A California Closing

by Robert Wintner

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll follow up with this one coming over now?”

  “Yes.”

  “You might want to tell the good-time boys we got another player.”

  “Are you done?”

  “Mm … Yeah. I think so.”

  “Well, good.”

  “I’m glad you’re pleased. Don’t I need to initial the papers for the counter offer? I thought that was required by law.”

  But Marylyn’s thoughts are rendered conjectural with the phone clicking dead. Was it a soft click? Or an emotional click? Who cares? That’s the problem with selling a house. It’s such a bother of emotions and strategy, none of it mattering until a legitimate player steps up with the money, and the deal closes. Then emotions and strategy matter even less. Who in their right mind would play footsies on two point two, or two point two oh two or whatever chickenshit lowball they came up with, thinking they can step up to the good life on a ninety percent loan? Because that’s what they’re banking on, sure as California is the leverage state.

  Meanwhile, who can even develop a decent strategy for his own life with nonstop straightening the furniture, sweeping the decks, putting things away? And for what?

  Well, for better prospects in case the eight-name woman coming over with the three-time drive-by might be the player in question. The next hour will likely suffer slow death on one more mind-numbing discourse by another halfwit wannabe kicking the tires and fingering the dents. But prospects defer to attitude, and if he’s a stiff, the whole afternoon will still be left, in spite of this imposition. In the meantime, luck will favor the receptive mind in a well-swept and sorted house.

  As a salesperson at heart, for whom the fundamentals are second nature, Mulroney knows these things yet feels foolish turning on the lights and elevator music. He feels stranger than when he had to stream strings of plastic banners on a car lot. Plastic banners are obviously plastic, but this is not obvious. People think it’s real. They think that having lights on with elevator music is how it will be, with them firmly installed in their new lifestyle. No—they don’t think it; they feel it.

  Now why the hell is that?

  “Mr. Mulroney!”

  “Yeah. Come in. Come on up. I mean, take your time. Do whatever …” Fuck it. Do whatever you want.

  So enters Judith Elizabeth Cranston Layne with Coldwell Banker Clifton Baines. “Hello,” she says, huffing up the entry stairwell, which, you’ll notice, reflects both the Lloyd Wright influence as well as the Donovon Hewitt imprimatur—“They are the architects. Can you believe it?” Offering her card: “I’m Judith Elizabeth Cranston Layne with Coldwell Banker Clifton Baines.” The card says it yet again, as if such a moniker could ever be remembered by anyone but Judith Elizabeth Cranston Layne with Coldwell Banker Clifton Baines. “This is Roy.”

  “Hello, Roy,” Michael Mulroney says, heaping scoops of warmth and hospitality as only a seller who wants to sell can do.

  “Hi,” Roy chirps, tucking his head more securely into his apparent shell. Roy is painfully shy, perhaps pathologically introversive; this is plain to see, clarifying the challenge to Judith Elizabeth Cranston Layne with Coldwell Banker Clifton Baines and Michael Mulroney. The buyer must be made to feel at home, like it’s his home. Like he’s okay, and the place is okay, and he in the place is equally okay.

  Okay?

  Roy’s head is shaved, and … could it be? Nobody wants to stare, but apparently, his eyebrows are shaved too.

  His skin is pale white—wait a minute!

  No, his eyes are gray, not red, so he’s not albino. He’s only a shut-in. The timorous demeanor is thorough and makes the seller wonder where a so-called buyer with nuts like chickpeas will get two point seven five. Yet here again, the seasoned veteran defers to rudiments: Never prejudge a prospect. Some of your wealthiest people on Planet E look like schleppers, ragtag as bag people just off the boat in need of a bath and a job. So you just can’t tell, though this one seems particularly unwealthy.

  But enough assessment. Judith Elizabeth Cranston Layne with Coldwell Banker Clifton Baines takes the lead, pointing hither and yon, brandishing insight like the leader of a marching band. “I know this house! Come. The kitchen is amazing.”

  She must know something about the net worth of the party of the second part. Or she’s a cold closer. Closers don’t waste time on peasants—so either she’s a closer or she didn’t suss him out. But she seems on—on the trail, on a scent. She’s toying with him, telling him what to think and when to think it. Is this Roy an idiot and a world-class pussy? Because the kitchen is not amazing or amazing. Fuck it. She leads; he follows. Let her sell the sumbitch.

