A California Closing

by Robert Wintner

  Phillip and Steffen choose seats in reach of the wine and snacks, in response, s’il vous plait, to their new friend, Allison, who invited them to stay. “Frankly, I don’t think Brad Pitt’s done anything worth a hoot since Legends,” Steffen says.

  “That may be,” Phillip concurs. “But he was so deliciously buff as Achilles; admit it: you couldn’t help but think of Michael here.”

  Steffen covers his blush with a sip of wine and another, leaving no further option but a chin jut aimed at the thin air.

  Judith Elizabeth Cranston Layne with Coldwell Banker Clifton Baines chatters to her client gaggle over this fabulous Chablis on this marvelous afternoon with such incredible views—and Camembert on the way! Perfectly ripe! “Oooozing!” she verily oozes in an onomatopoeic overlap of cheese and climax.

  More notable to the more frugal segment of the gathering, however, is Judy Liz Layne’s surreptitious yearning—westward at the fabulous view—as a practical ruse to cover her true yearning. She perks on Marylyn Moutard extolling the subtle yet significant value of an ethereal phenomenon that combines a house with the power of nature to an extent that investment analysis becomes incidental—except of course as it specifically relates to a market vortex slapping you smack in the fucking head!

  Oh, if we can only wake up and smell the ambrosia …

  Not really—Mulroney added the fucking part and the ambrosia, because he can’t imagine anybody talking like these women do, non-fucking-stop with ablutions to the mist—or the smog—with a compulsory overdose of seasoning and unreality, neither of which will make a pinch o’ shit’s difference next to the signatures on the line and the money on the table. Most amusing is Marylyn Moutard’s conflicted motivation. On the one hand is her forte, facilitating a sale for her client in a market thoroughly established as upward, with demand exceeding supply, in which Econ 101 stipulates rising prices and every seller’s dream: the bidding war.

  On the other hand is the hot, gristly bone shimmering in the quicksilver just out of reach, so to speak. What red-blooded, long-tooth, real-estate professional would accept a commission of eighty-two-five when a blink as good as a nod could turn it to a hundred sixty-five large? To put it succinctly: Marylyn Moutard fairly invented the double-ender in this county, and she sure as shit ain’t settling for one big fat scoop when two should be hers by rights. You think developing common interests and trust with eight people is easy? Or fun? It’s not, and the pain and suffering show, ever so slightly, like a twist in a thong that pinches her cootch but not so much that she can’t emote morning glory for the wonderful world we live in—especially with these views!

  So relax: if anyone can shuffle into the end zone for the whole six points, it’s Marylyn “who cuts the” Moutard.

  Mulroney is amused with Marylyn’s dilemma, with potential on the one hand and greater potential on the other, leading on the one hand to a glorious commission—yet on the other hand hinting the happiest day in her life since her last double-ender. Then again, with two ups on the same unit, the play is easy: let them duke it out. Does it get any better than a bidding war? Oh, these Californians can swing some dick when it comes to acquisition in the millions, and they don’t need you or your measly, petty, penny-ante bullshit standing in the way once the decision is made to buy.

  Well, the blood mist of acquisition carnage may yet descend. In the meantime, Mulroney faces a more difficult challenge. The apparent gardener, boyfriend, art fence and sweaty, muscular fellow is demanding a hundred bucks for a hand job he, Mulroney, had no say in and certainly did not request. Push come to shove, it was a great hand job, the little city gal understanding a man’s needs and textures. Then again she was coldly professional and too fast for lasting love, or for any love, not that love was on the menu, but accuracy is still best. Truth be told, slower is better. Slower shows more affection—like Allison used to do, for fun.

  Those were the days when a kiss was just a kiss, before the sauce took away her bones and much of her brain. It’s hard not to love the woman you swore to love forever and meant it—which meant you didn’t need an oath at the time because the love was real, before she morphed into something else with a clinical label, but the profile suggested was an autistic child in a tantrum. The guests don’t see it, because she won’t let anyone see it except her husband, which should be the case for her naked body, but it’s not.

