Royce O'Rourke: Realtor!

Royce O’Rourke – Realtor!

Robert H. Eltzholtz

Copyright 2010 Robert H. Eltzholtz. Cover design by Colin Moore. All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the writer's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior permission from the copyright holder.

ISBN: 978-0-9826783-1-2

Chapter 1

Royce O'Rourke, Realtor. That's me, was me, still is me, really. Welcome to my open house. It's a beauty, right smack in the Catalina Foothills, among the best Tucson has to offer. The best. That's what I'm all about. Me, Royce O'Rourke, soon to be a member of the Billion Dollar Brotherhood.

I'm not some middle-aged housewife. Decides she wants a career. Gets a real estate license, joins the NAR, and starts selling houses. Says stuff like You snooze, you lose. Brandishes her cell phone like a mobile twat. I'm not that. I started first thing. My mom taught me. She was a realtor too, but came to it after my father died. Not like me. I was born to it.

I've done really well. I have a great house in the best location, and I have a wife and a son and a daughter. They love me.

They do! Oops. No exclamation marks here.

You. You know why you are reading this. Don't you? I'll make it clear. I promise. And I keep my promises. A promise is like a contract to me – a covenant – no. I won't use dashes either.

I also promise to be honest here, as I take you through all the rooms, all the nooks and crannies of this house, just as I was taken, that strange, zombie-filled night by.... No. I'm getting way ahead of myself, and I allow ellipses.

I want to start at that open house that Sunday afternoon in mid-May because, looking back on it all, now, that's where it starts making sense to me. That house was mine, my sale, not Fitzroy's. Fitzroy was my business partner. We both ran FitzRoyce Realty. We were both among the most influential, highest grossing realtors not just in Tucson, not just in Arizona, not just in the States, but in the whole fucking universe.

Right. That may sound hard to believe, I mean, coming from Tucson, not Manhattan. But it's true.

My reelater told me the association fees are high here, a woman, one with several face lifts under her brow, came up and said to me.

Your realtor, I said, emphasizing the pronunciation of the noun, is right. And it's realtor, not reelater, ma'am.

If anything pissed me off, other than the ants, it was people who couldn't take the trouble to pronounce correctly the word that was so tightly intertwined in the biggest financial, personal, and familial decision of their lives. You'd think, wouldn't you, they would bother. But most people, truth be told, and I'm telling the truth, are stupid, antlike idiots.

Speak of the devil, there they were, those pesky ants, each wearing a yellow fanny pack, instead of holding a professional briefcase. They were sisters, so the story went. Crystal and Chrissy Diamond. Realtors. Fitzroy told all sorts of dirty stories about how they were really lesbians who frequented truck stops and whored themselves out on the Internet. Oh, how I wanted to believe those stories, but the ants were too boring and ordinary to be so colorful. And they looked just like each other. Like twin sisters. Short. Petite. Short bobbed dirty blond hair. They could have been knockouts, but even by thirty their angular faces and almost buck teeth, and big bug eyes, on which they wore black plastic glasses, made them look like giant insects. Like human ants. Their pixie pointed upturned noses didn't help. Neither did their ultra-high pipsqueak voices. Plus, they liked to punch guys, really hard.

I couldn't explain it, never could, still can't, but I hated them, had a visceral hatred for them. I think it was because they had a degree of confidence and an air of assured power wholly inconsistent with their antlike bodies, personalities, and, well, I was going to say souls, but ants don't have souls, do they? That is very, very important.

What was also important was that the ants seemed to be with none other than Father Flannery O. Flannigan, president of the Billion Dollar Brotherhood.

Damn. I had to go out and explain solar powered pool heating to some rubes from Chicago who had no business being here. I humored them, to avert the ants from approaching me. Those rubes clearly couldn't afford this house, and it was going to be a big sale for me, a crucial component for me to qualify for the Billion Dollar Brotherhood this year. My year.

