"I'll sell it to you for tree fiddy."
"$350,000?"
"No. $3.50."
"...Are you joking?"
"Not in the least. Better you than my son, who would just turn around and sell it to an investor. Probably turn it into apartments or a parking lot or some other crap."
And that was how, for $3.50, I bought a bookshop two-thirds of the way across the country.
There's more to the story, of course. But right now, I'm too tired to tell it. Three days journey in a small U-Haul across the United States, with my chatty nephew, he of the chipmunk cheeks and chipped, yellow teeth from too many coffee straw chews and cigarettes, driving the whole way due to my being bereft of both car and license.
Initial impressions: A drop of 35 degrees from lower Southwest to Upper Midwest meant for a pleasant, beautiful late summer night and next day after we pulled in to the hotel, coated in grime and exhaustion. My items were promptly placed in storage that next day, and I was literally bone-aching tired. From the travel, from the loading and unloading, from the mattress firmer than a spinster schoolmarm. As of yet, I hadn't even inspected the new business I now officially owned.
Presently, it's early afternoon in this quiet, small town far more red than blue, like most locales of its sort in this country in recent years. I'm walking down the main street that leisurely runs for twenty blocks parallel to a river. The usual expected fellow businesses: bars - many with for sale signs due to the plague hurting their business, restaurants, assorted shops (one of those, on the 17th block, is mine), insurance agents, a couple of fast food joints - one national, one a regional chain, a lone gas station, a grocery store. This isn't in any sequence or semblance of anything - just random recall as I've traipsed up and down after my nephew left in a cloud of dust and smoke back home.
I've been told that the diner I'm now facing is one of the best breakfasts around. Unfortunately, it's lunch time. Doesn't matter. I'm hungry, I'm tired, and I'm tired of gas station food.
Door chime. I scan the seats and beeline for an empty booth far removed from other people. No one is masked except me, I belatedly notice as I flop down on the creaking leather.
"What can I get you to drink to get started?"
I look up into calm, dark blue eyes. I'm staring into them because they're so damn entrancing.
The owner of the eyes repeats the question. The voice is a young woman's. I blink. Blonde hair, curiously fashioned into not a ponytail, but a single, perfect oval at the back of her head. It's weird, but cool. Her face is expressionless. Probably because I'm acting weird as her hair. But then I always act weird.
"Uh... coffee."
"Sure thing." A smile, thank God. Though not the beaming, bright one of extroverts like my nephew. But the slight one of a smooth, self-assured girl who knows she's beautiful.
In the midst of perusing my menu, I hear repeated clangs. Looking over, I see the girl. She's constantly fumbling with silverware and dropping them. Odd.
Thirty minutes later, I've ordered and eaten a hamburger and onion rings. Throughout our interactions, she keeps that serene look, with a tendency to clasp her hands behind her back. The hamburger is good, the coffee great, the onion rings excellent, the girl? Well, a phenomenal server, bar the whole percussion of dropped silverware and the puff of falling napkins throughout my time there. That's okay - I'm clumsy, too.
I particularly appreciate the discretion with which she brings the bill. A careful, unobtrusive slide forward, the paper slip turned face down. It's a small gesture, but one I don't see too often these days, where servers slap the check down in open view face up, totally nonchalant.
That nonchalance I emulate as best as I can as I walk up to the counter. She breaks from her conversation with one of those old men who permanently perch themselves on counters - whether bar or diner - to take my card with that poised smile.
To avoid staring, I peer in my cashless wallet. There's a clatter. My debit card fell out of her hands and tumbled to the floor apparently. A swipe, with 25% tip, and signature later, I hand the machine back to her. She smiles broadly this time, her eyes lowered as she says, "Thank you. Have a wonderful day."
Me:
I don't know. I'm too scared to ask.
I do know her name is Nichole G. thanks to the receipt.
Or maybe it's not her. Maybe the name is wrong.
Nevermind. I'm going back to the hotel to sleep on that uncomfortable bed. Tomorrow, I'll get a look at what I bought and see just what I got myself into.
***Author's Note***
Yep, this is a Jestor AAR. That means we'll have a few posts of frame story before delving into the CK3 part of the AAR. I've set this up to allow for the AAR to continue even if (let's be honest - more like when) I get a game over. How that happens will eventually become clear.