Closing Costs

by Seth Margolis

  “That’s right. Guy is the founder,” she added, the defensive edge sharper now.

  The day Positano went public—the company was named for the town in Italy where they’d spent their honeymoon—Guy’s stock was worth forty-seven million dollars. She’d found the amount unreal, obscene, even terrifying. Her parents were high-school teachers in a small town near Pittsburgh where the owner of the local Jiffy Lube franchise was at the top of the economic heap. They were middle class and proud of it and had bequeathed to her a deep-rooted suspicion of wealth. She felt strongly that forty-seven million dollars, even on paper, was a dangerous sum of money. You could never work hard enough to justify such an amount. It had taken Guy months of pleading before she agreed to call a real-estate broker, by which time Positano’s stock had slid forty percent. They were reliving the Internet boom-and-bust all over again, but this time if felt more personal, just the two of them.

  “Six rooms minimum, south of Ninety-sixth…” Lucinda tap-tapped the data into her Palm. “Can you go as high as one-point-three?”

  “We could go that high—assuming, of course, we could get a good price for this place.”

  Lucinda arched her pruned eyebrows. “I could get you seven-ten, seven-twenty,” she said with a shrug, as if tossing off the price of a quart of milk. “Unless you want to sell quickly, in which case seven-even. I’ll have a queen-size brought in for the open house.” She looked hopelessly around the small, cluttered bedroom.

  “The closets are actually quite large,” Rosemary said, opening Guy’s closet to make her point. His golf bag tumbled out.

  “I sold 6A and 9A,” Lucinda said. “Trust me, I know the closets in this line.”

  Rosemary shoved the golf bag back into the closet, displacing a row of suits Guy never wore anymore. His long bathrobe, which hung on a hook behind the door, prevented the door from closing securely and the golf bag fell out again.

  Lucinda got up from the bed and stepped daintily over the bag, as if avoiding a corpse. “I’ll have to call you later about the open house. And I’ll see what I have in inventory to show you.”

  Imagining a gigantic warehouse containing an inventory of dark apartments, Rosemary followed her into the living room, where Lucinda glanced at the swinging twins.

  “Is that cute?” she said. “And I love the window treatment.”

  “I can’t wait for more space,” Rosemary said.

  “New Yorkers dream in floor plans,” Lucinda said. “No, really, it’s their most recurring dream, more common than that one about studying for the wrong test. Freud said that walking in and out of rooms in a dream is really about sex—penetration, I suppose. Did I mention I was a psych major at BU? Helps in this business, trust me. But with Manhattan apartments going for two thousand a square foot in top buildings, dreaming of walking in and out of rooms has nothing to do with fucking, it’s just the desire for more space, case closed. The people I deal with would trade a year of sex for a walk-in closet with custom shelving. Make that five years! Trust me, Freud never saw a real-estate market like this one.”

  She handed Rosemary a business card at the door. “I’m going to love working with you,” she said, as if that mattered most. She reached in her pants pocket and took out a small cell phone. “Last year I sold seventy million in co-ops, but this year I’m already ahead of that by twenty percent, and with this stock market.”

  Rosemary closed the door and heard the nasal beeping of a dialing cell phone from the other side. She went to the living room and sat on the sagging sleeper sofa, where she watched her boys’ syncopated rocking. Back and forth, back and forth. Patrick, Edward, Patrick, Edward. She had a bad feeling about this move. They needed more space, that much was irrefutable. But with the stock market going nowhere, was this really the time to buy? Guy’s salary was just over a hundred thousand a year: Positano was losing buckets of money—truckloads—on just a few million dollars in revenue, so anything larger would be unacceptable to investors. She felt herself frowning and imagined that she looked much like her mother at that moment, an anxious and disapproving Republican.

  Patrick, Edward, Patrick, Edward, Patrick, Edward. She almost wished they’d wake up—they always regained consciousness with a united howl—so she’d have the distraction of changing their diapers, feeding them, burping them, then changing them again, then feeding them…

  No, she’d let Lucinda Wells find them their dream home. Guy was a risk taker, and she could learn something from him about trust and optimism. Hadn’t she tried to talk him out of leaving his job at the brokerage to start Positano? He’d ignored her and was now worth…what was the stock price that morning? Twelve and a half or twelve and three-quarters? Well, somewhere around twenty-five million dollars.

