One Fifth Avenue (7 page)

“He’s looking for a researcher. I met a girl at the interview who e-mailed me his information. Then I e-mailed him myself, and he e-mailed me right back. I have an interview next week.”

Beetelle was nearly speechless. “Darling, that’s wonderful.” She pulled her daughter into a smothering embrace. “Philip Oakland is exactly the kind of person you came to New York to meet. He’s an A-list screenwriter. Think of the people he must know—and the people you’ll meet through him.” Gaining momentum, she added, “This is everything I always wanted for you. I just didn’t expect it to happen so soon.”

Lola wriggled out of her mother’s grasp. “It hasn’t happened yet,” she said. “He still has to hire me.”

“Oh, but he will,” Beetelle insisted. She sprang up. “We’ll have to get you a new outfit. Thank goodness Jeffrey is right around the corner.”

Hearing the word “Jeffrey,” Cem shuddered. Jeffrey was one of the most expensive stores in Manhattan. “Weren’t we just there?” he asked cautiously.

“Oh, Cem,” Beetelle scolded. “Don’t be silly. Please, get up. We need to shop. And then we’ve got to meet Brenda Lish. She has two more apartments to show us. I’m so excited, I don’t know what to do.”

Fifteen minutes later, the threesome exited Soho House and came out on Ninth Avenue. Lola had decided to break in her new boots; in the gold platform heels she elicited gaping stares from passersby. After a few feet, they were forced to stop when Cem brought up a map on his iPhone.

“We go straight. And then we veer to the left at the fork.” He looked 44

Candace Bushnell

down at the iPhone again. “At least I think we do,” he added. His few days in the West Village had been a continual exercise in navigational frustration.

“Oh, Daddy, come
on
,” Lola said, and strode off ahead of them. She had officially outgrown her parents, she thought, teetering along a cobblestoned street. They were just too slow. The evening before, it had taken her father ten minutes to work up the confidence to flag down a cab.

The Fabrikants met the real estate agent, Brenda Lish, in front of a plain white brick building on West Tenth Street, one of many constructed all over the city in the sixties as middle-class housing. Brenda would not normally have dealt with such small potatoes as the Fabrikants, who were only seeking a rental, but Cem was an acquaintance of one of Brenda’s major clients, who had asked if she would help them out. Since the client was spending several million dollars on an apartment, Brenda was happy to be generous to these nice people with the beautiful daughter.

“I think this will be perfect for you,” Brenda said in her happy, flighty voice. “It’s a twenty-four-hour doorman building, and it’s filled with young people. And you can’t beat the West Village location.”

The apartment was a studio with a separate kitchen and dressing area.

The exposure was southern, which meant good light. The cost was thirty-five hundred a month.

“It’s so small,” Lola said.

“We like to call it cozy,” Brenda said.

“My bed will be in the same room as my living room. What if I want to have people over? They’ll see my bed,” Lola protested.

“You could get a foldout couch,” Brenda said cheerfully.

“That’s awful,” Lola said. “I don’t want to sleep on a foldout couch.”

Brenda had recently returned from a spiritual journey to India. There were people in the world who slept on thin mats made of plant materials, there were people who slept on cement slabs, there were people who had no beds at all. She kept a smile on her face.

Beetelle looked at Lola, gauging her mood. “Is there anything else?”

Beetelle asked Brenda. “Anything bigger?”

“Honestly, I’ve shown you everything available in your price range,”

Brenda said. “If you want to look in another area, I’m sure you can find a one-bedroom for the same amount of money.”

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45

“I want to live in the West Village,” Lola said.

“But why, honey?” Cem asked. “It’s all Manhattan. It’s all the same, isn’t it?”

“Some people might look at it that way,” Brenda said. She waited.

Lola crossed her arms and stood with her back to her parents, looking out at the street. “Carrie Bradshaw lived in the West Village,” she said.

“Ah,” Brenda said. “There is another apartment in this building. It’s probably exactly what you’re looking for. But it’s much more expensive.”

“How much more?” Cem asked.

“Six thousand a month.”

