Mistaken Identity

My dear friend Mark is buying a house. After years of renting, he found a really neat development and he closes on the new house next week. During the design phase of the housebuilding, he asked me to come along to the sessions to help him pick tile and carpet and flooring and all that "decorative" stuff. So I trundled along to the Design Center and helped him pick tile for the bathroom and laundry, countertops, bathroom fixtures, all that stuff.

It was kind of fun. We started referring to me as the "rental wife", since he doesn't have a woman in his life to give him a hand with all that.

Today was his final walkthrough prior to closing -- you know the drill, looking for things that need to be fixed, making sure tha l lthe doors and cabinets open and close, all the faucets work, that sort of thing. He asked me to come through and look for stuff.

So I arrive a bit early at the house, where the two representatives of the building company are waiting and introduce myself as the 'surrogate, rental wife'. They chuckled a bit, but Mark arrived shortly afterwards and Mark made the comment that I'd been really helpful, and that my husband was glad I wasn't doing it for our house.

"So, you're not married?" Chirpy walk-through woman says in surprise.

"Nope."

The look on her face was priceless. For just a second, before I could say that I was just giving Mark a hand with the aesthetics, you could tell that she was thinking...huh? What sort of weird sex triangle have I stumbled into? There's a husband somewhere?

We laughed like hyenas, which I imagine didn't help.