Alternatives to Sex (15 page)

Charlotte and Samuel arrived in my office late on a Saturday morning when the air was warm and damp, a humid weather system left over from the summer. He held the door open for her again, always the gentleman, but this time, she strode in ahead of him, looking more addled than she had in the past, her hair in disarray and her face flushed pink, as if she’d just had an angry outburst. She was scowling, never an attractive expression. It was obvious they’d been arguing, and there was something in her determined gait that made me suspect they weren’t talking to each other. I waved them to my desk and experienced a moment of confused pleasure as I watched them walk toward me. I had half a dozen places to show them, and by the end of the afternoon, they’d both be in better moods.
Happy couple,
I wrote in my notes. Not an observation but a goal.

“We’ve got a big day ahead of us,” I said as they sat at my desk.

“Excellent,” Samuel said. “But before we get to that, we have a little present for you.” He handed me a coffee table book neatly wrapped in tissue paper. “Go ahead and open it now,” he said, with the enthusiasm of a child. It was a pictorial history of Nahant with a sepia print of a rocky shoreline on the front. “We thought you might find it interesting.”

“He thought you might find it interesting,” Charlotte said. “I thought it might add some needed clutter to your apartment.”

“You’ve seen his apartment?” Samuel asked. “When? You didn’t tell me.”

“I don’t tell you everything,” she said. “I fully expect you don’t tell me everything either. Care to disagree? I didn’t think so.”

“It was a simple question, Charlotte.” He bit her name.

“To which I gave a simple answer.”

It can be excruciating and embarrassing to be in the company of a squabbling couple, but on the plus side, you can be reasonably certain they prefer your company to each other’s.

Samuel shifted to the front of his seat. He’d replaced the business suit I’d first seen him in with a pair of blue jeans and a jersey. He looked less comfortable and relaxed in this casual wear than he had in the suit. The green polo shirt fit his lean torso snugly and emphasized his athletic build. Probably he was one of those men whose obsession with running and working out is a silent rebuke to his wife’s fleshiness. I was guessing he chose to do his sit-ups in front of her, although they probably had ten empty rooms in their house.

“I’ll show you the picture of our place,” he said, sliding the book toward me.

“Oh, really,” said Charlotte. “Can’t we do this show-and-tell later? I mean, how is it relevant?”

“I’ll take a quick look and then examine it more carefully later,” I said.

“How shamelessly diplomatic you are, William.”

Samuel turned to a photo of a rambling, shingled summer house that appeared to be perched on the edge of a rocky cliff. “Does it have some historical significance?” I asked. The photo took up an entire page of the book.

“The architect built a lot of grand old summer houses on the East Coast.”

“And this,” Charlotte said, closing the book, “was an early and relatively minor effort. Can we focus on the future, instead of dwelling on the glorious past?”

“I would
love
to do that,” Samuel said. “I’ve been trying to do that all morning.”

“Now that it’s convenient for you to bury the hatchet. At long, long last.”

“Oh, give it up, sweetheart, please. What have you got for us, William?”

“Lots of appointments,” I told them. “I’ll start out by taking you to see one or two that are respectable but unlikely, just to soften you up. Then we go to a couple of deeply flawed, and then, with your expectations lowered, I take you to the most likely candidate.”

“We couldn’t just start there?” Sam asked. “Obviously, we’re not in the most lighthearted mood.”

“Two people, two moods, Sam.”

“Let’s do it my way,” I said, trying to steer them away from their argument. “You’ll end up liking the likely candidate much more.”

As I was leading them out to my car, Samuel assured me that the picture of their house was not a very good one, and that with the landscaping and the remodeling that had been done over the years, it was barely recognizable.

“I’ve invited him to the party,” Charlotte said. “Assuming we still
have
the party. He can form his own opinion then.”

Charlotte insisted Sam take the front seat of my spotless car for his long legs, and she sat in the back, adjusting her hair in the rearview mirror, and catching my eye. I pulled out of the parking space with an unusually clear sense of purpose, happy to be the calm center of this stormy weather system.

The first apartment was a three-bedroom in a low-slung modern building along the river. The building was famous for its services and impressive views, but to my way of thinking, the apartments were little better than overgrown motel units, with a single-exposure fixation on the river that made me feel claustrophobic.

“The question is,” I said, leading them through the rooms, “could you picture yourselves living here?”

“I could picture Samuel living here,” Charlotte said. “Alone.” The comment was so bluntly hostile, both she and Samuel laughed. She opened the sliding glass door, another motel fixture, and stepped onto the narrow balcony. A warm breeze carried in the smell of mud from the sluggish river and the sound of traffic, and lifted Charlotte’s summery skirt above her knees. “Do people like having cars racing past them day and night?”

“Surprisingly, yes,” I said. “Most people find it comforting, a hedge against the terrible reminder that, essentially, we’re alone.”

“Like marriage,” Samuel said, and grinned, pleased with himself.

