"You just don't let up, do you?"

"It's my most endearing trait," said Cindy. "After it grows on you."

"I just better see results."

"Have a nice day."

This time the hanging up was peaceful, and she turned to grin at Ryan.

"You only got away with that because you're a woman," said Ryan.

"I only had to do it because I'm a woman," said Cindy. "If I'd been a man, he would have listened to my advice seriously without having to go through all the drama."

"You're really pretty when you're on a feminist rant," said Ryan.

"And you're really attractive when you remember that you're married," said Cindy.

"Not to my wife I'm not."

"Well, she'd know," said Cindy.

She had a few hours to kill and the house intrigued her. The file said it was built in 1874 by a Dr. Calhoun Bellamy. Cindy always liked to tell her prospective buyers the history of a house, even if it was only a few years old. They liked knowing that a mansion was built by an executive with Jefferson-Pilot, for instance, or that a modest house was built by one of the textile mills as affordable housing for its employees. It gave them a sense of connection with the place, a story to tell their friends. Most important, it made them feel as though the house had some personality and that made them connect with it. No way of knowing whether that finally helped them decide to buy, but it couldn't hurt, could it?

So she went to the county offices and spent a couple of hours hunting for the pertinent records and examining all the transactions. Not many buyers. Dr. Bellamy and his wife lived in the house until they both died in 1918—the flu epidemic? Their children tried to hold onto it, apparently, until 1920, but then they sold it for nine thousand dollars. A very good price in those days. After that the place was nonresidential for a while, whatever that meant, and by the mid-thirties it was just one landlord after another renting ever-smaller apartments to ever-poorer residents.

Boring. It was the Bellamy family that would interest the buyer. And so Cindy walked across the street to the main library and got the microfilms of the newspapers from that era. There was no index, but she knew the pages she wanted—society news. Sure enough, there were notices about the Bellamys all the time. They were party hounds. Soirees, balls, receptions almost every week, sometimes two or three in the same week. And apparently there was real cachet to getting an invitation from the Bellamys. The heavy schedule of entertaining continued until the turn of the century, but then tapered off to an annual ball and reception. Well, that would be something, wouldn't it, to tell the buyer that the Bellamy house had been the high society hot spot of the late 1800s.

Her eyes were bleary from looking at the microfilms. As always after one of these research marathons, she mocked her own obsessiveness. How could a real estate agent seriously hope to make a living if she kept, in effect, taking a day off? This buyer seemed eager, the seller had given her carte blanche on price—why did she need to do research when the deal was as good as done?

Because she loved houses, that's why. Loved houses and the people who lived in them and the neighborhoods that grew up out of the ground and sprouted families and children. Houses are the trunk of the tree, Cindy felt, and people are the leaves that sprout from them until the neighborhood is lush with them. Then the leaves age and fall, the neighborhood decays, but the trunk remains, until another generation of leaves can bud and grow.

She almost never said this to anyone, of course, because they either looked at her like she was crazy or mocked her the way Ryan did. And they were right. But she had no intention of changing her mind or her habits. If she couldn't be herself selling real estate, then real estate could go sell itself as far as she was concerned.

Don Lark arrived five minutes early for his appointment. Cindy knew at once that this must be the man from the payphone, and not just because of his workclothes and shaggy hair. He came in and looked around for a moment and said nothing when the receptionist asked, "May I help you?" Didn't even show a sign that he heard her, for a few moments at least. Only when he spotted Cindy watching him from her desk down at the end of the long room did he turn to Leah at the reception desk and say something. Leah pointed a painted fingernail at Cindy and the man nodded and Cindy thought: He doesn't care about making a good impression. He doesn't hurry to ingratiate himself with people. He takes his time sizing up a situation and then finds the least troublesome way to his goal.

Cindy didn't really have a strategy for dealing with people like him. The ingratiaters required her to be visibly impressed with them, to ooh and aah over their taste and judgment. The roughshod type, on the other hand, would have ignored Leah completely and headed straight for Cindy's desk upon spotting her. Those she worked on by being contrarian, telling them why the house she wanted them to buy wasn't really within their price range, or had a lot of extras they didn't want to pay for. Cindy didn't count these selling strategies as hypocrisy. People looking for a house exposed themselves emotionally, and what Cindy did was feed their need. If she ever did a motivational video, that's the phrase she would use. Feed their need.

This man, though, was of that rare type that knew what he wanted but didn't want anything badly enough to demand it or beg for it or hurt anyone else in the process of getting it. Which meant that all she could do was show him the house and answer his questions and, if he decided he wanted to buy, help him put together a deal. No strategies. Instead of dealing with his inner child, she could talk directly with his inner grown-up. Such customers seldom came along, but she was always glad when they did.

So her smile was genuine when she stood up and offered her hand and said her name.

"Don Lark," he answered. His handshake was firm but brief. "That house on Baker."

"Your car or mine?" she asked.

"Let's each take our own," he said.

Cindy glanced at Ryan, who was shaking his head and rolling his eyes. Ryan's theory was that if ever a customer refused to ride in the same car with you, it meant no sale. Cindy's theory was that it meant they had somewhere to go afterward and didn't want to have to go back to the real estate office.

"Fine," said Cindy. "I have to warn you, though. I found a key that I think is the one to the lockbox, but the file's been inactive for so long that I can't be sure it's the right one or if it'll work even if it is."

Don nodded. "If it doesn't fit, what'll you do?"

"Call a locksmith, I assume."

"Let's go," he said.

She was pretty sure that if the key didn't fit, he would have the door open before she could call a locksmith. But he didn't say so right now because that would lead to a needless discussion. Naturally he assumed that she would argue with him and tell him about laws and rules and damaging the client's property. Well, she could be patient, too, and let him find out that she didn't have a bureaucrat's tiny fears and passions when the occasion arose.

As she got into her Sable—ostentatiously modest among the BMWs and Lexuses—she noticed that while his truck looked like it had been used for real work, the engine started smoothly and quietly. It reaffirmed her impression of him: Doesn't care how his tools look, but makes sure they work perfectly. And for the first time it crossed her mind: He can't possibly be married if he doesn't have a phone.