In the late 80s-early 90s, a glossy magazine, thick with pages and pages about the Washington, DC commercial real estate market hit the newsstands, ready to forge to the front of its field.  Each issue displayed a stunning array of full-color spreads of building spaces, inside and out.  For those in commercial publishing, including myself, it boggled the mind trying to understand how they could afford to put out such a lavish product in such a confined market. Sure enough, after a few years, they folded up, but not before hosting an annual fiction contest calling for stories about the business.

I entered the contest three times, and never won. Since I, too, was involved in real estate journalism at the time, and knew some of their editors, I figured they might have ruled me out of free publicity for a competitor. Or, perhaps my stories were too hard on their constituents.  The first winner wrote a story called something like “The Rainmaker.” The story celebrated the amazing ability of a wheeler-dealer bringing in money to his firm through shrewd, facile deals that made all the players happy. My stories tend to see the players in a less-than-flattering light. In any case, I didn’t win, but the magazine went out of business.

So, below, here is the first story I submitted, City Mouse, Country Mouse.  I’ll present the other two stories in subsequent posts.  You be the judge.