By J.D. Hosemann
I never managed to unpack my things. My apartment was lined with stacks of cardboard boxes and picture frames propped against walls where they might have been hung. I drank unknown quantities of Line 39 Pinot Grigio ($11.38/bottle). Even lesser-known quantities of time passed without my noticing. Faceless tenants slammed doors and stomped across the ceiling. Their muffled voices reverberated in the walls while I scrolled on my phone watching countless street interviews with drunken college students, reaction videos, trick shots, thirst traps. I can say very little about my arrival. There was the recently laid sod, a freshly painted sign (The Mark III: A Place for Living). But I do remember how it ended. I remember the jarring knock on my apartment door.
The neighbor introduced himself as Charles and claimed he’d been living across the breezeway for several months. He wore a baseball cap, an enormous Green Bay Packers Starter jacket, and he held in his hand a small, padded envelope. “This you?” he asked, extending the package toward me. Charles showed little interest in chatting. I accepted the package, offered my thanks, and retreated immediately leaving no time for pleasantries. Once inside my unit, I opened the padded envelope and discovered a digital meat thermometer ($17.89), which I vaguely remembered ordering from TEMU. Fair enough, I thought. I ripped it from its plastic encasing and placed it among other miscellaneous items in a small kitchen drawer, which, to my bemusement, already held an identical device still in its original packaging.
It was around the time of this encounter that I began scouring online real estate listings. Night after night I stared into my laptop screen. I zoomed-in on the map and hovered my cursor over properties marked by little blue pins ($180k, $246k, $557K). I clicked through images of open-concept living rooms, galley kitchens, carpeted bedrooms and white-tiled bathrooms, not to mention backyard patios and oil-stained garages. Each home was newly renovated and updated. Stainless steel covered every appliance; granite, every countertop. The effect of wide-angle lenses made even a tiny nook seem like a great hall. I often saw myself in the images of these various rooms. I was preparing a nice meal in the kitchen. I was playing a musical instrument or watering a plant. I was reading a book in the den. Writing a book in the study. Doing pushups in the garage. I was learning to paint. Entertaining guests. Sometimes another person was there, a co-habitant, a woman without a face. I don’t know who the faceless woman was, but she was often doing what I was doing: reading or cooking or taking a nap. I thought I could almost see her face, but that would’ve been impossible because she didn’t have one.
I exhausted all listings in my surrounding area. It was late at night and I found myself zooming out, highlighting the little dots, expanding pictures of each house. Each one I’d already visited. I looked for something new, something overlooked, but nothing presented itself. I closed my laptop and left my apartment.
The concrete paths and nascent shrubbery led me to the center of The Mark III, to the emerald waters of the communal pool. I’d yet to discover a single bather in the pool, which, despite its recent construction, had already succumbed to severe neglect. A thin film of debris and dead bugs floated perpetually across its surface. But I found the pool to be soothing, especially at night when the underwater lamp illuminated the whole common area and projected ripples of green and yellow against the poolside units. I reclined on a pool chair and watched patterns of light casting shadows of floating debris. I lit a cigarette.
“What was the package?”
The voice came from my right. I turned to find Charles embedded in a nearby pool chair, a big G across his chest. He gestured to my pack of Parliaments with forked fingers. I flipped him the pack, offered the lighter.
“A digital meat thermometer. From TEMU.”
“Nice.”
“Yeah. Need to watch my spending though.”
“What for?”
“I’m buying a house.” I shuddered at the thought of this admission.
Charles was silent for a moment. Then he said, “You don’t buy a house with money.”
“Well, you need a little money.”
“You got credit?”
I nodded.
“You don’t need money. You just need credit.”
Charles tucked the cigarette behind his ear and produced a bulbous glass pipe from his jacket pocket. He lit the bowl and drew it deeply. For a moment, the features of Charles’ face were illuminated by the orange embers. His eyes were closed. He had freckles. When he exhaled, plumes of smoke billowed from his nostrils. Then he leaned back and extended the pipe in my direction, less of an offer than an assumption. I took the pipe, put it to my lips, and drew until I saw orange. I exhaled a stream of smoke that floated into the darkness above.
“I’ve never bought a house.”
“You won’t do the buying.”
