Repossession

I remember when I met him. He worked for the city. He was that succulent shade of summer that you want to run your hands across barebacked. That was about all he had going for himself. Fresh out of a divorce, he was looking for a place to call home with his half pit-retriever and alley cat.

I sold him a repossessed 16 x 70 manufactured home. The floorplan wasn't bad but it had the previously trendy shade of mobile home mauve as its running theme. Mauve plush carpeting, mauve in the vinyl covered paneling and flecks of mauve in the formica. If mauve is indeed the color for romance and relaxing, he should have been blissed out.

But he wasn't.

He was a nervous chatterer. A lonely, thick haired natural blonde. Sadness. It was palpable in his Basset Hound eyes, glassy and desperate. A chain smoker whose lungs had to be the same shade as the roads he worked on. Tar lips. Kind of sexy in a rogue-ish way.

I smoked then as well and sometimes I was the recepticle for more of his miserable meanderings as we stood on the office deck in the fading hazy sun of August. I knew he was attracted to me. Somewhere I was thinking why me? My co-worker and I would make fun of his raspy voice after he left the office or called on the phone to check the status of his loan.

He got the house. That rieking house dripping of cat piss and pink passion. I was more excitied about the "bonus points" from the finance company for selling the repo. Yeah, I was finally going to get that fucking Nambe Tri-Corner bowl AND the kissing salt and pepper shakers for NOTHING. All because of him.

Then he asked me to dinner and I politely refused. It was after the loan closed and I turned him down that he called very pissed off saying the house stunk. Really? We had no idea since no mention was made before. In the hot stagnant air of August I don't know how ANYONE could have missed it. It made my eyes burn.

Last week he came into the office. It was almost like that line from the song by Dan Fogleberg that goes," Met my old lover in the grocery store, the snow was falling Christmas Eve" but it wasn't. So much time had passed it was weird. I had Snowflake and he had two heart attacks.

The sadness was still there in those brown Junior Mint eyes. He just kept talking and talking and talking. I let him. Have you ever felt that it could make a difference for someone if you just let them talk? It was that kind of sadness. He needed an appraisal on the cat piss house and I said I would have John call him.

He stopped in this afternoon. He was driving a mini hillbilly limo- an early 90's Ford Ranger transformed into a weird platform truck with one of those strange bars that come up behind the cab. I assume these are for busty redneck women to hang on to while 'mudboggin'. It was navy blue and rusty, the only shine coming from the plastic chrome naked lady silhouettes stuck on the back window. A Petronas like antenna reaching defiantly into the lower atmosphere proclaimed his subliminal manhood.

He was back.

I was busy retouching photographs and John handled the situation. No need for me to interrupt the dialog. He hung himself next to the door looking down at me. I could smell stale cigarette smoke emanating from him. With Snowflake perched on my lap, he joked and asked me if I was running a daycare and could he drop off his two granchildren named Blah and Blah. I was really trying to tune him out. I laughed in that spaced out 'I'm on the computer' kind of way and he left.

John and I laughed as soon as the door was closed.

"Jesus, Heid! How does it feel to get hit on by a grandpa! Holy shit", he razzed.

I was relieved he was gone. I almost felt sorry enough for him to invite him to my Christmas party. His presence felt like a repossession. Remembering how it felt to be around him or someone like him. Suffocating. It was heavy and forlorn.

I felt happy to eat alone tonight.