by Adam Mitzner
Will thought about the first time he saw the view from Sam’s place, and recalled joking with Gwen that his place had a better view. Even if he bought this place, it still wouldn’t be true, but it also wouldn’t be a joke anymore.
“The kitchen is top-of-the-line,” Risa was saying. “Quartz countertops, a Sub-Zero refrigerator, Viking six-burner cooktop and oven, a Bosch dishwasher.”
Will had no idea what the names meant, but he assumed that she mentioned them because they must be expensive. He followed Risa down the hallway and into the master bedroom. Two sides of which were all windows.
“The closets are to die for.” Risa opened up two double doors, revealing a space inside the size of Will’s present bedroom, lined floor to ceiling with shelving. “I know men don’t care so much about closet space, but believe me, women certainly do. So, for the woman in your life, either now or someday, this will be more important than the view or the kitchen. Believe me.”
Will had told Gwen he was thinking about buying a place when the Maeve Grant loan came in. She had encouraged him to take the plunge, although he was quite sure she hadn’t expected him to go this far down the rabbit hole. They had discussed something in the $2- to $3-million range, which in Manhattan amounted to a 1,500-square-foot two-bedroom in a doorman building. And, if you were lucky, a view of something other than the building across the street.
“The en suite master bath is truly spa quality . . .” Risa said as they entered the bathroom.
Will couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken a bath. But he did note that the tub was easily large enough for two.
Upon entering the second bedroom, Risa explained that most childless residents used the room as an office, usually fitting it with a pullout sofa so it could double as a guest room. “There’s even one person with this layout who made it a closet. Can you imagine? She gave the walk-in in the master to her husband, and she made this entire room a closet. What a waste of the views, but she had a lot—and I mean, a lot—of clothing. But it’ll also make a great kids’ room someday.”
Will very much liked the sound of that. Even though it had only been three months, he very clearly saw his future with Gwen, and that included filling the second bedroom with children. He’d already asked her to move in with him when he acquired an apartment of his own, which had always been pegged to his Maeve Grant money coming in. He imagined that they’d get engaged soon and married sometime next year. Gwen sometimes expressed reservations about having children before she was a bit more established in her career, but she also said that there was no optimal time, and she too saw a future with the patter of little feet. All of which convinced Will that the second bedroom would have a crib in it soon enough.
After reentering the living room, Risa opened the French doors to the balcony. Will followed her outside like an excited child.
Unlike the empty interior, the terrace was fully furnished. Two long sofas faced each other. Their frames were teak and the upholstery a pale yellow. On the other axis two sets of armchairs, in the same style and colors as the sofas, faced each other. A large rectangular coffee table, also in teak, completed the sitting area.
“I’m not sure why this is out here,” Risa said, referring to the outdoor furniture. “It’s possible that someone in the building had a party or something and they just never collected it. Or sometimes they use marquee space for a modeling shoot. It looks to be brand-new. I’m sure no one is going to claim it, so consider it a housewarming gift.”
Will smiled at the thought that, after investing in Sanjay’s fund, he might well have to move the outdoor furniture inside so he would have somewhere to sit. He turned to visualize how it would look in the living room. That’s when he saw Eve.
“Hello . . .” she said, waving at Will.
She was wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt. Will realized it was the first time he’d seen Eve not dressed to the nines. It just as quickly occurred to him that she looked equally beautiful—if not more so—this way.
He gestured for her to join them outside. A moment later, she was admiring the view beside him.
“Sure beats what you can see out a fourth-floor window,” she said with a wide grin.
“It is amazing, that’s for sure. But I think it’s a little too amazing for someone of my means.”
“You’re moving on up in the world, Will Matthews. Got to have an address that keeps up.”
“I don’t know . . .”
“You absolutely need to buy it. Apartments like this don’t come along very often.”
Risa chimed in. “So all you need to do is say yes, Will.”
Will looked around the space. It seemed as if his soon-to-be former roommates had been right after all. He was Mr. Wall Street.
21.
The Clinton section of Manhattan was traditionally considered to be bordered by Thirty-Fourth Street to the south, Fifty-Ninth Street to the north, Eighth Avenue to the east, and the Hudson River to the west. It formerly went by the much more hardscrabble identifier of Hell’s Kitchen, but since gentrification in the 1990s, including the development of the waterfront property to the west and the construction of the High Line, it had become among the most desirable sections to call home anywhere in Manhattan.
Will’s new building was the crown jewel of the neighborhood. A glass-and-steel spire that shot up twenty-seven floors, tapering at the top. The vanity address was One Hudson Yards.
Will was standing in front of the building when Gwen arrived by taxi. Now it finally felt real. Gwen had that effect on him. If dealing with Sam always had a bit of fantasy about it, Gwen brought him back down to earth. That being said, he was about to take her into a different realm. A fantasy for both of them to experience together.
“I thought when you said that you wanted to meet at this address that I’d be standing in front of some hot new restaurant,” she said. “So why am I standing in front of an apartment building? And why do you have a bottle of champagne in your hand?”
“So I could carry you over the threshold of my new home, and then we could share a toast.”
