21
Thirty-year-old Penny Rawling completed one last walk-through of the apartment. The property listing described a chicly renovated, turnkey-ready three-bedroom, two-bathroom condo in the heart of the West Village featuring a spectacular sunset view over the Hudson River. In reality, the third “bedroom” was a cubbyhole at best, used by the current owner as a tiny home office. The “chic renovations” used the kind of inexpensive but trendy finishings that inexperienced buyers easily mistook for high-end. And the “view” was from a single living room window, and only if one leaned a bit to the side to glance around a neighboring building.
Given what she had to work with, however, Penny thought the place was ready to show. Just as she knew what kinds of words to use in a listing to please her employer, she had mastered the finishing touches of staging an apartment for potential buyers. With the seller’s permission, she had placed all clutter and personal mementos in clear, plastic boxes that could be stored neatly beneath the bed in the master suite. Fresh flowers—a mix of lilies and roses were the best assortment at the corner delicatessen—had been arranged in a crystal vase on the dining room table. Every room looked like a page out of a modern furniture catalogue.
She removed the stack of flyers she had printed out with details about the apartment and placed them neatly next to the vase of flowers.
She stopped and looked at the lower right-hand corner of the printout, trying not to feel resentful. The woman pictured there was Hannah Perkins, a member of the firm’s elite “Titanium Club” for agents who had sold at least a hundred million dollars of real estate in the preceding year.
All on the backs of minions like me, Penny thought bitterly.
Penny was more than halfway done with the seventy-five hours of training she needed to sit for the exam to get a New York State Realtor’s license. In the meantime, she made twenty bucks an hour as an assistant, answering Hannah’s calls, printing out contract documents, preparing flyers, scheduling appointments, arranging appraisals, organizing co-op packages, and, yes, cleaning a lazy seller’s cluttered home—basically all the work except negotiating a selling price and cashing that big commission check at closing.
“Someday, I’ll be the star of the agency,” she promised herself, glancing in the mirror. She smiled as she took in her newly styled black hair. She had recently taken a friend’s advice to try a chin-length, layered bob and knew it accentuated her bright blue eyes. The new, expensive, but on-sale, Escada slacks and jacket were a perfect fit now that she had managed to take off ten pounds. I look like a Titanium Realtor, she thought proudly as she locked the apartment door behind her.
She was stepping into the building’s lobby when her cell phone chirped in her purse. Under Hannah’s orders, she no longer used the cheery, pop-song ringtones she had previously favored. “No offense, Penny, but no one takes a woman seriously when her phone sounds like it belongs to a teenybopper.”
Penny looked at the screen, expecting to see Hannah’s name there, micromanaging her as usual. Her heart nearly stopped when she saw the number. Nearly three years later, and she still recognized it.
Her finger lingered over the screen, knowing that she should decline the call. Nothing good could come of this. But just as her memory still knew that number, the person on the other end of the line still, apparently, had some amount of control over her.
“Hello?”
“You didn’t change your number.”
“No. I changed everything else, but not that.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m a real estate agent now,” she said, before realizing how silly it was to lie. He, of all people, would be able to check, if he were inclined to do so. “Well, almost. I’m about to take the exam.” That was just an embellishment on the actual timing, and not nearly so easy to disprove.
“Congratulations. I’m proud of you.”
She swallowed, hard, not wanting him to know how much she still cared about his opinion of her. If I had been a member of the Titanium Club, would I have been good enough for you and your precious family? she wondered. Probably not.
“Why are you calling?” she asked. Her voice sounded chilly, even though her skin felt on fire.
“Have you been contacted by a television show called Under Suspicion? The producer is a woman named Laurie Moran.”
“I know the show, but no, they haven’t contacted me. Why would they—Oh,” she said, connecting the dots.
“Yeah, I guess it was only a matter of time before the media circus came back around. They’ll probably contact you at some point.”
“Why? I was only the assistant.”
“You were more than that. Always. And you were there that night. Plus you knew Ivan, arguably better than any of us.”
Ivan. How many times had she been tempted to walk in when she passed his gym? But he had moved on, just as she had. Maybe she would see him again after she had her license, so he’d know that she had found that “work ethic” he was always lecturing her about.
“So that’s the only reason you’re calling?” she asked. “Fine. Thanks for the heads-up.”
“What are you going to tell them?”
“What do you mean?”
“If the show contacts you. I mean, you don’t even have to talk to them. You know that, right? You could just ignore them.”
“And how’s that going to look?”
“Like you want to keep your privacy. Whatever excuse you can come up with for not doing it.”
Once again, he was only thinking about himself. He never cared about her, not then, and not now.
“Thanks again for the call.” She hung up without waiting for him to say good-bye.
As she walked to the West 4th Street subway station, she found herself wondering how long it would take for a television program like Under Suspicion to get on the air. If the timing worked out, she might be a full-fledged agent by then. Having her name emblazoned across the bottom of television screens across the country wouldn’t be a bad way to launch a career in New York City real estate and it would be a chance to show off to the Wakelings.
“Titanium Club, here I come!”