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I toss it across the room and she darts over to it, leaping on it, letting out a whine of contentment.
I wish we could leave her at the apartment, but we’re not really supposed to have pets and some of our neighbors have already complained about her barking. Whenever she’s left alone, she whines super-loud, too, so loud that the whole building can hear her.
I reach into the bag and take out her portable water bowl, shaking it open, and then grab a bottle of water to fill it up.
“I won’t be long, girl,” I tell her. “Please don’t do anything silly. I’ll check on you as often as I can.”
She glances at me briefly, but mainly she’s focused on the bone, her jaw moving methodically.
“Okay,” I sigh, turning back toward the stairs. “Showtime.”
I stand at the edge of the room with a clipboard in my hand and a big realtor smile on my face. Alexis is always telling us that smiling and looking sexy is half the battle for female realtors.
I make do with smiling.
With my curvy body and thick blonde hair – horse-thick, the cheerleaders in high school used to say – I’m not exactly the sexy type.
Jackie hates when I talk like that. She says I need to get more self-esteem. But the fact is every time I look in the mirror, I feel a pang of harsh self-judgment that I can’t seem to shake.
People mill around the house, their voices rising into the air. Couples discuss how this room would make a good art studio, how the TV could go here, and on and on, and it’s my job to make it seem like there’s a bidding war going on behind the scenes. I need to drum up interest.
But mostly I’m just waiting for Tinkerbell to grow bored of her bone and start yapping. That’s probably why every noise is making me wince.
“Excuse me,” a lady’s voice says, calling me out of my thoughts.
I look up to find an elegant older lady, her gray hair styled down to her shoulders. She wears pearls on her ears and her neck.
“Yes?” I say, making my fake smile even wider.
“We were just wondering if all the bathroom floors are heated?”
I glance at the clipboard where Alexis has hastily scrawled some notes concerning the properties. I curse silently when I realize I don’t know the answer for sure.
The lady keeps staring at me, her own fake smile twitching, a flicker of impatience flitting across her vision.
“I think so,” I say, my voice trembling a little.
I really need to get it together.
Screw Alexis for her incomplete notes.
The lady nods briefly.
“Ah, okay,” she says. “Then I think we’ll just keep looking around.”
I watch as she walks across the room to her husband. He’s at the buffet table, staring down intently, rubbing his hands together as his wife approaches. They exchange some words and then head toward the door.
They pause when a small, angry dog starts yapping from downstairs.
I cringe and start across the room, toward the basement.
All eyes turn to me and I just know that this is going to get back to Alexis. The lady with the pearls, especially, seems like the type to report my behavior and my lack of preparation for the company.
And even if my lack of preparation isn’t exactly my fault, I know that Alexis won’t take any of the blame.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter, squeezing between a bald man and his husband who is very inconveniently loitering in front of the basement door.
“Is that a Chihuahua?” the bald man says. “That sounds just like ours, doesn’t it, honey?”
“Just as rat-like,” the man says with a wry smile.
I smile and laugh, but it comes out phony-sounding.
Tinkerbell’s barking has become more frantic. My chest tightens at the thought that she’s somehow trapped herself down there, or hurt herself in some way. I’d never be able to forgive myself if something happened to her while she was in my care.
Worse, I know that it would tear Jackie to pieces.
I barge into the basement and hurry down the stairs, almost tripping in the skirt Alexis insists all the female realtors should wear.
Tinkerbell has her back to me, barking furiously at the wall. At first, I have no idea what she’s doing.
But then I see it.
She’s scratched away a piece of the wall that looks like it’s made out of painted cardboard, a pretend section that makes it seem like it’s a part of the solid brick. Now the cardboard lies in tatters and there’s a small jagged hole.
I move closer, wondering if my eyes are deceiving me if somebody spiked my non-alcoholic champagne upstairs.
In the fake section of the wall bundles and bundles of white powder are stacked atop each other, clearly visible through the translucent plastic they’re stored in. Duct-tape runs from one end to the other, but it doesn’t cover the whole area.