Oh, listen to me. Listen close. My story, my history, my tale, my defense, my justification is for you. Even if you don't understand why some things were so important to me, you must know that my dream is your dream, is everyone's dream. The American dream. Not some over-the-hill European capital where people live all crammed together in tight spaces with no yards, no pools, no landscaping, and no sprinkler systems. No. I, you, we are all Americans and our birthright is our own detached house with a lawn, a pool, and a double or triple garage, our integrated security systems, our home-owners insurance, and most important of all, our covenants, those special contracts that are so pertinent to the specific block, something that supersedes city, county, state, and national ordinances and laws. Yes, our very identity and self-worth is tied to our homes, our block. A good realtor gets that, ensures that he is not just selling a house, but is in fact ensuring the integrity of a neighborhood, guaranteeing a way of life, that is, block by block, the American dream.

There is no higher calling. Yeah. I sometimes thought, think even now, that Father Flannigan was more divinely inspired by real estate than he was with the teachings and the ways of the Catholic Church.

That, in a nutshell, is what the ants didn't get. To them, they were just selling houses, like selling cars, like selling fucking shitty toilet paper. That alone earned my dislike, and almost physical aversion to them.

What's the buzz on this one, Royce? Chrissy asked me, inappropriately grabbing my arm.

The buzz that concerned me was not her, but Fitzroy, who had just now invaded my open house and had button-holed Father Flannigan.

We've got not two, but three potential buyers, Royce, Crystal said. You're going to have to be very shrewd to get the best deal on this one.

She, like her sister, took my arm, the other one. Clearly they were infatuated with me. They didn't just take my arm; they dug into it, wetting themselves over their rare chance to feel a man at his physical and professional peak.

Cash offers to the front of the line, I said.

We don't represent drug dealers, Royce, Crystal said.

Unlike some realtors we know, Chrissy sneered, glancing toward Fitzroy.

Just between us, Crystal whispered, he looks so wrong standing next to Father Flannigan. How he ever got into the Billion Dollar Brotherhood is beyond me.

It's 'among' us, since there's three of us, not two, I said, diverting them away from talk about Fitzroy.

We went to college, Royce. We don't need our grammar corrected, Chrissy said. What's more important is a rumor is out that you are going to try to get into, and she whispered the next part, the Brotherhood this year.

How do you even know about the Brotherhood, and about Fitzroy getting in? I asked, for the Billion Dollar Brotherhood is a secret organization.

You'd be surprised what we know, Royce, Crystal said.

Good luck, Chrissy said, releasing my arm. On the house and on that other secret thing.

Crystal released my other arm and the pair of them found their client and went off to look at the pool. I wished both ants would fall in it and drown.

Then, as if I'd said a prayer for deliverance, a total contrast to the ants created a wake in my direction. It was he, my priest, president of the Billion Dollar Brotherhood, the august Father Flannery O. Flannigan. O. Not O with an apostrophe. An O with a period. And since I've taken a moment to provide some instructive information, I guess, since I'm sure the secret is safe with you, I guess it's time to clue you in on what the Billion Dollar Brotherhood is all about.

The Brotherhood is not known to the average realtor, you know, the silly ones who play by the, I mean the housewives who chuck it all to get their license. Fuck them. The Brotherhood is for the big boys. The powerful. The movers and shapers. Yes, I said shapers, not shakers. These are the cats who shape the market and end up shaping where you live and where those not in your socioeconomic historical racial ethnic tax bracket do not live. They make the deals possible. They grease the wheels. They shape the whole fucking world. Shit. The top echelons of the Brotherhood are tapped into some of the biggest multinational banks and investment firms. The very top hail from Yale and Princeton, and Oxford and Harvard. Most are born to it. Some, some rise to it.

Father Flannery O. Flannigan is up there, not born, well, kind of born, but he took a different path. It didn't hurt that he had several billion dollars of unused church assets to sell in the downturn that brought some much needed cash to his parish and lined his pockets with silk. He does real estate on the side, but the man is a prodigious talent, very lucky, and very well positioned. He's also charming as hell, and a born politician, which rose him to great heights in the Brotherhood.

He became President last year and helped Fitzroy get in. That's how I know about it. I didn't even know the Brotherhood existed until Fitzroy started slacking off. It wasn't like him, as he was usually buzzed and buzzing on coke. So I sat him down one day and put my concerns to him. He trusted me implicitly and told me all about it and how he was spending all his time on the application and qualification documents. He gave me the whole scoop. It went on so long that we adjourned to a bar where his lips loosened with each successive drink until he finally told me something really impressive.

