Plus One (16 page)

Besides, in the fantasy of his youth, he'd taken possession of this house after the actual owners fled. He hadn't bought it; he'd
reclaimed
it. He'd strung up hammocks in the ballroom, burned antiques in the fireplace. He didn't want to buy it; he wanted to invade it.

Now he was really here, in the role of a potential buyer. It was all wrong. There had been no revolution, no urban uprising. He wasn't the proletariat. He was the oppressor.

He caught up with Colby on the back patio, where he was talking to the seller's agent, an elegant Persian woman in a nubby-fabric cardigan. Colby broke off a conversation about “the list price, vis-à-vis the neighborhood specs,” raised his eyebrows at Alex, and quickly sized him up. He laughed and clapped him on the back. “I've seen that look before my friend. You're in love. Don't deny it. It's incredible. Nice? Nice!”

“It's definitely nice,” Alex said. He had to give it to him: Somehow, Colby had succeeded in delivering his literal dream house.

Colby took him by the elbow and turned them away. “The agent says she's got multiple offers coming in tomorrow. If you want to make a move, we should be first.”

Alex coughed and shook his head. “I don't think so,” he said. “It's pretty out of our range, pricewise.”

Colby frowned. “Oh, you'd be amazed what a good mortgage broker can make happen,” he said, pulling out his cell phone. “Let's just get Figgy down here. See if she can swing by? Get her feeling on it. This house is gonna go fast—I don't want you two missing out.”

Colby punched in her number—Alex registering that Colby had her work number on speed-dial, which meant the two of them had been talking a lot more than he realized—and in a few short sentences, he got across the message that she needed to get over here. Fast. Then Colby hurried out to his car to “get some papers together.”

Fifteen minutes later, Figgy was walking down the flagstone path with Colby at her side, a bulging manila folder under his arm. Alex trailed behind as they made a brisk tour through the property. This wasn't the nervous, nail-chewing Figgy at all. This was the other Figgy, the hard-charging dynamo, the ass-kicker who picked up her Emmy with a fist bump. Alex flashed back to the delivery room at Cedars-Sinai hospital when Sam was born. She'd spent much of the pregnancy a nauseous wreck, hobbled and terrified about the violence that was about to break out in her holiest of holies. But when the day arrived and it turned out the baby was positioned badly and labor would be worse even than she had feared, a steely calm fell over her. Alex nearly fainted when the doctor wiped away a miasma of fluids and advanced on her with a glinting pair of metal salad tongs. But Figgy kept calm, receding somewhere deep inside herself. He could still see her staring up at him, stroking his splotchy cheek with the back of her middle finger and saying, simply, “I got this.”

And she did. All ten pounds, nine ounces of it.

Now that same preternatural calm was back.

After the tour, she plopped into a wicker lounge chair by the pool. The last glimmer of sun was disappearing below the hills of Griffith Park, lighting up the yard with a thin violet glow.

“So,” he said.

“So,” she agreed.

“You love it?”

“What's not to love?” she said. “What about you?”

“I'm terrified,” he said with a laugh. “Isn't a little out of our league?”

A sly grin crept across Figgy's face. “Out of
your
league maybe.”

He winced and looked out over the swimming pool. Little candles on floating cups made golden flecks on the surface. This was entirely too pleasant a place to stage a protest, but he needed
to talk some sense. “Remember what you always say about studio executives? What they crave more than anything else in the world?”

“A reason for living?”

“Besides that,” Alex said. “They want a writer with a mortgage. One they can push around. And who's to say Katherine doesn't storm off tomorrow or the writers' strike doesn't happen again or you show up and find your office occupied by some hack the network has decided is the next Chuck Lorre? What then?”

Figgy looked away and sucked in a deep breath. “We'll be fine—we just will. If we close escrow soon, we can use the house for shooting. Wouldn't this be perfect for the commissioner's house?”

Angela Bassett was in talks to play the local police commissioner in a six-episode arc of the new season. As Figgy had scripted the part, the commissioner becomes obsessed with the madam played by Katherine Pool during a surveillance operation. Episode eight ended at a fundraiser at the commissioner's house with the madam and the commissioner engaged in some hot girl-on-girl action (known in the writers' room as “goga”).

“Standard fee for that kind of shoot is eight thousand a day,” Figgy said, the calculations ticking across her face. “We could do five or six days before we move in, pay for most of the remodel. If we move a few scenes inside, I could do a few product placements and get us a new fridge, at least a dishwasher.”

She hopped up and went toward the French doors leading to the kitchen. “What have they got in there now?”

Alex trailed after her. Eight thousand? For a single day? Maybe she was right. Maybe they
could
pull this off. What was he so opposed to anyway? Maybe the fact that he'd been here before was a
good
omen—like the discovery of the 'zine, a sign that he was on the right path. Besides, all that space, that land—how could that
not
be good for the kids, the dog, everyone? It obviously made
Figgy happy. Her happiness made everyone happier. All boats rose. Did he really think buying a house like this would somehow
corrupt
them? Maybe it was a win-win world after all. Maybe it was like he'd told his dad—just a house.

He followed her through the French doors, resolute now. Cheerful even. Figgy wanted it—and Alex wanted it for her. Was he really going to let some crazy apocalyptic fantasy get in the way of their happiness? Figgy marched through the back door into the kitchen, Alex close on her heels.

• • •

In the kitchen they found a woman with a severe black bob and a drapey, scoop-neck top, furiously pumping the valves of a gigantic countertop stainless steel cappuccino maker embedded with the word MAGNIFICA. Next to her, an older man emerged from a cloud of hissing steam, revealing a full head of silver hair and a pair of reading glasses dangling on a gold chain.

