I wasn't sure with this one if I wanted to go with funny or a more serious tone. I think I ended up leaning towards funny. I don't have too much to say about this one, except that weird or awkward situations are kind of fun to write about.

Enjoy!

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Thursday Morning

A few months back, I happened to find myself between jobs, and it was on the fourth day after my old job ended when that woman came to visit me. I don't mean unemployed, mind you. The project I was working on for my previous company was approaching its end and they didn't really have any new and interesting stuff to work on, so we parted ways amicably. I still go for lunch sometimes with my old boss. I found a new job in fairly short order but the start date wasn't until three weeks after they'd made me an offer. So I found myself with three weeks of free time; it was basically a vacation. Three weeks of guilt free leisure time and I actually was quite pleased. Who doesn't like a holiday? Well, my wife was resentful in a good-natured sort of way that she didn't get to stay home. I tried to keep things fair by taking over all of the housework and errands during my mini-retirement, as we called it. I prepared supper and made her a bagged lunch to take with her each day, as well.

I had very quickly fallen into a pleasant routine: after kissing my wife goodbye each morning, I would wash the breakfast dishes, then execute whatever chores I could before 10:00 am. At ten, I watched the Price Is Right. My holiday was during the transition between Bob Barker's stewardship of the show and Drew Carey's reign and I'd yet to decide what I thought of Carey as the new host. After the Price is Right I would usually read until lunchtime. One of my goals for my time off was to make a dent in the pile of unread books that had accumulated on the shelf beside my bed. On the day in question, I was reading a self-help book, something about how to be more assertive and successful in life. It was a gift from my brother-in-law and not the sort of book I usually read, but it was the sort of book my brother-in-law felt everyone should read. I've never really found much use for books like those. The audience seems to be people who are unhappy with their lives and reading the books gave them something to do other than try to fix things. It held even less interest for me then - how could I be discontent when my only obligation was to have a tasty supper ready by six o'clock? Nevertheless, I wanted to struggle through it so I could move onto more interesting things. I was dozing on the couch before I'd even made it through the introduction: something effulgent and overly earnest written by someone whose life had been utterly transformed by the book (their words, not mine).

I was dozed half-way through some talk show before a noise woke me from my doze and I jerked to sitting position. My book thumped to the floor. After a moment of confusion I realized the sound was a scratching at the front door; someone on my front porch. The mailman, I thought, but the sound kept at it and I heard the doorknob being twisted clockwise and counter-clockwise. Someone was trying to unlock my front door.

We don't have one of those peepholes in our door and from the living room window you can't see people standing on the porch so I opened up the door, hoping it wasn't a home invasion. Standing there holding a key was woman, probably a few years older than me. She was dressed in a pinstriped suit beneath an overcoat and her blonde hair was tied back in a complicated looking twist. She was attractive, although perhaps a bit stern looking.

"You must be the new owner. You changed the locks, my key doesn't work anymore."

We'd lived in this house for nearly two years and I explained this to the woman.

"What I meant was, I suppose, the newest owner. Or perhaps the next owner." She removed a small brass case from her coat pocket and from that removed a crisp white business card. "You bought this house from me and my husband."

I glanced at the card, and didn't recognize the name. But we'd never met the couple we bought our house from; that's how it goes these days. When I was a kid, I remember my parents taking me along to see a house they were thinking of buying. I sat on the kitchen floor playing with the family's dog while my parents chatted with the homeowners. Nowadays, the homeowners aren't even there. If there is an open house on a Saturday they might even leave town for the weekend. If you want your house to fetch a good price you have to hire a consultant to help you stage your home, to create the illusion that some fictional, perfect, stylish family lives there. My brother-in-law is in real estate and he compares it to Starbucks. You aren't buying coffee; you're buying a lifestyle. You have to stage your house because it's not the building you're selling, it's the lifestyle the buyers could have if they bought it.

While flipping through radio stations the other day, I caught part of a sermon by a guy talking about how we're in the end times, about how people are too greedy and how the youth are corrupt. When I think about Starbucks and staged homes, I almost begin to agree with him. But then again, old people have always said the end of the world was imminent. It's a hard-coded protocol in the brains of humans to believe each subsequent generation was more feckless and corrupt than yours. I bet way back amongst the first hominids evolved enough to make bitter, clucking complaints, there was some guy standing on a rock, waving a bone and ranting about how the cave boys and girls were leading the world to hell in a hand basket. But I'm getting a bit off topic.

