The View From Penthouse B (5 page)

“So you said yes?”

“I said, ‘Come over for a drink and meet my sister.’”

“How old?”

“Young.”

“
How
young?”

“Late twenties.”

Decision obviously made, I asked, “Whose bathroom will he use?”

“The powder room. He says he’ll shower at his gym.”

“If he can afford gym membership—”

“That’s all he
can
afford!”

“But you haven’t made a firm commitment, correct?”

“Gwen. Let’s be practical. Remember the stuff Daddy took care of? Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone who knew his way around a fuse box? And who could unscrew jar lids? How about transferring a turkey from oven to cutting board? Remember that fiasco?”

When I didn’t respond, she added, “Besides finding a job, and selling my jewelry, what’s easier than bringing in an extra boarder for fifty dollars a night?”

I did the math: at least $1,800 a month.

“Negotiable,” she added.

I asked if he could afford it and how long we could depend on that.

“He pays more than that now for half of a barely two-bedroom. As for how long, we’ll see how we like him.”

“Does he know about me?”

“He knows I live with my sister.”

“I meant does he know I was recently widowed?”

Margot stared at me, a long, unhappy, corrective gaze. “‘Recently’? Is that accurate? Because when a person says, for example, ‘I was
recently
elected to Congress,’ and someone asks when, and the answer is ‘two years ago,’ it means he’s already running for reelection.”

I recited what the literature liked me to believe, that everyone is different; everyone heals at a different rate, so to me, “recently” was accurate.

“Let’s be open to this, and let’s look at it this way: Even though we don’t have much to spare, we’re being charitable in our own way.”

“Charitable implies that you’re giving him a couch at no charge.”

“Not true. He’s not broke. He just doesn’t want to pay for a hotel when he’s between jobs and apartments.”

Bereft of arguments, I asked, “You really think we have room?”

Margot gestured toward the far end of the long mahogany dining-room table, and I was obliged to follow her gaze to the six empty chairs and faraway bowl of wizened apples. “I’m expecting him at six tonight,” she said. “I’ll be roasting a chicken and I was hoping you’d make your corn bread and a green salad.”

A whole roasted chicken and corn bread from scratch that would exhaust a half stick of butter. Anyone could read the welcome sign implied in that.

Anthony did not have the hedge-fund personality I was expecting. To begin with, he arrived with a rock star’s tousled brown hair, a dimple in each not well-shaven cheek, and homemade cupcakes. “For you. For later. I don’t want to overshadow whatever dessert you planned.” He also exhibited something of which we were in short supply lately: a sense of humor. As soon as he retold the picket-line-meeting story, with some new flourishes, I recognized that we might be getting some entertainment with our meals. He did a spot-on impression of Margot, how she’d led with her business card, cutting in and joining the picketers. I sneaked looks over at her to gauge any degree of offense she might be taking; she was not only enjoying herself. She was also laughing.

I wondered if he was too cheerful for a man who’d lost his domicile and his job. But how to ask? He must have sensed that I was trying to be a responsible interrogator because he volunteered, “I haven’t told you everything. I’m divorced, and it’s embarrassing because what I did was a felony.”

“Oh shit,” said Margot. “Not another.”

“No, no, nothing homicidal. Not even what most people would consider criminal. I was doing a friend a favor. Actually, it was my Spanish tutor. I wanted to improve my Spanish and be the guy in the office they could send to South America. She was here on a student visa.” He shrugged. “I married her so she could stay.”

“And now she’s divorcing you?” Margot asked.

“Immigration and Naturalization took care of that. We didn’t convince anybody that it was a real marriage. They’re much better detectives than I gave them credit for. And I’m a terrible liar.”

“And it wasn’t like a movie where you marry each other so she wouldn’t be deported, and then you fall in love?” I asked.

“Ha! More like fell in hate. I had to get a lawyer and make a deal: tell the truth and save my own skin.”

I said, “That was very generous of you to marry her as a favor.”

“Actually, it was more stupid than generous. My mother is clamoring for an annulment. My friends thought the whole thing was moronic. The alleged bachelor party the night before the wedding was more or less an intervention. They threatened to rat on us, and I’m not so sure one of them didn’t.”

