Nothing To Lose (A fat girl novel) (28 page)

“It wasn’t too long ago that you were ready to fling yourself to the bimbos on First Avenue, remember?”

“That was different.”

“No. This is different. Don’t be a fool.”

“Let’s see what he decides before we start arguing about it. Let’s see what happens.”

“See what happens? Are you crazy? You’ve got to make things happen. Do you know his schedule? You’ve got to park yourself in front of his face at every chance. Get on his train. Squeeze in next to him. Thumb a ride. Anything.”

She did none of that. She slunk away in the opposite direction when she saw him approaching. She took a later train than the 6:03. She wasn’t strong enough to handle anything as important as this. She needed her energies for fixing up the rest of her life. She needed a new apartment and a new job. Definitely, a new job.

At night, near sleep, unguarded, her thoughts went wild. Suppose she hadn’t taken the cab home. Suppose he had touched her, kissed her. The thought of that kiss sent shock waves throughout her body. During the day, she had a very good hold of herself. All those months of denying herself food had taught her something about self-control. Luis O’Neill was a wonderful man but he could also break her heart.

She didn’t like what was happening that weekend. She was thinking about Luis in a way that spelled trouble. Instead of jogging along the East River or doing the hip walk, she was staying in bed and brooding. Brooding was one step away from being unhappy over something she could do nothing about. It smacked of old bad times. She would go apartment hunting to distract herself.

When Pierre and Don had first seen her one narrow room haphazardly furnished, dark and often dank and smelling of some unresolved leak, they were appalled. They told her she had to move. “Ees not good enough for you, Avril,” said Pierre.

In the interim, they rearranged her furniture to make the most of a bad situation. They put the sofa in the middle of the room backing it with a barn-smelly early American dry sink that she had purchased on Third Avenue. The new arrangement did make the room more interesting but she couldn’t fall asleep with the couch facing the windows. She was sure someone could see her sleeping and she moved it back against the wall. The dry sink was still in the middle of the room and that made no sense at all. She had to move.

She searched through the previous Sunday Times’ supplement under Manhattan apartments of three, four or more rooms. She circled one described as ‘large 3 ½ quiet, treed street, low 30’s, $900.’ She also circled ‘Immaculate 1 br.,tv sec.,low 70’s, $1250.

She also circled a floor-through on the West Side where the values were supposedly better.

Taking the paper with her, she looked at the 3 ½ first because it was within walking distance. It consisted of a large living room, a kitchen, and a recessed alcove supposedly for sleeping but with no means of ventilation. It wasn’t different enough from her present apartment to justify almost twice the rent. The one bedroom in the Seventies was sunny and had all new appliances but the rooms were very small and she couldn’t persuade herself to part with more than twelve hundred dollars a month with no return except for shelter and a television scanner that might keep out thieves and murderers.

She stopped at a coffee shop and continued to look through the paper but, instead of looking at rentals, she turned to the co-ops. The idea of owning real estate, which had not occurred to her until that moment, made her adrenaline shoot up. At the very least, it was a possibility. She still had her stock portfolio that she had kept throughout her marriage. And the settlement she had received from Harald was in a money market fund earning ten percent. Most of the co-ops advertised that they could be financed up to seventy-five percent of the price. There were ads from two banks offering co-op mortgages. The idea appealed to her on several levels. She could live in more imaginative space. It was a better investment than the stock market, which was weakened by the high interest rates. And, momentarily, it would be something engrossing enough to displace Luis.

Her price range, under one hundred thousand, put her on the West Side, but the West Side didn’t have to be remote. There were loft buildings opening up in the Twenties and Thirties, the flower district and the fur district. She scanned each column, trying for something east of Eighth Avenue. She read the whole page twice and then noticed a two-line ad that said: ‘15th Street, off 5th. Raw loft space, good light, 1025 s.f.,78,000.’

She took the Fifth Avenue bus downtown, feeling odd and daring. She also felt scared, as if she’d already bought an apartment. She wondered if she was dressed too casually to be taken as a serious prospective buyer.

The building had one of those grimy facades that, upon closer inspection, reveal an astounding array of ornamentation. The entrance, a double door scuffed and pitted by a thousand hand trucks, was flanked by fluted columns with Corinthian caps. She looked up to see which windows looked empty. They all looked empty and dirty. But the real excitement was the windows themselves. They were double-storied, arched and heavily mullioned.

One of the doors was open and there was activity on the second floor which was a manufacturing plant and a showroom for knitted goods. They called out a man who said he could let her into the loft but couldn’t give her details. The owners were away until Monday.

The space was on the top floor, facing 15th Street. Six of the windows she had seen from the street wrapped around what was essentially a huge rectangle with bites taken out of it for the outer corridor. Each window had a deep sill about a foot off the floor. At the rear of the space was a skylight that was cranked slightly open and could be reached by an iron ladder. Outside of these two spectacular amenities – the windows and the skylight – the rest of the place was uninhabitable. The floors were filthy and patched in places with linoleum. There were pipes, but no bathroom or kitchen. There was an odd small sink with the drain almost rusted out and the remains of a toilet that had been disconnected long ago. Over the sink was the sole light bulb although lots of wires dangled from open sockets. There were no partitions. No closets. The walls were painted a nondescript industrial green but they, too, were obscured by dirt and grime. Raw space, the ad had said, which was not strictly true. Raw space implied you could start from scratch, but here there wasn’t any way to begin anything until you had dug the place out from the layers of dirt.

