Our Project
Mercy Chapter 2
Previous Chapter: Maybe There Isn't A Good Answer
Isla put her backpack on and eased through the tables. She wondered if anyone who’d seen the lawyer woman glide confidently out with her leather bag was watching her now. Isla hitched her bag a little higher, tossed her hair, and swung her unencumbered hands.
She was glad that the lawyers were gone. Back to court, she supposed. What did the public defender’s clients from the courtroom have for lunch? Not $15 sandwiches with frilly salads, she bet.
“White Linen” was close to City Hall and she usually walked. The restaurant was in a canyon created by the other even more massive old mill buildings, those empty exoskeletons of dead industry. Across from the restaurant was one of the old mill ponds. The town had created a small park at this end, the former site of a popular tavern, and now it stood clean and green and waiting for . . . what? It made for a good postcard. But there didn’t seem to be any reason to go there unless you wanted to sleep on its one bench.
In the direction she now walked, there were a few empty storefronts on the left, plywood over the windows, and to the right, the massive sprawl of a strip mall that urban “renewal” had brought to town before she was born. It was in what should have been the commercial center of town, but was expensive, dated, and suffered from bad water leaks. She rarely recommended the strip mall to new businesses; the only consistent tenants were the rats that had outgrown the mills. Unfortunately, it was right at the center of the downtown area.
She liked to pause at one spot about halfway up the hill. The view from there was robust Americana, the remnants of prosperity. The solid old bank building blocked the used appliance store from sight. The post office in one direction and City Hall in the other rose in a dignity that suggested their marble and hardwood interiors. The common in the middle was green and pleasant, a big maple at its heart that was lush with June foliage. “Central Park,” they called it now at City Hall, although unlike its sprawling, infamous NYC namesake, you could throw a baseball across it in any direction. Perhaps Central Park had always been its official name, but she’d never heard it until the city started running all its community initiatives. Not in over 30 years of living here. Not until a chamber of commerce member, born in Idaho and raised in Germany and Taiwan, tossed it casually at her in a meeting.
If she stood just right, she couldn’t see the strip of convenience stores and fast-food restaurants just beyond the library, but only the few fine old storefronts that remained. She could pretend that she lived in a place where people wanted to live. The only problem was that sometimes, as happened to be the case today, the sidewalk in that one perfect spot was flooded with people waiting for their 12-step programs to start at the rehab place. Isla wished them well and crossed the street.
At City Hall, she often paused to imagine climbing the grand staircase into the vestibule, the way she had entered as a kid. Instead, she turned into the little alley leading to the current entrance and her office. She had liked the feeling of the big, old building. The doors opening on the left and right of the broad, high-ceilinged hallway were classic wood with a frosted glass window behind which you’d expect to find Sam Spade. The two that led to the spacious clerk’s office always stood open, and you always met someone you knew coming or going. But those days were gone, and now offices like hers and the clerk’s, where people still often needed to come in person, were in the warren of rooms in the adjacent building. Progress.
“I’m back,” she told Doreen, the receptionist she shared with several other small departments. “I brought you some of that cake.”
“Ooh, thanks,” Doreen responded, then added, “I’ll let Bill know you’re back.”
“Give me a minute, sister,” Isla said, laughing as she entered her office.
Isla tidied her desk for a few minutes while she waited. Soon, Bill Morris, the city manager, stuck his head around the door, smiling. “Hi there.” He let himself in. Isla nodded curtly. Bill was also big on nodding, not curtly, but enthusiastically, as if nodding would ensure one’s agreement with him. His nods were so big that his shoulders were somehow a part of them. “Just checking in on our project!” He let gravity guide him into a chair and poised a clipboard.
“Our project” was a resolution to “reinvigorate” Main Street in the next five years. There were national and statewide organizations dedicated to preservation, but Scottsville didn’t qualify for their assistance because its historic downtown was already long gone for the most part. And still going, despite their good intentions—they’d just lost another beautiful old school to a convenience store.
“So, what’s the latest?” Bill smeared a smile across his face.
“I’ve just had some great pasta.”
Bill laughed heartily, but wouldn’t be sidetracked. “Haha, I’m sorry, I meant on the Main Street project.”
“Oh, great, great. I think we have,” she paused to calculate, “oh, at least seven or eight investors already.”
Bill was genuinely shocked, “Really? Fabulous! Amazing! I can’t even believe that!”
Already tired of the game, Isla dropped the punch line. “That’s right. They live in Mass and New York and own and ‘maintain’ all of the buildings on Main Street that they rent to businesses that will not be able to succeed with the rates they charge. It’s one of the fastest ways to get our money out of state. Highly efficient.”
