Closing Costs

by Seth Margolis

  “So many young couples move in and tear everything down,” Sheila Ratliff said. “I saw the plans for one apartment…they knocked down every wall, made it into one big room. I think maybe they’re planning to bicycle from one end to another.”

  Guy and Rosemary chuckled dutifully as he wondered if she would have to approve their plans, which would include the removal of several walls.

  “Why buy in a building like this in the first place unless you appreciate its bones?” Rosemary asked.

  “Exactly!”

  “I see from your board package that you’re paying all cash,” said one of the men, whose name Guy couldn’t remember. “But you’ll be financed one hundred percent by Goldman Sachs.”

  “Correct,” Guy said.

  “That’s a lot of debt to service. Almost a hundred thousand a year in interest charges.”

  “Tax deductible,” Guy said, and immediately regretted the way it sounded, so defensive, so granular, as they liked to say in the tech space about anything less momentous than a new software release or a secondary offering.

  “How will you be servicing the debt?” the other man asked. Guy would have loved to ask both men if they could afford to buy in the building now that even a junior four cost a million-two. They’d probably gotten in during the early nineties, when they were giving away these old places, and now liked nothing better than to harass people like him and Rosemary who were worth ten times their sorry asses. Or was it all really just financial voyeurism?

  “The board—Positano’s board”—everyone smiled—“will be reviewing my compensation at its next meeting. Given our recent performance…revenues up nearly a hundred and fifty percent this year…”

  “Run-rate revenues,” one of the men said.

  Christ, everyone was an accountant all of a sudden.

  “Given our recent performance, I’m confident they’ll approve a significant increase in overall compensation.”

  “Your Positano holdings were used as collateral,” one of the men said.

  “Correct.”

  “The board is a tad concerned about its recent performance.”

  A tad concerned? Guy hadn’t put in a good night’s sleep since the stock peaked at $73 in February. The twins slept more soundly.

  “The market’s been tough on everyone,” he said with strained airiness.

  “Yes, well, given the size of your holdings, I don’t think we’ll have a problem. You can always sell shares to cover your obligation.”

  Guy nodded, though he’d sooner chop off a finger than sell shares for something as granular as servicing mortgage debt.

  “Would you mind taking a look at an old vase?” Sheila Ratliff asked Rosemary. Like a physician, Rosemary was often pulled aside at social events and asked, in an anxious, discreet voice, for her professional opinion. Everyone had an old vase or washstand or Barbie doll, invariably worthless, that they were convinced could finance their children’s college education or a house in the country.

  “I’d love to,” Rosemary said.

  Home free, Guy thought as the two women left the room. Well, not free…two-point-two million, in fact. Then his phone rang.

  Larry had suggested the restaurant, and the moment Lily walked in, she knew why. La Mirabelle, on West Eighty-Sixth Street, was a throwback to the seventies—pastel paint, lots of chrome, beveled mirrors covering the walls. She and Larry might have gone there on a date had either of them been able to afford even a modestly priced French meal back then. Even the clientele looked like they’d hit their prime during the Nixon years; she nervously scanned the room for Peggy and Monroe before taking her first breath inside the restaurant.

  He was at the small bar drinking a beer. He wore a nicely pressed work shirt, khaki pants, loafers—West Side dress-up. She doubted he’d changed much since the seventies, either, but he looked handsome and comfortable.

  They exchanged identical, slightly awkward “hi’s.” An older, heavyset woman with a lilting French accent escorted them to a small table all the way at the back of the half-empty restaurant, as if sensing something clandestine about their meeting. They opened menus without speaking.

  “French comfort food,” he said, and she nodded: boeuf bourguignon, coq au vin, coquilles St. Jacques, duck à l’orange. She hadn’t seen so much cholesterol on a menu in decades. She was starving.

  They ordered and talked about food and France and other safe topics and then, more dangerously, about things that had changed and things that hadn’t. She noticed a few people staring at them…at her, rather. She was often photographed for the Times Sunday Styles section, wearing something expensive, fingers clasping the stem of a wineglass, talking animatedly through a tooth-baring smile, always, instinctively, playing to the camera’s ubiquitous presence.

