The sweet winds of the South have kissed the palisades of the Potomac about three weeks early this year – thanks, no doubt, to global warming. So it’s a serendipitous jump start for Real Estate Raping Season, that local annual Rite of Spring which dawns with the first crocus blossoms pushing through the melting snow and continues until the oppressive, overly moist heat of Washington’s sadistic Summer finally descends upon us all, coyly coaxing forth the thick, narcotic scent of honeysuckle and mimosas; inducing, if not reason, at least such crushing, brain-melting Dixie torpor as to finally extinguish the unseemly rut. During the frenzied Real Estate Raping Season, one could be forgiven for asking Those Powers that Be, whether there dwells a predator anywhere else on this verdant Globe, who is half the match of a real estate agent? There are, of course, plenty of them – investment bankers, members of the American Medical Association, attorneys of various stripes, numerous politicians, stock brokers, hucksters who populate late night informercial broadcasts, people who work for Microsoft, and many, many, more. Being a reasonably observant Italian Catholic, all I can say is that I fervently pray for each of them to have a special place waiting in an appropriate Circle of Hell. As a matter of fact, I say four novenas a year, one to Jesus, one to God the Father, one to the Virgin Mary and one to a specially selected saint chosen on a carefully planned annual rotation schedule, every time suggesting a list consisting of a few choice names and an appropriate eternal fate of damnation for each name on the list. Call it presumptuous if you like, but I figure you only get to go around this life once, so you got to make the most of all your opportunities.
But in this season, the greed, duplicity and shameless evil of those other candidates for choice berths on the Tophet Express is simply eclipsed, dwarfed and overshadowed by the pure, undiluted sin displayed, practiced, nay, openly celebrated, by the real estate agents of Washington, DC. So I knew, given the latest paroxysms of the economy, that a visit from a real estate agent was inevitable.
Given the immutable nature of Murphy’s Law, the bell rang just as I sat down to dinner on Monday. I tried to ignore it, but my uninvited caller was insistent, probably having observed me arrive home some forty minutes before. So, at last, forsaking my baked Occoquan shad roe wrapped in Vermont apple wood smoked organic bacon, Pyrenees grass-fed goat butter sauteed Amontillado marinated hen of the wood medallions with paper-thin giant shallot slices, risotto Milanese flecked with black Perigord truffle, green beans almandine seasoned with Santorini volcanic ash sea salt and a smooth, yet spicy 1996 Steinertal Pichler Riesling, I answered the front door.
“Mr. Collins?” She was pert, well dressed, well made up, well coiffed, and not bad looking for a woman her age. Her smile was orthodontically perfect and transparently insincere.
“Yes,” I replied, leaving it at that.
My taciturn approach took her aback somewhat, it seemed – “Ah, I… I’m representing the Miltowns across the street. Do you know them?”
“Representing?” I grinned at her cynically. “Are you their attorney or their theatrical agent?”
“I’m their real estate agent,” she replied, offering me her card, which I accepted.
“I was just having dinner,” I told her as I examined the business card, “won’t you join me?”
This floored her, which is what I intended. It was no problem at all, really – shad roe comes in sets of two and nobody can eat an entire set wrapped in bacon, except maybe Luciano Pavarotti. On the other hand, given how the flavor actually improves when you re-heat a baked bacon-wrapped shad roe sac in a microwave, it doesn’t make much sense to cook them separately in a gas oven. So I had another one, as well as reasonable portions of everything else left over, including the Riesling.
“I, I had a big lunch,” she managed after an overly long pause.
“Well,” I responded, “I’m certain you won’t mind if I finish my meal before it gets stone cold?” At this, I simply walked back into the dining room, leaving her standing in the doorway. She followed me, taking a seat at the end of the dining room table, a far as possible from mine.
After carefully placing her briefcase and notebook on the table, she took out a pen, donned a pair of glasses set in fashionable designer frames, and asked “Do you know the Miltowns very well?”
“It’s not like they’re friends,” I allowed, “but I’ve had some opportunities to interact with them.”
“What are they like? Are they good, honest people?”
“That depends,” I said, slicing shad roe slowly, “on whether the vice president of IT at a federal government contracting firm and a member of the United States Senior Executive Service could possibly, after attaining such positions in our society, still retain the generally recognized concepts of ‘good’ or ‘honest’ as functioning components of their personalities. But be that as it may, in my estimation they still are, without a doubt, people, which is to say, human beings of some sort or another.”
