The closing statement.

Two pages.

Every line of that transaction — the sale price, the payoff, the taxes, the adjustments, his own fee of eight hundred and fifty dollars — and at the bottom, in a box, the number.

Cash to seller: $317,412.08.

He would not take anything for it.

Not for the copying, not for the mileage, not for the storage.

Patricia offered three times and he became short with her.

What he said, when I tried, was: “Mrs.