The real estate agent was good at his job. Not extraordinarily good, or he’d be selling nicer properties to richer people, but not terrible, either. He unlocked doors, waved in young couples and mid-life divorcees looking for a change, showed them vaulted ceilings and painted-over brass fixtures. He closed on almost every deal.
“And what about the basement?” asked the young woman in front of him, distinguishable from the previous appointment’s young woman only by the too-short cut of her bangs. “Any issues? Black mold, flooding in the spring?”
He skated his eyes over her and the man at her side, an inattentive husband whose shoulder brushed hers with every step. The sound of their jackets swishing together was like a jackhammer to his brain. He’d had a headache brewing for days, and was starting to believe that it might have taken up permanent residence.
“No issues,” the real estate agent said. “Other than the uranium, of course.”
The woman didn’t even blink. “Of course.”
All of the properties the real estate agent showed had uranium in them. Almost all properties did. Lacing the walls, speckling the paint, thrumming up from the foundation. His own apartment glowed faintly green at night, particularly the grout between his bathroom tiles. His feet burned, sometimes, but at least he didn’t need his phone flashlight to take a midnight piss anymore.
He showed the couple the attic, the bedroom, the closets, the crawl space. They smiled and shook his hand, and said they could imagine it so well with their furniture and sweet little dog. The real estate agent’s stomach turned. He imagined a teacup chihuahua, all big wet eyes and ears not much larger than a silver dollar, entering this home and starting to sag from radioactive rot: paw pads sizzling, barks growing wetter and weaker as its lung tissue slowly sloughed off. He almost wanted to protest, but the home had been listed, of course, as pet friendly, and who was he to contradict the papers? So he just nodded and agreed, then went back to his sedan and thought of what to make for dinner.
In between showings, the real estate agent liked to run, do puzzles, and watch old black-and-white movies. His favorites were Citizen Kane, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and The Red Shoes. He did not like It’s A Wonderful Life. He didn’t think one life really mattered as much as Frank Capra said it did; he didn’t think angels really cared so much.
He also liked to call his ex-wife. “Hello,” she’d answer on the fourth or fifth ring, always a little reluctant, but always right there on the other line.
“Hi,” he would say, while Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe argued on mute in front of him. “I sold three properties this week. One of them had a window missing, but the lady didn’t care.”
“That’s nice. Was it the window frame or just the panes?”
“The panes. I don’t know how a whole window frame could disappear.”
“I don’t either.”
“I made a decent margin. I might treat myself to a steak tomorrow.”
“That’s nice.”
“Thank you.”
A cloud passed over the moon outside. Tony and Marilyn kissed. The walls glowed green.
In the mornings, the real estate agent would get up, massage lotion into his aching joints and angrier patches of skin, then go through the arduous process of buttoning his shirt, tying his tie, lacing up his shoes, fastening his cufflinks twice over, since he never did it right the first time. By the time he was done dressing, he often felt drained enough to go right back to bed. But he never did. He grabbed his briefcase, gulped down his morning coffee, and got to work.
This morning, a family stood outside of a modest three-bedroom: four children and three adults, two of which he assumed to be the parents and the third likely the husband’s sister, judging by the matching slope of their noses and nervous hunch to their necks. This was his third or fourth time meeting with them, although before it had always been just the couple, who were ecstatic as ever at the prospect of owning a home. The sister blinked and stared and did not look ecstatic. The kids rattled around the empty rooms like pinballs, giggling at the novelty, while the real estate agent pointed at light fixtures and kitchen appliances due for replacement.
“And you’re aware of the uranium?” he asked the adults.
“Oh, yes,” said the mother.
“And you still want to go through with the sale?”
“Yes, yes.”
The kids ran past them with a volley of shrieks. They’d taken off their shoes, and the soles of their feet glowed a bright, painful red.
An hour later, he handed them the papers to sign.
“Wear shoes indoors,” he recommended, a speech he gave to almost all of his clients. “Change your couch cover every week, and don’t use bleach on the walls.”
“Yes, yes,” said the mother and father. The sister just stared. He wondered what she thought of him, his suit and tie and the bags under his eyes. If she thought he was a good man for giving them a warning, or a bad man for earning his daily bread by selling them a house that needed a warning, or just simply a man. He wondered if she was unable to speak, somehow, or if there was really nothing for her to say. Either way, it was probably the uranium’s fault. And either way, she was still moving in.