“You don’t like your neighbors, Mr. Collins?” Her reproach was gentle but obvious.
“I dare say I know my neighbors for what they are, ma’am,” I retorted, deliberately hoisting my Riesling as I intently watched her face for a reaction. She quickly looked down at her notes.
“I see. What’s your opinion of the Miltowns, then?”
Returning to my plate and retrieving a fork full of risotto, I smiled and waited until she worked up the courage to look me in the eye again. “Restricting myself to polite characterizations, they are typical of their professional peers – fatuous, empty suits who succeed by constant practice of office politics, gossip, sycophancy, slander, mendacity and betrayal. Neither of them know one single thing that’s of any use to humanity, technology or our civilization. They, and everyone like them, could disappear from the face of the Earth tomorrow morning, and those who remained would not only do just fine in their absence, those left without them would significantly benefit from the sudden availability of the resources that such useless parasites as the Miltowns regularly and constantly consume in obscene volume while vainly attempting to validate their meaningless existence through gratification of their inflated, corrupted and putrid egos. So,” I ventured, slowing my delivery and raising my voice ever so slightly, “let’s cut the cake – the Miltowns are selling their house because, despite their overweening pretensions, they bought it with a sub-prime, adjustable-rate mortgage and, furthermore, put practically nothing down; now, they can’t afford to make the payments.”
Dear reader, when you can get a Washington real estate agent to blush with shame, I’d say you have them by the shortest hairs that in the Nile delta do grow. That gave me a hunch so strong, I had to pounce. “And you’re the one who sold it to them, aren’t you?”
“If you know that Mr. Miltown is in the SES,” she said, pointedly avoiding an answer to my question, “then I’m sure you know that members of the SES are often transferred around the country and even abroad. That’s why the Miltowns are selling the house, Mr. Collins – they will be moving out of town so Mr. Miltown can take a new SES post.”
“Where?” I demanded.
“Mr. Miltown didn’t say,” she replied, averting her gaze.
“I’ll bet. Miltown’s been stuck in an SES post at the Department of Education since he got it during the first year of the Bush administration. He’s their front man for integration of intelligent design into life sciences curricula.” I hoisted another sip of Riesling as I spoke. “He’s not going anywhere until at least January, 2009, and probably not even after that if the Democrats nominate Clinton, which it looks like they will…”
“Mr. Collins, you should know that home is available at an extremely reasonable price…”
“Yeah, but what’s a reasonable price for a white elephant?” I asked. “The Miltown’s place was custom built in the 1980’s – it was the suburban Xanadu of a former soap and toothpaste corporation executive who made it to Washington by kissing up to a bigger fraud than him who ran a tool-and-die business. He’d shoot hoops with the guy and intentionally lose. That action finally landed him the presidency of a local firm we used to call ‘Pretty Rotten Consulting,’ which the tool-and-die magnate had acquired as part of a bigger deal to buy its parent company. So Mr. Soap Salesman promptly runs Pretty Rotten Consulting into the ground, then drops dead from a brain tumor. When you know that he had a malignant growth the size of an egg in his skull, it’s easier to understand how he could have ordered a custom designed mansion with seventeen fireplaces, a twelve-car garage and an indoor basketball court. And oh, by the way, he was an uncultured buffoon with no class and terrible taste, just like the Miltowns, and you can’t blame his cancer for that. Surely, ma’am, there must be another such person somewhere around Washington, to whom the Miltown property will appeal. And I suggest you start looking for them, because there is no way you are selling that place to me. You could, I suppose, try some of the other neighbors – but something tells me you already have.”
My surprise dinner guest then promptly closed her notebook, picked up her briefcase, rose from her seat and walked into the foyer.
“Don’t let the front door bang you in the behind on the way out,” I cautioned.
At ten-thirty Tuesday morning, I received a punctual visit from Sinclair, the principal lobbyist at the National Institute of Loan Lenders, a K Street organization that represents the interests of all the usurers and shylocks, big and small, across this great nation of ours. He brought with him a report I had prepared for NILL about a year ago. It had been fine with them then, but apparently the mortgage industry had some problems with its content now.
“We aren’t saying we think your analysis is incorrect, Tom,” Sinclair was both diplomatic and conciliatory. “It’s just that, even if what’s in this analysis is the truth, it’s not, ah, convenient, to have the situation explained in such, um, stark terms.