Gwen craned her neck up to the sky to capture the full height of the building. Then, turning her focus back on Will, she said, “Aren’t you the secret keeper?”
“Come. I’m excited for you to see it.”
He took Gwen by the hand. The front door was held open by an attendant, outfitted in full regalia, including white gloves and a brimmed hat. Once inside, they were greeted by another doorman in an identical outfit. He opened the next set of doors, which led into the building’s lobby, where a third man in the exact same garb stood behind a mahogany podium as if he were about to deliver a speech.
“Mr. Matthews, so nice to see you again.”
“Thank you, George. This is my girlfriend, Gwen.”
After Gwen and George shook hands, Will guided her toward the elevator banks. The cars were completely mirrored inside, which created something of a fun-house feel. As they ascended, Gwen said, “You need to fill me in a little, Will. Have you already closed on this place?”
“Yeah. Saw it on Monday, closed today.”
“How’d you do it so fast?”
“A real Sam special. This is the building Eve lives in; she’s on the fourth floor. Sam heard about the penthouse coming up for sale and got me in to see it before it was officially on the market. I made an offer, it was accepted, and I was able to do it as an all-cash deal, so we closed right away.”
Before Gwen could say anything else, the elevator doors opened—directly into the apartment. When they did, she gasped.
“We’re here,” Will said, gesturing for Gwen to step out into his new home. “It’s two bedrooms, two and a half baths,” Will said, mimicking how Risa had introduced the space to him.
“Jesus, Will. What did you pay for this?”
“It wasn’t cheap, that’s for sure. The arrangement I reached with Sam was that he’d front the purchase price, and then when the Maeve Grant money comes in, I’ll inves
t it with a buddy of his that runs a hedge fund. As soon as the hedge fund has a liquidation event, I’ll pay Sam back.”
“Why didn’t Sam just make the ten million investment in the fund himself and then let you use the Maeve Grant money to buy this place? Or take out a mortgage, like a normal person?”
“He’s in the fund too, so maybe he wanted to limit his exposure. As for why he wanted me to invest, he said it was important that I have skin in the game.”
Gwen’s eyes narrowed. Obviously, this explanation was not sufficient.
“Gwen, it’s going to be fine. Believe me. I got this. And you’re going to love the place. After you’ve seen it, we can talk about the reasons you think I shouldn’t have bought it. But, and I cannot emphasize this enough, remember that I already closed, so . . .”
Gwen took a deep breath. Since Eve’s admonition at the party, she’d tried her best not to let her cynicism overcome Will’s optimism. Still, this wasn’t a gift of a tuxedo and some overpriced footwear. This was a full-floor Manhattan penthouse. Nonetheless, Will’s request wasn’t too much to grant, so she smiled to indicate that she was on board with tabling the discussion until she got a tour of the place.
Will guided her through the empty rooms, trying to remember the buzzwords Risa had used to describe its features. As he’d expected, Gwen was already fluent in the terms bandied about for New York City high-end real estate—Sub-Zero, Bosch, Viking, pied-à-terre, common charges.
She paused at the second bedroom. When Will mentioned that it was easily large enough for two children, she gave him a genuine smile and said, “Is that so?”
The moment they stepped onto the terrace, the wind gusted up as if on cue. Will watched Gwen’s hair dance.
“So, what do you think?” he asked.
“It’s spectacular, Will. I mean, even the partners at my firm don’t have real estate like this. I’m not even sure our clients do. In fact, the only apartment I’ve ever even seen like this belonged to Sam. But fun and games aside, I need some answers. What did you pay?”
“It was a shade over nine million.”
“And is Sam charging you interest?”
“Yes, he’s charging me interest. Market rate.”
“Your monthly expenses alone—interest and condo fees—have got to be in the thirty- or forty-grand range?”
“I haven’t calculated it to the penny, but it’s something like that. But Sam’s deferring the interest payments because I told him I couldn’t make the fund investment if I had to pay monthly interest. So all I need to come up with on a monthly basis are the condo charges, which run about five grand. And I set two hundred grand aside so I could buy furniture. Eve is going to take me shopping tomorrow with the expectation I’m going to spend all of it. Then, when the hedge fund hits, I’ll pay Sam back.”
“What if it doesn’t . . . hit?”
“It will . . . but if for some reason it doesn’t, Sam will understand that. Especially considering it was his idea to do it this way.”
Will was smiling to defuse Gwen’s apparent concern, but by the fact that she looked like she had bitten into a lemon, he knew it wasn’t working. “Gwen, it’s all good. I ran it by Maeve Grant, and they were fine with it.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. I may not be a risk-averse lawyer like you, but I’m not going to jeopardize my job over an apartment. I told them that Sam was rather insistent that his broker invest alongside him.”
“And they signed off on . . . your client basically buying you a ten-million-dollar apartment?”
