by Connor, Anne
“What’s going on, here?” Lee asks quizzically, putting his attache case down on the table in front of him and easing himself into his chair slowly.
“We have a little bit of a presentation for you all today,” I say, sliding into the chair next to Sarah. “Would you like to kick it off, S?”
“It would be my pleasure,” she says, standing up and sliding her laptop in front of her. An image of Rich’s building appears on the whiteboard.
“Anderson Equities has identified an opportunity to purchase a residential, multi-family building in Brooklyn.”
“What the hell is this?” Lee asks, pointing to the picture. “Are you trying to screw us over intentionally?”
“May I finish?” Sarah asks, with a cool smile. “As I was saying. The former owner of this lovely building has had many chances to sell.”
She taps a key on her laptop and the next slide appears - it’s an old, faded picture of Rich.
“In the late 1990s, during one of New York’s real estate booms, the previous owner, Richard Sender, received multiple offers a month to purchase the building. But he didn’t want to sell. No, instead, he wanted to hold the property so he would have a steady income, and because he liked working in the building. He was the original Superintendent, and he loved forging connections with the tenants. Getting to know them. Working with his hands. Building something.”
She taps her laptop again and another slide appears, this one a picture of Molly and Mrs. Martinez.
“These are just two of the current tenants in the building. The older woman, on the left, has lived in the building since the 1970s. She raised her kids there. And the young woman who you see on the right is a Brooklyn native who is just starting to plant roots of her own.”
“We have a lot of plans for the building.” She taps the keyboard a few times, flashing pictures of the renderings I’ve created: pictures of the interior and exterior, new finishes and a small garden outside.
“What the hell?” Lee asks. “We had a lot of interest in that building.”
“Look,” I say, getting up from my seat. Sarah sits down beside me and folds her hands on the table in front of her. I flash O’Malley and my brother a quick look. O’Malley nods. He thinks I’m doing okay.
Not bad for a non-lawyer guy, I guess.
“The owner wasn’t interested in selling it to a firm that was going to change it too much. He loves the neighborhood. And just because he can’t be as involved with it as he used to be, he still cares what happens to it. And I promised him I’m going to keep it in the same good condition he left it in.”
Lee and his men turn their backs to me and whisper to each other. I can see that they know they’re screwed, but of course, like any good businessman, none of them wants to be the first to admit it.
“Look,” I say again, walking over to the corner of the room to flip the lightswitch back on. “I don’t want to totally leave you guys in the lurch. Which is why I’ve decided to compromise by giving you a little incentive to walk away from the deal your firm is currently suing me over.”
“Suing us over!” Eric calls out.
“Excuse my brother. He’s the only person I know who gets FOMO over things like getting sued up the ass.”
“What kind of incentive?” Lee asks.
Bingo. Got ‘em. The first sign of wavering is always the first sign I’ve done something right in business.
“Why don’t I draw up the contracts and send them over to you boys.”
Lee gets up and grabs his attache case. The other men remain silent as they make their way to the door.
I guess they listen when their attorney tells them not to get involved.
I guess that’s just one thing I don’t have in common with them.
“Drew,” Lee says as he turns back to me. “The renderings look really good.”
He turns again to leave and everyone remaining in the room lets out a collective exhale.
“Holy shit!” Eric says, pumping his arms in the air. “We fucking did it!”
“We did do it,” Sarah says, taking a sip of her coffee and smiling. “And guess what? I have some of the good bagels for us to celebrate with. They’re just for us.”
“Those other guys don’t appreciate the good bagels,” I say, flopping down into my chair. I can’t wait to tell Molly the good news.
I take out my phone to text her, and of course I have about ten texts from Clarissa.
28. Molly
I summarize ten articles, have three cups of coffee, place four very important phone calls, and have two very big blisters on my feet by lunch time, but I only have one text from Drew.
I thought the real estate guy was supposed to be the numbers guy. I’m the journalist. I’m not good with numbers. He’s good with numbers.
But aside from the one text from Drew telling me that he can talk now because his meeting is over, I also have one colossal headache from sneaking looks at anything about Clarissa that the paper has deemed newsworthy.
I’m growing more and more annoyed at myself by the second. Is it right to pry into people’s personal business, even if they are in the public eye? Even if they do have some claim to fame? After all, that’s what fame is, isn’t it? It’s when everyone knows you and no one knows you.
But what the hell did Clarissa ever do to become famous? She’s just a gorgeous girl with a famous dad. And I mean that in the nicest way possible. She doesn’t deserve to have the papers and blogs writing about her constantly.
All of the doubts I’ve had recently about my choice of career come crashing down on me like a ton of bricks. The direction the paper is going in isn’t what I envisioned for myself.
I grab my phone and my purse and kick my heels under my desk. I slip my feet into my flats and tell Natasha that I’m going out to lunch.
I take a cab over to Drew’s office. It isn’t far, and I get there in just a few minutes. I can feel that something strange is going on with him, and I want to talk to him in person. I want to tell him what I’ve decided.
