Seeing Kate peeking in, the woman says, “Hi there” with a lovely Jamaican lilt, and smiles sweetly.
“Hi. Is there a bathroom my client can use, by any chance?” Kate asks. She’d rather ask the housekeeper than the brokers; it seems less embarrassing, she supposes.
“Bathroom in the library,” the housekeeper says, smiling, and looks back at the TV. There’s a cereal-size glass bowl of SpaghettiOs in her lap.
As they tour the apartment a few minutes later, Kate pointing out the magnificent living room, the oversize windows, the beautiful marble spa baths, the chef’s eat-in kitchen, she senses an undercurrent of dissatisfaction, most of it coming from Jessica Prettyman, who just can’t keep her big mouth shut. Why Jessica Prettyman is so concerned with whether or not Allison might prefer a regular stove to a cooktop, or whether the whirlpool in the master bath is something Allison and her husband—a successful Broadway producer who’s worked with Julie Taymor and Mel Brooks—will ever make good use of is beyond Kate.
Kate continues, “The building was designed by Rosario Candela—who’s considered one of America’s most important architects—and that makes it terrific for resale; he’s one of a small handful of architects who is always listed alongside an apartment as a ‘merit.’ And from how many prewars on the Upper East Side can you see the Chrysler Building? The views are gorgeous.”
The grim look on Jessica’s face turns grimmer. “Gorgeous? Well, not if you’re an acrophobe, like I am.”
“Excuse me?” Kate says.
“I suffer from mild to moderate acrophobia,” Jessica says. “Fear of heights?”
“That’s why she came with me today,” Allison explains. “To test herself, to see if she could come all the way up to the sixteenth floor without getting nauseated and dizzy.”
Suddenly, Kate wonders, could Allison—straitlaced, hypochondriac Allison Silverman-Cole—be having a wild affair with Jessica Prettyman?
Nodding her head, Jessica says, “Sometimes it gets so bad that it’s even too scary for me to stand on a chair to change a lightbulb.”
“Poor thing,” murmurs Allison. Or at least Kate thinks that’s what she said; it’s a little hard to understand her through her surgical mask.
“What I do is, I take a deep breath to slow my heart rate, then climb down from the chair and run for my bottle of Xanax,” Jessica says.
It’s never ideal when a client brings friends to look at an apartment; generally, their presence can only lead to trouble. Too many opinions, too many complaints, a lot of it coming from, she often suspects, jealous friends who would kill for the apartments Kate’s clients can afford. She wishes Jessica Prettyman would get back to her tennis game and leave Allison to make up her own mind.
“Xanax,” Jessica repeats, “is the best of the benzodiazepines. Calms you in an instant and doesn’t leave a hangover.”
Just then Kate’s cell rings, and Kate excuses herself for an instant, her face burning as she sees who’s calling. “Scott,” she says in a whispery voice, her heart racing.
“Kate,” he says slowly, and then pauses.
“Sorry, I can’t talk now, I am in the middle of a showing,” she tells him reluctantly, much as she might want to speak to him. And so she hangs up without another word and wills herself to concentrate, instead, on Allison.
Just hearing the sound of Scott’s voice for that single moment has her feeling completely shaky, but she pulls herself together and makes her way back to Allison, who’s back in the living room without Jessica Prettyman. Oh, that ridiculous surgical mask, Kate thinks, hoping that if Allison ever gets to a co-op board meeting, the mask will be left at home!
“Where’s your friend Jessica?” she asks.
“Oh, in one of the bathrooms, throwing up,” Allison says. “The view wasn’t good for her acrophobia—a wave of nausea came over her and she ran . . .”
Oh dear, Kate thinks, to have brought a client with a friend who is throwing up in the middle of an open house—humiliating! “Oh, no, maybe she should leave?” Kate says, and then, when Allison ignores her, “So what do you think?”
“I feel so bad for her,” Allison says. “It’s crippling, this acrophobia of hers.”
“I know,” says Kate, “But you’re not an acrophobic, thankfully, and you always said you wanted a view like this.”
“Jessica thinks—”
Kate just has to interrupt her. “Is Jessica living here with you?” she teases, then says, “It’s what you and Chip think. Why don’t you bring him to see it?”
Looking stricken, Allison doesn’t turn around to face Kate; instead, she continues to stare through the window. “Because I’m planning on leaving him,” she says, and whisks the surgical mask from her face. “He’s been a total prick, and I guarantee you he’s going to be even more of a prick when my attorney gets through with him.”
Kate is shocked; she had no idea that their three-year marriage was in trouble. “Oh no, what happened?” she says. “You seemed so happy.” You just never know, she thinks to herself.
Allison sighs. “I was on the Internet a few weeks ago, reading my e-mail, and then I had to check something about our American Express bill, so I needed to take a quick look at Chip’s e-mail. I signed on to his screen name, and what I found queued up there in his new mail was something with the subject line ‘Hey Babe’—followed by three exclamation points. I don’t know, I never open his e-mails, ever, but this time I just had to. And there it was, right there on the screen—it was as obvious as could be that there was something going on between Chip and this person named, get this, Honey Baer.”
