One Fifth Avenue

by Candace Bushnell

  “It’s okay,” Schiffer said.

  Philip jiggled her hand. “James said he just saw Lola Fabrikant. In the Mews.”

  “She was at the funeral,” James said, trying to explain.

  “I’m afraid we missed her.” Schiffer and Philip exchanged a glance. “Excuse me,” Schiffer said, and moved away.

  “Nice to see you,” Philip said to James, and followed her.

  James took a fresh glass of champagne from a tray and stepped into the crowd. Schiffer and Philip were standing a few feet away, holding hands, nodding as they spoke to another couple. Apparently, Philip Oakland didn’t even feel guilty about what he’d done to Lola, James thought with disgust. He moved into the living room and sat down on a plushy love seat and scanned the room. It was filled with bold-faced names—the art folk and media types and socialites and fashionistas who comprised the chattering classes and had defined his and Mindy’s world in New York City for the last twenty years. Now, having been away for a month, he had a different perspective. How silly they all seemed. Half the people in the room had had some kind of “work” done, including the men. Billy’s death was just another excuse for a party, where they could drink champagne and eat caviar and talk about their latest projects. Meanwhile, out on the street, homeless and probably hungry, was an innocent young woman—Lola Fabrikant—who’d been taken up by this crowd and summarily spit out when she didn’t meet the exact requirements.

  A man and a woman passed behind him, whispering, “I heard the Rices have a Renoir.”

  “It’s in the dining room. And it’s tiny.” There was a pause followed by high-pitched laughter. “And it cost ten million dollars. But it’s a Renoir. So who cares?”

  Perhaps he should ask Annalisa Rice for the twenty thousand dollars for Lola, James thought. She apparently had so much money, she didn’t know what to do with it.

  But hold on, James thought. He had money now, too, and more than he’d expected. Two weeks ago, his agent had informed him that if the sales of his book continued at the same rate—and there was no reason to think they wouldn’t—he would earn at least two million dollars in royalties. Despite this astonishing news, when James returned to New York and his daily routine, he saw that his circumstances hadn’t changed at all. He still awoke every morning as James Gooch, married to Mindy Gooch, living his odd little life in his odd little apartment. The only difference being that right now, during this two-week break from his book tour, he had nothing to do.

  James stood up and crossed the living room, stepping out onto the lowest of the Rices’ three terraces. He leaned over the edge, looking up and down Fifth Avenue. It, too, was exactly the same. He finished his champagne and, looking into the bottom of the glass, felt empty. For once in his life, there was no sword of doom hanging over his head; he had nothing to complain about and nothing about which to hang his head. And yet he didn’t feel content. Stepping back through the French doors, he looked at the crowd and wished he were still in the Mews with Lola.

  The next afternoon, James met Lola under the arch in Washington Park. Determined to be a hero, James had spent the morning trying to find Lola an apartment. Mindy would have been shocked at his industriousness, he thought wryly, but Mindy never needed his help, and Lola did. After making several calls, Redmon Richardly’s assistant told him about an apartment that might be available in her building on Eighteenth Street and Tenth Avenue. The rent was fourteen hundred dollars a month for a studio, and after tracking down the owner, who had not only heard of his book but had read it and loved it, James made an arrangement to see the apartment at three. Then he’d gone to the bank and, feeling like a criminal, withdrew five thousand dollars in cash. Strolling toward the park, he found Lola already waiting. She had mascara under her eyes as if she’d been crying and hadn’t bothered to wash it away. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “What do you think?” she said bitterly. “I feel like a homeless person. Everything I own is in storage—and it’s costing me a hundred and fifty a month. I have no place to sleep. And the bathroom in that place I’m staying is disgusting. I’m afraid to take a shower. Were you able to…figure something out?”

  “I brought you some money,” James said. “And something else—something that should really make you happy.” He paused for effect, then said proudly, “I think I may have found you an apartment.”

  “Oh, James,” she exclaimed.