29. Drew
Clarissa is standing in the lobby of my building. I want to dodge right past her, but it doesn’t seem like the right thing to do.
But I know she won’t stop blowing up my phone with texts until I come down to see her.
“I just wanted to talk,” she says as I approach her.
“You wanted to talk? And you needed me for that? There are millions of people in this city, Clarissa. You could have talked to any one of them.”
“I wanted to talk to you, okay?”
“Right. Now you want to talk to me. What about one of your other boyfriends? I know of at least two.”
She puffs her cheeks out and exhales sharply.
“It isn’t going to work out with them.”
“So you admit there was more than one guy in the picture? What, Robert wasn’t enough for you? You needed to add another asshole guy to the mix?”
“No. I don’t admit that. God, Drew, you think you know everything.”
“So you are saying there wasn’t yet another guy you were dating?”
“No. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that…”
Her voice is small and meek. This woman drove me crazy, made me feel like I had an obligation to her. I was relieved when she broke off the engagement, in a way. I was angry, of course, that she had gone back to her piece-of-shit ex, but I had bigger things to deal with. This is just so much petty nonsense, and I don’t want to get wrapped up in it again.
But I don’t want to see her in pain, either.
She isn’t a bad person. Just confused, immature, and dramatic.
“Come on. It’s okay.” I soften my tone. She must really be a mess if she’s coming to me instead of any of the girls in her social circle.
Clarissa always had a lot of friends. Her level of beauty and wealth always attracted people.
“What’s going on, C?”
“Oh, God. I’m sorry that I’m coming to you like this.�
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“Just spill. You’re already here. Tell me what’s going on.”
“Oh, God. It’s horrible.”
She takes a tissue out of her oversized tote bag and sits down on the edge of the large fountain in the middle of the lobby. I sit down next to her, careful to give her space.
I don’t want there to be any confusion about our relationship. I am just here for her as a friend.
“What is so horrible?”
She blots her eyes and blows her nose loudly into the tissue.
“Well, you know how I was with Robert?”
“Yeah. Thanks for reminding me.”
“He left me! And that’s not all. Oh, God. It’s so embarrassing.”
I want to tell her that I’m not at all surprised Robert left her. He had left her once before, and that type of guy doesn’t change.
He’s an entitled, rich asshole. That kind of guy never changes.
He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. The chip on his shoulder developed later.
He wasn’t born bad, but he certainly didn’t make any attempt to shake off all the trappings of having everything in life handed to him.
“What else is it, Clarissa?”
“Don’t rush me. Can’t you see that I’m a mess?”
“Yes, I can see that.”
I want to tell her that she brought this all upon herself. That she had a good thing with me, and that we could have had an acceptable life together.
I really dodged a bullet with this one.
“I don’t appreciate your sarcasm, Drew. For once, can’t you just let this be about me?”
“Don’t worry, this is clearly all about you. If you’ll allow me to remind you, you dumped me. Right in the middle of the planning. And right in the middle of all the bullshit with my firm. I haven’t even had a chance to cancel the reservation for the rehearsal dinner yet.”
“You haven’t?”
She looks up at me, her green irises bright beneath her tears. A little bit of mascara is smudged beneath her eyes.
“No. I haven’t. Honestly, it’s been the last thing on my mind.”
“Well, what if...what if the wedding was back on?”
“For real? This is why you came here?”
“No,” she says as though she’s scolding herself. “No, not at all. But now with both Robert and Marcus out of the picture, I just didn’t know who else to talk to.”
My blood runs cold at Marcus’s name. He is a real piece of crap guy. He grew up with me and Eric upstate. He’s some artist type, always trying to mooch off the next pretty rich girl who’ll fall for him, sucked in when he tells them that he wants to paint them in watercolor and post it on Instagram.
He doesn’t offer anything to anyone. It’s all to get girls. He was the guy at the high school party who would bring his guitar along to play a ballad for the room and seduce whichever pretty thing happened to be around. He didn’t care who it was that he seduced, and he always lead the girls on.
At least with me, they knew I didn’t want a relationship.
Guys like him disgust me.
“Marcus? Man Bun Marcus?”
“No. He got rid of the man bun.”
“Okay, so the artist formerly known as Man Bun Marcus.”
She laughs, her eyes lighting up as she wipes away her tears from her cheeks.
“Yes. Man Bun Marcus.”
“I don’t think it’s funny. That man bun was a serious problem.”
“You didn’t think it was cute?”
“No.” I put my hands on my knees and get up. “Please forgive me if I didn’t find that douche bag’s man bun adorable.”
Clarissa looks around the lobby before resting her eyes on mine.
“Look,” I say, rubbing my forehead. “You don’t deserve that. You’re a good person. You’ll have it all figured out soon enough. What about being independent? Didn’t you say you wanted to be on your own for a while?”
