212 LP: A Novel by Alafair Burke

Laura had been a giveaway. To a person who considers downtown her “ideal,” the Upper East Side is definitely not fine. Either Laura didn’t know Manhattan—unlikely, given she’d been renting in Chelsea for six years—or she just wasn’t being honest about her preferences.
    And then there was the budget. “We want to stay under 700. We’d love to get a two-bedroom, but know we may have to get by with a one-bedroom-plus to start.”
    It was a so-called compromise that Katie heard all the time. The reality, though, was that a true “one-bedroom-plus”—a one-bedroom with a separate space for an office or a crib—was the same square footage (and price) as a small two-bedroom. And neither could be had for anywhere near seven hundred thousand dollars, no matter what people heard about so-called bargains in the down market.
    If Katie believed the Jennings’ budget cap to be real, she would not have wasted her time on a We Can Do It tour. She instead would have arranged a Come to Jesus tour. In a Come to Jesus tour, Katie would drag a couple like the Jennings to six nice (and, ideally, overpriced) two-bedroom apartments. When the clients finally realized they could not afford apartments of that size, she would lead them to a nice, reasonably priced one-bedroom. It would be time for the clients to Come to Jesus: either get into the market with a small place or rent for the rest of their lives.
    But the Jennings didn’t need a Come to Jesus tour. They needed the We Can Do It tour, designed not to persuade the clients ofwhat they could not afford, but instead to convince them of what they could afford.
    Katie knew from the Jennings’ mortgage application that quiet, petite Don pulled in a quarter mil a year as a “director of credit risk policy,” whatever that was. Since shacking up with Laura, he was living month to month, but in the decade before he’d met her, he’d managed to save an entire year’s salary. Laura was a jewelry designer who sold her wares at open fairs and to a few small boutiques. Lucky, lucky Laura—whom Katie tried not to resent—had never made more than twenty thousand in any individual year from her craft, but had her father—and now, Don—to fall back on.
    The Jennings could afford more than they knew. They just had to put away their existing notions of a dollar and to start thinking, We can do it.
    Katie knew that this generously sized one-bedroom would be a good candidate for convincing the Jennings to “stretch,” as she liked to say, but the apartment was even more impressive than she had imagined. The seller had followed all of the rules: clean surfaces, no unnecessary clutter, even the welcoming fragrance of a warm pan of brownies, still cooling on the stovetop. And absolutely no photographs; the apartment should feel like it already belongs to the potential buyers.
    “Now this one’s one-point-one-two-five,” Katie said, as if the extra four hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars was chump change, “but my guess is that there’s some softness there.”
    Don winced at the number, but his wife did not. “Wow, Don, look at this kitchen. We could actually cook if we had this kind of kitchen. Think of the money we’d save in the long run.”
    And then Katie knew she had an ally. Crossing the million-dollar threshold would be a leap for Don, but now Katie could see that Laura had been there all along. She felt a twinge of animosity toward the woman for so willingly spending her husband’s hard-earned money, but then reminded herself that she needed the commission. Given Katie’s standing in the hierarchy of her agency, it wasn’t often she had a shot at selling above the million-dollar mark.
    “Feel free to open the cabinets,” Katie urged. “They’re Italian. High-gloss lacquer, top of the line.”
    Katie checked her BlackBerry while the Jennings made their way through the apartment. She preferred to give buyers privacy so they could imagine life in their new