  “It’s only fourteen hundred a month. If you like it, we can use the cash to pay your first month’s rent and a deposit.”

  “Where is it?” she asked cautiously. When he told her, she looked disappointed. “It’s so far west,” she said. “It’s practically on the river.”

  “It’s within walking distance of One Fifth,” James assured her. “So we can visit each other all the time.”

  Nevertheless, Lola insisted on taking a taxi. The cab pulled up to a small redbrick building that James suspected, given the location, had probably once been a flophouse. On the street level was an Irish bar. He and Lola walked up a narrow staircase to a short hallway with a linoleum floor. The apartment was 3C, and after trying the handle, James found the door open and he and Lola went in. It was a tiny space, no bigger than three hundred square feet—a room, really, in a normal person’s house—with a tiny closet, a tiny bathroom with a shower, and two cupboard doors that opened to reveal a minuscule kitchen. But it was clean and bright and located on a corner, so it had two windows.

  “Not bad,” James said.

  Lola’s heart sank. Had she really fallen so low in the short nine months she’d been in New York?

  The landlady was a salt-of-the-earth type with a pile of bleached hair and a New York accent. Her family had owned the building for a hundred years; her biggest requirement, after an ability to pay, was “nice” people. Was Lola perhaps James’s daughter? No, James explained, she was a friend who’d had a rough time with an ex-boyfriend who’d dumped her. The perfidy of men was one of the landlady’s favorite topics; she was always happy to help out a fellow female sufferer. James proclaimed the arrangement a done deal. The apartment, he declared, reminded him of his first apartment in Manhattan and how thrilled he’d been to have his own space and to be making his way in New York. “The good old days,” he said to the landlady, peeling off three thousand dollars in hundreds. The extra two hundred would be used to cover Lola’s utilities.

  “Now all you need is a bed,” James said when the deal was completed. “Why don’t we get you a foldout couch? There’s a Door Store on Sixth Avenue.” Walking east, James noticed her glum expression. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “You don’t look happy. Aren’t you relieved to have your own apartment?”

  Lola was in a panic. She hadn’t planned on getting an apartment at all, and especially such a shabby, depressing little place. She’d meant to take the money from Philip and James—thirty thousand in total—and install herself in Soho House, from where she would relaunch herself into New York society in style. How had her plan gone awry so quickly? And now three thousand dollars were gone. “I didn’t expect it to happen this suddenly,” she said.

  “Ah,” James said, holding up a finger. “That’s New York real estate. If we hadn’t taken the apartment, it would have been gone in an hour. You’ve got to act fast.” At the Door Store, James purchased a couch with a queen-size foldout bed in a sensible navy blue fabric that wouldn’t show stains, the feel of which made Lola shudder. It was the floor model, James exclaimed, saying it was a great deal. And another fifteen hundred dollars was gone.

  James finally escorted her back to the empty apartment, where she was to wait for the bed to be delivered. “I don’t know how you managed to do all this,” Lola said weakly. “Thank you.” She kissed James on the cheek.

  “I’ll come by tomorrow and see how you’re settling in,” he said.

  “I can’t wait,” Lola said. There was still the remainder of the fifteen thousand dollars James might give her, but she didn’t dare ask for it now. S
he would have to talk to him about it tomorrow, though.

  When James left, she immediately went to Thayer Core’s apartment. “I got my own place,” she said.

  “How’d you manage that?” Thayer said, looking up from his computer.

  “James Gooch found it,” Lola said, taking off her coat. “He paid for it, too.”

  “He’s an idiot.”

  “He’s in love with me.” Lola was suddenly thrilled to be getting out of Thayer and Josh’s apartment. Thayer was becoming unreasonable, asking her for oral sex and pouting when he didn’t get it, saying he had something on her and would use it if he had to. “What?” she’d scoff. “You’ll see,” he’d say vaguely.

  “Shut up, Thayer. You’re a douchebag,” she reminded him now.

  “I thought you were trying to get back into One Fifth. I need information.”

  “I’ll get it from James.”

