High Maintenance

by Jennifer Belle

  Another woman sat at one of the desks with her back to us. She shuffled through papers. She had long ruined bleached blond hair and a baseball cap. She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. She didn’t acknowledge me in any way.

  “Oh,” I said, pointing to a wall lined with shelves that were crammed with strange knickknacks: vases, lamps, figurines, glass bottles, two old rotary phones, three sets of salt and pepper shakers—a squirrel and a nut, two red chili peppers, and two feet. It looked like a junkyard.

  “Those are for sale,” Dale said. “This isn’t just a real estate office. We’re a real estate gallery. I’m currently interviewing to hire, you know, a gallery guy.”

  “You mean a curator?” I asked.

  “A what?”

  “A curator. Someone who chooses the art in a gallery.”

  “That’s what they call it? I like that word!” Dale said. “I never heard of that.” She grabbed a paperback dictionary and looked it up. “‘The director of an institution such as a museum,’” she read. “This isn’t exactly a museum. Yet.”

  I laughed, and she gave me an angry look.

  “They still call it a curator,” I said.

  Dale rambled on about her successful SoHo art gallery. “We could use a smart kid like you,” Dale said. She gave me a brochure for a real estate course at the Pennsylvania Hotel on Seventh Avenue. “You have to be sponsored by a broker in order to get your license. When they axe you who’s sponsoring you, give them my card.”

  “Thank you,” I said, suddenly feeling grateful to be sponsored like a starving African child with flies crawling on my distended stomach.

  “And what’s my salary going to be?” I asked.

  The blond woman snorted.

  “There’s no salary!” Dale said, enthusiastically. “The great news is you’re an independent contractor. You get paid a commission! Most firms only give you twenty percent of every deal but I’m willing to start you off at fifty percent.”

  “That sounds great,” I said.

  “Grrreeeaaattt! Well, I really think you lucked out. You found your way into a great firm,” Dale said. “I think you’re going to fit in very well.”

  “Thank you,” I said, suddenly planning never to come back.

  “We’re going to make millions,” Dale said.

  The blond woman snorted again. “Shut up, Lorna,” Dale said.

  “Oh, one more thing, there’s a dress code,” Dale said. I tugged at my Chanel No 5 shirt. It had risen up a little over my stomach. “You should dress as though you’re working in a high-end law firm, or a Madison Avenue art gallery.”

  Or a run-down real estate office and garage sale, I thought.

  “Look at you,” Lorna said to Dale. “Look what you’re wearing. You look like a bus driver. You look like Ralph Kramden.”

  She looked more like a postal worker, I thought.

  “You look like a postman,” Lorna said.

  “Lorna, that’s enough. Things are going to be changing around here now,” Dale said.

  “What do you care what we wear?” Lorna said. She pointed to the wall of junk. “This place is like working at Sanford and Son. I love working at the town dump. Oh, and for your information, all firms start you at fifty-percent commission.”

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “Shut up,” Dale said, to Lorna. “When I get dressed up to go out I can look more feminine than all of youse. In a short dress and heels … Ummmm, I look good. Every man I pass looks at me. I could get more men than both of you put together.”

  “Yeah, right,” Lorna said.

  “You’re really axing for it,” Dale said.

  “What are you going to do, fat man, fire me? I think you have to actually pay a person in order to fire them.” She stood up. “It stinks in here. I’m leaving,” she said.

  “Pay no attention to her,” Dale said. “She’s just jealous.”

  From the window behind Dale’s desk I could see Lorna already walking up Greene Street. I had never seen anyone walk so fast in my life. She led with her head and shoulders like she was straining on an invisible leash. People moved aside to keep from getting hit.

  “I have to apologize for my associate,” Dale said. “She’s a very unpleasant person. I’m just letting her work here because she owes me money. Have you ever used a computer?” Dale asked.

  “No,” I admitted.

