“And you think Paul Rice did it,” Enid said skeptically.
“I don’t think he did it. I know he did it,” Mindy said. “He told me if I didn’t approve his air conditioners, it was war. If this isn’t a sign,” she continued, shaking the little green army man in Enid’s face, “I don’t know what is.”
“You must confront him,” Enid said.
“I can’t do it alone,” Mindy said. “I need your help.”
“I don’t see how I can help you,” Enid said calmly. “Dealing with unpleasant residents is your job. After all, you are the president of the board.”
“You were the president of the board for fifteen years,” Mindy said.
“There must be something we can do. Some way to get them out.”
Enid smiled. “They’ve only just moved in.”
“Look, Enid,” Mindy said, beginning to lose patience. “We were friendly once.”
“Yes, we were.” Enid nodded. “We were friendly for a long time.We were even friendly after you conspired to have me removed as president.”
“I thought you didn’t want the job anymore,” Mindy protested.
“I didn’t, and that’s why I forgave you. I thought, If she wants the job that much, why not let her have it?”
Mindy looked away. “What if the approval was a mistake?” she asked tentatively.
Enid sighed. “There’s nothing we can do. The only way we can force them out is if they don’t pay their maintenance. And given the circumstances, I’d say that’s highly unlikely.”
“I’m not sure I can live in the same building with this man,” Mindy said.
“Then perhaps you’ll have to move,” Enid said. She held open her door.
“So sorry I can’t help you, dear. Have a good day.”
Lola put down the novel Atonement and, opening the door to the terrace, stepped out onto the icy surface in her high-heeled Chloé boots.
She peered over the edge and, still seeing no sign of Philip, went back inside. She closed the book and glared at the cover. It was a gift from Philip, although “gift” probably wasn’t the right word. “Suggestion” was more like it. He had given her the book after they’d had a disastrous dinner with one of his old friends. “This is a great book,” he’d said. “I thought you might enjoy it.”
“Thank you,” she’d said gratefully, although she knew exactly what he was up to. He was trying to educate her, and while she thought it was sweet of him, she couldn’t understand why he found it necessary. As far as she was concerned, it was Philip who needed educating. Every time she mentioned a hot new actor or some YouTube video everyone was talking about, or even when she played music for him off her iPod, he claimed never to have heard of any of it. This was frustrating, but she always refrained from criticizing him. She at least had the decency not to hurt his feelings and make him feel old.
In adopting this attitude, she’d found she could pretty much get Philip to do whatever she wanted. Today, for instance, they were going to visit the set of Schiffer Diamond’s new TV show. Everyone was talking about the show, and knowing Philip was, as he put it, “old friends” with Schiffer, Lola had wondered why he hadn’t gone to see her. Philip seemed to wonder, too, and, with her urging, went down to her apartment and left her a note. One evening, Schiffer called, and Philip went into his office and talked to her on the phone for an hour with his door closed while Lola waited impatiently outside. When he came out, he said he was going to see Schiffer on the set, but Lola shouldn’t bother coming with him, as it would be dull and she would be bored. This after it was her idea to go in the first place! Then she’d given him a foot massage and, while she was rubbing his feet, pointed out that a set visit would be good for her education. As his researcher and girlfriend, naturally, she wanted to understand everything about his work. “You know what I do,” he’d protested, but only mildly. “I sit at a computer all day.”
“That’s not true,” she said. “You’re going to Los Angeles for two weeks in January. And I’ll probably come out for a week. I’ll have to go to the set with you then — you can’t expect me to sit in a hotel room all day.”
“I thought we discussed L.A.,” he said, tensing his foot. “It’s going to be a nightmare. The first two weeks of production always are. I’ll be working sixteen-hour days. It won’t be fun for you at all.”
