Every Man Has His Limits
Archie Kyriacou appears to have been a well-liked, capable, successful, and upstanding man in many ways, but he slowly became pathologically impatient with the pace at which Miss Wallace’s estate was probated. That corner meant a lot to him: before her death, he had offered $20,000 for it -- at the time, nearly enough to purchase three new Levitt homes. Now he saw no reason why he could not buy it immediately. Her heirs wanted to sell it. They did not want to live there, and even if the house were in good repair, it would not generate significant rental income. No one else wanted to buy it, but if they did, he would outbid them. He would buy it eventually. Until he could, he would gladly pay the heirs $3,500 for the privilege of demolishing the house and cleaning up the grounds, and still pay them the full amount later when the purchase happened. He just wanted to be happy again.
Instead, every day when he looked over his customers, he wondered. How could they enjoy food and companionship when the ambience of the room was ruined by that derelict house, which loomed over their tables from outside the windows? He got angry when he thought about would-be patrons who had passed by without seeing the diner – for motorists traveling some routes, the house and its foliage hid the diner from sight.
