Hot Property

by Michele Kleier

  “Oh, nothing much going on,” Kate manages to say. “Just a really impossible client.”

  “Looks more like boys behaving badly again!” he says, an amused smile on his face.

  “You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?” Lorelei says, standing up straight, sticking her cleavage out.

  Oh, God, Kate thinks, is she flirting with Teddy?

  Ignoring her, Teddy turns to Kate and says, “Are you showing my listing tomorrow in the Apthorp?”

  “Yes—at two thirty.”

  Teddy consults his BlackBerry. “Okay, perfect, I just scheduled a three forty-five.” He squints at Kate. “So this client of yours is that English mystery writer?”

  “Yes, looking for a pied-à-terre.”

  “Well, tell him that the apartment is right down the hall from where Joseph Heller used to live. . . . Anyway—I’ve got a mound of paperwork. I’m off, girls,” he says, continuing along to his office. “Looking forward to tomorrow, Kate.” And Teddy winks, smiles a big, big smile, and saunters out of her office.

  A month from now, when Rodney Greenstein buys a co-op from another broker, he will come crawling back to Elizabeth and Chase Residential, knowing he’ll never get past the board without her help, and offering her $200,000 if she’ll assist him with his board package for the deal he excluded her from. When he is finished begging her, Elizabeth will tell him “go fuck yourself” and hang up the phone. Two months later, Rodney Greenstein will indeed be turned down by the board. And that, Elizabeth will tell Lorelei, is Rodney Greenstein’s happy ending.

  Chapter Five

  Isabel

  Magnificent Limestone Town House

  80s East off Fifth, 25-foot-wide 6-story single-family town house; 6 bedrooms, 7 baths, beautifully landscaped 50-foot garden with terraces off master suite. Must see. $22.5 million.

  At ten o’clock the following Friday morning, Isabel leans back in the limo idling in front of Barney’s on Madison Avenue. Her new client, Delphine Homan von Herenberg, has instructed the driver to wait for what sounds to Isabel something like “a teenzy, tinzy leetle minute” while she rushes inside to retrieve some expensive bauble or other from a saleswoman who she swears is waiting just inside the luxury department store’s front doors. Isabel can’t quite place Delphine’s accent, which seems to hover somewhere between French, German, and, at certain moments, Italian. But that makes sense, since Isabel has been told that her client is part German, part French, and spent considerable time in Rome when she was growing up. In addition to all that, Delphine is a bona fide countess, thanks to her husband, Count Homan von Herenberg, and the count’s pockets seem to be exceedingly large and deep. The countess has come to Isabel through the courtesy of Mimi Ross, whose West End Avenue classic six Isabel sold for $2.5 million last year. Mimi met the countess at a dinner party in East Hampton, and when she learned that her new acquaintance was interested in buying in Manhattan, she recommended Isabel. Isabel makes a note to herself to send Mimi a big box of Swiss chocolates—champagne truffles, she decides—from Teuscher this week.

  “Zhere! Zat vasn’t too bad, vas it?” Isabel hears, and watches as Delphine scrambles back into the limo, the discreet black shopping bag with its silvery letters bobbing on her arm. “Would you like to see?” Delphine pushes her hair—pale blond and falling almost to her waist—out of her face as she opens the shopping bag to give Isabel a glimpse. Inside is a dense profusion of leather and suede, both in the same deep shade of scarlet; the Valentino handbag, which Isabel can see more clearly when Delphine extracts it, is a giant, intricately petaled flower, hanging down from a pair of scarlet handles.

  “It’s gorgeous,” Isabel says.

  The driver moves back into the stream of traffic making its way up Madison. They are headed to 1 East 82nd Street, just off Fifth Avenue, where Isabel is going to show Delphine not an apartment but a six-story, twenty-five-foot-wide town house, with a newly restored limestone facade, a state-of-the-art underground wine cellar, and an enormous garden designed by one of Tokyo’s leading landscape architects. It’s an exceptional listing owned by a wealthy Arab businessman, and it requires an exceptional buyer; Isabel hopes the count and countess might just be the ones.

