Good Faith Read Free Page B

something’s been on the market is the buyer’s first obligation.
    I should say about Gordon, whom I had known almost all my life and worked for forever, that his idea of a good deal was unvarnished and old world; he wanted to make sure he took unfair advantage of everyone he negotiated with. In bridge, he trumped you; in poker, he bluffed you; in Scrabble, he used every tile. He haggled at all times and in every situation. When he took everyone out to dinner, he haggled with the waiter about the bill, not just about the tip. In fact, if the waiter took ten percent off the bill, Gordon would sometimes add something to the tip, but not always. When he saw a sum of money that he owed, he discounted it by 20 percent automatically and paid that. If the clerk pointed out to him that he owed more than the sum he had laid on the counter, the haggling began. Beyond that, he didn’t mind giving away far more than he ever saved by bargaining—he was not a miser by any means—he just viewed every price as a starting point, and his greatest regrets had to do with having been suckered, as he thought, from time to time over the years. In years of doing business for and with Gordon, I had been had more times than I could count and then received the difference, or more than the difference, at some later date, in another form. You could say what Sherry had said, that Gordon Baldwin lived to swindle others, but most people around the area, like me, didn’t take offense, just hit him up later for a loan or a donation.
    In a more timid and less successful form, Bobby adhered to the same principle. It didn’t matter to him how much money he made on a deal, just as long as he made one percent, or one tenth of one percent, more than the other guy. I knew Gottfried would sell for ten or more percent off the asking price (not without ranting and complaining—Gottfried liked an energetic face-to-face negotiation of exactly the sort that Bobby, who had also been had by his father over and over, detested). Not too long before, Gottfried had gotten a buyer in a corner at a closing and threatened to grab him by the jacket and push him out a (ground-floor) window. As long as Marcus Burns didn’t force it, I knew Bobby would do the easiest thing and make a full-price offer, but I was curious to see whether Marcus Burns was going to force it. “So,” I said. “What’s this guy do?”
    “I guess he was an IRS agent. Can you believe that? Anyway, now he’s an investment counselor at that new office in Cashel Heights, that Merrill Lynch office. He knows the tax code cold.”
    “How did you find that out?”
    “Well—” Bobby shrugged. “I guess he told me.”
    And that was all we had to say about Marcus Burns for several weeks.

         
    CHAPTER
    2
    I WOULD PROBABLY STILL have been married if Sherry hadn’t acted to unmarry me. All through our last year together, she would say, “Are you happy, Joe? What do you want?” and I would say “Well, yes,” and “I don’t know. This is fine.” And it was. My mental life was pretty clear. I would say, “Are you happy?” and she would say no, but then she had never been happy, in the sense of being satisfied or generally pleased. Not being happy was one of her good points. Not being happy led her to try things, like gourmet cooking. When I met her, she didn’t know how to bake a potato. Every year of our marriage the food was different and better—roast chickens with onions and lemons stuffed inside and herbs crushed all over the skin were followed by roast chickens with herbs and onions and lemon peel ground up and pushed between the skin and the meat. Mashed potatoes were followed by roasted potatoes with olive oil and rosemary, and then she discovered how to boil the potatoes a little and then roast them so that they were crunchy and buttery on the outside and melting and soft in the middle. I always called our house “Hog Heaven.” I was the hog. She liked sex, too, and