Checking out
All cabin guests will be fictional for the foreseeable future
Hi, all.
Summer madness has started early in the Rocky Mountains this year. The snow passed us up for the East Coast and the heat dome is evaporating what’s left. Campers started a forest fire last week, close to one of the most popular hiking routes in the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness. All of us are beyond indebted to the Chaffee County Fire crew who showed up fast, like they always do, and shut it down.
And people are already trying to summit Colorado’s 14,000 foot peaks, aka Fourteeners, which is why our neighbor Rocky spent part of last weekend winching an engineering student out of a snow-mud ditch.
Dear tourist friends, maybe stay home for a bit! If you do come early, come prepared, leave no trace, and if you must build a fire, make sure the ashes are cold to the touch before you walk away. You should always check for fire restrictions in the county you’re visiting, as well as on the USFS’s website for the forest, like this one here.
This week, I was going to tell you about the first time friends stayed with us at the cabin, but as I was writing, the post put down a deposit on its own place. Didn’t even ask me to cosign. There’s a fun questionnaire at the end, so please read through, share, and click that heart.
When we first bought our cabin in the Rocky Mountains, we planned to rent it out for part of the summer. The income would help pay for the property taxes and expenses like having the outhouses serviced, and we could start saving to redo the second cabin. But the cuter the first cabin got, the less Michael liked this plan.
I was torn. Running a good rental is a lot of work, especially in old buildings, which was something of a specialty of mine. For roughly ten years, I managed two tri-plexes, a four-plex, several small houses, and a pair of trailer parks with mobile homes that dated to the post World War II boom. Our rentals were not “luxury apartments.” There were no gyms, no pools, no front desk.
I did add washers and dryers whenever possible, because you know what is a luxury? Doing the laundry at home in your underwear. And they usually had a charming detail or two: built-in cabinets, good natural light, a porch or patio, vintage kitchen tile.
I really liked taking a place that had outlived its brochure moment, that was no longer in style, that had been smothered under layers of landlord-beige paint and those horrid fake-butcher-block laminate countertops, and making it a home someone might aspire to live in again. But more than anything, I enjoyed the tenants.
Mrs. Treviño, an avid Fox News viewer, insisted we pick up the rent in person, which gave her a chance to talk about her son, a perfumer’s nose who lived in Paris. Maria M. ran a tortoise-rescue community out of her double-wide. The tortoises arrived in the mail; she would nurse and foster them, then ship them back out in a cardboard box with a piece of lettuce.
Johnny H. was busted for pirating electricity because the city utility wouldn’t accept his only ID, a paper card from the county jail. He was the best liar I’ve ever met. I knew he’d help install the pirated sub-meter, but I still kind of believed him when he said he had no idea where the power in his trailer came from.
If we had cabin renters, they’d be a somewhat self-selecting group: able to afford a trip to the mountains yet willing to use an outhouse. But still, people from all over! And I knew I could make the cabin just the right balance of rustic and comfy.
Of course, being a landlady isn’t the same as being in the hospitality business. If you’re managing your long-term rental properties well, you and your tenants don’t hear from each other too often. So, I called a friend who owned and managed a small historic inn in South Texas.
“Tell me your worst stories,” I said over margaritas at San Antonio’s Liberty Bar.
She laughed. “You mean like the time the French guy literally shit the bed?”
I remembered just then that the cabin is twenty miles from the nearest laundromat.
Water causes most of the trouble in rental relationships — too much or too little, too hot or too cold. Johnny H. is actually the second-best liar I’ve met. I had a tenant once who insisted water was leaking intermittently from the ceiling in his bedroom. He even texted me a video of his girlfriend holding a sopping wet t-shirt they’d allegedly used to clean up the deluge.
I sent the handyman twice, the plumber three times. Finally, the plumber offered to write me a letter swearing there was no leak and no sign of there ever having been a leak. This was the same tenant who paid a deposit for one dog, then brought in another dog and two cats and claimed they were all service animals.
Pets are almost as much trouble as water. A decade ago, we’d decided to sell a beautiful old house that contained three apartments, one up and two down. The gentleman who lived in the downstairs back unit had been there for years, long before we bought the place. He owned a feisty chihuahua*, who chased me around the apartment like a Mad Max extra for a full hour while the Home Depot appliance-delivery team changed out the stove.
The couple upstairs had moved in less than a year earlier. The apartment was painted a pale but luminous cream that highlighted the original wood molding. It had a curving oak staircase and original Craftsman windows overlooking a yard filled with large pecan trees.