I took them to five more apartments, some that I’d visited, others that I’d only seen listings for. A sprawling three-bedroom in a run-down, castellated brick building outside of Harvard Square; a dark apartment that had been pieced together on one half of a Greek Revival house near the river; a loft that was daunting in size and far too open and sunny to imagine living in; a peculiar little converted carriage house buried under a chestnut tree; and to round out the trip to unlikely places, an expensive apartment in a bland building similar to the one we’d first visited that afternoon. None ridiculously inappropriate, but none right.

I could see Charlotte getting more depressed as the afternoon wore on. Most people get depressed when shuttling through the Goldilocks routine of visiting apartments that are wrong in small, specific ways and make the idea of moving seem pointless. Too big, too cramped, too dark, too chopped up, too expansive, too new. I sometimes wondered if people wouldn’t be happier if housing were run more like an adoption. You put in an application with certain requests and requirements, and when something comes up, it’s handed over to you, and you make it yours. It becomes the perfect place to live, not because it meets certain criteria, but because it’s yours.

The last apartment I had to show them was unquestionably the most promising—roomy, eccentric, and full of charm. It was on a pleasant side street lined with oak trees, not far from the river, walking distance to a few recklessly expensive food markets. I pulled up in front of the house slowly. It was an overgrown Queen Anne with a hipped roof, cross gable, two added-on towers, and a bunch of neoclassical porches that had been pasted onto unlikely corners of the house over the years. Somehow or other, they’d attached a sprawling Colonial Revival addition to the back. The house was painted a deep salmony color that everyone in the office found charming but that reminded me of undercooked meat.

I could tell by Charlotte’s reverential silence she approved of the outside.

“There are eight units in the house,” I said. “They’re all different, each with its own porch or cupola.”

“Really?” Sam said. “Cupola. I’d love one of those.”

People are mad for cupola rooms, even though no one knows what to do with them except use them for storage. Their unit had a porch instead, less glamorous but more practical.

I’d made an arrangement by telephone with the owners, a couple in their thirties. The wife had told me they’d be out doing errands for the better part of the day, but as I was fiddling with the keys, the husband opened the door. He stood there with a look of sullen discontent and pushed at his glasses.

“I’m William Collins. I’m from Cambridge Properties and we—”

“I know,” he said. “We promised we’d be out of here, and I’m sorry, but things got hectic.”

From somewhere inside, a woman called out, “Who
is
it?” in a tone that was not especially welcoming.

“It’s them,” the man called back.

“Who?”

“Them! The real estate people.”

“Tell them I’ll be right out,” she called.

“I don’t need to convey that message, do I?”

He led us into the living room, bright from a bay of rounded windows at one end. The apartment was on the top floor of the house, and the branches of the oak tree in front, just beginning to turn autumn colors, were tossing around in the warm breeze, and the afternoon sky peeking through the leaves was deep blue. I made introductions, and told Barry, the husband, I’d be happy to show my clients around myself. “Probably not a good idea,” he said. Clearly, this was a reference to the voice from the other room.

It was a beautiful apartment, and the rich colors of the walls—dense shades of peach and burnt umber—the perfect placement of the furniture, the layers of drapes, the padded valances, the abundance of toss pillows all screamed interior decorator, which in turn screamed software millionaire. My brother, Kevin, was in software. His wife was in software. My rich cousins were or had been in software. Everyone on the news was in software. I had no idea what it meant to “be in software.” I would never learn because “software” was one of those words, like “carbohydrates” and “Cher,” that triggers an off switch in my brain.

Less attractive than the decor was a heavy smell of bacon that permeated the apartment. If the sellers had been my clients, I’d have told them to avoid cooking this particular food until the apartment sold. Everyone likes to eat bacon, but no one wants to be thought of as the kind of person who indulges. Much better to bake fresh bread, something no one does but everyone wants to picture themselves doing.

Barry, the husband, was a short man dressed in a pair of short pants and sandals. He wasn’t plump, but there was a soft fleshiness to his pale face and something in the too-tight fit of his clothes that made me think he’d probably gained weight recently. Probably the result of marriage. Almost everyone I knew gained vast amounts of weight in the first years of married life, further support for a theory I have that people generally marry for love—of food.

He had the unhappy, confused expression a lot of recently married men get in their early thirties when they’re wondering where their youth and freedom went, questions soon to be made irrelevant by the arrival of a child or the beginning of a messy love affair.

Vanessa, the voice from beyond, appeared in the living room, wiping her hands on a white bar towel she had looped through the belt of her pants. She looked alarmingly similar to her husband, in size, shape, coloring, and even hairstyle. “I’m sorry we weren’t out as we promised, but we got busy all of a sudden.”

“I told them,” Barry said.

“Well, I’m telling them again.” She jabbed this rebuke home with a grin and exposed a mouthful of braces. “Let’s start in the kitchen and work our way forward.” She introduced herself to Samuel and Charlotte with an exuberance that struck me as overdone, and Barry, rendered insignificant, collapsed into a chair and picked up a magazine.

“This really is a wonderful apartment,” Vanessa said, leading us down a long hallway. “We’re sad about having to leave, but Barry got a fantastic job offer out in Columbus and I’m from there and we’ll be closer to my mother, who isn’t doing very well right now. Barry’s being great about the whole thing. I’m sure I wouldn’t be half as agreeable as he’s being, if the tables were turned. Believe me, my mother is
not
easy to take. Like mother, like daughter, I’m afraid.” She looked over her shoulder and smiled at us. “For the past year, I’ve felt a need to be closer to home. The job and my mother are convenient excuses.”

