“Yes, I do…”
“No, you don’t.”
“All right, I don’t.”
Brenda sighed. “Oh, well,” she said, throwing a bunch of grapes on a plate. “It was all Robbie’s fault!”
“Robbie? Why?”
“Because she buys summer flavors just so she can catch me, that’s why! Anyhow, I had to run out and get another pint to put back in the freezer, but when I got back, Robbie was already home, so I put it in my purse and I forgot about it until this morning. When Robbie got up, there was this green gooey stuff leaking out all over the floor.”
Maggie had heard something like this before; only the last time, it had been an entire coconut cake Brenda had hidden in the top of the linen closet, and Brenda had blamed the ants for her getting caught.
“Oh dear. What did Robbie say?”
“Oh… you know Robbie. She said, ‘I guess that pint of ice cream just jumped out of the freezer into your purse when you weren’t looking, didn’t it?’ ”
“What did you say?”
“What could I say? Anyhow, I didn’t forget to call Cecil. We have two tickets for the Dervishes. I’m sorry I’m late, but I had to take everything out and wash it all off. My checkbook is just ruined, but enough about me… what did you do last night?”
Maggie started to say something, but a gal from Ingram Realty walked in, and the open house started.
THANKFULLY, A LOT of agents had shown up, including Babs Bingington, who had marched through and, as she left, made her usual snide remark: “Well… it’s not Mountain Brook.” Unfortunately, she was right. Since the market was down, Brenda and Maggie had been happy to get a call from the owners of a midpriced home in a part of town they didn’t used to handle. But the minute they walked inside, they knew it would be a problem trying to show it. The wife, “Just call me Velma,” collected what she lovingly referred to as “pinecone art.” Everywhere you looked, there were hundreds of pinecones with little plastic eyes, dressed as Santa’s elves or as Scarlett O’Hara in evening dresses, and pinecone babies in diapers or in tiny pinecone cribs, and she informed them with a happy smile, “I’ve got lots more up in the bedroom and out in the garage.”
Oh, dear. How do you tell a nice woman like that that potential buyers wouldn’t find the pinecones just darling, “like part of the family,” as she did? How could they explain, in a nice way, that the pinecones and all the geegaws had to go? Collectors were always a problem. Trying to separate people from their eight hundred spoons from around the world or their collection of ceramic chickens, pigs, cocker spaniels, cats, elephants, cows, birds, deviled egg plates, teapots, or whatever they collected was always difficult. They’d once had a client with forty-two toy Chihuahuas, all named Tinker-Bell. Trying to show that house had been a nightmare. But thankfully, Maggie had managed to talk Velma into letting her put away some of the pinecones for today’s showing.
AFTER THE OPEN house, Brenda said she was late for one of her many political meetings. Maggie told her to go on; she would see her later at the office. Maggie didn’t mind closing up. It was nice to see Brenda so excited. Brenda loved politics. The only really strong opinion Maggie ever had about politics, she had learned in the movies. After seeing Doctor Zhivago, she knew she could never be a Communist. The scene when poor Dr. Zhivago (Omar Sharif) came back to Moscow after the war and found that his beautiful family home had been taken over by a horde of strangers had really bothered her.
Before she left, Maggie had to put all the pinecone art she had hidden back where it had been. She then went into the kitchen and gathered up all the realtors’ business cards they had left on the counter and noticed that Babs had left two cards with BIRMINGHAM’S NUMBER ONE TOP-SELLING REALTOR stamped across the top in bright red ink-just to rub it in.
As usual, when she had come through the house today, Babs had completely ignored Maggie and been rude to everyone else. Maggie had always been so uncomfortable around Babs; it was hard to be around someone who just hated you, particularly when you didn’t know why. As Maggie was locking up, something occurred to her. The next realtors’ open house wasn’t until Wednesday. Today was the last time she would ever have to see Babs Bingington again, and if that wasn’t something to look forward to, she didn’t know what was. In fact, as of Monday, she would be saying goodbye to the never-ending saga of real estate forever, and not a minute too soon.
Besides being physically dangerous, real estate was also an emotional roller coaster. Dealing with people selling their homes was always tricky. Some would not leave the house and would follow the potential buyers from room to room. And there were no guidelines to offer help, no official set of rules for real estate etiquette. She was constantly surprised at the cruel things people would say about another person’s home.
IT WAS ABOUT four o’clock when Maggie pulled into her parking spot behind the office. Red Mountain Realty was located in a charming old stone building right in the middle of the village of Mountain Brook. When Hazel was alive, all twelve desks had been filled with busy agents, the phones ringing, and the place had bustled with activity. But now it was mostly quiet-unless, of course, Ethel was on one of her “in my day” rants.
It was said of Ethel that she was set in her ways, but in fact, Ethel just plain didn’t like the way the world was headed and made no bones about it. And this afternoon, she was on her Hollywood rant (again). “In my day, the movie stars were glamorous, but now they all want to look just like everybody else; they go out in public wearing any old rag. Back then, you’d never catch any of them running out to the store in cut-off blue jeans. In my day, the movie stars were carefree and fun. Now they all have causes and take themselves so seriously, running all over the world, palling around with dictators, bad-mouthing America. But they sure don’t mind taking all the money they make here. I say they should all just keep their big mouths shut and act.”
Brenda laughed. “That would be kind of hard to do.”
“You know what I mean, and I just give up on the movies. Every damn one has the same plot: everybody in authority is corrupt, and every lead character is a murderer, a thief, a dope dealer, or worse. Hell, if I wanted to spend time with criminals, which I don’t, I could go to the jail and visit for free. Why don’t they make movies about nice people? When I go to the movies, I want to be uplifted and feel good after I leave, not worse. Nowadays, if there is a movie about killers, perverts, or child molesters that shows the very worst side of human nature, they just can’t wait to give it the Academy Award. I used to watch the Academy Awards, but the year ‘It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp’ beat out Dolly Parton for best song, I just cut it off and never watched it again. Hell, no wonder Western civilization is on the decline.”