Authors: Virginia Swift
Chapter 7
The Multiple Listing Service
At forty-five, Josiah Hawkins Green had never owned a house. He owned a number of mining claims, controlling interest in a working mine, and had even invested, unwisely, in several unproductive oil wells. But never a house. He'd always picked his dwellings based on convenience and cost. He had never wanted to get tied down. He'd lived a lot in trailers and motels with kitchenettes, in damp rented basements and leaky cabins. He'd lived out of a frame pack and spent months in a tent, slept in his truck for weeks at a time, eating at Denny's. It could get fairly disgusting, but it hadn't much mattered to him.
Now here he was on a fine August morning, waiting to be picked up by a Realtor named Sheila Czerny. She was the cousin of the geology department chairman's wife, and they'd asked him if he wanted to talk to someone who could help him find a house. He hadn't said no; he hadn't said anything; he'd just let them do what they wanted. So Sheila Czerny, his chairman's cousin-in-law, had called him at the Holiday Inn, made an appointment to show him some houses, had told him on the phone to look for a red Jeep Cherokee. In any town bigger than Laramie, that woman would have been cruising for a carjacking. Hawk had read in the Arizona
Daily Star
not three weeks ago that red Cherokees were the most popular vehicle among the nation's car thieves.
Sheila Czerny pulled her Cherokee up in front of the Holiday Inn office. Hawk was standing there, a tall, bony man with big shoulders, a ponytail, and round, wirerimmed glasses, wearing jeans, a faded black twill shirt, and scuffed cowboy boots, carrying a clipboard.
“Oh, Dr. Green, Dr. Green!” Sheila hollered, waving gaily.
Hawk sized her up as a typically calculating Realtor. He noted a quick look of surprise on her face: No one had told her about the ponytail. But then, Hawk had influential friends in Laramie. Dwayne Langham down at the Centennial Bank had prequalified him for the loan. If the check for her commission didn't bounce, Hawk knew that Sheila Czerny wouldn't care if he had a mohawk. He folded himself into the front passenger seat, gave her a small smile, and told her he hoped to find a house by noon, and to close the deal as soon as possible. The Realtor wouldn't mind. The less time she wasted on each client, the more she made for every hour of work. He knew he looked impatient to the point of desperation. Yahoo for her.
“Have you owned a home before, Dr. Green?” she chirped, patting his hand with her own plump fingers.
Hawk shrugged and stifled a recoil. He didn't like having his hand patted and he hated it when people referred to houses as “homes.”
She ignored him, lumbered on. “Well, what we do is every week we get a printout of homes on the market in your price range from the multiple listing service of the Wyoming state real estate board. Now I know you're looking for something in the tree district near the university, but I want to start out by showing you some of the
real bargains
just a wee bit farther out, where you get so much more square footage for the money!” She was heading east on Grand, out of the trees and into the tracts.
Hawk forced himself to speak. “Mrs. Czerny, I don't really need a big house, living by myself.”
“Well, just wait until you see a few places, and then you can decide,” she told him firmly. “I've selected a nice range of homes to give you some choices. Don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions about financing, or inspections or any of that stuff. After all, that's what you're paying me the big bucks for, ho ho!”
Hawk said nothing.
The first place was one of those plywood and plastic houses erupting like boils every year in the outer reaches of every western city. It had four bedrooms the size of packing crates. The window frames were vinyl-coated aluminum. The mauve carpet smelled like every dog and cat in Laramie had peed on it, and then some idiot had come in and sprayed it with a firehose. “Now don't think of this place as it is now, picture it with your own things in it,” advised Sheila Czerny. Five minutes and they were gone.
The second place, way the hell out in West Laramie next to a gas station, was dark as a tomb and freezing cold even in August. Every room was painted a different muddy color. “Visualize!” she exclaimed. Hawk visualized that the hot water heater was in the garage. He'd lived in a similar house one winter long ago, and woken up one morning with his undershirt frozen to a glacier that had crept down the wall overnight. Five more minutes.
Hawk was openly unimpressed with the bargains she'd presented him. Now she'd give him what he wanted, but at a slightly higher price. He could almost hear the noise in Sheila Czerny's head, the sound of the cash register:
chching
. “Well, I do have one place here,” she said, peering at the printout from the M.L.S., “that's only about four blocks from the U, right on Eighth Street. It's small, though, and pretty pricey for the square footage.”