  “Is that the house?” Delphine asks, pointing out the window as the driver turns adroitly onto the side street.

  “No, the one next door,” Isabel corrects. “Number one.”

  “My lucky number!” says Delphine, actually clapping her hands together in delight. Although she must be in her late thirties, more than a decade older than Isabel, she has the gestures and mannerisms of a delightful little girl. Isabel is absolutely enchanted with the countess—her only concern is why she’s so adamant that her husband, the count, not accompany them on any of the showings.

  “I hate to bother him,” Delphine had explained earlier. “He’s just so busy. And he’s mostly in Europe for his business.”

  How busy could a person be? But Delphine has insisted that Franz—or Fritzie, as she likes to call him—has left the details of this purchase entirely up to her. “He loves to indulge me,” Delphine said with a breathy little laugh, a laugh that sounded to Isabel like that of a thirteen-year-old. “What can I say?”

  The limo pulls up to the curb, and the two women get out. Delphine pushes back her hair—again—and adjusts the supple, whisper-thin fawn suede jacket—perfect for spring, Isabel thinks—that she wears over a pair of matching suede pants; on her feet are a pair of glossy and elaborate black cowboy boots that remind Isabel of the matching Billy Martin cowboy boots she and Kate had in every color in their early teens. Her long, slender fingers glitter with diamonds, and diamonds sparkle at her ears as well. She leans over to say a few words to the limo driver, who nods before driving off. Then she turns back to Isabel, her face lit by a wide, innocent smile.

  “I’m ready!” she says, and follows Isabel into the house, the heels of her cowboy boots tapping as she walks.

  Isabel introduces Delphine to the exclusive broker Jed Garfield—a young man in a navy suit and a white shirt, no tie—and Delphine squeals, “That smell! Vat is that delightful smell?”

  “They’re flowers from Plaza Florist,” Jed says. It’s an explosion of white freesia, roses, and gardenias selected and arranged by the stager Jed had hired; the scent, as they walk in, is certainly intoxicating. The black-and-white marble floor, laid in a pattern of diamonds, not squares, shines like a mirror. Overhead, a six-armed crystal chandelier glitters as brightly as Delphine’s jewels. And this is just the entrance gallery.

  Delphine oohs and ahhs her way through the house, exclaiming over the garden with its burbling fountain and prettily arranged slate pathways and the double-size parlor that could easily be used as a ballroom. Isabel imagines that Delphine is one of the few women left in this world who is divine enough to host her own ball. She swoons over each bathroom—where the stager has filled a massive covered glass jar with hyacinth and pink oval bars of soap, and made sure there is another, smaller bouquet on the bathroom vanity. And then there are the his-and-hers walk-in closets, the kitchen with its glazed terra-cotta tiles, collected and shipped from a Tuscan farmhouse of a previous century. “Fritzie will love these!” Delphine says, kneeling down to run her bejeweled fingers over the floor. “He can truly appreciate history!”

  “Then he’ll love this house,” Isabel assures her as they descend the stairs that lead to the wine cellar. Forty minutes later, Isabel and Delphine emerge with Jed onto the street again, where the driver has been waiting.

  “What a pleasure!” Delphine says. “This house is like a little palace. I can’t wait to tell Fritzie about it.” Jed smiles, and then Delphine leans over and, European style, plants two light kisses on either of Isabel’s cheeks. Despite her initial wariness, Isabel is charmed by the gesture. Occasionally a client treats her with such barely veiled contempt that it makes her blood boil. But not the countess. N
o, she has manners, lovely manners, in fact. And yet there is about her just an ever-so-slight air of gracious condescension, that of a sophisticated, discerning buyer toward a person trying to purvey something to her.

  “Please just wait one leetle second,” Delphine says to Isabel after Jed leaves.

  Isabel waits patiently by the curb as the countess slides into the limo, and watches as her new client slips her hand inside the Barneys shopping bag. When Delphine pulls her hand out again, she’s holding a small package swathed in tissue paper and tied with a silver ribbon. “For you,” Delphine says, handing the package to Isabel.

