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  BART HOPKINS

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  Copyright © 2014 by Bart Hopkins

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form with the exception of small selections for reviews. Please contact the author for additional information and requests: [email protected].

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Facebook Stats

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Acknowledgments

  DEDICATION

  For my three kids, who don’t have cell phones, have never sent a Tweet, and aren’t on Facebook. You’re the most beautiful critters in the world.

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  Also from Bart Hopkins

  Texas Jack

  Fluke

  Dead Ends

  World Wide Gone

  Facebook Statistics from 2012

  Almost 1,000,000,000 users.

  250,000,000 photos uploaded daily.

  80% of users prefer to connect with brands through Facebook.

  1,000,000 websites have integrated with Facebook.

  Links about sex are shared 90% more than any other link.

  85% of women are annoyed by their friends on Facebook.

  23% of users check their account 5 times or more each day.

  *Statistics courtesy of Brian Honigman, Marketing Consultant, Freelance Writer, Professional Speaker, and SEO Expert, as previously published in his article in the Huffington Post.

  “Think about what people are doing on Facebook today. They’re keeping up with their friends and family, but they’re also building an image and identity for themselves, which in a sense is their brand. They’re connecting with the audience that they want to connect to. It’s almost a disadvantage if you’re not on it now.”

  - Mark Zuckerberg

  “If you can’t stop thinking about someone’s update, that’s called ‘status cling’.”

  - Jessica Park, author of Flat-Out Love

  “Can we go back to using Facebook for what it was originally for – looking up exes to see how fat they got?”

  - Bill Maher

  “With one Like I can say hi to a friend, support them during a crisis, share in a joke, make someone happy, or reinforce a person’s self esteem. I make myself part of their world. It’s like I stopped by for coffee. But, by Liking, I can also avoid talking to all the people I don’t want to waste time on. Or I can check to see what my ex-girlfriend is doing seven or eight times an hour. It’s a double-edged mouse click.”

  - Anonymous

  Chapter 1

  Greg and Claire

  Thursday was Greg Thomas’s favorite day of the week.

  He enjoyed having lunch with his wife and then heading home to update his blog, his website and his Facebook page. His social media needed lots of care and watering and sunshine to blossom.

  He stared across the terrace table at his wife. “You are much too sexy to be a teacher,” he told her.

  “Okay, what do you want?” Claire asked, frisky, little playful crinkles revealing themselves at the outer corners of her eye.

  “To live a thousand years,” he told her. “With you.”

  She smiled, and he could tell he’d gotten a bull’s eye with his words. He winked at her to seal the deal. Complimenting a beautiful woman was the easiest and most natural thing a man could do in this world.

  The waitress arrived and dropped off their drinks. A large glass of water with a lemon wedge was placed in front of him. Claire’s glass was tall and colorful, with separate layers of pink, peach, yellow, and red. It looked like one of those jars filled with colored sand that kids make in art class.

  Claire pulled out her phone, quickly arranged her drink on the table, and snapped a picture. Then she took one of her seafood salad. Greg rolled his eyes dramatically.

  “What? I had to take a bevvie. And a dishie!”

  “A bevvie?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I call drink pictures.” Her eyes were bright, excited.

  “Since when?”

  “Since lunch yesterday with the girls,” she told him and smiled. “I made it up.”

  “Short for beverage?”

  “Bingo!”

  “And the food is the dishie?”

  “Double bingo. You’re on your game today.”

  If Claire found her drink or food aesthetically pleasing, she took pictures of it. She’d been doing it for years. She even did it back in the day, with film cameras, though she wasn’t as prolific about it. Film was too expensive and took time to develop.

  While he watched, she uploaded it to Facebook. He felt a vibration in his pocket.

  “Did you tag me?” he asked, amused.

  “Ha ha, of course!”

  “Hmm. I love you, babe,” he laughed.

  And, on that note, they dove into their lunch like Olympic divers from the tallest platform.

  <<>>

  Greg rolled into his driveway an hour later while simultaneously checking Facebook on his phone. His eyes were on the screen for a moment too long. He almost took out a gatepost, but yanked the wheel hard at the last second, and missed it by a good two inches. Maybe even three.

  Room to spare, he thought to himself sarcastically, glad that Lady Luck hadn’t fallen asleep on duty.

  He enjoyed updating his real estate sites from home … cold beer within arm’s reach. It helped him relax, and he attributed the success of his blog, at least partially, to the taste of delicious, dark beer in a frosty mug.

  Flexibility was one of the reasons he loved his job so much. Some days he didn’t go in until noon. Noon! Other days he was out of the house by 6:00 a.m. Naturally, the norm fell somewhere between. It was all about the business, and he’d done well by doing what he had to do.