Bill shook his head jovially and wagged his pencil. “Haha, no, Isla. You know that’s not what I meant.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Isla said, pretending a lightbulb had just gone on, “That’s right. You meant that that particular efficient method of draining the local economy wasn’t enough. We need to make sure that the businesses themselves aren’t locally owned, either.”
“Again, Isla, not what I meant.” His tone was condescendingly gentle. “We absolutely want businesses to be locally owned when possible.”
“Locally owned because the owners have moved into town and built a big new house on someone’s farmland. Boom: now they’re local.” He laughed and shook his head, but she went on, “That’s what investment means, Bill. It means that you have money and for the favor of letting people borrow it, they do all the work and put more back in your pocket, if they’re lucky enough to make a profit.”
He shook his head again, smiling. “First of all, fact check: NOT all of the downtown building owners are located out of state.”
“Most,” she said, then, sighing sadly, added, “most of the ones we have left.”
“Some,” he said. “Isla, let me paint a picture for you of our ideal investor: I’m a self-made man with maybe a little extra in the bank. I see people struggling to get by and I know I can help them with my money. What is the right thing for me to do?”
“Give it to them? Maybe with some words of advice on how to make it work for them?”
Bill held his hands out in front of him, emphasizing each syllable after a pause: “Yes. Invest in them.”
“Let me paint a picture for you: I have a lot of money and I don’t like to work. I realize I can get even more money and work even less. I invest and then I am a partial owner and commander of someone else’s dreams. The main street of the town where I live is lined with boutiques, coffee shops, and bookstores. I never have to see the one where I collect rent from pawn shops, cheap retail, and payday loan operations. I don’t care what that one looks like.”
“I hear your concerns, Isla, I really do. That’s exactly why I’m hoping you will seek out investors who truly have a vision for our town.”
“But the problem is you can’t maintain a cute downtown here without importing customers, too. The minute you make it cute and desirable is exactly when the people who live here can’t afford to anymore.”
Bill smiled with odious sincerity. “But Isla, if they had a town they could be proud of, it would change everything. They’d say, ‘That’s my town! I come from Scottsville! I need to become a proud, contributing citizen of this fine city.’”
Isla stared at him incredulously, then snorted with laughter. “Hey! Great news! There’s a place selling expensive handbags on the corner, so I no longer crave illicit substances! All my problems are solved!”
Bill added a gentle nod to his expression. “Of course, it is not that simplistic. But we truly want to build a better world for the residents of the city.”
“Then why Main Street? Why just the public face of the town that everyone drives through on their way to the lakes or the ocean?” Isla’s eyes challenged Bill’s. “Do you know there used to be a little branch of the library up on Pine Street? Why couldn’t we do something for that part of town? Put resources where people who struggle to afford transportation could actually get to them?”
“Haha, ok, that would be great! No one is against that. But back to the Main Street Initiative . . .” Isla sighed as Bill continued, “End of the day, it’s what the town has decided to do, and you work for the town. And we are grateful for the fine job that you do.” Bill hastened to cover the very slight threat in his words, “We absolutely need your cooperation and support here.”
“Yes, sir.” Isla’s tone was not exactly submissive.
“We have a meeting in four weeks. I want four or five investors, minimum.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I know you don’t want to look out of state or maybe even out of town. But, I mean, aren’t those just artificially drawn lines? We’re all one big happy human family. We can help each other.”
“I’m sure that it’s pleasant for you to think that. I’ll let you know if the investors I find are motivated by pure altruism.”
“Are you against profit?”
“Of course not. That’s not it at all.”
“Then what’s bothering you?” His voice was thick with tender concern, dropping his flamboyant professionalism for a moment.
“The fact that everything we try doesn’t work.” Isla flicked the pencil she was holding across her desk and leaned wearily on her splayed-out elbows. She thought about the happy, hopeful people who had sat where Bill was sitting now, counting on her to help them make their dreams reality, and how they had one by one had to close the doors on their businesses.
“Aw, Isla. Don’t look at it that way! Manifest success! Believe in the process! Your team’s got your back!” Isla stared deadpan at him, wondering if he read a list of trite managerial slogans every morning. It was hard to bear such misplaced optimism.
Bill increased the wattage of his smile as he checked his clipboard. Isla imagined that it read: “Assign Isla: four weeks, five investors,” and wished he’d just gotten straight to the point.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“I know what you can do, and I look forward to hearing about it.” Bill heaved energetically to his feet, “Pleasure as always,” and stuck out his hand, which she took awkwardly. He squeezed, and she thought his hand felt slick and puffy. She didn’t like how warm it was.
“Have a marvelous afternoon.”
“You, too,” Isla said half-heartedly as the door closed behind him.