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pool.
    “It seems to be working out,” I said. “And here Danielle didn’t think she had anything in common with them.”
    And then Kelsey emerged from the water, one long leg following the other. Oh, to be so young , I thought. To be so lovely. She made her way to the diving board, water droplets glistening on her body, blond hair slicked back.
    We watched transfixed as she hooked her thumbs into her bikini top, carefully adjusting her breasts within the two black triangles. She called something that sounded like “Geronimo!” and did a perfect swan dive into the water below. When she surfaced, her bikini top was twisted, revealing a perfectly round nipple.
    “I bet the Jorgensens could afford a little more fabric,” I commented lightly.
    Phil only said, “Shit,” and turned away.

PHIL
    A question: What’s the difference between a pedophile and an innocent person accused of pedophilia? What about a rapist and a person accused of rape? Practically speaking—nothing. They’re the same. One might as well be the other. It doesn’t matter if you’re innocent, because the accusation plants the suggestion, and from there the guilt grows. The innocent are the most vulnerable, really. They’ve got the most to lose—those with wives and kids who aren’t looking for something on the side.
    On my first official day of work at The Palms, she was there. The office had been repainted for me, and plastic sheeting still covered my desk when I’d arrived. I’d been sorting through files in the cabinet when I heard the door close. By the time I looked up, she was sitting in one of the club chairs. Her skirt was so short that it nearly disappeared when she crossed her legs.
    I smiled. “Can I help you?”
    “I hope so. I have a complaint.”
    I’d spent the previous week getting to know the residents, schmoozing with the men and flattering the ladies, fielding complaints about the wattage of lightbulbs and the leaky faucet in the women’s locker room and a slight hump near the service line on one of the tennis courts. I’d written it all down, made the appropriate phone calls. There had been other complaints, too—private ones—made by residents who stopped me on the sidewalk, always prefacing their thoughts with You didn’t hear it from me, but... and ending them with some variation of the same theme. Of course, I wouldn’t complain just for myself, but I’m thinking about the good of the community. Myriam Mesbah hated Helen Zhang’s dog, which barked constantly. Rich Sievert’s view was spoiled by the excavator that was digging out a pool in one of the backyards in Phase 3. The trees on the edge of the Asbills’ property dropped leaves into Janet Neimeyer’s backyard, and her gardener was forever having to blow the debris, which in turn disturbed the Asbills’ twins, who needed a midmorning nap.
    But I’d smiled through it all, because this wasn’t real hustling, like selling had been—courting buyers and talking clients down from unrealistic asking prices, running from open house to open house on weeknights and weekends, waiting for above-asking-price offers that might never come. This job meant regular hours and a steady paycheck, not to mention a house Liz and I would never have been able to afford on our own.
    “Buyers in these communities tend to be high-maintenance,” Jeff Parker had told me, after we’d shaken hands a second time, and the job was officially mine. He was a vice president at Parker-Lane, and eventually he would inherit his dad’s job. “The thing is to soothe them, to kiss a few asses here and there, to deal with what you can immediately and pass the buck upward for the rest. Above all—they like the quiet, the security, the exclusivity. They like to feel like they’re the most important people in the world when you’re talking to them.”
    At that point I was still trying to wrap my mind around the day-to-day expectations of the job. “So essentially my job is