Her tone was so convincingly warm and cheerful as she spoke about her husband, I couldn’t connect it to the chilly scene that they’d played out in the living room. But then again, it’s not uncommon to discover that people talk glowingly about a spouse whom they seem, in person, to dislike intensely, as if they have an idealized version they carry in their heads and then launch into angry disappointment when confronted with the genuine article.

“Let me show you the porch off the back,” she said. “It’s one of the nicer features. I figure it’s best to start there since it’s probably where you’ll spend most of your time.”

The day had turned into a breezy dream, with big dignified clouds sailing through a blue sky. Weather like this seemed to hold out the promise that if you were very good and played your cards right, your life would always be just this pleasant. It was real estate weather, the kind of atmospheric conditions that make any dwelling seem like the absolute best place on earth to live.

The porch was a square outdoor room with a teak floor and a surprisingly high ceiling held aloft at either end by white pillars. The shape of it and its position on the house made it feel like a gazebo floating in the trees. Not far off, we could see the rooftops of the Brattle Street mansions and a faint sparkle of sunlight on the river. Samuel stood off to one side of the porch, gazing out at the view, making a noble attempt at appearing interested. If his eyes were focused on the trees, his mind, it was obvious, was somewhere else. And when I looked back at Charlotte, she was watching her husband, not with anger or hostility, but with understanding and a weary kind of sorrow.

I started to follow Vanessa into the house, but Charlotte pulled me aside and waited until her husband was out of sight. “I want this apartment,” she said.

“I knew you’d like it. Wait until you see the rest. There are a few oddities, but nothing seriously wrong.”

“No. I mean I really want this place. I can see us living here, happily.” Her tone was pleading, almost desperate, and although she was talking about happiness, she looked miserable. “Can you talk Samuel into it?”

“I don’t think so. I think the two of you need to discuss it and come to a decision. That’s how it usually works.”

“Usually, yes, even for us. But not today. It’s the right move for everyone. You’d benefit as well. You could try. You could try to help me out, all right?”

Vanessa reappeared at the end of the hallway and beckoned us. “There’s a lot more to see,” she said.

Charlotte touched my arm and tilted her head, a silent plea.

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said.

People exhibit less interest in the specifics of a potential new home when they’ve decided, based on an intangible emotional response, that this is the place for them. When a customer starts asking for a lot of details about the boiler and the gutters, I can tell they’re looking for an excuse to walk out without making an offer. As Vanessa led us through the maze of rooms, Samuel hauled out an impressive list of questions: What was the condition of the roof? How recently had the plumbing been updated? Had the basement been tested for radon gas? Were there, as far as they knew, any underground oil storage tanks anywhere on the property? Mildew? Mold?

Barry appeared in the bedroom with his hands jammed tightly into the pockets of his shorts, and offered to show Samuel his study. As often happened in these real estate transactions, the couples were forming alliances along gender lines, leaving me stranded gawkily in the middle.

I followed the guys. Barry’s study was a tiny room off the hallway, a closet that had been expanded and brightened by way of a dinner-plate-sized window. It was tightly packed with computer equipment and bookshelves holding the usual assortment of discs, DVDs, and similar computer-related accouterments that had risen to importance since books had become irrelevant cultural artifacts. This room existed in nearly every living space occupied by a heterosexual couple, and it was always the exclusive domain of the man. At some point, the husband had retreated to a remote corner of the house and claimed it as his own. A basement, a workshop in a garage, a study behind the kitchen, a converted closet under the stairs. Inevitably, it was the location of the computer, and given my own computer habits, I couldn’t help believing that not all of these men were spending all of their time comparing prices on automotive supplies and looking for the cheapest airfare to St. Louis.

Crammed into the little room, my head nearly brushing the ceiling, I felt a wave of sympathy for Charlotte and a sudden closeness to Sam. Barry left us alone in the study, and Sam took a seat at the narrow, built-in desk.

“What’s your reaction so far?” I asked.

He shrugged and looked around the room. “Not very impressed. I was hoping for something more open, more space.”

“Charlotte’s quite taken with it.”

“Oh? How do you know that? I suppose she told you. Well, wouldn’t it be nice if she’d thought to tell me? It might be the more sensible way to go about it.”

“I wasn’t going to mention this because I don’t want to put any pressure on you, but I just checked with the listing broker, and there’s some very serious interest in the place. She’s expecting an offer later this weekend.” It was the kind of lie Jack was always telling his clients. I’d sit at my desk, listening to him spin out these imaginary scenarios, hoping the client would hang up on him. They seemed like such obvious fabrications, but they almost always worked.

“Is that so?” He sounded skeptical.

“A Harvard Business School professor and his wife. She didn’t give me the name, of course, or too many details. It might be wise to make an offer this afternoon. I think it would please Charlotte a great deal.”

“I’ll take that into consideration,” he said, and pushed himself up from the chair.