"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Sweet Young Things" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

“I still let her make the decisions,” Fala said. “It’s polite and all. I’ll bring
them all back tomorrow, signed by us both.”
“You realize that we won’t be able to get you the money by Friday if you
don’t sign today,” Kayla said. “We need your signature before we do a title search,
which can take three days or more.”
“Title search?” Fala asked, pretending ignorance.
“To make sure there are no irregularities with the home’s ownership. Once
we’ve cleared that, we will have all the documents for you to sign. When we finalize
the deal, we will cut you a check.”
 “You can’t do this stuff, like, you know, based on a good search?” Fala
asked, trying to avoid jargon.
“You mean, can we have you sign on the contingency that the search won’t
turn up anything?”
Fala nodded.
“We can, but you’ll still have to come in to finalize the documents. We don’t
hand out checks until everything is complete.”
Fala bit the polish off her right thumb. “Gram has some bills we gotta pay.
Isn’t there, like, an advance you could give us or something, a loan, just till
everything comes through?”
“I’m sorry.” Kayla was clearly a pro at this. “We’ve found that it’s better to
dot our ‘i’s and cross our ‘t’s before we hand out any money.”
Protecting the company against some old person stealing a few thousand
dollars. How rich.
“And no way to hurry this stuff up, right?”
“I’m afraid not,” Kayla said.
Fala sighed. “It’s hard to come back. I got my business, you know.”
The pawnshop gave her legitimacy. If Herbert, Steinman, and Wilkes asked
around, they would know that she had owned the shop for more than a month,
which made sense for someone who had just moved to Gresham to take care of her
grandmother.
“I can’t change our policy. We’ll give you cash faster than anyone else can.”
Kayla gave her an insincere smile. “But you will have to show up during business
hours then, too.”
Fala nodded. She gathered the papers, having no intention of signing anything,
and rolled them before sticking them under her arm.
“Thanks,” she said, trying to sound as humble as she could. “You people are
real lifesavers.”
****
That last lie nearly tore her up inside. They weren’t lifesavers, although she
would have wagered some of the younger people behind those desks in that upstairs
room thought they were. Those young ones, like Kayla, weren’t involved in the other
side of the operation: the conversations with the various developers, getting them to
outbid each other for a hunk of valuable land now owned by one company.
Gresham was in the process of rebuilding. Six blocks from her pawnshop, a
brand-new Safeway store paved the way for a new upscale neighborhood. That
neighborhood would backtrack from the Safeway, through the run-down houses and
Division Avenue, all the way to this new office development complex near the MAX
train line.
Eventually, five or ten years from now, no one would know that this part of
Division had once looked as if its better days were behind it. And instead of the