Construction and the fine art of bidding, and winning girlfriends, all in one.

Jaime in his prime.

Jaime started a construction company, found the excellent craftsmen in Rincon to make it work and invited me and Sanita to the island just as it took flight. He was a brother-in-law who loved me as much as he loved his sister and taught me every aspect of the trade, freely and happily. From the day I arrived we took on a job, three hours away, just the two of us, two brothers at work, talking the whole time we drove, the most intimate of friends, sharing every secret between us. I knew his love life with Cindy and he knew mine with Sanita as much as they did.

But he failed me too. He started our business rolling and made it a success, and for the first year did great work, on sites everyday, directing his framing crew, laying out walls and soffits with his laser box, common now but a six-thousand-dollar rarity and luxury in the early nineties. Then he had Addison take over this work, as he was equally qualified.

Jaime was the smooth talker, the front man. He knew exactly how to bid each client and signed the contracts. Then he began to teach me how to price all aspects of each store, the walls, the plumbing, A.C., floors, (tile or wood or carpet) cabinetry, cash wraps and even the storefront glass.

I wondered why he did this at first because I never asked for it. We’d often sit after work at the huge, circular wine bar in the lobby of the San Juan Hotel, the one casino on the island and richly adorned, sipping red wine, the large prints rolled out in front of us on the wide counter. We’d always sit at the one end of the horseshoe shaped bar, nearest the entrance, with me at the end. The waiters didn’t mind as these seats were always empty and we tipped them well. I sat pencil in hand, taking pages of notes, while he instructed me with his considerable knowledge of prices and the labor each task should take, pointing out anomalies on each page of the print, extra costs, explaining everything.

We were also magnets for tourists, beautiful, naïve young American girls, almost always entering the lobby in pairs. They would sit a few barstools down from us, order their first drinks and keep glancing at us, all curiosity, busy at such strange work in such an odd, luxurious setting.

The wine bar

This worked like a charm for him, as these cuties, within a few minutes, would invariably step over and ask us politely what we were doing. Jaime would smile and mention he was the contractor for most of the American stores being built on the island and calmly ask if they needed a refill on their drinks, as if he were some millionaire, always in his expensive Hawaiian shirt, a pair of ray bands peeking out the top pocket.

Then they’d move in closer, stand behind us, pretending to watch our work, view our prints while he pointed out small details. They would invariably lean over us for a closer look as we enjoyed quick glances at their half-exposed breasts, taking in their perfume. Then he’d turn to them and his sweet talk would begin. I’d roll up the prints, my session over, his just starting.

Sometimes I’d stick around for one more glass of wine, just to hear him operate, his smooth talk about the subtleties of construction, and the profits to be made. They’d be wrapt in attention. He truly was a clever talker, using the very same lines with clients in some office to win contracts and then in his suite to undress these girls a few hours later. One would never imagine the same catch lines were so variably potent. But they were. I witnessed it.

He’d slip them our company card with his room number and invite them to dinner and the craps table afterwards. I’d leave, as I could only take so much of his exaggerations, saying I had to get back to the office before five with my paperwork.

This plush entrance lobby had a harpsichord in it, set up in a corner like some trophy. I thought it was just that, a showpiece after several months of this twice a week routine. Then one afternoon a middle-aged woman came in and began playing it. The vibrations of the chords she played were celestial. The music was dreamlike, mesmerizing. I’d never imagined such sounds existed, until then.

The bidding formulas he taught me were easy because the stores were so much alike, chain stores from the U.S. Even their blueprints were standardized. Soon I could calculate floor footage, wall lengths, soffits, the sheetrock and studs required, drop ceilings, cabinetry, A.C. and all the labor costs, then add the ten or fifteen percent for contingencies and have a profitable estimate on each new store in a few hours. I’d hand over these columns of prices, (about twelve to fifteen categories) to Victor and he’d mail in these bids to offices in the States. They usually solicited three. There was always a deadline for receiving bids, and on the appointed day (usually a Friday at four) they’d open all three envelopes and almost always pick the lowest one.