  “Why’d you call?” he asked.

  She hesitated before answering, opting not to mention the role of dildo-wielding lesbians in bringing her to the West Side.

  “Because I could.”

  “Huh?”

  “I suddenly realized that I’d been following a whole set of rules that didn’t really apply to me anymore. Maybe they never had.”

  “Rules?”

  “Well, you need a lot of money, for starters. I realized a long time ago I was never going to make much on my own. I mean, I had no head for business, I still have trouble figuring the tip on a restaurant check, so rule number one became ‘Marry well.’” This was more revealing than she’d intended. Was it too late for the lesbians? She sipped the house red wine he’d ordered for them. “I know that sounds terrible.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” he said quickly.

  “Yes, it does, even to me. I took the easy way out. And once I’d succeeded, once I’d married well, I realized you have to live in a certain way, in a certain type of building in a certain neighborhood. You hire a certain decorator, invite certain people, go to certain parties. I worked so hard to follow all these rules that I forgot it was all voluntary.”

  “Where the hell did you learn these rules? I mean, we both grew up on the West Side before all the investment bankers moved in and started renovating. I thought your place was as grand as it got—I mean, you had wall-to-wall shag in every room. How did you even know this other world existed?”

  “I read about it in magazines, I suppose,” she said, but then a memory began to take shape. “I met this girl once, in Central Park. We were both ten or so. She was with a nanny who wore a white uniform and a navy blue cape. Her name was Lizbeth Sampson, not Elizabeth but Lizbeth. Those missing syllables seemed absolutely fraught with significance to me, like her nanny’s little white cap or Lizbeth’s perfect little sweater set with embroidered violets. We played together while my mother and the nanny looked on. She told me she had exactly one hundred stuffed animals and every single Barbie outfit made—Enchanted Evening, Guinevere, Pajama Party, all of them. I was dazzled. She seemed so confident and satisfied. Lizbeth insisted that I give her nanny my telephone number, and the next day she called—the nanny called—to invite me over to her place on Fifth Avenue.

  “Lizbeth lived like a little fairy-tale princess. The Sampsons had the only apartment on the top floor, like a secret castle up in the sky. A man answered the door. I thought it must be Lizbeth’s father but it was a servant, I eventually realized. Lizbeth appeared and I said good-bye to my mother, who seemed very reluctant to leave. We walked down a long hallway to Lizbeth’s room, which was everything I’d imagined it to be. Beautiful stuffed animals everywhere, a canopy bed, pink walls with these incredibly realistic birds and flowers painted on, so it seemed as if she lived in the middle of an enchanted forest. There was a view over Central Park, of course. I’d never seen the park like that before, from twelve floors up, so neat and orderly, as if it were her own little backyard.

  “I don’t remember what we did that afternoon, I only remember that when the man who wasn’t her father appeared to tell us that my mother had returned, I was devastated. I pleaded with Peggy to le
t me stay. She said we had to go, but she also asked Lizbeth if her mother was home. When she heard that she was out, she asked Lizbeth to show her the apartment. Lizbeth took us to a huge living room, a dining room, a library. ‘What, you don’t have a kitchen?’ my mother asked. Lizbeth said she wasn’t supposed to go in the kitchen while dinner was being prepared, which I thought was the height of sophistication. Peggy made a point of poking her head into every closet and bathroom. In the master bedroom she walked over to one of the windows and admired the view while Lizbeth and I bounced on the enormous bed. Suddenly I was aware of a woman standing in the doorway, beautiful and stern faced.