Cem Fabrikant did not sleep well that night. He hadn’t slept so badly for years, from around the time when he’d purchased the McMansion in Windsor Pines with an eight-hundred-thousand-dollar mortgage.

Back then, Beetelle had convinced him that it had to be done for the future of the family in this highly competitive world where appearances were as important as reality. Where reality
was
appearance. The thought of owing so much money made Cem sweat, but he never expressed his fears to his wife or daughter.

Now, lying next to his soundly sleeping wife in the big bed with the starched hotel sheets, he reminded himself that the whole world, or rather, his whole world of decent, upwardly mobile and righteous people, ran on fear. Even his livelihood ran on it—the fear of a terrorist attack or a school shooting or a madman run amok. Cem was a tech man and for the past three years had been working on a system to alert people to these dangers via a text message, so they could at least avoid arriving needlessly into danger. But he sometimes wondered if these larger fears masked the smaller and less worthy fears that drove everyone in his world: the fear of not making it, of being left behind, of not utilizing one’s skills or potential or advantages to the fullest.

What everyone wanted, after all, was a happy, carefree life full of pleasant and wonderful things, a life in which no one was hurt or died needlessly, but most of all, a life in which no one was denied his dream.

And so, he realized, he was going to have to refinance his mortgage again to pay for Lola’s dream of a big life in New York City. Cem did 46

Candace Bushnell

not understand why she wanted this dream or even exactly what this dream was and why it was important, but he did know that if he did not support it, then for the rest of her life Lola might be unhappy, might have to wonder “what if ?” and “if only.” And even worse: Is this
all
there is?

3

“It is I, the prodigal nephew,” Philip said the next morning, knocking on Enid’s door....................................................................................

“You’re just in time,” Enid said, jangling a set of keys. “Guess what I’ve got? Keys to Mrs. Houghton’s apartment.”

“How’d you get them?” Philip asked.

“As the board president emeritus, I still enjoy certain perks.”

“The children are definitely selling?” Philip said.

“They want out fast. They think real estate prices can only go down.”

They went upstairs, and opening the door to Mrs. Houghton’s apartment, were immediately assaulted by a riot of flowered chintz. “Society lady circa 1983,” Enid remarked.

“You haven’t been in here since?” Philip asked.

“Only a couple of times. Louise didn’t want visitors toward the end.”

There was a scratching at the door, and Mindy Gooch and the real estate agent Brenda Lish came in. “Well,” Mindy said, staring at Philip and Enid. “It’s like Grand Central Station in here.”

“Hello, Mindy, dear,” Enid said.

“Hello,” Mindy said coldly. “So you do have the keys.”

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“Didn’t Roberto tell you?” Enid asked innocently. “I picked them up yesterday afternoon.”

Philip glanced at Mindy but didn’t acknowledge her. He knew vaguely who Mindy was, knew vaguely that her husband was some kind of writer, but as he didn’t know them, he never said hello. And so, as sometimes happened in these buildings, Mindy and James had decided that Philip Oakland, who was successful, was also smug and arrogant, too arrogant to even greet them politely, making him their sworn enemy.

“You’re Philip Oakland,” Mindy said, wanting to put herself in his face but not wanting to sink to his level of disregard.

“Yes,” Philip said.

“I’m Mindy Gooch. You know who I am, Philip. I live here. With my husband, James Gooch. For God’s sake, the two of you have the same publisher. Redmon Richardly?”

“Ah, yes,” Philip said. “I didn’t know that.”

“You do now,” Mindy said. “So the next time we see you, perhaps you’ll say hello.”

“Don’t I say hello?” Philip said.

“No, you don’t,” Mindy said.

“The bones of this apartment are amazing,” Brenda Lish interjected, wanting to defuse a spat between warring residents. With an apartment like this, there would undoubtedly be many skirmishes ahead.

The group trooped up the stairs, eventually reaching the top floor, which contained the ballroom. The ceiling was a dome, sixteen feet high; at one end was an enormous marble fireplace. Mindy’s heart beat faster.

