Mademoiselle? Oui. La Spinster?…ZUT!

by Geno Petro

Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

Author website

I could see the fan and I could see what was about to hit it. We were all sitting around the closing table…signing, witnessing, and waiting to be paid (the latter being me, of course), when the question was posed to my client by her counsel—an attorney I usually recommend for relatively routine transactions. A nice guy but no Bruce Cutler if you know what I’m saying. He’s cheap, actually.

“Married, Divorced, or Spinster?” he asked my client, looking at a title form he obviously had never seen before.

‘BAM!’ (splat)… then dead silence for one of the longer two or three second periods I can recall in recent weeks.

Did I just hear what I thought I heard? I hoped it went unnoticed as I looked up from the mindless game on my Treo, just three deals away from completing Solitaire for the 100th time in about as many closings. Not a chance.

“Did you just call me the ‘S’ word?” answered my client, a lovely unmarried woman who, with pen in hand, was about to sign the final document and close escrow on her first condominium in Chicago. When a question is answered with another question in such a situation then the next one who speaks loses. We all know this. And I knew who wasn’t going to say anything as I went back to my PDA, clearing the game and pretending to enter something into the calendar, all thumbs in different directions on the tiny keyboard. I was careful not to make eye contact with anyone. I was listening though.

“Pardon me?” asked the attorney.

I felt like popping him on his forehead with the palm of my hand …”Dumb dog, dumb dog.” The funds weren’t transferred from the Federal Reserve yet. Say something stupid after we’re paid for our services and keys are handed over. And just like the time one of my golfing buddies got caught cheating on his wife, I was also in trouble just by association. (And for the record, the wife was much hotter than the girlfriend, I thought. Either way, she got the house, the stock portfolio and the good car while he was left with the girlfriend and I guess, whatever else remained. I wasn’t allowed to play golf with him anymore so I can’t really say. Another dumb dog, for sure.)

“No…Pardon me,” retorted our client. Then she shot a look my way and caught me stealing a glance upward. “Did he just call me a Spinster?” She wasn’t letting it go.

“Legal term. Legal term,” was all I could come up with, typing nonsense into next December on the qwerty buttons.

“Yeah, legal…” the attorney could barely get the words out before she finished him off, stomping him out like a cigarette butt. My client happens to be one the foremost mergers and acquisitions paralegals in the country, recruited, no…headhunted, by the biggest, baddest corporate law firm in Chicago. If it were a Pay-For-View event, the fight would have been stopped immediately and everybody would be entitled to a refund.

“I know all about legal and legally”… (but she said it like ‘lee-gal-lee‘, like she was speaking to….well, a dumb dog)  “…and lee-gal-lee, I am un-marr-ied.” Then she made a gun with her thumb and fingers and fired off an imaginary round into his head, just like Silvio Dante did Adriana La Cerva on The Sopranos, making that ‘tchshhhh’ sound with her mouth. I know you think I’m pulling your leg but I am not. This all went down Halloween Day on the 22nd floor of the First American Title Company, Downtown Chicago location.

“Whoa,” I think I said under my breath, sounding a little too much like Paulie Walnuts, perhaps.  It was either Whoa or the F-word, I’m not certain. It just nervously popped out of my mouth.

No…, it was the F-word because the other Realtor on the deal was sitting next to me and broke the chill by saying “I believe that’s the first time I ever heard the F-word at a closing table.” She must have been kidding because I’ve said it more times than I care to remember in similar situations but then again, she was about 70 years old and from the suburbs. Hey, if anyone was a spinster at that table it was her.

“It’s in the dictionary, you know,” she continued. Poor, never married thing. She had brought everyone cookies, too. Halloween cookies in the shape of little ghosts. Very scary in so many different ways.

Right about then, by the grace of whoever was dressed up as God, the title company Closer (dressed up like Elvira or Tammy Wynette or both) walked into the room, handed my client back her driver’s license and swept the loan and title packets from the table to fax the hundred or so pounds of freshly completed paperwork off to the lender. She also had a few RESPA questions for our attorney and he was more than delighted to jump up and escort her into the copy room leaving the rest of us to wade through the mess he left behind. We sat in silence for a minute or so (10 years) staring at the cookies. We were all on diets, I think.

“What are you?” the other Realtor finally turned and asked me.

“What am I what?” I answered, not sure what she meant.

“For Halloween. Who are you dressed up as?  That’s a leather suit, isn’t it?” the old, old woman.

I looked down at what I was wearing; Black pants (silk/wool blend), black rayon shirt (Zegna), a black leather blazer my wife bought me in Spain and black leather shoes my Broker brought me back from Italy (and admittedly, they may be a little more pointed in the toe than what you usually find in the Midwest). But a leather suit, it was not. I promise. I would never wear a whole leather suit period, much less to a closing.

My client was laughing now. “Don’t F with him,” she told the woman.  “He’s in the mob.”  Which of course, I am not, making it all the more humorous. There are just too many vowels in my name, that’s all. My vehicle of choice is a Mini-Cooper, for chrissakes. Anyway, she’s the one who just whacked the lawyer.

“Ooops. There’s that word again,” said the other Realtor. It was pretty priceless. And the best part was the lady didn’t even need to be there. She was working for free because the Seller (not present) was her niece or great niece, or something. She just wanted to bring everyone cookies on Halloween and personally hand over the keys.

The attorney was back now with Elvira Wynette, still holding the last and final title document in his hand. “Okay, folks. I just spoke this spooky young gal here…(‘oh, oh, here we go,’ I thought.) and good news! How about ‘Never Married’… Is that cool?” Nobody spoke. Enough with the silent beats, already. He looked over at me…

“Geno, what do you think?”

He didn’t care, nor did it even matter, what I happened to think at this point. He just wanted me to nudge along my client so we could all move on with the day. Elvira apparently had her next victims chained to the chairs in the reception area and needed our space. This guy is passive aggressive that way. He thinks just because I’m wearing a leather suit that I’m stupid but in reality he’s the dead lawyer wearing Tommy Bahama and Dockers on a Wednesday, the last day of October.

“How about Mademoiselle?” other Realtor chirped.  She continued on although there was really no need to. We all just wanted to leave. “In France never married women are addressed as Mademoiselle. It is the equivilant to Miss here in America, or Ms, I think… Maybe not…”

“Yeah, right, whatever,” said my client, done with it all. “I have to get back to work. Where do I sign?”

And just like that we were all in the elevator heading down, about to part ways forever most likely. Elevator silence is the worst. I lived in a high rise for years and there is really nothing to look at but the numbers on the panel  and above or yourself in the mirrors. Elevators in this city all have mirrors at every turn. I stole a glance at my image and I suppose, through a cataract eye, my attire did have an omnisciently leather appearance. At least I got paid.

“I guess I should take political correction lessons from Geno,” the attorney remarked, half jokingly, mouth full of cookie crumbs. What he really meant by that comment was “….lessons from Geno, of all people” as the doors opened into the grand lobby and we all shot off in our respective directions.  I would have whacked him again but like I said already, I’m not in the mob.  I just have a lot of vowels in my name.