The
next day, Mummy received a flood of calls about the #apartment; but no one
wanted to see it when they heard it was in Manson Street.
Almost
without exception, the calls went like this:
Brrring! Brrring!
"Hello?"
"Hi. I'm calling about the apartment in the
paper?"
"Oh,
yes?"
"Can
you tell me a bit about it?"
"Well,
it has a large living room and dining room, three bedrooms, a large kitchen, a
bathroom, and a small room leading off of the living room which can be used as
a study or something. It also has a
balcony and an attic."
"Sounds
nice. Where is it?"
"Manson
Street."
"Oh. Er, thank you." Clunk!
or
Silence
. . .clunk.
The
calls kept coming in, but still no one was interested when they heard where it
was. Mummy eventually resorted to
tactics aimed at enticing people.
To
the question of “where is it?” – or even beforehand – she would launch into a
spiel that went like this:
"Oh,
it's a very nice street." Which I'll admit was overdoing it a wee bit. "It's on a dead end, so there's no
through-traffic. Except for the prostitutes and their johns, that is “The street's full of kids riding
bikes." Not adding that they were mostly young hooligans. "It's a friendly neighborhood."
A
couple of people sounded slightly interested at this, although I think my
mother’s gushing tended to make the callers a little suspicious. And of course their suspicions were confirmed
when they heard the words "Manson Street."
“I’ll
really have to visit this house, of yours,” Frederica said, after overhearing some of
Mummy’s more creative descriptions and the disinterest that followed.
Later
on, Mummy resorted to, ". . . Manson Street . . .," and before they
could get a word in edgeways, " . . . it used to have a bad name but the #neighborhood's really coming up, you know."
Still
no success.
I
couldn't understand it. To my knowledge,
nothing particularly bad or, should I say, worse than usual had happened on
Manson Street since I bought the house. Why the bad name and the stay-away-at-all-costs
reputation?
After
a few more days, Mummy phoned me at work.
"A prospective #tenant just called who sounds really interested, even when I told him the #house was on
Manson Street," she said.
"I've got the number. I
think you should call him."
"Right." I took down the number and called right
away. A man answered the phone, and I
told him who I was.
"Oh,
yes," he said. "Do you know if
it's near Thomas Street, ‘cause my wife has some friends living there that she
likes to visit."
"I'm
not sure," I answered, "but we can look on a map."
We
made an appointment for Saturday morning.
Saturday
dawned. Allen went to Schemmerhorn with
me to keep me company. We arrived a
half-hour early, complete with brooms, mops, and vacuum cleaner, to give the
place a quick once-over before the people arrived.
We
drove up to the house to find the street door to the second-floor apartment
standing wide open; a couple of scruffy little girls and a boy were darting in
and out of the doorway.
"What
the . . .!" I exclaimed, leaping out of the car next to where Shirley was
chatting to the neighbor from across the street.
"Who's
in the upstairs apartment?" I demanded, rather unfairly, of the poor
woman.
Poor
Woman looked slightly taken aback.
"I thought you knew," she said. "They moved in on Monday. You mean, you didn't know?"
"No,
I did not!"
"Well,
Jerry and me, we thought, gee Anastasia rented that place real quick. I mean, we only saw you last Saturday, and
they was in on the Monday."
"We'll
see about that!"
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