  These nosy bastards wonder what’s wrong with Mulroney. But they’ll be at home when it’s time to clean up the mess, and so will he. She used to pass out at the point of inebriation—what a relief. Now she becomes aggressive, verbally, and hostile over what’s been missing in her life. Random observers find her demands reasonable in a laughable way. Mulroney does not comprehend what Allison wants, what Allison freely gave away in her every waking moment, what every soul gives away in exchange for something else. Maybe freedom isn’t so free. Maybe the passive, subservient personality is where she’s taken refuge these last five decades, for convenience or refuge. Mulroney doubts that anyone knows, though many will theorize for a fee. Why did Mulroney bargain for a normal woman and get an invalid, a wife in need of supervision when drinking?

  Because life is fated, as if written and ordained. Because love can’t stand a chance, but then the liquor changes everything. Because, this is what happened to him and his.

  Could it have been avoided?

  Maybe not.

  Did he do anything to prevent it?

  Probably not.

  It’s that simple. Situations result from small decisions, stacking up for loss on a dead-end journey. A fair assessment of Allison will require two columns; one headed Drunken Allison and the other headed Admirable Allison. With social and sexual skills, a sympathetic ear, and sundry other attributes, a life mate might be constant to the end of the road. But things change—breakdown prevails, which seems cynical and accurate. Mulroney also factors positive aspects in these difficult times, granting her the benefit of many doubts because her heart is unchanged from those fresh, young days and so is her mind, he thinks, when she’s sober. Yet alas, the positive pales in the slosh.

  That’s the catch.

  When she’s sloshed, she has no heart, no mind, no give, no meaning, only the rankling demands of a severely handicapped woman reduced to childlike tantrum. The aging process is inevitable, requiring flexibility of spirit. She has that. Mulroney is a good provider, at least on paper, but he can’t handle drunkenness, not anymore. The challenge approaches, in which patience and forbearance for one spouse may outpace that of the other spouse.

  How do people stay married for twenty, thirty, fifty years and then divorce? Divorce after decades of marriage defies social expectation, which should disqualify social norm as a standard for any reasonable behavior. Marriage also suffers the burden of years and can often end at the intersection of Familiarity and Contempt. Loathing becomes cumulative, until quirk and idiosyncrasy tower above all else. Decades of marriage require an open mind, and that’s what age should enhance. But it doesn’t. And Mulroney needs no excuse to get away from his mate—he only needs refuge from self, as life comes down to reckoning, on paper.

  Allison makes him tired. So does the reefer, but he only smokes it because he’s tired of the situation, always thinking, planning, strategizing, repressing his alcoholic wife. And because he likes it.

  Allison is supportive as often as not. Of course, Mulroney’s persona as chauvinistic bore is a show, a building block on which a Big M empire resides. Allison is cute, free of body fat, and blessed with small, pert breasts, like in her teen years. She’s eccentric, beyond the social norm, and that’s good and should be good, but when she’s drunk she’s a cunt, which is burdensome and demoralizing. It’s an imposition on life—one with apparently deliberate intent.

  She’s more than casually naked in front of strangers. She’s showing off her female form in a phase of life she doesn’t mind calling well preserved—make that a calling out, one she doesn’t mind hearing from a murmuring cr
owd. Naked by design in public marks her as unstable, as compensatory, as a woman in need. Her splendid hip line, her still trim ass and above average muscle tone could make for a playful display—a woman posing nude for art, caught out, as it were, and dropping everything in deference to an entertainment for drop-in guests. Mulroney wouldn’t mind so much because she is the hostess with the mostess, and everyone appreciates recognition. But the other motivation moves into the psyche, what’s left of it, or an altered version of it, in which this woman, Mulroney’s love, seeks revenge. Does she lay this straw knowingly upon the camel’s heavily burdened back? Does she call his bluff, parading naked for a bonehead group of interlopers to prove their appreciation of her? Or does she merely work the master, though protector and provider he may be, calling him out on vanishing youth, on the best years gone, on the disjunction between paper and reality?

