One Fifth Avenue (16 page)

“Nice to meet you,” Annalisa said. Her handshake was firm, and Mindy appreciated the fact that Annalisa didn’t try to kiss her on the cheek in the faux European manner, and that Billy had referred to her as a friend of Mrs. Houghton’s. Billy, Mindy thought, was a perfect example of how civilized Fifth Avenue residents ought to behave toward each other.

Inside the church, they took seats in a middle pew. Two rows ahead, Mindy recognized the back of Enid’s coiffed and bleached blond hair (she had once been a brunette, but gray hair had eventually gotten the better of her) next to Philip’s shiny brown bob. What kind of middle-aged man insisted on wearing his hair so long? They were a ridiculous pair, Mindy O N E F I F T H AV E N U E

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decided—the aging spinster and her silly nephew—with their attitudes and arrogance. It was too much. Enid Merle needed to be taught a lesson.

The church bell chimed mournfully ten times. Then the organ music began, and two priests in white robes, swinging balls of incense, came down the aisle, followed by the bishop in a blue gown and mitered hat.

The congregation stood. Mindy bowed her head. Billy leaned toward her.

“Who wants to break up the apartment?” he whispered.

“Enid Merle. And her nephew Philip.”

Billy nodded. The bishop reached the altar, and the congregation sat down. The traditional Catholic ceremony, which was what Mrs.

Houghton had wanted, continued in Latin and English. Billy let the words flow over him. On the surface, he found it hard to believe that Enid Merle would want to break up Mrs. Houghton’s apartment. But there was a good reason Enid had survived as a gossip columnist for nearly fifty years. She wasn’t as kindly as she appeared, and while it was generally understood that Enid and Louise Houghton had been bosom buddies, Billy suspected that wasn’t the whole story. He recalled some trouble between them concerning Enid’s stepmother, which might have been resolved when the stepmother moved out of One Fifth. It was possible Enid Merle didn’t give a damn about preserving Louise Houghton’s legacy.

Still, the situation presented a moral dilemma. Billy didn’t want to thwart Enid, which might be dangerous, as Enid still controlled a segment of popular opinion through her syndicated column. And yet the apartment had been Mrs. Houghton’s pride and joy. She had ruled over all of Manhattan society from her perch in the sky, and even in the seventies and eighties, when downtown lost its luster and the Upper East Side ruled, Mrs. Houghton wouldn’t consider moving. When she relayed this information to Billy, she would tap on the floor with her marble-topped cane.

“This is the center of New York Society,” she would insist in her grand low voice. “Not up there in the provinces,” she’d say, referring to the Upper East and West Sides of Manhattan. “Did you know it used to take an entire day to reach the Dakota? And then one was forced to spend the night in that Gothic monstrosity.” She would tap her cane again. “Society began here, and it will end here. Never forget your origins, Billy.”

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with the apartment, Billy thought. His mission was clear: As much as he admired Enid Merle, his loyalty must be to Mrs. Houghton’s wishes.

There was more praying, and the congregation knelt. Mindy folded her hands in front of her face. “I was thinking,” Billy whispered behind his closed palms. “What are you doing after this? Perhaps we could nip over to One Fifth and take a peek at the apartment.”

Mindy looked at Billy in surprise. She’d suspected a motive behind his sudden kindness, but she hadn’t expected him to go so far as to wheel and deal in the house of the Lord. But this was New York, where nothing was sacred. She peeked through her fingers at the back of her neighbors’ heads, and her resentment flared. The bishop led the mourners in the sign of the cross. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” Mindy said. She sat back in the pew and, staring straight ahead, whispered to Billy, “I think it can be arranged.”

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Following the memorial service, Enid had organized a luncheon for twenty at the Village restaurant on Ninth Street, to which Philip Oakland accompanied his aunt. Although not technically open for lunch, the restaurant, where Enid had been a patron for years—along with almost everyone else who lived in the neighborhood—made an exception for Enid and the sad occasion. Philip was well acquainted with Enid’s crowd, once New York’s best and brightest. These people and their particular rituals—which included speaking to the woman on your right during the appetizer and the woman on your left during the main course; exchanging inside information on politics, business, the media, and the arts; and, lastly, standing and speechifying during coffee—was so much a part of Philip’s life that he barely noticed how ancient these movers and shak-ers had become.

