Chapter 2 Dante
I’m in the driveway of the beach house at six in the morning because I don’t trust perfection to hold overnight.
Benji and I finished staging the house late last night after two full days of sourcing, placing, arguing about throw pillows, and sourcing again when the first set of hydrangeas weren’t the right shade of purple. Between us we haven’t lost a showing yet.
I’ve planned everything down to the very last detail. My linen shirt and slacks are pressed. Leather shoes, Italian, cognac brown, chosen specifically because buyers at this price point decide in the first four seconds whether they want to do business with me.
I punch the door code, turn the handle, and push it open.
The smell hits me before I clear the threshold.
Weed, heavy and stale, baked into the air so thoroughly that the AC has been recycling it through the vents for hours, grinding it into the upholstery and every soft surface in the house.
Under the weed, tequila. Under the tequila, the sour chemical smell of liquor metabolized through skin.
The house should smell like hydrangeas and eucalyptus. We left it perfect eight hours ago. I walk into the living room. The hydrangeas are knocked sideways, vase tipped, water pooled across the walnut runner that Benji spent hours selecting from a catalog.
He stood at the dining table last night and arranged those hydrangeas with the eucalyptus loose around them, organic, because he said, “a buyer doesn’t want a formal centerpiece, they want to feel like the flowers were just picked from a garden they haven’t planted yet.
” He adjusted the stems three times. He stepped back and looked at them from the angle a buyer would see walking in from the foyer.
He moved one stem to the left. Now they’re dead on the table in a puddle of water.
The lemons have rolled out of the bowl. Several are on the floor.
The cookbook is shut with the spine up, cracking the binding.
The accent chair I rented from a design house is on its side near the island.
A tequila bottle on the kitchen counter, mostly empty.
Another on the floor next to the sectional, tipped over, a puddle soaking into the hand-knotted rug.
The artisan bread Benji bought and staged perfectly has been torn apart and half of it is gone, crumbs across the cutting board, the counter, the marble floor. Someone was hungry and had no interest in the serrated knife six inches from the loaf.
And on the cream sectional, wrapped in the cashmere throw that Benji folded carefully and placed at the arm yesterday is a man.
Black hair past his ears, stubble that’s almost a beard, wearing a black t-shirt that’s ridden up over his stomach.
Jeans and scuffed boots, one foot on the cushion, one hanging off with the sole on the floor.
He’s on his back with the throw bunched around his shoulders and is completely unconscious.
He’s not small either. Six feet, maybe close to my height.
I quickly do an inventory of the potential damage.
The sectional is an eight-thousand-dollar piece.
The throw he’s wearing around his neck is cashmere and it’s visibly stained.
The rug is hand-knotted and currently absorbing tequila.
Three accent pillows are on the floor. Benji layered them on the sectional and now they’re on the floor because this man threw them off the couch so he could pass out on it.
I run up the stairs to check the other rooms and find them all empty. The only luggage is one duffel bag on the floor.
No broken windows, no jimmied lock. He had the code, which means he got it from someone who had it, and that’s a conversation I need to have with the property management company and possibly the seller.
I only have four hours.
Four hours to re-stage this room, replace the hydrangeas, air out the weed smell, clean the rug, get this man, his bottles, and his dirty boots out of this house, and make it look like none of this happened.
Four hours before the brokers arrive to assess me and the house.
Four hours before they decide whether I’m someone they want to do business with on this coast.
I call Benji. Third ring, his voice comes through thick with sleep.
“It’s six in the morning, Dante.”
“Someone is in the listing.”
He’s awake instantly and I hear the sheets move. “What do you mean, someone’s in the listing? In the beach house?”
“There’s a man asleep on the sectional. Staging is destroyed. The house smells like a rave and the brokers are here at ten.”
“Did you call the police? Dante, please tell me you at least called someone.”
“No.”
“Do you want me to come now? I can be dressed in five minutes, I can bring Mickey, he’s right here—” he asks.
“Absolutely not. No police. Not even Mickey. A police report at this address shows up on every search engine for the next five years and the listing is finished.”
“Is he dangerous?”
I look at the man on the sectional. Shallow, even breathing. Mid-twenties, maybe. Under the stubble the face is annoyingly symmetrical, cheekbones that would photograph well if they weren’t slack and shut down.
“He’s unconscious. He’s not dangerous. At the moment, anyway.”
