The Housing Market In Toronto

About ninety minutes before I normally get up in the morning, the buzzer to our apartment went off. This sent Heidi, our Miniature Dachshund, into a frenzy of dog shrieking. Like she’d fallen into some horror movie panic. Centuries of murder manifest. I don’t know. It was loud and then louder and then louder and louder. Dazed with a head cold, I staggered out of bed. Wearing underwear that had shrunken in the wash and with a Breathe-Rite strip still attached to the bridge of my nose, I picked up the still squirming and shrieking dog and opened the front door. A middle-aged couple stood there before me just as hopeful and optimistic as missionaries.

The man looked like a retired astronaut and the woman like she gave up her career some years ago and had now dedicated herself to traveling the world and running a marathon to fight breast cancer in each city she visited. She spun away and covered her eyes when she saw me, “Sweet Jesus, Anderson,” she whispered.

I stood there blinking.

Giving them a “this better be good” look, I asked, “WHAT?”

The man stepped forward, one arm back to steady his traumatized wife, “We’d like to buy your house!”

He said this like I had just won a game show.

I don’t own the house he wanted to buy. Rachelle and I rent the bottom floor of it.

“It’s not for sale.”

“Everything is for sale,” he responded like an Alpha Male.

“That’s obnoxious, “ I said.

He laughed. He’d handled my type before. Hell, he’d been in space. What was I to him?

“You haven’t heard our offer, “ he said.

“Look, the place is haunted.”

He laughed. There were ghosts in space. He feared no ghosts.

His wife was turned half way away from me and half way toward me, her eyes fixed on the floor.

“I’ll pay you two million dollars for this house, which I think you’ll agree, is far above market value.”

“Do you like ghosts?” I asked.

The wife now sighed heavily through her mouth, “Come on Anderson, this man is clearly insane, let’s go!”

But Anderson liked a challenge. Where others saw a roadblock, Anderson saw an opportunity.

“Tell me about the ghosts, I’m interested,” he pressed.

“They’re unpredictable, sometimes the energy is poltergeist in nature and others times it feels like a human presence. It’s hard to explain. We could do a quick Ouija board and you could ask them yourself, if you like?”

“Maybe later,” he said, dialing it down a notch, “ we can see we’ve caught you at a bad time and I’m sorry for that, but here’s my card. If you want to talk about the supernatural or maybe selling your home, give me a call, I’m interested in both.”

And then they left, two people determined to buy themselves the life they wanted, regardless of what it might cost anyone else.