According to their application and lease, the tenants didn’t have any pets, but they were evasive and unenthusiastic when I called to make an appointment to photograph their place. This is generally what we in the business call A Bad Sign. If a tenant doesn’t want you to enter their apartment under any circumstances, it’s almost always one of three things:
1. They’re up to something illegal. This was Texas, so often it was just pot-smoking, but in the meth-making heyday, nobody believed you put foil in the windows to keep out the sun.
2. Sometimes there’s a cleanliness issue, like hoarding or … well, I’ll save that example for another time when I know you’re not eating and reading.
Friends of mine used to rent an apartment across the hall from a reclusive couple. The house was a stately old wreck, covered in forest-green shingles and vines. But the leaves up and down the building’s western side were brown and wrinkled in the spring, summer, and fall. Very mysterious. Until the couple finally moved out and the owner discovered their toilet wasn’t working … … … . Yes, the other story was worse.
3. But it’s most likely the tenants have snuck in a pet. I did this myself, of course, in my callous twenties. Guy, if you’re out there, I am sorry (although, P. S., my neighbors told me you let yourself into my apartment without notice on at least one occasion and had a beer in the kitchen with some other dude. Let’s call it even.)
One spring we toured a beat-up bungalow that was for sale. The tenant walked backwards right in front of me for the entire tour, stepping on my toes, talking at auctioneer speed about the weather (hot), the neighborhood (good tacos on the corner), the Spurs <3. We were checking out the back room, which overlooked a gnarled oak that may or may not have been growing into the attic, when she stopped in front of a set of bifold doors.
“Do you have to look in the closet?” she asked.
Well, now I did.
She took a deep breath. “He’s my pet. Okay?!?!”
After I nodded agreement, she tugged the door open just enough to reveal a ’possum curled up on a pillow on the floor.
“He likes to hang out on the hangers, too,” she said. “He just comes and goes by himself.”
Reader, we did not buy that house.
I’ve thought about starting an advice column for tenants. I even have a name for my fictional advisor: Satiah. The answers would be so short, it could just be a Twitter/X account.
Dear Satiah: I want to get a cat, but my lease says I can’t have one, which is so dumb! Cats clean themselves and they hunt mice, too, which is like a free service. Should I just sneak one in and hope the landlord doesn’t notice?
Satiah: No.
Maybe it could be a phone line, answered by a real person.
Anyway! My reluctant tenants finally relented after I promised I would be with the photographer the entire time — and pointed out that under the terms of their lease they had to make reasonable accommodations. I was apprehensive as we unlocked the door and walked up those beautiful oak stairs.
The place looked great. The kitchen counters gleamed. The bathroom sparkled. HGTV could not have done a better job staging the living room. And these guys always paid their rent on time. I was growing more suspicious by the minute.
Finally, all that remained was the bedroom. I walked ahead and threw open the blinds. There, on the dresser, a trumpet-sized glass bong glittered red, blue, and gold. Phew. Why they hadn’t just popped it in the freezer, I don’t know.
“Make sure to get the windows,” I said, slipping a scarf around my hand. I carefully picked up the bong and set it behind the dresser. And came eye to snout with a yellow and white snake slithering inside a glass case that ran the length of the wall. Its middle was as thick as my calves and (understandably) it looked mad as hell at the midday glare bouncing off the wood floor.
Maybe you’re thinking, Cool! An albino python.
I was thinking: chihuahua. If you’ve spent any time in an old house, you know a snake could swallow a water buffalo for lunch and still squeeze through the utility crawlspaces before bedtime.
When I brought it up to the tenants, they didn’t say, Don’t worry, it’s just a Ball! (Google “Burmese pythons and Everglades.”) Or, “Of course we never let it out of the display case!” Because that would be cruel.
I would have given that chihuahua even odds, but was that really my call? A good landlady rule of thumb is to avoid situations that could make the 5 o’clock news (or 32 million views on Reels). I made them promise they would alert me if the snake slithered out of their sight for one second.
Then, dear reader, we sold that house.
*yes, “feisty chihuahua” is redundant.
Okay, tell me:
A. Would you have let the tenants keep the snake in the apartment?
B. What’s the best holiday rental experience you’ve ever had?
C. What’s the most unusual “pet” you’ve met?
BOOK NEWS!
I received edits for Up to Her Neck last week from the great Molly Zakoor, and I feel incredibly lucky to be working with her. She offered so much insight regarding stakes and pacing, while showing me what the story is and what it can be. When I’m done, Wendy’s story will be the best possible version of itself, and I can’t wait for you to read it. Once the editing rounds are complete, it’s off to the printer in time for ARCs (Advanced Reader Copies). Do you have a favorite book reviewer or content creator who might be a good fit for a twisty midlife thriller? Did I just describe you? Let me know!
You can preorder anytime, at bookshop.org and barnesandnoble.com. DM me your receipt if you do. I’m working on a special thank-you for early birds.