31/3/95

Unreal Estate

WANTED: Dream home for nightmarish couple.

    "Hello? Hello? Can you hear me? I want to buy a house."
    "Good for you. I need new silverwear." 
    "Is this the Horowitz IsReal Estate Company?"
    "No, this is Mermelstein and I'm fed up with people calling here for Horowitz. Try a different wrong number."
    Katz dialed again. "Hello, Buckingham Real Estate Company?"
    "Nu?"
    "I want to buy a house."
    "There's a place on Jabotinsky, $800,000, with a solar heater, but you have to decide now. You want it, yes or no?"
    Katz hung up and tried the Let's Make A Deal! Real Estate Co. "Hello, I want to buy a house," he said.
    "Fantastic. I'm Osnat. I'll be by you in five minutes."
    By the sound of it, Katz thought to himself, either Osnat sold 20 houses a day or hadn't sold one in two months.
    Five minutes later Osnat was already at Katz's kitchen table, with her checklists, contracts, maps, forms, printouts and testimonials spread out in front of him. This was more paperwork than it took to proclaim an independent state, Katz mused.
    "So, Mr. Katz, what's your dream house?"
    "Twenty rooms on the Riviera with high ceilings and a butler."
    "Yes. But what can you afford?"
    Katz didn't really know. "Three rooms in Jerusalem. With a bathroom."
    Osnat scanned her lists. "Well, that sure does narrow it down," she said sarcastically, crossing out "1ֲ½-rm hatch above bus station, $40,000." Osnat gave him that spit-in-the-eye look that took years to perfect. "You want to be a little more helpful? I've got thousands of places on my list. I can show you a villa, penthouse, cottage, pent-cottage, cot-pent, downtown, uptown, out of town, townhouse, boathouse, houseboat, ranch, Winnebago, ma'abara, igloo, you name it. Just don't ask for 'three rooms with a bathroom.'"
    Chastened, Katz tried to be more specific. Presently, he brightened. "Something with a garden!"
    "You want a garden, go live on a kibbutz."
    "A balcony, then."
    "Good, Mr. Katz, we're getting somewhere! A balcony and a bathroom. I've got just the place. Jaffa Street, fourth floor. Only two minutes from the shuk. What do you say?"
    "Too close to the shuk. Too noisy. Too high."
    "Too bad. Alright, how about this one: 'Nahlaot, ground floor, quiet, quaint.'"
    Katz shook his head. "I lived on the ground floor once. Don't like the ground floor. Mice, robbers, sewage that backs up into your kitchen sink. And anyway, the quaintest thing about Nahlaot is the Nahlaotians. Hippies, weirdos, odd old people."
    Osnat riffled through her printouts. "Bingo! East Talpiot. A very normal neighborhood. Second floor. Perfect!"
    "Too close to the Arabs."
    "How about Ramot Eshkol?"
    "Nope. Over the Green Line."
    "Geula?"
    "Too religious."
    "Gilo?"
    "Windy."
    "There's a plum of a place on Wedgewood, in the German Colony. Katz, it's the best neighborhood!"
    "If not for all those Americans living there."
    "How about Kiryat Hayovel?"
    "I don't speak Russian."
    "The Katamonim, then."
    "Where they hang their laundry on the sidewalks."
    "Baka is nice. Real friendly. How about it, huh?"
    "You think I want real friendly neighbors at my door all the time? I like my privacy."
    "Then you should live in Motza."
    "And get killed on the Tel Aviv highway twice a day."
    "I'll tell you a secret. The Old City is a real bargain these days."
    "Sure, because Arik Sharon lives there."
    Osnat put down her printout. She gave him that pitiful real-estate agent's basset-hound look it takes years to lose. "Tell me, Katz, If I could get you the President's Residence, would you take it?"
    "Well, I don't know. It's kind of far from a bus stop."
    "What do you want, Katz, what do you want?"
    "Perhaps we should ask my wife."
    In Mrs. Katz, Osnat saw a glimmer of hope. Nobody as indecisive as Mr. Katz could ever get married unless there's somebody else making decisions. Osnat was right.
    Mrs. Katz presented herself to the real estate agent. "So, my husband told you what we want?"
    "Oh, yes, Mrs. Katz, he's been most helpful. It seems you'd like a place with a bathroom."
    "Yes, that's right. With Italian tiles. And it should have a large, late-model freshly caulked tub at least 14 centimeters away from a cabinet containing an oval sink that is not yellow, so I can fit our imported mop. The toilet-roll holder must not be plastic, there cannot be any damp marks on the walls, I would expect a soundproof door that opens to the left if the toilet is on the right side, and vice versa if not, a heated towel rack would not be unacceptable and ventilation has to comply with internationally accepted standards. The room must not be less than four and a half meters from the kitchen, for sanitary reasons, and not more than five and a half meters, because my husband has a bowel problem. That's the bathroom. Now, for the rest of the house...."
    "Uh, Mrs. Katz?"
    "The master bedroom...."
    "I don't think....
    "I sleep on the right side of the bed but he gets up first so the sun must not shine before 8:15 a.m. at more than a 63 degree angle over a window ledge less than 1.03 meters off the ground if the apartment is on the first floor, or 11 degrees less and 14 centimeters more per every floor above that, providing, of course, that the bedroom faces south by southwest and that there isn't some stupid high-rise across the street. You're writing all this down? My closet must be big enough for 18 skirts, 21 blouses and 12 dresses size 11ֲ½, nine of them with shoulder pads. I plan to move in with seven pairs of pantyhose --"
    "Mrs. Katz!"
    "You got a house for us?"
    "Yeah." Osnat frantically crammed her papers into her tik James Bond. "It's just right. Talbiyeh. Fashionable neighborhood."
    "Nah," said Mr. Katz. "That's where the nuthouse is."