  Hate the game, not the player, he thought, his face twisting into a goofy grin. Or, like the Jean Val Jean meme he’d seen on Facebook earlier that day: haters gonna hate.

  There were times that he put in the extra hours for a sale, but most of the time everything was fluid: how many hours he worked, which clients he represented, and what time he got home from work.

  Of course, the market had suffered a slump—a down period—the last few years. Home sales were cyclical, just like the weather, or the tides, or anything else in life. Sometimes there was high pressure and the weather was great. But high pressure didn’t last forever. And when it moved, low pressure was ready with a cold front to bring in the clouds and make things
moist. But, if you knew how to interpret the signs and read the cycles, you could survive the tough times.

  Greg had watched the competition thin out with the decline in home prices and sales. No realty office had been immune; all of them had lost a realtor or two over the past few years. Prices dropped, so commissions dropped. When commissions dropped, the bottom-rung sellers lost their shirts and jumped ship. Some of the good realtors left, too, in search of greener pastures, tired of making every sale a life-or-death battle.

  The market eventually found an unsteady balance—reached a new equilibrium—and the circle of life remained circular. Changes caused warbles in the orbit, but planets kept rotating around the sun. That was nature.

  Greg cut the engine, grabbed his sports coat and attaché case from the back seat, and got out of his car. The engine clicked in the sudden silence and a low whistle escaped him.

  The Spanish-style villa was mostly beige stucco, but with pockets of yellow and light-brown tile. To the left, the driveway curved away to the garage, tucked out of sight on that side of the house. There was a large covered walkway that extended out from the left of the front door. To the right was a miniature courtyard, accented by a natural recess in the architecture. Claire had cultivated that area into a small garden, rich with colors. At the center was a large stone fountain, designed by his wife, and brought to life at no small expense from a place that did custom work like that.

  He’d come from humble beginnings—jammed into 600 square feet with his parents and two older brothers—and it was nicer than anything he’d ever imagined for himself.

  The house was stunning; the entire neighborhood was like something from a dream. He wondered if he had fallen asleep and woken in middle-upper class suburban heaven. The homes were large, set back from the road on sprawling properties, all divided by ornate brick walls, and manicured hedges, in creative ways that were easy on the eyes, but provided privacy. Each domicile was an island of tranquility that could have been plucked from the coast of Greece or the hills of Italy, transported, and dropped down into Austin, Texas.

  There was a long, low, wooden bench that lined the wall leading to the front door. It was solid—a large slab of dark wood. And, it could easily hold eight or ten people. Sometimes he lay down on it randomly, just being silly with his wife and daughter, when they were coming home from a night out. It reminded him of something you might see outside of an Olive Garden, crammed full of people clutching those electronic, flash-and-vibrate-when-your-table-is-ready gadgets, on a Friday night; or, it could be the bench outside of a rustic lodge, skis and poles leaning against the wall to one side, with thick coats and hats to the other. It was a great place to have a cup of hot chocolate on cold days; it was a great place to have sweet tea in the summer.

  He joked about that bench, but he loved it. Really loved it. And there was no denying that it worked with the theme that Claire had crafted inside, and outside, of their home. She had a natural talent for decorating.

  Greg heard the soft gurgle of water moving through Fountain Claire, as he had named it, and set his things down impulsively so that he could take a quick stroll.

  It’s almost too perfect, he thought, loosening the old tie and unfastening the buttons on his sleeves. It was like watching the beginning of a Disney movie—sprinkles of magic, fireworks, explosions of color, and the fairy tale castle. It was almost too pretty to be real.

  He stopped, dropped into a crouch, and looked closely at the stems of flowers, green and sturdy. The color scheme reminded him of Van Gogh’s Poppy Flowers, that painting that had been stolen only a few years before—except that Claire’s flowers were brighter, more vibrant.

  Greg sighed and stood up. There was no doubt that his home was the best perk to come out of his work. Ridiculous, really. The previous owners let it go cheap, eager to sell and be gone. The only reason he knew about it first was because of his blog: The Square Foot. The owners knew his blog and contacted him with a deal he couldn’t refuse. He made the offer and within twenty-four hours a handshake deal was done.

  Oh, man … my blog, he remembered, coming back down to reality. He stretched and thought about taking a day off. It was fleeting, something he frequently considered … maybe I’ll just take a day off … but instead gathered his things.

  The Square Foot had begun as a whim more than a decade earlier when Greg surmised that a digital presence would give him an advantage in the market.

  He had been very, very right.

