Houseboat

by Paul Shadinger

  Tom, who was sitting next to Slim, said that he agreed to the bet. Tom added most of the rest of the money he had left in front of him, covering what he was short and then called.

  That brought the bet to the black gentleman sitting next to me. We all call him Tubs because he plays the drums in a jazz trio. Most people know him better as Bill Tate. As in the William Tate of basketball fame. Bill played fewer poker games than anybody else in our group, however, he was an excellent player and had won some good-sized pots from all of us. Tonight had not gone well for Bill and it took him just a few seconds to shake his head, throw down his cards and comment, “This is crazy,” his deep voice chuckling as he continued, “This is getting way too rich for me. I’m out.”

  That brought the bet to me. I was very close to finding myself tapped out, and I really didn’t want to take a houseboat as a bet. To tell you the truth, there was a lot of money in the pot to be fooling around with in a stupid card game. I thought about just throwing in the hand. I looked around the table at the others, wondering what to do. When I looked at Slim, he sat quietly and returned my gaze, and then reached up to wipe at this eye again.

  A bolt of energy shot through me, and it was all I could do just to sit still. It was nearly impossible to not let on I’d just figured out Slim’s tell. I was now positive the ol’ son of a bitch was bluffing. Twice before during the night, and on at least two other occasions I could recall, I saw the same movement with his left hand. It didn’t hit me then, but every time he did that movement with his hand, he’d been bluffing. Now it seemed so obvious. The other times I had played with him, I kept getting the feeling I was missing something, and tonight I realized just what it was.

  It looked like when he had a poor hand and he was trying to bluff, his left eye would start to water. Not much, just enough so that he would try to wipe his eye with the back of his hand to remove something that he thought was there. Just for a moment, I wondered if perhaps he had just been suckering me in to keep me betting, but now it didn’t matter, I knew I had to find out. I wanted to know if I was correct. I could feel some of the weariness start to drain out of me. I was so damn sure now Ol’ Slim was bluffing I just had to do it. When I glanced over at Scott, he slowly nodded his head at me to go for it, and that gave me the push I needed to continue.

  I had every card in my hand memorized but I still picked them up off the table and fanned them slowly. They hadn’t changed since the last time I looked; there were three ladies, with a king of clubs and the jack of hearts to hold them in place. I missed the full house but I was so positive the ladies would bail me out I pitched in the necessary money to stay in, and I called.

  Tom should have known better than to try to push his pair of jacks, but lately that was his style. When Slim flipped his cards over, sure enough, I had the better hand. The old guy had been trying to buy the pot with just three sixes.

  After my hand hit the table, it was like someone had punched a needle into a balloon the way the air escaped from everyone. I hadn’t realized it but I had been holding my breath, too. I just sat there for a few moments and stared at the pile in the middle of the table. At that point, both Tom and Scott said that they’d had enough for the night and perhaps we should all knock off. Tubs informed us he didn’t care if we kept playing or not, since he had an important meeting later that day, he had to leave. Since I was the big winner, I felt that it would be best if I said nothing and waited for the others to decide if they wanted to quit.

  The little ol fellow I’d just wiped out said that now that I had tapped him out, he had to quit anyway. He turned to me and said “The houseboat is at the Westlake North Marina. It’s in slip C-14. I would appreciate if you would give me,” he paused and looked up at the ceiling. He looked back at me and with a crooked grin continued, “Say a few days to clean out my stuff. Today is Friday, no wait, it is now Saturday ain’t it? How about give me till a week from Monday. You come by then around 8 AM, we’ll sign the final papers, and I can show you around. You can take possession of the place then. OK?”

  I was starting to feel bad the man was going to lose his home. Although I tried to tell him that I was willing to let the entire thing drop if he thought he could come up with some of the money, he refused to listen to me. I continued my speech until he finally raised his hand to silence me.

