season's end

I remember now why I bought this place in Nowheresville, The Ozarks.
On Block Island, as Labor Day weekend begins, systems are falling apart and tempers are fraying. If real estate agents are asked once more whether there are any bugs, they are going to snap. "Yes, there are bugs," they say over and over. "There are roly-polies and crickets and silverfish. Show them to your children. This is not New York City." (FYI, there are bugs in the city too—just different ones. Cockroaches and fruit flies and bedbugs.)
According to a series of calls from Douglas and the real estate agents, tenants moved into my place yesterday to find a nonfunctional hot water heater. (After three seasons? This seems unconscionable. My guess is that a breaker is off, but we'll see.) (Also, why did the real estate agent call my ex husband? My nearest on-island relation?) Anyway, the Gas Guy told the tenants he'd be over to look at it today, and his guess was that the fan motor had blown out. We'll see.
"But we have to bathe the babies tonight," the tenants told Edie, the queen of real estate agents.
"You have a stove," she told them pertly. "Heat up some water and put it in the bathtub."
"Sometimes I fear for the coming generation," she told me this morning. "They don't know how to do anything."