Knowing that the wood floor in the guest bedroom would creak, Margaret Carlton moved in ahead of them, commenting on the view.
"Back in there, President Cleveland had his summer home," she said, turning to hide the tremble of her upper lip, as she stooped to give them a better vantage. "Hard to imagine that what they called 'the country' was just a few miles from the White House in those days. And the tall trees still give lots of shade and cool. Saves air conditioning costs, not a small consideration in a house this size..." She checked herself. She was talking too much. Moving so as not to obstruct their field of vision, she backed away and stood on that spot in the floor where the creak was loudest, forcing herself to continue talking to mask the sound. "Might make a lovely nursery..." she said.
"We've had our caboose," Mrs. Willey said with a nervous giggle. "Our youngest is 10."
The senator-elect laughed agreement with his wife, and knocked on a wall with his knuckles.
"All plaster," Margaret offered, as she led them out of the room. If they heard the creak, they didn't say. They followed her through the other bedrooms, which she had checked thoroughly earlier that day, glancing into each toilet bowl which workmen inevitably refused to flush, as if it were some mysterious act of protest. At least, she had learned how to show a house properly.
"I have my heart set on it," Mrs. Wiley had told her after the first visit. So have I, Margaret had agreed silently. She had been at it four months now and hadn't made a single sale. Above all, do not appear desperate, she told herself.
"A little steep," the senator elect had mumbled after she had repeated the price.
Rejected wives of political figures in Washington often take up using their connections to sell real estate, mostly to politicians and their wives arriving in the nation's capital for the first time. In this insightful story, a divorced wife of a politician sells more than real estate to an innocent naïve first-timer. Here is another gem in the Warren Adler short story series about Washington.