"Oh," I said to the woman, "Did you forget something?"

She looked at me, puzzled. What a dumb thing to have said.

"I was in the neighbourhood," she pointed at the car parked on the street, "so I thought I'd pop by and see what you guys had done with the place. I wasn't expecting anyone to be home in the middle of the day. Don't you have a job?"

"I'm between jobs right at the moment. But it's not how it sounds. Um, would you like to come in?"

She stepped through the threshold, closed the door and handed me her overcoat. While I hung it up, she inspected - arms crossed in front of her - the framed photographs we had hung by the front door.

"This isn't very polite you know."

"What isn't?"

"These pictures."

In our little foyer, we'd hung a few pictures from some of the vacations we've taken. There was one from a hike in a rain forest in Costa Rica, one of the two of us on the Charles Bridge in Prague and a picture of my wife in front of the hotel we stayed in when we went to Las Vegas for our first anniversary.

"What's impolite about our pictures?" I was beginning to regret leaving the grocery shopping for the afternoon.

"Your front entrance should be welcoming guests into your home. You know what these pictures say to me? They say, 'You are interrupting. We'd rather be somewhere else, doing something else, visiting other people.' It's rude. If you have to have photos hanging up, they should be simple, pastoral scenes. Or maybe pics of the family pet. Although children are okay if you don't have a dog."

She stared at me. I didn't know if she expected me to yank them off the wall right then and there. All I could I think to do was offer her some coffee. I had some left in the coffee maker from breakfast and it would still be warm.

"Yes, but just one cup. I have to get back to my office soon. I wanted just a look, a quick peek at my old place."

"Wait right here," I said, and headed off to the kitchen.

I poured some coffee into a mug with logo of the bank we'd got our mortgage from, then spooned in some sugar from the bowl we kept on the counter. Taking the carton of milk from the fridge, I gauged its volume with shake. Almost empty. I put it back and dug through our cupboard for the jar of Coffee Mate we'd bought to bring on a camping trip, added several spoonfuls of the white powder to the cup and stirred it well. She wasn't a proper guest so I didn't feel bad about not giving her the last of my milk.

She was sitting on our couch in the living room when finished in the kitchen.

"You didn't paint in here?"

The living room was an eggshell blue.

"No, my wife likes the colour. We haven't really done any renovations, really." We'd turned a large section of the backyard into a garden but had really left the interior of the house alone. I guess it's because we'd both lived in apartments for so long; maybe the notion that the house was really ours, that we could do whatever we wanted with it, never quite sunk in.

"I repainted all the walls before we moved in. And six months after we took possession I had the cabinets in the kitchen redone."

"What did you do with kitchen cabinets while the carpenters were working? It must have taken at least a couple of days."

"I was away on business and my husband just got take out."

"Would you like to see the rest of the place? Not much will have changed, though. Except our furniture is here instead of yours."

I gave her a quick tour of the first floor of the house. After the living room, I showed her the spare bedroom and the kitchen. I'd left the Coffee Mate on the counter but she didn't say anything. The last room was the office.

"This used to be our dining room."

"Oh, yeah, we saw that in the open house. My wife really loved the china you had on display. But it's just the two of us and we usually eat at the kitchen table or in the living room on the couch."

We'd turned the room into a office for my wife, who sometimes brought work home. Although I'd use the computer in there, too. We'd found a large, old wooden teacher's desk and set up a bunch of bookshelves. Our old futon was in the room, too, so that if my wife was working I could sit and read.

"I had an affair." She didn't blurt it out, just stated it matter-of-factly. After stating that fact, she took a sip of coffee and continued to regard the room.

"Excuse me?"

"It lasted the better part of six months and then just sort of petered out. Pretty much around the time my husband and I sold this house to you. I joked with one of my friends afterwards that the guy was just seeing me for the house. You should keep an eye on your wife."

I didn't say anything and she continued, "One time, I called in sick and he came over. My husband was working late, or out of town or something. We fucked on the dining room table. He laid me down on it and we did it basically full clothed. It was some of the best sex of my life and I thought about it each night we sat down to dinner in here. Thank you for the coffee; I should getting back to work."

At the front door, while she was putting on her coat the woman again reminded me about the pictures. I told this all to my wife when she got home that night, she didn't believe me and suggested I'd been watching too many soap operas. A few days later, though, I found the woman's business card which I'd stuffed into the pocket of my jeans.

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