The Listing Party

Ian did most of his thinking while he chopped things, which was one reason he liked being a caterer. Nobody paid you to think, but you got a lot of it done anyway. He was forty-two now, and he figured he'd spent about twelve of those years married to a woman named Karen who had decided at some point around year twelve that she'd rather not be.

The divorce had gone through two years ago, clean and boring, the way lawyers liked it. They'd split the furniture down the middle. She kept the house. He kept the van and the business, which honestly was the better deal, because the van had everything he actually cared about in it.

Three months ago he'd packed the van and driven six hours up the coast to a new city, because that was the kind of thing a guy did when he turned forty-two and realized he hadn't done anything new since he was thirty. His sister thought it was a midlife crisis. He thought a midlife crisis was supposed to be more fun than a new apartment with bad water pressure.

Saturday morning he got up early and drove the van across town to the Gardner listing. The realtor had hired him for the open house. High-end, mid-century modern, recently gentrified neighborhood, the kind of block where every other house had been renovated and the other half was waiting its turn. The email had said light refreshments, elegant, nothing messy. Ian could do that in his sleep.

The house sat back off the street behind a low wall, all long windows and warm wood. Even from the driveway he could see the garden had been done properly. Not just planted, actually designed. Somebody had put thought into where the shade would fall in July.

He backed the van up the side drive and started hauling crates through the side gate. The garden in back was the best part. Big old olive tree, gravel path, raised beds along the fence. There was a guy kneeling at one of the beds with a trowel, finishing some kind of edging, and he looked up when Ian came through.

"That gate stick for you?" the guy asked.

"A little. It opened."

"It sticks for everybody. I've been telling Joshua about it for a month." The guy stood and wiped his hands on his jeans. He was somewhere close to forty, tan from working outside, hair going gray at the temples in a way that looked intentional. "You the food?"

"I'm the food. Ian." He shifted a crate to free up a hand.

"Tucker. I did the garden." He nodded at the beds as a man would present a child. "Well, the beds. The olive tree was here."

"The olive tree is carrying the whole yard," Ian said. "The beds are good though. What's the purple stuff?"

"Salvia. Don't ask me which kind, there are about four hundred and I've stopped pretending I know them all."

Ian smiled and kept moving, because the table wasn't going to set itself. He worked through the side door into the kitchen, which was the kind of kitchen that sold houses by itself, and started arranging. Cold smoked salmon on the good platter. Little flatbreads. The cheese that cost too much and was worth it. Lemon water with mint, and a separate pitcher of the still water because there was always somebody who hated mint.

By one o'clock the realtor, a woman named Faith with a blazer and a phone she checked every ninety seconds, had done a walkthrough and approved. People started arriving a little after. Neighbors, mostly, plus the serious buyers who arrived in cars that didn't have dents. Ian stood by the table in his white shirt and refilled things and listened to the chatter, which was the same everywhere he'd ever worked. How long have they lived here. What did it list at. Look at these original cabinets.

Joshua Gardner, the owner, drifted through looking faintly sad about his own house, which Ian had seen before. People did that. They sold a place and then spent the whole party realizing they'd liked it.

Tucker came in around two, the trowel guy transformed into a person in a clean linen shirt. He made a lap of the house, said something to Joshua that made the man laugh, and then ended up at the catering table, because everybody did.

"Okay, I have to ask," Tucker said, picking up one of the flatbreads and studying it. "Are these house-made or are they one of those trays from the fancy market on Fourth?"

"House-made. I made them this morning."

"They're stupidly good. I came in here planning to be restrained and I've already had two."

"That's what they're for. Houses sell better when people are standing around eating."

"That's the actual trick, isn't it? Nobody bids on an empty house." Tucker took another one, then seemed to catch himself. "Sorry. I'm going to eat your entire tray and blame the housing market."

"Take the whole tray. I brought a backup."

Tucker laughed, and Ian noticed his own attention sticking to that a little longer than it should. The guy had a good laugh, easy, like he wasn't performing it. He was also, Ian noted in the neutral way a person takes inventory, pretty. Broad hands, forearms from real work, a small scar near his thumb.

