One Fifth Avenue

by Кэндес Бушнелл

  “Who?” Paul asked.

  “Enid Merle. Paul,” Annalisa said, “can you please pay attention?”

  Paul looked up from his pizza and, trying to satisfy his wife, said, “As long as she doesn’t give us any trouble.”

  “Why would she give us trouble?”

  “Why would anyone give us trouble?” Paul said. “As a matter of fact, I just saw Mindy Gooch. In the lobby. She told me we weren’t allowed to put through-the-wall air conditioners in the apartment.”

  “That’s just crap,” Annalisa said. “Was she at least nice about it?”

  “What do you mean by ‘nice’?”

  Annalisa picked up the paper plates. “Don’t fight with her, is all. Enid said Mindy can be tricky. Apparently, the way to get to her is through her son, Sam. He’s a computer whiz — works on everyone’s computers in the building. I could e-mail him.”

  “No,” Paul said. “I can’t have some kid messing with my computer. Do you know what’s on my hard drive? Billions of dollars’ worth of financial information. I could destroy a small country if I felt like it.”

  Annalisa turned and bent over to kiss Paul on the forehead. “I know how you boys love to play spy,” she said. “But I wasn’t thinking about your computer. I was thinking about mine.”

  As she turned to go into the kitchen, Paul called after her, “Can’t we do this the old-fashioned way? Isn’t there someone in the building we can bribe?”

  “No, Paul,” Annalisa said. “We’re not going to do that. Just because we have money doesn’t mean we’re going to get special treatment. Let me try it Enid’s way. We’re in a new place, and we have to respect the culture.”

  Down below, in the kitchen of the Gooches’ stifling apartment, Mindy Gooch was cutting up vegetables. “Paul Rice basically told me to shove it,” she said to James.

  “Did he use those exact words, ‘Shove it’?” James asked.

  “No. But you should have seen the expression on his face when I said no to the through-the-wall air conditioners. His expression said, ‘Shove it.’ ”

  “You’re being paranoid,” James said.

  “I’m not,” Mindy said. Her new puppy, Skippy, jumped up on her leg.

  Mindy fed him a bit of carrot.

  “You shouldn’t feed the dog people food,” James said.

  “It’s health food. No one ever got sick from eating a carrot.” She picked up the dog and cuddled it in her arms.

  “You were the one who insisted on letting them into the building,”

  James said. “They’re your responsibility.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Mindy said. She carried the little dog to the door and put him out onto the cement slab that was their patio. Skippy sniffed around the edges of the slab, then squatted down and urinated.

  “What a good dog!” Mindy exclaimed. “Did you see that, James? He peed outside. We’ve only had him for three days, and already he’s house-trained. What a smart doggie!” she said to Skippy.

  “And that’s another thing. Skippy. He’s your responsibility, too,” James said. “You can’t expect me to walk him. Not with my book coming out.”

  James wasn’t sure how he felt about Skippy. He’d never had a dog growing up, or any pet, for that matter, as his parents didn’t believe in having animals in the house. “Peasants have animals in the house,” his mother always said.

  “Can’t I have one thing, James?” Mindy asked. “One thing of my own?

  Without you criticizing it?”

  “Sure,” James said.

  The puppy ran through the kitchen and into the living room. James chased after him. “Skippy!” he commanded. “Come!” Skippy ignored him and skittled into Sam’s room, where he jumped on Sam’s bed.

  “Skippy wants to visit you,” James said.

  “Skipster. Dude,” Sam said. He was seated at his little desk in front of his computer. “Check this out,” he said to his father.

  “What?” James said.

  “I just got an e-mail from Annalisa Rice. Paul Rice’s wife. Isn’t that the guy Mom was arguing with?”

  “It wasn’t an argument,” James said. “It was a discussion.” He went into his own little office and closed the door. There was a small high window, and in the window was an old air conditioner that snuffled like a child’s runny nose. James pulled his chair around and sat beneath the warmish air, trying to get cool.

