Back to Business (attn: Eiryk)

Alex had been at his store for most of the day. The insurance adjuster had been by early in the morning to assess the damages to the store and Alex had compiled a reasonable list of losses. When she had left to deliver the information to the firm, Alex had begun to straighten out what he could.

With the water off and the shop dry (miraculously so, thanks to his friends' help) Alex had felt safe in turning the electricity back on. He made sure the answering machine message was still set up properly so his clients would understand he was stalled but not closed.

Toward evening the fax had come in and Alex sat staring at it now. What was the point of buying insurance if they weren't going to cover all of your losses? He added everything up in his head. All the assumed repairs would be just over twenty thousand. Count Alex's losses, which were about five thousand - not a lot thankfully, given some of the other items in the shop that would have sucked to have to ditch. Then add in the repairs to the studio on the second floor as well as the carpet downstairs which didn't look replaceable at all... everything came to a total somewhere around thirty two thousand.

His insurance was going to pay for the repairs to the pipe but that was it. Alex had about eight thousand in savings. Plus after calling his students he did have to give some refunds. Not as many as he'd hoped thanks to a timely suggestion from Vivienne Sena that he hold classes outside in the park and preserve. It was a great idea. He'd had to move up the time slot to do it, since the sun went down a little early this time of year. But a lot of his students had stayed on, and several of those who couldn't make the earlier time had asked him to hold onto their money against future classes when the building was repaired.

But even with that, Alex was going to have to find some way to come up with an extra few thousand dollars. The trouble with owning your own business was you relied on that income for everything. And if the business went down, you were in a hole with no means to generate money to restore said business. Vicious cycle. He could handle it though. He could take out a loan or, loathe as he was to do it, max out his one credit card. He wasn't happy but he would get by.

The phone rang and he absently let it go, trusting the machine to pick it up. Eiryk was supposed to stop by once he was awake and that should be soon. Alex didn't think anything of it until he heard the familiar voice on the machine, and then he lunged for the phone, nearly knocking it off the cradle in his haste to pick it up.

"Hi. Hey. Dad."

"What does that message mean? Why is the store closed?"

And at that point, all hell broke loose. Alex tried to explain what had happened. His father assumed that anything wrong wit the building was a fault in Alexander's genetic makeup. Because no Aristos would be stupid enough to sink money into a building so badly in need of repair. And never mind that Alex had had it inspected beforehand; clearly this was his fault.

Alex made an attempt to soothe his father and that went badly wrong too. Apparently he was frittering away the money they'd selflessly put forth in his business venture, out of the goodness of their hearts, to keep him away from Maryland.

Wait, what?

Alex listened to his father's words. Really listened this time. And it became painfully, painfully obvious that the reason his parents had been so supportive of his moving to Nachton was because they were hoping he would stay there.

It didn't matter that Alex hadn't asked to stay with his parents while repairs were being done; they told him in no uncertain terms was he welcome home until he stopped being a social deviant.

It didn't matter that he'd been working his ass off to get ahead, ten and twelve hour days, no social life at all; apparently he was still the drug-abusing drunken loser he'd almost turned into a while back.

And, to make matters worse, somewhere during this tirade Eiryk had wandered in to find Alex standing there, trying to get a word in edge-wise. Alex was pretty sure things couldn't possibly get worse at this point.