  “For me?” Isabel is surprised. She is accustomed to buying gifts for her clients. Buying gifts is just one of the ingredients in the Chases’ real estate “rules”; they love to send a beautiful bouquet from the right florist or the right wine from Sherry-Lehmann. And when an apartment closes, she has often been rewarded—by a stack of Ippolita bangles or a gift certificate to Jimmy Choo—by a client who is rapturously happy with his or her new home. But getting a gift so early in the process is a new experience for Isabel.

  “I hope you like it,” the countess says. The driver makes no move to leave; clearly, Delphine is waiting for Isabel to unwrap her gift.

  Isabel unties the ribbon and pulls the tissue paper aside. In her hands she holds a bottle of perfume made by Clive Christian. She’s familiar with the British furniture designer and has read about his new line of scent in Town & Country; at over $865 for a 1.7-ounce bottle, it is said to be the most expensive perfume in the world.

  Isabel opens the box, uncaps the elegant bottle, and sniffs delicately. A subtle mix of . . . what? Rose? Maybe gardenia? Isabel isn’t sure, but she knows that she loves it.

  “Thank you,” she says with great sincerity. “So much.”

  “No, it is I who must thank you,” the countess says in her slightly elusive accent. “You have shown me a great treasure.” She signals the driver, and they’re off.

  Isabel muses over this gift on her way back to the office. Her family has certainly had its share of super-rich clients, to say nothing of celebrities. She can remember the time, more than fifteen years ago, when Christie Brinkley accompanied Elizabeth after a showing to pick up Isabel and Kate at dance class at Helen Butleroff; she was so glamorous that even Isabel’s ten-year-old self couldn’t take her eyes off her. When it came time to show her own apartment on West 67th Street, Elizabeth said that, fittingly perhaps, the only thing to be found in Christie’s fridge was a bottle of champagne. Isabel remembers, too, the time her mother was showing apartments to John Travolta, with Isabel and Kate tagging along after school. John was so patient and sweet with them; he even let them climb all over him in the back of his limo while Elizabeth took pictures. Later, when they opened up the camera and realized there’d been no film in it, John messengered over a box of personally autographed photos.

  Turning her thoughts back to Delphine, Isabel just knows there’s something different about her, though what it is she cannot readily pinpoint.

  Back at the office, she puts the perfume on her desk like a trophy. Violeta has turned the radio on to their favorite 1980s station, and hearing Madonna’s “Material Girl” makes Isabel smile. (She and Kate love the “Material Girl” video where Madonna imitates Marilyn Monroe singing “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” from the movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, another Chase family favorite.) Isabel decides she will tell both her sister and mother about Delphine and the showing later; right now her mother is on the phone, and Kate is out somewhere. Isabel has plenty to do anyway, including scheduling a vet’s appointment for Dixie (vaccination and check-up) and sending a quick follow-up e-mail to the countess as well as another to Kimby Bennett. As she types, her phone rings nonstop: two more clients trying to set up appointments, a frazzled seller worrying about an upcoming open house, another client, offer accepted and fretting about whether his financials are going to work with a dreaded Fifth Avenue co-op board. And then her friend Nancy Scarlata, an obsessive reader of Page Six, who always seems to get to it before Isabel. “Here’s the latest,” Nancy reports gleefully.

  We hear that Elizabeth Chase and her real estate cutie daughters Kate and Isabel just sold a two-bedroom condo to actors Amy Poehler and Will Arnett.

  Then Kate calls, followed by her mother, both of whom are, of course, so excited to hear that they are on the New York Post’s coveted Page Six again.

  Isabel turns back to her work, taking a moment to grab a handful of Gummi Bears from the jar she keeps on her desk. She and Kate adore candy, all of it from Dylan’s Candy Bar—gummy anything, sour balls, licorice, both red and black—and they keep an enormous jar of it in between their desks. Elizabeth, though, is not one for just any candy—only the occasional black licorice twist and anything incredibly sour. She is totally a chocolate addict, and she always says to the girls, “You’re lucky I don’t like that kind of candy or I’d make you throw that jar away, because I’d be two hundred pounds!” As Isabel pops a few gummy dots into her mouth now, she thinks about the Bennetts. Although they acted as if they never wanted to see her again, she is not so easily deterred. Elizabeth has taught both of her daughters a thing or two about the value of persistence. “Never let a client slip away,” she’s said. “Send an e-mail, pick up the phone. Send flowers if you feel you need to.”