She’d always dreamed of living in an apartment like this, with a room like this, an aerie with three-hundred-and-sixty-degree views of all of Manhattan. The light was astounding. Every New Yorker wanted light, and few had it. If she lived here, in this apartment, instead of in the half-basement warren of rooms her family now occupied, maybe for once in her life, she could be happy.

“I was thinking,” Enid said, “we might want to split up the apartment.

Sell off each floor.”

Yes, Mindy thought. And maybe she and James could buy the top floor. “We’d need to have a special quorum of the board,” she said.

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“How long would that take?” Brenda asked.

Mindy looked at Enid. “It depends.”

“Well, it would be a shame,” Brenda said. “Apartments like this never come up in Manhattan. And especially not in this location. It’s one of a kind. It should probably be on the National Register of Historic Places.”

“The exterior of the building is on the register. The apartments are not.

Residents are entitled to do anything they want with them,” Enid said.

“That’s too bad,” Brenda said. “If the apartment were part of the national register, you’d attract the right kind of buyer, someone you’d probably want in the building. Someone who appreciates beauty and history.

They wouldn’t be able to destroy these deco moldings, for instance.”

“We’re not going to turn it into a museum,” Mindy said.

“How much is it worth?” Enid asked.

“My guess? Intact, around twenty million. If you split it up, you’ll hurt the value. Each floor will probably be worth three point five.”

In a fluster, Mindy went down to her apartment. The still air was stifling; in the afternoon on a bright day, when the sun was angled just right, a strip of light illuminated the back of the rooms, which looked out onto a small cement patio. The patio was eight feet wide, and she and James were always thinking about fixing it up, but never got around to it. Any kind of construction had to be approved by the board, which wouldn’t have been a problem, but it also required materials and workers to do the job, and the logistics of organizing such an event were too much on top of everything else she had to do. So, for the ten years she and James had lived there, the patio had remained the same—a cracked cement patch through which stubborn tufts of grass grew. A small Weber barbecue grill and three folding chairs completed the picture.

Mindy went into her office. Finding her latest bank statement, she added up their assets. They had two hundred and fifty-seven thousand in savings, four hundred thousand in a retirement account, thirty thousand dollars in checking, and maybe ten thousand dollars in stocks. A long time ago, James had wanted to invest in the stock market, and Mindy had said, “Do I look like someone who wants to throw away her money? The stock market is nothing more than legalized gambling, and you know how I feel about gambling. And the lotto, for that matter.”

Adding up all their cash, they had barely seven hundred thousand 50

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dollars. Mindy knew this sum was more than what most Americans had, but in their world, it wasn’t much. It cost thirty-five thousand a year to send Sam to private school, and it would take at least a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to send him to college. On the plus side, their apartment—which they had bought slowly in pieces and put together during the real estate downturn in the mid-nineties—was worth at least a million dollars. And they’d paid only two hundred and fifty thousand. Altogether, their assets were close-ish to two million dollars. If they wanted to buy just one floor of the penthouse, they were still one and a half million short.

Maybe they should sell everything and move to the Caribbean, Mindy thought.

How much could a house in the Caribbean cost? A hundred, two hundred thousand dollars? She could swim and make salads and read.

James could write pathetic novels about the local goings-on. They’d be giving up, but so what? The only glitch was Sam. He’d love it, but would it be good for him? He was a genius and such a nice boy. Not the least bit arrogant about his intelligence, unlike some of his friends. But if they left New York, it could throw Sam’s whole educational career off track, meaning he might not get into an Ivy League school. No, Mindy thought, shaking her head. We will not give up. We will persevere. We will stay in New York with our fingernails digging into the cement, if only for Sam’s sake.

The buzzer rang, and she jumped up, wondering who it might be.

Probably James, who was out buying overpriced food at Citarella and who’d probably forgotten his keys.

Instead, it was Enid Merle.

“Is Sam home?” Enid asked. “I need to install some new software, and I was wondering if he could help.” Sam was the building’s resident computer expert; whenever anyone had a problem, they called on Sam, who was a computer genius and had built up a cottage industry in the building.

“Sam isn’t here,” Mindy said. “He’s away for a few days.”

“How nice for him. Where?”