Weather’s been great!”
“I’ve got some buyers coming for the muddy-shoe walk-through.”
“Well, it’s like walking through a damn meadow out here. This is a fucking vacation!”
“Glad to hear you’re happy in your work.”
“I’ve been hounding Gordon to put these units up for three years.”
“What’s the deal with the setback?”
“Well, you know. They got a load of brick from somewhere like Quebec City. Brick out of the street. They’re bringing it down in a couple of days. I don’t know where they’re going to put it. Probably be hell to work with. You know—myself, I like a nice new brick, sharp edges, uniform color, looks great, but Gordon won’t look at a new brick anymore. I showed them some brick I could get for half the cost of these Canadian bricks.”
“Them?”
“You know, him and this other guy.”
“Nathan? One of the poker buddies?”
“Nah. Young guy. Good-looking. Younger than you. I don’t know where he found him, but they’re thick as thieves.”
I knew who he was talking about before he even finished talking. “Well-dressed?”
“Like a Wall Street banker every day.”
“Burns?”
“That’s the one.”
I estimated, depending on the cost of the brick, that the units had just risen in price. I said, “I thought this phase was low-ball all the way, nothing extra.”
“Oh, there’s plenty of extras. They canceled the vinyl-clad windows and ordered some wood-framed windows from this place out in Iowa. And they told me to find the tile guy, because they were changing the kitchen and bathroom flooring from linoleum to some kind of Italian tile.”
“I’ve got brochures at the printer that have certain prices on them.”
“Well, my advice, you’d better stop the presses. These improvements ought to add twenty grand, if you ask me.”
Let me say I was in a good mood that morning. The weather was gorgeous and my luck was flowing in a way that seemed permanent, maybe even a law of the universe. Therefore, while Larry talked, I nodded. No two ways about it, the units were definitely going to be nicer, not just good taste but expensive taste. Looking back, I would have to say that that’s when the eighties began, as far as I was concerned—the first week in June, 1982, when modest housing in our rust-belt state got decked out with Italian tile. The fly in the ointment, I realized, as I heard two cars drive into the gravel parking lot and saw them park next to mine, was that my presold clients were not going to qualify for them. The two-bedrooms I had priced at $49,900, the three-bedrooms at $79,900. That meant about an eleven-thousand-dollar down payment for the one, a fourteen-thousand-dollar down payment for the other, and an income of more than twenty thousand a year to qualify for a mortgage. If Gordon’s new plans added twelve or fifteen thousand to the price of the smaller unit and fifteen or twenty to the price of the larger unit, my clients would have to have an income of just over twenty thousand a year at the old price but almost twenty-five thousand a year at the new price. For the larger unit, a yearly income of twenty-four and a half thousand was sufficient at the lower price, but almost thirty-four thousand was necessary at the higher price. And as they got out of their cars and approached me, big smiles on their faces, I realized that asking almost a hundred thousand dollars for a townhouse unit in a development was an impossibility. Could not be advertised, could not be sold. It was an absurdity. But if Gordon didn’t price them that high, there was no profit to be made. I remember thinking that whatever Marcus Burns was telling Gordon—and why would he be telling Gordon anything to begin with?—between the two of them they clearly had no idea what they were doing with these townhouses. I was sorry. I had been so busy with my own clients and Felicity (and that was a problem too, because obviously I had been avoiding the Baldwins out of
“I’ve got some buyers coming for the muddy-shoe walk-through.”
“Well, it’s like walking through a damn meadow out here. This is a fucking vacation!”
“Glad to hear you’re happy in your work.”
“I’ve been hounding Gordon to put these units up for three years.”
“What’s the deal with the setback?”
“Well, you know. They got a load of brick from somewhere like Quebec City. Brick out of the street. They’re bringing it down in a couple of days. I don’t know where they’re going to put it. Probably be hell to work with. You know—myself, I like a nice new brick, sharp edges, uniform color, looks great, but Gordon won’t look at a new brick anymore. I showed them some brick I could get for half the cost of these Canadian bricks.”
“Them?”
“You know, him and this other guy.”
“Nathan? One of the poker buddies?”
“Nah. Young guy. Good-looking. Younger than you. I don’t know where he found him, but they’re thick as thieves.”
I knew who he was talking about before he even finished talking. “Well-dressed?”
“Like a Wall Street banker every day.”
“Burns?”
“That’s the one.”
I estimated, depending on the cost of the brick, that the units had just risen in price. I said, “I thought this phase was low-ball all the way, nothing extra.”
“Oh, there’s plenty of extras. They canceled the vinyl-clad windows and ordered some wood-framed windows from this place out in Iowa. And they told me to find the tile guy, because they were changing the kitchen and bathroom flooring from linoleum to some kind of Italian tile.”
“I’ve got brochures at the printer that have certain prices on them.”
“Well, my advice, you’d better stop the presses. These improvements ought to add twenty grand, if you ask me.”
Let me say I was in a good mood that morning. The weather was gorgeous and my luck was flowing in a way that seemed permanent, maybe even a law of the universe. Therefore, while Larry talked, I nodded. No two ways about it, the units were definitely going to be nicer, not just good taste but expensive taste. Looking back, I would have to say that that’s when the eighties began, as far as I was concerned—the first week in June, 1982, when modest housing in our rust-belt state got decked out with Italian tile. The fly in the ointment, I realized, as I heard two cars drive into the gravel parking lot and saw them park next to mine, was that my presold clients were not going to qualify for them. The two-bedrooms I had priced at $49,900, the three-bedrooms at $79,900. That meant about an eleven-thousand-dollar down payment for the one, a fourteen-thousand-dollar down payment for the other, and an income of more than twenty thousand a year to qualify for a mortgage. If Gordon’s new plans added twelve or fifteen thousand to the price of the smaller unit and fifteen or twenty to the price of the larger unit, my clients would have to have an income of just over twenty thousand a year at the old price but almost twenty-five thousand a year at the new price. For the larger unit, a yearly income of twenty-four and a half thousand was sufficient at the lower price, but almost thirty-four thousand was necessary at the higher price. And as they got out of their cars and approached me, big smiles on their faces, I realized that asking almost a hundred thousand dollars for a townhouse unit in a development was an impossibility. Could not be advertised, could not be sold. It was an absurdity. But if Gordon didn’t price them that high, there was no profit to be made. I remember thinking that whatever Marcus Burns was telling Gordon—and why would he be telling Gordon anything to begin with?—between the two of them they clearly had no idea what they were doing with these townhouses. I was sorry. I had been so busy with my own clients and Felicity (and that was a problem too, because obviously I had been avoiding the Baldwins out of
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