Pound Foolish (Windy City Neighbors Book 4) (15 page)

     “Well, I can certainly say that you’re the kind of person who would be well suited for SlowBurn. So are you wanting to do this on the side, or are you looking to make a career change?”

     Greg hesitated. “Well, to be completely upfront with you, Powersports is folding. So I’m looking for a new job. There aren’t many options in my field in the Chicago area, but we don’t want to move. So . . .”

     “So you’re checking us out. That’s great, because I think you’ll like what you find. Greg, I see that you live up on the Northside. I’m pretty tied up for the next couple of days, but any chance you’d have time Friday afternoon to come down to Hyde Park, where I’m located? I’d like us to meet face to face, make sure the chemistry is right. And of course, you need to sample SlowBurn and see how we’re set up. Usually product is shipped from our Pennsylvania headquarters direct to the U.S. reps, but I’ve got a small regional warehouse here with the various packages. Sometimes there’s a run on product and a rep can’t wait for overnight delivery. Think you could make it?”

     Greg hesitated only a moment. Free on Friday? He was free right now! But he said, “Sure, I could do that. Friday at . . .?”

     “Three o’clock good for you?” Arlo gave his address, and the call was over.

     Greg took a deep breath. Could this really be the answer to his prayers?

     “Nicole? Nicole!” he called from the top of the basement stairs.

His wife came to the bottom of the steps and looked up at him.

     “Good news, honey. I’ve got a job lead down in Hyde Park. Got an interview Friday afternoon. I’m gonna take the Cherokee. That’s not your shopping day, is it?”

     “No.” A smile warmed her face. “That’s great, Greg. I knew the Lord would provide.”

     Greg grinned. “Yeah, well, you have no idea how huge this might be. But I want to check it out in person before I get too excited about it. Think I’ll go for a run, work off some of the tension I’ve been under.”

     “Good idea.” Nicole gave him one of her sunshine smiles. She really was a gorgeous woman. And, though he hardly dared mention it, he thought she might’ve lost a few of those extra pounds lately.

     Changing into his running clothes, he felt lightheaded. If he was his own boss, he might be able to get back to running like he used to do. And a job like this might fix all the tension that’d been building between him and Nicole for the last few weeks. Probably his fault mostly. Even before Powersports let him go, he’d been uptight. And since then he’d worried far more than he’d acknowledged. When he got this job pinned down, he’d make it up to her.

     Good heavens, he’d be able to do more than make it up. He’d turn her into a queen. They’d be moving on up.

* * * *

Greg had no sooner left for his interview on Friday than Nicole dismissed “school” early. The kids had worked hard all week and completed all the assignments she had planned for them. Should she have prepared more? No. It’d been more than enough. She might be tired, but the kids were doing great. She told Becky and Nathan to run outside and play while she cleaned up the basement classroom and turned off the computer and lights.

     When she got upstairs thirty minutes later, Nicole went out on the porch to check on them. They were fine, racing their bikes up the sidewalk on the other side of the street. “No riding in the street!” she called. “Sidewalk only!”

     Nate waved one hand in the air while he concentrated on going even faster to stay ahead of Becky. This dead-end block of Beecham Street was fairly safe as far as traffic was concerned, seldom any cars other than those that belonged to neighbors. But occasionally a car drove too fast, like right now!

     A black limo accelerated down the street from Lincoln Paddock’s place. The rear sunroof was open, and just as it passed, two women stood up through the opening and yelled something. One was dressed in a well-filled halter-top and waved at Nicole like she was riding in a speedboat. The other was untangling a pink boa wrapped around her neck. They certainly seemed to be celebrating something.

     Nicole had often seen people coming and going from the big house at the end of the street and had accepted the rumor that Paddock threw wild parties. In the past, she’d never cared. But today . . .

     She watched the limo brake at the end of the block and turn west. Was Lincoln inside with those girls? Couldn’t tell from the tinted windows. Seemed a little early in the afternoon to be partying. The Lincoln Paddock she’d come to know didn’t seem like a playboy. He was certainly good looking—knock-’em-dead handsome, in fact. But he’d always acted like a gentleman, casual but refined.