  Oh, God. Just thinking about that number, reduced as it was, made her face flush and her stomach tighten. A number like that had to change things, and not always for the better, she felt certain. The apartment was just the start.

  Two

  “The tile!” shrieked Lucinda Wells in the foyer of the Gimmels’ apartment at 218 West End Avenue. She glanced down, her lavishly made-up face contorted by unfathomable emotion. Peggy Gimmel observed her carefully. Was she impressed by the gleaming marble-look linoleum or terrified that a gaping hole would open up and send her sprawling down to the fifth floor?

  “We had it put in when we bought the place,” Peggy said. Next to the real-estate broker her voice sounded meek and hesitant. She cleared her throat. “We’ve never replaced a single tile.”

  “Why would you?” Lucinda Wells glanced sharply at her. Did she expect an answer? Peggy shrugged. She’d called the agent only that morning and had been surprised at her offer to come over that day.

  “I didn’t have time to straighten up,” she said. This was accurate but hardly relevant, since the apartment was always immaculate.

  “I sold 12D, did your daughter tell you that?” Lucinda said as she led Peggy into her own living room. “I love it, I really do. The…the carpet.” She swept her right foot over the rust-colored shag as if scraping off dog poop.

  Peggy wondered if Lucinda Wells had sold an apartment in every building in New York. She certainly had the energy for it, the metabolism of a nuclear reactor. Her eyes blinked continually like tiny cameras, recording everything. Click. Click. Click. Peggy half expected little flashes to go off.

  “The crown moldings!” she cried. Click click click. “These old porcelain light switches, I haven’t seen these in years.” Click click click. “Oh my God, frosted sconces!” Click click click.

  She turned abruptly and marched back through the foyer and into the dining room. Peggy checked discreetly to see if her sharp heels had left impressions in the marble-look tile.

  “Incredible,” Lucinda said. “I love what you’ve done with the space.”

  We did it thirty-five years ago, Peggy almost said, but she felt a rush of gratitude nonetheless. She’d heard Lily, on the phone with a friend, refer to the apartment as Neanderthal, and that was twenty years ago.

  “You haven’t changed anything, even these old radiator covers.” Lucinda gave the metal cover a sharp rap.

  “Is that good?” Peggy managed to ask

  “Is that good? Are you kidding?”

  Was that an answer? Was she expected to reply?

  Lucinda charged into the kitchen. “I grew up in a kitchen just like this.” She turned slowly at the center of the room.

  “It gets quite a bit of afternoon sun,” Peggy pointed out.

  “Tell me about it! I’m dying to see what you’ve done with the maid’s.”

  There was hardly room for the two of them in the tiny room behind the kitchen, so Peggy waited in the back hallway for Lucinda to make her inspection.

  “I see you don’t have live-in help,” she said as she squeezed past Peggy and headed back into the kitchen.

  “Lily’s been gone for twenty years, and even when she was home we never had anyone—”

  “Joking!”
Lucinda said, and beat her to the den by several seconds.

  “Oh, hello! Am I disturbing you?” she said to Monroe, who was sitting on the sofa staring at FNN.

  Monroe turned slowly from the television and looked blankly at the intruder. He probably saw stock prices marching across her face.

  “This is Lucinda Wells, a real-estate broker. This is my husband, Monroe.”

  “A pleasure,” Lucinda said. “Do you mind?” But she had already charged into the room. “Buyers like to see an extra bedroom turned into a den,” she observed. “Shows the possibilities. How about this market, anyway?” She tapped the TV screen with a red-lacquered fingernail. “Quelle nightmare.”

  Monroe stared at her, mouth agape.

  “The venetian blinds!” Click click click. “That same shag carpet…how coordinated!” Click click click. “A console TV—when did you last see one of those!”