“It’s nine point two,” Will said with a smile. When Gwen didn’t smile back, he said, “Okay, you’re concerned. I get that. It’s . . . to put it mildly, a bit unorthodox. But the transaction is all documented, so Sam’s not giving me anything. Instead of JPMorgan Chase holding the mortgage, and me paying them off for the next thirty years, Sam Abaddon holds the mortgage, and I’m going to pay him off in five years. And you’re right that if the hedge fund investment goes south, there’s going to be a real problem there. But truth be told, it’s not much more of an issue than if the New York City housing market crashed, in which case my issue would be with JPMorgan Chase, and they would likely be far less understanding than my biggest client. But to answer your question, yes, I ran it by my office manager, and he passed it along to Compliance and probably Legal too. It came back with everybody’s stamp of approval.”
That did the trick. Gwen’s body slackened. She even smiled.
“Okay, I’m going to be like the dog,” she said. “See? My tail is wagging.”
She shook her backside in a half shimmy, half twerk gesture. Will pulled her into him.
“Sam and Eve won’t be here for another hour or so. What say we christen the place?”
“You don’t have any furniture.”
“There’s a sofa out here.”
“It’ll be cold,” Gwen said.
“Not if we do it right,” Will replied.
The elevator doors opened at a little after nine. Sam and Eve stepped off and looked sincerely surprised to find Will and Gwen sitting on the floor in the center of the massive, empty living room, a bottle of champagne between them.
“Apologies,” Sam said. “I hadn’t thought you’d be here yet.”
“It is their home,” Eve said. Her smile suggested she knew how Gwen and Will had spent the last forty minutes. “I’m so sorry. We promise to buzz up in the future.”
Will cast away their concerns with a laugh. “It’s fine. Gwen and I decided to come over a little early. I remembered the champagne but sadly forgot to bring glasses, so we’ve been drinking out of the bottle.”
“Then we’re just in time,” Sam said. “For I not only bring to this party a very fine bottle of Bollinger, but I also remembered glasses. And in Evelyn’s bag is some of the freshest beluga you can find outside of harvesting it yourself from the Caspian Sea.”
Sam was holding a shiny black shopping bag that lacked any store logo. He handed it to Will. “May you have many happy memories in your new home.”
Will retrieved the champagne from the bag, then reached in for the crystal champagne flutes and distributed them. His last withdrawal was a wooden box that was cold to the touch. After flipping open the lid, Will saw a very generous amount of caviar, with a mother-of-pearl spoon and some crackers beside it.
The pop of the champagne startled him. Will turned to see vapor rising from the bottle. After filling everyone’s flute, Sam said, “Come talk with me, Will.” Turning to the women, he added, “Business, I’m afraid. It’ll be but a minute.”
He led Will outside, toward the corner of the terrace. There was a chill in the air that Will hadn’t recalled when he’d been outside with Gwen earlier.
“Pretty amazing view. Am I right about that?”
Will nodded in agreement. “I can’t believe I own this place.”
“This is only the beginning, my friend. Bigger and better things still await. But the higher you climb, the more dangerous it is, because the farther you have to fall. That’s why, to stay on top, you need to be forever vigilant.”
From the corner of his eye, Will saw Gwen and Eve smiling at each other. He wondered if their conversation was similarly weighty and was near certain that it was not.
“My father was an alcoholic,” Sam said. “I swear, if it wasn’t inside a bottle, he didn’t want to know from it. Included in that category was his only child.” Sam chuckled. “I was ten when he kicked. Drank himself to death, naturally. I remember thinking that his coffin should be in the shape of a bottle. I’d seen funerals on TV, so I knew that wasn’t the way it worked. But my mother always talked about how he wouldn’t be at peace until he’d crawled inside a bottle and died there. So I thought . . . well, the things we don’t understand about the world when we’re kids.”
“I lost my dad at that age too,” Will said.
“I know. I remember you telling us that the night we first met. It was one of the things
that drew me to you, to tell you the truth. It’s the kind of formative thing that only those who have experienced it can truly understand.”
Will agreed. People sometimes shared with him their own story of loss, but unless your father died suddenly when you were ten, it wasn’t the same thing. Will understood that other stories—like Eve’s recent loss of her father—were tragic in their own way, but they were also different. The combination of being just old enough to understand and the shock of learning your world could change in a split second and nothing you could ever do would make it right again inextricably molds you right then and there into the man you will someday become.
“And your mother?” Will asked.
Sam smiled. “She was no prize herself. But I give credit where credit is due, and she did manage to fulfill the only true requirement of being a parent: she was able to keep herself alive until I could take care of myself. If sixteen years old meets that definition.”
Sam smiled. It was the kind of expression that made clear that he was thinking about something he hadn’t yet expressed.
“I’m heading out of town tomorrow,” Sam said, changing the subject. “I should be back in three or four days. I’d ask you to join me, but I know you have a date with Evelyn tomorrow to look at furniture.”
George Kennefick’s fate popped into Will’s mind. “I’m happy to put that off, if you’d like me to come with,” he said.
“No, that’s not necessary. Besides, I’d feel better having you here. But when I return, I’m going to have some important matters to discuss with you.”
“About what?”
“I’d like to keep that to myself for a little while longer. It’ll depend on how things shake out during my meeting. But believe me, your expected role will be an important part of what I’ll be discussing.”
Like many of his interactions with Sam, he was left with more questions than answers. But Will knew that further inquiry would not lead to any greater insight at the moment.
“Okay. I’ll be here when you return,” he said.