“She must have been a great Spanish teacher,” I said.

Anthony laughed.

“She wasn’t?”

“Sorry. I was laughing because I’ve never had such a compassionate question thrown into my fake-marriage confession.”

Margot said, “What is it about men? Do they think about the people they’ll hurt? Are they such slaves to their sexual impulses?”

“Actually,” Anthony began. “If there had been some of that, we probably wouldn’t have gotten caught.”

I said, “I think my sister was talking about her ex . . .”

Anthony’s face registered
Do I ask?

Margot said, “Gwen? Do you want to do the honors?”

“Which honors?”

“The abridged version. About Charles?”

I said, pretty much in a drone, “Her ex is a physician whose patients came to him for artificial insemination, and a couple of times . . . it wasn’t so artificial.”

“Unsafe, adulterous, brazen, fake inseminations!” Margot cried. “And do you want to know the worst part?”

Anthony nodded.

“Once a week, on his receptionist’s day off, I sat in that outer office while he did his dirty work!”

I said, “You never told me that.”

“I never tell anyone. The whole thing is humiliating enough without it having happened on my watch.”

“You don’t know that!” I said.

“
Did
you know?” Anthony asked Margot.

“I certainly did not! I’d have killed him! I couldn’t even go to his trial. I threw him out the minute the DNA results came back on the baby who came out of it. Who, by the way, is already a teenager. And guess what his name is? Charles! Named for the gifted physician who cured his mother’s barren womb.”

I said, in the silence that greeted Margot’s outburst, “Her ex is in a minimum-security prison. He calls every other week.”

“Collect,” said Margot.

Poor Anthony. “Wow,” he said. “I’m sorry. Are you sure this is a good time for you to be taking in a stranger?”

Margot said, “I know that it seems as if every topic has a touch of the tragic, but now you’ve heard the worst.”

“Dessert?” I asked.

“Not yet,” said Margot. “Are your parents alive?” she asked him.

“They are. Both.”

“Still together?”

“Still together.”

“Are you estranged from them?” I asked.

“Not estranged, just far away. They moved to Arizona when they retired. For the climate. My dad has asthma.”

“Otherwise you might have moved home when you lost your job?” I asked.

“Maybe,” said Anthony. “But unlikely.” He hesitated. “They lived way out on the island. Hauppauge.”

“How far is that via the Long Island Railroad?” I asked.

Margot said, “This is getting very boring. Shall we open another bottle? Gwen, tell Anthony about your business idea while I get dessert.”

Alone with Anthony, I said, “It’s nothing. A fleeting idea I had for an escort service of the platonic kind.”

From the other side of the swinging door, Margot yelled, “Strictly G-rated. Believe me. She’d find men who take presentable members of her widows’ support group out to dinner and maybe get a peck on the cheek when they part at the coatroom.” She returned with her own dessert concoction: baked fruit cocktail, a 1950s recipe that cost no more than the dented can its principal ingredient came in—and one white cupcake cut into thirds. “I took you at your word, that the cupcakes were a hostess gift. They’re adorable.”

Out of politeness—surely a cake mix, not worth the calories—I helped myself to my one-third of the cupcake. I tasted it, finished it, closed my eyes, and smiled.

“Like it?” he asked.

“It’s unbelievable.”

“I’m glad. Not everyone likes coconut.”

Margot claimed her portion and moaned as soon as her mouth closed over the first bite. She pronounced something with her mouth full that I didn’t get until she repeated it: “Butter.”

“Correct,” said Anthony.

“Whose recipe?” I asked.

“Mine. I’ve had a little too much time on my hands.”

“You could make a killing with these,” Margot said.

Anthony said, “Everyone who bakes a good cake thinks that. The cupcake market is saturated.”

I asked what the other flavors were. He said, “I think I brought red velvet, mocha, rum-raisin . . . chocolate-chocolate, of course. Um . . . I think I included one I call carrot and burnt sugar.”

Margot murmured in my direction. “I think this is going very well, don’t you?”

Anthony was gathering dishes and stacking them with the expertise of a young man whose parents had raised him doing chores. Backing through the swinging door, he said, “I’ll let you two conference.”