  At that point all I could do was wait through a long moment of silence before he started his drawl, “I’ll tell ya, son. I thought I wanted to live up here for a while. I was here during the War…that’s WWII. Back then, I enjoyed being here in the Puget Sound area a lot. It’s been fun this time, too.”

  Slim nodded at the group still standing around, “All of you have been a lot of fun, but I really miss the desert and the heat. I’ll tell you this, I hate rain. And it’s not just a little dislike, but I hate the God Damn fuckin’ stuff with my entire aching being. Excuse please.” Everybody laughed. Considering what was going on outside it was small wonder he hated Puget Sound so much. Slim continued, “Moreover, the past two months have reminded me every day why I hate it so much.”

  Slim stepped up to me and looked up in my face. “Trust me son, I’ve had enough of Seattle. I miss New Mexico. That’s where I’m from and that’s where I want to return. I thought I might try to entice someone to come and pay me a visit, but it ain’t going to work out. I guess this was fate showing me a good reason to go home where I belong. Thanks for the thought son, but I really want to go home, and getting rid of that houseboat makes it a lot easier now.”

  “You’re sure?” I asked.

  “Positive! But, that’s real thoughty of you son,” he drawled. “I’ll see you in a week and a half or so.”

  I explained to Slim that Scott was a real estate broker and since he knew all of the ins and outs of transfers like this, I was going to have him take care of things and asked if Slim minded. Slim shook his head as he told me he didn’t mind at all and it was nice I had a friend like Scott to help out. With that, we shook hands and parted company.

  CHAPTER 3

  I got into my truck and headed home, making sure to drive very carefully. I was beat! During the ride back to my place, I mulled over the question in my mind: what on earth was I going to do with the houseboat I’d just won? As for living conditions, I have what I consider the most perfect place to live, anywhere. A few years back, I was having a drink downtown one evening with a fellow who turned out to be an undercover narcotics police officer. During our conversation he mentioned he knew of a house that was going to be seized because it was being used as a drug house.

  As he described the location of the house, I thought it sounded like something I needed to check out. When I looked at the address I knew I wanted to buy it and I set my “wolves” to do their legal tasks. They found the company shell behind the owners, who specialize in these rundown places. Places that are just waiting. Pieces of property people were hanging on to just to see what profitable thing they could do with them later on. While they held on to these places, they—the unknown face of some corporation that didn’t care who they rented these dumps to. They set them up just so the properties would bring in a little extra bread and then take their write-offs with the taxman.

  Luckily for me it turned out my wolves were better at their job than their wolves. Suddenly that empty company shell found that they owned a house that the city had just condemned as well as a lot of trouble with the legal system. This meant trouble for everyone involved with the entire arrangement. As if by magic, it was suddenly in the best interest of everyone to sell at once, a piece of very undesirable property. My wolves were prepared to snap it up for peanuts. Because the house was worthless, the fire department had a delightful time practicing on it and burned it to the ground for me.

  The reason I was so intent on buying the old house was the lot it was sitting on had an incredible view. It sits three quarters of the way up a hill facing the west and south, thus giving me a
commanding view of downtown Seattle plus a view out over most of Lake Union. I had a fantastic multi-level complex built on my new vacant lot and I kept the top unit for myself. Since the units were built stacked on top of each other, this gives my place an even more unbelievable view.

  The northwest end of Lake Union leads to a ship canal, which in turn leads towards the Ballard Locks. On warm summer nights as the sun settles down in the water and shimmers down the canal, it looks like a ribbon of gold. I can sit on my balcony, drink in hand, and I think I’ve died and gone straight to heaven. Believe me, the last thing I felt I needed or wanted was a houseboat.

  I remembered Scott telling me not too long ago that houseboats were a hot item on the real estate market and they sold quickly. I also remembered about some Hollywood types who filmed a movie some time ago. The movie was about a guy who couldn’t sleep at night ‘cause his wife died and he was living on a houseboat in Seattle with his kid. As it turned out, some folks back east saw the flick and came all the way out to Seattle to buy the thing. I might not have too hard a time getting my money out of the damn thing after all.