Who used words like “footage” besides Realtors? But it was time Hawk bought a house, took advantage of the tax laws and put some of his savings into a place to live. He'd be out in the field a lot anyway. “Okay,” Hawk said, gritting his teeth and hoping wildly that he wouldn't be stuck in a Jeep Cherokee with a Realtor for the rest of his life. It had been less than an hour, hellish.
He knew from the moment he saw it. It was a small white frame house with a big window in front.
Sheila Czerny unlocked the lockbox, opened the door, sniffed. “The owners did some remodeling recently,” she said, “so they want more than they should, given the square footage.”
It smelled like varnish and fresh paint. The floors, recently and brightly refinished, were blond oak, the walls were white. The living room was washed in morning sun, with floor to ceiling built-in bookshelves. The bedroom had windows on two sides, with a view of the Snowy Range to the west. The sun streamed in large, new, wood frame, double-paned windows. The bathroom had real tile in it. He could throw down a sleeping bag anywhere in this clean, well-insulated house. Hell, he could get a bed. He might even buy a chair and a TV.
“I'll take it,” said Hawk, standing in the bathroom, looking at a big tub with whirlpool jets. “Offer them the asking price.”
“Oh, I just
knew
this cute little place would be
perfect
, Dr. Green,” Sheila gushed, dollar signs lighting in her eyes, tabulating her commission for forty-five minutes' work. Just then, the front door opened, and the next thing Hawk knew, he was face to face over a toilet with an already chattering Natalie Charlay Langham.
“Why, Sheila honey, I knew you had an appointment to show this house, but nobody told me you were showing it to my dear old friend Hawk Green,” she squealed, throwing her arms around Hawk, who found himself grateful for the toilet between them. He'd known Nattie twenty years back, but “dear old friend” was a stretch. “You're lucking out here, Hawk. I've only had this adorable place listed a week, and I'm expecting two offers to come in by Friday.”
She handed him a business card that claimed she was a “board-certified Realtor” working, Jesus, for Branch Homes on the Range. He really hated to think of that son of a bitch Sam Branch getting any of his money.
Nattie caught the grimace of surprise and distaste he shot at the card. “Oh, you must not have noticed our sign in frontâSam's very big in Laramie real estate these daysâresidential, commercial, why he's even started getting into new developments! Remember that place everyone used to go up to to watch sunsets on Ninth Street Canyon? Well, Sam's just about closed a deal for a gated community of over fifty mid-priced homes!” Hawk looked faintly sick.
Sheila Czerny seemed confused. She said, “So you all know each other? How sweet! Did you used to live in Laramie, Dr. Green?”
“Well, actually, I've lived mostly on the road,” Hawk began, but Nattie interrupted.
“Oh now, Hawk, you did too hang out here, on and off, for years. Sheila, he was part of the Gallery Bar gang, in the wild old days before everyone settled down and got serious about making money. Hawk, you should see the house me and Dwayne built, up in Alta Vista? We had it designed by the same guy that did the Gem City Bone and Joint Clinic, you know, all primitive granite and roughhewn pine, very natural. Five thousand square feet. 'Course, I don't suppose college professors ever actually get
rich,
do they, Hawk?”
No, they didn't. Hawk didn't answer.
“Unless of course,” Nattie said slyly, “they cut some kind of inside deal for one of those endowed chairs, huh, Hawk? Who do you think old Sally had to pork to get
that
gig?”
Hawk simply stared, imagining her head exploding. Perhaps sensing the tension, Sheila Czerny discreetly went into the kitchen, mentioning something about seeing whether the hot and cold water faucets in the sink worked.
Nattie herself looked considerably richer than she had back in the days when she'd sex-baited and guilt-tripped customers into leaving folding money on the bar at the Gallery. She wore about six gold chains with ugly charms dangling off them, diamond earrings the size of green peas, a shockingly noticeable gold watch, and enough orange lipstick to spray-paint a baseball bat. Hawk remembered her saying that she liked to put henna on her hair because it made it, ooh, so shiny. Today she looked to Hawk as if she'd been soaking her head in a bucket of mercurochrome.
