I have been neglecting you, 2009. Oh, how I desired you when you were a mere concept in the looming future, a number on a page signifying the departure of one of our country’s greatest evils. But now almost twenty-five percent of you is gone and I am not yet feeling the love. Two thousand eight—well, the less said, the better. But nobody expected anything good out of 2008. Two thousand eight was the 476 of the twenty-first century; I wonder what the Romans thought 477 would bring?

So today I went to look at a property for a new café I’m working on. Did I tell you this, 2009? Stop me if I have . . . I get so muddled. When I had to—was forced to—close the café that was a part of my downtown store, I came up with the idea of a new café owned jointly by the workers who had made the first one such a success. This has proven a delightful theory but we’re having some trouble solidifying the dream since all of our favorite properties are still too expensive even in this shitpile of an economy. (Investors wanted.)

Wait, the property. It’s in an up-and-coming area that has not quite yet up-and-come. But it has potential, this property, a potential that I found out today is drastically lowered by the owner, a barely intelligible human who spent the whole time waving his arms around and making the most ridiculous proclamations I have ever heard about the nature of business. Well, I suppose they weren’t so ridiculous from his standpoint since they involved how he wanted to take all of our money and guarantee nothing in return. (Sort of like AIG but on the slumlord scale.) This financial genius has decided it is better to let his property, a crumbling former paint store, sit abandoned for three years than take one penny less than he feels he deserves for being smart enough to invest in a crumbling former paint store. And he is quite emphatically convinced that in five years, without his lifting a finger, it will be worth more per square foot than what is currently the most desirable retail space in Baltimore.

Well, I have never had very good luck with landlords.

The funny part was that I had brought my brother, a real estate agent and renowned negotiator, to bully him into doing what I wanted, but I was the one who ended up going off on his crazy ass while my brother remained level-headed. Perhaps I am a loose cannon. A loose cannon swaying gently in the breeze of 2009, the squeak of my hinges barely noticeable amidst the chaos of a failing empire.