A Foreclosure
by Philip Goutell
© 2023 Philip Goutell
"We don't care if you screw up on your credit cards -- but a mortgage?" It was the man from the bank on the phone. I can't recall if it was their lawyer. Do lawyers from a bank call you personally when your mortgage is about to be foreclosed and your condo is about to be seized? I don't know. But the bank did have a lawyer and, when my lawyer talked to him, the report came back that he was a real animal. My lawyer promised to act like an animal too. Does the average person about to lose his home have a lawyer? Likely not. But there were circumstances.
I had seen the crisis coming but it seemed impossible, unreal, and I expected it would somehow fix itself. The problem was money. I suddenly didn't have enough money to cover the expense of three mortgages. Something would have to give and that something would be the condo. I had lived in Manhattan for enough years to know that there would always be something, should I want to be in the city again. But, in my place in the country, every morning was like waking up and finding yourself in heaven. The property had shrunk a bit since I bought it but there were still about eighty acres of peaceful, beautiful, farmland that nobody had farmed for years. I would try to keep it. Giving up the place in the city would be easier.
The crash, financially, had come, unexpectedly, out of the blue and, in my mind, it had nothing to do with anything I had done or not done. That was what made it so frustrating. I had suddenly been thrust into a bad dream that shouldn't have been my bad dream, and it was seriously messing with my life.
The slowness with which I accepted reality caught up with me and now time was running out quickly. Still, I could see only two solutions. The money could start to flow again and the nightmare would vanish, or, as friends and neighbors assured me, Delvin Adams would buy the condo. Delvin, a photographer on a roll, already lived in the building and was looking for a larger studio. When he asked to see my place I took it as a good sign.
My condo had as much terrace space on the outside as floor space on the inside. The terrace was on two levels although the upper space was only reached by a ladder and abutted a public roof space. The lower terrace, reached through French doors, was a good space for the dog to run. The ceiling ranged from about six feet alongside the terrace to about fourteen feet at the opposite wall. And there was a skylight. Most of the ceiling was skylight and skylights present problems. In winter they let the heat out, posing a challenge to the ancient, lukewarm radiators. In summer they let the heat in. Three air conditioners, running night and day, struggled to make the space livable.
But there was another problem. The skylight leaked.