Page 11 of This Is How It Started
Six Years After the Wedding
I’m not saying that Josh and I are perfect. Like any marriage, there are peaks and valleys. Times when the sex is perfunctory. Times when the sound of him slurping his cereal across the breakfast table makes me gnash my teeth. And times when he’s a little too soft on me.
I’ve never told anyone this before, but sometimes I think Josh is relieved that I suck at my job. For example, a deal I’d been working on for a week fell through escrow yesterday. This morning, the seller fired my ass and is listing with another agent. Josh’s reaction: “Rach, don’t put so much pressure on yourself. It’s not like we’ll be thrown out on the street and have to move in with your mother.” He says that last part with a shit-eating grin.
While I should probably thank my lucky stars that I have a supportive husband, I can’t help but feel that his blasé attitude is more apathetic than empathetic. No, we won’t wind up homeless. Nor will the loss of income put a dent in our grocery spending. But it will likely mean we’ll have to put off buying a house for another year. And how about just the mere fact that it makes me feel like shit?
What if I told him not to let that bad review of 23rd Market Street he’d spent two years designing get him down?Hey, it’s only one review.So what if the reviewer was one of the premiere architecture critics in the country?
Okay, to be fair, I’ve been phoning it in for the last five years of our marriage, selling only about three houses a year. But I can’t help but think that if Josh didn’t have such lovingly low expectations of me, I’d be doing more.
My father still insists I’m in the wrong vocation. And my mother says I’m not a people person, whatever that means. I suppose if I dug deep, I’d realize that real estate really isn’t my passion. Otherwise, I’d be better at it, right? But is there anything wrong with that? Millions—probably even billions—of people go to jobs every day that are just ho-hum, just a means to a living. No one blames them. No one thinks of them as sellouts or less thans.
So why can’t I cut myself some slack?
“Back so soon?” I say as Josh walks in the door. I still haven’t showered and am sipping my coffee, allowing myself to recover from the morning’s debacle.
“I forgot my earbuds. I got as far as the Embarcadero when I realized they weren’t in my backpack.”
Most of the time, Josh rides his bike the four miles from our Marina District apartment to his office on Folsom. I have this horrible premonition that one day he’ll have his music turned up too loud and not hear an oncoming car in time to avoid a collision. I read somewhere that an average of 742 bicyclists die a year in this country from fatal accidents.
Josh goes in search of his missing earbuds while I wash out the coffeepot and my dirty mug. I guess I better start my day, though I’d rather stay here and feel sorry for myself.
Our apartment is eleven hundred square feet, and I can hear Josh rooting around in our bedroom.
“You can’t find them?” I call through the thin wall.
“Got ’em,” he yells back. “They were in the dirty clothes.” He comes into the kitchen and kisses me behind the ear, wrapping his arms around my middle until my back fits snugly against his chest. And for a while we just stand like that, our bodies so close that I can feel his heat.
“Don’t get hit by a car,” I say, breaking the moment. “You’ve got precious cargo on that bike of yours.”
“Yeah, like what?”
“You.”
He chuckles, then turns me around and kisses me again. This time he catches my lips with his mouth and takes his time, letting his tongue explore. It’s such a good kiss that I still feel it on my lips an hour after he leaves.
Because I don’t have any clients today, I leave the MINI Cooper in our coveted garage and walk to the office. Windham Real Estate. The company, which has three satellite offices, is independently owned and boasts 2.1 billion dollars in annual sales. I left Century 21, where I felt stifled, years ago. The other agents there were all a little too cutthroat for my taste.
Windham feels more like the city. Laid-back but at the same time exciting. The other agents, while hard chargers, are friendly and helpful. The fact that Windham has a state-of-the-art coffee bar (like seriously good coffee) and a generous eighty-twenty split is the cherry on top.
“Rachel, you’re here.” Janney, the office manager, is surprised to see me.
I rarely come in these days, instead working from my laptop and cell phone from home.
“I’m here,” I say with a weak smile. “Is Chip in?” I crane my neck around Janney to search the glass office at the rear of the agency for my broker. I want him to hear my side of the story before he gets the buyer’s agent’s version. Both of us happen to work for Windham, which puts Chip squarely in the middle.
“Niki’s already here,” Janney says, making it obvious she knows there’s a conflict between us.
Despite Windham being a decent place to work, no one here is above watching a good catfight. The office staff, Janney and Chip included, trade on gossip like it’s the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange. In fact, before Chip got into real estate, he was a trader. Janney was an editorial assistant at theSan Francisco Chronicleand was laid off two years ago when the newspaper downsized. Besides running the agency like a boss, she knows where all the bodies are buried.
“Is she in with Chip?”
“Yep.” Janney clicks her tongue and gives me a look that saysYou should’ve beaten her to the punch.“I’d tell you to barge in, but I don’t think Chip or Niki would appreciate it.” She strides over to the coffee bar, pulls a shot of espresso, and hands me the cup. “Guess you better cool your jets until their meeting is over.”
I walk over to one of the empty desks with my coffee and try to pretend I’m busy. The sad truth of it is I have nothing to do. I’m taking offers on my one and only listing, a janky two-bedroom, one bath in the Outer Sunset, next Tuesday. The market here is so obnoxious that even a shit box with bad plumbing that sits in the fog nine hours a day is enough to pit frenzied buyers against one another until they all offer well over the asking price. My seller is hoping for an all-cash offer with no contingencies from a buyer who is willing to waive the appraisal because God knows the house isn’t worth what it will ultimately fetch. Josh, a pragmatist, would argue that a house is worth exactly what someone is willing to pay for it. Unfortunately, banks don’t see it that way.
In any event, my seller will probably get everything on his wish list and then some. That’s how crazy it is here. If I wasn’t so upset about my other deal falling through, I’d probably be counting the commission in my head, prematurely spending it with wild abandon.
