I´m a Realtor, and I try not to excessively intoxicate myself downtown while it´s still light outside. I monitor this with the breathalyzer that my mom recently bought for me. I don´t want clients or potential clients seeing me in public as a drunken shameless hussy. If it´s dark outside, my logic is that inside the bar people won´t know me. I was fully embracing this theory at Russian River Brewery, downing pints of a beer called Damnation, and arguing with my friends why the concept was superior, regardless of the fact that there are, in fact, lights inside all bars.
¨I don´t care, it´s dark and it´s okay to get drunk,¨I slurred and flung my arm in the general direction of the window. An hour later I blacked out. I awoke the next morning naked and in the process of a booze death recovery. My muscles felt like I´d been in a fight with a mailbox, my mouth tasted like I had consumed a rotting rodent, and I had mascara smeared across my face, which was nicely complemented by drool on my pillow as well as the lower half of my head. My saliva was in my hair. I groaned and glanced at the clock. It was ten-fifty in the morning, and I was supposed to show a house at 11am. I looked up the address, and the house was twenty minutes away. I called the clients and told them I was on my way but running a few minutes late. I threw on a dress, sunglasses to cover my drunk eyes, and perfume to disguise the smell of copious amounts of beer. I got to the car before realizing two things.
1: I didn´t have shoes.
2: I didn´t have my purse.
I ran back inside, doused myself in perfume, grabbed shoes and purse, and drove across town. I realized that I had left the address back at my house, so I called my mom to look it up. She texted me the address, and I didn´t feel like a complete failure as the addresses progressed and I got closer and closer to my destination.
Sonoma Mountain Road was like the goddamn Yellow Brick Road: it just kept going and going and going. I almost drove off the road twice in my haste to not look like a completely late asshole to the clients.
When I got to the end of the street, there was no For Sale sign in sight, and the address my mom had texted me didn´t correspond with any house on the street. It was 11:27am, I was over twenty minutes late, and I couldn´t find the house. I couldn´t call anyone because there was no reception. I couldn´t harass anyone through my window because there was nobody to ask. Every aspect of my life was in pain, demolished by my boozehag self. My eyeballs hurt, and the backs of my knees felt like they´d been attacked by a violent gremlin. I drove back down the street with the distinct impression that I was driving a loonybin. Seven minutes later, I saw a For Sale sign and the clients´monster van. Their youngest child had named the vehicle. They had four children.
I pulled up and jumped out, repeatedly apologizing. I noticed Child #3 lying spread-eagle on the ground crying. Child #2 had a stick in his hand and was playing a game that can only be called ¨Stab the Sibling¨ with Child #1. Child #4 smashed his head against the side of the house in ten second intervals. I ran up the steps to the front door of the house, only to notice that there was a combination lockbox on the front door. Combination lockboxes are almost extinct and technically illegal to use. The Listing Agent hadn´t provided any combination in the description of the house. I called the Agent, with no response. It was 11:38, I was almost forty minutes late, and I couldn´t let them into the house. We walked the perimeter of the property, tried all the doors and windows, and came to the conclusion that we were officially locked out. At this time, I realized that I was going to get violently ill. Within a minute. I handed the dad a bobby pin and a credit card. I said that I was going to continue to look around the house, and he should try to break in. I galloped around the side of the house feeling that the alcohol from the night before had eradicated half of the brain cells from my skull. I looked around, and then projectile vomited over the fence and into the neighbor´s yard. I struggled back to the front of the house to discover that the dad had broken into the house through the garage door.
The house was an absolute cesspool. Carpet had been torn up, walls had been punched in. Doors were missing, as was one of the bedrooms. Electrical outlets and light fixtures had been removed. The roof leaked. One of the kids walked into the bathroom and sprinted out seconds later, screaming. The other three followed suit. When questioned, they were all crying about different things.
Child #1 was in hysterics over the largest shit he´d ever seen, Child #2 over the excessive amounts of vomit. Child #3 had to pee, and Child #4 was crying because everyone else was.
I returned home and got directly in bed. Once there, I thought it prudent to breathalyze myself. I blew a .1. It was twelve-thirty in the afternoon.
No comments:
Post a Comment