Punk extraordinaire and lead guitarist for The Dynamite Chicks Annie Ocasia looks to buy a house with the help of her friend and recording studio colleague the fastidious Colleen.

This story will be featured in an upcoming collection of short stories entitled Short Songs, featuring characters from The Rise and Fall of Skye Wright series.

     “Window crimes.”
     “What?”
     Colleen pointed at the windows of the modestly-sized white house. “Those window frames aren’t original. They were added later.”
     Annie squinted at the house. “Mmm… really?”
     “Yeah. That’s some kinda Home Depot shit right there.”
     “Let’s go inside anyways. We came all the way out here.”
     They walked up the stairs just as a young, well-dressed couple was leaving. Annie could have sworn the couple had given her nervous glances.
     “Peckerwoods,” said Annie quietly.
     “You didn’t have to wear that shirt,” said Colleen who was dressed in her tan business casual.
     “It’s The Damned. It’s not like it’s my Frontline Assembly shirt.”
     “You could’ve at least tied your hair back,” said Colleen as she batted at Annie’s explosion of frizzy black hair.
     “Sneh.”
     Colleen restrained an eyeroll as they walked inside. A slim middle-aged woman in a lightly-colored pantsuit handed Colleen a page detailing the specifications of the house. Colleen handed it to Annie.
     Annie looked over the specs as Colleen inspected the living room. Annie noted the square footage and the asking price, as well as other details that she was only mildly interested in, at least for the moment. She needed a chance to look the place over and feel out its vibe before getting down to the gory details of trying to buy a house.
     She folded up the piece of paper and looked around the living room, walking around staged pieces of furniture.
     “Whattaya think?” asked Colleen as she sided up to Annie.
     “I’m tryin’ to imagine what that wall by the fireplace would look like with a huge ass record case.”
     “Don’t start a fire. Your records will melt!”
     “Beh. I wouldn’t start one in any case. I’ll use the fireplace to store my vibrators and dildoes.”
     “Really? I’d think you’d want to line them up on the mantle. Y’know, like art pieces.”
     Annie walked further into the house, looking in on one of the two bedrooms. She ran her eyes around the room. The paint was fresh and the furniture was new, but the textures of the door and window frames betrayed an older place. She imagined the house had been there for many decades, as the trim and the grain of the floor betrayed its old age.
     Colleen had schooled her on the tricks of the house selling trade. Most if not all of the furniture and accessories were brought in to make the place look bright and clean, to make it look more attractive.
     Colleen walked in, looking over the bedroom like a detective observing a fresh crime scene. She looked up at the ceiling and in the corners of the room. She stuck her head in the closet.
     “Attic!” said Colleen.
     “What?”
     “There’s a hatchway to the attic in here.”
     “Where all the dead bodies and mob money are?”
     “Hopefully.”
     Annie did a quick inspection of the somewhat small and pristine kitchen with an old-ish gas stove and brand new refrigerator before looking out into the small backyard.
     Colleen was still trailing behind her, no doubt inspecting details she had missed. Annie brushed back her large and tangled mane of frazzled black hair and looked around the yard, trying to imagine herself reading a book or strumming a guitar while kicking back on a sunny day.
     She was still living in the small white house, the one she had shared with Braze, her treacherous ex-boyfriend whom she discovered had been catting around when her band was on tour.
     Colleen walked past Annie, walking out onto the small backyard deck. Annie was struck by their contrast. Colleen had worn what she called her casual businessware, tan slacks and a blazer with a white button-up shirt. Colleen mentioned it was one of her more toned down outfits when it came to formal business attire, but Annie still thought she looked quite uptight, at least in contrast to herself. She thought Colleen looked like a lawyer going to court and she was the disheveled defendant, especially since Colleen had such short and well-styled red hair.
     Annie had no such business clothes. She never thought of her vast collection of band shirts, jeans, work pants, and an impressive collection of leather and patch jackets as a wardrobe, a noun that Colleen had used when she agreed to help Annie look for a house.
     Colleen walked up to Annie. “Well?”
     Annie could not hold back a sneer as she looked around the yard. “This place could be bigger. The yard certainly could be bigger!”
     “Take the specs and check out the next one?”
     Annie took out her smartphone. “The next house is only ten blocks away. Let’s walk!”
     Colleen made some quick and polite small talk with the estate agent before they took off for the next place.
     “You sure you got the financing down for this epic investment?” asked Colleen as they walked along the sunny residential streets of North Berkeley.
     “Oh yeah. Tandasil set me up with her moneys people. They got me set up right.”
     “That music money can fluctuate sometimes.”
