Okay... Ch. 04

The two condo-shoppers got dressed and made astonishingly polite and vapid small talk with me while we waited for my stepmother to return.

Eventually she did return. Her makeup had been reapplied, and her blouse and jacket had been dried as well as they could be, but clearly had been soaked recently. The blonde asked her a few questions about the building and satisfied after left the two of us alone again.

By then I was on my fourth Miller and sitting under the giant window. I had shared all the pictures between both of our cellphones.

When the door closed behind them, Gwen turned to me in a start, the scowl shining back through the veneer of her business face. "What the fuck was that?"

"That?" I took a slow sip off the beer. "That is your new sales tactic." Delight rose in my chest as fear washed over her slackened face. "I can make you treat every client you ever have to that in just a few words."

"Mike," she stammered, "I..."

I kicked my feet up on a coffee table and watched her stall out for a moment. "Tell you what though. Your phone has all the pics I took on it now, mine does too. We can both just hang on to those to remember this. But before we need to remember it, I want to give you the opportunity to avoid becoming the real estate agent that goes down on whoever takes a business card."

She swallowed hard and checked that the pictures were indeed on her phone.

"Buy me one of these condos, and I won't make you do that."

Terror mixed with elation on her face like the mingling of fluids had before. She set her phone down, brought a hand to the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes tight. In quiet resignation she said a single word, and it was the first time I had heard it in a while and was positive it wasn't from the action of my powers.

"Okay."