Sugarhouse: Turning the Neighborhood Crack House Into Our Home Sweet Home Read Online Free Page A

cruel stepmother, waiting for something magical to happen with wands, a squash, geriatric fairies, and rodents.
    A man’s small, pinched voice comes through the line, and it is not, I realize, my fairy godmother. I tell him who I am, why I’m calling, where I’m calling from.
    He sounds as if he’s ready to be highly annoyed with me, as if he were expecting a federal agent or property appraiser. When he understands that I might give him money rather than pinch it, he chippers up.
    “I can be there in half an hour. Half an hour. I’ll hurry hurry. Just down here in Murray, you know. Be there right quick. We’ll show you the place, we will all right. Name’s Stanley, by the way,” he says. “Stanley. See you soon.”
    I scoot to a convenience store, buy a Coke, and zip back to the house, hoping the glare of the window was playing tricks on my eyes. I look inside again and think about calling my landlord to see about extending our lease. Thank God my grandmother isn’t around to see this. The apparent condition of the house seethes from between the bricks. If it were a person, I would recommend, if not dramatic surgery, a generously cut caftan and a personal trainer or two. A burka perhaps.
    I call Jenae at work, who’s guarded but optimistic, and then Sully, our last-chance realtor. In his jaded, realtor way, Sully is piqued. He knows from experience that we have been nearing the Fuck It stage of home buying. It is preceded by the Just Looking stage, the Very Interested stage, the We Love It We’ll Take It stage, the What Do You Mean Our Offer Fell Through? stage, then the Well This Is the One We Really Liked Anyway stage, followed by the It’s Already Under Contract? stage, and finally, of course, the Fuck It stage, when exasperation courts thirty-year (or, hell, even adjustable-rate) mortgages with all the grace and romance involved in asking your cellmate if he’ll rub lotion on your back.
    “So,” Sully says, “you found another one. Super!” He seems campily amused by the fact that every house I have found has fallen through. As if he has been blameless by finding and showing us house after house that we hate. “And you said it’s listed through who?”
    I tell him it’s for sale by owner, and Sully laughs.
    “What?” I say. I am not amused. My grandmother is three months dead, and my mother has been a listing wreck, sick with grief. I am working two jobs, we are still broke, about to become homeless, and it is over a hundred freaking degrees for the eighth day in a row. People have shot strangers for less.
    “What, Sully?” I say.
    “Nothing,” Sully says. I can hear him leaning back like an executive, even though he is a waiter with me at the restaurant more often than he is a businessman. Mostly he’s a really good guy, but now is not the time. “Just gotta love the Fisbos,” he says.
    “The whats?”
    “The Fisbos. For Sale by Owners. They’re all just—well, you’ll see.”
    I sit on the porch, smoke a cigarette, and wonder what in God’s name I am waiting for, momentarily confusing Fisbo with Furby, that undead, self-animated stuffed thing with a beak, when a white Dodge Diplomat with imitation wood paneling and Idaho plates pulls up. It is the kind of car driven by, I imagine, someone who has a cellar full of Spam, Fanta, guns, and ammunition. Maybe even a cache of armor-piercing rounds for the big day when the feds try their Ruby Ridge routine again. The car’s license plate appears to be attached to the rear bumper with a coat hanger. A man wearing a white T-shirt and jean shorts gets out. His shorts are so short that one pocket hangs below the ragged hem, and I worry for a moment that it’s not his pocket.
    “You must be Stanley,” I say.
    I stand up somewhat awkwardly, realizing I’m on his porch, greeting the owner of the house as if he were me, someone I have been waiting for so I can sell him this damned house. He walks directly toward me at near-ramming speed, then