     “Shoot, I still work with a couple of web clients, just in case. If The Dynamite Chicks fall out I have that as a backup.”
     “Hey, I’ve seen your residuals. Your band could keep you goin’ for a while even if you did break up now.”
     Annie rolled her eyes at Colleen. “Fuckin’ a, we’re all married to each other at this point. The Dynamite Chicks ain’t gonna break up for a long ass time.”
     “The female version of the Rolling Stones?”
     “I call Keith Richards!”
     “I think Skye is Keith Richards.”
     “Fine. I’ll be Ron Wood.”
     They found the next place on Annie’s list. It was an off-white house that looked small at first, with its modest and not-so-wide facade. Then they looked down the side of the house and saw how far back it went.
     “Long!” said Colleen.
     “That’s what she said!”
     The housewife real estate agent in her long proper skirt and burgundy sweater walked up to Colleen as they entered the house. “Good afternoon. I can answer any questions you have about this offer.”
     Colleen pointed at Annie. “She’s the house hunter. I’m just tagging along.”
     “Oh,” said the real estate agent as she clasped her hands and turned to Annie. “Well, yes,” she said as her voice suddenly became higher. “Let me know if I can help.”
     Annie made a deliberate eye roll, making sure the agent saw her expression.
     Annie wandered into the back, looking at one of the bedrooms as Colleen followed.
     “I’m gettin’ real tired of these realtors actin’ like I’m some gutter punk who wandered in off the street,” said Annie.
     “Should I tell her you’re a famous musician?”
     “I wouldn’t go that far. It’s not like I’m David Bowie.”
     “The ghost of David Bowie lookin’ for a house.”
     Annie looked out of the window, into the backyard. “I think you just gave me an idea for a song.”
     “Should I try my hand at songwriting?”
     “Why the fuck not? All you ever do is hang out with musicians. You’ve had to have picked up something by now.”
     As Annie gazed at the modest backyard, trying to envision herself once again playing a guitar or reading a book, she thought about her current little white house, the one near downtown Berkeley where she had been living with her boyfriend Braze. She remembered how her heart jumped when their landlord offered to sell them the house. They had gotten the offer just as her band started blowing up in popularity, when she started to make more than enough money to afford the monthly payments.
     Annie mused that if it weren’t for an errant text she had received from Braze, a text that he had meant to send to his mistress while Annnie was on tour, she might still be living in that house with an unfaithful boyfriend.
     Since she was the leaseholder she was able to kick Braze out of the place, which was easy to do since he had packed up and left before she got back from her tour, no doubt because he feared her wrath once he realized he had let the cat out of the bag.
     “You could put a firepit back there,” said Colleen, pointing to the backyard.
     “No fuckin’ way. It’s too small for a fire pit.”
     “I don’t mean a big one. Just a chiminea.”
     Annie turned away from the window. “You don’t have to come with me to all these places.”
     “Sure I do. You need a second pair of eyes. Besides, I really enjoy it.”
     Annie raised an eyebrow. “Thinking about getting your own house?”
     “Hell yeah. I got two parents and two cats at my flat. I need more room.”
     Annie’s eyes became wide. “You thinkin’ about grabbin’ one a’ these places? One a’ the ones we already looked at?”
     Colleen winced. “I don’t think I could swing it financially.”
     “Why don’t you talk to Tandasil? She hooked me up. She could do the same for you.”
     “I suppose. Maybe. I should look into it.”
     Annie and Colleen walked down a thin hallway, looking at small side rooms, all built with a wood color the agent had described as “poplar.”
     “Good thing we’re skinny,” said Annie.
     “F’real. This place is slim!”
     They made one more cursory look around the place before chatting with the estate agent and moving on to the next place.
     Annie took out her sunglasses. “On to house number three.”
     “No winners yet?”
     “Eh,” said Annie with a shrug.
     It was a short walk to a small brown-shingled house that looked as if it were in good condition.
     “Good afternoon,” said the real estate agent wearing a light brown suit and well styled short brown hair as he walked up to Colleen. “Let me know if I can answer any questions you might have about the house.”
     Colleen straightened her back. “Oh, I’m not buying the house. She is!” Colleen jammed a thumb towards Annie.
     “Oh,” said the agent as if he were unsure about what Colleen had said. “Well, yes…”
     “Don’t you recognize her?” blurted Colleen, interrupting the agent. “She’s Annie Ocasia, lead guitarist for The Dynamite Chicks!”
     “…She is?” said the agent trying to feign interest.
     “Hell yeah. She’s a rock star. She could be your sugar mama!”
     “I see!” said the agent as his eyebrows went up.
     Annie rolled her eyes and walked down the house’s hallway before the agent could give his gratuitous pitch.
