“Really?” Sully handed Hue a roll of flashing tape.
“Oh yeah. Tenants will walk all over you if you let ‘em.” The larger man applied the tape around the hole with surprising gentleness and precision. He looked over his shoulder at Sully and shook his head as if he found something wanting. “You’ve got that good-hearted look about you.”
“Thanks!”
“Wasn’t a compliment. See how I’m working the tape into the corners?”
Sully peered over the muscled shoulder. “Yup.”
“Don’t forget the corners.” Hue sat back on his heels, removed his battered ball cap, and swiped away the sweat on his forehead. “You’re gonna have to learn the hard way, I can tell.”
“About the windows?”
“About the tenants.”
“Oh.”
Hue grabbed a level from his massive and chaotic tool bag and placed it on the sill. “They’ll give you every excuse in the book if it gets them out of paying rent. Or they’ll swear all the stains in the carpet were there when they moved in.” He gave Sully a piercing stare. “I’ve seen it all, man.”
Sully didn’t doubt it. Hue owned six properties in town and proudly managed them all himself. In fact, Hue was the entire reason Sully had moved to Yucca Hills (population 22,000) from San Diego (population 1.4 million). After losing touch years ago, they’d reconnected after Sully had mentioned an interest in learning about real estate investing on social media. Hue had been happy to answer his questions and take Sully under his wing.
Before Sully knew it, Hue had sold him on the merits of buying in Yucca Hills and had even helped him scout and land Cinderella, his first investment property. Within a day of Sully moving in, Hue was wandering around the house in his sturdy boots, pointing out all the work to be done.
“Go deep on their background checks,” Hue said now, snapping Sully out of his thoughts.
“What?”
“Tenants. Keep up. See how the sill isn’t level?” Hue beckoned to the level, and Sully could see that the bright yellow liquid didn’t sit evenly within the clear window of the instrument. “The window’s bowed. Happens with age. Not a problem. We’ve just got to put in some shims.”
Sully nodded and pulled up a supply list on his phone. Shims, shims, shims…There. Row Three, Box Eight. Sully moved through the carefully arranged rows of supplies in the garage until he came across Row Three. Opening Box Eight, he dug around and located the shims.
Hue accepted the shims with bemusement. “You catalog your socks and tighty-whities, too?”
“Logistics, remember?” Sully tapped his chest. “Labeling and cataloging are what I do.”
“Oorah,” Hue replied. “Shoulda been a grunt like me. Infantry always has more fun.”
“Can’t have fun if your extra boots, MREs, and ammo don’t show up,” Sully shot back with a grin. “Wars are won through good logistics.”
“Nope. Wars are won by the people who put their asses on the line.”
Infantry vs. logistics. It was an old, “friendly” argument; an argument either man would rather guzzle a gallon of paint thinner than back down from. Sully had first met Hue at the Marine base where both men were going through basic training. Despite their polar opposite personalities, they’d developed a fast and fierce brotherhood, forged in the fires of endless pushups and berating drill sergeants.
And then, in the blink of an eye, they’d gone their separate ways, Hue to a Marine infantry unit for eight years, and Sully to grad school, serving in the Marine Reserves one weekend a month, two weeks a year. For Sully, the Marines had been a means to paying for his master’s in engineering. For Hue, serving God and country had been the entire point… until it hadn’t. Sully’s friend had never explained why he’d abruptly left the service, and Sully hadn’t felt comfortable broaching the topic.
“When you get someone interested in renting this place, don’t skimp on the credit check and criminal check,” Hue was saying now as he placed flashing tape over the shims. “Always call their employer, and especially their last landlord. It might mean turning away a few tenants, but it’ll be worth it, believe you me. Ain’t that right, Janet?”
Lying behind the men on the dirt lawn, Hue’s ancient basset hound raised her head at the sound of her name. She sniffed the air, scratched one long, floppy ear with a back leg, then returned to her impression of a dog lawn ornament.
After carefully smoothing the last bit of flashing tape to the frame, Hue stepped back to examine his work. It was perfect, of course. Hue never settled for anything less. Sully hefted the window between his hands and dry fitted it into the frame.
“You’ve come a long way from that string bean who showed up at basic training and couldn’t do a single pushup,” Hue commented with a laugh.
Heat prickled in the tops of Sully’s ears. That first week of basic had been as brutal as it’d been transformative. After one dark night of the soul where he’d seriously considered quitting, Sully had vowed to himself that he’d make it through. He’d thrown his whole soul into training. The pushups had come slowly but surely. Next, the wall on the obstacle course. Finally, the dreaded rope climb. He’d conquered them all.
He’d kept up his training and was proud of the lean figure he’d built through running and regularly performing sets of pushups and squats in his garage. He had his eyes set on a new fitness goal, however. Next up on his personal Sully improvement list: weight training.
“Looks good,” Hue said, gazing at the window in the frame. “What do we do now?”