  Roy looks where he’s told to look. Sometimes he touches what he’s looking at, or what he looked at a minute ago.

  “Just wait! Till you see this bathroom remodel. It’s fabulous. The tiles are fabulous, and I a-dore this use of glass block. Don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do,” Roy says.

  Mulroney explains, “The master bath wasn’t a remodel, actually, but a rebuild, up from scratch, or from a hole in the wall at any rate, surrounding the ff … fricken’ ruins of this cockamamie, sunken-floor tub that was …”

  “What color was it?” Roy asks.

  “Dark blue. Not a bad color. But the design was late seventies, Roman orgy, with the tub sunk about three feet deep, and backrests under the showerheads, in case you wanted to cover the drains and fill it. And sit in it. It was awful.”

  Roy reaches gently to touch a glass block. “So … No more Roman orgies?”

  “Hey, it’d be your call, Roy,” Mulroney assures. Judith Elizabeth Cranston Layne with Coldwell Banker Clifton Baines shifts uncomfortably. “You’ll probably need some fresh Romans.”

  “Oh!” Roy gasps, blushing headlong to cherry on vanilla.

  Judith Elizabeth Cranston Layne with Coldwell Banker Clifton Baines recaptures the lead that Michael Mulroney unwittingly stole. Displeased as a seasoned professional who’s had her front-end T-boned, she smirks, suggesting that the deal is officially choked unless she can save it with charm and skill.

  What she can do is give a seller a fucking break. Are they not headed for the same goal? If not on the same play, they’re at least on the same team. Aren’t they? Really?

  Casting dourly over her shoulder, she guides the mark to the master. Turning to a new future on another flourish, she proclaims this bedroom … Is. Absolutely. Fabulous. So are the views from the rear and front decks, fabulous, but then calling the two views equal could lose the unique, not unlike one-of-a-kind characteristic each of the views commands. From the rear deck, which, by the way, is the location of the hot tub, you look east, to the Eureka Canyon Hills in a panoramic vista to die for—“while you’re soaking your bones, I might add.”

  “O’er the freeway,” Roy murmurs.

  She leads the way, away. “The front deck, on the other hand, is more succinct, which is not to say smaller, which it is, if your brainwaves process only mortar, tiles, boards, nails and such, which the sum of these parts surely surpasses by a long shot. This front deck overlooks the biggest ocean in the entire world with an unobstructed view for a hundred eighty degrees that will take your breath away. I mean it will literally … literally … It. Is. Fabulous! And I think it goes without saying that if a place ever captured the claim of Views! Views! Views! Well, this is the place.”

  So the rapturous real estate rhapsody flows mellifluously from Judith Elizabeth Cranston Layne with Coldwell Banker Clifton Baines.

  Michael Mulroney laughs short, stifling a request for a barf bag—nor will he pantomime the grunt and gag reflex, not even as a joke, because such could be misconstrued, miscued, potentially lewd and ultimately screwed. Rather he excuses himself for a beer, though he doesn’t mention the beer. What if either one said yes, I think I will join you in a frosty quaff?

  Please. A man draws the line.

  Judy, the overflowing storm drain from Banker Baines, babbles on. A
fly on the wall may sense that Roy is suffering just like Mulroney. But maybe not. Roy seems appreciative. Mulroney considers intervening, to assure Roy that the place is just as it is, as he sees it without the adjectives, and that he can design and build any kind of lifestyle he chooses under these rafters. But no. He senses a time in the future, where he may need to reference Judy Cuntish Baines’ pitiful excuse for a front end, and any word here would subjugate his position. Might she sell it? Not a fuckin chance—not to Royboy anyway. Mulroney knows a chump when he sees one, which is not to judge by the cover but to sense the essence, of which your world-class closer has sensed a few.

  Selling a house is a curse of sorts—that’s what Sales Manager Mulroney would tell his team if any fucking one of them knew who they were dealing with and had the smarts to ask. They don’t.

  But Mulroney comes clear on two points of realization, which is not another California song and dance, but the situation revealing its truth and its needs. The first insight occurs in transit, on taking leave of Roy and Judith Banker Baines, proceeding to the fridge for a beer or two.