  Tink, tink, tink went the noise. It was eight in the morning, and Enid Merle looked over the side of her terrace and frowned. Outside the building, the scaffolding was going up, thanks to the Rices, who were about to start renovating their apartment. The scaffolding would be up by the end of the day, but it was only the beginning. Once the actual construction began, there would be weeks of a cacophony of drilling, sanding, and hammering. Nothing could be done about the noise: The Rices had the right to improve their apartment. So far, they had done everything to the letter, including sending out notices to the other residents of the building, informing them of the construction and the length of time estimated to do the work. The apartment would be rewired and replumbed for a washer and dryer and restaurant-quality appliances and, according to Roberto, “high-powered computer equipment.” Mindy had won the first round on the air conditioners, but the Rices were still pushing. Sam told Enid that Annalisa had employed him to construct a website for the King David Foundation, which provided music and art classes for underprivileged teens. Enid was familiar with the charity, which had been started by Sandy and Connie Brewer. At last year’s gala, they were rumored to have raised twenty million dollars at a live auction in which hedge-funders were falling all over themselves to outbid each other on prizes like a live concert by Eric Clapton. So Annalisa was making her way in the new society, Enid thought. It was going to be a very busy and noisy fall.

  In the apartment next door, Philip and Lola were awakened by the noise.

  “What is that?” Lola complained, putting her hands over her ears. “If it doesn’t stop, I’m going to jump out of my skin.”

  Philip rolled over and stared at her face. There was, he thought, nothing like those first mornings of waking up with someone new and finding yourself both surprised and happy to see them.

  “I’ll make you forget about it,” he said, putting his hand on her breast.

  Her breasts were especially firm, due to the implants. She’d received them as a present from her parents for her eighteenth birthday — a ritual that was apparently now considered a standard milestone for girls approaching adulthood. The surgery had been celebrated with a pool party where Lola had revealed her new breasts to her high school pals.

  Lola pushed his hand away. “I can’t concentrate,” she said. “It sounds like they’re hammering into my head.”

  “Ha,” Philip said. Although he and Lola had been lovers for only a month, he’d noticed that she had an acute sensitivity to all physical mal-adies, both real and imagined. She often had headaches, or felt tired, or had a strange pain in her finger — probably, Philip had pointed out, the result of too much texting. Her pains required rest or TV watching, often in his apartment, which Philip did not object to at all, because the rest periods usually led to sex.

  “I think you’ve got a hangover, kiddo,” Philip said, kissing her on the forehead. He got out of bed and went into the bathroom. “Do you want aspirin?”

  “Don’t you have anything stronger? Like a Vicodin?”

  “No, I don’t,” he said, once again struck by the peculiarities of Lola’s generation. She was a child of pharmacology, having grown up with a bevy of prescription pills for all that might ail her. “Don’t you have something in your purse?” he asked. He’d discovered that Lola never went anywhere without a stash of pills that included Xanax, Ambien, and Ritalin. “It’s like Valley of the Dolls,” he’d said, alarmed. “Don’t be stupid,” she’d replied. “They give kids this stuff. And besides, the women in Valley of the Dolls were drug addicts.” And she’d given a little shudder.

/>   Now she said, “Maybe,” and crawled across the bed, leaning over the side in a seductive manner and feeling around on the floor for her snakeskin bag. She hauled it up and began digging around inside. The sight of her naked body — spray-tanned bronze and perfectly formed (in an unguarded moment, she’d let slip that she’d also had a tiny bit of lipo on her thighs and tummy) — filled Philip with joy. Ever since Lola had turned up at his apartment that July afternoon, his fortunes had changed. The studio loved his rewrite of Bridesmaids Revisited, and they were going to start shooting in January; off this good news, his agent got him a gig writing a historical movie about an obscure English queen known as Bloody Mary, for which he’d be paid a million dollars.

  “You’re on a roll, baby,” his agent said after delivering the news. “I smell Oscar.”