I leaned back in my chair, stretched and yawned. “You’re saying my analysis is an inconvenient truth, too easily understood, and is therefore undesirable?”
“Essentially.” Sinclair riffled through the deliverable. “I’m not saying it isn’t brilliant work, Tom. But our members in the sub prime mortgage market are going bankrupt, some of them are under investigation by federal authorities, and Congress is talking about using its subpoena power to call our member’s employees to hearings up on the Hill. Under those circumstances, NILL is worried that a copy of this report will get into the wrong hands.”
“Such hands,” I speculated, leaning toward Sinclair, “being those of a journalist, federal cop or member of Congress?”
“I… I can’t speculate on who the wrong people would be, Tom,” Sinclair cautiously replied, “but we’ve taken the precaution of destroying all the copies you delivered to us – except this one I brought with me, of course, so I could explain to you what our issues are with the deliverable and point out the passages that are, in our opinion, under the current circumstances, inappropriate and potentially problematic.”
I leaned back again, contemplating. “You intend to destroy that last copy you have, erase all electronic copies on your network drives and over-write the memory space with random digits, and burn all the CD’s and memory sticks containing the document in soft copy?”
“That’s right, Tom.”
“And you want me to do the same,” I continued, “so it would be like the document never existed?”
“Exactly.”
“Sinclair,” I asked, “could you please at least tell me which parts of my work you have recently developed problems with?”
Sinclair nodded, opened the report and began to read:
“In a completely equilibrated efficient market, interest rates incorporate all relevant risk information – the greater the risk that a borrower will default, the higher the interest rate for loans to that borrower. It is almost never the case, however, that any market is in theoretical economic equilibrium, any more than it is the case that a human being’s body is ever in thermodynamic equilibrium. For just as a human being in thermodynamic equilibrium is dead, a completely equilibrated economic market creates no wealth. Markets create wealth because they are dynamic and are never truly at any point of equilibrium; economic equilibrium, like death, is something seen only in the long run.
“Therefore, when various forces cause expansion in markets, such as housing, the resulting disequilibrium makes it possible for market participants, such as mortgage lenders, to pursue highly profitable strategies. Moreover, such lenders can sustain those profit strategies for considerable periods, as long as the disequilibrium state endures. In the early part of this decade, two major forces fostered such conditions – the first was a policy of low interest rates set by the Federal Reserve; the second was an enormous flight of capital from the recently failed equities markets into real estate and debt instruments. As long as the housing market keeps expanding, driven by these two forces, sub prime lenders will be able to reap extravagant profits. But they will do so only by ignoring the necessity, incumbent upon any lender servicing a risky market of borrowers, to retain capital reserves sufficient to absorb the defaults which will ensue when market conditions inevitably change.”
“That’s pretty much the situation,” I smiled with satisfaction, having forgotten what a fine job I had done on that analysis, “instead of keeping billions in reserve to absorb defaults, the sub prime lenders recorded them as profits instead. So when interest rates went back up and money began returning to the stock market, their strategy collapsed like a house of cards. It reminds me of those banks back in the twenties that went under because they couldn’t stay afloat during a run – millions of mortgages going into default in a matter of weeks, it’s just like a run on a bank in the old days.”
“Tom, this is serious,” Sinclair declared, “we can’t have a simple, obvious economic explanation like that floating around Washington at a time like this. Why, practically anybody who hears or reads that could understand what the sub prime lenders did wrong; even a congressman. It’s totally inappropriate for the times, Tom – these times call for complicated, inscrutable, arcane and convoluted explanations that even economists don’t completely comprehend. Putting those before Congress, the investigators and the general public is the only way we can keep the leaders of our major member organizations out of jail. So, when I leave this office, I’m shredding the hard copy I brought with me, and after I leave this office, I want you to destroy every electronic and physical copy of that deliverable in your possession, too.”
“Sure,” I said, pointing to a closet door “I keep my shredder in there. Help yourself.”
Sinclair very theatrically destroyed NILL’s last remaining copy of my report, then turned to leave. “I have your word, Tom, that you will likewise destroy all traces of that document?”
“No problem,” I told him, “after all, you guys paid for the damn thing.”
