”
“That’s what happens when you storm off in the middle of the day telling me to go fuck myself. You get so sick you can’t work the phone.”
“Yah. I got the crud.”
“Covid?”
“No, Michael. The Crud is not Covid. The Crud is crud.”
“Hiya, Stefanie. How are you?”
“Hi, Cody. I hear you missed a couple days. Wanna trade places?”
“Ma’am?”
“Nothin, buddy. She’s just saying she’s a little jealous.”
“I’ll be there tomorrow. Sorry I didn’t call.”
“Perfect. Did you call Tanner? You don’t have insurance yet, but we can probably find a way to bill a visit to the urgent care if you need it.”
“Nah, I don’t need that. I’ll be there tomorrow.”
“Good.”
“Okay, so, bye, then.”
“Bye, buddy.”
“That was interesting. Why’d you let him come back?”
“It’s not my decision.”
“How’s that?”
“He’s a partner in the company I hired to do the work.”
“You know that’s not real, right?”
“It is, Stef. It’s real. It has to be or I’m committing tax fraud.”
“Michael. You hired these men.”
“I selected them for a gift. My process was pick someone and let them choose the rest. They have known every minute of the way that if they’re not a company, then I will not work them. I can know more than them. I can even micro-manage them, but I absolutely cannot hire, fire, or punish them without punishing every one of them. And the only way I can do that is to use their services or not use their services.”
“You control their work.”
“I control DirecTV too and the surveyor too. Robby Giles borrowed my rotary laser. Does that make him my employee?”
“You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?”
“Look, I already got Cody clocking my every move in hope I’ll commit some kind of crime and get my comeuppance, I’d rather not have it at home too. I need to eat.”
“I’m starving my face off.”
“You? I’m so hungry you’re starting to look like on of those cartoon turkeys right now.”