These Dreams of You

~ ~ ~

While Zan feels foolish that it’s taken him a lifetime to know it, it’s reassuring to finally understand that the banks are evil. It lends to the situation a clarity that’s confirmed by every contact and transaction. You don’t want this house, he tries to explain, pillaged by my children and covered in my wife’s butterfly wings, no doors on half the rooms and its driveway so steep it’s practically vertical. You’re never going to find anyone else who wants to live here. “Loan number?” asks the lender on the other end of the line, in a ritual now familiar enough that Zan has made it a point, on general principle, not to know the number by heart. “Three zero six one three nine five one nine eight,” he reads from the application.

“Address?” the woman says.

“1861 Relik Road. That’s R-e-l—”

“Are you receiving mail at that address?”

“Yes.”

“Are you living at the residence?”

“Yes.”

“You are not renting the dwelling or—”

“We live here. It’s our home.”

“You have an outstanding balance on the property of one million, one hundred forty-seven thousand five hundred sixty-two dollars and eight cents. Are you prepared to make a payment in that amount today?”

“No,” Zan sighs.

The lending agent says, “How then may I assist you today, asshole?”