  Monroe’s eyes fixed on the broker’s long, impossibly narrow calves as she headed for the door. His mouth formed a slack, lascivious grin. Peggy swatted his shoulder as she followed but, truthfully, felt relieved that something, even the stilts of an anorectic real-estate broker, could distract him from the tumbling price of Cisco.

  “We never did much with it,” Peggy said in Lily’s old room. Indeed, the room was a shrine to Lily’s teenage years in the seventies.

  “So this is where it all began,” Lucinda said with a trace of awe. She might have been describing the nursery of Amelia Earhart or Madame What’s-her-name, the French scientist. All Lily was was the wife of a rich banker who attended a lot of parties that got written up in the papers. Peggy frowned. It wasn’t as if the apartment was some sort of Third World hovel from which Lily had clawed her way to Park Avenue.

  “She went to P.S. 87, just a block away,” she felt obliged to point out.

  “How extraordinary.” Lucinda peered closely at the room’s details, like a tourist at a presidential birthplace.

  “Crinoline bedspreads,” she said. Click click click. “Bamboo wallpaper. You must have cornered the market in rust shag, LOL.”

  Up to that point, the broker’s inspection had made Peggy uncomfortable, but the tour of the master bedroom felt as invasive as a gynecological exam.

  “Love how the spreads on the twin beds match the floor-to-ceiling drapes.” Click click click. “And the color of the drapes…how did you ever find the perfect rust?”

  She nearly swooned in the master bathroom as Peggy waited outside.

  “These fixtures…you could advise the Met on preservation.” Click click click. “Why do people insist on ripping out these old flushometer toilets? Why? And I love the medicine cabinet, the silvering is such an authentic touch.”

  She emerged, slowly shaking her head. “Perfect,” she cooed, stretching her arms as if she’d just stood up from a massage. Then the arms fell to her sides. “Where can we talk?”

  Before Peggy could reply, Lucinda headed straight for the living room and plunked herself down on the sofa. The plump goose-down pillows nearly swallowed her.

  “Did you have a price in mind?” she asked when Peggy caught up.

  “My friend Sonia said she thought we could ask eight—”

  “Two-point-three,” Lucinda said with a pursing of glossed lips.

  Million? Peggy almost asked but thank God didn’t. She sat in an armchair next to the sofa as blood rushed up into her face.

  “Maybe you were expecting more, but my policy is, be realistic. Manage expectations. Two-point-three is a lock. How do you feel about that?”

  Dizzy came to mind, but Peggy cleared her throat and managed to say, “Fine.”

  “I’d like an exclusive for six weeks, though I’ll sell this place sooner than that. Classic sevens don’t come on the market every day. I’d like to schedule an open house for next week.”

  “Next week?”

  “What kind of place are you planning on moving to?”

  “We hadn’t really—”

  “Two bedrooms? One and a half baths? I assume you’ll want to stay in the neighborhood.” Lucinda sat forward and narrowed her eyes. “You’re not thinking of moving to Florida, are you?”

  “Of course not,” Peggy said quickly, and decided to wrest control of the conversation. “We’d like something smaller, obviously. Two bedrooms, two full baths.” She couldn’t imagine why they’d need the second tub, but it seemed important to contradict Lucinda on at least one point.

  “Doorman, sunlight, move-in condition. I can find you something for one-point-two, one-point-three.”

  Leaving a million in the bank, Peggy thought. Her face warmed again as she considered how she was going to keep Monroe’s speculative hands off a million dollars.

  “A condo, of course. You don’t want to face a board interview.”

  “No?”

  “You’ll have to reveal everything. Your investments, liquid assets, the details of your sex life.”

  “Our—”

  “Joking! Most of the newer buildings in your price range are condos. No board approval. You own your own apartment outright. In co-ops like this one you own shares in a corporation, and a board evaluates your fitness to buy. It’s a very intrusive business, worse than a gyno exam, LOL.”

  “Ell-oh—”

  “So we’ll stick to a condo and spare you the stirrups, okay?” Her wink revealed a huge, blue-painted lid.

  “This is all happening so quickly,” Peggy said, glancing quickly around the room as if for the last time.

