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Authors: Laura Lippman
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done that forever. But once that job was done, he was done, too.
My mother sold the house for $75,000. That was a dozen years ago and boy, did we think we had put one over on the buyers. Seventy-five thousand! For a house on Decatur Street in Locust Point. And all cash for my mom, because it had been paid off forever. We went to Hausner’s the night of the closing, toasted our good fortune. The old German restaurant was still open then, crammed with all that art and junk. We had veal and strawberry pie and top-shelf liquor and toasted Grandfather for leaving us such a windfall.
So imagine how I felt when I got a referral for a complete redo at my grandparents’ old address and the real estate guy tells me: “She got it for only $225,000, so she’s willing to put another $100,000 in it and I bet she won’t bat an eyelash if the work goes up to $150,000.”
“Huh” was all I managed. Money-wise, the job wasn’t in my top tier, but then, my grandparents’ house was small even by the neighborhood’s standards, just two stories. It had a nice-size backyard, though, for a rowhouse. My grandmother had grown tomatoes and herbs and summer squash on that little patch of land.
“The first thing I want to do is get a parking pad back here,” my client said, sweeping a hand over what was an overgrown patch of weeds, the chain-link fence sagging around it. “I’ve been told that will increase the value of the property by $10,000, $20,000.”
“You a flipper?” I asked. More and more amateurs were getting into real estate, feeling that the stock market wasn’t for them. They were the worst of all possible worlds, panicking at every penny over the original estimate, riding my ass. You want to flip property for profit, you need to be able to do the work yourself. Or buy and hold. This woman didn’t look like the patient type.
“No, I plan to live here. In fact, I hope to move in as quickly as possible, so time is more important to me than money. I was told you’re fast.”
“I don’t waste time, but I don’t cut corners,” I said. “Mainly, I just try to make my customers happy.”
She tilted her head up. It was the practiced look of a woman who had been looking at men from under her eyelashes for much of her life, sure they would be charmed. And, okay, I was. Dark hair, cut in one of those casual, disarrayed styles, darker eyes that made me think of kalamata olives, which isn’t particularly romantic, I guess. But I really like kalamata olives. With her fair skin, it was a terrific contrast.
“I’m sure you’ll make me very happy” was all she said.
I GUESS HERE IS WHERE I should mention that I’m married going on eighteen years, and pretty happily, too. I realize it’s a hard concept to grasp, especially for a lot of women, but you can be perfectly happy, still in love with your wife, maybe more in love with your wife than you’ve ever been, but it’s eighteen years and a young, firm-fleshed woman looks up at you through her eyelashes and it’s not a crime to think: I like that. Not:
I’d like to hit that,
which I hear the young guys on my crews say. Just: I like that, that’s nice, if life were different, I’d make time for that. But I was married, with two kids and a sweet wife, Angeline, who’d only put on a few pounds and still kept her hair blond and long, and was pretty appreciative of the life my work had built for the two of us. So I had no agenda. I was just weak.
But part of Deirdre’s allure was how much she professed to love the very things whose destruction she was presiding over, even before I told her that the house had belonged to my grandparents. She exclaimed over the wallpaper in their bedroom, a pattern of yellow roses, even as it was steamed off the walls. She ran a hand lovingly over the banister, worn smooth by my younger hands, not to mention my butt a time or two. The next day it was gone, yanked from its moorings by my workers. She all but composed an ode to the
My mother sold the house for $75,000. That was a dozen years ago and boy, did we think we had put one over on the buyers. Seventy-five thousand! For a house on Decatur Street in Locust Point. And all cash for my mom, because it had been paid off forever. We went to Hausner’s the night of the closing, toasted our good fortune. The old German restaurant was still open then, crammed with all that art and junk. We had veal and strawberry pie and top-shelf liquor and toasted Grandfather for leaving us such a windfall.
So imagine how I felt when I got a referral for a complete redo at my grandparents’ old address and the real estate guy tells me: “She got it for only $225,000, so she’s willing to put another $100,000 in it and I bet she won’t bat an eyelash if the work goes up to $150,000.”
“Huh” was all I managed. Money-wise, the job wasn’t in my top tier, but then, my grandparents’ house was small even by the neighborhood’s standards, just two stories. It had a nice-size backyard, though, for a rowhouse. My grandmother had grown tomatoes and herbs and summer squash on that little patch of land.
“The first thing I want to do is get a parking pad back here,” my client said, sweeping a hand over what was an overgrown patch of weeds, the chain-link fence sagging around it. “I’ve been told that will increase the value of the property by $10,000, $20,000.”
“You a flipper?” I asked. More and more amateurs were getting into real estate, feeling that the stock market wasn’t for them. They were the worst of all possible worlds, panicking at every penny over the original estimate, riding my ass. You want to flip property for profit, you need to be able to do the work yourself. Or buy and hold. This woman didn’t look like the patient type.
“No, I plan to live here. In fact, I hope to move in as quickly as possible, so time is more important to me than money. I was told you’re fast.”
“I don’t waste time, but I don’t cut corners,” I said. “Mainly, I just try to make my customers happy.”
She tilted her head up. It was the practiced look of a woman who had been looking at men from under her eyelashes for much of her life, sure they would be charmed. And, okay, I was. Dark hair, cut in one of those casual, disarrayed styles, darker eyes that made me think of kalamata olives, which isn’t particularly romantic, I guess. But I really like kalamata olives. With her fair skin, it was a terrific contrast.
“I’m sure you’ll make me very happy” was all she said.
I GUESS HERE IS WHERE I should mention that I’m married going on eighteen years, and pretty happily, too. I realize it’s a hard concept to grasp, especially for a lot of women, but you can be perfectly happy, still in love with your wife, maybe more in love with your wife than you’ve ever been, but it’s eighteen years and a young, firm-fleshed woman looks up at you through her eyelashes and it’s not a crime to think: I like that. Not:
I’d like to hit that,
which I hear the young guys on my crews say. Just: I like that, that’s nice, if life were different, I’d make time for that. But I was married, with two kids and a sweet wife, Angeline, who’d only put on a few pounds and still kept her hair blond and long, and was pretty appreciative of the life my work had built for the two of us. So I had no agenda. I was just weak.
But part of Deirdre’s allure was how much she professed to love the very things whose destruction she was presiding over, even before I told her that the house had belonged to my grandparents. She exclaimed over the wallpaper in their bedroom, a pattern of yellow roses, even as it was steamed off the walls. She ran a hand lovingly over the banister, worn smooth by my younger hands, not to mention my butt a time or two. The next day it was gone, yanked from its moorings by my workers. She all but composed an ode to the
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