He remembered the night he'd first met Nattie. He'd been prospecting for uranium, working a crew out of Saratoga that summer. They had come over to Laramie one Saturday, as one guy delicately put it, “to eat some meat and get laid, or at least meet some women.” They had a good steak dinner at the Cavalryman, and walked around downtown until they heard music coming out of the packed Gallery. They'd waded through the crowd to the bar, ordered beers and shots of Beam while looking straight down the low-cut shred of a tank top on the bartender, Nattie Charlay. Inside of five minutes, one of Hawk's friends was asking her for her phone number, and she was telling the guy that if he stuck around long enough that night, she'd show him the whole phone.
The band was the Sister Brothers. Hawk said he thought they were good, and Nattie had said, “Yeah, if you like lesbos.” Hawk watched Sally Alder and hoped to hell Nattie was a liar as well as a gossip.
During the break, Hawk told Nattie to buy the band a round. Sally came up to the bar to get another tequila and grapefruit , talking to seven people at once. He hadn't had the nerve to do then what he felt like doing, which was putting both of his hands on both of Sally Alder's hips to see if they felt as good as they looked.
They hung on through three sets to close the bar down. Sally and Penny sang and played, Hawk drank, shot a little pool. Biding his time, he went back to the Cowboy Motel, assuring himself that there would be plenty of time later to see about this Sally Alder. In that, at least, he'd been right.
Her hips did feel as good as they looked. So did various other parts of her.
He shook off the memory and regretted the present, vise grip over-toilet hug. The year before he'd left Laramie, Nattie Charlay had gotten her hooks into Dwayne Langham. Their marriage had, miraculously, lasted. Hawk looked at her enormous wedding ring, did a little calculation based on what he knew from his own experience with diamonds, and thought of what his father would say about it. Crawford Green, who was in many ways a worthless piece of work but who assuredly knew diamonds, would have judged Nattie's big ugly stones as proof that “not all the rich were smart.” Crawford was proof that not all the poor were dumb. Poor Crawford. But at least he had Maria. Poor Dwayne.
Now her purse was ringing. Nattie rooted in the depths of her gold-trimmed white leather bag and extracted a cellphone. (Why the hell would anyone in Laramie need a cellphone? You could be face-to-face with anybody in town in under ten minutes.) She flipped it open, tapped a button with a long orange fingernail, and spoke. “Oh hi, Sam,” she cooed, listening for a moment. “Why, you'll never guess who wants to buy that little bitty bungalow on Eighth Street.... C'mon, guess.... C'mon . . . all right, Sam . . . remember, it's money in the bank . . . okay, okay, the guy who's writing the check is old Hawk Green!” She listened a moment, then turned to Hawk and smirked at him . “Sam says he didn't know you were the bungalow type. And he hopes your check is good.”
Sheila Czerny took Hawk back to her office on Grand Avenue, made him fill out about sixty pieces of paper, and dropped him back off at the Holiday. She said she'd phone Nattie with a formal offer that afternoon and start in hounding Dwayne Langham for a closing date. He'd already prequalified for the loan and this was Laramie, so it wouldn't take as long as it would in, well, cities. Hawk kept trying to impress upon her that he wanted to move in as soon as possible, and that, since the place was empty, he would be willing to rent until the sale was final. He'd lived in plenty of Holiday Inns and worse, but he'd just as soon get settled as close to the beginning of the school term as possible. His father, Crawford, and stepmother, Maria, were storing several dozen boxes of books, papers, rocks, and tools in a Tuff Shed behind their trailer outside Tucson, and he wanted his stuff shipped up early in the fall semester. Hawk imagined unpacking about five hundred black widow spiders amid his notebooks.
By the time he got back to the Holiday, it was only eleven-thirty in the morning. He ran up to his room, took off his jeans and shirt and boots, put on sweat shorts and a Tucson Toros T-shirt and a pair of high-top Chuck Taylors. He pulled the coated elastic band out of his hair, regathered and tied his ponytail tighter, stuck his room key in the pocket of his shorts. He stuffed his wallet, some clean clothes, and a bar of soap in a Ziploc bag into a daypack and ran out the door. Fifteen minutes later he was at the university gym, looking for a noontime pick-up basketball game.