MILF ON THE SHELF
A Big O Dating Specialists Novella
* * *
By Lili Valente
1
Maggie
There’s a toilet in the kitchen…
A Christmas toilet, wrapped in festive green and silver garland and topped with a floppy red bow…
“No. Not happening.” I close my eyes, squeezing my lids tight, but when I open them again, the toilet is still there.
As is the weirdly large and deep sink beside it, the one that looks like it would be more at home in a mad scientist’s operating room than the kitchen of a swanky, three-story brownstone in New York City’s exclusive Chelsea neighborhood.
At least the house looks swanky from the outside.
If it hadn’t, there’s no way I would have invested one hundred percent of the profits from my last three flips on this project. I’m a risk taker—you have to be to buy foreclosed properties sight unseen—but I’m not a crazy person.
Unlike the last soul who lived here…
In addition to installing a toilet and serial-killer-cleanup sink in the kitchen, Mr. Snively filled the ground floor with boxes upon boxes of bulk food and used the basement as his personal reference library. There must be at least a thousand books down there, as well as magazines, newspapers, and a mountain of unlabeled VHS tapes. He also cut a hole in the living room wall to make room for a tree that had decided to grow into the house from the back garden.
The tree, at least, I was aware of before I closed the deal. I saw it, and the massive hole in the wall, during my survey of the property, but I assumed it was the work of an old man with more love for nature than common sense. I’m a talk-to-my-houseplants gal from way back. I can understand wanting to spare the green things, especially in this city, where every flower that survives the pollution feels like a gift from the universe.
But amassing groceries, books, and collectible beer steins until every nook and cranny of your home is stuffed to overflowing? That isn’t tree-hugger behavior.
Poor Mr. Snively was clearly a hoarder, and most likely the second and third floors will be just as jam-packed with junk as what I’ve seen so far.
I should go look… See what I’m really in for…
I need to assess the damage and rework my renovation schedule since there’s no way my demo crew can get started next week, not with the entire house filled with stuff.
Instead, I pick my way around several boxes of Sugar Krispies cereal—the holiday kind with the red and green pieces mixed in—and sit down hard on the closed toilet, shivering in the icy wind whipping through the hole in the living room.
In the grand scheme of things, a Christmas toilet in the kitchen is a relatively easy fix. I can have it and the spooky sink ripped out and the floor and drywall replaced in a day, maybe two at the most.
Still, the Christmas toilet is the thing that does it, the straw that breaks my single-income-household, single-for-so-long-I-can’t-remember-what-it-feels-like-to-have-someone-to-lean-on back.
Crack. Right in two.
I drop my face into my hands and give in to the tears pressing against the backs of my eyes. “Shit, Maggie, what have you done?” I mumble to myself between sobs. “You knew it was a lemon. You knew, and you put in a bid anyway. You’re so stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid!”
It’s true.
I am stupid.
And I did suspect something was seriously wrong with the house.
There’s no other way I could have landed a property in Chelsea, one of Manhattan’s premier neighborhoods. I’m a bad-part-of-Brooklyn girl. I started flipping houses in Flatbush ten years ago, back when you could still get a deal on some of the old Victorian beauties in need of a gut job, and in the years since I’ve made a decent living for myself.
My daughter and I inhabit a tiny but adorable condo five blocks from here, next to the excellent public school she’s attended since first grade, and Lexi’s never wanted for anything. Not the things she really needs, anyway. She wears clothes from thrift stores instead of the designer boutiques where her friends shop, and we cook reasonably priced meals at home instead of going out to eat every night like my old prep school friends. But we have everything we need—food, shelter, a great school system, and quality time together as a family.
Or, at least, we used to have those things.
If I have to get a second job to dig myself out from under this money pit, mother-daughter date nights at the museum might be a thing of the past.
I already know I won’t qualify for another loan.
I’m up to my armpits in debt. The armpits that are presently sweaty even though it’s so cold in the house I can’t feel my nose, and there’s a chance the pipes will burst if the next few days are as frigid as the weatherman has predicted. And if that happens, I won’t just have a mess to clean up, I’ll have a wet mess that will put the integrity of the vintage wood floor, foundation, and other expensive-to-fix things at risk.