“Fabulous! Then I can cut you an amazingly good deal. It’s so good that, strictly speaking, I’m not allowed to go this low. But we’re making a few exceptions only in your neighborhood, for people like you.”
“I’m not interested.”
“Let me ask you this: How many pairs of shoes do you own?”
I didn’t answer right away, trying to remember where I’d put my cell phone. Wasn’t there a serial killer who had collected his victims’ shoes? Jerry Brudos?
“One,” I lied.
“You only have one pair of shoes?”
“Give or take.”
“My point exactly, give or take.”
“What is your point exactly?”
“Most people simply don’t know how much they own. May I come in?”
“No.”
“It would be easier.”
He put his foot on the threshold. I held on to the doorknob even tighter, ready to close it.
“Do you have children?”
His breath smelled like cigarettes. I pictured his black lungs, with scarcely any openings for the oxygen, decaying a little more each day from the toxins. I wondered if he knew that cigarettes contain a substance that numbs your throat so you don’t feel how much it hurts when you inhale the smoke.
“I have children, yes.”
“How old are they?”
“They’re . . .” I took a breath and plucked up my courage. “You know, now’s not a good time. Perhaps you could come back another time?”
“They all say that,” he said, sounding irritated. “Well, let me just jot down your name and phone number, because this is an offer you’re not going to want to miss!”
“Actually there’s no point in your calling, because we’re selling the house. I’m actually having an open house now, so it’s as good as sold. You’ll have to talk to the new owners.”
He laughed and shook his head.
“You haven’t sold it yet. We’ll just see how that goes.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You’ve heard of the housing market crash, right?”
He made an explosion sound with his mouth and illustrated with his hands everything being blown to smithereens.
“I hope for your sake that you haven’t bought a new place yet.”
“I have to go,” I said and tried to shut the door, but his foot was in the way.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“It’s . . . Anne Undheim,” I told him.
“Uh-huh. And your phone number?”
I made up one of those as well.
“Great. I strongly recommend that you get an alarm system. You know what happens when someone breaks into your home? They don’t just steal, you know. They make a mess and ruin your stuff. They urinate on your walls. They stick your toothbrushes into unmentionable orifices.”
“What?”
He winked at me.
“You can avoid all that with an alarm system. I’ll give you a call on Monday! But then I’ll expect to come inside. It’s really outrageous to be left standing outside like this!”
He gave me a slightly accusatory look and only slowly removed his foot. Once his foot was out of the way, I pushed the door shut with all my might and hurriedly locked it. My heart was racing. I had survived, but only just.
The people for the open house didn’t arrive until a good while after the appointed time. I had planned a few choice remarks about unpleasant Swedish alarm salesmen, but opening the door, I became distracted by how tall they were. They were so tall that I actually suspected them of being replicants. Especially since the male looked suspiciously like Rutger Hauer, and the female had a particularly meticulous hairdo that I had only ever seen in ads. Her short black hair stood straight up in a sort of a swoop to the left, which until I saw it I would have doubted was even possible to pull off in real life.
“Welcome,” I said, compensating for my lack of height and my limp hair by squeezing their hands extra hard during my handshake.
“Thank you,” they said and removed their shoes.
Despite their potential replicant status, I was happy to see that they were my age. Plus they both had steady jobs in the financial sector, so surely they also had actual money. The last private showings had been to two young couples currently renting basement apartments who should have been touring a “spiffy town house with sunny patio.”
All I had to remember in order to land this was that replicants weren’t the easiest to communicate with. Because their memories had been implanted, not experienced firsthand, it was hard for them to understand the emotional aspects of human life. Irony also wasn’t their forte.
But beyond a doubt they were equipped with an interest in interior design, because I could hear them talking about knocking down walls, building a loft, and putting in recessed lighting. They stood for a long while debating the purpose of the owl decals that adorned Alva’s bedroom wall. They concluded that they’d been put there to spruce up the space and give it the feel of a child’s bedroom. They also agreed the owls could probably be removed.
Easy peasy, I thought.
“Are you guys always so tidy?” she asked as they came back downstairs.
“We like to keep the place clean,” I said. “It gives us peace of mind.”
“But surely not as clean as this?”
“No, maybe not exactly this clean, but it’s not so far off.”
She stared at me as if she were trying to read my mind.
“I hardly believe that,” she finally concluded.
“Suit yourself.”
“Who put the owls on the wall?”
“I did.”
“I don’t like owls. Can they be removed?”
“Of course.”
“Can you prove that?”
“They’re decals. They come off.”
“Can you prove that?”
She stood and watched while I tried to remove one of the owls without damaging the paint. The hard edges of the decal cut in under my fingernails, but I held on to a straight face. When I was done, she ran her hand over the wall.
“No damage, right? No marks that I can see, anyway.”
She moved her head slightly and I chose to interpret that as a faint nod. Standing like that, she actually reminded me of an owl herself.
“Do you have any children?” I asked.
They exchanged glances, as if they didn’t understand my question.