“The buying?”
“The bank, the lawyers, the realtors. They do all the buying. You do the wanting.”
“The wanting?”
“Find yourself a realtor. She’ll put you in a house.” Charles stared forward, almost as if talking to some invisible person several yards from us.
I stared forward, too. I looked directly into the pool and watched as a spider made its way across the debris and then, miraculously, across water. Its spindly legs made tiny impressions on the water’s surface. My own feet felt far from me. My arms became lanky things. I leaned back in the chair. Charles continued saying things, something about realtors, mortgages, escrow. My eyes felt glassy. I had many eyes, like a spider. Weed smoke hovered in the night air and I could see each particle reflect the green light of the pool. I could see water molecules, stainless steel, kitchen gadgets, a crowded drawer. Storage space. Open concept. Find yourself a realtor. Unbroken chains of molecules. The pool chair dissolved into water but the surface tension held my weight. I lay there doing the wanting.
I awoke to a loud splash and sunlight hissing against my forehead. Charles was gone. A maintenance man combed the depths of the pool with an underwater vacuum. The pool was pristine. Not a leaf or bug in sight.
My phone vibrated and I sat up to check it. A Gmail notification: Prospective Client—Blue/Williams Realty Group. I touched the banner:
Hi, John! We got your message! I think I found your house! Call me asap!
–Marianne
601-423-XXXX
2
From the street, the house appeared small: a tiny one-story frame with a front porch swing and a sagging roof. At first it didn’t seem big enough to hold more than one person. But I walked the length of the property line and found the house was built on a sloping hill. As I descended the hill into the backyard, the house grew larger and larger. I turned and looked up. Two dark windows loomed some twenty-five feet overhead. Their height was disorienting. I felt a spell of dizziness. Then I heard a car, the sound of brakes.
A silver Mercedes was parked on the street and Marianne was waving to me from the front doorway of the house. She wore a light blue floral blouse and matching heels. Her face bore a thick layer of foundation, and her red hair had been recently dyed. She looked perfect, objectively so.
“Such a charming neighborhood,” she said. I looked around. The house was nestled between a law office and a fourplex. I saw some trees, architectural variety. A car with no muffler sped past us down the street. “And it’s designated historic,” Marianne added.
In the living room, I eagerly awaited Marianne’s instructions, but she said nothing. Instead, she extended her right hand in which she held a golf ball. She leaned forward and placed the ball on the floor, where it rested quietly for a brief moment before suddenly coming to life. The golf ball began rolling, slowly at first but gradually picking up speed until it rumbled noisily against the natural wood flooring. We both watched as the ball careened toward the baseboard on the farthest wall. But then, as if possessed, it slowed and curved back toward the center of the room, barely missing the wall.
“Is that bad?” I asked.
“Not necessarily. It just depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether you can see yourself living here.”
We walked around. Our voices reverberated in the empty spaces of the vacant house. The wooden floors were newly polished and a thick coat of paint had been applied to every wall. Even the fireplace was slathered with multiple layers of heavy white paint. It reminded me of a white, layered cake. In fact, the entire house had been painted in a style I could only describe as frosted. It made me want to go out and buy a gigantic knife, an absurdly large knife, to slice into this house and find out whether or not it was cake.
“Go on,” Marianne said. Take a walk around. I’ll let you be.
The house was built in such a way that one room led into another. Each room had at least two points of entry, forming a kind of circle or spiral. The spacious front room led into a cozy dining room, which was connected to the kitchen. I walked through the kitchen and into a bedroom. Then I walked through the bedroom and into a large white tiled bathroom. Jack and Jill, I remembered from my research. Then I walked from the bathroom into another room, a dark room with no windows. I was in the center of the house somehow. I wondered what purpose such a room could serve. Was it a bedroom? An office?
When I passed through the darkened room, I found myself back in the living room, back where I’d begun. It felt surprisingly spacious and airy. Natural light poured in through windows on the front facing wall of the house. I was just about to ask my realtor about the darkened middle room when, there in the light, I saw myself. I was reclined in a reading chair, a book hiding my face and a black cat curled in my lap. Finally, a chance to do a little reading, I thought. Then I saw myself in the kitchen donning an apron and making poulet chasseur. And then I was outside mowing the front lawn. I watched through the front window as I pushed an old-fashioned rotary mower. I was sweaty. My shirt was off. My arms were chiseled from all the pushups I’d been doing.
