Page 126 of Perfect Mess

Later, as I was sitting in the bathroom picking spinach out of my teeth, I had a moment of clarity. Like a lightning bolt straight from the sky. I knew exactly where I had gone wrong. I had been distracted by all the distractions. Distracted by feelings. Distracted by relationships. Distracted by love. I had been so busy crafting plans and hatching schemes I had gone completely off track. Book signings? Nature walks? Dungeons and Dragons? Distractions all. A complete waste of time.

What Iwanteddidn’t matter. What Ineededwas all that did matter. And what I needed was to focus on work. As I continued sitting there waiting for the pizza and my stomach to reach some sort of compromise, I decided right then and there that I would put all of my focus on work from now on. My number one priority was finishing Aunt Catherine’s house and getting it sold. Before the bank repossessed my car.

Sitting there waiting for the pizza to figure out which way it was going next, I realized that when you let yourself fall victim to spending too much time with someone, you lose sight of what really matters in life. Like making money. Paying bills. And checking out the balance of your 401k every couple of hours to see how much longer you have to earn a paycheck before you can quit civilization, run away to a remote tropical island, and drink strawberry daiquiris all day. Where you never have to see or talk to anyone ever again.

Jack had become a distraction.

Gary had become a distraction.

Even Janet, my best friend, had become a distraction.

What did I know about relationships? Nothing. Which is why I never should have gotten involved at all. I must have been out of my mind for wasting so much time with Gary. We never had a chance. Like burning a candle from both ends. No, not a candle, a stick of dynamite. Eventually, inevitably, it was going to explode. Like eating an entire pizza with extra cheese and spinach.

* * *

A week went by.Janet never called me back. Jack never called me back. And no, Gary didn’t call me back either.

The good news was that because everyone I knew and cared about had abandoned me, it made it a lot easier to uphold my new oath. It’s easy to avoid distractions when they never come your way.

Over those next few weeks, I focused all of my time and energy on getting Aunt Catherine’s house ready for the market. I rearranged the furniture a couple hundred times. I switched out the flowers in the clay pots on the porch. I scrubbed down the wallpaper with a non-bleach cleaner and a soft sponge so the little pink blossoms really popped, careful not to touch the penciled measurements. The new owners would surely erase them, but I couldn’t do it myself.

When things were as close to perfect as I could get them, I planned an open house, advertising all over Central Florida. I started printing a stack of flyers on the office copy machine, but then it jammed on me, backed up like a gastrointestinal track trying to digest an entire cheese and spinach pizza.

Bonnie helped me fish a mangled piece of copy paper out of the inner bowels of the machine. “So you’re really going to sell it?”

Joyce must have seen the puzzled look on my face because she added, “You put so much work into it. Seems a shame to let it go.”

I had put a lot of work into that house. And I had to admit, the place had really come together. Purrfect was happy there, obviously. After all, he had stayed even after Aunt Catherine was gone. Not to mention the pool was perfect for entertaining. Especially if someone came over that had kids. But I didn’t have to worry about that anymore. I doubted I would ever entertain anyone ever again.

“Of course I’m going to sell it,” I said, using two hands to extract a crinkled sheet from the feeder tray. “I don’t need a lot of space for one person. And a big house like that means there’s more to take care of and keep clean. Why wouldn’t I sell it?”

“Sentimental value?” Joyce offered.

“I have no sentiments.” I wadded up the crinkled piece of paper and threw it in the trash. “That’s the problem with society today. Houses are things that shouldn’t evoke any kind of emotion. They’re assets. Investments to be bought and sold. And if I don’t sell my Aunt Catherine’s place, my asset is going to turn into a liability real fast.”

Bonnie and Joyce must have read my expression because they said nothing more.

Once the copy machine was ungummed, I finished printing out the flyers and passed a few around to the other agents in the office. I wrote the access code for the front door on each of them so they could show Aunt Catherine’s house to their clients, even if I wasn’t there.

“You’ll come first thing in the morning when I have the open house, right?” I asked Bonnie and Joyce to bring their clients over early, so I could use them for a dry-run.

“Sure, I have a retired pastor who wants to move to this area with his wife and mother-in-law,” said Joyce.

“And I’ve got a family from Miami with four kids,” said Bonnie. “They’ve been looking for a house with a pool.”

“Great,” I said, as I packed up my things to go. My plan was to stuff all the flyers under doormats and tape them to light poles. But then I thought of an even better place to distribute the flyers, with high foot traffic and a captive audience. A new plan formed.

* * *

I waited until Sunday,the day of the farmer’s market at Lake Eola. I got there first thing in the morning, to stake out a suitable spot in the flyer line. Those free colon screening people were vicious, so I had to establish my territory early.

That’s what I told myself. But I think we all know why I was really there.

I handed out a few flyers, then caught myself drifting further and further down the line. Past the acupuncture lady. Past the save the whales dude. Past the ‘You’re All Going to Hell Unless You Find Jesus’ guy at the very end of the line.

I handed out a few more flyers, but it was hard to concentrate. I tried to look past all the swans nesting under the trees, but I couldn’t see Gary’s tent from where I was standing.Was he even there?

No distractions. No distractions. No distractions.

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