“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.”
“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 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.”
“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.
“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.”