High Maintenance

by Jennifer Belle

  “You’re so wonderful with children,” Audrey said. “Have you put any more thought into what we discussed?”

  They were still obsessed with my eggs. I hadn’t given them a definite no yet because I knew once I did they would go with another broker and try to get her eggs. It felt strange to be talking about my eggs in my old apartment surrounded by eggs. I had pictured the baby I would have had with Jack so often, I could almost hear it breathing in the second bedroom through the Fisher-Price intercom in my mind. Strange to think of Mrs. Bausch waking in the middle of the night to check on her, walking down the corridor in her nightgown, instead of me in mine.

  “I have thought about it a lot,” I said. “But I haven’t made a final decision. I must say that if you bought this place I’d certainly be tempted. Any child who got to grow up here would be so lucky.”

  When Storm Shapiro came back to see the apartment at night, I got there early and turned on every light and boiled water on the stove for pasta. I wanted her to feel that if she bought this apartment she would never be hungry again, there would always be a home-cooked meal.

  The doorman buzzed. “Stormy Shappy eess here.”

  “Send her up, Eddie,” I said.

  “Yes, Mees, eess nice to have you home.” It made me feel like Scarlett returning to Tara. I considered giving Eddie my husband’s gold pocket watch he had inherited from his father, the way Scarlett does when her father dies and she can’t pay the help, but I thought better of it.

  Storm came in and I presented her with the floor plan. I had it enlarged in the copy shop so it would be bigger than all the other floor plans she had gotten.

  “It’s so sweet. It looks like a castle!” she said. “A big square castle with four towers.”

  “That’s exactly what I was going to say,” I said.

  “This is a nice loft,” she said.

  “It’s not a loft, Storm.”

  “It looks like a loft to me,” she said.

  I told her to make herself at home, to try out the furniture, to open the drawers. I couldn’t bear to look. I stayed in the kitchen. I didn’t want to see her open those drawers. If I saw my husband’s socks and underwear I might start compulsively folding them again through force of habit.

  I ladled pasta onto plates that matched the mugs. “Would you like some dinner?” I asked, when she found me in the kitchen.

  “Oh, that’s sweet,” she said. “That bed was so comfortable.”

  We sat at the kitchen table, and I poured red wine.

  “So this is what it’s like at night,” she said. “I really feel at home here.” She looked at the plate. “These plates are so …”

  “They’re yours,” I said.

  The next morning, instead of our regular weekly meeting, a strange Chinese woman came to give us a seminar about Feng Shui.

  She pushed the table to one side and made us all sit facing north. Her whole body tilted east.

  She held up a few floor plans as examples. “In this apartment,” she said, holding up a picture of Marti Landesman’s new exclusive, “the Qi will get caught in the corner of the L-shaped corridor. Qi will become enraged.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Marti said. We all looked at her pityingly. If there was any Qi around, Marti would find a way to enrage it.

  “This apartment,” the Chinese woman said, holding up Tony Amoroso’s new exclusive, “has such a small kitchen, no spiritual growth can ever be possible.”

  “Uh, I disagree with that,” Tony said, standing up. “It’s quite a large kitchen by New York standards, with granite counters, a Subzero refrigerator, a six-burner Vulcan stove, and one of the only garbage dispose-alls in New York. And the owner is a very spiritual yoga instructor.”

  “I don’t care if owner is Dalai Lama,” the woman said. “There will be no growth.”

  “I’m sorry but I really beg to differ. I don’t mean to argue but …”

  “There is no arguing with the Qi!” the woman said.

  Then she held up the floor plan to my husband’s apartment. She shook her head. Everyone turned to look at me.

  “Big huge large window opposite front door,” she said.

  She threw the floor plan down as if even touching it for one more second would be hazardous.

  “Qi comes in door and flies right out window! When Qi flies right out window all opportunity flies right out with Qi. No love, no family, children die, no sex! Out the window. Out the window.”

