Buying the Castle

A spectacular night of successive winners at Aqueduct Racetrack produced a most unexpected surplus on my balance sheet. Up to this point, I had lived the customary hand-to-mouth existence of a seedy counselor at law residing in New York City. But now, I was able to stop wearing the false beard and rubber nose employed to avoid the hectoring attentions of my many creditors. I looked forward to bright nights in the Big Apple, sampling the haute cuisine and premier vintages of the best restaurants, hitting the hit shows, spending weekdays at the track.

But my wife Grunhilda, descendent of Viking warriors, declared in the dulcet tones of Hulk Hogan that we were moving out of “this dump.” She asserted that the healthy air and wholesome atmosphere of suburbia would help clear up our son’s chronic facial boils and intractable juvenile delinquency. Bowing to the persuasiveness of her arguments, and to the fact that she could beat me in arm-wrestling, I agreed. We were heading for Greenwich Connecticut.

Greenwich is a town of about fifty-eight thousand people of whom fifty thousand are real estate agents. The other eight thousand spend all of their time being shown around by the brokers. It is Hobbs’ war of “all against all” with every agent prowling, protective, paranoid, angry, and armed to the teeth. Every morning the police find the bodies of brokers strewn about the streets of Greenwich, but that is mainly because most real estate agents are heavy drinkers.

Our agent, a burly female martial arts expert in pink blazer and black belt, met us at the railroad station in her armored BMW. She asked what type of residence we were interested in. Grunhilda and I answered in unison (C Flat Major) “something on the water.” After an appraising stare, our agent politely inquired if we meant perhaps something like a houseboat or Chinese junk. We responded that we would prefer something equipped with trees and grass. Disregarding the narrow possibility that I represented some derelict branch of the Rockefeller family, our agent queried whether we were prepared to pay the $10,000 per blade of grass commanded by waterfront property. As the blood drained from our faces, she suggested several alternatives; i.e. something with a distant glimpse of the water, which she labeled “indirect water;” something on a stream, namely “direct creek;” or something attached to the town water line, or “direct pipe.”

Our agent showed us an authentic castle which had been built by an eccentric earwax tycoon who had brought it over, stone by stone, from Nutley New Jersey. The bridge over the moat led directly into a room with a cathedral ceiling. Grunhilda was charmed, but said we would have to get rid of the stained glass windows, pulpit, and pews. We decided to buy it.