Being self-employed, I really don’t have to go into the office unless there’s actually some work to do. So on Wednesday morning, I intended to enjoy the luxury of sleeping in on a weekday. With no client meetings until after lunch, I could begin my drive in at 11:30 and have the road pretty much to myself. But at about 7:30 a.m., I was awakened by the sound of a ridey-mow, right beneath my bedroom window.
Dressing hastily, I stepped out onto the front porch and saw Mr. Miltown, astride a John Deere ridey-mow, trimming my lawn. Few things, IMHO, are more absurd to begin with than a ridey-mow – here we have the suburban squire, indulging his pastoral fantasies, piloting a tiny tractor around his yard, playing Farmer McDonald, eee-yi-eee-yi-oh. To that, add the fact that Miltown is about six foot three and pretty stocky. If my career in Washington has made me nothing else, it has made me a connoisseur of the ridiculous, and the sight of Miltown on a ridey-mow is world-class ridiculous, take it from an expert. Now, I get pretty grouchy when rudely awakened, but that evaporated in an instant as the sight of Miltown on a ridey-mow, doing my lawn, sent me into gales of uncontrolled laughter.
This was apparently not what Miltown had expected. Seeing me standing on my front porch in my bathrobe, sandals and pajamas, laughing my butt off rendered him sufficiently disconcerted to extinguish his infernal engine and walk over to wish me good morning.
“Good morning, Tom!” He threw a broad, false and manipulative smile my way as he extended his hand.
“Same to you,” I replied, shaking his hand and grinning back at him, “and thanks for the early morning endorphin rush. To what, perchance, do I owe the honor of this occasion?”
“Just being neighborly,” Miltown declared, pumping my arm as if he expected that milk would shortly start to flow, “I noticed that your lawn needed a trim.”
“It’s not even April,” I observed, “it snowed less than ten days ago.”
“Wet the ground down real good though,” Miltown rationalized, “all that autumn fertilizer; the grass just shot right up – over at my place, too. Did that yesterday. Noticed you could use some edging. Looks like they left it kind of ragged last fall. Can I get that for you?”
“With neighbors like you, I guess I’ll have to fire that landscaping service I pay out the gazoo for, then,” I grinned back, sarcastically, “don’t know why I keep them around. Say,” I continued, as Miltown finally let go of my hand, “I don’t recall ever seeing you out on your lawn with that thing. Don’t you have some Central American fellows from Silver Spring do that kind of stuff for you?”
“Oh, sure, Tom,” Miltown allowed as he wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his L.L. Bean designer flannel shirt sleeve, “but they won’t be by until Saturday.”
“Well, I certainly do appreciate it,” I lied, “care for some coffee? I’ve got a rare Indonesian roast goes for three hundred dollars a pound – for special guests only, of course.”
“Oh, no, thanks, Tom,” Miltown demurred, “had plenty of coffee with breakfast. Oh, by the way, since we’re moving out, I left some extra heavy-duty plastic trash cans out in front of your garage.”
I walked out on the lawn and looked past the shrubbery at my driveway, where I saw the six extra heavy-duty plastic trash cans I had special ordered, all the way from Denmark, at Strosnider’s Hardware eight years ago. They had disappeared two days after the Miltowns moved in. Now they were back. It was obviously a miracle – I briefly considered whether to call a priest to debrief me.
“Excellent,” I declared, admiring my prodigal trash cans. “I’m sure they’ll come in mighty handy. Oh, by the way, remember when somebody did a hit-and-run on my girlfriend’s car that was parked in front of my house about two years ago?”
Miltown looked down at my lawn. “Ah, no, can’t say as I do.”
“Right,” I continued, “and how about Christmas 2004? You remember that party you had where the streets around here were parked solid up and down?”
Miltown smiled, remembering the good old days of fun before interest rates ruined his imaginary life. “Yeah, that was great, Tom. We sure packed ‘em in!”
“Do you remember,” I went on, “that one of your guests parked their Hummer blocking my driveway; and that I left a note on their windshield asking that they not do that anymore; and how they wrote ‘F—k You’ on the back of the note and put it in my mailbox?”
Miltown turned bright red and cast his eyes down at the grass clippings again. Ah – another one grabbed by the short hairs. “I… I never knew about that, Tom.”
“Strange,” I retorted, “because I photocopied both sides of the note and mailed it to you with a letter, written on my stationery, in which I described incident and the vehicle.”