     Shaking her head, she turned back inside. The situation bothered her. But why?
Good grief, Nicole.
If the man wanted to throw parties, that was his business. She shouldn’t care. No, she was only concerned about the safety of their street.

     Still . . . what were those girls doing at his place? Were they friends of his? He’d seemed to enjoy having someone to talk to—like they’d done at the zoo—but if that was the case, why hadn’t he just come down to her house? They could’ve sat on the porch and had a glass of iced tea. Or if that felt awkward to him, he could’ve invited her to come up to his place.

     Nicole knocked her shin on one of the dining room chairs as she passed through the room.
What am I thinking?
She was a married woman, mother of two. She had no business thinking about a handsome bachelor inviting her up to his “pad.” No. If he had asked her, she definitely would have said no. Maybe they could talk on her porch, but she wouldn’t have gone to his place.

* * * *

Traffic was light going down Lakeshore Drive until Greg got to Soldier Field, then it clogged with early rush-hour drivers. Greg calmed himself and flipped on the radio. Maybe some worship music on Moody Radio would help him avoid yelling at the jerks sneaking up along the right shoulder trying to pass everyone else.

     Arlo’s place faced west on the fourteenth floor of a modern building adjacent to Harold Washington Park. As Greg rapped on the door, he wondered why a multimillionaire wouldn’t have insisted on an expansive eastside vista of Lake Michigan.

     “Hey, man, right on time,” Arlo said as he ushered Greg into what was obviously the apartment where he lived, not an office suite.

     Arlo was about forty, with dark hair and a week-old beard, the kind some guys cultivated to appear too casual to shave but not countercultural enough to grow a real beard. He was dressed in jeans and an open-necked white shirt under a tan corduroy jacket. But Greg noticed that his black loafers looked like top-of-the-line Italian.

     The apartment was pretty basic—nice, but nothing special, with the usual casual mess of a single guy. Apologizing for how things looked, Arlo said, “I’m focusing on my place in Florida. Now that’s a domicile you gotta see to believe—sweet. But hey, first things first. Have you ever tried SlowBurn? You gotta try it, because I’m tellin’ you, once you sample it, there’ll be no turning back.”

     Greg followed him into the kitchen, only slightly troubled at how Arlo’s description of the product sounded like a pitch for street drugs. But obviously this stuff was legal or they couldn’t be promoting it all over the web.

     The eight-ounce cans Arlo pulled from his refrigerator were a smoky brown with a yellow-tipped blue flame on the side. He poured each into a wine glass and handed one to Greg. It looked like a creamy iced coffee with a slight head on it. The taste was light, refreshing, and something like a cream soda.

     “So, how do you like it? Think you can sell this stuff?”

     Greg shrugged. “Yeah, it’s good.”

     “But good’s not what sells it. I’ll ask you in ten minutes how you feel, whether you’re more alert, are thinking faster, more in tune with your surroundings, without the jittery feeling of too much caffeine. Then you tell me what you think.”

     Greg nodded as they left the kitchen, not oblivious to the fact that Arlo had just described how he
ought
to feel in a few minutes. There was a lot to the power of suggestion, but Greg believed he could be just as good a salesman as Arlo was.

     “Come on into my office, and we can get started.”

     Arlo’s office occupied the smaller of the two bedrooms in the apartment, but it served adequately as a home office. Better than what Greg had at the moment. Arlo took him through a slick booklet reviewing most of the information Greg had already studied on the web.

     “You’ll get one of these promo booklets at your first training session, then you can use it to bring the teammates you recruit up to speed. By the way, we’ve got a Chicago-area training coming up in a couple of weeks, June 22 through 25, out at the Hyatt Regency in Schaumburg. You’ll want to register soon. The training’s only six-ninety-five, and we get a group discount on the rooms. It’ll put you right on track with your first level Training Premium.”

     The idea of a local training program focused a question that had been in the back of Greg’s mind ever since Arlo said he was the Chicago-area director. “How many franchises or reps are in Chicago? I mean, are we going to be competing for customers and territory?”