“Well, do you see yourself living here?” Marianne asked.
I turned from the window and looked at my realtor. She was also looking out into the yard. Then she turned, smiled, and awaited my response.
3
The house visit, the loan-approval, the contract: I had very little to do with any of it beyond applying my initials in the designated blanks. But once my offer was accepted, once a closing date was determined, my online habit only intensified. I took special pleasure in watching the status of the listing flip from “for sale” to “under contract.” I combed through the page over and over again. I committed every detail to memory. Built 1938; 1617 sqft; .98-acre lot. I thought of new questions to ask Marianne. Were the bedroom outlets grounded or two-pronged? Was the entire roof replaced after the hailstorm of 2013 or just the shingles? I relentlessly clicked through each of the twenty-six images on the realtor.com slide deck. Crown molding, glass doorknobs, all the little bits of charm and character I’d missed or already forgotten about.
One night I downloaded several decades worth of Hinds County tax records in an attempt to discover all the names of the previous owners of my property. But I kept hitting snags. Either the document was illegible or the address was missing. That couldn’t be true. The house had stood for some eighty years. I stared at the screen checking each address until my vision blurred and I could no longer make out the tiny street numbers. I closed the laptop and there I was at The Mark III, in my apartment, amid the stained carpet, beige walls, the fluorescent kitchen light. I looked at the cardboard boxes stacked against the wall. On one of them I’d written the word “Stuff.” I thought about Charles and wondered what his unit looked like.
The pool was, once again, covered in leaves and debris. I paced around the deck with a cup of Line 39 in my hand. I lit a cigarette. I wanted to tell Charles about Marianne, about the golf ball, about her Mercedez. Get yourself a realtor. I looked at the pool chairs again and again but they remained vacant. Then I pulled out my phone and scrolled through emails, the back and forth between me and Marianne. I considered typing out a message. About what? Outlets. Shingles? I stared at the water, the emerald glow. I watched the leaves floating listlessly. I noticed a spider desperately trying to climb out of the pool, its legs struggling to take hold against the vinyl liner. Eventually it gave up and continued its miraculous journey across the water’s surface.
There was no traffic on the road at that time of night. I pulled onto highway forty-nine and crossed its four lanes without a turn signal. My plastic cup fit snug in the cup holder and I drove with the windows down. Heat on the feet. Crosby, Stills, and Nash were coming through the car stereo, but they were continually interrupted by the artificial voice of a woman reminding me to take a slight right onto Mill Street in two miles. I passed unimpeded through a gauntlet of green traffic lights. Turtles all the way down! I thought for no reason. I’m bending time and space, I thought as the white lines elongated on my approach. I’m on a night journey, I thought as the jangle of Stephen Stills’ acoustic guitar prepared me for the coda of “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes.” I’m on a journey home, I thought as I took a sip of Line 39 and sang along with the boys Doo doo doo doo doot, doot doot, doo doo doo doot. Then I made a series of turns and merges and slight rights toward downtown, toward a neighborhood with brown road signs, a historic designation. I was driving home.
The highway narrowed and funneled me into smaller boulevards and avenues and streets. I reduced my speed and lowered the volume of the car stereo. Quiet city, sleepy town. My car snaked around the streets of my new, yet historic neighborhood and suddenly I felt a sense of calm reverence, of peaceful vigilance. I turned the radio completely off. I turned off my navigation app too. One ought to know his way home. But my street seemed unnaturally dark. There wasn’t even a flicker from the streetlight. Only rooftops were visible against the mild glow of urban light pollution, but the houses themselves, their faces, were shadowy things. I recognized certain landmarks. The law office, a convenience store. But the houses themselves seemed to shift, their features distorted in the darkness. Was that wood or asbestos siding? Four columns or two? A rose bush or Japanese maple?
