It's a bad week. Taxes are due, money is tight - as in nonexistent; the rain is back, my car has got an owie and as much as I like rain, the sunshine before sure did feel good. I'm a miserable creature, feeling particularly foolish and like a big heaping failure-at-everything as I drive to pick the client up in the wet and dismal gray world.
Autism-Boy once told me he has a form of high-functioning Asperger's Syndrome, thus the nickname, which basically means he's a pain in the ass who is extremely cautious and afraid of everything - he generally pumps his foot on a brake pedal that's not there the whole time I'm driving, while maintaining an aura of intellectual superiority. Well, to his credit, he is a rather bright and interesting fellow even though he is absolutely convinced the world is ending. I don't exactly discourage him, which is my responsibility, but he does go on most of the time I am with him, creating something of a post-apocalyptic scenario Mad Max-style world vision of the future. The truth is I totally wimp out around this stuff and just end-up agreeing because I'm exhausted from arguing with all the gloom and doom - is the world coming to an end new information? He has no idea that while he's talking I'm telling myself a better story in my head, which these days for various reasons usually involves a bunny with cookies.
The first place is none other than a goddamn modular home from the seventies next to a run-down cottage, all blissfully sinking into five soggy acres of abandoned farm land.The moment I open the door of the double-wide, we're blasted with cold, musty air smelling of a thousand smoked cigarettes and mildew. I immediately start sneezing but am too caught up in imagining the scary old couple who once lived there, so I walk in before I know it.
I have a moderately large nose equipped with a ridiculously powerful sense of smell. I can often tell someone what they've had for breakfast but I had to stop revealing this "gift" as I end-up as an olfactory sideshow wherever I am, with a line of people asking me to sniff them. Why does everyone, upon smelling something horrible, offer it to me saying, "Oh this STINKS, here smell it?"
So how did I find the air inside a mildewy old home? Let's just leave it at "too much information." I was practically bowled over. I think I could even smell the last meal cooked in the kitchen (smelled like reheated pizza and perhaps some fishsticks.)I'm also quite allergic to mold so just after I smelled more than I wanted to, my nose seized-up and began to run. I've learned to keep tissue with me at all times, so I covered my mouth as I began to hack and cough. Autism-Boy smiles saying that's why he likes working with me - the built-in mold detector - and I struggle for a reason to say why I like working with him.
The inside of the home I would define as creepy-child-pornographer-meets-emphysema-research-and-development-facility, the kind of home where the sounds of belching and farting still reverberate with ghostly echoes, and the man of the house can be imagined spending most of his time with one hand down his pants. Parts of the ceiling are missing and the linoleum has warn through in the kitchen revealing what looks like cardboard. I peek outside the windows at the other structures and something in my mammalian survival instinct kicks in - I'm afraid. I can hear an imaginary audience screaming "Don't go in the barn!"
My client is unhappy, too, discovering that even in this meltdown your money still won't buy very much around here. We're out of there but it's too late - I'm going to be sick for days from all that I've inhaled. (In fact, it's been three days and I'm still sneezing as I write this.)
The next home we see is much better and I even begin to entertain the notion that this fellow might actually buy something after two years of looking. I've lost count of the houses we've visited but the one we're standing in outshines every experience. He gets very excited and begins to ask a lot of questions. It is a short-sale, which pretty much can suck, but I've closed a few and they are not insurmountable.
It's just a house but it has a nice yard and an "artist studio," which is basically four walls, a roof and a floor. It's also been fenced well and surprise-surprise, it is surrounded by open pasture land, so it's nice and private (easier to protect from the post-apocalyptic right-wingers coming to steal your organic vegetables.) We agree to meet back in two days with his wife.
The two days pass and for the first time in a long time, I'm feeling that perhaps...just maybe...there's a paycheck in my future.
I'm back again with them both. She's complaining that in the summer she might be able to smell manure from the open pastures, the very reason he liked the house. I'm starting to get that they will probably never agree, which explains why they are approaching their seventies and are still renting - this should have been my first clue. The real shocker comes when she informs me that upon reviewing their numbers once again, it turns out that he "made a mistake" and they can't really afford anything. After she says this I think my knees visibly wobble. I start wondering again if anybody needs a bartender out there - I'm a quick learner and I promise not to drink too much of the profits - really!
I can barely speak as I get back into the loaner billboard car and head home to figure out how to pay my bills. Autism-Boy refers me to a couple of websites for more research on how the U.S. dollar will be worthless soon and what to do to prepare for the violent survival free-for-all that's coming. I wonder if he sees any irony in the tons of my time he's wasted.
I think there's a misconception that Realtors have a lot of money and really just do this job because we like to pee in other people's houses. Alright, that last part's true.
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