  “What if he requires sex in exchange?”

  “I have sex with you, so what’s the difference?” Lola replied. “At least he doesn’t have diseases.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know,” she said. “He’s only been with one woman for the past twenty years. His wife.”

  “Maybe he sleeps with hookers on the side.”

  Lola rolled her eyes. “Not every man is like you, Thayer. Decent men do exist.”

  “Uh-huh,” Thayer said, nodding. “Like James Gooch. A man who’s an inch away from cheating on his wife. Although if I were married to Mindy Gooch, I’d cheat, too.”

  The next day, knocking on the door of her new apartment, James found Lola sitting on the bare mattress of the foldout couch, crying. “What’s wrong now?” James said, edging next to her.

  “Look around,” Lola said. “I don’t even have a pillow.”

  “I’ll bring you one from home. My wife won’t notice.”

  “I don’t want some old pillow from your house,” Lola said, wondering how she’d managed to pick the cheapest man in Manhattan as her savior. “Do you think you could give me some money? Maybe the fifteen thousand dollars?”

  “I can’t give it to you all at once,” James said. “My wife will get suspicious.” Having given the matter a great deal of thought, James had settled on a plan to pay Lola’s rent for six months while giving her two thousand dollars a month in spending money. “And when you get a job,” he said, “you’ll be fine. You’ll have much more money than I did at your age.”

  From then on, James went by the apartment every afternoon, often taking Lola to lunch at the Irish pub downstairs—to make sure she had one decent meal a day, he said—and then hung around her apartment afterward. He liked the uncluttered space and the afternoon sunlight that poured through the windows, noting that Lola’s apartment got more light than his own. “James,” she said. “I need a TV.”

  “You have your computer,” James said. “Can’t you watch TV shows on that? Isn’t that what everybody does these days?”

  “Everybody has a computer. And a TV.”

  “You could read a book,” James said. “Have you read Anna Karenina? Or Madame Bovary?”

  “I have, and they’re boring. Besides, I don’t have room for books,” she complained, gesturing at the tiny space.

  James bought her a TV—a sixteen-inch Panasonic—that they placed on the windowsill.

  On the day before James was to go back out on book tour, he turned up at her apartment earlier than usual. It was eleven o’clock, but she was still sleeping, her head resting on the down pillow she’d bought from ABC Carpet, along with a down comforter that James suspected cost over a thousand dollars. When he questioned her about it, however, she said she’d bought it on sale for a hundred. He didn’t expect her to sleep without covers, did he? No, he did not, he agreed, and let it go.

  “What time is it?” she asked now, rolling over in her bed.

  “It’s almost noon,” he said. He found the fact that she was still in bed slightly annoying, and wondered what she’d been up to the night before that would cause her to sleep till midday. Or perhaps she was depressed. “I’m leaving tomorrow morning. First thing,” he explained. “I wanted to say goodbye. And to make sure you were okay.”

  “When will I see you again?” She stretched, extending her arms up to the ceiling. She was wearing an orange tank top with nothing underneath.

  “Not for a month.”

  “Where are you going?” she asked in alarm.

  “England, Scotland, Ireland, Paris, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “Terrible for us but good for the book,” James said.

  She threw back the comforter and patted the mattress. “Snuggle me,” she said. “I’m going to miss you.”

  “I don’t think…” James said cautiously, despite his beating heart.

  “It’s only a hug, James,” she pointed out. “No one can object to that.”

  He got into bed next to her, awkwardly arranging his long body so several inches of space remained between them. She turned to face him, curling up her knees into his groin. Her breath was pungent with the lingering smell of vodka and cigarettes, and he wondered once again where she’d been the night before. Had she had sex with someone?

  “You’re funny,” she said.

  “Am I?”

  “Look at you.” She giggled. “You’re so stiff.”

  “I’m not sure we should be doing this,” he said.

  “We’re not doing anything,” she countered. “But you want to, don’t you?”

  “I’m married,” he whispered.