"So you're the gardener," Ian said. "You were out there when I hauled crates through the gate."

"Guilty. I do landscape design. Mostly residential. Joshua's been a client of my side hobby for eight years, which is the hobby where I tell him what to do with his yard and he does half of it." Tucker nodded toward the living room. "He's moving to Portugal. Did you hear?"

"Heard Portugal mentioned, yeah."

"Eight months ago he told me he was thinking about it. Today there's a sign on the lawn. That's Joshua for you. Thinks out loud for a year and then acts in a weekend." Tucker glanced at the name tag Ian wasn't wearing, then at his face. "Ian, right? Sorry, I heard Faith say it earlier."

"Yeah. Ian."

"You just move here? You've got that thing people get."

"What thing?"

"That look. Like you're still deciding whether you live here or you're visiting." Tucker said it without any judgment in it, just observation. "I did the same thing when I moved. Took me about a year to stop feeling like a tourist."

"Eight years, apparently," Ian said, and Tucker laughed again.

"Eight years. You'd be a very committed tourist." He picked up the little plate of olives like he was going to carry it off, then put it back. "Okay. I'm going to go look at the kitchen cabinets like I care about them, and I'm going to come back for more of these flatbreads, and that's a promise and a threat."

"I'll be here. It's my job to be here."

"You never know," Tucker said, walking backward toward the living room. "Faith might let you off early."

She wouldn't, but Ian appreciated the sentiment. He spent the next twenty minutes restocking and overhearing a couple argue in low voices about whether the yard was big enough for a pool, which it wasn't. The afternoon light came long and gold through the west windows, and the house did that thing good houses did, where everyone in it sounded friendlier than they probably were.

Tucker came back, as promised, around four. The crowd had thinned out by then. Faith was showing the serious buyers the primary bedroom with the door mostly closed, and Joshua was standing on the back patio looking at his olive tree.

"Three more," Tucker announced, taking three flatbreads. "I have no shame left!"

"None at all. It's kind of impressive."

"I work outside all day. I burn through shame by noon." He leaned against the counter next to the table, which was technically against the rules but Ian wasn't going to say anything. "So how'd you end up doing this? Catering, I mean."

"Used to cook in restaurants. Got tired of the hours. Catering's better, you work parties, people are happy, nobody sends back a canapé."

"That's true. Nobody's ever sent anything back at one of these." Tucker looked toward the patio where Joshua stood. "I should go say goodbye to him, he leaves Monday. I'll let you pretend to work until Faith kicks everybody out."

The last hour of an open house was always the same. People drifted in, circled the kitchen, asked Ian if the flatbreads were vegan, and left. Faith's voice carried from the hallway, doing that thing realtors did where every sentence ended like a question even when it wasn't.

"And the previous owners kept the original terrazzo, which is, as you can see, gorgeous?"

Tucker came back around four-thirty, hands clean this time, and stood at the end of the table like a customer at a deli counter.

"Last call?" he asked.

"You look like you've had enough flatbreads."

"Nobody's ever had enough flatbreads. That's science." He took one anyway and folded it in half. "Okay, confession time. I'm not house hunting."

"No?"

"Not even a little. I rent a place over on Telfair with a leaky skylight and a landlord who answers texts at two in the morning, which is the best landlord situation in the city, so I'm not going anywhere." He finished the flatbread in two bites. "I came because Joshua asked me to be here. He gets nervous at these things. He wanted somebody in the yard who could answer questions about the salvia."

"So you've just been milling around all afternoon."

"I've been eating your food and milling around, yes. It's been a very good Saturday."

Ian wiped down the table with a cloth, mostly to have something to do with his hands. "You could've just said that this morning instead of asking me about the olive tree."

"I didn't know you this morning. Now I know you and I wanted a fourth flatbread. Growth."

Faith appeared in the doorway with her phone in her hand. "Twenty minutes, gentlemen. Then I need the kitchen empty, sorry, Ian, you know how it is."

"I know how it is," Ian said.

She was gone again before the sentence finished. Tucker watched her go.

"Does she check her phone every ninety seconds or is that just today?"