     The hallway was quite narrow, but it led to a surprising number of rooms. Peering into a few bedrooms, Annie realized just how long and thin the house was.
     She walked all the way through the house and ended up in the quite spacious backyard.
     Looking at the tall hedges that sequestered the property from the neighbors, she thought about how much she liked her current backyard, with its flowers and tall grass. Her cats were very fond of the place, sleeping on the craggy brick porch and wandering around the small bushes by the fence. She frequently went back there to strum on her acoustic or read while her cats stalked around. The neighborhood was just quiet enough and the weather temperate enough to make it the ideal place to space out on music, or reading, or just zoning away the day with a drink.
     Colleen popped out of the back door and walked up to Annie. Annie glanced back at the house.
     “Honestly, I could give a fuck if the windows are from Home Depot,” said Annie. “I just want a nice house. It doesn’t have to be all retro.”
     “Yeah, sure. I’m just sayin’, I wouldn’t want a house like that.”
     “Really? Because if you did look for a house, wouldn’t it make it that much harder to find a place? If you gots to cross off the ones that don’t fit your high standards?”
     Colleen shrugged. “I know what I want, and I know what I like.”
     Annie bumped her shoulder. “You just gotta have that vintage groove, right?”
     “I want original windows. I can’t deal with that prefab stuff.”
     “Nerd.”
     “So sue me. But yeah, I really should think about buying a bigger place,” said Colleen as she looked back at the house.
     “What about just getting a place for your parents?”
     “What?”
     “Just buy a place for your parents and you could stay put in your flat. I know you love that flat.”
     Colleen let out a long sigh. “I was in love with it. Now it’s so full.”
     “Whattaya think?”
     “Sounds complicated. And way more expensive than all of us just getting a bigger place altogether.”
     Annie shrugged. “I guess I wasn’t thinking it through.”
     “Maybe if I was making more money.”
     Annie was interested enough in the place to suffer a quick chat with the real estate agent, whom she was sure would not take her seriously, but she still wanted to check in just in case she decided to make an offer on the place.
     They walked to the next house. It was a two story house with a dark wood exterior.
     “Two stories. I never woulda thunk it,” said Annie as they climbed the short stairs into the house.
     The interior looked much more modern than the facade would have suggested. They looked around the living room quickly before getting into the kitchen.
     “We always make a beeline for the kitchen,” said Annie as she looked into the refrigerator.
     “That’s because we’re from Berkeley. We actually cook our own food.”
     Colleen started to look around the cupboards as Annie looked out of the back door to see the small yard. Annie recalled how Colleen’s father had lost his job, and her parents were forced to move out of their three bedroom house since they could no longer afford the mortgage, meaning their only option was for himself and his wife to crowd into their daughter’s flat.
     They looked around the spacious living room with its dark wood interior and modern gray fireplace.
     “I’m trying to imagine your wall of records in here,” said Colleen.
     “I’m trying to imagine a bunch of drunk punks splayed out all over the place during a Young Ones marathon.”
     “With Skye and Miranda drinkin’ sodas in the corner.”
     As Annie looked down the long hallway next to the stairs, she was trying to imagine Colleen and her parents living in the house. She eyed the stairs to the second floor just as a pony-tailed real estate agent handed Colleen a spec sheet.
     Coleen handed it to Annie who glanced at the page.
     “Holy fuck!” blurted Annie. “Okay, we’re done here.”
     Annie handed it to Colleen whose eyes became wide when she saw the price. “Fuckin’ a’. That’s way higher than what they had listed online.”
     Annie glanced at her smartphone. “Fuck it. Let’s go grab some coffee before we look at any more places.”
     They found a Beller’s Cafe on University Avenue, not far from the last house.
     “Aren’t you housed out yet?” asked Colleen as she delicately picked up her espresso.
     “A few more. Then I’ll call it a day,” said Annie as she cradled her latte.
     “Thinking about any of the ones we looked at yet?”
     Annie scrunched her face. “I dunno. Every place we’ve looked at was either too big or too small or just… I dunno.”
     “Hard to choose?”
     “Not just that. Once I buy a place I might be stuck with it for a while. Like, maybe for the rest of my life.”
     “Whattay mean for life? You bands are doin’ so well right now.”
     “Yeah, so was Skye, a few years ago. She was a big wheel at Anemone Studios, and she was Tandasil’s right hand woman. An’ look what happened to her. I found her all fucked up an’ homeless. She lost everything in no amount of time. Once Anemone got bought out an’ she lost her job, she eventually lost her place and ended up out on the street. She damn near lost her fuckin’ mind.” Annie sat back in her chair. “I can’t take anything for granted. A couple a’ years from now alla my bands might fall apart. Skye’s studio could go under. I could find myself strugglin’ an’ scramblin’ for any web contracts I can get my hands on, just to squeak by. Yeah, the place I buy could be the end all and be all for my livin’ situation, for the rest of my life.”
