Tipping the Balance by Christopher Koehler Page B

of Morgan’s, you just can’t,” Nick said.
     
    “I know,” Drew said softly, deflated.
     
    “Talk to Emily,” Nick urged him. Then he smiled. “Save your manipulation for her. After all, she owes you a few favors, now, doesn’t she?”
     
    “You’re a baaaaad man, Nick Bedford.” Drew smirked. “That’s why I like you.”
     
    Nick winked. “Now let’s get back to work. If you’re going to go after the Bayard House bid, you need this and that bed/bath to be perfect.”
     

     

     
    “So you’ve heard about the Bayard House, have you?”
     
    Drew sat across from Emily Schoenwald at a small table at a trendy coffee shop. Both had notebooks and calendars open in front of them. Drew stared at the blank page open before him, toying with a pencil. “My crew leader showed me the circular. What do you think?”
     
    “I think it’s a tremendous opportunity,” the small blonde spitfire said. “I’m just not convinced it’s an opportunity for us.”
     
    “It’d be a stretch, that’s for sure, but then, that may be the point of aiming it at younger designers and builders. It’s supposed to be a stretch, and it’ll turn into a boost up,” Drew said.
     
    “I’m just not convinced that either of us operates at the scale this job will require. You do fantastic work, but you handle only one or two jobs at a time. I usually have a few more jobs going at once, but we’re neither of us used to handling things like this,” Emily said.
     
    Drew shifted in his chair. “Of course we don’t operate on that scale. The point is to make the jump up to that scale.”
     
    “Possibly,” Emily replied. She took a sip of her latte to maintain the caffeine levels in her blood. “It’s also a gamble. You’d have to back way off on selling houses, and I’d have to devote most of my resources to the project too. That means either we have to have money in the bank to carry us or we have to secure loans until the city pays us, and in this economy, I’m just not optimistic we could get the financing.”
     
    “We work pay-as-you-go, you know that. I don’t see how these public projects would be that different,” Drew said.
     
    “You know these government contracts don’t tend to have large profit margins,” Emily said, looking at him.
     
    “Maybe we should stop thinking about why we can’t do it and start thinking of how we could do it,” Drew said, losing patience.
     
    Emily smiled. “I was wondering how negative I was going to have to get before you pushed back.”
     
    “You bitch.” Drew laughed as he sat back in his chair.
     
    “I could tell you wanted to do it just by the way you brought it up, but you needed to get the reasons for not doing it out of your system,” Emily said, pulling a laptop out of her briefcase. “Let’s look at this and start brainstorming. This is the chance we’ve both been waiting for.”
     
    Drew pulled his own laptop out, and together he and Emily called up the webpage devoted to the contest. There they found the information they’d need to start their bid, including detailed schematics of the existing Bayard House and a list of requirements for the renovated structure, along with so much more. Two hours later, Drew and Emily felt a lot more optimistic about the possibility of making a go of it.
     
    “So what do we need to update this thing?” Emily said, thinking aloud. “HVAC, for sure.”
     
    Drew nodded. “Probably two separate systems, one upstairs and one down.” When she looked at him quizzically, he said, “Because the building is so old, the walls may not take well to having ductwork run through them. Separate systems for the upstairs and then the downstairs and basement gets around that.”
     
    “But what about new wiring? Won’t that need to go through the walls?” she asked.
     
    “Yes, but if we have to run conduit in the walls first, it’ll be much less intrusive than effective HVAC ducts,” Drew said. “Even if it turns out