Real Estate, by Lacey N. Dunham
I could have drowned this couple in the kidney bean-shaped swimming pool.
Except I’m not the killing type, I have a sensitive stomach, always have, it’s a thing that’s plagued me my whole life. I wait for the Ramseys to finish their hunt and poke of the garish entertaining room that doubles as a pool room in the warmer months—but let’s not kid, it’s the same thing, the warmer months in LA are every month, it’s no colder than sixty-five degrees in January, not like where I’m from. I give them the appropriate amount of time while I stare through the sliding glass doors, and I picture her: a woman not unlike Norma Desmond floating face down, arms like goalposts, her black and gold housecoat billowing in the crystalline blue water, her headwrap half-undone, a tendril tugging her towards the deep end.
They’re mumbling behind me, the Ramseys, secreted exchanges about the room and its future merits, its detractions. I only have positive and uplifting opinions about the houses I sell, but if I had a negative thought about this one, it would be Make it suffer this agony no longer. But death is a soft thing found nowhere here amongst the neon and chrome and slickly tiled black floors. Here, the glass glimmers, the lighting is modern, the rooms spacious, and the location to die for. I turn on a bright smile for the Ramseys.
“Just think of the pool parties you’ll host!” I exclaim. “Or those quiet, moonlit evenings together in the hot tub.”
“Yes, the outdoor space is rather divine,” Mrs. Ramsey says measuredly, a flick of eyes at her husband, who is taking in the artwork.
“Odd fellow, this seller,” he says, a practiced cadence and step to his voice. The men all sound like this. Dubious. Cynical.
I gleam with enthusiasm. “He certainly has unique tastes.” I clasp my hands, heels clicking over the lacquered wood in the next room. “But again, don’t we all? Imagine how beautiful these floors will look in an artfully curated and tastefully contemporized French chateau style. So luxe and breathtaking.”
Mrs. Ramsey adores a faux-French style, and she wilts at my description, her eyes already updating their existing furniture and arranging it throughout the space. They’ve dropped tidbits about their hopes and dreams. A playroom for the twins. A third child’s bedroom just in case. Hard to imagine her pregnant, ever, like a praying mantis with a tumor. I curse myself silently. Be bright! Upbeat! Pregnant Mrs. Ramsey: A beachball glued to a chopstick!
The Ramseys are new money, tech money, and they exude the freshly wealthy’s ambitious ostentation with their love of Southern California’s compromised interior decorating styles (a parquet floor! in a sitting room that’s a recreation of an Austrian hunting lodge!). It’s how they show off all they have worked for. But really, they haven’t worked; they’re not new to wealth, not at all. My requisite digging turned up a long line of Ivy graduates and robber barons in his family, and a long line of prestigious women’s university training grounds in hers. He: Stanford, then Harvard Business School. She: Vassar, lots of pearls, sunny smile, thin and, later, thinner. Her arms are matchsticks.
“Divine,” she repeats, as if it’s a code word. Maybe it is. Maybe it’s their safe word in another situation.
“But the seller—”
“Wishes, at this time, to remain anonymous.” I breeze through this nudge, his third on the tour. “To avoid too many looky-loos.”
“He didn’t murder anyone, did he? Kid toucher?” Mr. Ramsey—Charles Whitmer Ramsey III, though my research indicates that he goes by Chip—is determined to suss out the current owner’s identity. He’s a man who likes knowing things that others don’t. Despite her degree, he keeps his wife purposefully stupid.
“Oh, you are funny,” I laugh lightly at Mr. Ramsey’s comments and guide the couple around a see-through foosball table next to two wingback chairs in a hideous—no, delightfully unique—upholstery.
I’ll show him the soundproof lower-level room—if a house is over two mil, we never say basement. Men each have different hobbies—different games—that would make useful a soundproof room or two. It’s becoming obvious what Mr. Ramsey does in his spare time. I wonder what the seller used his for? I’ll tour it later with Chip while I send Immy—Imogene Delphine Mountbatten Ramsey—into the more domestic spaces and allow her to envision what she (not her: the hired help) will cook on that Miele stove.
I gesture. “This cozy room with its eco-friendly fireplace is perfect for entertaining guests or family all while allowing them glimpses of the lush backyard. These curtains might be a bit too visually heavy for this room after you finish redecorating it, but swap with blue and white brocade, for example—why, just imagine it!” I gush, leading Mrs. Ramsey towards a curtain.
She runs her slender fingers over it, her wedding ring enough to light an airport runway. Straight to the bottom if she falls into the pool with that thing on her finger. She gasps.