  When I pulled up to my building, I punched the button to raise the garage door and then pulled into my stall. I took the elevator up to my floor and Blackjack, my little black cocker spaniel, promptly greeted me. Her nickname is BJ and she was pawing at my shoes to let me know she wanted to go out. Actually, all I really wanted to do was eat a little breakfast and then hit the sack, but I felt guilty. Normally I take Blackjack with me everywhere, but I don’t take her to my poker games. I felt I owed it to her to take her for a walk so she could at least do her business.

  As always, she had to sniff every blade of grass and explore under all the bushes in the neighboring vacant lot. Every day she uses the same place to do her thing and every day she goes through the same routine, checking out the lot, blade of grass by blade of grass. Does she really think she’s going to find something new today? As I stood waiting for her, I continued to inform her that I would greatly appreciate a little alacrity on her part this early in the morning.

  Finally, she completed her tasks and I returned to the condo to feed and bed my poor tired body. I whipped up some eggs and added a little shredded cheese. While I was waiting for my concoction to cook, I drank a quart of orange juice right out of the bottle, just one of the benefits of living alone. I ate my meal over the sink while my mind pushed around what I was going to do with my new possession. When I finished, I just stacked the dishes in the sink and headed off to bed, which is another benefit to living alone.

  As I started to drift off to sleep, I mentally counted my winnings from the evening. BJ found her spot curled up tight against my back and I continued to drift. I pulled out and then examined the feelings I’d had when I called it right, and found out Ol’ Slim was bluffing. I savored how great the win had felt. The last thing I was aware of was thinking about the houseboat again, and how I was going to dispose of the thing.

  “A houseboat,” I thought. “I don’t need a houseboat.”

  Oh shit, what have I gotten myself into now?

  CHAPTER 4

  A little over a week had passed since the card game when an incessant knocking at my back door startled me out of my slumber one morning. Actually, it was more banging than a knock.

  In order to make everything clear, I need to explain about the door arrangement in my apartment. My front door is actually the elevator which comes from the downstairs foyer on the ground floor. Each floor of the building is a separate condo. The elevator stops at any one of the five levels, if you have the correct key. Visitors call up to the unit they wish to visit on the house phone located outside on the wall by the door, and the tenant of the unit must release the elevator to bring the guests up to their level. The elevator will not stop on any other floor unless you have the key to make it stop.

  The apartment building is set into a large hill and only my floor is high enough to have a back door. This door is reachable via a short bridge which leads from the side of the vacant lot behind my property to my kitchen door. When they built the apartment building, they had to cut into the hill behind the complex. Because of the building’s height and the steep rise of the hill, my apartment is the only one that actually ended up with a back door. There’s a concrete retaining wall behind the entire structure which holds the back wall of dirt in place. Because of the retaining wall, all the other units only have small windows that face out against the concrete wall. I have a steel mesh security door covering my back door. Since no one can really see very well into the lot that faces the entire back of the apartment, I feel very secure with my back door arrangement.

  What had pulled me out of my happy sleep was somebody was banging on that steel door. The noise rebounding through my entire place was impossible to ignore. Although I glanced at the clock beside my bed, in my state of fogginess, the time didn’t register. On my way to the back door, I again glanced at a clock on the wall, and this time it finally sunk in. I was operating on around four hours of sleep.

  When I peered out the peephole to see who was so rudely interrupting my sleep, I saw Scott standing there. I opened the main door, keeping the steel mesh door closed and locked. At this point, I just wasn’t feeling very friendly.

  “Why aren’t you asleep?” I growled through the mesh, “You know I had a date last night. As I recall, so did you!” Without letting him answer, I continued on, “So the question is, why are you out running around at this time of day, asshole? Did your date have a headache?”