“You mean I won’t see you for two weeks?” she’d exclaimed. He must have felt guilty, because almost immediately, he agreed to take her with him to the set of Lady Superior after all. She was so pleased, she didn’t even mind about him not going to her parents’ house for Thanksgiving; she told herself it was too soon in their relationship to be spending holidays with each other’s families. She wouldn’t have wanted to spend Thanksgiving with Enid, which was what Philip had done, taking his aunt to a boring lunch at the Century Club. Philip had dragged Lola there once, and she’d vowed never to return. Everyone was over eighty. So Lola happily went back to Windsor Pines and met up with her girlfriends and stayed up until two A.M. on Friday night and showed off pictures of her and Philip and Philip’s apartment. One of her friends was engaged and planning a wedding; the others were trying to get their boyfriends to marry them. They looked at the photographs of Philip and his apartment and sighed in envy.
That was three weeks ago, and now it was nearly Christmas, and Philip had finally come up with a day for the set visit. Lola spent two days get ting ready. She’d had a massage and a spray tan, her dark hair was highlighted with strands of gold, and she’d bought a dress at Marc Jacobs. After the purchase, her mother called, wondering if she had indeed just spent twenty-three hundred dollars. Lola accused her mother of using her credit card to spy on her. They had had a rare fight, and Lola hung up, felt terrible, then called her mother back. Beetelle was nearly in tears. “Mommy, what’s wrong?” Lola demanded. When her mother didn’t respond, Lola asked in a panic, “Are you and Daddy getting a divorce?” “Your father and I are fine.” “So what’s the problem?” “Oh, Lola,” her mother said, sighing.
“We’ll talk about it when you come home for Christmas. In the meantime, try to be careful with money.”
This was very strange, and Lola hung up, perplexed. But then she decided it wasn’t important. Her mother got upset about money every now and again, but she always got over it and, feeling guilty, usually bought Lola a trinket like Chanel sunglasses.
Philip, meanwhile, was around the corner, getting his hair cut. He’d frequented this particular salon, located on Ninth Street off Fifth, for thirty years. His mother started coming to the salon in the seventies, when the clients and stylists would play music on a boom box and snort cocaine.
Naturally, the proprietor was a dear friend of his mother’s. Everyone was a dear friend of his mother’s. She’d had that charming neediness that made people want to take care of her. She’d been a trust fund girl and considered a great beauty, but there was an air of tragedy about her that only increased her fascination. No one was surprised when she killed herself in 1983.
The proprietor, Peter, had been giving Philip the same haircut for years and was nearly finished, but Philip was trying to kill time. Peter had recently recovered from cancer and had begun to work out at a gym every day, so they talked about his routine. Then they talked about Peter’s house upstate in the Catskills. Then they talked about how the neighborhood was changing. Philip was dreading the set visit and the impending meeting of his former love and his current lover. There was a bald difference between “love” and “lover,” the first being legitimate and honorable, the second being temporary and even, he thought, when it came to Lola, slightly embarrassing.
This unpleasant reality had come to light during the dinner with the Yugoslavian director. The director, who happened to have won two Academy Awards, was an elderly man who drooled, and whose Russian wife, dressed in gold Dolce & Gabbana (and twenty years younger, about the same difference in age, Philip guessed, as he and Lola), had had to feed him his soup. The director
was a curmudgeon, and his wife was ridiculous, but still, the man was a legend, and despite his age (which couldn’t be helped) and his silly wife, Philip had the utmost respect for him and had been looking forward to the dinner for months.
Lola, intentionally or not, was on her worst behavior. During a long dis-course during which the director explained his next project (a movie about an obscure civil war in Yugoslavia in the thirties), Lola had attended to her iPhone, sending texts and even taking a call from one of her girlfriends in Atlanta. “Put it away,” Philip had hissed at her. She gave him a hurt look, signaled to the waiter, and asked for a Jell-O shot, explaining to the table that she didn’t drink wine, as it was for old people. “Stop it, Lola,” he said.
“You do drink wine. You’ll have what everyone else is having.” “I don’t drink red wine,” she pointed out. “Besides, I need something strong to get through this dinner.” She’d asked the director if he’d ever worked on any popular movies. “Popular?” he’d asked, startled. “Vat is zat?”
“You know,” Lola said. “Movies for regular people.”
