One Fifth Avenue

by Candace Bushnell

Sure enough, her phone began bleeping moments later, announcing a text from Thayer Core. “Just saw Oakland leave the building. What’s up?”

  Lola thought for a moment and, realizing she had an opportunity to cause trouble for Schiffer, wrote, “Going to see Schiffer Diamond. She’s on location somewhere in the city.”

  Next door, Enid was also getting ready to go out. Her sources told her that Billy was suspected of selling Sandy Brewer the cross, although Billy Litchfield’s involvement wasn’t the only thing that perplexed her.

  She went down to the lobby, passing by the Gooches’ apartment. Inside, Mindy was on the phone with her office. “I’m not coming in today,” she said. “A very good friend of mine passed away unexpectedly, and I’m too upset to leave my house.” She hung up and opened a new file for her blog, already having decided to use Billy’s death as a topic. “Today, I officially became middle-aged,” she wrote. “I’m not going to hide from the truth. Instead, I’m going to scream it from the rooftops: I am a middle-aged woman. The recent and untimely death of one of my most beloved friends has pointed up the inevitable. I have finally reached the age when friends start dying. Not parents—we all expect that. But friends. Our peers. My generation. And it’s made me wonder how much time I have left myself, and what I’m going to do with that time.”

  Crossing the street, Enid knocked on Flossie Davis’s door, then let herself in with the key. She was surprised to find Flossie out of bed and sitting in the living room, looking out the window at the commotion in front of One Fifth. “I was wondering how long it would take you to get here,” Flossie said. “You see? I was right all along. The cross was in Louise Houghton’s apartment. And no one believed me. You don’t know what it’s been like all these years, knowing the truth, and no one listened. You don’t know—”

  “Stop,” Enid said, cutting her off. “We both know you took the cross. And Louise found out and made you give it to her. Why didn’t she turn you in? What did you have on her?”

  “And you call yourself a gossip columnist,” Flossie said, clicking her tongue. “It sure took you long enough to figure it out.”

  “Why did you take it?”

  Flossie snorted. “Because I wanted it. It was so pretty. And it was right there. And it was only going to be locked up in that stupid museum along with every other dead thing. And Louise saw me take it. I didn’t know she saw me until I went to the Pauline Trigère fashion show. Louise sat next to me, and she’d never done that before. ‘I know what you have in your bag,’ she whispered. Louise was scary even then. She had those strange blue eyes—almost gray. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said. The next morning, Louise came down to my apartment. I was living in Philip’s apartment then. Philip wasn’t born yet. And you were working at the newspaper and not paying attention to anyone except yourself.”

  Enid nodded, remembering. How different life had been in those days. Entire families often lived in a two-bedroom apartment, sharing one bathroom, but they’d been lucky. Her father had bought the two apartments side by side and was going to turn them into one large apartment when he’d suddenly died of a heart attack, leaving Enid with one apartment and Flossie and her little daughter with the other. “Louise accused me of taking the cross,” Flossie said, continuing her story. “She threatened to turn me in to the authorities. She said I would go to jail. She knew I was a widow, trying to take care of my child. She said she would take pity on me if I gave her the cross. Then she was going to slip it back into the museum and no one would be the wiser.”

  “But she didn’t give it back,” Enid said.

  “That’s right,” Flossie said. “Because she wanted it for herself. She wanted it all along. She was greedy. And besides, if she’d given it back to the museum, she wouldn’t have been able to hold it over my head.”

  “You had something on her,” Enid said. “But what?”

  Flossie looked around the room as if to make sure no one could overhear them. She shrugged, then leaned forward in her chair. “Now that she’s dead, she can’t do anything to me. So why not? Why not let the world know? Louise was a murderer.”

  “Oh, Flossie.” Enid shook her head mournfully.

  “You don’t believe me?” Flossie said. “Well, it’s true. She killed her husband.”

  “Everyone knows he died from a staph infection.”