“My goodness, these are lush!” She wants to claw at these curtains, roll herself in them like a lunatic, I can tell. Mr. Ramsey: not so good in the department of physical comfort and cuddles, I suppose. It’s a wonder they conceived at all. Then I remember: twins. Of course. IVF. Fewer distasteful fluids in the long run, easier to clean up.
He doesn’t roll his eyes at his wife’s theatrical interjection, though she hasn’t appeared this alive since I shook her limp hand, but if he could roll his eyes—meaning, if I wasn’t here, and he wasn’t worth thirty million—he definitely would. He loathes her. I gesture to him; he steps closer.
“Mr. Ramsey.” I lay my hand lightly on his arm. Forward, I know, but now that I see Mrs. Ramsey would hump these curtains if we left the room, I know that Mr. Ramsey is likely not immune to a well-placed touch from a beautiful woman who is not his wife. “You know I can’t break my client’s request for anonymity but—” I raise a finger close to his lips, a quick, cloying shush while Immy sucks five years’ worth of affection from a decorative fabric. “I will say privately, only to you—” I emphasize it. This is our little secret. Immy will never know. “The seller is, well, he’s in Hollywood but not an actor. He’s more of a… You must never repeat what I say.” I wink at him. “He’s akin to the TV personality an overweight woman in Ohio might watch before her shift at Wal-Mart.”
I smile, close my eyes for only a moment. I’ve described my own mother. I swallow the heavy, slick-slime feeling in my throat, punch the buzzing tick-tick-tick that rises up deep into the compartment at the back of my head. My eyes snap open. “Oh, and he publishes ghostwritten books, vitamin supplements for weight loss, the whole works.”
Mr. Ramsey lays his hand over mine, grateful. He’s delighted to know.
“Shall I show you the billiards room? The billiards table itself comes with the house.” He nods, says Of course, please. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Ramsey,” I call over my shoulder as we leave the room. “Take all the time you need to fully experience this space.” The twitch of her shoulders tells me she is relieved to have a moment alone with those pornographic movie house— majestically antique!—claret velvet curtains.
The billiards room on the second floor is stylized in a rich blue—the color of Capitalist power. I feel silly every time I say billiards room. Where I come from, we didn’t need a billiards room because we used the pool table at the bar.
The table itself is also in blue; walking into the room, I always sense as if I’m walking into the daylight version of the scene in Eyes Wide Shut where Sydney Pollack summons Tom Cruise in the middle of the night to his wood-hewed billiards room with its red velvet table and green-shaded lamps. Kubrick was a great man for details. If he wasn’t already dead, I’d like to sell his house.
I tag the room’s features for Mr. Ramsey: built-in wine cellar, fireplace, chandelier, beautiful view of the pool below through the floor-to-ceiling windows. I look down into the unblemished depths, and I remember that it wasn’t Norma Desmond face down in the pool at the end of Sunset Boulevard, and there’s no one who drowns; it’s Joe Gillis, the young screenwriter, who ends with three bullets in his back when Norma shoots him. He stumbles into the pool, already a dead man. A dead man who manages to tell his story nonetheless. Men are allowed their uninterrupted fantasies but women—well, we are untempered plot devices in a man’s story.
“A beautiful view from these windows!” I say brightly.
Mr. Ramsey comes up behind me, slides his hand around the back of my neck.
“It is a beautiful view,” he whispers. His kiss is rough, then cools to a gentle wisp. His hand squeezing my left breast is hungrier, more direct. He’s only a gentleman because he has to be, and he has made his point. I lean into him, my full weight against his body. Yes, I’ve done this before. Such gentle, luring subtleties move houses, move homes that must move so I never have to return to Ohio and put on a blue smock, all to arrange cheap products on metal shelves in a fluorescent-screaming hell. So I never become my mother. I slip away from him daintily, scuttle to a door along the wall, one easy to miss among the other flourishes in this over-embellished—but charmingly detailed!—room.
I put my finger to my lips. Below us, Mrs. Ramsey is likely lost in a stupor inside her curtains, imagining herself the star of another drama, perhaps one with less heartbreak. Mr. Ramsey’s eyes take on a black sheen and flick with curiosity, a panther’s gaze—curious, but unconvinced. I push open the door, feel along the midnight-painted walls for the switch. The soundproof room on the lower level is not the only one for this house. Did you really think there would be only one?
“Now, here.” I step backwards into the room, crook my finger at him. I shiver my pencil skirt up my bare thigh with a twist of my other hand. I force him to kneel. I will make certain he buys this house. I whisper, “Let me show you what delights await here.”
Lacey N. Dunham’s debut novel The Belles is forthcoming from Atria / Simon & Schuster in September 2025. She lives in Washington, DC with too many books and only two cats. Find her online at www.laceyndunham.com.