“Vat is regular people?” the director asked, insulted. “I think my tastes are too sophisticated for a young lady such as yourself.”
The old man hadn’t meant to be insulting, but it had come out that way. And Lola took the bait.
“What’s that mean?” she’d said. “I thought art was for the people. If the people can’t understand it, what’s the point?”
“This is zee problem with America,” the director said. He’d lifted his glass of wine to his mouth, his hand shaking so violently he spilled half the glass. “Too much democracy,” he exclaimed. “It’s zee death of art.”
For the rest of the evening, everyone ignored Lola.
In the taxi on the way back to One Fifth, Lola was fuming, staring out the window and playing with her hair.
“What’s wrong now?” Philip had asked.
“No one paid any attention to me.”
“What are you talking about?” he said.
“I was ignored, Philip. Why should I be there if I’m going to be ignored?”
“You wouldn’t have been ignored if you hadn’t made that stupid remark about his films.”
“He’s an insignificant old man. Who cares about him and his movies?
Oh, excuse me,” she added with vehemence, “his films.”
“He’s a genius, Lola. He’s allowed his idiosyncracies. And he’s earned his respect. You need to learn to honor that.”
“Are you criticizing me?” she said warningly.
“I’m pointing out that you could stand to learn a thing or two about life.”
“Listen, Philip,” she’d said. “In case you haven’t figured it out, I don’t put anybody above me. I don’t care what they’ve accomplished. I’m as good as anyone. Even if they have won two Academy Awards. Do you really think that makes a person better than other people?”
“Yes, Lola, I do,” he said.
They went into the building in stony silence. It was yet another spat that ended in sex. She seemed to have a sixth sense about when he might be angry with her, and she always managed to divert his attention with some new sexual trick. That evening, she came out of the bathroom in crotchless panties, showing off the Brazilian wax she’d had that afternoon, as a “special treat” for him. He was helpless in the face of such sexual temptation, and the next morning, they went on as before.
Now, as he shook his head about Lola while the stylist brushed the clipped hair from his shoulders, who should walk by the plate-glass window but James Gooch. Was Philip always going to run into James Gooch now, too? he wondered. How had this happened? They’d lived in the same building for years and had managed to coexist peacefully, without the acknowledgment of each other’s presence, and all of a sudden, ever since that afternoon at Paul Smith, he ran into James nearly every other day. He did not wish to increase his acquaintance with James, but it was probably inevitable, as James struck him as one of those men who, knowing he is not wanted, only becomes more insistent on pushing his way in. Sure enough, James spotted him through the selection of wigs in the shop window and, with a look of surprise, came into the salon.
“How are you?” he asked eagerly.
Philip nodded, trying not to speak. If he spoke, it was all over.
“I didn’t know they cut men’s hair here,” James said, taking in the purple velvet chairs and the fringed wall hangings.
“Been doing it forever,” Philip murmured.
“It’s so close to the building. Maybe I should start coming here. I still go to a guy on the Upper West Side.”
Philip politely inclined his head.
“We used to live up there,” James said. “I tell everyone my wife rescued me from my studio apartment and loft bed. If it weren’t for her, I’d probably still be there.”
“I hope not.” Philip stood up.
“What about you?” James asked. “Have you always lived downtown?”
“I’ve always lived in One Fifth,” Philip said. “I grew up there.”
“Nice,” James said, nodding. “What do you think about the Rices, by the way? Guy seems like an asshole to me. He hassles my wife, and then he’s putting in a two-thousand-gallon aquarium.”
“I’ve learned not to get involved in the altercations of the other residents,” Philip said dryly. “That’s my aunt’s area.”
“I thought you knew Schiffer Diamond, though,” James said. “Didn’t you two used to date?”
“A long time ago,” Philip said. He handed the cashier forty dollars and tried to get away from James by quickly slipping out the door. But James followed him. Now Philip was stuck with James for the two-block walk back to One Fifth. It seemed an eternity. “We should have dinner sometime,” James said. “My wife and I, you and your girlfriend. What’s her name again?”
