Photo by Jim Harris
The storefront overlooked an intersection where speed limits were closely observed, and housing prices stayed reasonable, just above the high arch of Louisiana’ fascia. After nine months of paperwork, licensure, and fines, the woman and her brother had secured their franchise contract with Remax and solidified the lease.
He had done well enough in the real estate market around Lafayette Parish to establish the down payment for the franchise and space. For years, he had encouraged her to get her license to practice along with him.
In the mornings, after dropping her son at daycare, she unlocked the front door and put on the coffee in the back. She pulled the plastic, A-frame sign out onto the sidewalk. If needed, she updated the real estate notices in the front window. She would sit down at her desk and wait. Her brother would arrive and try the coffee. He would straighten the notices, sit down at the adjoining desk, and wait with her. People would come in. They would schedule property visits. She would schedule showings.
In the evenings, she pulled the sign back inside. She waited for the text saying her husband had picked their son up from daycare. After the first year, she stopped wearing heels and started wearing flats. After the second year, Remax sent them a new sign.
Sometimes, waiting for the first customer to arrive, she would remember the vastness of old dreams, and the things she never quite became. Of being nineteen and returning from a summer in California with a shaved head to her father’s immediate fury. Of her brother, just then out of school, managing an arcade in the corner of a minor and ultimately doomed mall. How he hired her because she was both agile and brave enough to maneuver inside the crevices of broken ski ball machines. He joked about running a business together someday. He studied for his real estate license--the study manual lay propped open on the glass of the prize case. She rolled her eyes at his diligence, still then dreaming of becoming a nature photographer. She remembered traveling with no set destination and accumulating brief, unspoken loves that could only be communicated through unresolvable distance.
From inside the Remax, she knew that this lapsed self emerging from beneath the busted ski ball cabinets, could not have appreciated the life she and her brother together would eventually achieve. The grace of its simple, daily victories. Unlocking the doors in the morning and locking them at night. Moving the sign back and forth, from inside to outside, until its rounded white plastic legs accumulated a filigree of scratches. Stepping outside on the days of quiet that preceded hurricanes, turning to her brother, and saying, “Let’s head home early today. Just in case, you know?”
The Author
Adam Hofbauer’s fiction has appeared in such publications as Adelaide, Charge, and The Eastern Iowa Review. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. He lives in Philadelphia, where he is an active member of the Backyard Writer’s Workshop. His work has most recently been heard at Creative, at the Cannery, and The Hatchery Reading series.
Adam Hofbauer, Philadelphia, PA