The Stars Shine Down

Another workman passed her and grinned. "Mornin', Miss Cameron."

Two other workmen were leering at her. "Morning, boss."

Lara looked around. Other workmen were watching her, all smirking. Lara's face turned red. She stepped into the work elevator and rode up to the level where Ryan was. As she stepped out, Ryan saw her and smiled.

"Morning, sweetheart," Ryan said. "What time is dinner tonight?"

"You'll starve first," Lara said fiercely. "You're fired."

Every building Lara put up was a challenge. She erected small office buildings with floor spaces of five thousand square feet, and large office buildings and hotels. But no matter what type of building it was, the most important thing to her was the location.

Bill Rogers had been right. Location, location, location.

Lara's empire kept expanding. She was beginning to get recognition from the city fathers and from the press and the public. She was a glamorous figure, and when she went to charity events or to the opera or a museum, photographers were always eager to take her picture. She began to appear in the media more and more often. All her buildings were successes, and still she was not satisfied. It was as though she were waiting for something wonderful to happen to her, waiting for a door to open, waiting to be touched by some unknown magic.

Keller was puzzled. "What do you want, Lara?"

"More."

And it was all he could get out of her.

One day Lara said to Keller, "Howard, do you know how much we're paying every month for janitors and linen service and window washers?"

"It goes with the territory," Keller said.

"Then let's buy the territory."

"What are you talking about?"

"We're going to start a subsidiary. We'll supply those services to ourselves and to other builders."

The idea was a success from the beginning. The profits kept pouring in.

It seemed to Keller that Lara had built an emotional wall around herself. He was closer to her than anyone else, and yet Lara never spoke to him about her family or her background. It was as though she had emerged full blown out of the mists of nowhere. In the beginning Keller had been Lara's mentor, teaching her and guiding her, but now Lara made all the decisions alone. The pupil had outgrown the teacher.

Lara let nothing stand in her way. She was becoming an irresistible force, and there was no stopping her. She was a perfectionist. She knew what she wanted and insisted on getting it.

At first some of the workmen tried to take advantage of her. They had never worked for a woman before, and the idea amused them. They were in for a shock. When Lara caught one of the foremen pencil-whipping - signing off for work that had not been done - she called him in front of the crew and fired him. She was at the building site every morning. The crew would arrive at six o'clock and find Lara already there, waiting for them. There was rampant sexism. The men would wait until Lara was in earshot and exchange lewd jokes.

"Did you hear about the talking pussy at the farm? It fell in love with a cock and..."

"So the little girl said, 'Can you get pregnant swallowing a man's seed?' And her mama said, 'No. From that, darling, you get jewelry...' "

There were some overt gestures. Occasionally one of the workmen passing Lara would "accidentally" brush his arm across her breasts or press against her bottom.

"Oops, sorry."

"No problem," Lara said. "Pick up your check and get out of here."

Their amusement eventually began to change to respect.

One day, when Lara was driving along Kedzie Avenue with Howard Keller, she came to a block filled with small shops. She stopped the car.

"This block is being wasted," Lara said. "There should be a high rise here. These little shops can't bring much of an income."

"Yeah, but the problem is, you'd have to persuade every one of these tenants to sell out," Keller said. "Some of them may not want to."

"We can buy them out," Lara declared.

"Lara, if even one tenant refuses to sell, you could be stuck for a bundle. You'll have bought a lot of little shops you don't want and you won't be able to put up your building. And if the tenants get wind that a big high rise is going up here, they'll hold you up."

"We won't let them know what we're doing," Lara said. She was beginning to get excited. "We'll have different people approach the owners of the shops."

"I've been through this before," Keller warned. "If word leaks out, they're going to gouge you for every penny they can get."

"Then we'll have to be careful. Let's get an option on the property."

The block on Kedzie Avenue consisted of more than a dozen small stores and shops. There was a bakery, a hardware store, a barbershop, a clothing store, a butcher, a tailor, a drugstore, a stationery store, a coffee shop, and a variety of other businesses.

"Don't forget the risk," Keller warned Lara. "If there's one holdout, you've lost all the money you've put in to buy those businesses."

"Don't worry," Lara said. "I'll handle it."

A week later a stranger walked into the two-chair barbershop. The barber was reading a magazine. As the door opened, he looked up and nodded. "Can I help you, sir? Haircut?"

The stranger smiled. "No," he said. "I just arrived in town. I had a barbershop in New Jersey, but my wife wanted to move here to be near her mother. I'm looking for a shop I can buy."

"This is the only barbershop in the neighborhood," the barber said. "It's not for sale."

The stranger smiled. "When you come right down to it, everything's for sale, isn't it? At the right price, of course. What's this shop worth - about fifty, sixty thousand dollars?"