THE COTTON EXCHANGE
Brad began picking me up every weekday and we made the drive into Wilmington to his cave. The office was located in the Cotton Exchange on the South end of downtown. There was a shared receptionist who screened calls for the occupants, from psychics and massage therapists to insurance salesmen and a consumer protection agency. The manager of the building, Cleo, was an attractive dominatrix with a voice that could crack a windshield.
“She’s evil,” Brent told me.
“Nah,” I answered.
The building had just gone through a great transition and many of the tenants had vacated over personality conflicts or the usual petty stuff, politics. Or it was just time for them to move on and the gossip was created to intensify the drama in a place where not very much actually happened.
Cleo’s family owned a great deal of property downtown. Cleo was getting her wings and throwing her ass around whenever she could, having graduated from being the black-sheep hippie girl of the family to daddy’s little girl going through culture shock. Cleo wooed tenants she wanted to keep. Brent was one of them. He had planned to move out on the first of the month, but she promised him a larger cave with a view and a nearby parking space. For the past year he had been dragging his leg from blocks away. No wonder he thought she was evil.
By the first of May I still hadn’t seen any money from Mountain Valley, but Brent moved into his new office with a view, which we shared. We came up with a proposal for a 90 minute film and promptly sent it out to eight different companies. Two said that they would send money. Bingo! North American
Biologicals Inc. sent five thousand dollars. A home-care company out of New Jersey that had operations in the Carolinas sent five hundred. I tried to collect the last 30,000 dollars from the sale of my business, but the guy never returned my phone calls. He could have paid me in a heart beat—his regional thing was booming. So I simply threw a curse on him.
Aside from the money thing that came with film, I realized we were dealing with very sensitive subject matter. The number of people from the hemophilia community that was believed to have been infected with HIV from clotting factor concentrates ranged from six to ten thousand or so, including spouses and family members who were also unknowingly infected. We wanted to do everything by the book, according to Hoyle.