Rich Boy

by Sharon Pomerantz

  “Might do him some good,” Robert mumbled. He’d been sailing with Tracey many times, but he still watched in wonder as the wind filled up the main sail, bright red under the aquamarine sky, and the boat began to turn. Suddenly, the image of the shoe-shine girl passed before him—the way the hair arched over her eyes as she worked; the sound of her voice when she’d asked him if she really did have stage presence; the roundness of her ass when she bent over—and he lost himself in revelry, interrupted only by the voice of his brother, which now rose above the wind.

  “You just take it once in the morning, like vitamin C. Changes your whole outlook. Cures depression, alcoholism, obsessive-compulsive disorder. Makes fat people thin and thin people sleep better. No side effects, either. Gonna overhaul the whole mental health industry.”

  “How is that possible?” Biscuit asked, pushing the hair out of her eyes.

  “No more need for therapy,” Barry said. “They just write you a prescription. It’s going to revolutionize life as we know it. And make anyone with stock in the company very rich.”

  “I’m already very rich,” Claudia said, staring off at the water.

  “Pills that make people happy,” Mark Pascal said. “Don’t we have those already?”

  “You got a point there,” Barry said, squinting into the sun. “But none of those businesses are registered on NASDAQ.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Of deals and dames

  The smell is a mixture of certain streets in Calcutta and the men’s restroom at the Port Authority,” said Mark Pascal.

  “When were you in Calcutta?” Robert asked.

  “Or the men’s restroom at the Port Authority?” added Elaine Norton, a pretty second-year associate who was in the room for reasons Robert didn’t completely fathom. Pascal liked an audience. Elaine, at least, added a good pair of legs to stare at under the long glass table.

  “What we need is damage control, emphasize the massive cleanup under way,” Mario Saldana said, playing idly with the stem of a small bunch of grapes. In the center of the table sat a tower of untouched sandwiches and a half-eaten tray of fresh fruit.

  “There is no such thing as damage control in Connecticut!” Pascal snapped. “People hear environmental cleanup, they panic.” He wanted to scrap the project, a condominium development in an area just off Long Island Sound where raw sewage, escaping into the water from a nearby treatment facility, had washed into people’s backyards during a heavy rain.

  Robert sensed that Pascal was in one of his moods. When the market was lousy in the 1970s, his father had expanded the business tremendously. Now the market was booming, yet Pascal, Inc., under the son’s direction, could not seem to catch a break. Mark’s plan to spread his seed, in the form of condominium complexes all over the tristate area, did not seem as realistic as it had been even a year ago. Recently Tracey had said to Robert of Mark Pascal, “Finally lucky in love and, well, you know the second part.”

  “All that time and energy invested in blueprints and building permits and goddamned attorneys’ fees, but it’s nothing compared to what I’ll lose in the long run if we stick with this.”

  “You’re losing your nerve,” Saldana said. “You had the same response to Carroll Gardens, and you’ll make money there if you can just wait —”

  “I’m not in a patient business!” Mark interrupted. “Developers put up buildings, sell them off, and move on. I’m not a landlord.”

  “All right,” Mario said softly. “So what, exactly, is your plan B?”

  “We’re going to sell off what we can of Connecticut and stake a bigger claim in lower Manhattan,” Pascal announced. Then he directed the conversation to Chip, a Harvard MBA with close-cropped blond hair who looked to be no more than twenty, though Robert knew that was hardly possible. Chip had been mostly silent, but now he cleared his throat and began to talk rapidly and with great enthusiasm about the Battery Park City—TriBeCa–SoHo residential corridor. “We’re going to rehab old lofts not far from the new investment banking center on Water Street, create luxury apartments with artistic flare,” he said, “giant picture windows, exposed pipes, distressed beams. Bankers eat that artist’s-loft shit right up.”

  “Zoning is like a checkerboard below Canal,” Mario Saldana said. “Have you talked to Carpenter? If I’d have known this was where we were going, I’d have gotten him back here from the bloody Hamptons.”

  Carpenter was their land-use specialist. He had a degree in civil engineering and they’d paid a lot of money to lure him from another firm. Like the tax guys, who knew they were in demand, Carpenter walked around in a strange state of either arrogance or oblivion, Robert wasn’t sure which, but he never seemed to be where you needed him. Then again, they had all assumed that the reason for this meeting was sewage in Connecticut, not building in TriBeCa.

  “Right now we’re only putting feelers out. Anyway, I had lunch with Carpenter last week,” Pascal said.

  “I wish someone had bothered to tell me that!” Saldana snapped.

  Robert had never heard the restrained Saldana snap at anyone in his life.

  “We’re making overtures to the owners of an old button-and-fastenings factory on Hudson,” Pascal continued. “Owned by one family for generations. They’re cagey; the space has sentimental value, et cetera. I’m having lunch with the grandfather and two grandsons on Saturday.”

  “Family businesses are tough,” Robert said.

  “We have a few other possibilities, but I like this one. The adjacent loading dock gives us a large envelope,” Pascal added. “I’d like you to come with me to the lunch on Saturday.”