  The second illumination is one week later, also in transit, bidding adieu to the odious Mrs. Mumford Milguard Munro, moving again to the fridge for a beer. Lining up side by side, as if the week between them didn’t exist, Mulroney glimpses meaning—make that singular meaning among myriad potential meanings, this one with notable relevance. It comes down to possessions and the karmic debt of ownership, which comes down to drudgery. How blessedly seductive the aging Brahmin can make life seem, as he heads out to make his way in a compassionate world, alone with a beggar’s bowl. Objects demand maintenance, lest they lose their dollar value. Bane Judith prattles on, restating the obvious on the views, the tiles, the furnishings and fabulously refurbished falderal festooned like fungus from rafters to foundation—so much stuff that a talking head must keep up to get it all in, or out. She can’t shut up …

  The time between the two moments was not dead time or gone time, though the house-selling task puts a tinge on all time. But a tinge also defers to process; nobody actually sells a house. A seller waits on chance and timing.

  Sorting the rubble of the week in between, Mulroney seeks something to admire but comes up short, like a hobo late to the landfill on trash day—all the good bits are gone. That’s what the house sale process feels like, bereft, like a dump in late afternoon. It’s nonstop cleaning, turning on lights, and finding the goddamn elevator music. Fuck.

  Several items from the gone-dead week could have value, even if only as amusement and/or entertainment. Like Roy’s career—make that Dr. Roy. A timorous man to be sure, he is also a young surgeon specializing in lower gastro-intestinal maintenance, repair, and replacement as necessary—what Mulroney would call an asshole doctor, though only in a private moment, to himself. The good news, such as it is: Judith Baines did qualify the party of the second part, affirming as well his aspiration to greater affluence and appropriate imagery, mobility, superiority. After all, he was shopping the neighborhood at the top of the hill. Roy glittered on paper, but the bank said no, even though everyone knows doctors are rich, or soon will be. Alas, Roy had “suffered a reversal in his investment strategy”—JEC Layne’s language. Roy simply loved the place but crapped out. The good news was her concession that she too suffered from her own mouth-hole effusions—“I don’t do this for fun.” In fact, prattling on and on and on gave her a ripping fucking headache every goddamn time. Roy wanted another visit, just to see if that lovey-dovey feeling would hold up. Judy Layne advised that another visit would be great, any time, after a visit to the lender, just to see.

  She saw. Not to worry, said Judy Layne, though she didn’t say it directly but rather through the agent of the first part, she who first acquired the listing, Ms. Marylyn Moutard.

  Roy may be back, said Marylyn, according to Judy Crane, because he’s a doctor after all, as in practicing physician, with Medicare, Medicaid, Medical and other sundry medi-mother lodes to mine, and anyway, she, Judy C, loves the place and will definitely be back.

  The single item rising from the ashes of the-week-that-was was Judy C Layne’s return, as promised. It’s a vision, through a glass darkly. Mulroney smiles wanly as Mrs. Mumford Milguard Munro, in basso profundo, assures Judy Layne, “You know, view is everything to me. View is everything to my art. So, I mean, we must have view. We need view. View is our primary need.” Mrs. Munro’s harrumph is meant to underscore her and her art’s need for view, in case anyone in hearing range didn’t quite get the point or the first person plural required to include herself, her art, and her life.

  “Then, too, we also need space, as well. You know, I teach art. I have up to twelve students on some days, and each and every one of my students needs space for a big canvas. I would estimate eight feet by eight feet. Each.”

  Mulroney calls from the fab kitchen: “Big canvas? That’s a fricken’ tent.” Judy C turns purple, as her sensitivity dictates.

  “That’s the work space required, not the size of the canvas.”

  “Oh. I thought you meant that each one was …” He strolls back in with his cold brew.

  “Yes. It’s apparent, what you thought.”

  “Oh, I think you might be surprised.”

  “Oh, I think not.”

  “Well then. I’ll leave you two ladies to … whatever’s necessary.”