You see, the Brotherhood is heavily insinuated in government, business, the church, the school boards, the university regents, hell, even the media and entertainment industries. And the goal was, is, not just to affect policy and business conditions through the traditional channels. Oh no. The Brotherhood is aligned with fundamentalist religious groups to route out the liberal, permissive, irresponsible, degenerate influences in all spheres of Western culture and commerce. It has no philosophical bent against all that. As Fitzroy explained it, the ability of industry leaders and politicians to garner massive support by appealing to moral authority and stoking fear in the public at large played to their real goal of securing influence and control they couldn't buy or legislate outright. That's why the Brotherhood's reach and scope is so broad, Fitzroy explained. That part scared me a bit, I will admit. On the other hand, it mightily impressed me with its ambitious goals, deft organization, and successful secrecy. It is an extremely powerful group, in spite of and because of all that, and it cares for its members like brothers.

You can see where this was going for me, me, Royce O'Rourke. It's not the money, per se. It's the network. Yes. The Brotherhood. They open doors, they cover your back, they lead you on the right path. Get in the Brotherhood, and you are set for life. Of course, some would argue that you have to be set for life to get in the Brotherhood, but what they miss is that once in the Brotherhood, you are assured, insured, guaranteed that you will stay set for life.

It's an international organization. Now, you ask why they were headquartered in Tucson? Location, location, location: Flannigan's parish was in Tucson.

He was something of a contradiction. After talking to Fitzroy about the goals of the Brotherhood, I had a hard time reconciling Father Flannigan the priest, head of a small, wealthy, but moderately liberal congregation, with Flannery O. Flannigan, champion of the global corrective goals of the Brotherhood. Indeed, Flannigan always had struck me as solidly Tucson. After I got the scoop from Fitzroy, Flannigan seemed more Phoenix to me. But isn't that the essence of a great man, the harmony of contradictions? So as I watched him approach me, not as Father Flannigan, but as Flannigan the real estate mogul, the contradictions crystallized into a beautiful paradox. He walked with an assured, confident stride that bordered safely just this side of a swagger. As he walked, he slowed without fully stopping to say hello to a realtor, or a member of his congregation, spending just enough time to be cordial, but not enough time to be sucked into a vapid conversation. He was a man who knew the value of his time, and as he progressed elegantly from one supplicant to another, greeting everyone by name, he masterfully apportioned that time according to the recipient's current value to him, keeping his eye, his intention, his entire bearing and being on the prize, like a master politician. And the prize was me, Royce O'Rourke.

Excellent showing, Royce, he said, stopping his walk and showing to the entire room where the real value was.

Thank you, Father. It is a great property, I replied.

And so well staged. He looked around, then in a low voice said I can always distinguish between your stagings and Fitzroy's. This is almost a work of art here today, Royce.

Score.

Thank you, Father. Even in this economy, there is a lot of interest, qualified interest.

Indeed. This is the place to be in Tucson today.

This was going so well for me, a one-eighty from the ants crawling about my feet.

Royce, I wanted to talk to you. Do I hear right? Are you aiming for the Brotherhood?

Score. Double Score. Triple Score. For the president of a secret society to say those words to me, to me, Royce O'Rourke, in this stunning setting, well, it was almost a sign from above that my destiny was assured.

I've been thinking about it, sir, I said. I think I may qualify this year, this quarter even.

Ah, a quarter qualifier already, he said.

At the time, that struck me as an odd, almost mocking remark. It would make more sense later, on that night in June, at the haunted house.

But Royce, he continued, I want to be clear. It is important to qualify, to be sure, but there are other factors.

Oh, I know, I bullshitted. I'm not being presumptuous.

Let's not go too far in the other direction, Royce. My advice is to be open to all possibilities.

Thank you, sir, Father.

Now Royce, you don't need to address me that way. Here, today, I am Flannigan, like you are O'Rourke, realtors.

Yes.

And my counsel now is to be on your best game today. This is the biggest property and of the greatest interest in the last two quarters. I want an impressive deal. I gather the Diamond sisters have three ideal buyers, who all more than have the resources. I think we may have a record setter here.

I'll do my best, I said.

He moved in close, almost uncomfortably close, so close, I could tell, for sure, as I had long suspected, that the fountain pen in the breast pocket of his suit was a Visconti. I almost got hard knowing that.

O'Rourke. Your best is not always what's necessary, or even hard.

