The following excerpt is from a short story originally published in the
The Apple Valley Review, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Spring 2008). The Apple Valley Review is a semiannual online literary journal. It features poetry, short fiction, and personal essays, and was established in 2005 by its current editor, Leah Browning: www.applevalleyreview.com.

Excerpted from "You Are the Bad Smell"
By Kathy Anderson

Seventy-three houses they did not buy. Seventy-three houses I showed them and I knew this game. I knew how to play this game. But she was winning.

“I quit,” I said.

She laughed. “We’ll take a few days off.”

I just won’t return her calls, I thought. “Great idea,” I said.

To her partner, I whispered, “I’m so sorry for you.”

I could see that made the partner mad. But she was the long-suffering type, even with me.

“Not at all,” her partner said. She held her head up high.

They were so beautiful, these two. Concrete Skull was a tall and crispy blond, with a gorgeous wide smile and sharp blue miss-nothing eyes. Long Suffering was olive-skinned, with a full bottom lip and a way of standing that showed off her large breasts. Her eyes were as patient as an animal watching for its turn at the watering hole.

I liked lesbians, made a specialty of selling houses to lesbian couples. There were tons of resales on those couples. A lot of them broke up after four or five years and then they put their houses back on the market and bought new ones with other women. I especially liked couples like this one, with their matching black Mercedes, big bank accounts and high-salaried corporate jobs.

I liked lesbians, but I hated these two. They were realtor cockteasers. Okay, I am a woman too and do not have a cock to tease, but you take my
point. They showed you what they had, stroked you until you were so ready you could scream, then pulled back with a perfectly good reason that was totally bogus because the real reason they did not buy any of the seventy-three houses I showed them was because they were sizing each other up.

It had nothing to do with me. They were watching each other, waiting for the house that made one of them pant and scream. Then one of them would have the upper hand. The one who wanted it the most was the one who would have to grovel, for as long as they lived in that house....


...Continued in the Apple Valley Review, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Spring 2008).