Margot said, “We only need a minute.” As soon as he was gone, she said, “Do you love him? What if we put a bed in the storeroom? He can put his stuff in a pantry drawer.”

“Did you say ‘Put a bed in the storeroom’?”

“With all our junk out of there, it’s got bedroom potential. I happen to know that my sellers used it as a maid’s room.”

“Were they slave owners?” I asked.

Minutes later Anthony agreed to take the closetless one hundred square feet that was currently housing all the boxes I’d never unpacked. Whatever downsizing had brought him to our door made him agree without whining to quarters big enough for only a narrow bed and stubborn built-in pantry drawers originally meant for table linens.

“I’m very grateful,” Anthony told us. “And I’m sending out résumés by the dozen every day. And don’t worry about the size of the back room, because it looks to me like home sweet home.”

“How long do you think—” I started to ask, but Margot interrupted with “We’re glad we can help a fellow victim of the recession and personal setbacks.”

Grinning, Anthony asked if we felt as if we were taking in a foster child.

I looked at my sister. Did I mention she was wearing a soft, cream-colored blouse that showed off her lovely neckline? Her skirt was straight and not that easy to sit down in; her shoes were oxblood patent leather and open at the toe. I couldn’t help but wonder if she was thinking
foster child
at all.

Anthony’s Interests

H
E MOVED IN
thirty-six hours later with his laptop, backpack, duffel, weights, compact discs, and muffin tins. From our basement storage unit, now housing leftovers from my former life, he selected a futon, a rug, a quilt, a floor lamp, and a framed French movie poster of
The Producers
. He said his parents were relieved; they liked the sound of two mature ladies watching over him. Should they send a gift basket of fruit or products indigenous to Arizona? “I took the liberty of suggesting wine,” he said.

Neither Margot nor I have ever thought of ourselves as fascinating, but suddenly we were. Anthony approached our meals and conversations as if he’d scored an orchestra seat to a sold-out show. He is more communicative than almost all the men I’ve known. We think it’s his age—that he spent four years in coed dorms and after that shared cubicles and conference tables with women. His questions aren’t rude or overly personal; they all have a getting-to-know-you quality, and we are flattered at his unflagging attention. Not to be discounted: He is also a newcomer to our signature topics of fraud, extortion, and sudden death.

“Tell me when I’m prying,” he says. We haven’t yet. As polite women, we try to turn the tables conversationally. He’ll say, “You already know about my marriage and divorce. Nothing more to report there. Classic green-card arrangement. Happy childhood. Played T-ball, flag football, a little tennis, a lot of soccer. Never progressed beyond jayvee. College, Wall Street.”

“Siblings?”

“One sister, younger. For now an au pair.”

“Where?” we ask.

“Upper East Side. Fifth Avenue, in the nineties. Park view.”

“Here! New York City! When do we meet her?” Margot asked.

“I never see her. She’s a slave.”

“Nice children at least?” I ask.

“Two lawyers with one baby.”

“Boy or girl?” I ask.

Anthony says, “Umm. Girl? I forget. She has one of those androgynous names like Tyler or Taylor.”

We move in that direction every so often—our interviewing Anthony—but mostly we experience him as moderator. It’s part gregariousness and part something else, sociology or anthropology, as if he’s never had the chance to discuss the stages of life beyond his own. He is happy here. And he is easy to have around, both thoughtful and helpful. He’s freed us from stereotyping and hating men who have anything to do with Wall Street or wealth management. As far as being handy, he has exceeded our expectations. In the first twenty-four hours of his residency, he put batteries in our remote control, set our clocks ahead to daylight savings time, and gave new life to what we thought was an inoperative ice maker. He always has the right cable needed for various transfers of information that we didn’t even know we wanted. He can see and talk to his far-flung friends while sitting at his computer, and he is the king of uploading and downloading, of searches and hunts.

He likes his room, or at least its location on the other side of the kitchen, somewhat segregated. When he’s home, we often find him at the kitchen island, on a stool with his laptop and vitamin water. “Praying at the altar,” he says with a smile. He bakes a double batch of cupcakes every week, some for us, and the rest as offerings to his dates.