No answer. No barks either. That’s odd.
Harder this time, I knock again.
Still no answer.
Carefully, I cross the porch where a rocking chair looks close to crumbling. The curtains are drawn on all the windows, so I can’t see inside. I pray these advertised dogs aren’t feasting on Alice’s festering carcass somewhere beyond the front door.
Just as I’m about to peer around the side, a breeze forces the rocking chair into creaky motion.
“Boo!” comes a witchy voice beneath my shrill scream.
I jump sky-high when I notice an elderly woman with a shock of stringy white hair standing behind the screen door. There’s a naughty smile stamped on her face. She wears an oversize cardigan and a pair of round glasses with telescopic lenses.
“Crap, you scared me,” I gasp.
“Watch your language, boy! Don’t make me clean your mouth out with soap. My eyesight may be going, but my hearing is as sharp as a bat’s.” She has a smoker’s voice, a habit she probably picked up when cigarettes were still Hollywood glamorous. When she pushes the screen aside, I get a good look at her gnarled, long nails. Maybe she is a witch after all and this is a fairy-tale retelling instead of a horror movie.
She looks nothing like the preened woman with flawless cheekbones featured in her headshot from the seventies, but I recognize her all the same. “Sorry, Ms. Kelly.”
A beat passes before she says, “You real estate agents are all the same. A bunch of jumpy Jacks with no good manners.”
“Wh-what?” I stammer. I steal a quick glance down at my outfit and realize I do look sort of like a real estate agent—my button-down, my blazer, even though it’s now June and I’m sweating, the only bow tie I own with a yellow buttery-popcorn pattern on it. Judging by her glasses, I’m sure she can’t make out the details properly.
“You are here to evaluate the house, aren’t you?” she asks even as she steps inside, gesturing for me to follow.
I only hesitate a moment. It feels wrong to take advantage of an aging woman with a feigned grasp on memory, yet this is my in. I’m not exploiting her, right? I’m merely bamboozling her into a beneficial situation. A trick that ends in a treat. The treat being her reemergence into film society! I’ll just step inside, give her a minute to warm up to me, then come clean and do my best to convince her to give me a chance. Easy.
There’s not much house to evaluate anyway. It’s in shambles. Each step I take makes me fearful I might fall through the floorboards.
I shuffle around behind her. She doesn’t close or lock the door, and it feels rude to bring it up, so I gently press it back into place while she’s busy flitting down the hall. There’s a TV in another room somewhere playing a rerun ofThe Mary Tyler Moore Show. I can tell by Rhoda’s nasally voice and the memorable audience laughter.
I nearly knock my head on a piece of loose molding when she leads me into the kitchen. The linoleum floors are scratched and the cabinets have fared no better. Alice doesn’t seem to mind any of this as she opens one with an unfastened handle and turns the stove-top knob three times before the burner lights. I don’t know whether to sit or stand, so I end up leaning against a nearby counter.
“You have a lovely…”
“Don’t lie, boy. Flattery is for fools,” she says. I think about the prepared speech I had for her. It’s almost all complimentary regarding how ahead of her time she was. This woman seems like she’d spit right in my face if I said any of that stuff to her. “Sit down. Stop making me nervous.”
I heed her demand. The table is an artifact of another time, a silver rim with a pale-pink top. Somehow, this is the one object that looks kept beyond reason. There’s a stack of coasters in the center, and napkins sit in a decorative holster. She places chipped saucers at two spots with dainty, doll-like cups on them.
“I hope you like decaf because that’s all I’ve got.”
“Decaf is great. Thanks.” The bag itself takes up half the cup, leaving very little room for hot water. It’s clear she’s not used to entertaining others. “Though, I should mention, I’m not actually a—” The whistle of the kettle overpowers my confession.
It smells distinctly like dog food, yet I don’t see any bowls out, which is curious. Normally people with pets live with the incessant jangling of ID tags banging against collars, little paws scampering around rooms. Here, you could hear a pin drop if she weren’t boiling water.
“I’d give you the tour, but I think you get the gist.” She gestures at the rubble around us. “You’re welcome to see yourself around when we finish chatting. I assume you’ve looked at the property profile. It’s not much, but it’s mine, and I don’t want it to be any longer. That’s where you come in.” I have no idea how to come clean now. “Do you think you can sell it?”
I grasp for the right words, but all that comes out is the single wrong one. “No.”
“No? Then why are you here?”
“No, sorry, I didn’t mean no.”
“Then whatdidyou mean?” she asks, growing agitated with me. This woman means business. I slip the blazer off my shoulders to air out my neck. There’s clearly no AC in here(How is she comfortable in that sweater?), and my internal temperature keeps rising. I’ve never been good under pressure.
“I meant I’m not a real estate agent.” That feels good to say. I’m certainly no actor. I couldn’t have given an award-worthy performance even if I wanted to.
“You mean you’re not alicensedreal estate agent?”
