dignified walking around a house with a data systems man and talking about escrow. Mrs. Spenser invited Stern and his wife and child into the kitchen and brought out a jar of jam.

[Pg 19]

"Did you make that in this house?" Stern asked.

"Yes," said Mrs. Spenser, a skeletal woman Stern imagined had been worn down by her husband's dignified but fetishistic lovemaking requests.

"This is quite a house," said Stern.

The price was $27,000. Someone had told Stern always to bid $5,000 under the asking price, and, adding on $1,000 to be nice, he said, "How about $23,000?" Mr. Spenser muttered something about expediting the escrow and then said OK. Stern's heart sank. He had been willing to go to $25,000, and his face got numb, and then he began to tingle the way he once had after taking a one-penny sharpener from the five-and-ten and then waiting by the counter, unable to move, to get his Dutch Rubbing from the store owner. Getting the house as low as he had, he felt a great tenderness for Mr. Spenser; he wanted to throw his arms around the stiff-necked man, who probably knew nothing of Broadway plays with Cyril Ritchard, and say, "You fool. I just got two thousand dollars from you. How much could you get paid by your company, which probably gives you plenty of benefits but only meek Protestant salaries? Don't you know that just because a man says one price doesn't mean that's all he'll pay? You've got to hold on to those two thousands, because even though you're a churchgoer you've got a glandular daughter who'll always be doing things in cars and forcing you to move to other neighborhoods, pretending you're moving because of oil burners or escrow."

[Pg 20]

[Pg 20]

Mr. Iavone left the piano and said to Stern, "I see we have nice people on both sides. Would you like to leave some kesh now?"

"I want someone to see the house," said Stern.

"But you've already talked price," said Mr. Iavone. He grabbed his coat and slammed the top of the piano. "You bring people out, you're a gentleman with them, you spend the day," he said, "and you wind up holding the bag. You think they're nice people.... I closed three million dollars' worth of homes last year."

"I've always lived in apartments and I want someone I know to look 

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