Page 12 of Perfect Mess

“At least he didn’t give you mouth to mouth.”

Janet never showed.

ChapterThree

As soon as my alarm went off the next morning, I snatched my alarm clock off the bedside table and hurled it across the room. I was supposed to get up early to meet the new painter at Aunt Catherine’s house, but my head felt like a herd of cattle stomped all over it, so I decided to sleep in.

Eventually, I had to get out of bed to pee. While I was sitting there, I checked my phone to see if Janet had called. She hadn’t.Weird.I thought best friends were supposed to check in on you after a near death experience.

I saw a text from the new painter, though. He was waiting for me. Judging by the number of texts, he had been waiting a long time. And not patiently.

I texted him the door code and told him to get started. All the paint and supplies were already there, left behind by the last painter, painter #4, the one who quit when I asked him to touch up the hallway again because he still hadn’t painted over the paw prints.

For some reason, I couldn’t seem to find a competent painter who could get the job done, with each excuse or mishap even crazier than the last. Some people accuse me of being a perfectionist. Okay, many people. What can I say? I have high standards.

I texted the new painter I would get to Aunt Catherine’s house as soon as I could. Technically, it wasn’t Aunt Catherine’s house anymore, it was mine.

Aunt Catherine was my father’s mother’s sister. She never got married.Smart woman.Never had kids.Really smart.My father was her only nephew. When she wrote out her will, he was her only next of kin. But since he wasn’t around when she died, everything she owned went to my father’s only next of kin. Me.

Still sitting in the bathroom, I considered the possibility that getting screwed over by cosmic forces was hereditary. You see, my great Aunt Catherine got thrown under the bus. Literally. She was ninety-nine years old. Smoked like a chimney, drank like a sailor, ate like a diabetic pig. And despite it all, she was in perfect health. Except her eyesight.

One rainy Tuesday, on her way to bingo, she stepped off a sidewalk in front of a bus full of schoolchildren. Wham! What a way to go. You make it ninety-nine years in this life and then you get plowed down a week before you turn one hundred. That’s the Universe for you.

My phoned binged. The painter replied with a thumb’s up emoji in response to my last text telling him I would get there as soon as I could.

Still sitting in the bathroom, I took an exploratory sniff of my armpit. Notes of hay. Barn. Cow fart. The scent of the previous day’s disaster stuck to my body like cow flavored super glue.

I stripped out of my pajamas and jumped into the shower. I squeezed half a bottle of cucumber melon body wash into a luffa and scrubbed my skin raw. If I still smelled like cow farts after all this, at least the farts were from a cow that ate a lot of cucumbers and melons.

After showering, I got dressed and made myself a banana kale protein shake for breakfast. It was disgusting. So I dumped that and toasted two frozen waffles instead. I drowned them in maple syrup and covered them in whipped cream. Then I added half a bag of chocolate chips and rainbow colored sprinkles. There were enough calories on my plate to feed a third world country.

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I gotto Aunt Catherine’s house a little after noon. Aunt Catherine had spent most her life working in a factory embroidering souvenir T-shirts for tourists. The hours were long; the paychecks were small, and the vacation time was non-existent. It was like the Florida version of a sweatshop in China. Though she told me once they had a nice dental plan.

After saving every penny she could, Aunt Catherine bought her first and only house on an oak lined street in downtown Sanford. The house had a wrap around front porch and a big backyard with a pool.

I’m sure it was lovely when it was brand new. I bet when she first bought it, it was a dream come true. But after almost fifty years, without a single upgrade or refresh, it was now on the nomination ballot to be officially added as the tenth circle of hell. The foundation was crumbling, the trim was rotting, and between the overgrown weed garden, cobweb crusted windows, and creepy looking rusted fencing, it looked like the set of a horror movie.

As I pulled into the driveway, I saw a white van parked on the street in front of the mailbox. Except it wasn’t just on the street. Two of the tires had gone up over the curb and were now sitting on the front lawn. My landscape guy, Leo, had put in new sod just last week. New sod which was now being mushed by van tires. Worse, there was a trail of stomped grass clearly visible between the van and the front door. As if someone, a painter perhaps, had marched back and forth across the front lawn multiple times carrying a ladder and heavy cans of paint. The green grass was already turning yellow. I had to remind myself to breathe.

I snarled as I put Charlotte into park and turned off her ignition. Charlotte, by the way, was my car. A red-head. That is an Imola Red BMW. Premium package. Comfort package. Technology package. Top of the line all the way. Could I afford her? No. But in real estate, it’s not just the house that has to keep up appearances. Success breeds success. Or more specifically, the appearance of success makes potential clients think you know what you’re doing.

Charlotte was like the car version of a trophy wife. A lot of upkeep, secretly hated me, and as a short-term lease, would only stick around until the money ran out. If I didn’t flip Aunt Catherine’s house quickly, Charlotte would be shacking up with another owner soon.

With the economy and the housing market the way they were, costs were up, materials were scarce, and good help, painters especially, were in short supply. My renovation was well over budget and let’s just say my bank account didn’t have a lot of wiggle room for cost overruns and schedule delays.

I left Charlotte in the driveway and marched down the sidewalk toward the van, taking care not to step on the newly installed, newly trampled sod. As I got closer, I could feel my temperature rising. And not just from the sweltering heat.

I know what you’re thinking. It’s just a little grass, right? Wrong. You see, everyone knows the number one rule in real estate is location, location, location. But what is less known, though almost as important, is the number two rule of real estate. Curb appeal, curb appeal, curb appeal.

Not once in all my years selling houses did a prospective buyer gush about the steel reinforced concrete foundation. In the history of real estate, not one time did a buyer offer above asking price for the type K copper plumbing. People didn’t care about what’s on the inside. It’s the outside that counts. Looks aren’t everything, they’re the only thing. What seals the deal are high end fixtures. Feng Shui furnishing. A gourmet kitchen.

Speaking of curb appeal, once I got a better look at it, the new painter’s van definitely did not have curb appeal, or any type of appeal at all. It was a hunk of junk. Dents and rust covered the back bumper. Scratches streaked the door like it had sideswiped a telephone pole. One of the side windows was cracked.Was this thing even road legal?Stenciled lettering on the side of the van read Wright Touch. Right touch? Looked like the wrong touch to me. I hoped the new guy could paint better than he could drive.

I turned back toward the house, fully intending to give the new painter a piece of my mind. That’s when I noticed the front door standing wide open. My mouth dropped. I could hear the the air compressor on the side of the house spinning faster than the engine on a turbo charged jet. Dollar bills with little wings on them were billowing out the front door.

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