Chapter 4 Dante #2
I don’t step into the room. This morning I touched his shoulder and his arms came up before his eyes did. I’m not doing that to him again. I don’t have a name to call out, either. He never gave one and I never asked.
I knock lightly on the open door, twice.
His breathing breaks and his arm starts up and stops halfway.
He comes up to sitting fast, back against the boxes.
His eyes go to the doorway and find me standing in it with my hands where he can see them.
Three seconds, maybe four. Then whatever was running fast in him shuts off, and what’s left is an exhausted man on a floor, squinting at me through the wreckage of last night.
“The showing is over,” I say. “Time to go back.”
He scrubs a hand down his face. “How’d the open house go?”
“It was a private showing. It went fine.”
“That bad, huh?”
He gets off the floor in stages, one hand on the boxes. I carry the chair back to the kitchen table, shut the sliding glass door and flip the lock. He’s already out and onto the stairs, boots clanging down the metal, while I pull my front door closed and hear the deadbolt catch.
He rides with the window cracked open, defeating my air conditioning, his arm on the sill. I wait until we’re on the highway to lay out the week.
“The service crew comes Monday at eight,” I tell him.
“They seal the house for seven hours, so you’ll need to be somewhere else.
Between now and next Saturday, nothing gets smoked inside the house.
And Saturday a buyer walks through, which means Saturday, you and everything you own need to be invisible. ”
He takes all of it in with his head back against the seat, and I’m starting to think he’s asleep again when he speaks in that deep, gravelly voice.
“Sounds like you’re a man who needs a lot of things from me,” he says. “Which means we have some negotiating to do.” He rolls his head toward me. “You’re going to make a stop first. There’s a liquor store up here on the right. Park close to the door.”
“And if I keep driving?”
“Then Monday your crew knocks on a locked door and I sleep in.”
I know he’s not bluffing. The property management company would need three days and an attorney to tell me whether I can force that door, and I have until Monday at eight.
I think through it fast. Tequila stays in a bottle and a body.
Weed gets into the vents and eventually into the appraisal.
Whatever he’s doing to himself, he was doing it long before I showed up and he’ll be doing it long after closing.
His liver isn’t my listing. The house is my responsibility. He isn’t. I’ve closed worse deals.
I pull into the lot and park close to the door.
He puts his sunglasses on to cross ten feet of parking lot, which seems like a lot of effort for a man who won’t comb his hair.
Through the store window I watch him go straight to a shelf without browsing.
He already knows the layout. Two bottles.
He pays from a fat fold of cash in his front pocket.
The man won’t give a name, but he carries cash around like a contractor.
He comes back across the lot unhurried, sunglasses on, the jeans he slept in riding low on his hips. I read buyers by their clothes for a living. This is not that, and I make myself check my phone for messages that aren’t there until he’s in the car.
He gets in and sets the paper sack between his boots, and I pull out of the lot.
“I don’t like this,” I tell him. “For the record.”
He turns to look at me. I keep my eyes on the road. I don’t explain why I don’t like it, because every version of explaining is a lecture and he doesn’t owe me the listening.
“Duly noted,” he says, and looks out the window.
It’s the first thing I’ve said all day that didn’t bounce off him. We drive the rest of it without talking. It’s not a comfortable silence.
The gate lifts and I take us down narrow streets I could sell in my sleep. The house stands at the end of the cul-de-sac looking exactly like its listing photos, which is the highest compliment I can pay a property.
“On Monday,” I say. “I’ll pick you up at seven-thirty.”
“Alright. Seven-thirty. I’ll be on the curb with a packed bag.”
He agrees so fast I don’t trust it. Then I remember the liquor store. He isn’t agreeing. He’s collecting on a price I already paid. And a man who knows the difference is a man who isn’t done charging me.
He reaches for the door and stops. “Just so we’re clear. The terrace door is going to be open the entire time I live here. I’m telling you now so you can plan your life around it. I’m not shutting the damn door.”
“When the workers arrive, it closes. Ninety percent humidity comes off that water every night, straight through the opening and into the floors. A house like this runs climate control around the clock for a reason.”
“Then the floors and I’ll suffer together for fresh air.”
“They’re twenty-million-dollar floors.”
“Not my twenty million.” He says it light, but the hand on the door handle hasn’t moved. “The door stays open. That one’s not on the table. I’m not asking, I’m telling you.”
“Crack a window. Same air, a fraction of the damage.”
“No. The door. All the way open. Every night I’m in that house.”
“Anything walks off, it’s my signature on the report,” I tell him.
“Nothing’s walking off. I’ll be watching the door. Besides, who would want to steal a damn thing in that house?”
“Help me understand why a door is the one thing you won’t move on.”
“No.”
“It’ll be open when you’re gone and closed when you get back.”
He looks at me across the console. “Alright, as long as I’m not here,” he says, and gets out. He hauls his duffel out of the back and tucks the paper sack under one arm. He’s three steps toward the house when I lower the window.
“Dante,” I call out, loud enough to reach him.
He stops and turns halfway, the sack riding his hip.
“My name,” I say. “For Monday. It’s Dante.”
He doesn’t answer. Long enough that I start to wonder if names are a negotiation too.
“Levi,” he says.
No last name. I don’t chase it. Half the money on this coast is a first name basis and a wire transfer, and I’ve closed every one of them.
He lets himself in, and the front door stays open behind him.
I back out with the windows up, and the best listing of my career standing wide open behind me.