The conversation was, as usual, impassioned. Although the tragedy of Mrs. Houghton’s unfortunate accident and her untimely death—“she had another five good years in her,” most agreed—was part of the discussion, it eventually turned to the upcoming elections and the impending recession. Seated next to his aunt was an aged man who held himself stiffly upright in his chair. A former senator and speechwriter for Jack Kennedy, O N E F I F T H AV E N U E

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he held forth on the differences between the Democratic candidates’

oracular styles. The second course came—veal in a lemon butter sauce—

and without missing a beat in the conversation, Enid picked up her knife and fork and began to cut up the senator’s meat. Her act of kindness terrified Philip. As he looked around the table, the scene was all at once gar-ish to him, a picaresque grotesquery of old age.

He put down his fork. This was where his own life was headed; indeed, he was only a short hop away. His perceived reality panicked him, and everything that had recently gone wrong with his life came to the fore.

There was trouble with his current screenplay; there would be trouble with the next one, if there was a next one, and if there was another book, he’d have trouble with that as well. Someday he’d be here, an impotent and insignificant windbag, needing someone to cut up his meat. And he didn’t even have a woman to soothe him.

He stood up and made his excuses. He had a conference call from Los Angeles that couldn’t be avoided—he’d only just gotten the message on his BlackBerry. “You can’t stay for dessert?” Enid asked. Then she exclaimed, “Oh, damn. There go the numbers.” His absence meant there would be an uneven number of men and women.

“Can’t be avoided, Nini,” he said, kissing her on her upturned cheek.

“You’ll manage.”

He made it only halfway down the block before he called Lola. Her casual hello made his heart race, and he covered it up by becoming more serious than he’d intended. “This is Philip Oakland.”

“What’s up?” she said, although she sounded pleased to hear from him.

“I want to offer you the job. As my researcher. Can you start this afternoon?”

“No,” she said. “I’m busy.”

“How about tomorrow morning?”

“Can’t,” she said. “My mother’s leaving, and I have to say goodbye.”

“What time is she leaving?” he said, wondering how he’d gotten into this desperate-sounding exchange.

“I don’t know. Maybe ten? Or eleven?”

“Why don’t you come by in the afternoon?”

“I guess I could,” Lola said, sounding uncertain. Sitting on the edge of the pool at Soho House, she dipped her toe into the warm, murky water.

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She wanted the job but didn’t want to appear too eager. After all, even though Philip would technically be her employer, he was still a man. And in dealing with men, it was always important to keep the upper hand.

“How’s two o’clock?”

“Perfect,” Philip said, relieved, and hung up the phone.

Back at Soho House, the waiter approached Lola and warned her that cell phones were not allowed in the club, even on the roof. Lola gave him an icy stare before texting her mother to tell her the good news. Then she slathered herself with more sunscreen and lay down on a chaise. She closed her eyes, fantasizing about Philip Oakland and One Fifth. Maybe Philip would fall in love with her and marry her, and then she’d live there, too.

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“It’s beautiful,” Annalisa said, stepping into the foyer of Mrs. Houghton’s apartment.

Billy clutched his heart. “It’s a mess. You should have seen it when Mrs. Houghton lived here.”

“I did see it,” Mindy said. “It was very old-lady.”

The apartment had been stripped of its antiques, paintings, rugs, and silk draperies; what was left were dust bunnies and faded wallpaper. At mid-afternoon, the apartment was flooded with light, revealing the chipped paint and scuffed parquet floors. The small foyer led to a bigger foyer with a sunburst inlaid in the marble floor; from there, a grand staircase ascended. Three sets of tall wooden doors opened to a living room, dining room, and library. Billy, lost in memories, stepped into the enormous living room. It ran the length of the front of the apartment, overlooking Fifth Avenue. Two pairs of French doors led to a ten-foot-wide terrace. “Oh, the parties she had here,” he said, gesturing around the room.