  “I’ll teach you.” She led me to the computer and I sat too low in a wooden chair. “This is the Mac.” The keyboard was covered in a thin clear plastic cover like an old lady’s couch. She punched the keys through the plastic layer until the screensaver of the New York City skyline under sparkling stars disappeared and an animated frog in a pond came up. She showed me how to use the mouse and I sat for twenty minutes double-clicking and dragging the frog from one lily pad to another. If I missed he fell in the water and splashed. If I made it, he ribbited happily.

  “You’re a natural,” Dale said.

  I know how to use a computer now, I thought to myself. I didn’t have to sit in the dark reading the calories and fat grams on a potato chip bag to Jerome. I had to admit it felt sort of good. I felt like I could make millions.

  Dale walked over and stood behind me, wearing a sickening aftershave.

  A fat woman with a ponytail drooping down her back walked in. She had dark skin like a gypsy and sad eyes like a child at bedtime.

  “Harri, meet the kid,” Dale said.

  “I’m Liv,” I said.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Harri said. She took a bag of Doritos out of a shopping bag and poured them out on one of the desks, making a big pile of them.

  “Harri’s my partner,” Dale said. Harri was wearing the same gold band as Dale. “Liv’s our new young lion.”

  “Oh yeah?” Harri said.

  8.

  NO DOGS, NO BKRS

  In order to get my license I had to take a forty-five-hour course and two tests—the test for the school and the test for the state. I signed up to take the course in five days straight for nine hours a day.

  Why not? I thought. I was so depressed it wasn’t like anything could make me feel worse. What difference did it make where I sat and brooded for five days? Might as well get licensed for it. The first day was on what would have been my husband’s birthday if we were still together.

  When I walked into the lobby of the Pennsylvania Hotel I gasped. There were dogs everywhere, dogs of every shape and size. It took me a minute to realize that the Westminster Dog Show was happening across the street at Madison Square Garden.

  The place had turned into a dog run. It felt strange and exciting like when a pigeon flies into an expensive restaurant.

  But the more I looked at the dogs, the more grotesque they seemed—fluffed and powdered and drinking water from Evian bottles. They were more like trained seals than dogs. More like stewardesses working at the St. Louis hub than unneutered animals. They all looked like JonBenet Ramsey.

  I made my way to the elevators, past a Shih Tzu having his portrait painted, and got on with four Bedlington terriers. On the ninth floor I followed an arrow on a handwritten sign that said “Empire Real Estate School.”

  An obese woman with a slight beard sat on a stool outside the door with a clipboard. I told her my name. “You’re six minutes late,” she said. She wrote a -6 next to my name. “You’re only allowed to be out of the room for a total of twenty minutes while class is in progress or you’re disqualified,” she said, looking down at me like I was worst-in-show.

  I took a seat in the front row, which was the only seat left. The room was filled with women, a few fags, and some middle-aged men. A couple of people were all dressed up. I wished I was back in the lobby.

  The woman sitting next to me smiled and stared at me until I turned my head and smiled back at her. She was tall and wore a hat with an actual feather and no wedding ring. I was mise
rable sitting in the front and I twisted around to see if there was any way I could move back.

  “If you’re looking for where the action is, it’s up here,” the teacher said, pointing to himself. “Trust me.” He was very small and Jewish with a New York accent. Wedding band.

  “We’re talking about chattel marriages,” he said.

  “Chattel marriages,” I repeated like a parrot.

  He hooted. “Not marriages. Mortgages.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Will you mortgage me?” he asked, bending down on one knee in front of me. I couldn’t believe it.

  “No,” I said.

  “Actually I’m very happily mortgaged already.” He flicked an invisible cigar and stood up.

  I wrote the words “Chattel Mortgage” on the legal pad I had stolen from Jerome’s office. One day while he was sitting there, I just piled a bunch of pads, boxes of pens, and a stapler into a shopping bag. Chattel Mortgage. The words looked soft and valuable like champagne.