     “Ha, you don’t have to worry about that. There are over five million people in Cook County alone. And this training will be bringing in reps from all the collar counties, even Milwaukee, Rockford, and northern Indiana. We may be getting big, but you’re in on the ground floor. I can tell you that right now, no one’s covering that whole north end of the city, let alone Evanston or Skokie. But you’re asking the right questions. See what SlowBurn will do for your mind? You’ll be the man, Greg.” He slapped him on the shoulder. “You’re the man!”

     Greg had a few more questions, but Arlo said, “Let me take you over to our warehouse. I want you to see the actual product packages we offer so you can get a better idea what you’re dealing with.”

     The product was in a stall the size of a one-car garage in a nearby public storage facility—not what Greg had imagined as a
warehouse
, but it was clean and bright and certainly seemed to hold enough product.

     “Here we go. As you can see from the boxes, you can choose from platinum, gold, silver, bronze, and starter packs. The starter packs are for team members you recruit, but I’d recommend you begin with a platinum supply because you’re gonna sell a lot of this stuff, so there’s no reason why you shouldn’t earn the largest Instant Bonus from the outset.”

     “You mean there’s no reason
you
shouldn’t earn the largest Instant Bonus from the start.”

     “Ha, ha. There you go. I told you SlowBurn sharpens your mind. But really, we both benefit from the bonuses. That’s the thing about this company: We’re family, share and share alike. You know what I’m saying.”

     Greg frowned. “I’ve got just one other question. This whole thing sounds an awful lot like a pyramid scheme, and I thought those were illegal.”

     “Oh, they are. But a pyramid scheme, or a Ponzi scheme, as it’s sometimes called, doesn’t involve any product. In those schemes, a person pays money to join, and then the next level of people to participate begin to pay them off while passing on a portion of the money up to the next level, and so on. But when no one else joins, everybody but those at the top lose what they’ve invested. You can see why it’s illegal—no product, no real wealth generated, just the top people collecting everyone else’s money.”

     Greg waited to hear the difference.

     “This is multilevel marketing with real product, and a very valuable product at that. Look, every marketing network in the country works on the same basis. There are the owners, the producers, the wholesalers, the retailers, and finally the consumers. All the way up the line, people are taking risks, investing their time and money to deliver the product to the consumer. Each one gets a little slice of the profit, but there’s a real product, a warehouse like this, and satisfied consumers, or it wouldn’t exist.”

     Greg nodded his head slowly.

     “Hey, don’t take my word for it. You can go to the library or online and check it out. This is as legit as snow in a Chicago winter.”

     They both laughed.

* * * *

By five thirty that afternoon, Greg closed the tailgate on his Cherokee loaded with a platinum supply of SlowBurn plus two starter packs. He was an authorized representative of SlowBurn, with papers to prove it and a bank account that was $1,385.46 lighter.

     He had something good to report to Nicole when he got home, but by the time he got to the Outer Drive, all lanes were backing up with rush-hour traffic. And then the radio reported a bad accident just north of Navy Pier was blocking three lanes of traffic. “Anyone who can avoid this area should choose a different route.”

     Greg checked his rearview mirror. Should he gut it out on the Drive or exit west on Roosevelt Road and find another way home? Glancing to his right out over the lake, he saw a green and black ultralight plane floating gently down for a landing on Northerly Island where Meigs Field used to be.

     That’s right! The Burnham Harbor Boat Show was in progress—the event he’d worked so hard to plan. The exit for Burnham Harbor was just ahead. He sure wasn’t going anywhere fast creeping along on the Outer Drive. He flipped on his turn signal. Why not?

Chapter 15

Finally turning onto East 18
^th
Drive, Greg headed out to the harbor just as the ultralight took off again, clawing its way up into the broken clouds out over the lake. He watched it go with a sense of satisfaction. Before today, he wouldn’t have dared show his face at Powersports’ last in-water event. But now that he had a job—no, now that he was in business for himself—it’d be a pleasure to answer if someone asked him, “Hey, Greg, how’s it going?”

     He parked the Jeep and phoned Nicole. It rang five times and went to voice mail. Oh, well. “Hi, Nikki, I’ve got some great news. Everything’s gonna be okay. I’ll tell you all about it when I get home. But there’s a huge accident on the Drive, so I’m stopping by the boat show for a little while until it clears up. Don’t expect me before seven. Okay? Love ya.”