  “What should I do?” I whispered.

  “Curtains can help to contain Qi,” she said. “But for you, you should try to live in a round biding.”

  “Where am I going to find a round building?” I asked, alarmed, looking imploringly at the other brokers.

  “Your only chance is a round biding with round windows. Everything else, bad luck!”

  Just then I was paged over the loudspeaker. I had an important call. For one split second I wondered if it was Andrew. It had occurred to me that Andrew might really believe those things he said. That he had really convinced himself that we had never had sex. But history could not be rebuilt, even by a master architect. “Remember our first kiss?” I had asked my husband at our wedding, as we danced our first dance as man and wife. Our first kiss had taken place leaning against a wall outside John’s pizzeria. “That must be some good pizza,” a man on the street had said.

  “Of course I remember,” my husband said. “It wasn’t very good.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. I stopped dancing.

  “You were too tentative,” he said, trying to start me up again.

  I had kept my head down and sort of smiled as we kissed. I was shy. I had been purposely tentative.

  “Fuck you,” I whispered in his ear. Our first kiss had been incredible. Shy and smiling and incredible. His words couldn’t change that. But somehow they did.

  I left the conference room and took the call at my desk. It was Noah Bausch with an offer on my husband’s apartment. “Eight hundred thousand,” he said.

  “Of course I’ll convey your offer to the owner,” I said, “but I’m sure he won’t accept. As you know, he wants one point two million.” I wished I had just said one point two and left off the word “million.” I swiveled my chair around to face north, the wealth direction. “Perhaps you should come up at least one or two more hundred.” I meant hundred thousand.

  “Well, I’m not going to negotiate against myself!” Noah said, irately.

  In every single deal I did, at one point the owner and the buyer would each come out with, “I refuse to negotiate against myself.” No one was asking them to. It’s the one thing all people seemed to know about the rules of successful deal making. The phrase reminded me of how my husband had refused to go to couples therapy with me, and I had to go alone every week. “Well, what do you wish you could say to your husband?” the therapist said. “And what do you think your husband wishes he could say to you?” Now, that’s what I would call negotiating against myself.

  “I’m not axing you to negotiate against yourself,” I said to Noah. Not that you’re not your own worst enemy, I wanted to say.

  “Did you just say ‘axing’?” Noah said, contemptuously.

  “Of course not,” I said. “I think I know how to speak English.” My call waiting went off. “I have another call,” I said curtly.

  “Offer him nine hundred thousand dollars,” Noah said. “But we’re not going up much higher than that.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Bye, I mean, hold on.” I answered the call waiting.

  It was Mr. Shapiro, Storm’s father. “We’ll take the Fifth Avenue apartment,” he said.

  “I’m afraid I’m on the other line with a customer who’s making an offer right now.”

  “Eight hundred thousand,” Mr. Shapiro said.

  “Oh, I’m sorry but my other customer already bid nine hundred and fifty thousand
and that’s just his opening,” I said.

  “Please inform the owner that our offer is one million dollars,” Mr. Shapiro said.

  “Would you mind holding,” I said, and went back to Bausch.

  I explained to him that unfortunately he had been outbid and would have to go higher.

  “One million dollars. Cash,” he said.

  I gasped at the word “cash.” I had no idea they had that much money. Dale always said I didn’t qualify the customers carefully enough. “Hold on just a sec,” I said and clicked over to Storm’s daddy.

  “Sir, I’ll make your offer to the owner but I’m afraid we’ve got a cash offer on the table.” He could definitely afford to pay cash, too, but there were tax benefits or something for carrying a mortgage. I couldn’t remember what they had said in real estate school about that.

  Mr. Shapiro paused. “One point one,” he said.

  “Cash?”

  “No, not cash! Fuck him if he thinks he’s getting cash.”

  “Of course,” I said. “I’ll relay the message.”

  “Wait a minute,” Mr. Shapiro said.

  “Yes?” I asked, hopefully.