  “That’s what Louise made people think. And no one ever questioned her. Because she was Louise Houghton.” Flossie began to wheeze with excitement. “And everyone forgot—all that time she spent in China before she came to New York? She knew all about diseases. How to cure them and how to make them worse. Did anyone ever think about what she was growing on that terrace? About what was in her greenhouse? I did. And one day, I found out. ‘Belladonna,’ I said. ‘If you turn me in, I’ll turn you in,’ I said. She didn’t dare return the cross then. Without it, she would have had nothing on me.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Enid said.

  “Who said it had to make sense?” Flossie said. “You know perfectly well what it was about. Louise didn’t want to leave that apartment. It was her pride and joy. And then, after she’d spent a million dollars to do it all up the way she liked, and everyone was calling her the queen of society, her husband wanted to sell it. And there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. He had all the money, and the apartment was in his name. He was always smart that way. He probably guessed what Louise was really like. And sure enough, she sent him on that trip, and two weeks later, he was dead.”

  “You know you’re still not safe,” Enid said. “Now that the cross has been discovered, they’ll reopen the case. Someone may have seen you take it. A guard, perhaps, who’s still alive. You could go to jail.”

  “You never had any common sense!” Flossie snapped. “Louise paid off the guards. So who’s going to tell them—you? You would turn in your own stepmother? If you do, you’ll have to tell the whole story. About how Louise was a murderer. You’ll never do it. You wouldn’t dare. You’ll do anything to preserve the reputation of that building. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d commit murder yourself.” Flossie took a deep breath, gearing up for another attack. “I’ve never understood you or people like you. It’s only a stupid building. There are millions of them in New York City. Now get out.” Flossie started wheezing. After Enid fetched a glass of water and made sure the attack had passed, she left.

  Outside, Enid stood on the sidewalk across the street from One Fifth, gazing at the building. She tried to see the building the way Flossie saw it—as just another building—but couldn’t. One Fifth was like a piece of living art, unique and beautifully executed, perfectly positioned at the end of Fifth Avenue, in close—but not too close—proximity to Washington Square Park. And there was the address itself. “One Fifth.” Clean and authoritative and implying so many things—class and money and prestige and even, Enid thought, a bit of magic, the kind of real-life magic that made life so endlessly interesting. Flossie was wrong, Enid decided. Everyone wanted to live in One Fifth, and if they didn’t, it was only because they lacked imagination. She raised her hand to hail a cab and, getting into the backseat, gave the driver the address of the New York Public Library.

  Alan, the PA, rapped on the door of Schiffer Diamond’s location trailer. The door was opened a crack by the publicist, Karen. “Philip Oakland’s here,” Alan said, standing aside to let Philip pass. Behind him was a band of paparazzi and two news crews, having discovered the location of the day’s shooting at the Ukrainian Institute on Fifth Avenue and then finding Schiffer’s trailer on a side street. Billy Litchfield wasn’t of particular interest to them, but Schiffer Diamond was. She had found the body. It was possible she’d had something to do with his death or knew something about it or had given him drugs or taken drugs herself. In the trailer was a leather couch, a small table, a makeup area, a bathroom with a shower, and a tiny bedroom with a single bed and chair. The lawyer, Johnnie Toochin, who had been called in to help with damage contr
ol, now sat on the leather couch, talking on his phone. “Hey, Philip,” Johnnie said, greeting him with a raised hand. “What a mess.”

  “Where is she?” Philip asked Karen, who motioned to the bedroom. Philip opened the narrow door. Schiffer was sitting on the bed wearing a terry-cloth robe, her legs crossed beneath her. She was staring blankly at a script but looked up when Philip came in.

  “I don’t know if I can do this today,” she said.

  “Of course you can. You’re a great actress,” Philip said. He sat down in the chair across from her.

  “That was one of the last things Billy said to me.” She pulled the robe across her body as if she were cold. “You know, if it weren’t for Billy, we might never have met.”

  “Yes, we would have. Somehow.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I wouldn’t have become an actress, and I wouldn’t have done Summer Morning. I keep thinking about how a chance meeting with one person can change your life. Is it fate or coincidence?”

