Gabrielle Taylor's "Cockluck"
February 11, 2002
After Judith left, Bertram had a long scalding hot shower. He read his email naked. Make $5000 A Week From Home Call Now! Buy Viagra Discreetly 4267! Credit Card Debt? Too Many Bills? Teenage Hotties Take It All Everywhere!
Nothing unusual.
Sometimes he would play Risk or solitaire until his overtired brain shut down. This morning he went to his scrupulously clean narrow hard black futon and slid into a sleep-lined hole.
"Breakfast!" Judith called.
"I don't wanna go to school," he muttered and hauled himself out of bed. He took another shower and dressed in dark green cotton boxers, black cotton trousers, a black leather belt with a worn chromy buckle, white socks, and a tan short-sleeve shirt with an improbable animal tattooed on it.
Breakfast was a three quarter litre of coffee with four cream and four sugar that was cool enough for swimming and onion bagels and fat whipped cream cheese from Druxy's. "This house, it's the one in the Glebe, right, near the canal?"
"Yeah. It's a beautiful house. I keep getting losers in it."
"You should make them hire me to screen them."
"I do require references, but still... I'd rather you just took it over. It's too much trouble. I sold the Leo house, did I tell you that?"
"Leo's a cock. Half rent rather, less my per diem?"
"Well..."
"Still cover your taxes. Think it over."
The house was on a treed half acre with knee-high yellow grass out front. The garden in back was overgrown and the greenhouse was disturbingly green. The main house was wrapped in scraggly nose-high hedge with holes burned in it.
Set a hundred meters back from the shrubs was a wartime A-frame with white asbestos shingles and green trim. Once, a brick path led to the chipped British red door. The bricks were since turned partly into a barbeque pit behind the greenhouse.
The main house had weathered gray cedar siding, large square tinted windows and peeling cornflower blue trim and cornflower blue metal doors to the two car garage. The entire structure was solid and airy, like a ski lodge.
"What's that..." Bertram started.
Judith unlocked the first garage door and flipped it up. It slid all the way up smoothly and silently. Bertram made an appreciative sound. Then they saw the inside. Fifty sweltering garbage bags bursting trash stewing like a chicken in a pot.
Judith covered her nose and mouth. Bertram held his breath and grabbed the door back down.
"I can't believe this! Every time this happens I still can't believe it! I can't believe people can live like this! Next to a garbage dump!"
"I'm not cleaning it," Bertram said. "That's not part of the deal. Get Sanitrol over here."
Judith flipped out her cellphone and grumbled into it. "Half an hour," she said. "Double time. Oh well. I'll just add it to my court claim. We can go in the other way."
"Swell." They circled to the back deck, which was broad planks of varnished pine sloshed with cigarette butts.
Judith unlocked double French doors and threw them wide. "Better get as much air in here as possible," she muttered.
The inside was packed with pizza boxes, empty milk cartons, empty soda bottles, empty beer bottles, fast food wrappers and smeary boxes of Tim Horton's donuts. On the living room coffee table was a shopping bag full of bubbly yellow cereal. A plaid lumberjack jacket was nailed to the floor just before the deck entrance. Bertram wiped his feet.
Judith walked into the middle as though into a sea of trash.
"This is amazing," she said finally. "I'll pay for the cleaners right away. And the garbage removal. This is amazing."
"I guess you haven't seen it lately?"
"No, I'm just suing for back rent since the lessor went to jail. I don't care if he's in jail or not, I know he had roommates and they could've paid. Then I just didn't want the trouble. I didn't even want to see the place. Urq bought it for me, remember."
"I remember. Urq's a dumb cock. Anybody who fails suicide three times can't commit to anything."
"I don't miss him, that's for sure. This is a beautiful house though. When it's being kept up. I need to pay more attention, and I just don't want to care that much. It's you or a management company and a management company would take a good sized cut too."
Bertram went back outside while Judith called the cleaners. At half rent less per diem he could afford the house. It might be twice what his apartment cost, after utilities and the impulse buying that comes with having more living space. He had never thought of himself as financially sound. Yet if he made himself do enough process serving and kept the bar profitable, he could maybe even buy this property if Judith really wanted to sell. He had never thought of owning a house before, much less two houses and a hedge.
He wandered back inside. He had always liked this house, with its squared polished hardwood beams, high ceilings, and cool smooth floors. There was a bright orange sweatshirt in the kitchen sink with water dripping onto it. The bathroom was full of mildew and there was an Anarchy symbol drawn on the shower curtain with gold glitter paint. The windows were filthy with greasy gray dust. Wads of dog fur clumped in the corners and in the jacuzzi jets. The bedrooms were stacked with broken furniture.
"You could set this room up as your office, if you didn't want to work out of the bar," Judith said forlornly of one room with bay windows facing north and west. "It's wired for high-speed internet access."
"I like working out of the bar."
"You could rent the spare room for at least a third of your rent."
"I like living alone."
"It could be a guest room."
"I don't have guests."
"That's because you don't have a guest room."
"I don't want guests."
"Have you ever had one?"
"No."
"Maybe if you had one, you'd find that you liked it."
"Maybe. I'd have to get rid of the spiders first."
"Yeah. I guess so."
"Does that mean you'll do it?"
"I'll do it."