  “My financials are impeccable. A cash offer doesn’t mean anything in this case.”

  “I’m aware of what difference cash makes, sir,” I said.

  “Make sure you give him my offer, Liv.”

  “That’s my job,” I said, cheerily, and returned to Bausch.

  “He’s up to one point one,” I said to Noah.

  “One million cash is our final offer,” he said.

  “That’s a shame,” I said. “Are you sure you won’t come up a little more?”

  Noah didn’t say anything.

  “Hello?” I said. There was silence. “Hello?”

  “I’m here,” he said. “I can’t go any higher.”

  “Well, I’ll give him both offers,” I said, like a nursery school teacher saying she liked both children equally.

  “Thank you,” he said meekly.

  “You’re welcome,” I said and hung up.

  When I leaned back in my chair I noticed Carla for the first time. I hadn’t been aware that the meeting let out. She was just staring at me with her chin hitting her half of the shelf.

  “Jesus Christ,” I said. “Haven’t you ever seen a deal before? Take a picture, it lasts longer.” I picked up my bag and headed for the door.

  I walked down the aisle between rows of desks and brokers yelling on phones and finishing bagels. I had never felt so much a part of anything in my life. With two million-dollar offers on the table I had definitely secured my place in the Millionaires Circle, which I was pretty sure came with a luncheon at Tavern on the Green and maybe a weekend at Samantha Smoothe’s own weekend house in Connecticut.

  Every month Smoothe Transitions ran a full-page ad in the Times featuring its best agents doing seasonal things like gardening in the spring or ice skating in the winter. Now I would be in one of those ads, and Dale would see it, and Lorna, and maybe even my father. Jerome wouldn’t see it, of course.

  38.

  WHY RENT??? POSTWAR STU LOW MAINT

  Imight as well have stayed at the office because Noah and Storm both called me late into the night, whining and complaining about why they couldn’t come up any higher.

  “Why don’t you just come up ten more thousand,” I said.

  “We caaaan’t,” Noah simpered. “Hold on, sweetie.” He was talking to little Flannery. “Liv, Flannery wants to talk to you,” Noah said to me in baby talk.

  “Hello?” I said gently into the phone. “Flannery, Flannery,” I sang. “Are you getting ready for beddy bye?” I hated when people put their babies on the phone. Flannery didn’t say anything, she just breathed, so after a while I just stopped saying anything. We just stayed on the phone in silence. Finally I said, “Can you put Daddy back on the phone?”

  “Guess what she named her favorite teddy bear?” Noah said.

  “I don’t know, Noah,” I said. “Eggbert?”

  “No. She named it Liv Kellerman. She sleeps with Liv Kellerman every night and takes Liv Kellerman with her to the doctor’s. In fact the other day she left Liv Kellerman in the playground and I had to go get it in the middle of the night. Anyway, when do we find out if we’ve got an accepted offer?”

  I told him for the hundredth time that I would call him as soon as I spoke with the owner. I told the same thing to Storm.

  The more they called, the angrier I got. I couldn’t stand the thought of them living in the apartment I loved. I had chosen the carpet. I had polished the floors and the banisters. I didn’t want Storm sleeping in my bedroom. I didn’t want the Bausches putting window guards on my beautiful windows. Madonna and Lourdes should live in that apartment, not Noah, Audrey, and Flannery Bausch, and their future egg. I was more jealous of Storm or the Bausches getting to live there than I had ever been of Jordan. They could issue a new street sign. “Jealousy Street.” “Envy Ave.” “Longing Lane.” “Despair District.” I could just avoid the whole neighborhood.

  I had thought it would help me to broker the deal, like a pregnant woman choosing the couple who will adopt her baby. But I just couldn’t stand it. I hated Storm and the Bausches so much. How dare they refuse to come up ten more thousand?

  The phone rang. “Hello?” I said.

  “Did you talk to the owner?” It was Noah again.