  “Chattel,” he instructed, “from the French for cattle.”

  “Hi,” the woman sitting next to me wrote on her pad. She tilted it toward me for emphasis.

  “Hi,” I wrote on my pad and tilted.

  “I’m not listening,” she wrote. “Already bored.”

  “Me too,” I wrote.

  She wrote back a two-page dissertation. Her name was Valashenko and she had been a model on the cover of French Vogue when she was twenty-one. A gentleman friend, a sort of a benefactor, who was also a psychiatrist, had encouraged her to get into this line of work, but she had certain misgivings. Then, a leak, pouring down from the ceiling of her closet, had been the final straw. She needed money and a new apartment. She realized she had nothing and she couldn’t get any more miserable so she signed up for real estate school. She wrote that she was only wearing one contact lens and couldn’t see a thing. “I’m divorced,” she squeezed in on the bottom of the second page.

  I underlined the “me too” I had already written. Divorce was my only résumé item. It was my whole story.

  When we went out on our lunch break I could see that she was at least fifty. She kept her hat on the whole time. She couldn’t decide what to order. She counted the dollar bills in her wallet.

  She wasn’t happy with her pasta special.

  “I have eaten in all the finest restaurants in the world,” she said.

  “Send it back,” I said.

  “I never do that,” she said. “I don’t think I could do that.” She tried to take a bite.

  “Don’t eat it if it’s bad.”

  “It’s not good,” she said, distressed.

  “Just tell the waitress it’s not good and get something else,” I d, amused.

  I can’t!”

  “Do you want me to do it?” I asked.

  Finally when I was almost done with my egg salad she called the waitress over. “I’m really sorry to bother you but”—she looked down the pasta—”I’m … I’m … I can’t do it,” she said to me.

  “You can do it,” I told her.

  “I’m just not happy at all,” she blurted out to the waitress. She looked like she was going to cry. It was amazing how badly she had handled it.

  The waitress whisked away her plate and brought her a menu. She squinted at it with her good eye.

  At that moment I knew that I had what it took to be a real estate agent. I wouldn’t think twice about sending back food. Valashenko wasn’t going to make it, and neither were most of the people in that class. The man in the bow tie, the woman who ate bags of McDonald’s squirting dabs of ketchup on individual fries while the rest of us took notes, the Indian man with the English accent who kept asking how much money he could expect to make, the girl in the last row who reeked of cigarette smoke and brushed her hair, the failed lawyer interested in doing land development deals Upstate. One girl, a young lion type like myself, told a story about how she worked as an agent’s assistant, showing apartments at Zeckendorf Towers, and a man told her he would only take the apartment if she went for a swim with him in the rooftop pool, and she did but he didn’t sign the lease. I knew from that she wouldn’t make a dime.

  But I would. I could do it with no contact lenses. My husband was right—I was pushy enough—and Dale was right—I was a natural.

  We got back from lunch twelve minutes late. Now I had a negative 18 next to my name.

  “We’re talking about multiple listings,” the teacher said.

  “Multiple listings,” I repeated carefully.

  “Very good, for a minute I was worried you were going to say multiple orgasms,” he said. He laughed at his own joke. It was why I had always hated school—the teacher always focused on me.

  He went on to talk about the fact that you had to be a licensed agent to sell cemetery plots. “Real estate is real estate no matter what you want to use it for,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if you are selling six feet or six thousand square feet. Maybe that would be good for you,” he said to me. “Working in a cemetery. You seem glum enough.” He was smiling at me. “You look like you’re at a funeral.”

  His comment surprised me since I had faced real estate school so bravely. I thought I had been sitting there with a pleasant, upbeat expression on my face.

  I thought of myself taking the train to Long Island every day and working at a Jewish cemetery. Trudging through dirt in a long black skirt with lace-up shoes.

  “I think I’d rather sell million-dollar lofts in Tribeca,” I said.

