Nobody Home

Walking around in people’s houses when they aren’t home is an odd part of the Real Estate job. You witness some peculiar things.

I once saw a Basset Hound sprawled on the kitchen floor in front of an open refrigerator door surrounded by a great splatter of former contents of that refrigerator. Stained meat wrappers, mangled Tupperware containers, and various chunks, lumps, and hunks of foodstuff radiated from the snoring and bloated dog in a colorful collage like a Jackson Pollock painting.

Another time, I discovered a rat swimming frantically around in a toilet bowl, fighting for dear life. “Good riddance,” said Bill, my buyer. But I couldn’t leave that rat. Bill looked shocked when I scooped the little guy up with a plunger and flipped him outside. Hey, my kids owned pet rats named Fluffy and Scamper, and this was a cute one.

An odder part of the Real Estate job is walking around in people’s houses when you think they aren’t home, but they are. That oddity occurred three times over the course of a single weekend when I was showing houses to my client, Rosie.

First, in a workshop behind an old country farmhouse Rosie and I came upon an elderly man in overalls slumped over a dented metal desk, his head resting on his arms. I had dutifully yelled “REAL ESTATE!” when I opened the front door of the house; but not the shop. I coughed intentionally. The man jerked suddenly awake, alleviating our concerns that he might be dead, but the surprise appeared to nearly kill him anyway, for he clutched his chest and gasped, “Lordy, Lordy!”

At the next place, Rosie and I looked down from the second-story master bedroom window to the pool below, and beheld a man lying on his back, splayed out on a lounge chair, happily sunbathing in the nude. My front-door announcement had been unheard again. “Let’s get out of here,” whispered Rosie, and we slunk from the house anonymously, though I left a business card on the kitchen counter.

At the third place, we witnessed a lady strolling queen-like across her back yard. She held a wine glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other, and wore a long shimmering silky robe. She might as well have been striding through the grounds of a castle, though her home was modest. Classical music flowed from a table-top radio, enhancing the elegance of the spectacle.

Back at the office, Rosie said, “I’m sold on that blissful place with the lovely lady in the back yard. Let’s make an offer.” She narrowed her eyes. “Did you stage all that just to get me to buy that last house?”

I didn’t, but it’s not a bad idea.