  “Asshole?” He sounded hurt. “Who are you calling an asshole? You just don’t know it yet, but I’m the guy who is trying to help you out. And no, my date did not have a headache. Not all of us have to sleep with every date we go out on.” Scott reached out and tried to open the steel door, but it was locked. “Damn it, Matt, let me in! I’m not going to stand out here and talk to you like some door-to-door salesman. Anyway, this is about your houseboat.”

  This was great news. Hardly a week had passed and the paperwork still was not completed, and already it was disturbing my sleep. So to continue this conversation that I didn’t want to have, I flipped the lock, and turned around to go to put on some clothes. I called back over my shoulder for Scott to make some coffee.

  Once inside my bedroom I went over to my date from last night, and pulled up the covers. No reason she shouldn’t catch some more sleep. She mumbled something incoherent and moved closer to the center of the bed. As I glimpsed her nude body while covering her up I recalled last night’s passion. Those erotic thoughts did little to push me to return to Scott. Besides, I knew in the back of my mind I didn’t want to hear what he had to tell me about the houseboat.

  When I returned to the kitchen the aroma of coffee filled the room. So, even though the pot hadn’t finished dripping, I grabbed a cup from the cupboard, and poured some coffee from the carafe. I needed something right now. Screw waiting! As I took a sip, I could tell that Scott noticed what I had done. By the look on his face, I could tell he was considering commenting. I gave him a dirty look so he thought better of it.

  “OK, what’s so important you had to wake me at this unholy hour?” By now, Blackjack had dragged her lazy butt out of the bedroom where she’d been sleeping. When she saw Scott, she went straight to him, and started begging for his attention. The two of them get along well, and when I have to leave town I usually ask Scott to dog sit for me. He’s actually more of a cat person, so I’ve been surprised the two of them get on so well. One of the first times he’d met BJ, he told me a story about when he was a kid, and the little black cocker that a car had run over. Maybe BJ reminds him of his childhood.

  Scott drew himself a cup of the finished joe and took a sip before he started in. “... took the liberty of checking on the houseboat moorage. I felt it was my duty since I was more or less the one who goaded you to take the bet. By the way, I had a courier take all the paperwork to Slim last Thu
rsday and I also started the paperwork you’ll need to sign. After Slim finally signs everything and... well...” his voice trailed off.

  Considering the mood I was in, I thought that my just saying one word was very kind. “Well?”

  He looked down at the floor and spoke so softly I could hardly hear him, “I thought I should research the current lease on your space in the marina. It turns out you have a houseboat all right...but you won’t have a place to tie it up after the first of next month. You have to move it.”

  His comment made me take in too much hot coffee, and I burned my tongue. I shouted at him, “What? How can I have a houseboat, and not have somewhere to tie the damn thing up?” I knew I needed to lower my voice but I just couldn’t. “How can somebody just tell me I have to move? I thought there was a lease or something! And how can you move anything that large? Doesn’t this thing have power and telephone connected to it, and…and…and like that other stuff?” By now I was waving my hands in the air but I was too wound up to stop. “Isn’t there some way we can arrange to keep it there? Isn’t there…”

  Scott held up one hand, and ducked his head in mock surrender, “Slow down, one question at a time, please.” He held up one finger, “They will disconnect the power and telephone on the thirtieth of next month.” Another finger popped up, “You can move the houseboat with a tugboat. If you don’t have a tug there on the first of the following month to move it, they’ll just cast you off, disconnect the power and stuff, and your boat will float off into the lake. At least that’s what they told me.”

  Now he held up another finger, “As for the lease, the deal is, there are two types of houseboat moorages. The first type is you own the moorage and part of the dock. All the owners are responsible for keeping up the docks, piers and the grounds out front. The other arrangement is someone else owns the dock, and each tenant is on a month-to-month rental with some sort of extended lease involved. Yours was on a lease, and Slim hadn’t renewed the lease since he planned to move anyway. He must have thought he had more time, and you sorta got stuck.”