  Philip had gotten the phone call the day before, and he’d taken Lola to the Waverly Inn to celebrate. It was one of those evenings when everyone was there and the booths were filled with celebrities, some of whom were old friends. Before long, their table expanded to include a glamorous, bois-terous group that drew envious glances from the other patrons. Lola kept introducing herself as his researcher, and full of everything that was good in life, he corrected her and claimed she was his muse, squeezing her hand across the table. They drank bottle after bottle of red wine, finally stumbling home at two in the morning through a foggy hot night that made the Village look like a Renaissance painting.

  “Come on, sleepyhead,” he said now, bringing her two aspirins.

  She slipped under the covers and curled into a fetal position, holding out her hand for the tablets. “Can’t I stay in bed all day?” she asked, staring up at him like a beautiful dog who always got its way. “I’ve got a headache.”

  “We’ve got work to do. I have to write, and you have to go to the library.”

  “Can’t you take the day off? They can’t expect you to start writing right away, can they? You just got the job. Doesn’t that mean you get two weeks off? I know,” she said, sitting up. “Let’s go shopping. We could go to Barneys. Or Madison Avenue.”

  “Nope,” he said. He would have revisions on Bridesmaids Revisited until they started shooting, and he needed to finish the first draft of the Bloody Mary script by December. Historical movies about royals were all the rage, his agent said, and the studio wanted to go into production as soon as possible. “I need that research,” Philip said, playfully pulling her toe.

  “I’ll order some books from Amazon. Then I can stay here with you all day.”

  “If you stay here with me, I won’t get any work done. Hence, it’s off to the stacks.” He pulled on jeans and a T-shirt. “I’m going out for a bagel.

  You want anything?”

  “Could you bring me back a green-tea-and-apple VitaWater?” she said. “And make sure it’s green-tea-and-apple. I hate the green-tea-and-mango. Mango is gross. Oh, and could you get me a frozen Snickers bar?

  I’m hungry.”

  Philip went out, shaking his head over the indulgence of eating a candy bar for breakfast.

  On the sidewalk, he ran into Schiffer Diamond, who was being helped out of a white van by a Teamster. “Hey!” he exclaimed.

  “You’re in a good mood,” she said, kissing him on the cheek.

  “Sold a screenplay yesterday. About Bloody Mary. You should be in it.”

  “You want me to play a cocktail?”

  “Not the cocktail. The queen. First daughter of Henry the Eighth. Come on,” Philip said. “You get to cut off everyone’s head.”

  “And have my own head cut off at the end? No, thank you,” she said, walking toward the entrance to One Fifth. “I just spent the whole night shooting in a goddamn church on Madison with no air-conditioning. I’ve had enough of Catholics for the moment.”

  “I’m serious,” he said, realizing she’d be perfect for the part. “Will you at least consider it? I’ll personally deliver the screenplay when it’s finished, along with a bottle of Cristal and a tub of caviar.”

  “Cristal’s out, schoolboy. Make it a magnum of Grande Dame and I’ll think about it,” she called over her shoulder. She was always walking away from him, he thought. Wanting more of their banter, he asked where she was going.

  She folded her hands and lay them next to her chin. “Sleep,” she said.

  “I’ve got a six P.M. call.”

  “Catch you later, then,” Philip said. As he walked away, he was reminded of why it had never worked out with Schiffer. She wasn’t available for him.

  Never had been and never would be. That was what was so great about Lola. She was always available.

  Back in Philip’s apartment, Lola dragged herself out of bed and went into the kitchen. She idly thought about surprising Philip by making coffee, but after finding the bag of whole coffee beans next to a small grinder, decided it was too much trouble. She went into the bathroom and carefully brushed her teeth, then pulled her lips back into a grimace to check their whiteness. She thought about the trek up to the library at Forty-second Street on what was going to be another hot day, and she felt irritated. Why had she taken this job as Philip’s researcher? For that matter, why did she need to have a job at all? She was only going to quit as soon as she got married. But without an engagement, her mother wouldn’t let her stay in New York without a job — “it would look whor-ish,” she’d said. Continuing on her path of random thoughts, Lola reminded herself that if she hadn’t taken the job, she wouldn’t have met Philip and become, as he’d put it, his muse. It was incredibly romantic, being the muse of a great artist, and what always happened was the great artist fell in love with his muse, insisted upon marrying her, and had beautiful children with her.

