Danny Ossuress was a slitherer. He slunk into the party, gliding around the cracked-ajar door, and slipped along the walls, to the punch bowl. He ran his pink little tongue around his lips and dipped a sip of the sauce into a plastic cup. Then his eyes guided his head with cold blooded precision around the room. There was Bill and Jean Proslighter, who already had a house, settled in these forty years, mortgage paid off, and happy. The Vreems stood back to back, with arms folded each holding their share of the punch bowl in a plastic cup. They were not speaking to each other for a variety of ribald reasons. So a divorce in the making and possibilities of a new listing.
There was Sandy and Jimmy Proslighter, kids. She a bit mousy, he bucktoothed rabbity, deeply in love and obviously expecting. He had just the thing, just the thing, a ratty little hovel in the Otter Farm development, down where the swamp used to be and where it still seeped sometimes. They were as poor as church mice in a preacher’s cupboard, and would need a loan. But of course, old Bill, good old Beaver Bill, could be swayed to kick in a substantial down payment for them. Danny weaved, twisted, squirmed, and twined, in that peculiar way of his, through the party crowd till he was leaning on the wall next to Sandy. With her belly bump, she was the most likely of the pair to respond to hissings about a baby needing a home to come home to.
Danny Ossuress was not a good real estate broker, but he was good enough.
Posted in response to (among other things) the Ragtag Community Word of the Day, reptilian: with apologies to the realty professions and good hearted, solid realtors everywhere. (Though, I have known a “few narrow fellows in the grass.”)
Home of Have, Poems by Lee Robison 