  Robert knew what that meant. The owners were regular people who didn’t go to college, people with regional accents. He was known for being good with such people, had been called in more than once by Pascal, Inc., to advise them in disputes with construction companies. He had no labor background—only the experience of being on the other side of management, as a cabbie. “Sure,” Robert said. “If you want me there, I’ll be there.” You say how high, he thought, and I’ll jump. At least this year I will.

  In the next six months, Robert, Wilton Henry, and a third lawyer, a woman named Liesel MacDuff, would all be officially in competition for partner, a process that could keep them in suspense for another full year. There were three other men being considered, as well—though Robert didn’t think that any of the three had strong backing. There’d be pressure to make the first female real estate partner, and though Wilton Henry had not brought in much business, he was an excellent craftsman with a head for complex transactions, and he had supporters. Robert had brought in business—much of it came from Barry and his contacts, the new banking money—but the big, long-term money was in developers, large construction issues, and there he had been less successful.

  Mario was talking now about financing. Which banks was he talking to? “Local this time,” Mario said. “No more of those German banks. It looks bad.”

  “I thought you South Americans liked the Germans,” Pascal replied.

  Robert looked over at Saldana, waiting for a reaction, and found himself focusing on something he could hardly believe: a stain on the ridiculously fastidious man’s collar, tiny, brown, and circular, perhaps a bit of dried blood from shaving. If a small colony of tiny humans had appeared on Saldana’s collar, Robert could not have been more surprised.

  A knock at the door interrupted his thoughts. Assuming it to be someone who would clear away the food, Mark told them to come in, adding, “Let’s get some of this shit off the table.”

  But it was not a waiter. It was Sally Johannson.

  “There was nobody at reception to help me,” she said. “And I—I saw you through the glass—you told me to come today, and —” She looked at Robert, as if for help.

  He stood up, aware that not one of them was looking at him. All eyes were on Sally. “I’m sorry. This is a little poorly timed surprise of mine. Sally is a shoe-shine girl, and an excellent one. Your shoes will
stay shiny for days afterward. And I’ve bought you all a shoe shine. As a gift. She’ll come back, though, won’t you, when we’re finished? We should be done here in about, well, when do you think, Mark?”

  “I think we’ve said everything that we need to say for today,” Mark replied, still staring at Sally. “Can I go first?”

  Robert never did figure out how she’d walked all that way without being stopped by reception, or one of the secretaries, but it was late in the day, not quite five, and likely the receptionist had left early. By late June the partners had already begun their three- and four-day weekends—many of them did so in lieu of actual vacations, which were becoming more difficult for anyone to take as business grew and took on computerized urgency; and men who might have cut back, as partners had always done in years past, now found themselves working as hard as ever, or retiring. But even A, L and W did not ignore summer altogether, or the way in which businesses in the city adopted their own schedule from June to August so that Mondays and Fridays always held out the cruel hope that freedom was possible.

  When Sally had finished in the conference room she went to look for Elaine, who was still owed a shine. As she passed from office to office, lawyers looked up from their work, got out of their chairs and walked to their doorways, watching as she moved down the hall. Those who understood her purpose asked for a shoe shine, others who did not found her later in the offices of their colleagues and did the same. People bought each other shines. There was chatting and laughing in the hallways in a way rarely heard. Two hours after she’d arrived, Sally showed up in Robert’s doorway to thank him, and to be paid for all the conference room shoe shines.

  “You won’t believe how much business I got today!” she said breathlessly.

  “I thought you didn’t get business. I thought that was your boss,” he said, sitting down and lifting his pants leg to show his shoe. “Don’t forget your benefactor.”

  She put her box down at his feet. “No, I mean, I gave out our card all over the place. Everyone wants me to come back.”

  “Then you’ll have to come back,” he said. “This is a democracy.”

  “Not if the receptionists won’t let me through, or one of the partners goes ballistic.”

  “Have your boss call me,” he said. “I take full responsibility. I’ve never seen so many unhappy people smile in my life.”

  She had his shoe up on the footrest and now squirted white liquid all over it. “Mark Pascal wants me to come there, too. Wow, I’m going to rake it in.”

  “How much do you make?” he asked.

  “A lot,” she said, then lowered her voice. “Twenty dollars an hour minimum, with tips. That’s under the table. Plus I don’t have to work with food, or deal with drunks.”

  She scrubbed his shoe with a narrow toothbrushlike instrument, bending over it with concentration. The room was over-air-conditioned, but she looked disheveled and flushed from exertion. “You should ask your boss for a cut, you know, like a finder’s fee on new business.”

  “I don’t want to get involved in the business end,” she said. “I only work four days a week and I have auditions. These are English shoes, right?”

  Robert nodded. Her nipples were visible through the thin fabric of her pink T-shirt. “When do you go out?” he asked.

  “Hardly at all,” she replied. “I’m in a play now, and rehearsals take up a lot of time.” She stopped what she was doing just then and lowered her brush, looked up at him. “I know how this goes. At this point you ask me out. I have a boyfriend. He’s on the road now in A Chorus Line.”

  “What about your show?” he asked.

