Carlin Romano - Philadelphia Noir

Nothing beat an open house for inviting friendly conversation, self-revelatory or inquisitive, free of all activity clumsily designed to bring boys and girls together. When Isaac felt he’d clicked with an agent, he followed up by making some excuse about the house itself, while dangling an overture about a meal or coffee sometime. And so something would or wouldn’t begin. And every affair that did begin, he explained to Christy, far outweighed-on the scale of pure pleasure-any number that didn’t.

Had Christy known Isaac’s MO the day he came to see a trinity she was handling on Waverly Street years ago, their seven-month thing would never have happened. She’d thought he liked the house, not her headshot in the Sunday Inquirer real-estate section. But he let on only years later, long after they’d climbed back from the breakup to be solid if irregular pals, able to talk about his or her latest romantic disasters.

Because Isaac couldn’t commit to anything beyond his next piece or foreign trip, Christy knew he’d never commit to building on 401’s side yard. He fit Irina’s oddly proprietary criteria for 401. Irina wanted someone who wouldn’t endanger the overgrown yard. She quickly discouraged would-be buyers who eyed the property as a twofer-one unique detached house, one enormous lot where you could build a second structure and make a killing.

“Is like Russian forest,” Irina had joked to Isaac the first time she showed him how 401’s side yard, and Gombrowicz’s backyard, combined to form a veritable mini-park of soaring evergreens and overlapping foliage. The only difference was that Gombrowicz’s yard had neatly cut grass on its ground. The vines and weeds to the side of 401 made it look like a house that had landed, Wizard of Oz style, on a jungle floor, with terra firma at least six inches below the sight line.

Christy knew her biz. The sale and closing happened fast. Christy even suspected that Isaac and Irina might have slept together preclosing, despite Irina’s being a few years older than Isaac, which put her about twenty years outside his routine demographic. The only time the three of them had drinks together, she’d seen the flirtation between them, Isaac dropping more than necessary of the fifty words that had gotten him around Russia, and Irina looking overamused at his anecdotes about St. Petersburg.

In the two years since the closing, Christy had seen Isaac about six or seven times for one of their friendly meals or coffees. The conversations took their usual pre-401 course. First they’d gossip about the Inquirer (where Isaac now found himself bored as the paper spiraled downward to irrelevance), City Hall sorts they both knew, what was in the news.

At some point, Isaac would send a signal that he’d still happily sleep with Christy and Christy would gracefully rebuff him. Then they’d share recent romantic wins and losses. The new part, which Christy disliked but also found professionally flattering, were Isaac’s questions about his rights and possibilities as the sole owner and resident on the 400 block of St. Irenaeus.

At dinner the previous Friday, Isaac, oddly, seemed ready for a commitment.

“Seriously,” he’d said, “I know Irina would kill me, but would it really be so hard to get the permission and variances to build a small house in the yard, one that would still leave some greenery and trees?”

“I told you already, Isaac,” Christy replied, “it’s not a big deal. You own that lot. There are no covenants or restrictions on it. Your neighbors and Irina might go apeshit, but it’s a pretty clear path.”

“I’m more afraid of Irina than Derek,” Isaac said. “I’m beginning to think real-estate women have a harder time pulling away from houses they sell than from men they, so to speak, handle-”

“Nice try,” Christy cut it. “But I hear a new form of whining just around the corner. Let’s not go there.”

“The last time she dropped by,” Isaac said, taking Christy’s cue and dropping the “Poor me” tone, “I was watching Larry King do his latest Michael Jackson show, about the endless wait for the funeral. At first Irina was funny. She listened to it for about a minute, then uttered one of those Irina-isms I love.” Isaac shifted into his heavily Russian Irina impersonation and accent. Poor Michael Jackson! Cannot easy normal die !

“So I was feeling obnoxious,” Isaac continued, dropping the accent, “and said, ‘Right, Irina, you can only easy normal die in Russia. You just sit in your car after offending someone powerful, or write the wrong story, and pow -you’re gone.’”

“That was nasty!” Christy said. “You know she loves that whole Russian tough-guy thing, and Putin. Plus she really doesn’t like anyone even noticing her accent, let alone making fun of it.”

“I know, I know,” Isaac said, a little too knowingly for Christy’s taste, “and, yeah, she did act strange, weird, after that. She just looked at me in a way she never has before. Really cold, as if she didn’t recognize me.”

“Have you slept with her?” Christy asked with a chirp in her voice.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Isaac shot back. “I’ve told you before-no.”

“Yes, but you’ve also told me ‘No’ about other women in real estate, then changed it to ‘Yes.’”

“What’s the point?” Isaac asked.

“The point is,” Christy said, her sarcasm getting the best of her, “if she wants to share that unique feeling of being with you, and you haven’t gotten there yet, don’t jerk her chain.”

“I guess I can’t say I’ve never slept with my realtor,” Isaac offered, hoping for a smile.

“No, you can’t,” Christy replied, not granting one.

A week later, Isaac made clear to Christy that he wasn’t kidding about the side yard. His 401K had dropped 40 percent in the recession. His bridge loan on 401 would come due in two more years. Isaac wanted to know if, at least, the second-house idea was feasible.

In the eleven years since they’d stopped sleeping together, Christy had never made a dime off Isaac. Now, she thought, she should.

“Look, Isaac, if you’re really serious about this,” she told him on the phone, “let’s deal. The first thing you have to do is to see if it’s even possible to lay a foundation and build there. If you’re serious, for a $5,000 retainer, with you bearing the costs, I’ll arrange for the initial testing.”

“Five thousand is pretty steep,” said Isaac. “How much would the testing cost?”

“Probably a couple of thousand.”

“Five thousand is too high,” Isaac said. “What would you think of doing it as a team, with you taking a commission if I build the little house? You said all along that this was a unique property and situation-sort of ‘Own your own block right smack in University City.’ You could sell both together for over a million. I’d give you 10 percent on the whole thing.”

Christy liked the idea. She’d never seen a Philadelphia city block with only one house. A wild notion that she’d had before about 401 came back. It could be her signature project. She could explore that craziest of all inner-city ideas: trying to turn the 400 block of St. Irenaeus Square into a private street. Or a gated area like one of those suburban enclaves she’d long admired. Isaac’s prominence as an Inky writer might get her coverage as an innovator.

“Okay, let’s do it,” Christy replied after a long pause. “I mean, the project-the house!”

“You can’t tell Irina,” Isaac said.

“Of course not,” agreed Christy.

Isaac gave Christy a set of keys-he traveled half the time anyway, and trusted her. Christy arranged for Eric Busby, who’d worked on some of the town houses that replaced the imploded Southwark Towers, to do the initial research, checking city records on underground lines and obstacles, checking out the yard. Isaac would be off in Europe for three weeks right after the semester ended in May. She might get things off the ground by then. She told Isaac as much.