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seller agreed to the appointment, I bubbled him with thank-you's and ended the conversation with what would soon become my "Oh-and-by-the-way-just-one-more-question" Columbo close: a few last-second queries guaranteed to ferret out just how negotiable the price really was.
    "Oh and by the way," I quickly asked the now excited seller, "have you had manv offers on your apartment? Well, has it been on the market very long? Oh, really? Where will you be moving to? Oh, congratulations! When are you expecting to close? Wonderful! I really look forward to seeing you tomorrow at nine-fifteen." If the apartment turned out to be what my customer was actually looking for, I knew I was armed to close.
    By the time I finished combing the paper that night and working my sales pitch, I had twelve appointments set. Four were with non-negotiable sellers, six with folks who would take something less than their price, and two with gotta-get-outta-herr-fast sellers.

    God was my cobroker when my customer and I walked into the lobby of a twenty-story prewar on East Eighty-fourth Street. Apartment 9K was our eighth apartment of the day, and as we walked past the doorman, my customer beamed, "My boss just bought in this building!" When I found out his boss was living three floors below Apartment 9K, all the rest, as they say, was a piece of cake. The living room was the same cocoa brown as my customer's living room in St. Louis, and the seller's boxes were packed by the door ready to go.
    By the time I dropped my customer at the Drake it was four o'clock. His flight was at seven. I circled back to the Hayman and Sumner stationery store, picked up a standard Blumberg sales contract, and rushed back to the tiny office Ray and I had taken in a building on East Sixtieth Street. I pecked out the needed information on my new IBM Selectric and circled back to the Drake. My customer was waiting. We jumped in a cab and headed to LaGuardia Airport.
    The cab had reached the airport exit when my customer looked up from the contract and asked the question that bedevils every real estate broker in New York:
    "Just what is a co-op anyway?"
    "It's what makes New York so special," I began, never having explained these details and having no idea how I would. "You'll be a sharecropper—I mean shareholder. That means the apartment is yours, but you don't really own it." His eyebrow cocked slightly. "Well, you own it, but you don't get a c deed.' Instead, you get a 'lease.' But the great thing about a co-op lease is that there's absolutely no rent, just a monthly maintenance fee, which covers all the salaries of the super and the doormen. And the great thing about that is with a few hundred dollars at Christmas, they'll fix anything.
    "And then there's the co-op's board of directors," I talked on, "a group of your neighbors whose job is to protect you." His eyebrow

    relaxed. "They decide what you can and can't do, can and can i change, and who yon can and can't sell to because that's wliat ihey're not paid to do. If you want to put in a dishwasher, they'll make sure it'll work by having the building's engineer review the plans your architect submits. He'll bill you by the hour and tell you that you can't do it." His eyebrow climbed back up his forehead. "But don't worry. As your boss probably knows already, you can pay the super to sneak it in. just make sure it's in a box that doesn't say dishwasher.'''
    I could tell by the look on his face I needed to backpedal. In short, a co-op is a one-of-a-kind thing and when you decide to sell the apartment, you have the right to sell it to whomever you want as long as all your neighbors like the person you want to sell it to. Your buyer, just like you do, will have to submit a list of all his personal assets, liabilities, and income. And six full copies of his last two years' tax returns. You have all those things, right?"
    His eves glazed over. I passed him a pen.
    "Sign here."
    MOM'S LESSON #4: Use your imagination to fill