  But Mulroney took nothing from her, unless you want to count fundamental stability. But that shouldn’t count, because shit does happen, and in this case the paper appearance will soon be reality once again—this is a short-term glitch, an event in nature no less random or certain than clouds in the sky. This is real life, not Mulroney, but life. It demands adaptation and shifting to find the comfortable position, to remove the lumps as necessary. What is Mulroney’s role in a romance decomposing? For starters, decomposition happens. Mulroney has never served as facilitator but rather has pissed on the drunkenness parade at every opportunity. All of which begs the starting question: Did you ever come home to a drunk?

  He will always love her, always care, not by choice but by bond, by that overlap on which the heart is not a lonely hunter but is rather bound to another soul. Yet he cannot maintain the demon. Just look: she glows in audience appreciation. She has their admiration—and their sympathy. She’ll serve fresh fruit, gooey cheese, and discount wine with the towel tucked loosely under her arms, and thereby ensures their continuing support. She’ll let the towel slip in the act of giving. She’ll giggle. She’ll pull it back up like a child, but she’s not a child. She’s a woman with no basis in rational thought, and Mulroney is her husband.

  A man reaches the age of confidence and thinks he’s past wondering how things got so bad, how he ended up here, where he doesn’t want to be. Yet it happens. She steals his energy, sticking the emotional air hose up his ass and inflating him with malaise, just when he needs his wits to fend off vulnerability, to avoid the loss of what he’s taken a lifetime to build, which is nothing short of security. Maybe they’re not so secure, or maybe they’re secure like inmates in a federal slammer. They seem hardly happier.

  Like now, with the macho Mexican field hand drifting on the fringe, discreet as a cat burglar, backing off from his ridiculous demand for cash. He grasps the crystal stemware with his thick mitts like it was a plastic tumbler, pouring cheap Chablis down his gob like lemon water at high noon. Juan Valdez squints again through the windows, seeking art and Allison, ever hopeful that the masters live here in the upwardly mobile, ever-reaching hills.

  But that’s a generalization. Betty Burnham won’t need to reach again, except for sympathy and company, which she can find easily with the service her late husband assured was of excellent quality.

  Where can such an ill-conceived afternoon lead? To new friends, shared insights, common ground, good offers? Mulroney represses, because a born salesperson approaches the final third of life at a disadvantage, with every potential squirting adrenaline into his already twitchy system. It’s the combustion ratio of the ultimate piston that enables the true closer to close the motherfucking deal beyond mortal skill levels, even when the motherfucker doesn’t want to close. And the off-road action is smooth as a baby’s bottom, with a true closer at the wheel. The action feels good. It lingers with tingly vibration because nobody wants a rough ride anymore. Mulroney knows the way. The adrenaline may enable a tomorrow that’s worth a good goddamn, if it doesn’t kill him first. Oh, he’ll pay on the back end. The idea is to defer painment—make that payment.

  Look at Marylyn, counting an imaginary stack of money in her head as if nobody can see what she’s thinking and then counting another stack twice as tall. She’ll get to have and to hold one stack or the other. Is she really worth another squirt of heart juice?

  Then again, does a man want to spend one more day than necessary here in Screwtown?

  Wait a minute! Get a grip! Can a man afford to forget the rudiments now? It’s a devilish brutal scrum, but every one of these bums is as bruised as the home team. Any progress to date was built on the fundamentals. So?

  Now get back in there!

  Then again, Mulroney may be one more figment of an overworked fantasy, another personal sophistry or worse. So he fades to past tense, which isn’t the same as has been, but then again … Maybe Big M is all that remains of an old man—a hormonal aberration with outdated sales skills and comparatively low cycling cadence on average. Maybe denial is done today. Maybe escape on a bicycle is a multi-faceted mode for former men and active pussies. Maybe his quiver is empty—but wait!

  Attitude is everything.

  There it is, proof that the warrior attacks!

  The true raconteur will show abject indifference at this juncture of the transaction, where the game is won or lost. The right tools for Mulroney are solitude and silence, which may seem as unavailable as the exit of a mall department store. Still, the exit exists. Hmm. Is that like Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse, when he said, If, man. It’s the middle word in life?