  “No, I didn’t,” I said, “but I’m afraid there’s a new development that I don’t think you’re going to be too happy about.”

  “What is it?” he asked, panic-stricken.

  “There’s another buyer who has come in with a very high bid and I think she’s going to get it, especially since you won’t come up even five more dollars.”

  “What’s her bid?” he said angrily.

  “I’m afraid I can’t release that number until I speak to the owner,” I said.

  “I thought you weren’t showing it to anybody else. Who is this woman? Where did she come from?”

  I considered the question for a moment. “Actually, Noah, it’s Liv Kellerman. The person, not the teddy bear.”

  “What!”

  “Well, you said you couldn’t go up any higher and I got to thinking about it and I just really think it’s worth a lot more than you could afford, so I decided to buy it myself.”

  “That’s outrageous. That’s illegal!”

  Actually it was sort of illegal, I was pretty sure. But they hadn’t discussed bidding against your own client in real estate school.

  “I’m sorry, Noah. The apartment is as good as mine.”

  I heard a crumbling sound in my kitchen. I couldn’t take it if there was a mouse. I reached for my gun on my bedside table. “Anyway, I’ve got to go. But good luck in your search,” I said and hung up.

  I went into the kitchen and saw a small pile of rubble on the floor. It looked like a dune in the middle of my kitchen. I looked up at the ceiling. Debris was slowly pouring down like sand in an hourglass. Dune Street.

  There was all kinds of construction being done in the building. The bricks were being pointed. Sheets of black mesh hung from scaffolding out my window, like a widow’s veil. My building was an Afghani woman imprisoned in her shroud.

  I lay on my bed and waited for my husband to call. There was a crumbling sound from the kitchen ceiling again. Then it was more of a rumble. It sounded like a tub was going to fall through at any moment. I got up and put on my sturdiest boots and my only hat, my straw sombrero from Mexico. When I took the apartment I didn’t know I would require a hard hat. I trudged through the rubble on the kitchen floor and began to gather my things. Suddenly I found myself packing.

  Before I left, I poked curiously at the kitchen ceiling with a broom handle. Giant rocks rained down like candy from a piñata. I was covered in pale soot, the color and consistency of cremated bodies.

>   I stepped out of the kitchen just as the whole ceiling caved in. 6F’s refrigerator and stove came crashing into my kitchen in another New York City tin-and-porcelain avalanche.

  I didn’t bother to lock the door behind me.

  I loaded my bags and a couple of boxes into a limo I had ordered from the Tel Aviv car service. The limo was white, and inside there were cocktail napkins with wedding bells printed on them wrapped around champagne glasses. The chauffeur had given me a nasty look when I carried down the last garbage bag of shoes. There was no champagne.

  I took possession of my husband’s apartment, wheeling my things over the threshold on the doorman’s gold hotel cart. I was glad Andrew wasn’t there lifting me over it. The phone rang and I answered it. It was Jack.

  “Did we get any offers?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “No one wanted it.”

  “What are you doing there at this time of night?” he asked.

  “I live here,” I said.

  “You’re staying there while you show it this week?” he asked, sounding annoyed. “Where’s Charitable?”

  “No, I live here,” I said. “And I’m not ever leaving here again.”

  “Do you do that with all your exclusives? Just move in and force the owner out? Is that the policy at Smoothe Transitions? Does Kim let all her brokers do that?”

  “Jack, I’m serious. I’m really not leaving. I’m staying put.” I smiled when I said that because it was what my father used to say— “I’m staying put.” On those rare occasions when I found him in the living room and we’d listen to a set of records he bought me of an English guy reading Through the Looking Glass, he’d say, “Today you and I are just staying put.”

  “You’ve always been obsessed with the apartment,” Jack said.

  “I love it,” I said.

  “I love it, too.”

  It was the most passionate we’d been with each other in a long time.

  “I think it’s fair, Jack. I have a right to live here. This apartment is a part of me, and I can’t leave it again.”