I had gone to work with my father to help him finish the paperwork he’d been unable to complete. At 4PM we left his office in the same car. “There are a few houses out in Natomas I want to look at,” he said. “You’ll have to bear with me.”

We drove through downtown, past the jail, and took the interstate out of the Capital. In all directions the horizon was close because of the smoke in the valley. The radio had reported as many as twenty-seven separate fires in our region.

We exited on Elkhorn Boulevard and entered one of the new neighborhoods constructed during the housing boom at the turn of the century.  On the side of the road was a green Mercedes and we pulled up behind it. Inside it was Al, and my father waved to him. Al pulled out onto the road and we followed him through a few stoplights and then onto a residential street.

When we parked, I was slow to get out. I did not like to be there. Al came up and shook my hand. I did like to see Al. He emigrated from Nigeria and was  grateful to have survived so many years in this country.

“This is it,” said Al. He had a distinct accent but his elocution was always immaculate. He was wearing dark, khaki pants and a white shirt with the top button unfastened. My father still wore his orange construction vest that, my mother told me once at dinner, he often went to sleep in after forgetting to change for bed.

The upstairs window of the house we’d come to see was open and there was a Pinocchio DVD on the sill. I realized then that someone still lived in the house—that the tenants had probably been foreclosed on but not evicted. Al went up to the door and knocked. After half a minute he said, “They don’t seem to have expected us.” Around the back of the house were a number of dogs barking shrilly.

“There are other properties,” I said.

“Calm down,” my father said. “No one’s in a hurry.”

I walked across the street to the car. Down the road a small, blue truck was coming toward us. When it was near enough I saw the man driving looking at me, and then at my father and Al standing in front of the house. He turned into the driveway and Al stepped aside, pulling my father out of the way so the truck could park.

I went hesitantly back across the street. The man got out and Al asked if he was the owner. “Yes,” the man said. He had a thick Mexican accent and his shoes were not tied.

“We only had a small problem with the Chihuahuas,” said Al. He was smiling, and as he said this he clapped the man on the back.

“They keep away the bandits.”

The man went up onto the porch and into the house. I was the last inside and I spent some time wiping my shoes on the mat. I closed the front door behind me. There was the faint smell of shit in the air, perhaps a diaper that had been left in the kitchen garbage. Al, my father, and the owner were standing in front of an enormous TV in the living room. The owner was looking up at the ceiling. He pointed at the two light fixtures hanging there. “They can be fans,” he said. “You could hook up the fans there, to cool you off.”

“That’s fine,” said my father.

“This is on short sale?” asked Al.

“Yes,” said the owner.

“When did you put it on the market?”

“We’ve been here two years.”

“It’s been on for two years?” my father asked.

“No, since February. We buy it two years ago.”

“And what’s it listed for?” my father asked.

“$210,000,” said the owner.

“And what did you buy it for?” asked Al.

“$450,000.” He did not appear interested in recalling the loss too acutely, so he led us into the dining room. “The fireplace,” he said, “is gas. You open it up like this, and the gas comes from this switch.” He pointed to a switch on the wall but did nothing to demonstrate how anything worked.

Next we went into the kitchen. In the rear wall of the house was a sliding glass door looking out onto the yard. In the yard were the two dogs, both colored like Dobermans, but the size of fox terriers. I felt relieved that they were not Chihuahuas. The tenant, for it wasn’t fair, I realized, to call him the owner, was looking at the pile of dishes in the sink, which was the only disorder we’d encountered. “My wife does them only by hand. So this thing”—he pointed to the dishwasher—“is brand new.”

My father laughed. Then, leaning over to Al, he said softly, “I don’t need to see anymore. I’m ready to make an offer.”

The boarder ignored him and said, “I’ll show you upstairs.”

We all followed him upstairs and into his office which overlooked the street and our cars. In the corner of the room was a guitar. “You play the guitar?” Al asked.

“I always try to,” the boarder said.

“Stick to it,” my father said. “Start up a little Mariachi band.”

“I’ll show off the bedrooms,” the boarder said.

Across the hall from the office was a room with pink walls. Inside on a long chest of drawers was a pink television. “My daughter,” the gentleman said, “has everything to be pink and white.” The comforter was white. Even my father would not go into the room, but the gentleman entered and straightened a stack of papers on the dresser. Then he looked up and out the window at the house beyond his back fence. “And I will show you the jets, now.”

In the master bedroom the bath was a Jacuzzi and my father knelt down and inspected the jets and swiveled one in its socket. “It’s all customized,” said the gentleman.

Soon we left the bedroom and descended the stairs. My father and Al walked ahead and I stayed back with the gentleman. Al took my father into the garage.

“You are in a business?” the gentleman asked suddenly.

“A little business,” I said. “I sometimes help out my father.”

“Yes,” he said. We were in the kitchen again. He looked over at the dogs standing at the sliding door, shaking their shortened tails.

“I wanted to say,” I began, “that I’m sorry you’ve lost your house. I don’t like to bother you in your home like this, at a time like this.”

“It isn’t our house,” he said. “So it isn’t any problem.” He paused for a moment. “But don’t think that this is any sad thing. I lose money on this house, I make on the others. What is this one building? I own seven other houses, and I rent those out. Like me, I know people who need to have some place to live, and they can’t get mad that they must live in one room with six other men, and that they have to pay three hundred dollars a month to sleep like that. I have one house where there are thirty-two men in it, and four wives. That is, what, nine thousand dollars for me every month? I will sell this house soon. There shall be others. This one is just too expensive, now.”

My father came in from the garage then. “You’re ready to go?” he asked.

I shook hands with the businessman and my father shook his hand and we all walked out into the street.

As we got into the car, my father said, “I feel badly for him. I feel badly for his family. But someone has to buy the house.”