Page 1 of Finding Basil
Chapter One
Thegrimycity.He’dheard it called that so many times, he couldn’t count, but he’d never really noticed how grimy it truly was.
Not until he had to lie once more, until he had to tell another half-truth.
His name was Herb Buffet. He’s a genius in marketing, graduating top of his class ten years earlier, got a job immediately with a company that desperately needed a good marketing plan.
They’d paid well for him, and he’d taken the job. Herb wondered why he hadn’t investigated what the company did before taking the job, but all he saw were those six figures of salary, and an added seventh figure for a bonus if the company’s numbers jumped after he’d joined them.
They had. Public perception was everything. That was one of his very first lessons.
And the perception he’d had to bolster was that the company wasn’t purposely buying small businesses just to dismantle them for big competitors. It was all a coincidence. Big companies gave out big jobs, more jobs, so it was a good thing, even if they were buying the small businesses to dismantle them. But they weren’t.Trust us.
Looking out of the window of his high-rise condo, seeing the city under him, the people, the cars, the businesses that were all on the chopping block, he’d had enough.
So, what did he want to do with the rest of his life? Wasn’t that the big question?
He’d saved some money for retirement, and saved some besides that, even though he’d spent plenty on the condo and the three cars he had to have the second he’d seen them. He could buy a little business in some small town and make a go of it, living a slower, cleaner life.
Herb was thirty-seven years old, young for starting over, old for trying to figure out how to do that. He sat at his computer while a movie played on his gigantic television over the gas fireplace and tried every search he could think of to find a new goal, a new dream.
Or maybe his first real dream. All he’d wanted before was to make a ton of money.
Running his long fingers through his sandy hair as each of the searches proved fruitless. Real estate…used car dealership…schoolteacher…
Sure, he could do any of those things, but did they appeal to him? Not really. Buying and selling homes came with problems. He didn’t think he could stand pushing people into mortgages that he knew they couldn’t handle.
Used cars were more of the same of that sort of thing.
And he cared little for kids, so being a teacher was out, too.
After a while, he played around with the computer, avoiding the credits of the movie that was over and he hadn’t watched a full minute of it. Seeing the credits would mean picking a new movie, and that, at the moment, seemed as difficult as picking a new life.
Decisions. More damn decisions. So many. Too many.
He closed the laptop and used the remote to turn off the television, then used yet another to turn off the fireplace. It was March, and not half as cold, but he enjoyed having it on, it reminded him of simpler times and simpler places.
Moving…moving to the country. He dreamed of that. Hey! A dream! He finally had a dream.
After opening the laptop again, he typed in country homes for sale, and didn’t add a location. Maybe, just seeing the prices would make him rethink it all.
Well, not one price were any worse than the exorbitant price he’d paid for the apartment on the fourteenth floor, overlooking the river. Not close enough to smell the river, and where he lived near the river, it wasn’t exactly safe enough to casually walk next to, but he lived by it, nonetheless.
The view. That was what was important.
Well, no more. He wanted a home in the country with a 360 - degree view. Herb wanted a simple life that let him wake at noon and drink coffee on a peaceful porch as he watched deer run by.
There were many towns on the lists he researched. All the best small towns in the previous few years. Unable to pick one to start house shopping, he stood and got a glass ofGlenlivetand started tossing darts at his favorite thing in the apartment. His dartboard.
“Okay, let’s do this,” he said as he matched the towns with the numbers in his head. He closed his eyes to make it fair and tossed the dart, hearing the gentle chunk of it landing in the dartboard's cork.
He saw the number nine. “Foggy Basin it is.”
Typing the name into the search engine of the real estate site, there was a home that caught his eye. It was a two-story farmhouse with dormer windows on the roof, trees all around it, and there were twenty acres that went along with it, as well as the furniture, not that he’d probably keep the furniture.
The house was yellow with white trim, exactly what he thought a farmhouse in the country would look like.
The price was just under a million dollars, which was a steal for that kind of home in the country. The land was zoned for farming and business along with residential, and whatever he decided to do with it, he should be able to run a business right there.
