A Conversation with One of the Many Houses in My Neighborhood that I Can't Afford

A Conversation with One of the Many Houses in My Neighborhood that I Can’t Afford

I ask about the taxes first because, even though it’s a bit forward, he’s the one with the sign outside, right on the main street. There’s the opportunity to demure and he takes it, asking instead if I’ve lived in the neighborhood long. 

Long? I repeat. What’s long in a city? If it were up to me, once anyone lived in a place for over half their life, they had the right to call it home. But this is Boston, so I just shrug and say, how long have you been here? As if I haven’t paid attention. I walk past his stupid brick and ivy face every time I go to Dana Street to pick up beer, not because I’m obsessed with him, or because I’m an alcoholic. I just need an excuse to get out. I glance at his white door with its triangle arch that sinks into the stone, five steps descending to ground level. It always made me think about flooding, or drunks pissing in street level air conditioners, even though we’ve just had a year so dry there were wildfires in November, and I haven’t been good and truly wasted in a full year. 

Multi-family, I say, but in this assessment, he assures me, I am wrong. Perfect for two hobbyists, he says, which sounds like hobbits, even though I know my entire extended family could fit inside him if we weren’t estranged. This place was built in the 20s to make apple pies and model Ts, he says. A fantasy or, at the very least, expensive marketing: how American its roots are in that specific American way that no one in the neighborhood can afford him, especially someone who’s not white. I know this without asking for the price. He knows this without me asking. I expect him to tell me to move on, but instead, the door in its sinkhole opens. Beyond the hinge, there is light, so much light, and he gestures for me to come inside. 

I really can’t, I say but don’t add an ending, of which there are numerous options: afford it, stay long, impose, or because that’d feel like cheating. But he smiles, the windows reflecting same self-assured glitter that I’ve only seen in the confidence of the rich.

What would be the harm in a quick look around, he says. I’m not asking you to marry me, hell, I know it’d never work but it’d be nice.

Yeah, I think, my shoes pivoting towards the door, soles run down to the quick. Even though my place is just down the block, I’ve never felt so homesick and also on the precipice of something that could change my life, and so, I step inside and decide, then and there, that once I’m in, I won’t ever leave. 

Because that’s the only way I’ll be able to have something like this.