“Her last name was B-E-A-R? Are you serious? With a first name Honey? Is she a porn star?” Kate says. “That can’t be her real name.”
“Oh, but it is,” Allison says. “B-A-E-R. Chip was at work, but I called him anyway, this just couldn’t wait till he came home. When I confronted him about the e-mail, he had the nerve to start yelling about the violation of his privacy. I mean, is he kidding me? How outrageous is that? Then he denied the whole thing, but I wore him down until he finally confessed. He just said that he and this Honey, who works in his office in human resources, had unexpectedly fallen into something and that he was sorry, but he and I were done . . .” Allison says, her voice choking up a little.
Something in the hopeless romantic in Kate makes her very upset about poor Allison and this Honey Baer. She remembers Allison and Chip’s wedding in the New York Botanical Garden, the two of them married by a very talkative rabbi and a nervous-looking priest, Allison in cream satin Vera Wang, the six bridesmaids in ice-blue cocktail dresses, the reception in the Garden Terrace Room with its lovely hand-painted murals, Kate already fantasizing—three years ago—about a wedding of her own, though she and Scott had been having their usual problems at the time. Scott Scott Scott.
Kate hears herself sigh. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “You must want to kill Chip.”
Allison’s eyes harden. “I want to screw him,” she confides. “Leave him with nothing. And then live happily ever after in an apartment just like this one.”
Jessica Prettyman is coming toward them now, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Anybody have any breath mints?” she asks. “I’m still not feeling too great, but I have to say the marble in the master bath is gorgeous.”
“It is beautiful,” Kate says, again, thinking, is Jessica Prettyman Allison Silverman-Cole’s rebound?
“Even so, I could never live here,” Jessica says. “Not unless I could figure out a way to overcome my acrophobia.”
“But I don’t have to overcome acrophobia, Jessica,” Allison says. “I love it here. Let’s see what happens.” She hugs Kate and says good-bye, promising to let her know if and when she’s ready to return for a second look.
Kate stands out in front of 1220 Park now, looking around for a cab, breathing into her cell, he
r heart racing, as she returns Scott’s call. “You called?” she says, trying to sound no-nonsense and businesslike. Oh, how I’ve missed the sound of your voice these past eight days, is what she’d like to say. That deep hoarse voice of yours.
“How are you doing?” Scott says.
“Good, very busy . . .” And that’s about all he’s going to get from her today. There’s a bit of frost in her voice, and she hopes he hears it. Cool as a cuke, she hears her mom telling her. “Okay, anything else? I have to run,” she says.
“I,” Scott begins, “I, well, no, not really. Just checking in to see if everything’s, you know . . . okay.”
She feels herself collapse with disappointment; she had so hoped he would break down and tell her how much he misses her and what a mistake he made. She contemplates hanging up on him, cutting him off this instant now that she knows he’s calling for a reason that has nothing much, really, to do with her and her broken heart. “I actually went on a date last week,” she says instead.
“Uh-huh, okay . . .”
“Yeah, he’s very smart, really nice, and he graduated from Harvard Law a couple of years ago,” she says, wanting, foolishly, she knows, to hurt Scott just a little. “And he’s a balletomane and an amazing chef.”
“Really? Well, I know what a chef is, but what the fuck is a balletomane?”
“A devotee of the ballet,” Kate says, laughing. “But are you sure you know what a chef is?” she teases him. Oh, what is she doing? Flirting with him? She can’t control herself!
“Whatever,” Scott says. “Sounds like this date of yours went really well.” It seems he’s about to say something further, but there’s only silence.
“Really well,” Kate lies. A woman with a toddler in a stroller stops at the awning in front of 1220 Park. She lifts the little boy, a platinum blond, out of the stroller, and the moment she sets him down on the pavement, he makes a mad dash down the block. “Cooper Kleier!” the woman yells, dropping her diaper bag and running after him. “Cooper—freeze!” Kate sees the adorable little boy mimic “freeze” and then keep running. He reminds her of her brother Jonathan at that age.
Watching the way the little boy shrieks with glee, racing down Park Avenue, Kate finds herself imagining her own life—who knows how far into the future—with Scott and a child, theirs with dark hair and Scott’s dimples. It’s what she wants for herself, she knows, smiling at the blond baby boy now as he waves good-bye to her and disappears into 1220 with his mother. Kate’s thirtieth birthday is only months away; just contemplating this undeniable fact makes her a little anxious. She thinks of her friends, and how, one by one, they’ve gotten engaged and married over the past few years, all those weddings she’s gone to, not to mention engagement parties, bridal showers, and nearly a dozen bachelorette parties, many of them held at the luxurious Mayflower Inn and Spa in Washington, Connecticut, where the owner actually knows her by name because she’s been there so often. (And where Kate and her mother and sister had a magical girls’ weekend with Carolyn Klemm, the biggest broker in Connecticut, who famously told them over their margaritas on the rocks when they lamented that their cells and BlackBerries had no service that “sometimes you just have to write yourself out of the script.”) The husbands of these friends of hers are nice enough, she thinks—young men working in banking, in finance, in their fathers’ marketing firms, men so different from Scott and his friends, almost all of them moving from one unconventional job to the next, from one girlfriend to the next, none of them even considering the possibility of settling down in any way at all. But there’s not one of those husbands she would take—no matter the size of his bank account or apartment—over Scott, working now at a new magazine called Texture, making no money, working insane hours laboring over articles about music, design, and technology—copyediting and proofreading through the night to meet deadlines. . . . But how long can she wait for him? Who’s going to get him to see that there might actually be something desirable about living well, as his parents do, in a grown-up home and eating at proper restaurants? Maybe when he turns thirty-five he will grow up and realize that he needs Kate in his life, that she can make it even better. But who could wait three years? Oh, how much and how deeply she could love him, if only he would let her!