  Is, man, it’s the middle word in exist. Or maybe it’s the missing word in exit. Fuck it. Whatever. The first step is to fetch a dress, a simple number from Allison’s closet. Back to the bedroom and out to the kitchen in less than a minute, he hands it over with concise instructions: “Put this on and don’t interfere when I tell everyone to leave. If you don’t obey me, I’ll put you out this afternoon.” It works, to the surprise and relief of both parties of the first part, since it doesn’t work too often. Because knowing each other too well most often leads to bluffs called with growing frequency. Old spouses trade challenges like adversaries in the mirror, which is more or less to the perfect opponent, which is what a spouse of many decades becomes. The most frequent result is stalemate. Then again, she does fear growing old alone.

  She slips it on, and with a semi-huff she slinks back to the kitchen, perchance to peel some grapes.

  Mulroney repeats that it’s been swell, but we think we’re going to take it easy now. He pauses ever so briefly to allow the proper response, so leave-taking can begin. But the collective response is less than audible.

  Judy the obsequious Layne knows full well the meaning and reward of dominance—what she calls controlling the room—so she steps boldly forward to say, “We’re working on an offer here.”

  Mulroney knows with equal fervor the guiding hand of the sales manager. “Take it somewhere else. Call it urgency.” This gentle but firm directive may actually be a great ploy for the seller, not exactly conforming to the tenets of the technique known as The Take Away, in which the product is suddenly pulled from the market, no longer for sale, compounding desirability and value, especially in Asian capitals with regard to those edible species on the verge of extinction and in California, where unavailability is to image what lumens are to luminosity. And, in this case, the process of driving prospects off the property may benefit that segment of the transaction referred to contractually as: and the buyer wants to buy.

  That is, the cunt’s glare sears the balmy air with icicles.

  Marylyn Moutard senses only icing on cake. She can’t draw a line over who should leave first and which position will offer the greatest advantage in the offer-tendering phase, because Judy the you-know-what Lane could go desperate at any moment, namely the moment she sees goose eggs chalked up to her commission column. This is some tricky tundra, rife with sinkholes and snares. But it seems very obvious to any woman with her eyes open that now is the time to make an offer—a full offer at the very least
! And Judy Cranston has her eyes open!

  Marylyn begs to disagree. She does not trust the situation to play out best on its own. Rather she sees the deal as done, thanks to her, with the question remaining on rightful commission or half that amount. Or, in a win-win situation, she can do what a gal in the driver’s seat can do best: step on it. She must continue in stealth toward the double-end on one hand but prevent losing the entire deal on the other, which can happen with a nutter like Mulroney. What can she do? Only what a Moutard would do, smile sweetly and take action—and control—back to the buyer’s side, her buyer: “We’re just leaving. We have two more places to see. We may want something a bit more dramatic in the views. And we’re way over budget here.”

  Marylyn smiles sweetly all around, saving the last lump for Judith Elizabeth Cranston Layne, leaving Judy EDLtheC no recourse, but extra sweetness returned until sugary one-ups verge on the gag reflex. So the sales sisters affirm that we’re all in this together, that sharing is good, that we can make this happen, and commissions are best for everyone. Right? They affirm their love with a peck on each cheek, one each for the other and again for the other side in perfect synchronicity. Right? After all, we can only do what’s best for our clients. Right?

  Marylyn adds a dash of secret seasoning with a pregnant pause meant to let Judy know where the advantage lies and that this is what she came for.

  Mulroney sorts strategies in a heartbeat; Marylyn has played a great lead, a truly impressive move seen only at the consummate-pro level, but it’s a smoke screen, obviously so to an observer at the consummate-pro-with-more-than-half-a-wit level. What, you want more view for less money? It’s a veritable give to arch-nemesis Judy Layne, but hardly a concession, since everyone knows that Marylyn can work these bumpkins if she hones in—that she can be back by sundown with an offer no less blazing than Carol Doda’s twin forty-fours.

  Fatigue and tedium ooze over the sorting and strategizing, reminding every pro present that she who tires first loses. Disadvantage Mulroney, who must also shoulder the burden of Allison’s petty but endless challenge.