It was one of those moments where you're totally exposed, on trial, your whole life depending on the outcome of what you are about to say or do. I thought, at that moment, that just the fact of me realizing the significance of the moment meant I was among the chosen, the elect. With that in my mind, I knew what to say, what I had to say, what any man born, bred, and bound for the Brotherhood had to say.

It will be easy, sir.

He smiled, that politician smile, shook my hand, maybe even winked, or maybe that wink was really the gleaming glint of the Visconti, and he glided away, confident, actually swaggering slightly. It was I who caused that sinful swagger. It was a mega score. And I've really got to stop all this alliteration. It's unseemly for a man on the cusp of the greatest moment of his life, poised to be admitted into the Brotherhood. I knew it then. Was sure of it then. Oh it had been in the back of my mind ever since Fitzroy told me about it. But not until that day, in that open house, in the presence of the great Flannery O. Flannigan did the idea, the dream, become a real possibility.

My eyes were actually watering. I cast them about the great room (sad but true, the house had one of the most ostentatious ones ever) looking for the ants, who I was sure would bring me back to cold dull reality. No ants. I did see that sexy RE/MAX realtor, such a nice duplex on her, I always thought. I wanted to fuck her, right there, right then, to seal my good fortune. No. Not her. I just knew the other one would be waiting for me later. After the open house. After all had left. The mysterious one. I decided to wait for her.

As if my dirty thoughts dispelled Flannigan's pure air, and let all the scum air rush in at me, who should approach but Fitzroy, who had the audacious nerve to crash my open house.

I won't bore you with the business he had, except to say that it was only an excuse to spy on me. He could easily have told me the next morning, on our way to New Orleans to initiate Phase Two of our Katrina deal. It was time to cash in, and that deal was a main component of my being able to qualify for the Brotherhood.

Chapter 2

It was a good showing, that open house, one of my best, I thought, as I collected the signs from out front and put them in my car. I went back inside to do my paperwork at the kitchen bar. I knew she would be there, somewhere, preparing for me, waiting for me.

When I was done with the paperwork, I started the search, slowly sneaking into each room downstairs.

This all started after Fitzroy got into the Brotherhood. I would finish up a showing or an open house, do some paperwork, then find her. The first time I thought she was a realtor or buyer who had gotten lost. Except that she was completely naked in the kitchen pantry and gave me the best blow job ever. The second time she was in the pool shed, a garden hose draped seductively around her. She didn't talk much. From what little she said, I knew she was foreign, French or Belgian. She also said her name was Juliette, and that was about it. She would just be there, be with me, then leave.

This time, I found her in the master bath. Oh, sweet Jesus, you know what she did? It was all blue. She had lit these blue votive candles, the kind Rocky, my wife, keeps in her sewing room, next to her bible, that has a red cover. Juliette, she was laying in the tub, with like twenty-five blue candles lit. And you know what she was laying in, in that tub? It sure as shit wasn't water. She had filled the tub half full of blueberries. Fucking blueberries. I didn't know where she got so many in Tucson, but she was laying on a cushion of blueberries. She had them scattered all over her. There was one in that dip in her neck. There were two between her tits. There was one in her navel. She had squished others all over her, so she was, not blue. She was purple. So was I, when we were done. I shouldn't tell you this, but I will, since you should be eighteen or over if you are reading this. She took a plump, tight little blueberry and stuck it down my urethra. Shit. When you use scientific medical terms it sounds like a fucking vacuum cleaner. She took this plump blueberry, took my cock, squished the head, then real fast, she pushed that fucker inside. Just inside. She wanted it to shoot out like a bullet when I came. That was the easy part. The real problem was how would I explain to Rocky all those purple stains all over my body?

I tried to clean up the bathroom after Juliette left. Then I went downstairs and was shocked to see the house, that prime property, was infested with ants.

What the hell are you two still doing here? I said to them. The open house closed over an hour ago.

We are doing our jobs, Royce, Crystal said, putting a little notepad into her yellow fanny pack.

What have you been doing? Chrissy teased.

My job. Now get out.

Really Royce, do you want to make a sale or not? Chrissy asked.

Yes, but to realtors whose clients belong here, which rules you out.

Is that so? Chrissy replied, sounding surprised. "Well look Royce,