  “And I think you will,” he said. “I think you will.”

  For the next five days I learned about liens and fees and bonds and fiduciary responsibility. The words were so beautiful and sounded so promising, my heart sank a little each time one was explained. But there was always another to take its place. They looked like Fitzgerald titles written on the blackboard. Tender of a contract, binders and good faith, consideration, promissory notes, lot and block numbers, easements, options, time is of the essence, meeting of the minds, renunciation, abandonment and breach, earnest money, usury, blanket mortgages, wraparound mortgages, covenants. Estoppel, enough already.

  I couldn’t help but think if I had known any of this when I was married we might have stayed together. We would have had puffing and steering to talk about. I already felt like a different person.

  For forty-four hours and forty-one and a half minutes, I sat next to Valashenko and ate Dunkin’ Donuts and Pepperidge Farm, passing them around to everyone behind me.

  I also went to the dog show, standing in the back because I couldn’t sit anymore. I had spent some time getting to know the contestants, and I felt like I had to support my friends.

  “When are you taking the test?” I wrote to Valashenko. I had counted down the last ninety minutes on my pad in thirty-second increments. My whole body hurt from sitting so long.

  “Next Tuesday,” she wrote.

  “Me too.”

  I got all one hundred questions right on the class test, even the math, and on Tuesday I went for the state test. I sat in a big room with a hundred people. Valashenko wasn’t there.

  A few weeks later a slip of pink onionskin paper came in the mail saying I had passed the state exam. I received a license and a “pocket card.” I was so excited I wanted to call my husband but I called Dale instead and told her I was ready to work.

  “Grreeeaaattt!” she said. “I have a listing for you.”

  On my first day as a licensed real estate agent I ate peas for breakfast right out of the can, standing in my kitchen, and got to Dale’s by ten.

  I sat at my desk, terrified, calling Violet whenever Dale left the office.

  “So you don’t know what you’re supposed to do?” Violet asked.

  “I have no idea,” I said. “They didn’t cover that in real estate school.”

  “You should canvass,” Dale said when she c
ame back in and hovered around my desk.

  “Great,” I said, as if I were looking forward to it. I wasn’t sure if canvassing was something to do with real estate or with her art gallery.

  “Grrreeeaaattt!” Dale said. She placed two huge books on my desk and put her hand on them as if they were Bibles. “This is a co-op book,” she said about one, “and this is an upside-down phone book.” She looked proud, as if she were presenting me with a homemade upside-down cake. “Pick a building you would like to conquer and call all the people who live in it and axe them if they want to sell or rent. That’s how you get listings. You can usually get two commissions that way, selling their apartment and then selling another apartment to them.”

  I looked up my old address and found my husband’s name.

  Then I picked a building on West Broadway and left messages on twenty-five answering machines. If an actual person answered I hung up. My next task was to write my name on the bottom of a stack of “temporary” business cards.

  When I got home I got undressed and a single pea fell out of my bra. I had gone to work with a pea in my bra and not even known it. Some princess, I thought.

  The next morning I woke up late and did some X (Excedrin). I had learned in real estate school that as an independent contractor I was allowed to make my own hours. I felt independent. I was even ready to return the video I had brought with me from my husband’s house, The Long, Long, Trailer starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.

  When I rented it the girl with the glasses five sizes too big in the video store said she and I were the only two people in the history of the place to ever take it out. My husband and I didn’t get a chance to watch it in the heat of our battle, so I packed it in with the rest of the things I was taking with me. Every night in my new place, I intended to watch it but I couldn’t. I hadn’t watched a video alone, except for my wedding video, in five years. I couldn’t watch The Long, Long Trailer without my husband’s arms around me. I had had it out now for sixty-seven days. I was ready to return it.

  I took a cab to the Upper East Side and walked into the video store. I looked around nervously for a minute, thinking I might see my husband there, but of course he probably wouldn’t be renting videos at noon on a weekday.