  “Listen, you can’t drag this sort of thing out. You’ll make yourself crazy.” Lucinda sprang to her feet and stood directly in front of Peggy. From down below her face looked especially long and narrow, and her bony shoulders arched forward, ospreylike. “Okay to leave the contract for the exclusive with the doorman?”

  Peggy had learned that Lucinda’s questions didn’t require answers. She followed her to the front door and unlocked it.

  “You have a beautiful apartment, Mrs. Gimmel. Exceptional. It’ll go like that.”

  Peggy shut the door and leaned heavily against the wall. Her home for thirty-five years, reduced to a sharp snap of Lucinda Wells’s fingers. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine herself and Monroe in another apartment. Something new and white, without moldings to dust, and perhaps there’d be a view. She could picture the apartment easily enough, sunny and clean, heat and air-conditioning whispering through those nice little ducts you didn’t have to clean or have serviced, but she couldn’t quite place her and Monroe inside it. They were like the drapes in the living room, built specially for these windows. Where else would they fit?

  She shook her head to clear it and opened her eyes. It was time to go, absolutely. Only this morning she’d dropped a spoon on the kitchen floor and, when she bent over to retrieve it, noticed a streak of schmutz under the toe kick, an entire civilization of crumbs and hair and dust that would never, in the past, have escaped her efforts.

  And the money. She didn’t dare think of the sum that broker had mentioned. When had prices gotten that high? Why hadn’t she noticed? Never mind that, who the hell could afford to buy their place? Lily and Barnett, obviously, but they’d sooner move to the Congo than West End Avenue. Then who? It struck her as perfectly logical, in an absurd way, that anyone who could afford to buy the apartment wouldn’t want to.

  She’d lie down for a few minutes and try to forget the whole thing. She walked by the den and cast a weary glance at Monroe, his face shimmering with reflected stock prices, untroubled by the momentous decisions awaiting them. In the master bedroom she lay down on her bed with a sigh and closed her eyes. An afternoon nap—already things were going downhill. It was the money, of course. Money was always the issue, too much or too little, either way. So much money—surely a sum like…a sum like that woman mentioned would have consequences.

  Rosemary Pierce ran from the living room to the kitchen to the bedroom, a twin in each arm, searching for the cordless phone. Like the TV remote, it was
never where she needed it to be. If Heisenberg were alive he’d invent another, and far more useful, Uncertainty Theory to explain why the very act of searching for a small household appliance guaranteed that it would be somewhere you didn’t even think to look. She gave up looking when the answering machine picked up after four rings. Patrick was wailing for a feeding and Edward was taking quick gasps through his puckered mouth, always the prelude to a full-throttled crying jag.

  “Please leave a message for Rosemary, Guy, Patrick, or Edward after the beep,” she heard herself say. “One of us, most likely Rosemary or Guy, will call you back.” A cute idea at the time, but she imagined most of their friends were already tired of it. She’d make a new message as soon as she had time, perhaps when the twins left for college.

  “It’s Lucinda. Are you there? Rosemary?”

  “Believe it or not, I do get out,” she shouted at the answering machine. “Just not today,” she added more quietly. “Or yesterday, actually.”

  “Okay, I’ll make this quick. I found your apartment. I knew the minute I walked in. I’m standing in front of the building right now, it’s just around the corner from you, three bedrooms, three baths, full-service building, eighty percent financing…needs work, of course, I mean the place is a total dump, a wreck, I haven’t seen that much shag carpeting since I lost my virginity to Matthew Bronstein on the floor of my parents’ den, and we all know how long ago that was, LOL. Anyway, it’s got incredible bones. The apartment, not Matthew Bronstein.”

  Lucinda released a high-pitched laugh that sounded very much like the answering machine beep and triggered a complete meltdown from Edward.

  “…the bathroom fixtures and the window treatments…yuck. Some of my clients wouldn’t see the possibilities, but I know you can, with your art background. Rip out the whole fucking thing and start fresh. God, doesn’t that sound heavenly? Oops, I’m getting another call. Listen, this one won’t last. You can have it for just north of two mil if you make a preemptive bid right away. Call me.”