  “But you had the opportunity. And you made it work.”

  “That’s right, Philip,” she said. She looked at him, her expression vulnerable. She had yet to have her makeup done. Her face was clean, and there were little lines around her eyes. “I keep wondering why we can’t do that. Make it work.”

  “I fucked up again, didn’t I?” Philip said.

  “Yeah.” She nodded. “And I guess I did, too. All those years, I kept thinking, What if? What if I hadn’t gone to Europe. Or what if I’d seen you that time when you came to L.A.”

  “Or what if I’d managed to break up with Lola?” Philip asked. “Would you still being seeing Brumminger?”

  “You have to ask?” Schiffer said.

  “Yeah,” Philip said. “I guess I’ve never managed to ask the right question.”

  “Will you ever manage it, Philip? If not, we should end this right now. I need to know. I want to move on one way or another. I want it to be clean.”

  Philip leaned back in the chair and put his hands in his hair. Then he started laughing.

  “What’s so damn funny?” she asked.

  “This,” he said. “This situation. Look,” he said, sitting next to her on the bed and taking her hand. “This is probably the worst time to ask you this, but do you really want to marry me?”

  She looked down at his hand and shook her head. “What do you think, schoolboy?”

  19

  A couple of hours later, Schiffer Diamond, made up and wearing a long gown for the scene at the Ukrainian Institute, came out of her trailer. Philip was still holding her hand, as if he didn’t dare let go of her, and after he helped her down the steps, the photographers closed in with their cameras. Philip and Schiffer exchanged a look and began running down the sidewalk to a waiting van. The paparazzi were taken by surprise, and there was a jostling in the crowd, and two photographers were knocked down. Nevertheless, Thayer Core managed to hold up his iPhone and snap a picture of the happy couple, which he then e-mailed to Lola. “I think your BF is cheating on you,” he wrote.

  Lola got the e-mail immediately and tried to call Philip. She’d suspected something like this would happen, but now that it had, she couldn’t believe it. Philip didn’t answer his phone, of course, so she texted Thayer Core to find out where he was. Then she opened the closet to get dressed, her hands trembling so violently with frustration and anger that she knocked several tops off their hangers. This gave her a wicked idea, and she went into the kitchen, found the scissors, and pulling several pairs of jeans from the shelf on Philip’s side of the closet, cut the legs off. She refolded the tops of the mangled jeans and replaced them on the shelf. Then she kicked the cutoff legs under the bed, put on her makeup, and went out.

  She found Thayer standing behind a police barricade on Seventy-ninth Street. There was a carnival atmosphere, with the presence of the paparazzi drawing the attention of passersby who kept stopping to find out what was going on. “I’m going in,” Lola announced grimly, stepping around the barricade. Four beefy Teamsters were blocking the entrance. “I’m Philip Oakland’s girlfriend,” she said, attempting to explain why she must be allowed to pass.

  “Sorry,” one of the Teamsters said, impassive.

  “I know he’s in there. And I have to see him,” she wailed.

  A young woman sidled up next to her. “Did you say you were Philip Oakland’s girlfriend?” she asked.

  “That’s right,” Lola said.

  “He just went in with Schiffer Diamond. We thought they were together.”

  “I’m his girlfriend,” Lola said. “I live with him.”

  “You’re kidding,” the girl said, and put her cell phone in Lola’s face to record her remarks. “What’s your name?”

  “Lola Fabrikant. Philip and I have been together for months.”

  “And Schiffer Diamond stole him from you?”

  “Yes,” Lola said, realizing she had an opportunity to play a significant part in this drama. Rising to the occasion, she summoned her most confused tone of voice and said, “I woke up this morning, and everything was fine. Then two hours ago, someone texted me a photograph of the two of them holding hands.”

  The girl gasped in horror. “You just found out?”

  “That’s right. And I might even be pregnant with his baby.”

  “What a scumbag!” the girl declared in female solidarity.

