DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Well, at least I know who I’m not selling my house to.

It was Saturday, prime-time for showing properties. We’d endured so many showings during the week that we figured we’d just leave for the afternoon, and let the realtors fight amongst themselves for the lockbox hanging at the front door. Between 10am and 5pm, they’d be crawling about the place like maggots on a porkchop.

So we drove to the beach, visited a few bookstores, wandered around, killed time, and by 5pm, we were ready to be done. We came home, tossed the fresh business cards into the stack, and then discovered an unwanted message on the answering machine: “Hi, I was in earlier to preview your house. I’ll be back just after 5:00 with my clients. I hope that’s OK.” The realtor left a number, which I’d have called to cancel his visit if it wasn’t already so late that they’d be pulling into the driveway any second.

So we sucked it up. Never mind that we’d abandoned the place for hours specifically to not have to deal with all these people… never mind that 5:00 PM is the magic “come again tomorrow” hour… Maybe the client had a lot of money, after all. I’d heard Martha Stewart was buying a house in Marin — maybe after the recent insider-trading scandal she’s decided to look for something a bit more modest.

I regretted my decision as soon as the people arrived. The realtor would have been a plantation owner, had be been born 150 years ago: unpleasant, swaggering, and oily. The first words out of his mouth, spoken with a good-old-boy drawl, were “Have you ever looked into putting a stove and toilet into that studio building?” He didn’t ask about installing a shower. Presumably this is not a fixture he attributed much value to.

I smiled tightly. “No, never thought about it,” I said, “so please shoehorn your greasy bad intentions back into your Lincoln Town Car and drive the hell off my property,” I should have added, along with “Better never than late!” and a cheerful if sarcastic wave. But I let them wander around anyway, even though I could guarantee that they ultimately would not be buying my house.