“She had it set up like a European salon, with couches and settees and conversational clusters. You could fit a hundred people in this room and not even know it.” He led the way to the dining room. “She had everyone to dinner. I remember one dinner in particular. Princess Grace. She was so beautiful. No one had any idea that a month later, she’d be dead.”

“People rarely do,” Mindy said dryly.

Billy ignored this. “There was one long table for forty. I do think a long O N E F I F T H AV E N U E

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table is so much more elegant than those round tables for ten that everyone does these days. But I suppose there’s no choice. No one has a large dining room anymore, although Mrs. Houghton always said one never wanted more than forty people at a sit-down dinner. It was all about making the guests feel they were part of a select group.”

“Where’s the kitchen?” Mindy asked. Although she’d been in the apartment once before, it had been only a cursory tour, and now she felt envious and intimidated. She had no idea Mrs. Houghton had lived so grandly, but the grand living appeared to have taken place before Mindy and James moved into the building. Leading the way through swinging doors, Billy pointed out the butler’s pantry and, farther on, the kitchen itself, which was surprisingly crude, with a linoleum floor and Formica countertops. “She never came in here, of course,” Billy explained. “No one did except the staff. It was considered a form of respect.”

“What if she wanted a glass of water?” Annalisa asked.

“She would call on the phone. There were phones in every room, and each room had its own line. It was considered very modern in the early eighties.”

Annalisa looked at Mindy, caught her eye, and smiled. Until then Mindy hadn’t known what to make of Annalisa, who managed to appear self-contained and confident, without revealing a peep of information about herself. Perhaps Annalisa Rice had a sense of humor after all.

They went up to the second floor, examined Mrs. Houghton’s master bedroom, large bathroom, and sitting room, where, Billy noted, he and Louise had spent many pleasant hours. They peeked into the three bedrooms down the hall and then went up to the third floor. “And here,”

Billy said, throwing open two paneled doors, “is the pièce de résistance.

The ballroom.”

Annalisa walked across the black-and-white-checkerboard marble floor and stood in the middle of the room, taking in the domed ceiling and the fireplace and the French windows. The room was overwhelmingly beautiful—she had never imagined that such a room, in such an apartment, could exist in a building in New York City. Manhattan was full of wonderful secrets and surprises. Gazing around, Annalisa thought that she had never desired anything in her life as much as this apartment.

Billy came up behind her. “I always say if one can’t be happy in this 112

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apartment, one can’t be happy anywhere.” Even Mindy was unable to come up with a retort. The atmosphere was full of longing, Billy thought, what he called “the ache.” It was part of the pain of living in Manhattan, this overwhelming ache for prime real estate. It could cause people to do all kinds of things—lie, stay in marriages that were over, prostitute themselves, even commit murder. “What do you think?” he asked Annalisa.

Annalisa’s heart was racing. What she thought was that she and Paul must buy the apartment now, this afternoon, before anyone else saw it and wanted it as well. But her trained lawyerly mind prevailed, and she kept her cool. “It’s wonderful. Certainly something for us to consider.”

She looked at Mindy. The key to getting the apartment lay in the hands of this jumpy neurotic woman whose eyes bulged slightly out of her head. “My husband, Paul, is so particular,” Annalisa said. “He’ll want to see the building’s financials.”

“It’s a top-notch building,” Mindy said. “We have the highest mortgage credentials.” She opened the French doors and went onto the terrace. Looking over the side, she had a clear view of the corner of Enid Merle’s terrace. “Have you seen this view?” she called to Annalisa.

Annalisa came outside. Standing on the terrace was like being on the prow of a ship sailing over a sea of Manhattan rooftops. “Gorgeous,”

she said.

“So you’re from . . . ?” Mindy asked.

“Washington,” Annalisa said. “We moved here for Paul’s work. He’s in finance.” Billy Litchfield had whispered to her in the church to avoid

“hedge-fund manager” and use “finance” instead, which was vague and classier. “When you talk to Mindy, emphasize how normal you are,” Billy had advised.

“How long have you lived here?” Annalisa asked politely, turning the topic away from herself.

“Ten years,” Mindy said. “We love the building. And the area. My son goes to school in the Village, so it makes things easier.”

“Ah.” Annalisa nodded wisely.

“Do you have children?” Mindy asked.