“Yeah. That’s what I really want. I don’t want Robert or Marcus or any of those other guys.”
I don’t even want to ask what she means by those other guys.
Because it doesn’t matter.
Soon, I’ll have all of this crap behind me and I’ll be able to be with Molly.
It doesn’t even matter that Clarissa broke off the engagement.
Correction: it does matter. I’m thankful for it. And I’m mad for allowing myself to go so far down that path just because I thought it was the right thing to do.
I won’t allow myself to do that again.
Clarissa leans in to give me a hug. I happily embrace her.
“Maybe we can be friends,” I say. “It seems that you are in the habit of remaining friends with your exes.”
“Yeah, and look at how great that turned out,” she says sarcastically.
“Look, I have to go. But go home and get some rest.”
“I will. The rest of my day is open.”
Figures. A woman without a job and without any of her many boyfriends would be able to just drop everything and go home to relax on her couch with daytime talk shows and a glass of wine.
“Alright, C. Take it easy.”
She turns and walks past me, out the revolving doors of the lobby and into the summer air. She will be fine. She has enough to fall back on.
Good riddance.
I take my phone out of my pocket and start to go through the turnstile to make my way back up to the office. I need to talk to Molly as soon as possible, but Lee is walking toward me to leave the building as I’m about to go back upstairs.
“I thought we already said goodbye,” I say, pausing before the turnstiles.
“I had business in another office in the building. You know how fast these things happen.”
“I certainly do.”
“Look. I don’t get why you did what you did. It just seems like a strange strategy. But I respect it, because it’s clearly something you’re passionate about.”
“It’s not a strategy, man. Not this time. It’s just the right thing to do.”
He puts out his hand to shake mine.
“It’s been good doing business with you.”
“Drew?”
I turn around and see Molly standing by the fountain.
“That’s the girl from the picture,” Lee says, smiling. “Now I get it. You’re crazy, but I get it.”
His phones rings and he walks away, shouting into the phone as I make my way over to Molly.
“Hey, what are you doing here?”
“I, um. I came by to talk to you.”
“What’s going on?”
I put my hands on her shoulders and start to move my hands down her arms, but she feels tense and cold.
“I was going to come by to tell you that I saw something weird online about Clarissa.”
“What was it?”
I’m probably already aware of whatever Molly’s talking about.
Clarissa was out with Robert. Clarissa was out with Marcus. Clarissa was out with Robert and Marcus.
It could happen.
“I...I wanted to tell you that I saw something about how she was with...two guys. I don’t know. I just saw her outside.”
“Oh, yeah. She came by to talk. Listen, I really appreciate you coming up here to tell me. But we have more important things to deal with right now, Molly.”
“Why the hell were you talking to Lee?”
“It’s just a little business deal.”
“A business deal? I thought he was interested in buying the building. And now you’re doing business with him?”
I pull her in for a hug, but she still seems a little bit tense.
Distant. Cold.
“Why was Clarissa here?”
There’s something strange in her tone. Something suspicious.
“She just needed a shoulder to cry on,” I say.
“She looked awfully happy when I saw her leaving just now.”
The truth is starting to crystaliz
e before me.
“You don’t think I’m getting back with her or anything, do you?”
Molly’s big brown eyes stare up at me.
“I don’t know. Is that what you want?”
“Molly. You’re mine now. There is no one else in the picture.”
“Yeah. That’s what you keep saying. But she did look awfully happy. A little bit too happy.”
“What do you want me to say? All of her friends are awful. I’m sure it was one of them who leaked the info about her cheating on me with two different guys to the media.”
“So you were the only one she could talk to?”
“I guess so. I guess I’m just that great of a guy.”
“Yeah. You keep saying that. But all I know about you right now is that your ex looked awfully happy to be back in your arms, and you were shaking hands with someone who you yourself admitted wants to ruin the building.”
“Wait, what?” I can’t believe she’s suggesting what I think she’s suggesting.
“It looks like you just made a deal with the one person who could ruin the building.”
30. Molly
There has to be an explanation for this.
As a reporter, I try to look at a story from all angles. I try not to take things at face value.
Take the gossip blogs, for instance. They just post a picture of whatever celebrity is hot right now and has the unfortunate luck of leaving the house without makeup, just like the rest of us do every single day.
And all the rags run is the picture. It’s superficial. It’s the definition of skin deep.
There could be another explanation for everything I witnessed with Clarissa the day when I was out shopping, but then I got confirmation from Drew that it really was what it looked like.
Now, I have two new pieces of information that I’ve learned first-hand.
First, we have Drew hugging his ex. This is the same ex who I know is out and about with at least two other guys.
Second, we have Drew shaking hands with some finance guy who I know for a fact wants to flip the building, and who I know Drew is already sparring with. It is just not adding up.
“I know this is a cliche, but it’s not what it looks like,” Drew says, smiling.
“You think this is all funny? A game? These are people’s lives you’re dealing with here, Drew.”