The real estate agent drove away in the opposite direction of the family. This was technically his lunch break, but he didn’t feel hungry, and didn’t particularly want to stop his car, anyways. He just turned on his radio and drove, letting Bob Dylan croon his way down crowded intersections and lonely alleyways, past a rear-ended teenager and a billboard advertising at–home beauty tips for the irradiated: cold cream, aloe vera, a dose of melatonin every night. Gaggles of tweens walked past, chattering loudly as they left campus for their free periods. Some of the girls had their hair arranged in careful ponytails to hide bald spots caused by the radiation. All wore gloves and long socks. It was August.
“Does Jake still have his hair?” the real estate agent asked his ex-wife that night.
“What? Most of it, yes.” He could hear something sizzling in the background of her call, and the occasional clinking of utensils. She was cooking dinner. “He goes to Michael with that kind of thing, not me. But other than a patch or two by his hairline, he’s fine, and that he just covers with some bangs.”
“They don’t usually lose the hairline first. I saw a guy today with a huge chunk gone from the back of his head, like a reverse rat tail.”
“Well, Jake’s just special, I guess.”
“Must be.”
The real estate agent let them lapse into silence to appreciate that, on screen, Gloria Swanson was making a truly extraordinary entrance. When she was finished, he said, “Why doesn’t Jake come to you about his hair?”
“Christ, I don’t know. He likes Michael more.”
“Michael’s not even his dad.”
“Yeah, well, I guess I’m not the best mom.”
The real estate agent knew that already. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Listen, I’m burning the beef, I have to let you go.”
She let him go.
The real estate agent continued to make sales. He sold to old people and young people and bereaved men who had never lived alone before; his teeth started to ache, and the hair around the nape of his neck came out in one big fistful in the shower. Bandages on his feet became a part of his morning routine, as did calcium supplements and a sensible hat. He sometimes tossed back a shot or two of gin on his way out of the door, just to dull some of the more acute pains. He wasn’t a hard drinker, though, and always switched back to beer after coming home with another mortgage signed and a stronger rattling in his throat.
He sold duplexes and condos and cottages. His clients showed up missing hair or teeth, cartilage or jaws. This wasn’t new, but the real estate agent’s weakening stomach was, and he found himself trying not to see too much of anybody if he could help it. One woman tutted her tongue when he handed her the floor plans and popped out a false eye to see them better; the socket was black with rot, flaking and oozing like grease buildup on a grill. The real estate agent stopped looking his clients in the eyes, after that. He lay in bed at night, pain ringing through his body, unable to conjure up images of Rita Hayworth or Greta Garbo and unable even to fall asleep so he could dream of them, and thought for the first time that he understood what torture was. Something was trying to worm its way up his belly—a tension, a riptide, a needle-sharp terror—but it couldn’t get past that rattling in his lungs, that turning in his stomach; it couldn’t get up to his heart.
In mid-spring, he pulled up to a property he’d closed on to drop off the keys personally. It was a cute little house, a painted one-bedroom in a part of town that most people had forgotten about. The windows seemed to smile at him; there was room for a garden, but all the plants were long dead. A bottle of melatonin rattled in his pocket.
The buyer was a lone elderly woman, with a flowery cardigan and short white hair teased into a cloud atop her head. Her glasses were so thick that they magnified her eyes—a pale, cutting blue—to give her the appearance of a gigantic, floral-scented bug. Her husband had died, she told him, and she couldn’t keep living in that house that they’d shared.
“I’m sorry,” he told her, unlocking the door. It came out a little garbled; his mouth had been giving him more trouble than usual, the past few days.
“Oh, it’s alright.” Her voice, in contrast, was surprisingly clear and strong. “He had a long, good life.”
“That’s good.”
“It is, isn’t it?” They were in the living room, now, but the woman didn’t look around the space. She kept her insect’s eyes trained on his face, soft and sincere. “It really is.”
He showed her around, but she didn’t seem very interested in his spiel about painting the walls and how many winters she had before the roof would need re-shingling. She was set, she said, on moving straight in.
“Well, that makes my job easier,” he said, then winced as one tooth sent a bolt of pain through his skull. The real estate agent slipped his hand into his pocket. His fingers closed around the melatonin bottle, the fancy, extra-strength kind. “And I know I’ve probably asked before, but just to be sure—you’re aware of the uranium?”
“Oh, of course,” she laughed. “That’s what killed my husband, you know. Filled him up with the wrong kind of cells and took him in his sleep.”
“You don’t want to try and find someplace else?”
She just shrugged. “Where else is there to go? I have to sleep somewhere.”