“The open house ended a half hour ago,” the man said, mashing his hands in a damp rag.

Alex shrugged and advanced into the room. “Oh, sorry, we won't be a minute,” he said, the words scrambling together. “I'm Alex Sherman-Zicklin. This is my wife Figgy. Also Sherman-Zicklin. Hyphenates—we went that route. Beautiful home!”

“Rex Benjamin.” He looked them over, and then nodded slowly. “Lots to see here, obviously. People have been in and out all day—but I've gotta get out into the yard before we lose the light. Finish with the compost.”

“Sorry?”

“Truckload of compost in the driveway,” he said, moving past them. “Spreading it around the azaleas. Once a year—they'll die without it.”

The door shut hard behind him as he tromped out. Figgy and
Alex watched him go.

“Espresso?” The woman was collecting cups from the cabinet. The skin on her arms and neck was an unnatural shade of orange; Alex guessed she'd had some assistance in the tanning department. “Don't mind Rex. He's not himself. Don't mind either one of us. I'm Judy—the wife. Everything's pretty scattered, as you can imagine. Him with his compost. Me with my estate sale. Everything's available, you know. The light fixtures, the plants, the furniture. Everything must go!”

“Okay then,” Alex said. “We'll keep that in mind.”

Judy yanked a lever on the machine and a squealing hiss filled the room. Alex admired the coffee machine's coiled tubes and gleaming metal finish. While rotating a cup under the spout, Judy nodded toward Figgy. “Did you get up to the shoe closet? I must have three hundred pairs up there. A little Imelda Marcos, I know—but what can I say? Women and their shoes, right? You're what? About a nine? Nine and a half? Same as me. I've barely worn half of them. I'll do twenty-five a pair, Ferragamos, too.”

Figgy leaned over. “I'll have a look.”

There was another awkward pause as Judy poured foam over their coffees, her jaw set.

Alex coughed and offered, “Are you moving far? Out of state?”

“We're not sure
where
we're going,” she said. “But we're not going anywhere 'til we get rid of everything. We can't just sit around ignoring the phone, talking to lawyers, spreading compost. Compost, can you believe it?”

“I'm sorry—I don't understand,” Alex said. “What happened? Did something happen?”

“Oh, I thought you knew—I thought
everyone
knew,” she cried. She laid a coffee cup down on the tile countertop with a definitive clink. “We've had some bad luck. That's what Rex calls it: ‘a rather epic turn of bad luck'. But you ask me, luck has nothing to do with it. The lawyers are calling it ‘misappropriation'. But come
on—it's
thievery
. That's why we're selling. The things you see, the little bit of equity in the house—that's it. That's all we've got.”

“What? How?”

Her face scrunched up, a fluttering in her upper lip. “It was a trust,” she said. “Isn't that rich?
Trust
? All our money, all my family money. Rex turned it
all
over to this money manager—Greg Helman? The Whiz of WeHo? It was in all the papers—took a plea for fraud, looking at twenty years. Lot of good it'll do us. We're wiped out.”

“Oh, God,” Alex said. “I'm so sorry.”

Judy looked down into her cup, examining the pattern of the foam. “What can you do?”

She set her cup down on the granite countertop and shrugged, the silence stretching out far past Alex's comfort. He opened his mouth to say something, anything, but stopped short—
at least you have your health? Sorry your family lost everything, thanks for letting us pick through the ruins?
He looked over beseechingly at Figgy, who shot him a look and stepped forward. “Well, I guess we better take a look at those Ferragamos of yours.”

Seven

N
ews of the Benjamins' misfortune sent Colby into a frenzy; they needed to act fast, he said, go in big, make a bold first move. “I love a distress sale!” he said, hyperventilating. Figgy was in the front seat, and Colby was behind the wheel; they'd been parked on the curb of Sumter Court strategizing for the past half hour, the offer propped up on the parking brake of Colby's Mercedes. Alex kept quiet in back, slumped in his seat, a light year away. The two of them up front were like teenagers warming up for a makeout sesh, each palpably aroused by the pile of documents between them and the obscene financial risk it described.

Colby was adamant about the correct way to proceed (speaking, Alex noticed, entirely to Figgy). They shouldn't lowball. This offer said they were serious. And in the grand scheme of things, considering the current inventory and the swing in the market and the neighborhood specs, the house was actually
cheap
.

“Cheap?” Alex lobbed from the back seat. “In what reverse-reality world is this
cheap
?”

“Sweetie, I have clients who spend this kind of money on their kids' bar mitzvahs,” Colby said, flashing Figgy a you-get-it grin.

Figgy leaned over and plucked a pen from Colby's breast pocket. Then she started laying down initials. “We're getting this house,” Figgy said, her pen making a series of piercing, definitive pops. “Alex, honey—take this home with Colby and go over it. And make sure there's nothing we shouldn't be signing.”

Alex looked out the window at the wall surrounding the house. Painted the same shade of dusty pink, the wall ran along the sidewalk's edge. It really was nine feet tall—grandfathered in, Colby had said. The city wouldn't let you build a wall over six feet anymore. Alex objected to it on principle. Driving around certain precincts of Brentwood or Cheviot Hills, all you saw were walls like that, or else gates, hedges, blackout fences, security cameras, or those elephant-size trash barrels. L.A. was becoming a South American bunker town, the haves barricaded from the have-nots by pink stucco and topiary.