Hungry For Business - Tuesday

‘Could you do a viewing at lunchtime?’ Asks negotiator S as I come back in the office stomach already rumbling. The bran and suspect dried fruit offering I had at breakfast, in solidarity with my wife’s family diet, has proved an inadequate substitute for a full English.

I move towards the viewing book, before spotting S’s reproachful look. I shouldn’t be cherry-picking the viewings, not a great example to the staff. Treat them as you’d like to be treated yourself I think, as another unhelpful image of S treating me, as I’d like to be indulged flits through my mind.

The silence has gone on too long and as I’ve often told S, as well as the other team members, silence is a powerful tool in selling. Make your pitch then shut up. People always feel compelled to fill a conversational void. I’m paused halfway towards my target and she’s waiting, knowing, looking. Looking pretty good, as it happens. I crumble.

‘No problem. Where is it?’

She tells me, with the hint of a triumphal smile.

‘You’re kidding?’ I grumble, stepping to the diary and confirming the worst with my own eyes. It’s a grotty converted flat in a shabby part of town, currently let to a couple of scruffy students – although I suspect there are more than two occupants most nights. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had sub-let the couch and the carpet. The landlord wants to sell when the tenancy expires, but the current occupiers have no interest in helping him - or us.

‘Have you told the tenants?’ I say cursing this wretchedly misplaced socialist attitude towards my colleagues. A dictatorship works best in sales. I should have ordered someone else over the parapet and stayed at the back like a First World War General, sipping red wine and screwing the locals.

‘They are going to be out so it’s ok to use the keys.’ Says S a trifle smugly. I scan the other appointments, short of re-arranging the diary in an obvious ploy to avoid the smelly socks and unwashed dishes I need to go. I take a sulky walk to the key-cupboard grab, a set of the details and the viewers contact details. I won’t need the rape alarm, I think absurdly, seeing the spare unit alongside the other dozens of sets of keys, but I might need the flea-spray. I’m already starting to itch.

‘Oh it’s a bit dark and dingy.’ Says the girlfriend of the slightly effeminate, posh-vowel city boy alongside her. He has that weak-chinned overfed and overeducated look of someone used to privilege and spending his parents’ money. If he works for one of Daddy’s friends, as he’s unemployable anywhere else, I suspect they’re not paying enough if this dump is all he can afford for his weekend shag-pad.

‘The communal areas are due a spruce-up.’ I tell the woman with a smile I hope isn’t as sickly on my face as it feels looking out. They’ve been due a redecoration for at least three years but the residents are in dispute with the freeholder. He wants to appoint his own building company to do the work, then doubtless stiff the sinking fund with an over-inflated invoice. No change there then.

Dodging a couple of grubby prams, both empty this time, and a rusty bicycle, I reach the landing just as the light-timer pops off and we’re plunged into semi-darkness. Hurriedly I stab the button and the greasy landing light wheezes back to a low-energy, low wattage puddle – it’s certainly not a pool – of light. My stomach rumbles like a Tube Train passing under the foundations.

I tap the door than work the flimsy lock.

‘I’m really not sure about this one already.’ Trills the girlfriend with the double-barrelled surname. God, if he ever does marry her they’ll need a whole page in the phone book to themselves.

‘It’s nicer inside.’ I say then remembering how quick people are to sue now with all the no-win-no-fee shark solicitors around, I add. ‘Or will be once you’ve decorated to your own taste.’

‘Did they like it?’ Asks S on my return.

 Not a lot.

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Cold Logic - Thursday

I let a guttural expletive out before I realise, and it echoes around the kitchen accusingly. My wife walks in, even before the swear word has finished pinging round the room, the last timbre-filled bounce off the aluminium cooker hood almost pleasing She frowns at me. There was a time when I never swore in front of her, but half a lifetime of marriage and a similar period selling to the public, has broken more than barriers.

‘What is it?’ She asks resignedly. She doesn’t sound as if she really wants to know, more a fading loyalty question.

‘I forgot to clean my shoes.’ I tell her sheepishly, still staring at the slightly scuffed selection of Oxford and Brogues on the floor in front of me. She moves past the counter and inspects the footwear quizzically, then says:

‘I thought it was meant to be girls and shoes?’

‘I haven’t got as many pairs as you.’ I snap back ungraciously before a small detonation goes off at the back of my throat and I add to the necessity of a footwear clean up, by unloading a percussive sneeze that splatters the leather unpleasantly.

‘You shouldn’t even be going in.’ Chides my wife as I stifle another sneeze and a derisive laugh, before bending to get the cleaning kit from a cupboard too low for those with fragile backs and disposition.

‘If I don’t show up nothing will be done.’ I sniffle defensively. ‘And then we’ll have no commission payments in a few months time.’

‘Nonsense.’ She proclaims, opening a box of sultana bran she knows I find about as appetising as sawdust and rabbit droppings, a combo the cereal has an uncanny resemblance to.

‘Surely they can make do without you?’ My wife continues, as I apply black polish to the snotty surface and feel the wax going under my fingernails to create another unwelcome chore before I leave. My head is thumping like a jackhammer and as I stoop towards my shoes, gravity is sluicing more mucus down both nostrils in a double-barrelled river of infection. An infection that woman in London Road almost certainly gave me last week – although she didn’t give me her house to sell. Bitch.

‘That’s just it, they can’t.’ I tell her as I work the polish in to the shoes in a circular motion, before beginning the buffing with a separate brush. ‘They’ll just stare out the window or update their social networking page if I’m not there to direct.’ I pronounce pompously. There’s an element of truth to my statement, but I also know that if I dropped dead this afternoon the bean counter boss would happily replace me before anyone could….sneeze.

‘The shoes don’t have to be done daily do they?’ Asks my wife pointlessly, as she pours me a bowl of long-eared cage-dweller’s floor covering. She sees me scowling at her through watery eyes, as another sneeze starts to prickle my nose. ‘What?’ She says, as I buff with a cloth. ‘It’s good for your cholesterol.’ I don’t know where to start.

‘People notice the smallest things.’ I tell her through laboured mouthfuls of the tasteless, own brand, bran mix. ‘So if you have dirty shoes they might just choose the next agent in.’ She looks at me unconvinced, as I notice my blackened fingernails and wonder where the nailbrush is.

‘They won’t thank you for going in and spreading your germs.’ She perseveres doggedly.

‘They never thank me anyway.’ I bat back, as a hacking cough that might be a ball of bacteria, or a stubborn sultana regurgitating, rises uncomfortably. ‘What you forget.’ I splutter, as I swallow whatever it was trying to escape. ‘Is that we’re not some cosy public sector where it doesn’t change the bottom line if you turn up or not. There’s no taxpayer bailing me out at the end of the month.’ I rail, as she visibly switches off.

‘Have you got your medication?’ She asks wearily, as I stand on the doorstep and check both nails and shoes. It’s a question I expect to hear for the rest of my life. I check my briefcase. Cold tablets, menthol inhaler, throat sweets, tissues, disinfecting gel.

Ready to clean up.

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