  Hearing this pronouncement on Philip’s character, Lola was momentarily worried that she’d gone too far. She hadn’t meant to say she was pregnant, but she’d gotten caught up in the moment, and it had just slipped out. But she couldn’t take it back now—and besides, Philip had wronged her. And it certainly was possible that she could be pregnant.

  “Brandon!” the girl shouted, waving at one of the photographers and pointing at Lola. “She says she’s Philip Oakland’s girlfriend. And she’s having his baby. We need a photograph.” The photographer leaned across the barricade and snapped Lola’s picture. Within seconds, the rest of the pack followed suit, aiming their cameras at her and clicking off shots. Lola put her hand on her hip and posed prettily, glad that she’d had the foresight to dress in high heels and a trench coat. At last, she thought. This was the moment she’d been waiting for her entire life. She smiled, knowing it was crucial she look stunning in the photographs that would undoubtedly be all over the Internet in a matter of hours.

  Billy’s death was not ruled a suicide but an accidental overdose. He hadn’t taken as many pills as suspected; rather, it was the combination of four different kinds of prescription medication that did him in. Two weeks after his death, a service was held for him at St. Ambrose Church, where Billy had mourned the death of Mrs. Louise Houghton just nine months earlier.

  It turned out that Billy had recently made a will, leaving all his worldly belongings to his niece and requesting that a service be held in the church patronized by his idol, Mrs. Louise Houghton. Many of the hundreds of people who knew Billy came, and although the Brewers claimed Billy had sold them the Cross of Bloody Mary, there was, people agreed, no way to prove it, especially when Johnnie Toochin revealed that Mrs. Houghton had left Billy a wooden box filled only with costume jewelry. However, the box was never discovered, and so the provenance of the cross remained a mystery, and Billy’s reputation stayed intact.

  During his memorial service, several people gave eulogies about how wonderful Billy was, and how he represented a certain era in New York, and how, with his passing, that era was finished.

  “New York isn’t New York anymore without Billy Litchfield,” declared an old-monied banker who was the husband of a famous socialite.

  Perhaps it wasn’t, Mindy thought, but it still went on, the same as always. As if in confirmation of this fact, Lola Fabrikant flounced in halfway through the service, causing a stir in the back of the church. She was wearing a short black low-cut dress and, inexplicably, a small black hat with a veil that just covered her eyes. Lola thought the hat made her look mysterious and alluring, in
keeping with her new role as the slighted young woman. The day after Schiffer and Philip were photographed together, Lola’s picture had appeared in three newspapers, and there were discussions about her on six blogs, in which the general consensus was that she was a babe and could do better than Philip. But after that, the interest in her had quickly waned. Now, although it would mean seeing Philip and Schiffer and Enid, she and Thayer had decided she ought to attend Billy’s service, if only to remind people of her existence.

  Lola had agreed reluctantly. She could face Philip and Schiffer if she had to, but she was terrified of Enid. The day she’d gone to confront Philip on the set at the Ukrainian Institute, she’d returned to One Fifth after being “assaulted”—her words—by the paparazzi, realizing if she hung around any longer, she would lose her mystique. Safely inside Philip’s apartment, she waited for him all afternoon, going over the situation again and again in her mind and wishing she could take it all back. She reminded herself that she didn’t know for a fact that Philip and Schiffer were really together; he might have only been comforting her after all. She would have to figure out a way to exonerate herself. But at about five, Enid appeared in Philip’s apartment, coming up silently behind Lola, who was in the kitchen, pouring herself yet another vodka. Lola was so startled she nearly dropped the bottle.

  “Oh, good, dear,” Enid said. “You’re here.”

  “Where else would I be?” Lola asked nervously, taking a gulp of her drink.

  “The question is, where should you be?” Enid said. She smiled broadly and sat down on the couch, patting the place next to her. “Come here, dear,” she said, giving Lola a frightening smile. “I want to talk to you.”

  “Where’s Philip?” Lola demanded.

  “I imagine he’s still with Schiffer.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t you know, dear? He’s in love with her. He always has been, and I’m afraid for your sake, he always will be.”