“So, Kate,” he’s saying now, “gotta go, okay? Got a big deadline coming up. I’m just . . . just glad you’re okay, going out on dates with, um, balletomanes, and enjoying yourself.”
“You’re such an idiot, Scott,” she hears herself say.
“What?”
“I’ve got a client waiting for me,” Kate says, lying to Scott for the second time today, as she steps into the street to flag down a cab. “You’ve gotta go, I’ve gotta go.”
“Did you just call me an idiot?”
Kate is silent.
“Can you at least explain why?”
“I’m sure you can figure that out for yourself,” Kate says.
“Listen, I don’t understand why you’re mad all of a sudden.”
“Oh, you’re a bright guy, Scott,” Kate says, and hangs up, though what she’d really like to do, of course, is stay on forever, or at least long enough just to hear him say, “I was wrong. I love you.”
When she gets back to her office in midtown, Kate finds Lorelei Lyne sitting beside her desk, about to light up a cigarette and looking, Kate thinks, pretty horrific; there are smudges of mascara under her pink-rimmed eyes, and her bra strap is visible, peeking out from her sleeveless, see-through shirt.
“What’s wrong?” Kate says immediately, and then whispers, “Are you crazy? You can’t smoke in here, it’s not the 1990s!” Lorelei, she thinks, is clearly unraveling.
“Oh, for God’s sake, you’d think I was a crack addict or something!” Lorelei says, and wipes what looks like a tear from her badly Botoxed eye, arched up in a semipermanent triangle of surprise. “It’s only a damn cigarette!”
Reaching toward her, Kate takes the Marlboro from between Lorelei’s twitchy fingers and drops it into the wastepaper basket under her desk.
“I did it,” Lorelei whispers. “And God, it turned out really, really bad.”
Getting up now, Kate rushes to close the door to her office. “Don’t tell me,” she says. “How could you be such an idiot? Oh, Lorelei, what were you thinking?”
“I know, I know, I can’t believe I did it, either,” Lorelei says, running her fingers through her brittle black hair. “He was in St. Barts for a week, and then last night he called and told me to meet him at his office so he could show me some stuff about his financials. I knew what that meant, but I went, all gussied up and all, and I just kept thinking, while I was down there on my knees last night looking out his windows with the lights of the whole city in front of me, that this wasn’t just anyone, this was Rodney Greenstein, one of the most powerful men in the entire city. And somehow at that moment, I felt better about having his big disgusting dick in my mouth. Almost excited . . . Oh, Kate, I’m so ashamed.” She pauses, then continues, tears now leaking from her heavily mascaraed eyes. “Today I got an e-mail from one of his assistants—not from him, but from his third assistant!” she says, outraged. “She thanked me for my help, and said that he’d decided not to buy the apartment after all.” Sobbing, Lorelei says, “Give me back my cigarette, will you please, Kate. Look at me!”
“Oh, God, Lorelei,” Kate says.
“Oh, it was that damn commission, the biggest I’ll ever see, singing to me like one of those Greek sirens. How could I walk away from that?” Lorelei says.
Without a word, Kate leans over her and slides Lorelei’s errant bra strap back under her shirt. “Let’s not share this with anyone,” Kate says.
“Not even with your mom or Isabel?”
Kate puts the tips of her thumb and index finger together and makes a gesture as if zipping her mouth shut. “Well, of course Mom and Isabel,” she says. �
�But no one else.”
At that moment, Teddy Wingo glides into the office dressed in an exquisite tan Prada suit and a robin’s-egg-blue tie with pale pink elephants, one of the many in his delicious parade of Easter-egg-colored Hermès ties, his thick, longish dirty blond hair gleaming. As is customary, he pokes his head into Kate’s office and gives the two brokers a big, smiling hello. Kate thinks to herself at that moment how attractive he is, but in a Jeff Bridges in Jagged Edge sort of way. Lorelei glances at him. “I’m mortified,” she murmurs.
You should be, Kate thinks, and then, Poor Lorelei.
“What’s going on?” Teddy looks from one woman to the other. There’s a trace of sympathy in his voice. “Are you okay?”
Hot Property Page 7