We’re back up at Elsie’s cottage, treading lightly, as she’s put the property on the market, sooner rather than later, at her realtor’s behest. To show the place to prospective buyers in its best light.
So far, few bites. “Not even nibbles, really,” Elsie says.
“Except this one guy,” she tells me as we sit on the deck, looking out over the water. “Came in lowballin’, Earl called it,” Earl being Elsie’s realtor. “Insultingly so.” Earl’s words, she says. “Earl’s indignant. Fired off quite the feisty response, informing the guy to stop any further frivolous contact with us.” She takes a sip of tea. “A bit rash, I thought,” she continues. “But what do I know about real estate.”
Indeed.
What do we know about real estate? we mere mortals. What does anyone know about real estate except that it’s good to get you some. Until it isn’t.
“Then the guy comes back with a monster offer,” Elsie tells me. “Astronomical. Too good to be true. Earl thought the guy was just being funny. Some smart aleck retort to Earl’s Get Stuffed note.”
Elsie takes another sip of tea and sighs out into the view, to such an extent that I take it to be the end of the story. An odd note to end on, I think. A real cliffhanger. Tune in next week for the exciting conclusion. Was it a real bid or wasn’t it? Did they accept the offer or didn’t they?
“Turns out, the guy’s serious, according to his real estate agent,” Elsie says. “Very serious. So much so, it unsettles Earl, despite the whopping great commission he’ll get if the sale goes through.”
“If?” I ask. “Why wouldn’t it?”
“Well,” Elsie explains. “Earl did some digging. Especially when the guy insists on staying anonymous. That’s a big red flag for Earl.”
I’m immediately wondering about Elsie’s realtor, Earl. What business is it of his who’s making the offer? Isn’t his job essentially mediation of a deal, middle manning the transaction?
“Is that usual practice?” I ask, refraining, I hope, from a display of too much judgement.
Elsie shrugs.
“Anonymous bid makes excessive offer? I guess you’ve got to determine if it’s legit or not,” she tells me. “That was Earl’s thinking at any rate.”
My turn to shrug.
Again.
What do I know about real estate?
“Turns out the guy’s some local magnate,” Elsie then confides, at a whisper despite there being no one else around but Shirley the dog for nautical miles. “A deeply despised local magnate, according to Earl.”
Well, this sounds like the perfect place for a despised local magnate. Far away from the haters, far from the maddening crowd. What could possibly be the downside? I wonder to myself, not wanting to impart further opinion into the proceedings.
“Earl gets a couple of his young assistants to do some digging into the guy, into his social media and such,” Elsie says, still at a conspiratorially volume level, as if the waves have ears.
“And?”
“Turns out the guy’s a bit of a prepper. Ever heard that term, Barnaby?”
I nod. I have.
“Prepping for the end of the world. Apparently, the guy’s been buying up isolated properties all around the area here.”
Huh. What do you know? Our very own, home-grown paranoid hoarding of the wealthy.
“The world’s misfortune smiles good fortune down on you,” I say to Elsie.
Elsie does not seem all that pleased. She squints out over the water with a sigh.
“It just doesn’t feel right, Barnaby,” she responds after a bit. “Cashing in on the end of the world. That’s not what decent people do, is it? I mean, don’t we owe a little something for being lucky enough to have had a place like this for the last forty years or so?”
“Some might say,” I counter, “that rational self-interest is what makes the world go around.” Elsie turns and looks at me, surprise and disappointment fighting for the dominant look on her face. “Take the money, disperse it in a way you think might better things.” She doesn’t seem convinced. I’m not convinced. Just laying out options, alternatives.
“You really want to be playing devil’s advocate, Barnaby? These days?”
In days like these.
“I’m assuming that’s what you were doing with that,” she adds.
In part.
Sure.
But answers in matters such as these are seldom easy or obvious.
“I mean, look at us,” Elsie continues. “We’re up here, already escaping the ill-effects of the world gone off-kilter. Our own private paradise. As the world burns. That should be a soap opera we’re watching. As the World Burns.”
It is hot.
That is for sure. A punishing, sustained heat I do not remember experiencing ever in my life. Not around these parts. Not like the last few years. Couple? Three? Five?
And that’s just the one terrifying aspect of it, of the world we live in, the world we created.
As the World Burns.
“And now because some guy with more money than brains,” Elsie points out, “more money than heart, at any rate, wants to play apocalypse now and build himself a fortress to safely watch it all burn down, I get to further profit from that? Just because I’m in the right place at the right time?”
Shirley the dog appears out from a shady grove of trees that he’s been camped out in since we arrived, and makes his way down to the lake. Normally rambunctious and relentless in his pursuit of the local wildlife, especially the dastardly red squirrels, Shirley’s been low-key to inert. Still recovering from the city heat we fled from, we imagine. He laps up some lake water before plopping down along the shoreline, what little energy he had, now depleted.
“It’s not like I’m being forced to sell the place, Barnaby,” Elsie tells me out of a thoughtful pause. “It just seemed like a good time, is all.”
“Shirley certainly seems to enjoy coming up here,” I add, hoping to free myself from the doghouse I moved into with my ill-advised remarks about taking the money and running.
“Maybe I could bequeath it to some local children’s camp or something,” Elsie says after giving it some thought. “People do that kind of thing, don’t they?”
“Sure. Why not?” I respond, enthusiastically.
It surprises me, the thought of doing something like that would never have crossed my mind.
“I mean,” Elsie continues to think it through. “Why should people with money be the only ones able to dodge the worst aspects of what we’re doing to the planet?”
I nod in agreement.
“You gonna try and devil’s advocate that one, Barnaby?” she asks me with a chuckle.
This is where you’d normally say ‘Touché’ but I do so hate that convention.
We sit back in our seats and soak in the view, the weather, the vibe, as the kids say. Shirley rolls over on her back, legs splayed, down at lakeside, manifesting our general feeling of contentment.
“Earl might not be happy with that decision,” Elsie says after a bit. “No commission for him on that kind of transaction.”
To give Earl, the real estate agent, his due,
“Well, he did sort of point you in that direction,” I suggest. “He might even get a kick out of sticking it to that despised local magnate.”
Elsie considers the possibility.
“Yeah,” she says finally. “He really does seem to dislike the guy.”
You see? I think but don’t say. Rational self-interest doesn’t always have to have a monetary value attached.
And we continue our summertime vigil, looking out over the lake into the distance.
While it lasts.