     Colleen was quiet for a few moments, looking down into her latte’.
     “But, I’m doin’ pretty good right now,” continued Annie. “If I don’t grab me a house right now when I can, I’ll probably regret it for the rest of my life.”
     “It really is a thing,” said Colleen as she leaned on the table, “when you have no goddamn idea which way your life will turn.”
     They became quiet as they finished their coffees.
     They walked to the next place, which was only five blocks away in a pleasant residential area. They walked up to an old and decently sized stucco house.
     Walking in, the real estate agent was standing by the island in the kitchen, handing out spec sheets. She was slightly heavy with neatly trimmed shoulder length brown hair, wearing a light brown blazer and a long earth tone skirt.
     She turned to Colleen with a wide smile, holding out a spec sheet when she froze and looked right at Annie.
     “You look familiar.”
     “Do I?” asked Annie.
     “Yeah,” said the agent as she fixed her eyes on Annie. “My daughter listens to you. She showed me some of your music videos!”
     “Really?” smiled Annie.
     “She loves your music.” She leaned towards Annie and whispered. “I saw that music video, where you were beating up a young man on a club floor.”
     “Right. Our Atomic Bomb Betty vid.”
     A friend of Skye’s had made their first music video, and had included a lot of various club scenes in the video, including cell phone videos of the various members of The Dynamite Chicks, including Annie, fighting during a club-wide brawl that was instigated when a boot boy slapped his girlfriend.
     The agent beamed with a wide smile. “I probably shouldn’t say this,” she said quietly, “but there was something about seeing a woman beating up a man that just made me feel…”
     She could not hold back a giggle.
     “It was a quick brawl,” said Annie who could not hold back her own smile. “It got broken up almost as fast as it got started.”
     “Still, it was really… I don’t know how to explain it.”
     Annie put a hand on the agent’s shoulder. “I know what you mean.”
     Colleen decided to walk around and look over the kitchen while Annie talked to the agent. After a quick look at the roomy kitchen she heard the agent going over the house specs with Annie, talking over the details about the place. By the time she got back into the living room Annie was discussing her financial situation, how her income fluctuated based on her residuals.
     They spent more time looking around the clean and well-built house than any of the previous ones. Annie had a big smile on her face as they left.
     “Fuckin’ a’. I almost wanna buy that house just to give her that commission.”
     “Got a kick outta that, didja?”
     “Knowing I can charge up a woman because she saw me knocking some man’s head on the floor does give me quite a feeling of satisfaction!”
     They made their way back to Colleen’s car and went to Juan’s Place for lunch.
     Annie looked over the spec sheets for all of the houses as they ate chips and salsa.
     She dropped the sheets onto the tabletop. “Fuck it. I’m just gonna go ahead and accept my landlord’s offer.”
     Colleen’s eyes became wide. “Really? The Braze house?”
     “Yeah. Fuck it.”
     “I thought you wanted to get away from that place, put Braze behind you.”
     Annie slumped down in her seat. “That fucker is gonna follow me aroun’ no matter where I go. He’s superimposed on my life, whether I like it or not. If I try to run away from that son of a bitch it’s just gonna make it worse.”
     They paused their conversation as their food arrived.
     “So, what are you gonna do when you eventually run into him?” asked Colleen as she started mixing her rice and beans together.
     “Hopefully I’ll have Skye or Roach or ideally Miranda with me so they can stop me from beatin’ his ass and I don’t end up gettin’ arrested,” said Annie as she started hacking into her enchiladas.
     “You sure you know how you’d react if you ran into him?”
     Annie nodded. “I’ll fuckin’ explode. It’s not gonna be pretty”
     “Well, don’t expect me to hold you back. I ain’t a brawler like your bandmates.”
     “You can just watch while I beat him up.”
     Colleen put down her fork and sat back.
     “What?” asked Annie.
     “I worry about you sometimes.”
     “Just sometimes? Most of my friends worry about me all the time.”
     “Staying in that house, where you were living with a two-timer. I mean, you got the cabbage to get a bigger place.”
     Annie looked around the decorated walls of Juan’s Place, with all of its photos and banners and lights.
     She sat back in her chair. “I like where I live. Yeah, I was hoping to share it with a good partner, but if I leave, then I’ll just let him win.” Annie leaned forward. “I don’t want him to win.”
     Colleen nodded and picked up her fork.
     “That works,” said Colleen.