  “‘Mommy!’ Lizbeth shrieked, and rushed over to her. Or maybe she said ‘Mummy’ Lizbeth introduced me to her mother, who seemed tense and suspicious. I’ll never forget how dressed up she looked, the way her hair seemed to form a perfect blond halo around her head. I looked over at the window but my mother wasn’t there. A second later she emerged from the bathroom. I heard the words ‘Even a bidet’ from her mouth, then both women gasped. It was an excruciating moment—if this were the movies, one or both women would have dropped a glass and it would have shattered. ‘This is quite a place,’ my mother said. Even at ten I could tell this was completely unsuitable. I don’t think Mrs. Sampson acknowledged what my mother must have intended as a compliment. She wasn’t the least bit gracious, my mother pointed out later on the crosstown bus. I felt Mrs. Sampson’s disapproval so strongly as she led us silently back to the front door. I knew I’d never be invited back. I remember thinking how old my mother looked—she had me when she was in her late thirties, which practically made me a medical miracle back then. And how dowdy, too, with her sensible wool sweater and sturdy skirt and low-heeled shoes.

  “I think that was when I realized that there was a whole other universe right here in New York, where people talked quietly and dressed up for play dates and lunches and decorated their apartments like museums and stayed away from the kitchen while dinner was prepared. My mother showed me a photograph of Mrs. Sampson in the Times that Sunday, and after that I started looking for her every week. I discovered this new in-crowd of beautiful, sophisticated people who seemed to do nothing but attend parties in beautiful clothes. And I realized that I wanted to be in those photographs, and eventually I learned what I had to do to get there, the rules I had to follow.”

  Their waitress arrived with steak au poivre for Larry, a glistening duck à l’orange for her. She dug in.

  “What’s amazing to me,” Larry said, “is that you bought right into that world. Instead of sympathizing with your mother, you took Mrs. Sampson’s side.”

  “In some stupid way I wanted to earn her respect.”

  “And not your mother’s?”

  “Maybe I figured I’d never get that. Anyway, once I’d managed to infiltrate the Sampsons’ social circuit, I kept an eye out for Lizbeth, but she never appeared. Then a few years ago I read somewhere that she’d become a doctor, a heart specialist, I think, and lived somewhere in the Midwest.”

  “How did that make you feel?”

  “At the time, confused. It seemed so unlikely, it seemed almost wrong, somehow, to turn out so unexpectedly. I couldn’t quite figure out how you went from princess on Fifth Avenue to cardiologist in Detroit or wherever.”

  “And now?”

  “Now?”

  A chill breeze of sadness blew through her. She shrugged and concentrated on the duck, which was gamy and succulent and would require a month of lunges to work off. They said little, in fact, over the rest of the meal, but the long silences were surprisingly comfortable. Later, walking along Columbus Avenue, toward his building, he took her hand. She pulled away.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “But I thought…”

  “Don’t be sorry,” was all she said. But she felt adrift, as if she’d entered a strange new country and not just another neighborhood. She needed to get her bearings, and that meant being alone, at least at that moment. She touched Larry’s arm, a tentative gesture from which she retreated immediately, then stepped off the curb and hailed a cab.

  Guy walked into the foyer to answer his cell phone, leaving the two male board members in the living room. His phone’s little LCD screen read Private.

  “It’s Derek.”

  He didn’t respond, hoping, illogically, that Derek would hang up or be struck dead by a heart attack or meteor shower.

  “Don’t tell me you don’t—”

  “Of course I know who you are.”

  “And I know who you are. The CEO.” Derek gave each initial its own smarmy emphasis, making Guy’s precious title sound like an adult cable network.

  “What do you want?”

  “I hope you’re not this impatient with all your shareholders.”

  “My shareholders don’t call me at eight-thirty at night.”

  “This one’s different.”

  Derek Ventnor’s voice was deep and resonant. It suggested someone tall, husky, self-confident. In fact, Ventnor was short and wiry—scrawny, actually. He was in his late forties and any self-confidence he had was badly misplaced.

  “What the hell’s been going on?” Ventnor asked.

  “I don’t know what you—”

  “Positano’s stock is down seventy-five percent. I can’t fucking believe it. I’ve never been through anything like this.”

  He sounded whiny and petulant, as if the collapse of Positano Software—the collapse of its stock price—were some petty ordeal he’d been needlessly put through, like having his car towed from a legitimate parking space. When the stock was in its ascendancy, investors universally felt it was their financial acumen that was behind its rise, as if they had collectively willed it to levitate (and maybe, in a way, they had). When it started to decline they were suddenly clueless innocents at the mercy of incompetent executives.