  “Your wife never has to know.” She trailed her hand down his chest and touched his penis. “You’re hard,” she said.

  She started kissing him on the mouth, thrusting her fat tongue between his teeth. James was too startled to resist. This was so different from Mindy’s kisses, which were dry little pecks. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d kissed someone like this, marveling that people still did this—that he could still do this—this making-out thing. And Lola’s skin was so soft, like a baby’s, he thought, touching her arms. Her neck was smooth and unwrinkled. He tentatively touched her breasts through the fabric of her shirt, feeling her nipples erect. He rolled on top of her, pushing himself up on his arms to stare down at her face. Should he go further? He hadn’t made love in so long, he wondered if he would remember the moves.

  “I want you inside me,” she said, touching the mound of his penis. “I want your fat cock in my wet pussy.”

  The mere suggestion of this sex act was too much, and as he was trying to unzip his jeans, the inevitable happened. He came. “Damn,” he said.

  “What’s wrong?” She sat up.

  “I just…you know.” He slid his hand into his jeans and felt the tell-tale wetness. “Fuck!”

  She got onto her knees behind him and rubbed his shoulders. “It doesn’t matter. It’s only the first time.”

  He took her hand and brought it to his lips. “You are so sweet,” he said. “You’re the sweetest girl I’ve ever known.”

  “Am I?” she said, jumping off the bed. She pulled on a pair of cashmere sweatpants. “James?” she asked in a syrupy voice. “Since you’re leaving and I won’t see you for a month…”

  “Do you need some money?” he said. He reached into his pants pocket. “I’ve only got sixty dollars.”

  “There’s an ATM in the deli around the corner. Do you mind? I owe the landlady two hundred dollars. For utilities. And you don’t want me to starve while you’re away.”

  “I certainly don’t,” James said. “But you should try to get a job.”

  “I will,” she reassured him. “But it’s hard.”

  “I can’t support you forever,” he said, thinking about his aborted attempt at sex.

  “I’m not asking you to,” she said. On the sidewalk, she took his hand. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  He extracted five hundred dollars from the ATM and handed it to h
er. “I’ll miss you,” she said, flinging her arms around him. “Call me the minute you get back. We’ll get together. And next time it will work,” she called over her shoulder.

  James stared after her, then set off down Ninth Avenue. Had he just been taken for a ride? No, he assured himself. Lola wasn’t like that. And she’d said she wanted to do it again. He strolled down Fifth Avenue full of confidence. By the time he reached One Fifth, he’d convinced himself it was a good thing he’d ejaculated prematurely. No fluids were exchanged, so it couldn’t really be called cheating.

  20

  Early that evening, on her way to Thayer Core’s place, Lola paused across the street from One Fifth and stared at the entrance. She often did this, hoping to run into Philip or Schiffer. The week before, they’d announced their engagement, and the news was all over the tabloids and on the entertainment programs, as if the union of two middle-aged people was not only a big deal but an inspiration for all lonely, still-single middle-aged women everywhere. Schiffer had gone on Oprah to promote Lady Superior, but really, Lola thought, to boast about her upcoming nuptials. Their marriage was part of a hot new trend, Oprah said, in which women and men were finding first loves from the past and realizing they were meant for each other all along. “But this time around, one is older and wiser—I hope!” Schiffer remarked, which drew knowing laughter from the audience. They had yet to set a date or a place but wanted to do something small and nontraditional. Schiffer had already picked out a dress—a short white sheath covered in silver bugle beads—which Oprah held up for the cameras. While the audience oohed and ahhed, Lola felt sick. It should have been her wedding Oprah was blathering on about, not Schiffer’s. And she would have chosen a better dress—something traditional, with lace and a train. Lola couldn’t stop thinking about the wedding; filled with envy and anger, she possessed a pernicious fantasy of confronting either Philip or Schiffer. Hence her occasional stakeouts of One Fifth. And yet she didn’t dare linger too long—she might encounter Philip or Schiffer but might as easily run into Enid.