Miltown began to tremble. “Must… must have gotten lost in the mail, Tom, what with the holidays and all.”
“Miltown?” He looked up at me in despair. “I know what you’re thinking. Forget it.”
“But we’re having an open house on Saturday, Tom,” his lip began to tremble. “It’s an incredible bargain, excellent condition. Great investment.” His eyes implored as his John Bolton style walrus mustache drooped, ever so sadly. “Please come by and see the place.”
“I’m going back to bed now,” I told him, “and I would appreciate some quiet.”
“Sure, Tom,” he replied, exerting himself to regain his previous demeanor, “is it okay if I drive the mower back to my place?”
“By all means, do that,” I said, and laughed madly once more all over again at the sight of him on top of that totally asinine ridey-mow. So, once again snugly fit into the mask he was determined to show me, he took his leave atop his John Deere – Miltown the Indomitable, like a latter day Ronald Reagan, ever hopeful no matter how stupid his endeavours have been revealed to be, brightly optimistic no matter what moronic mess he has gotten himself into, and relentlessly cheerful despite having been revealed as a hypocritical cad, that sorry SOB smiled and waved at me as he drove away. Republicans – ya gotta love ‘em.
Wednesday night, I was watching “The Lives of Others” via satellite. Good film, BTW, if you like art house stuff from Europe – an interesting plot with some excellent Pirandellian moments. Just as the final credits rolled, the phone rang. It was my dear sister, Rose.
Tom: Hello?
Rose: Tom, it’s Rose. I hate to bother you so late.
Tom: Eleven is not late for single people, Rose. You remember, you were single once.
Rose: Please don’t remind me, I might want to go back.
Tom: Oh, that does not sound good, not at all. What’s the matter, big sister?
Rose: You know Henry’s brother Stan, right?
Tom: Inasmuch as I met him at his wedding, yeah.
Rose: Five kids since then.
Tom: How heart warming.
Rose: Moved out of their honeymoon bungalow, of course.
Tom: Bungalows are for “baby makes three,” not seven.
Rose: Exactly. Good incomes, both have college degrees…
Tom: I rather gathered that at the wedding, seeing as how they got married in Manning Chapel.
Rose: She went to Brown, Tom.
Tom: Somebody has to; how else can they keep that dump open?
Rose: So, good combined incomes…
Tom: Hold it. Let me guess. They bought an outrageous house…
Rose: Thirty foot atrium. Thousand square foot redwood deck with a six seat hot tub. Eight bedrooms, nine baths. Four car garage. Three acre lot. Walk-in closets the size of the apartment I lived in when I went to graduate school. And a kitchen to die for, Tom, to die!
Tom: And they bought it on an adjustable rate mortgage with practically nothing down.
Rose: Have you suddenly become a psychic, or is there a lot of this going around?
Tom: No need for paranormal powers, Rose. They can’t afford the mortgage payments any more, right?
Rose: No way. Not even if they sell the SUV, trade in the Mercedes for a Hyundai, eat nothing but Kraft Dinner and do nothing but watch basic cable.
Tom: So they’re bailing?
Rose: Yeah.
Tom: And let me guess again – Henry has invited Stan’s family to move in with yours?
Rose: Damn it, Tom! He can’t do that to me! This is my house!
Tom: I, of all people, know that your opinions should be taken seriously, Rose. What are the alternatives?
Rose: I walk out on this dumb Polack and his stupid family, that’s what! Find myself an Italian stallion!
Tom: Now I’m convinced. This is has got to be a huge crisis to make my sainted big sister Rose, who hasn’t missed Mass or Confession once in her entire life, to start talking about committing the mortal sin of adultery. Ah, come on, stop crying like that…
Rose: I… I don’t mean it, I suppose, but I worked so hard for us to have what we’ve got… and she condescended to us when we went over to visit them in that place, Tom, she really did. She’d say catty stuff…
Tom: As women do. Implying that she was better than you?
Rose: Of course! That’s what any woman would do with a house like that – beat other women over the head with it! And Stan was no better – giving Henry the guided tour and the full story on the latest additions and improvements, every time we visited, no less. That’s the last thing Henry needed, you know, what with the trouble we’ve had lately.
Tom: Has Henry been, ah, eating his Bundt cake?
Rose: Yes, thank God – and thank you, too, Tom. He’s quit playing the stock market with his 401(k). But I don’t know if I can take having Stan’s family living here, even if it’s just for a few months.