  Guy launched into his new mantra. “The entire market has been weak, especially technology stocks. Investors with a long-term horizon—”

  “Easy for you to talk long term. You didn’t put your shares up as collateral when they were selling for sixty-seven dollars. Now they’re down to fifteen bucks and I’m getting margin calls. You gotta do something.”

  “Wait a minute, you borrowed against your Positano shares?”

  “Easiest money I ever made. I put the proceeds in a bunch of stocks my broker recommended. They doubled, they tripled. Then they went straight to hell. Now my broker’s calling me every goddamn hour wanting me to send cash to cover the spread. I mean, cash. He wants fucking cash.”

  Imagine wanting something as last year as cash!

  Rosemary and a beaming Sheila Ratliff passed him in the foyer and went back into the living room. The vase had presumably turned out to be “very special, though it’s nothing I’ve ever seen before”—Rosemary’s stock appraisal, affording her enough wiggle room to avoid ever having to actually take it on consignment at the auction house. As she walked by she shot him a get-off-the-phone-and-make-nice-with-these-people look.

  “In my opinion, these cellular telephones are a curse,” Sheila Ratliff huffed as they sat down.

  “Look, if you borrowed against your Positano stock, it’s not my concern,” Guy said. “I never suggested you invest in Positano in the first place.”

  “I was ‘friends and family’” Ventnor said bitterly. “Remember?”

  How could he forget? Ventnor was not his friend and, thank God, he certainly wasn’t family, but he’d gotten the biggest allocation of directed shares, fifteen thousand in all, at the offering price of $15. When they closed on opening day at twenty-eight, he had a quick profit of $195,000. At their peak of just over $70 a share, Ventnor’s stake was worth over a million dollars. But that wasn’t enough for Derek Ventnor, a gazillion percent profit in under a year. He’d borrowed against his holdings to buy shares of the next Positano. It was never enough for anybody.

  “What do you want from me?”

  “I need cash.” Guy felt something cl
utch inside him, just south of his rib cage. “Not the whole thing, just fifty thousand dollars.”

  “I don’t have it.”

  “You have three million shares,” Ventnor said. “Three million two hundred and twenty-five thousand shares, to be exact.”

  Ventnor probably kept Positano’s registration statement on his night-stand, consulting it for consolation, like the Bible. Or maybe he jerked off to the option tables and income statements, visions of double-digit profit margins stiffening his dick. He knew to the dime what Guy was worth, his salary and bonus plan, where he’d worked before Positano, where he’d gone to school, the fact that he’d allocated 280,000 shares to a trust fund for the twins.

  “Shares aren’t cash,” Guy said.

  “Then sell a few.”

  “It’s not that easy. The lock-up period isn’t over and the SEC—”

  “Fuck the lock-up period and fuck the SEC, okay? I don’t want to hear about the SEC, you understand?” Ventnor sounded more affronted than truly angry, as if the Securities and Exchange Commission were responsible not only for his recent financial reversal but also for his receding hairline, diminutive stature, and failure, thirty years ago, to get into the college of his choice. Guy glanced into the living room. Everyone was watching him.

  “I have to go.”

  “You can’t get rid of me,” Ventnor said. “You needed me, back then, back when you were a nobody, a total schmuck. Now you’re Mr. Big Shot, Mr. CEO. But you wouldn’t have three million two hundred and twenty-five thousand shares if it weren’t for me. You’d still be out in the swamps of Jersey, writing code.”

  “I’m eternally grateful,” Guy said, though in fact he was thinking yearningly of the veal farm at that moment.

  “I know where you work!” Ventnor shouted.

  Guy clicked off the phone and walked back into the living room.

  “Sorry about that,” he said, trying to suppress a nervous quiver in his voice.

  “Not a problem,” one of the men said. He stood up and the others followed suit. “We won’t keep you any longer, other than to say that we don’t see any reason why you and Rosemary wouldn’t make wonderful neighbors at 218 West End Avenue.”