  More than 6,000 subscribers received his blog updates via email. The website had more than 100,000 hits each year. And his Facebook page was up to 28,000 likes.

  When he posted pictures of a new home, thousands of newsfeeds displayed it. Posts and pictures moved rapidly between Austin’s residents—Austinites—as Janice shared with Debra, who shared with Nicole. Then the pictures moved outside of the city, to excited friends and relatives in other cities and states. They did his job for him, advertising the properties more effectively than any billboard.

  He made his usual detour through the kitchen, grabbed a Sam Adams from the stainless steel refrigerator, and continued to his office. Where all the magic happens!

  The attaché case got tossed down on the small, chocolate leather sofa, and his Sammy found a home on the oversized 2012 Realtor’s Conference & Expo coaster perched on the desk. He joggled open the wooden blinds and stepped back a few paces.

  Sunlight bathed the room, gently washing it in soft, golden light. A few errant motes of dust moved around. Greg had always wondered what caused that, those random little particles and fuzz that danced about in the sunlight. Was it the heating of the air and the generation of energy that caused quicker movement of the molecules? Was it simply that moment of stark contrast before the eyes adjusted? Something else entirely?

  He shook his head. It might always be a mystery to him, but that was okay, because you needed a little mystery in life.

  Or he could Google it.

  He popped open the leather hasps on his attaché case and pulled out his Macbook Air. Gadgets were his weakness—cameras, smart phones, computers—and the slender notebook computer had been coup de foudre. He set it on the desk next to the monitor.

  Some of his Apple-hater friends had razzed him for buying it two years before.

  Ah, you’re just paying for the Apple brand…

  They’re the same as Windows computers…

  I can get a Windows laptop way cheaper…

  The first time they saw it boot up in 15 seconds, the office manager’s mouth dropped open comically, and Greg couldn’t stop himself from laughing. Out loud. LOL.

  “Is it already on?” Jim had asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Wow. That’s fast.” Jim commented.

  “Yep,” Greg repeated.

  It amused him when several of them bought MacBooks over the next year—converts to the dark side. Again, unbidden, Russell Crowe as Jean Val Jean: haters gonna hate.

  Greg was logged on and ready to start a new post in less than a minute. This week’s topic: effectively staging your home. In real life, he usually recruited Claire’s help with staging. He was good, but he knew his limitations; Claire’s opinion always made the house look better. Before he started writing, he pulled up the other tabs that he routinely kept open while he was online.

  There was a web-based dictionary and thesaurus ... he was fastidious about making sure all of his posts and interactions were appealing, without flagrant spelling errors.

  Next were tabs for his Gmail and Yahoo email accounts. He could use the mail program on his phone and computers, and sometimes did, but he preferred to use the accounts in their pure form, through the Internet. They seemed to function better that way.

  The fifth and (usually) final tab he kept open was Facebook. He checked his accounts at least a dozen times a day, flipping between his personal page and his realtor page. A sizable chunk of each working day was divided between his cell phone and laptop.

  The p
age came up and he saw little red flags at the top of the screen: five new messages and sixteen notifications. He clicked on the notifications button and the dropdown menu opened, revealing everything new.

  Susan tagged you in 5 photos...

  Jack invited you to play Farmville…

  Mark Beaman Realtor likes your comment: “This house will go fast!”

  Jennifer is attending your Event: House Showing

  Cindy Johnson (friends with Claire Thomas) commented on your photo: “You guys look great in that…”

  Nicole tagged you in a post: “We had a great time, even though it was cold LOL…”

  It was the standard litany of Facebook alarms and hey-how-you-doings. He made a few replies, taking time to personalize the comments, then tapped the Like button on a dozen or so links, posts, and pictures. It was an easy way to send the smallest pulse of electricity out to those people and let them know they weren’t forgotten.

  Literally, it was barely more than nothing. Practically nothing. But it wasn’t nothing; it was something. Tap the Like button on one end of the digital rainbow and a pot of gold appears at the other end—the red flag that says you have been Liked—your thoughts have been validated. Your existence affirmed.

  It was a connection. Shallow? Yes. Lacking substance? Probably. But it was still a connection. He remembered when AT&T’s television commercials all ended with a lady singing, “Reach out and touch someone,” at the end.

  Like was the modern-day version of “reach out and touch someone.”

  The rules of engagement for Facebook seemed a little absurd—the liking, the sharing, the commenting—yet it was woven into the fabric of society, entwined in so many lives, in such strange little ways.

  Maybe I’m just too old for this, he thought. He considered that, perhaps, his age drove his perception. At nearly 38—no longer the youth of the nation—he was solidly middle-aged now. Average lifespan was less than 80 for men.