Eventually I found myself at a small public park with a walking trail that twisted and curved around a large grassy meadow. I pulled over and poured myself more Line 39 before killing the engine and embarking on my walk. Small, solar-powered lamps had been planted at measured intervals along the trail and created a haunting effect. Ghost path, I thought. I walked from light to light and tried to focus on the path rather than the surrounding darkness, which seemed infinite. I imagined it was daytime, in the future, a future in which I was living my life in my new house. I imagined a green meadow and blue sky, people on a picnic blanket, dogs chasing tennis balls. “On your left!” I jolted and spilled my wine when the runner bounded past me. He wore a blinking red light that bobbed up and down while the rest of his body disappeared into the darkness.
Back at The Mark III, I found another package at my doorstep. There was a note: Delivered to my address again. Check shipping info. C. I tore open the package and found another digital meat thermometer ($18.39/TEMU).
4
As the closing date drew near, new players in the drama of my house hunt entered the scene. Yes, there had always been Marianne, the realtor and soothsayer who showed not just houses but entire lives unfolding before your very eyes. But there was also the bank, the Mortgage Loan Originator, the home inspectors, the crawl space guy, the insurance agents, the roofing guys, the sump-pump repairmen. Somehow I’d set into motion an entire industry of professionals determined to house me.
I was in my apartment the night Marianne called to explain that my house had not passed inspection. I remember very few details from the conversation, only that my first reaction was to say That’s okay. I still want it. I still want my house. But Marianne explained my desire had been insufficient, that the people actually buying my house, those professionals involved in the transaction, had decided it was not to be. Eventually we hung up. I looked down at my laptop, which sat open on the kitchen countertop. Of the dozen or so tabs open, half of them were my home listing. I clicked one of them and saw the front porch, the Japanese maple in the front yard. Then I closed the computer.
I’m not sure why I went to Charles’ apartment. Perhaps I held him partially responsible for this, even though he’d done nothing but offer some kind advice to a neighbor. Maybe I thought I could change things by going to his apartment, by knocking on his door the way he’d knocked on mine. When I did so, when I rapped my knuckles against the vinyl door, it creaked open slightly. At first I wondered if Charles was waiting on me, if he had opened it as soon as I walked over. But it had only opened a fraction of an inch. “Charles?” I said nervously. When I pushed the door myself, I found no one there.
Charles’ apartment was nearly identical to mine. There was a beige living room, a carpeted bedroom, and a small kitchen with plenty of storage space. Charles had managed to hang a few pictures, but the only striking difference was the window in the living room. Unlike my unit, which faced the parking lot and, at some distance, highway forty-nine, Charles’ unit faced the interior of The Mark III and offered a perfect view of the pool’s emerald waters. I walked to this window and looked out into The Mark III, the tan vinyl siding, the concrete paths, the patched sod, and the blue-green light of the pool at the center of things. That’s when I noticed a tiny orange light in the darkness. The light was coming from the pool chairs in the corner of the common area. The little orange light would glow bright for just a second before fading slightly, followed by a little puff of smoke.
When I got to the pool I was out of breath from running, but I hadn’t been fast enough because I did not find Charles. I found no one. It was only me, there at the pool, late at night when the underwater lamp made everything green and yellow. It was me who, just then, noticed something at the bottom of the pool, something dark and impossible to make out because of the refracted light of the water’s surface. And it was me suddenly splashing around in the water, unable to penetrate the depths, my limbs spread out and flailing on the surface. It was me who wanted—no—who needed to see what was at the bottom of the pool. And it was me who, eventually, contorted my body and dived down. Beneath the surface, I saw a more definite shape, a dark rectangular thing down at the bottom of the pool. I kicked my legs furiously but struggled to go down, to sink into the depths. I kicked and kicked and extended my right hand toward the dark thing at the bottom of the pool. And, as I reached for it, I thought I recognized the shape, its unique angles. It looked familiar, something I’d viewed a million times. But the thing disintegrated as soon as I grabbed it. I looked at my hand, which was covered in green algae. Then I turned and looked up from the bottom of the pool. I looked to the surface and I saw the silhouettes of people standing around the edge of the pool. They were staring down into the water, dozens of vague and refracted faces, faces from the past and faces from the future, staring down from above.
J.D. Hosemann lives in Jackson, Mississippi. His work has appeared in places like The Kenyon Review Online, New World Writing, Maudlin House, ergot., hex, and elsewhere.