They always sounded so damn perky.
“This is Eugenia Blatherton from Shultz, Shucks, and Hogue Realty. I’m in your area today showing clients around and I was wondering if I could show them your unit?”
We’re in the middle of an orgy. You’re welcome to stop by if you want, though. There’s always room for more.
“We’ll be there in about 20 minutes.”
That’s just enough time for me to warm back up. Do you prefer it up the ass or are you an old fashioned kind of whore who just likes to get fucked?
Usually they called or stopped by on weekends. Sometimes there was five or six of them a day. Sundays, too. The realtors all smiled big, bleached smiles and the clients all tried to act like they weren’t intruding. The realtors all left a business card that I promptly ripped up and threw in the garbage. “In case I had any questions,” they would all tell me. The only questions I could think of involved which orifice they preferred me to stick my foot in.
“They’re just doing their job,” my wife said. “There’s no reason not to be polite.”
“There’s every reason,” I shot back. “What if we were busy? What if we were walking around naked? People do that, you know. In their own HOMES.”
“Are you planning on walking around naked?”
“No. But I could.”
She didn’t answer. She only shook her head and went back to her Sudoku book.
“We don’t have to be nice to them.”
“You’re not.”
“I know. You don’t have to be, too.”
She couldn’t help herself though. It was just who she was. A nice person. The nice people of the world usually end up putting up with the rest of us with a great deal of magnanimity. Her behavior could at times even be called noble, and I loved her for it. But there was a point. A point when being polite was no longer the appropriate response.
“We need to move,” she said.
“We can’t afford to move.”
I didn’t want to fight with her. It wasn’t her fault. I wanted to emaciate every realtor who stopped by with shit smiling clients looking to displace us. I wanted to bitch slap my idiot landlord for getting in too deep and not being able to pay his bills. We paid rent on time… most of the time. He was a nice enough guy, I guess. But they’re all vultures. Real estate attracts the lowest common denominator, just like the legal profession, psychology, and school administration. People who need just a little power to feel better about the powerlessness of their lives.
“When are they getting here?”
I was busy fantasizing about the horrified look on the blonde bitch’s (they’re mostly all blonde, for some reason) face when I answered the door with my dick hanging out. I remembered watching a news report on people ripping all the appliances and copper pipes out of houses after they’re foreclosed on. The talking head said that this behavior was having a “deeper negative impact” on the already nose diving real estate market. It was costing more to repair the homes than they were worth. Damn right, I thought. Why make it easy on them?
“When are they getting here?” She repeated the question and shook me out of my fantasy of tearing into the dry wall and pulling out electrical outlets.
“20 minutes,” I mumbled. “They’ll be here in 20 minutes.”
She looked around. “Should we pick up?”
“Nah.”
She sniffed the air. “Maybe we should go ahead and change the kitty litter.”
“I’m not doing anything that might make it more pleasant for them. Maybe they’re allergic to cats.”
She didn’t try to reason with me.
Waiting for them to arrive was almost as bad as them actually being IN the place. “I’m going to check the mail,” I said.
“Isn’t it early?”
“Yeah. But I forgot to check it yesterday.”
She looked up from her puzzle and smiled one of those smiles wives reserve for absent minded husbands. “Ok.”
I slipped into my sandals, grabbed my keys, and walked out. The weather was warm, and there was a slight breeze. It could be worse, I told myself. We could live somewhere cold. Even if we did end up out on the street, at least we wouldn’t freeze. It wasn’t the idea of moving that bothered me. Granted, we had more stuff than I wanted to have to move: the furniture, the TV. All the accoutrements of our life on the installment plan. My books. I had been planning on going through them and thinning down the collection – but then I’d have to decided which ones to part with. I couldn’t do that anymore than I could part with one of the cats, even though they destroyed the furniture we’re not done paying on yet. I’d tried a couple of times to convince her that we needed to get rid of the furniture. I told her we could just not make the weekly payment and they’d come and take it. She seemed to think they wouldn’t because of the damage caused by the cats. But even having to move the furniture wasn’t an issue, other than finding a truck. It was the fact that we would be forced to move without having any say, and that I was supposed to smile and show people around my home like a god damn butler.
We lived in the back of the complex and the mail boxes were in front. If you didn’t know any better, it would be easy to think that the people who lived in our complex were well off. That was what I thought when we looked at the place. There were more empty units than the week before. For Sale signs in the windows and the phone numbers and email addresses of realtors. I wanted to take all of their numbers and prank call them. I wanted to use their emails and sign them up on kiddie porn sites. I wanted to leave little envelopes filled with white powder at their offices.
When I opened the mail box, it was stuffed full. Ok, so maybe it had been more than a day since I checked the mail. I tugged on the wad of paper and envelopes. Mostly advertisements. No wonder I never check the mail. Just a bunch a of fucking garbage. I sorted through the pile looking for envelopes. She liked to save the coupons, and maybe we should… but I didn’t feel like taking all that shit back, only to throw away two weeks later when we got around to picking things up for another realtor who would call when they were five minutes away with a young married couple from Minnesota looking to buy their first place. That actually happened once. They stopped by when I was home alone. Very nice people. A few years younger than me. Bright-eyed with a solid credit rating. I glared, grunted, and smoked a cigar while they were there. The realtor, a short pudgy guy, gave me a dirty look when he left his card.
Once I was finished fishing out the envelopes, I looked through them to see what was there. Some junk mail about switching car insurance, and another one about switching cell phone carriers. There was one envelope addressed to “Current Occupant” but the address was handwritten. I usually tossed that kind of mail. But it WAS handwritten, and the hand writing was unshakably neat and feminine. So I opened it.
Inside the envelope was a form letter notifying us that the condo had been foreclosed on. The bank’s name on the letter head was familiar. I remembered hearing about it being bailed out by the government. The letter laid out two options. One was to move. The other was to stay and suffer more realtors and prospective buyers, while paying higher rent. The agent stapled her card to the bottom of the letter. It had her picture on it. She was a blonde.
I walked back through the complex. When I got to the condo, a bottle blonde with a spray tan who could only have been Eugenia Blatherton was there. Three people were with her: two people who looked like parents and a college age girl. They were probably looking for a place for her to live while she went to school. They smiled and were very friendly. My wife was in the middle of answering some question about the size of the walk-in bedroom closet. The realtor smiled at me – one of those You’re-Going-To-Help-Me-Out-Here-Right? smiles. The college age girl was trying to pet one of the cats – the one that usually hissed and scratched strangers. I didn’t warn her.
I grunted and kicked off my sandals. I looked over at my wife. She knew exactly what I was thinking.