Tom: Well, you know us ethnic Catholic types – we’re really big on family…
Rose: Stop it! That’s not funny!
Tom: She’s… it rhymes with “witch,” is that it?
Rose: Rhymes with “blunt!”
Tom: Rhymes with “shunt?”
Rose: Rhymes with the last name of the guy who hosted “Candid Camera.”
Tom: Ah yes, Allen Funt!
Rose: Rhymes with them all, Tom!
Tom: Incurable, absolute and intolerable word-that-rhymes-with-them-all?
Rose: Well, pretty bad, anyway.
Tom: As I remember, she was kind of cute. Has she gotten fat, ugly and domineering or something?
Rose: No, she’s gotten totally stuck up and nympho. Thinks everybody’s husband wants her – or should.
Tom: So, you’re concerned that, if she and Stan move in, one day you might come home and find her in bed with Henry?
Rose: I’ll kill both of them, I swear!
Tom: If there’s anybody in the world you don’t need to convince you’re serious when you talk like that, Rose, it’s me.
Rose: What am I gonna do?
Tom: Well, the way I see it, you got two options. Number one – double the St. John’s Wort in Henry’s Bundt cake; or, number two – get real open minded. Maybe the four of you could do something creative. Would you throw Stan out of bed for eating crackers?
Rose: Tom!
Tom: Hey, don’t forget how pragmatic our great grandmother and her husband’s brother had to be, just so we could have this conversation.
Rose: This isn’t Ellis Island in 1903!
Tom: No, it’s worse. Not materially, of course. I’m talking ethically and morally here…
Rose: You said double the dosage of St. John’s Wort?
Tom: Yeah.
Rose: Okay. Any way I can kill them if Henry starts cheating on me – some way I won’t get caught?
Tom: If your husband doesn’t know better than to marry an Italian and then cheat on her, you aren’t going to need to do anything. Somebody else is going to kill him for doing another thing to them that’s just as stupid – so let them worry about how to kill him and get away with it.
Rose: Makes sense.
Tom: Ain’t marriage wonderful?
Rose: Well, it’s great if your bankrupt in-laws aren’t planning to move in with you, and your bankrupt sister-in-law isn’t a total…”
Tom: I’m sure it is, Sis.
Rose: Yeah.
Tom: G’night.
Rose: Bye, Tom.
I finished up my work downtown rather early on Thursday, so I decided to stop by the gym on the way home. I was half way through my usual warm up on the exercise bikes when Mrs. Miltown hopped on the one next to me.
“Hi, Tom!” She smiled, cheerful and glib, as if she didn’t know about her real estate agent’s visit on Monday evening, much less her husband’s performance on Wednesday morning.
I nodded a greeting and continued my workout, but she wasn’t taking any hints today. “Did you hear that we’re moving?” She started pedaling, looking at me expectantly.
“I didn’t know you belonged to this gym,” I came back at her, dryly, “your place has its own gym, doesn’t it?”
“We have the one-week trial membership,” she explained, “working out in our own gym got to be a bit boring.”
“I can’t imagine why,” I quipped.
She pointedly ignored my jibe, remaining resolutely upbeat and positive as she pedaled away. “This is a great place to meet people; you know, people who might want to buy the house. It’s a steal at three million two.”
“Pure, undiluted thievery, without a doubt,” I agreed, not sparing the thick coating of sarcasm, which I hoped would drive her away.
She remained undeterred, however. “It would make a great investment property, don’t you think?”
“Sure,” I smirked, “for anybody who might want to house a couple of basketball teams composed of pyromaniacs. Plenty of parking, too.”
She quickly made it clear that she would not be gotten rid of easily. “You wouldn’t know of anybody who might be interested, would you? We’re offering a ten thousand dollar finder fee.”
“Ah, yeah,” I mused, looking up at the ceiling, “just over three-tenths of a percent. With that kind of commission, there must be a veritable army of people beating the bushes trying to find you a buyer.”
“Well,” she continued, still displaying a dentally perfect, shallow rictus of transparent insincerity, “ten thousand dollars is a lot of money.”
“Ten grand?” I chuckled. “What’s that, about a quarter of your monthly mortgage payments at the moment?”
That did it – she got off the bike. “For your information, Mr. Collins,” she huffed, stalking away indignantly, “it’s more than a third!”