“Lola,” Philip said.
“She’s young, isn’t she?” James asked nonchalantly.
“Twenty-two,” Philip said.
“That is young,” James said. “She could be your daughter.”
“Luckily, she isn’t,” Philip said.
They reached the building, and James repeated his offer of dinner.
“We can go someplace in the neighborhood. Maybe Knickerbocker?”
Philip couldn’t see a way out. What could he say? “I never want to have dinner with you and your wife”? “Maybe after Christmas,” he said.
“Perfect,” James said. “We’ll do it the first or second week after New Year’s. My book comes out in February, so I’ll be away after that.”
“What are you doing for Christmas?” Brumminger asked Schiffer Diamond over the phone.
“No plans,” Schiffer said, leaning forward in the makeup chair. She’d had four dates with Brumminger; after the fourth dinner, they’d decided to sleep together to “get it out of the way” and ascertain whether or not they were compatible. The sex was fine — adult and technically correct and slightly passionless but not unsatisfying — and Brumminger was easy and intelligent, although somewhat humorless. His lack of humor came from a residual bitterness over being fired from his position as CEO two years ago, then struggling with his perceived loss of status. If he wasn’t CEO, if he didn’t have a title after his name, who was he?
Brumminger’s yearlong hejira had taught him one thing: “Soul searching is good, but achievement is better.” He, too, had returned to New York to start over, trying to put together some deals with other former CEOs who’d been put out to pasture at sixty. “The First CEOs Club,”
he joked.
Now he said: “Want to go to Saint Barths? I’ve got a villa from the twenty-third until January tenth. If you can leave on the twenty-third, I can give you a lift. I’m flying private.”
Alan, the PA, stuck his head into the room. “You have visitors,” he mouthed. Schiffer nodded. Philip and his young girlfriend, Lola, came into the room. Philip had mentioned he’d be bringing her, and Schiffer had agreed
, curious about this girl who had managed to hold on to Philip longer than Schiffer had expected.
Stating the obvious, Philip said, “I brought Lola.”
Schiffer held out her hand. “I’ve heard about you from Enid.”
“Really?” Lola said, looking pleased.
Schiffer held up one finger and went back to her phone call. “What do you think?” Brumminger asked.
“It’s a great idea. I can’t wait,” Schiffer said, and hung up.
“Can’t wait for what?” Philip asked with the curious familiarity of having once had an intimate relationship.
“Saint Barths. At Christmas.”
“I’ve always wanted to go to Saint Barths,” Lola said, impressed.
“You should get Philip to take you,” Schiffer said, looking at Philip. “It’s one of his favorite islands.”
“It’s one of everyone’s favorite islands,” Philip grumbled. “Who’re you going with?”
“Brumminger,” Schiffer said, looking down so the makeup artist could apply mascara.
“Derek Brumminger?” he asked.
“That’s right.”
“Are you seeing him now?”
“Sort of.”
“Oh,” Philip said. He sat down on the empty chair beside her. “So when did that happen?”
“It’s new,” Schiffer said.
“Who’s Brumminger?” Lola asked, inserting herself into the conversation.
Schiffer smiled. “He’s a man who was once rich and powerful and now isn’t quite as powerful. But definitely richer.”
“Is he old?” Lola asked.
“Positively ancient,” Schiffer said. “He may even be older than Oakland.”
“They’re ready,” Alan said, poking his head in.
“Thanks, darling,” Schiffer said.
Schiffer took Lola and Philip to the set. Walking through the maze of hallways, Lola kept up a pleasant patter about how excited she was to be there, oohing and ahing over a backdrop of the Manhattan skyline, the number of people milling around, the plethora of cables and lights and equipment. Schiffer wasn’t surprised Enid hated the girl — Lola seemed to have Philip wrapped around her black polished fingernail — but she wasn’t so bad. She was perfectly friendly and seemed to have some spunk. She was just so young. Being with her made Philip look slightly desperate. But it wasn’t, Schiffer reminded herself, her problem.
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