The leaking
fridge was the final straw. One too many latent defects had reared their ugly
head, forcing the issue of selling Husband and Wife’s tired starter home,
replete with the former owner’s less-than-fabulous renovations. Once packaged
as having been an elegantly renovated home with high-end finishings, the home
had been more akin to a house of horrors, prompting Husband and Wife to move on
up to a more civilized pied-a-terre.
“If I have
to live in this shit pile of bricks for one more minute, I will burn it to the
ground!” Wife cried.
“Alright,
I’ll look at the MLS listings you sent me last night at three in the morning,
when you should have been sound asleep,” Husband offered.
“How can
you sleep soundly when our bedroom is a furnace in the summer, notwithstanding
our brand new air conditioning system? Lest we not forget, the freight-train
like whirring coming from the fan you have blasting cold air on me all night
long?” Wife asked rhetorically.
“I told you
that I’d switch sides with you since the plug is on your side of the bed. But,
you refused,” Husband replied.
“The left side is my side. It has always been my side and
always will be. Heaven forbid you use some lateral thinking and bought an
extension cord to run under the bed to plug the fan in from your side of the bed,” Wife emphasized.
“Anyway, who the hell renovates a house to its studs and only installs one bloody electrical outlet in the
master bedroom?”
“Same idiot
who leaves ungrounded wires in the furnace room, exposed insulation in the
basement and mould growing inside of the walls of the nanny’s room,” Husband
replied.
Wife, not
wanting to waste more precious time venting, which was distracting Husband from
reviewing the MLS listings she had sent him, turned on the television to numb
out.
“Well,
these five look promising,” Husband stated pointing out on his iPad the houses
he liked. “I’ll set up showings with the agents for later this week.”
“For
tomorrow!” Wife instructed, shutting the television off and tossing the remote
at the fan. “I want to see two sold signs on two front lawns by the end of next
week.”
Two sold
signs in Wife’s stated timeline were not written in the stars. Rather, sixty
unacceptable showings and four months later forced Wife to relent, and she
lifted her geographic embargo on various areas in the city, giving their
realtor more flexibility in finding the couple more housing options to look at.
One early Sunday morning, interrupting Wife’s regularly scheduled political
television program viewing, the realtor called with news that he was swinging
by in twenty minutes to take them to see a brand new listing.
“I have
found you the one!” the realtor advised excitedly, hoping that his time servicing
this couple was coming to an end. “This lovely Victorian is in the swankiest
part of town. It has been renovated by one of the city’s top architectural
teams and is impeccably appointed with only the best high-end finishings. This
home is a stone’s throw from some of the city’s best restaurants, shopping and
places to people watch.”
The
realtor’s car pulled up in front of a historically preserved semi-detached home
that looked as though it was backlit on a Hollywood studio set, emphasizing its
regal character.
“Excuse me,
but when did we ever say we would consider a half of a house?” Wife demanded to
know. Husband remained silent, not wanting to further fan Wife’s raging flames
of frustration. Everyone remained unmoved in the realtor’s car.
“I know it’s
a semi, but it has over four thousand square feet of above ground living
space!” the realtor said exasperatedly.
“What’s
wrong with a semi anyway?” the realtor asked.
“Is this
guy for real?” Wife asked Husband, not expecting an answer. “Do you think I
want to smell my wall neighbour’s foul odours wafting through a shared
ventilation system, when it’s curry night or when he had a bad gastric episode?
Maybe you like to know when it’s sex night for your neighbours, but I certainly
don’t. And, I don’t want them knowing mine either!”
“The
silence from our side would be deafening since it only happens three days a
month,” Husband added laughing. Wife was not amused with Husband’s sexual
disclosure.
“But, it’s
been renovated! It has new ventilation, new pipes, new soundproof insulation
held in by new drywall,” the realtor shrieked.
“Walls are
only so thick. Bottom line, I need to be able to tell my husband to go fuck
himself without having a nosy neighbour listening in on our private marital
conversations without calling the cops,” Wife explained.
“I think I
now have a clearer picture of what you are looking for and I don’t think that
we share the same vision. I’m willing to terminate our buyer’s representation
agreement so you’re free to find what you want with someone who can cater to
your specific needs,” the realtor offered trying to break free from his
albatross. “And, to show that we’re still friends, I won’t even claim a right
to any commission on any listing I’ve shown you, should you end up buying one
of those homes.”
“And the
truth shall set you free,” Husband laughed.
“Two weeks
– that must be a record for us!” Wife laughed acknowledging that they went
through more realtors in the past four months than anyone in MLS history. Or,
so several realty firms that had refused to work with them, after first being
forewarned that Husband and Wife had been boycotted by almost every other
firm with whom they had worked previously, had told them.
“You’re
doing us a favour, really. I’ll find exactly what I want without having a
commission-sucking vampire like you suctioned to my wallet,” Wife shot back.
After two
days passed since breaking ties with their realtor, Husband and Wife returned
to visit the semi, tempted by the square footage and pedigree of its
renovators’ hands. A sale price of two hundred thousand dollars below the
seller’s asking price was accepted, after Wife had made it clear that no one
else would put in an offer once bidders’ agents found out that an offer had
been placed by Husband and Wife, given their reputation amongst the city’s
realtors. Determined not to be wall neighbours with anyone, Husband and Wife
doggedly pursued the octogenarian grandmother living next door with cash
offers, to no avail. Then, one fateful night when the grandmother’s television
stopped working because her cable lines had been cut mysteriously, she
eavesdropped on Husband and Wife’s easily audible conversation, in which Wife
told Husband loudly that they would be hosting both their African-drumming
classes and S&M group sex swinger parties for the next six months, since no
one else offered up their homes for the events. As if on cue, an hour later the
grandmother made an unexpected late night visit to Husband and Wife’s front
door offering to sell them her dilapidated half-a-house for half of what they
had paid for their palace, proving that no matter how good a renovation is, a
semi’s walls were paper thin.
© 2013.
Naomi Elana Zener. All Rights Reserved.
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