Swap Out(3)

I snicker and lay the carpet back down, putting my knife away, and when the realtor comes out of the master bedroom with a fake smile on her face I head to the dining room to check out the rest of the house. Zoe starts announcing “her discovery” about the floor, and I tune out the rest of the conversation. She’s about to start re-negotiating her fee to include all the work it’s gonna take me to pull up that carpet, and weird as it may seem, I don’t actually want to know what she considers my hourly rate to really be worth. I know what she should be paying me, and so does she. And we both know she’s not doing it. A fact I have no problem reminding her of on a constant basis.

I yawn and stretch my arms, my eyes narrowing on the corner of a crooked baseboard. I chew the inside of my lip as I kneel down to check it out, wondering if I should tell Zoe or just let it go. All houses have their quirks, no matter what you paid to build it. And I don’t really feel the urgent need to rip this up and re-lay it when I don’t have the time considering all the other items Zoe keeps stacking on my To Do list, but this is why I’m here.

She has a good eye for detail and should be quoting these houses alone, but she doesn’t anymore. She always ended up spending the entire time on the phone with me, asking me about the time estimates on rebuilding this and did I know anything about fixing that. So she decided I was going to start coming with her in an effort to save the life of her cell phone. Once I started pointing out the problems she was failing to notice, it was a set arrangement.

“Okay,” she says and sighs behind me, “that’s done and now we can—what are you doing?”

“Checking this baseboard,” I mutter, Zoe immediately coming over to stand beside where I’m crouched down. She yawns, and I peek up at her. It’s barely six o’clock…

“What?”

“Nothing, just…” I trail off, then grin teasingly. “Didn’t you get a long enough nap on the drive over here?”

This house is way the hell out in Castle Valley, because in order for Zoe to keep a steady flow of business we have to push out to the surrounding areas. She also does straight up interior decorating for the big spenders, and managing a few of the vacation rental properties for the seasonal influx; we clean, we restyle, we rent them some furniture until they go back to wherever they came from. I don’t really care about having to travel to some of the more remote areas, except she took it upon herself to snooze during the whole damn ride out here. And she calls me lazy?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about and don’t worry about the baseboard,” she says, then starts rummaging in her purse. “I’ll just keep the lighting low and besides, I don’t have time to deal with your nitpickiness.”

“My nitpickiness?” I say, incredulous. “Isn’t that why you cart me along on all these super exciting little outings? Because you—”

“Bye Rachel!” she calls out, and with that she turns on her heel and starts striding towards the front door; my eyes rolling as I get up and follow her, then shut the door behind us.

“Where to next, O’ Fearless Leader?” I taunt as we walk to my parked car, sliding on my sunglasses to shield against the mid-April sun, and she chuckles under her breath.

“Well, since you asked…” she drawls, and I arch an eyebrow at her over the roof of my car. She waves me off before opening the door. “We’re done for the day. By the way, did that house smell funny to you?”

My brow furrows as I slide smoothly into my seat, waiting to start the car until Zoe buckles her seatbelt. “Smelled fine.”

“Huh.” She pulls out a bottle of white tea and ginger lotion from her purse and immediately starts massaging it over her legs, and my nose wrinkles.

“Don’t put that stuff on in my car.”

She pauses, white goop pooled in her palm before she got a chance to attack her other tanned limb, a crinkle between her eyebrows I pride myself on getting to show. “Why?”

“Because it smells.”

She gasps with a playful grin as I start backing out of the driveway, but still starts rubbing lotion onto her right calf. “You don’t like my lotion?”

“I didn’t say that,” I singsong. “I just don’t want my car smelling like a Bath and Body Works.”

She scoffs. “Better than sweat and gasoline.”

I reach over and steal her lotion, Zoe immediately screeching my name before taking it back and thankfully putting it in her purse.

“My car smells perfectly fine, thank you,” I tell her, and she widens her eyes mockingly. “And anyway, I’m a guy, and I do manual labor. It’s supposed to smell like that.”