  Mulroney takes leave yet again, not exactly proud of restraining himself from telling this bitch to get the fuck out and pronto but feeling good in speaking truth to women. Fulfillment derives on yet another glimpse of the ineluctable: that life is but a series of leaves in taking, till the last curtain falls. He sincerely contemplates prospects for Judith Cramden opening wide for the Big M under special circumstances, say, like his expert facilitation on a double ender—make that six points on two point seven five—if it was late, and he could get a few drinks down her. Not that she’s such a pussycat, but the principle of the thing might go a long way in alleviating the angst and the other, with the cleaning and low lights and fucked up music.

  “Such a boor,” Mrs. Munro enunciates clearly enough to be heard from twenty paces and around a corner. “The place is not right. It doesn’t feel right. Maybe it’s largely because of him. Maybe it’s only because of him, but one supposes that the cause of the trouble is secondary to the trouble itself. Don’t you agree? You know, the right atmosphere of a place is quintessential to my art. A place has to feel right. I don’t speak for myself alone. You know?”

  Yeah, right. That cow knows what Mulroney is thinking. If she knows anything, she’s smarter than she lets on. Now there’s a difference between last week and this; last week the dog and pony show came after a great bicycle ride, and this week the ride has yet to occur. They have a name for that, when the aftermath seems somehow less than the anticipation. Damn. What is it? Oh, yeah: life. On the other hand, Mulroney feels better when a ride is over, but that’s because it’s out of the way, and maybe that’s life too. Then again, he feels better, looking forward to a ride rather than hanging around the house with that uppity, nasty woman.

  So Mulroney finishes carb-packing and saddles up, as it were, wincing as the minimally padded crotch support in his spandex riding shorts sorts itself between the nuts and the seat, a Sella Italia minimalist dream with hardly skeletal carbon graphite bones and a gram and a half of TechSkin designed to wick the sweat right off your taint while sliding to and/or fro as necessary, smooth as a baby’s buttocks, but not pressing the vital nerve, directly below which the seat does not exist. It’s the finest seat that money can buy, imposing itself presumptuously as a stick up the nether vortex. Well, not up but under, with an equally egregious assertion, such as Mrs. Mumford Milguard Munro would like to make up Mulroney’s sphincteroo—with her broomstick! Under and alongside, till the point pokes the backend of the nutsack … Mm!

  Wait …

  What about … What about a new seat for well-hung wheelmen? Call it the Eggcup, and instead of a le
ather-wrapped cattle prod pressing hell out of the gonads, the seat would stop at the front of the taint, short of the scrotal sac, allowing the thin and lovely air as nature intended for a more natural dangle. Support? Easy! At the front end of the seat, slightly lower, would be two eggcups, side by side, one for each nut.

  The Nut Cup? Nah. Who ever heard of a nut cup? The Candy Dish, perhaps … No! The Jewel Caddy, and it could be like …

  Nah. Maybe the Double Barrel … No. Who wants shotgun imagery so close to his nuts?

  It’s the Eggcup.

  But why settle for half a market? What about fulsome female riders known to suffer the labia squeeze every bit as bad? Majora? Majorum? Majori? Fuck it. The Eggcup. It’s perfect. Equal opportunity too.

  Something to think about anyway.

  Labicaddy?

  Hmm.

  Gimme a minute.

  X

  Aging Gracefully

  Michael Mulroney is a self-made man falling behind in a mad world, dashing headlong to entropy. With dynamic energy sustained, he wonders how fast he can actually go on his new bicycle and where.

  He takes solace in movement, in the rhythmic circle of wheels and pedals and a chain and legs pumping to keep the show on pace. Muscles do the heavy work, as the temple of his soul becomes a refuge, in which to take in the lovely scenery. Pastoral images displace his dissatisfaction. It’s nice, but some notions persist: I think, therefore I doubt—Mulroney’s synthesis in life is not what he’d anticipated. He’s not sure what, exactly, he’d expected or hoped for, except for the presumed more, more and more of the thing. Moving to someplace else rarely cures life’s shortcomings. When all those Joads fled the dust bowl for California, they only got fooled in the end, like they could have stayed home and eaten more dust. But moving now could be different, a change of situation that could change a worldview. He has more stuff than the Joads, starting with a huge house at the top of the ridge and the market, and he wonders if it could all fit in a beat-up truck.