The real estate agent ran a thumb over the melatonin’s cap. He’d heard it could slow the effects of radiation, heard some people swore by it, even claimed that just sleeping through the night was enough of a relief to be worth the purchase. And the real estate agent liked this woman, had since she first called his work number and asked if he had any available listings. He’d bought them for her. But she was smiling at him, eyes bright behind coke-bottle lenses, and he thought of the young couple’s dog and all the girls going to prom without fancy updos and a whole marriage, a whole life reduced to a new mortgage and some irradiated bones in the ground while the rest of the world churned on. He thought of the cheer in this woman’s voice that first time on the phone, despite it all, despite everything. The real estate agent wondered if it wouldn’t be better to just let the uranium run its course; to just let things be.
He left the melatonin in his pocket, and with his hand free, shook on the sale.
She thanked him, took the key that he offered, but didn’t go back to her car to pick up any belongings. When the real estate agent shut the door behind him, she watched him go, and he felt like he was leaving a house already well lived in, and that he had forgotten something between the nonexistent couch cushions or on the too-clean, faintly glowing kitchen counters. But he hadn’t.
That night, he couldn’t pay attention to Audrey Hepburn in her pearls and black silk, flirting freely with a young George Pepard. He fiddled with the cap of the melatonin bottle, spinning it open and closed, open and closed. He’d revisited his morning gin to numb his face, and unease tugged at the edges of his spinning, addled mind.
“Am I a bad person?” he asked when his ex-wife picked up the phone, before she even had time to sigh out a greeting.
His ex-wife thought for a moment. “No more than anybody else,” she answered.
“Does Jake think I’m bad?”
“I don’t know. Hell, he’s just a kid, he probably doesn’t know either. Why, did he call you?”
“No. I just feel…” The real estate agent hitched a wet breath. “I don’t know. I just feel.”
His ex-wife was silent for a long, long moment. He could hear Jake yelling exuberantly in the background. He imagined him shouting at a video game, or at Michael, or in agony or horror or at his own reflection.
“That’s okay,” the real estate agent’s ex-wife said. “That’s good.”
The ceiling seemed to twirl overhead. It made the real estate agent want to throw up, but then, everything made him want to throw up, these days. He wondered if he’d ever get to enjoy a meal again. Before him, Audrey was so beautiful.
“Can I make this a video call? I want to see your face.”
“I don’t think so. I’m sorry.”
The real estate agent took another swig of gin. He was too drunk to feel it burn. “It’s okay.”
“You could talk to Jake. You could try.”
“Maybe.”
“He misses you, you know. I’m sure he’d answer, this time.”
“I know. Maybe.”
The call disconnected. The real estate agent lifted the melatonin so close that it blocked his view of the television. It probably wouldn’t do anything for him, now, but he felt it looking at him, felt it asking him a silent question. Maybe he ought to go back to that old woman, give it to her anyways. Maybe he ought to recommend it to Jake. Maybe it didn’t fucking matter. All else aside, it really would be nice to just sleep for a while. If not his movies, if not his ex-family, if not any kind of home that wouldn’t break him down from the inside out, what was there to be awake for?
He opened the bottle, emptied half of it into his shaking, clammy palm, and chewed up elderberry and lullabies.
The real estate agent fell headlong into spinning, restless sleep, and dreamt of bugs and beef and constellations. He woke around two in the morning to a roiling in his stomach and a pounding all throughout his face, jaw, neck. He toddled his way to the bathroom and flicked on the light; in the mirror, his reflection stared back at him with sunken eyes, flaking skin, and thinning hair, like an inflatable zombie from the Halloween store. He used to be attractive, once, or maybe he had just thought that he was.
His mouth filled with what he thought might be vomit, but when he bent over the sink and spit, a generous handful of teeth clattered into the porcelain: molars, bicuspids, canines, a couple of incisors, all soft and gray with rot. His tongue prodded the empty spaces, knocking another tooth loose as it went, clumsily tracing the ragged flesh around his jaw. The taste of the melatonin still lingered: elderberries, dreams, oblivion. He spit again, expecting there to be blood, but there was nothing. Below his feet, the tiles glowed faintly green.
Audrey Coldwell holds a BA with Honors in English from Louisiana State University. Her work is forthcoming or has been featured in American Literary Review, Creation Magazine, The Roadrunner Review, and others. Her accolades include the Gus and Leanne Weill Award for Playwriting and the 2023 Take 9 Film Festival’s Award for Best Writing. She's currently thinking about her next nap.