  “Oh, the usual,” she said, finishing off with a quick back-and-forth of the flannel rag. “A young playwright, a director right out of NYU, make lemonade.”

  “The play is about lemonade?”

  She told him to switch feet. “I mean take lemons and make lemonade. In this case the lousy part and wooden dialogue are the lemons. And when you do that for enough years, maybe, maybe someone will spot you doing something great in a bad part in a terrible play.”

  “Sounds awful.”

  “Actually,” she said, raising her head from her work, “it’s the best thing in the world. You think anyone would live like this otherwise?”

  “I’ll have to come see for myself. When’s the performance?”

  She paused to pull a polish-stained piece of paper out of her apron. “Here’s a flyer,” she said. The play was called Bus Sickness, five performances at a theater off Union Square.

  “This is soon.”

  “In two weeks; and in three weeks I have to move out of my apartment—my boyfriend’s apartment, actually, because the subletter is coming back. And don’t offer to buy me an apartment. I’ve had that offer from clients. Plenty.”

  He laughed. “Sally, you assume nothing but ulterior motives from people.”

  “Don’t you?” she asked. “Have those? Because that’s all I deal with all day long. Like I’m for sale. Let me make it clear right now: I’m not for sale.”

  “I didn’t think that you were!” This was going to be difficult. “Sally, look at me. Do you think I hurt for women?”

  She stopped again to scrutinize him. “Probably not,” she said, and went back to her work.

  “And I’m married.”

  She snorted. “Yeah, whatever.”

  “I do, however, own an apartment that you could rent. You’d have to pay, of course.”

  “How much?”

  “It’s empty now. Three and a half rooms on the Upper West Side.”

  “How much?”

  “If I break even on the mortgage, that’ll be enough. Say six hundred dollars.”

  “No way your mortgage is six hundred.” She took a brush out of a bottle of what appeared to be black ink, and the strong scent of chemicals filled the air. Then she ran the brush around the edge of his sole to make it darker.

  “Don’t you want to come see it?” he asked. “Prewar, great light.”

  She sat up and brushed the hair out of her eyes. “I guess I don’t see the point of going to see an apartment I can’t afford because your mortgage sure as hell is more than six hundred dollars. I’m not for owing anyone anything. People have a way of demanding payment, men particularly.” She placed his other foot back on the cloth, and then began to put her belongings back in the box. “Look, you got me some business, which I appreciate. I had a good day. Let’s leave it at that.”

  “Okay,” he said, sighing. Was he getting older, or was she anticipating every line before he could say it? She was right about the apartment, but he was suddenly willing to take a loss, all previous plans disregarded. “But I know how hard housing is in this city.”

  “Tell me about it!” She stood and picked up her box. “I counted the other day. You know that I’ve been in nine different apartments since I left Philly? That was six years ago.”

  “Philadelphia? As in Pennsylvania?”

  “Not Mississippi. Oh, you owe me eight bucks for the shines in the conference room. What’s the matter, you never met anyone from Philadelphia before?”

  “I’m from Philadelphia.” He handed her a twenty and told her to keep it.

  She took the bill and thanked him. “Don’t tell me, you’re from the Main Line, right?”

  He shook his head. “You?”

  “The Northeast,” she said. “Oxford Circle. You even know where that is?”

  “I grew up on Disston Street.”

  “Harbison.”

  “My grandmother lived on Harbison,” he said. “The garden apartments.” The coincidence struck them both with the same force, as if they had come from a distant country known only to its inhabitants. Neither said anything for what felt like a long time.

  “Three years, I’ve never met a single person from home in New York.”

  “That’s because they don’t leave.”

  “I guess maybe that makes things a little different,” she said, and put her hand
on her hip, studying him again. She would tell him later that she didn’t see her customers most of the time; she’d trained herself that way. Even walking down the street, people were a blur to her. She moved impervious to men’s catcalls and women’s patronizing questions, safe in her own little world. She was an actress. And maybe, he thought, all attractive young women had to be actresses, to survive the probing eyes of the world, and the curiosity and aggression of men.

  “Sally, I’ll give you that apartment for whatever you want to pay,” he said. “My intentions are honorable. I won’t bother you or expect anything. I swear. Scout’s honor. Just take it; make your life a little easier.”

  He meant it, at least in the moment that he said it. When he stopped trying, dropped the flirtation and games that had worked so well all his life, then and only then did he pull her in.

  “Okay, Robert Vishniak,” she said. “When can I see the place?”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Empty house

  Robert had entered his marriage intending to be faithful. His parents had been faithful for forty years, and so had all his aunts and uncles. In fact, until he got to college he’d never met anyone whose parents were divorced. He didn’t think it even occurred to Stacia or Vishniak to cheat; marriage was a legal and religious contract, a binding condition, and besides, neither one of them had such a high opinion of their own charms, nor did they seek out people outside their own families. Yet among their children, his generation of cousins, many were already divorced. Barry was almost thirty-five and no closer to marriage than he’d been twenty years ago. When Robert asked Stacia what happened, why there was suddenly so much divorce in the family, she’d replied, “The sixties happened, that’s what. Everyone thinks they have all the choices in the world now. Well guess what, mister, you don’t.”