Only when one bid was way below the other two would they reject it because they knew things were missed and they didn’t want complications, renegotiations or contractors pulling out when they realized, half-way through, they were losing lots of money (a thing not uncommon in this business). My estimates were usually spot on (with Jaime’s excellent lessons). So Victor most often got the happy phone call. I quickly learned to fine-tune our prices to come in just a few thousand dollars less on hundred-thousand-dollar bids. And I quickly learned to bid the customer, not the store, as some had deep pockets, (like Gap stores) and would pay a good fifteen percent more than cheap clients, (like Dollar stores) for the same amount of work.

When I explained this to Victor one day in his office, he clapped his hands at my cleverness and treated me with all the more respect. We’d gathered some of the best craftsmen on the island and their speed and skill allowed us to lower our labor costs quite a bit, even though we paid them well above the average wages to keep them. This was our advantage. They were worth it. We had a winning team.

So I made Victor lots of money from the start. As time went on and our reputation increased, I brought in even more money and contracts, because a very influential architect on the island, Manuel Garcia, took a real liking to me. Almost all the stores that weren’t American chain stores were referred to him, to design and recommend the contractor, and they all came our way.

One set of prints, when Jaime was still working with us, (I think this was his last store) was hand delivered to our lovely secretary, Madeline, sitting at her desk just inside our entryway, (almost like a mascot, and certainly a tease). But there was a major problem. The store planned was to be a huge video and game arcade, on the second floor of a large mall and at the other end from the substation where all the power came in.

The problem was that such an arcade was power hungry and would require a four-hundred-amp service. The meter bank that supplied all the upstairs stores had only two hundred amp. slots and there were two empty ones left. The electrical engineer who designed that mall said a whole new conduit and large wires would have to be run from one end of the building to the other, at a huge cost. The two American partners who wanted to build the store were upset at this complication and almost ready to drop the whole project, being told it would be another fifty thousand dollars at least, just to provide the new meter base. I went by to examine the situation and called Manuel, saying I had a solution.

We had one meeting at his fancy office in San Juan, at a large, mahogany conference table, the two partners, the electrical engineer, Jaime, Victor and I all sitting down together, with Manuel Garcia orchestrating the meeting. The solution was simple to me, perfectly legal and used frequently in large installations in the States. I’m surprised the engineer hadn’t thought of it, parallel runs, equal in length and therefore balanced in loads.

We could use the two empty meter bases right across the hall from the store to each supply a set of wires to a four-hundred-amp distribution panel, changing the main lugs in it to doubles, to accommodate the eight feeder wires and from that supply all the 277-volt lighting and the two 75 K.V.A. transformers to power the store panels. I even brought my fat Canadian electrical code book along to show them the relevant passages, highlighting them, and the legality of it, in plain print.

As I did this the engineer stood up and admitted it was a brilliant and legal solution. Manuel shook my hand. The partners also. The contract was ours. After that Manuel referred all his clients to us for their stores. Sets of prints started flooding into our office. The contracts were just handed to us. All we had to do was fill in reasonable prices. Victor was amazed and delighted.

As the money rolled in Jaime started spending, just as he had in earlier years. Victor couldn’t refuse him at first because he was the goose that laid the golden eggs. Victor was nothing without him. But Jaime, as he’d done many times before, (as Sanita can attest) quickly lost it, drinking heavily, gambling at the El San Juan Casino each night, paying dinners for picked up girls or call girls when he couldn’t snare one in the lounge, and sleeping with them in the three hundred dollar suites. Victor had to slowly, craftily, cut him off. And he did.

Jaime was the type that no matter how much we made he’d blow it and spend it all faster than it came in. He’d built up two huge businesses in his early twenties, in Dallas and Huston, and could easily have been a millionaire, but crashed them both through reckless spending. He’d talk of yachts, marlin fishing, rare sports cars, and the fanciest hookers were never high class enough for him because he was in an alcoholic delirium. I was his brother-in-law and the one person he trusted, as family. He would drag me to the El San Juan Casino and gamble hundred dollar bets at the craps table, rolling dice for hours.

