Michael Collings - The Slab

“Ma…Mar…Mat…Max-here it is,” he said, more to himself than to Catherine. “Maxwell, William. Realtor.” He punched the numbers, allowing his growing fury to communicate itself through his fingers. He tapped on the receiver as the phone rang once, twice, three times.

“Maxwell.” The voice on the other end sounded confident, sure of itself. Willard recognized it immediately, remembering the ease with which Maxwell had worked the deal for the house. I wonder how much he got from the scam, Willard thought, even as he was speaking.

“Mr. Maxwell, this is Willard Huntley.”

“Sure, Will. How’s the new homeowner?”

Faced with the easy assurance in the voice, Willard suddenly found himself stalled for words. He was still angry-furious and upset-but he wasn’t quite sure how to begin. “Well,” he said after a long pause, “actually that’s what I’m calling about.”

There was another long pause. He was half waiting for Maxwell to ask for particulars, but the silence on the other end of the line remained deafening.

“I, uh…I’ve found some problems.”

“Yes?”

Apparently Maxwell wasn’t going to make things any easier.

“Well,” Willard took a deep breath. “The walls and foundation seem to be cracked to hell and gone, and I want to know what you’re going to do about it.”

There, it was out. He felt better already. After all, there were such things as local ordinances, required inspections, things like that.

“Me?” Maxwell sounded honestly surprised. “What makes you think that I can do anything?”

“Well, you helped us with the house. You must know how to begin…”

“Begin what?”

”For starters, I want the previous owners…”

“The Merricks,” Maxwell added, as if he were trying to be as helpful as possible.

“The Merricks,” Willard repeated, nodding as if Maxwell could see him. “Anyway, I want to know how we can get the Merricks to make good on the problems. We haven’t even been in here a year yet-hell, we haven’t been in here more than a couple of months, and already the place is falling apart.”

“Don’t exaggerate,” Catherine whispered.

“And besides,” Willard added, her presence reminding him of the immediate cause of their problems. “Besides, the place is overrun with roaches.”

“Sorry to hear that, Willard,” Maxwell said, “but there’s really nothing I can do about the problems. There was a clearly stated ‘as is’ clause in the contract, remember?”

Willard was stunned. He searched his mind but could dredge up no mention of any such thing.

“Just a minute,” Maxwell said, his voice ebbing gradually, replaced by the sound of shuffling papers. “I’ve got a copy here somewhere,” he continued, again speaking more to himself than to Willard. “Yeah, here it is.” He fell silent, except for a murmur as he scanned the contract sheets. “Right, here it is. Page seven of the original contract. ‘Summary of county inspection, specifying items anomalous to original construction, accepted and countersigned by purchaser(s).’ A couple of other items, but the gist is that any such problems become the responsibility of the new owners.

“That’s you.”

Willard opened his mouth to speak, but the words stuck in his throat. “But…but,” he finally sputtered. “But I didn’t know, I mean, it’s our first house and everything. I thought, I figured that you would let us know if there was anything wrong.”

Maxwell laughed. “Huntley, do you know that your house was the least expensive one in the entire Tamarind Valley? By a factor of several tens of thousands of dollars?”

“No, I didn’t. But what…”

“My commission on any other house listed with this agency would be almost double yours. And over the past six months, I’ve had seven houses in escrow.”

Willard was beginning to understand.

“So maybe I might have let a few details slip. But you got the house, didn’t you? And the property values will probably go up two, three thousand a month when real estate gets hot again. So you’re not really out anything. And it’s not as if you were planning on selling tomorrow or anything, is it?” Maxwell laughed.

Through the phone lines, the laughter sounded tinny and hollow.

Willard sputtered a few sounds, then fell silent. Everything Maxwell said was true.

“And anyway, the house isn’t going to fall in any time soon. Maybe in forty or fifty years, but not tomorrow.” He paused, then said, “Good to hear from you, Mr. Huntley. Have a good day.”`

And then the line clicked and Maxwell was gone.

“Damn,” Willard swore softly as he hung up the phone and looked quizzically at Catherine.

“Damn.”

From the Tamarind Valley Times, 29 June 1991:

STRONG QUAKE FELT, LITTLE DAMAGE IN VALLEY

One person died in Arcadia and one person died of a heart attack in Glendale as a result of yesterday’s 5.6 earthquake, centered near the San Gabriel Mountains. Although extensive damage was reported in Pasadena, Sierra Madre, and other near-by communities, Tamarind Valley escaped with minor damage.

Several local stores reported overturned shelves but…

The Warrens, April 1992-November 1997

Living the Dream

At age thirty-two, Daniel Warren could surely be counted a success, in his own eyes if not in the eyes of his mother. He owned his own Ford dealership-one of the most lucrative in the entire San Fernando Valley. His apartment, snuggled in the dense greenery of the Santa Monica Mountains just off Sepulveda, was well furnished with antiques that even his mother recognized cost more than she had ever had to spend on furniture, Heaven knew, and more than she would ever feel comfortable spending on furniture. His clothes were always immaculately tailored, his shoes always expensive continental brands.

All in all, he was a success.

But success is as success does, as they say. And no amount of money could atone for what Amanda Warren considered her only son’s greatest failure.

“You should be thinking about getting married,” she would repeat every Sunday afternoon as Daniel Warren sat at the family table, surrounded by innumerable bits of bric-a-brac from his mother’s sixty-seven years of life. The faded black-and-white pictures of Alfred Warren-none showing a man beyond his late thirties, and several of the later images eerily reminiscent of Daniel Warren as he sat at the side of the table-served as silent reminders that thirty of those years had been spent in patient widowhood and selfless, focused motherhood, days and months and years devoted to seeing that her Daniel had only the best she could offer. Now it was her turn, she had thought more than once. Now it was her turn to have what she wanted.

And what she wanted was simple.

She wanted grandchildren.

“You’re not getting any younger,” she would argue as she ladled gravy onto the flawlessly creamy mashed potatoes mounded at precisely eleven o’clock on her son’s plate. It didn’t matter that she knew he was watching his cholesterol count and that he had warned her that the gravy would probably send the numbers skyrocketing. She’d served gravy for Sunday dinner every day since she married Daniel’s father thirty-eight years ago this September, and it certainly hadn’t killed anyone yet.

“What about that nice young thing who lives on your floor, what’s her name again, oh yes, Rita. Have you asked her out?” she would say as she set his huge wedge of cherry pie in front of him at the end of the Sunday meal, in spite of the fact that he had just announced that he was full, thanks Mom, but no dessert for me. And while she listened to him explaining how Rita was engaged to a construction foreman that weighed three hundred pounds and would probably snap Daniel’s spine in two at the first sign that Daniel even knew Rita walked the face of the earth, Amanda watched each heaping forkful of pie disappear into Daniel’s mouth, watched, almost not breathing until the entire wedge was gone.