She dusted one of the window seats and sat and stared at the room. She noted that the part of the room under the skylight was higher than the rest of the room, a natural division for a bedroom or a kitchen. Her bedroom or her kitchen. She took a key and picked away at the walls to see what was underneath and was surprised to find that they weren’t plaster at all but wood. It was at this point that the whole place began to change before her eyes. If you could look past the dirt and the wires and exposed pipes, it was a miracle. A miracle of potentially interesting space in the heart of New York City. Don and Pierre were away for the weekend, so she called Sylvie who was mildly interested but couldn’t understand why April would choose to live in such an isolated situation when people were being killed left and right. “You should have a doorman,” she said, “to screen visitors and take your packages and things.”

By Monday morning she had twice decided to buy the loft and remained firm for a period of four hours. Twice, she decided not to buy it. Around eleven o’clock, when she reached the owner, a Mr. Shapiro, she was in her cooling off period and asked him if the price was firm or was he open to offers.

“What have you got in mind?”

“Well, it needs a lot of work. A kitchen and bath alone will run to thousands of dollars. And the floors…”

“It’s raw space in a prime location. You don’t want it, you don’t want it,” he said philosophically.

“Are you open to offers,” she repeated, not having the vaguest idea how much she would offer if he said yes.

“I’m open to anything. You want to make an offer, make me an offer.”

“Sixty-five,” she said, waiting for him to scream.

“Make it seventy and you’ve got yourself a deal.”

“Seventy.” Her hand was trembling so much; she could hardly hold the phone. She hadn’t meant to say it. The momentum had built up and she was just a victim.

“You’ve got yourself a loft,” he said. “Congratulations.”

When she finally saw Luis again, it was the day she had received the keys to the loft. The closing wouldn’t take place for a week but her hefty deposit entitled her to a key and virtual possession. She was already on the train when he rushed in and squeezed beside her in an already crowded three-seater. They were as close as they had ever been. His thigh pressed against hers, his arms were perilously close to her breasts. It gave her no comfort that he, too, looked twitchy and unsettled. Suddenly and without warning, she was overcome with desire. A passenger one minute, a basket-case the next. What was he going to do with his thigh from Newark to New York? His arm kept falling against her. As for his hand, there was no place to put his hand except…She shifted. He shifted. He glared at her. “You’ve been taking a different train. Why?”

“I’ve been apartment hunting.” It was the first thing that came to mind.

“Why are you apartment hunting?”

“Because my apartment is very small and very dark.”

“I see.” He looked around the train as if trying to orient himself. “Are you going apartment hunting tonight?”

“Not exactly.”

He opened his newspaper as if her vague answers had annoyed him. Maybe she was being too coy. Maybe he didn’t like her answers. “I bought a co-op and I got the key today. I’m going to see it right now.”

He turned back to her quickly, clearly impressed. He now felt differently about everything. “That’s a big step,” he said.

“Well, the worst is over. I know I did the right thing. It’s huge. A loft. And there’s plenty of light, lots of windows.”

When they were off the train and he was ready to go his way, he put his hand on her arm. “I’ll give you a lift. Which way are you going?”

“Just to 15th Street. Between Fifth and Sixth. Maybe you’d like to see it.”

“Why not? That’s where your loft is?”

“Yes.”

They began to walk south and she knew immediately that something was going to happen. They would be really alone on the sixth floor, or the twelfth floor if you considered the double-height ceilings. She was wearing a soft dirndl skirt, a blazer and a silk shirt with chains in the neckline. She had on sensible navy pumps. Her pocketbook was a deep burgundy with a shoulder strap. Her hair was pulled back and tied with a Bill Blass scarf. She had on gold shell earrings and an antique commemorative pinkie ring from England that said ASD had lived from 1871 to 1903, a mere thirty-two years. If New York magazine wanted to do a story on the quintessential career woman with nothing on her mind but her individual retirement account and a safe method of birth control, she could be an ideal choice. So why did she feel so threatened and so sad? Why did she feel as if he had already kissed her and loved her and it had turned out badly? Why did she feel as if he had already left her? The sadness replaced desire, a good outcome. She definitely had to watch out for him. He had taken her hand as they crossed the street but now she let go.

The moment they entered the apartment, she started her pitch in case he had any ideas about the desirability of the space. “The floors are salvageable…maybe we’ll have to replace a few boards, but they’re solid. And the walls…” – she knocked on them – “wood, believe it or not. The old style paneling with narrower boards. And the windows…I really love the windows…with seats. See…the sills are wide enough to sit on. They’ll need cushions, of course.” She began to walk toward the rear wall, her voice echoing. “But the bonus of it all…really unexpected…is the skylight. It opens and…it gives you daylight way back here.”

He stood there watching her, not paying attention to any of the details. There was a smile on his lips. When she had run out of sights and attractions and she was just flailing her arms, willing him to respond, he went to her under the skylight and took her in his arms. “Well, what do you think?” she asked in a subdued voice. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“It’s the best loft I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“How many lofts have you see?”

“None, but I’m sure there’s not another one as fine as this.”

She began to hit his chest and struggle in his arms but he managed to put his mouth over hers and keep it there until she was finally still. He felt her back, her buttocks and her back in quick succession. He outlined her breasts. She held him, too, with her head on his shoulder. They stood together for quite a while.

“Now what are we going to do?” she asked with great concern.

He smiled and moved away. “It isn’t as if we’ve killed someone and have to get rid of the body. What if we just went to get something to eat?”

“Everything’s going to become very complicated.”

“Not necessarily.”

He touched her twice during dinner. She was aware of his every movement. Her senses were supercharged. As if she was about to witness an accident.

“I’m not going home with you,” she announced abruptly during dessert.

“Why not?”

“Lots of reasons…plenty…a million rea…”

“Okay, okay. Just one will do.”