“Is he alone?”
“I didn’t find anyone else in the house.”
“Is he okay?”
That is so Benji that I almost laugh. I’m standing in my trashed listing four hours before my career-defining showing, and Benji wants to know if the stranger is okay. This is why I love Benji and also why he makes me crazy. The two have never been separable.
“My priority right now is re-staging the hydrangeas,” I say. “Not nursing a drunk man back to health.”
“Dante.”
“He’s breathing. He’s fine. He’s going to be a lot less fine when I wake him up. He’s passed out drunk. Can you get flowers? Hydrangeas and eucalyptus, here by eight?”
“Florist in Seaside opens at eight. I can be there by eight-thirty.”
“Eight-fifteen.”
“Okay. I’m up, I’m moving. I’ll text you when I’m on the road and again when I pull in.”
“I’m waking him up now. He needs to go.”
“Dante, what if he’s—”
“I’ll be fine. Hurry and go get the flowers.”
I hang up and set my face into the expression I use when a seller is about to hear a number they don’t like. I walk toward him and lean close enough to reach him through whatever chemical fog he’s buried under.
“Hey. Wake up.”
He doesn’t move.
I reach over and lightly shake his shoulder. “Wake up. You need to get up.”
His eyes open and his arms come up fast, both forearms crossing over his face, shielding, blocking.
I quickly step back, putting three feet between us.
My hands are at my sides, his arms are up, his chest heaving.
For two seconds neither of us moves. Then he focuses.
He sees how I’m dressed and his arms drop.
He pushes himself to sitting, blinks, scans the room with bloodshot eyes, and then looks back at me.
He takes me in, settles back down into the cushion, and pulls the throw tighter around himself.
“Damn, the wake-up calls are intense here,” he says. “I didn’t ask for one. I got in last night after midnight and went to sleep. I only brought one bag with me. It’s upstairs if you want to go unpack it. Or you can leave. Whatever. Don’t care.”
His voice stops me. It comes from deep in his chest. It’s roughed up from last night, but underneath the damage there’s a Southern drawl I can’t place.
It isn’t the Panhandle, Texas, or even Atlanta.
It’s older than that, more rural, a twang that rolls through the vowels like it grew up in the mountains.
It’s a voice that could sell things. Expensive whiskey. Luxury cars.
The drawl lands in a place inside me the smell of stale tequila should have made impossible, and I put that down to no sleep and move on.
“Who do you think I am?” I ask.
He opens one eye and looks me over again. “The concierge?”
No one in my entire life has looked at me and concluded that I am the help. And this man, wrapped in a very expensive cashmere throw Benji sourced, has decided I’m the bellhop.
“I’m not the concierge.”
He waves a dismissive hand at me. “Butler, whatever. I don’t need anything right now except a few more hours of sleep, so if you could come back later, that’d be fucking fantastic.”
“No, you need to wake up and leave. I’m not your butler. This house is listed for sale. I’m the listing agent. And you have five minutes to get your stuff and get out before I call the police. You’re trespassing.”
He doesn’t react in any way. He doesn’t stand up, doesn’t look for his bag, doesn’t do any of the things a person does when they’ve been told to leave a place. He just blinks at me with startling green eyes from the cushion with the throw pulled up to his chin.
“Did you hear me? Five minutes.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he says. “This house was rented for me. For a month.”
“No, that is not possible,” I tell him. “This house is for sale. It’s not a rental.”
“Well, somebody must’ve turned it into one, because I’ve got a code that works and a confirmation for a paid booking that says otherwise.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Don’t care if you believe me or not. Still not moving.”
“Show me the confirmation. I want to see it.”
“Christ, you’re annoying,” he says, sighing heavily. He reaches toward the floor without sitting up, finds a phone with a cracked screen that’s nearly dead, taps it, scrolls, and holds it up at an angle.
There’s a text message with a code, the same code I used to get in. Below it, a confirmation from a property management company with this address. Monthly booking. Paid in full. Nonrefundable within the booking window. Check-in was yesterday.
“Who rented this house for you?” I ask.
“Doesn’t matter who. Somebody did. I showed up, the code worked, I went to sleep. I’m here for a month. That’s the story.”
“It matters to me who rented it. I signed a listing agreement with the owner of this property weeks ago. This house is for sale. He didn’t mention it going on the rental program.”