Rust and Regret

*This one came from the idea of two people who meet each other on the wrong day, for the wrong reason, and find exactly what they need anyway. Hope you enjoy the raw edge of it.*

My name is Melissa, I'm 28, and for the last six months I've been carrying around a grudge the size of a transmission. Six months ago I caught my ex, Dan, in bed with a real estate agent named Nicole. I was 27 then, we'd been together five years, and I walked out the next morning with a duffel bag and my toolbox and never went back. I know, I know, most people would call that smart. It was smart. But smart doesn't stop you from being mad.

So yeah, six months of fuming. Six months of double shifts at the shop, six months of going home to my apartment above the laundromat, six months of telling everybody I was fine. I was single, I was tired, and I was angry at a woman I'd met exactly once, in my own hallway, wearing my ex's shirt. You'd be mad too.

Then last week my buddy Ray comes into the break room waving his phone around like he'd won the lottery.

"Mel. Mel, you gotta see this."

"See what, Ray?" I'm eating a sandwich, I'm not in the mood.

"That agent chick. Nicole. She's listing a house out in Fairview Estates, open house Sunday. Big mid-century thing. Look at this place."

And I looked. And something in my chest went all warm and ugly, like a heater kicking on in a cold garage. Because there was her name on the listing, right there, Nicole with her professional headshot and her blazer, and I thought, well. Isn't that something.

So here's what I told myself. I told myself I was going to go to this open house and price the place. That's it. Just market research, like I'm some kind of investor, which I'm not, I'm a mechanic with $6,000 in savings and a Corolla with 180,000 miles on it. That was the story I told myself in the car the whole way out there on Sunday, and both of us knew it was a lie, me and the Corolla.

I even dressed up, sort of. My best jeans, the ones without a hole burnt in the knee from a grinder, and a fitted black tank top that Ray's wife said looked good on me once at a barbecue. No makeup because I don't own makeup. And I'd scrubbed my hands twice Saturday night but there was still oil down in the nails, that gray stuff that never comes out. Whatever. I am who I am.

Fairview Estates is one of those developments where every house looks like it was designed by the same guy on the same afternoon. Big low-slung rooflines, tidy gravel, little ornamental trees. The house itself was easy to spot, this sprawling mid-century thing with a flat roof and huge windows, sitting back off the street like it knew it was the pretty one. Cars lined the curb. Great, I thought, a crowd. Maybe I can just lurk.

I parked and sat in the car for a minute, hands on the wheel, doing the whole pep talk. You're going to walk in, you're going to look at rooms, you're going to ask about the price, you are not going to make a scene, Melissa, do you hear me?

I heard me. I went in.

The front door was propped open and there was a table with sign-in sheets and little bottles of water, and a woman's voice was playing over my head about original terrazzo floors or whatever. The place was staged, you know how they do it, sparse furniture that looks like nobody lives there, a bowl of lemons on the counter like somebody eats lemons. It smelled like fresh paint and fake vanilla candles.

And this is the truth. Nicole wasn't there.

I did a full lap of the living room, checked the kitchen, checked the people holding clipboards. Nope. No blazer, no headshot come to life, no woman wearing my memory like a costume. Just regular open-house people, older couples and a guy measuring a wall with his phone.

What I did find was a guy. Lean, tallish, in a suit that fit him so well I figured it cost more than my tool chest. Dark hair, warm smile, clipboard already extended toward me like we were old friends.

"Hey there, welcome in! I'm Pedro. Are you looking for yourself or working with an agent?"

"Neither," I said, and then felt bad because he had a nice face. "I mean, looking for myself. Just pricing the area."

"Sure, sure." He didn't push, which surprised me. Most of them push. "Well, the floor plan is on the back there, and the list price is right up top. Any questions, I'm the guy."

I signed the sheet. Melissa, illegible address, and I watched him glance at my hands and not say a word about the oil under my nails. Points for that.

"So how's it going?" I asked, mostly to keep myself from scanning the room again for a woman who wasn't coming.

"Honestly?" He lowered his voice and leaned in a little. "It's going like every open house goes. Forty people through, thirty-eight of them neighbors, two tire-kickers, and maybe one real buyer if I'm lucky."

"That bad, huh?"

"That's not bad, that's average." He laughed, and it was a real laugh, not a salesman laugh. "The market out here is weird right now. Everybody wants the house, nobody wants the price. I'm just here so the listing agent doesn't have to work Sundays."

And something in the way he said it. The little edge on it, like the words had a burr on them. I've heard guys talk about coworkers like that a thousand times in a shop.

"Nicole, right?" I said, casual as anything. "It's her listing?"

"Yeah." That edge again, sharper. "You know her?"

"We've met," I said. "Once."

He looked at me, and I swear I watched him do the math. He was good at his job, this guy. "Ah," he said. "One of those meetings."

"Something like that."

"Listen," he said, and here he leaned the clipboard against the table and actually turned his body toward me, no more salesman posture, "if you're here to see her, she dumped this open house on me at the last minute. She's showing a different property across town. So whatever you came here to feel, I hate to tell you, but you're going to leave feeling it anyway."

I blinked at him. "Wow. Okay. Straight to it, huh?"

"Sorry. I talk too much when I'm bored. It's been four hours of terrazzo questions."

And I don't know why, maybe because he was the first honest person I'd talked to in six months, but I laughed. Actually laughed, standing in a stranger's staged living room with a lemon bowl.

"Terrazzo questions," I repeated.

"An older gentleman asked me if the floors were original. I said yes. He asked me if I was sure. I said the house is sixty years older than me, sir, but yes. He did not like that."

He was funny. That was annoying. I came here with a grudge to feed and instead I was standing there grinning at some suited guy with a clipboard.

"So how long have you been doing this?" I asked, nodding at the clipboard.

"Seven years. I went to college late, graduated at 25, been hustling ever since." He shrugged. "Some days it feels like a career. Some days it feels like a waiting room."

"Tell me about it," I said. "I wrench for a living. Same feeling, greaseier."

"See, that's a real job. I push paper." He picked up two bottles of water off the table and held one out to me. "Want the grand tour? The master bedroom has the only decent light in the whole place, and the backyard is a disaster, which is my favorite part."

"Your favorite part is a disaster?"

"Best part of any house. Everything else is for the buyers."

Well. What was I supposed to say to that?

I said yes to the tour, obviously. Not because I cared about the house. Because it was either that or go sit in my Corolla in the driveway like a weirdo for another hour.

He walked me through it room by room, and I kept my mouth shut for about ninety seconds, which for me is a record. Then we hit the corner of the hallway and I stopped.

"See that crack?" I pointed at the wall where a diagonal line ran from the ceiling down to the floor, patched but still obvious under the fresh paint. "That's a foundation crack. Somebody just mudded over it. You can paint over a crack all you want, it's still moving."

"It's settled," Pedro said. "Sixty-year-old house, it's allowed to settle."

"It's allowed to settle, sure. It's not allowed to keep going. You look at that crack, it's a stair-step, that's a footing issue."

"It's a repaired crack in a house with three offers pending."

I looked at him. "Three offers?"

"I shouldn't have told you that." He rubbed his jaw. "Don't put that in your offer."

"I'm not making an offer. I've got six grand in savings and a Corolla with 180,000 miles on it, I'm not