  Until then, being wise in the matter of cliques and social order, Lola could already see that in Philip’s world, this muse business might not be enough. It was one thing to be around famous people, quite another to have them accept you as one of their own. In particular, she recalled an interaction last night with the world-famous movie star who’d sat at their table. He was a not particularly attractive middle-aged man who was distinctly before her time; she couldn’t recall exactly who he was or which movies he’d starred in. But since everyone else was making a huge fuss of him, hanging on his every word like he was Jesus, she realized she ought to make some effort. As it happened, he was squeezed into a chair next to her, and when he finished a long soliloquy about the beauty of seventies movies, she asked him, “Have you lived in New York long?”

  He slowly turned his head and stared at her, and the fact that it took him about a minute to complete this movement made her wonder if she was supposed to be afraid of him. She wasn’t — and if he thought he could intimidate Lola Fabrikant with a look, he had another thing coming.

  “And what do you do?” he asked, mocking the tone of her question.

  “Don’t tell me you’re an actress.”

  “I’m Philip’s researcher,” she replied with the edge to her voice that usually silenced strangers. But not this man. He looked from her to Philip and back again. He grinned. “A researcher, eh?” He laughed. “And did I tell you I’m Santa Claus?”

  The whole table erupted in laughter, including Philip. Sensing this was not a good time to go into high dudgeon, Lola laughed along gamely, but really, she told herself, it was too much. She wasn’t used to being treated this way. She would let it go this once but not again. Of course, she planned to bring it up with Philip, but would be careful about how she did so. In general, it wasn’t a good idea to complain about a man’s friends to his face — it could hurt his feelings, and then he would associate you with negativity.

  In the meantime, she thought, she should find a way to be taken a bit more seriously. No man wanted a woman whom other people thought silly — in which case, a visit to the library might not be a bad idea after all.

  When Philip returned to the apartment, however, he found Lola had gone back to bed and appeared to be in a deep sleep. He went into his office a
nd quickly knocked off five pages. From the other room, he heard the sound of Lola’s gentle snoring. She was so natural, he thought. Reading through his pages, which were excellent, he decided she was his good-luck charm.

  The Rices’ apartment was slowly taking shape. The once empty dining room now held an ornate table with six Queen Anne chairs that Billy had mysteriously conjured from a friend’s storage bin somewhere on the Upper East Side. The table was on loan until a proper (meaning larger) table could be found; in the meantime, it was strewn with decorating books and color swatches, both fabric and paint, and Internet printouts of various pieces of furniture. Annalisa looked at the table and smiled, recalling something Billy Litchfield had said to her weeks ago.

  “My dear,” he’d admonished her when she brought up the fact that she might, in the future, go back to work as a lawyer, “how do you expect to do two jobs?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You already have a job,” he explained. “From now on, your life with your husband is your job.” He corrected himself. “It’s more than a job.

  It’s a career. Your husband makes the money, and you create the life. And it’s going to take effort. You’ll rise each morning and exercise, not simply to look attractive but to build endurance. Most ladies prefer yoga.

  Then you will dress. You’ll arrange your schedule and send e-mails. You’ll attend a meeting for a charity in the morning, or perhaps visit an art dealer or make a studio visit. You’ll have lunch, and then there are meetings with decorators, caterers, and stylists; you’ll have your hair colored twice a month and blow-dried three times a week. You’ll do private tours of museums and read, I hope, three newspapers a day: The New York Times, The New York Post, and The Wall Street Journal. At the end of the day, you’ll prepare for an evening out, which may include two or three cocktail parties and a dinner. Some will be black-tie charity events where you’ll be expected to wear a gown and never the same dress twice. You’ll need to have your hair and makeup done. You’ll also plan vacations and weekend outings. You may purchase a country house, which you will also have to organize, staff, and decorate. You will meet the right people and court them in a manner both subtle and shameless. And then, my dear, there will be children. So,” Billy concluded, “let’s get busy.”