The most amazing thing, which I witnessed many times standing beside him, was that the more drunk he became, the luckier he got, often winning thousands. And each time he’d order his fifteenth drink from some hot waitress and as she brought it on her tray, he’d try to tip her a hundred-dollar chip from his pocket, which I’d grab out of his hand and give her a ten. He was often too drunk to even see the switch. He was so far gone one night I picked up five hundred dollars in chips which he dropped in the elevator and hallway stumbling up to his suite. There went our company profits.

I told these stories to Victor, in his office in the mornings, to protect our business. He thanked me for it but saw it all himself, with Jaime stumbling in around noon, hungover still, sitting with me a half hour in our little conference room at the long table spread with newly arrived prints, me doing all the calculations on pads, pencil and ruler in hand. He’d check over some of my numbers than stumble into Victor’s office and demand another thousand dollars, as if his day’s work was done, and leave with whatever Victor could talk him down to, (usually half or less). Then he’d stagger out with a ‘goodbye’ to us and attempt to kiss Madeline, our beautiful secretary, her red lipstick glowing so bright it was like radiation, irresistible but dangerous. She’d gently push his head away with a friendly smile and then he’d drive back to the casino, where he built up a large tab.

Victor knew, we all knew, he had to go. Victor came and asked me if I could handle all the prints and bidding and I said ‘yes’. He was secretly glad. That’s when I realized why Jaime taught me how to bid jobs. He wanted me to replace him, free him from all responsibilities as if money would just keep flowing into his pockets as president of the company, and he a full time playboy. We both agreed on getting Jaime out of the picture, but we had many bumps over personality differences.

Victor wanted maximum profits, even to the point of ripping clients off. I wanted to do a good job for a fair price and establish a reputation. I had to argue this long-term strategy with Victor. He always wanted to jack up my prices. But I won out for the time as I handed him my sheets and checked with the supervisors from the States that he hadn’t changed my numbers. He didn’t and this won us many more jobs and good standing, island-wide, with ever more contracts pouring in, till he got rid of me two years later. Under this sane protocol, in a few more years, we could have grown into the largest contracting business on the island, putting ‘Lord Electric’ with all their millions to shame. But Victor never could envisage the broader opportunity and died, as he lived, a small time, petty, thief.

When Milton stated, in “Paradise Lost”:

‘The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven’.

He was thinking about his own superbly rich, elevated, transcendental mind.

Most people have no such luck, or abilities. Their minds are hovels. They grew up in dirt and rags, a 'dog eat dog' world and can never escape the poverty and misery of their mind-set, because they make no effort to rise above it. So they end up where they started, and it isn’t ‘Heaven’. Victor was formed from such lowly clay.

We found a solution for Jaime. His girlfriend Cindy had half-inherited the Calypso bar from the old owners who loved her almost as a daughter for over twenty years. She’d been there that long, surfing since a teenager. She was family to them. They watched her grow up. They were about to retire and made her a deal. If she could come up with some money the place would be hers. Jaime stepped in at this point, made some kind of deal with Victor to step out of the company with this payout, and the transaction was done, with a very tenuous and unclear understanding between Jaime and Cindy as to who actually owned the place. They had no liquor license and three years of tax records were required to get one so I stepped in and acquired one in my name. So in a way I was part-owner too.

Jaime was now taken care of, put in a happy place, behind a bar, with countless bottles in front of him and pretty girls to talk with day and night, like a baby in a crib, with toys. The place was run down, a two story building with the U-shaped bar beside it, and a covered patio in front of that, overlooking the ocean. Cindy had the kitchen up and running again with Jaime’s help and money and then turned the far end of the structure into a bathing suit and tourist shop. Upstairs was a two bedroom apartment. After weeks of clean-up and painting, they moved in. Jaime ran the bar.

Jaime behind the bar, giving way to many free drinks to beautiful women.

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