  Isabel remembers a story her mother told her: years ago, when Elizabeth heard that Warren Beatty was in town and looking at real estate, she devised a plan to get him as a client. She’d had a crush on him since grade school, when she fell in love with him in Splendor in the Grass, and so she wrote a number of identical, beautifully handwritten notes explaining why she would be the perfect broker for him, and because she didn’t know which hotel he was staying at, she left those notes at the Plaza, the Carlyle, the Ritz-Carlton, and several other exclusive New York hotels. She virtually papered the city with notes. Remarkably, not only did she hit the right hotel, but Warren Beatty was so impressed by her note that he called her, and after nearly two years of working with her, he and Diane Keaton actually bought an apartment through Elizabeth, though, in the end, after they’d split up, it was Diane who wound up with the co-op. Even all these years later, Elizabeth still has the tiny tape she extracted from the answering machine, containing Warren’s messages; she keeps it in her jewelry box.

  So Isabel knows all about the importance of being persistent. She sends the necessary e-mails, and then checks her book for her next appointment, which, as it turns out, is across town, on Riverside Drive at a beautiful, amenity-filled new condominium called the Aldyn. She glances at her watch. No time for lunch today. She grabs a Ronnybrook peach yogurt from the office refrigerator and heads across the park in a cab. She doesn’t, after all, want to be late; the client she’s meeting is a busy, imperious investment banker. Newly divorced, he seems to have a chip on his shoulder about women in general, and Isabel doesn’t want to do anything to offend him.

  When she arrives at the showing, an ultramodern luxury building with a pool and a spectacular roof deck, her client, Clive Brooks, is already waiting. Isabel can sense the tension in his body and in his face, and she can also see that Dee Bradley, the heavily made-up fiftysomething broker representing the sponsor, is rattled by Clive’s attitude. Isabel is determined to get past his annoyance. “Clive!” she says. “Good to see you, I love your tie.” Clive is a meticulous dresser, extremely tan, with big black-rimmed glasses and a nervous sort of fidget. He is a very small man, but seems to make up for his lack of stature with attitude.

  “I’m not sure about this building,” he says, ignoring her hello and compliment. “It looks too big. Impersonal, even.” Clive shoves his glasses up on his nose. Dee wilts a bit.

  “It is big,” Isabel agrees. “But it’s also very sophisticated, and a great social building. They host pool and roof deck parties, and there are film showings in the entertainment center.”

/>   “Entertainment center?” says Clive. “I didn’t know they had one.”

  “Yes, they sponsor mini film festivals twice a month. My sister and I love old movies, and if we lived here, we’d go to all of them!”

  “That is a nice amenity,” Clive says, and Isabel can see he’s loosening up a bit. And after she shows him the thirtieth-floor apartment—oversize living/dining area, partial views of the Hudson, two bedrooms, two full baths tiled in pale green Italian glass—Clive seems to be a different man.

  “I have to say you changed my mind,” Clive confesses later as the elevator whisks them down again. “I wasn’t prepared to like it this much. To be honest, I was all set to hate it. But now . . .” He trails off, pushing his glasses back up his nose.

  “See, you never know!” Isabel says.

  “You’re right, I made a hasty judgment,” Clive says. “I mean, I’m not ready to make an offer, but this place is definitely an apartment I’ll consider. It seems like a good building for me, with my situation as you know it.”

  “I agree,” says Isabel. “Which is exactly why I brought you here. You have my cell phone number for when you’re ready for another look.”

  Dee nods a grateful smile before saying good-bye.

  By the end of the day, Isabel is thoroughly exhausted. An irate seller called to complain about the asking price set for her apartment; another broker canceled a showing for an apartment that Isabel’s client was dying to see. But she has no time to relax at home; in fact, she’s not even going home. Instead, she’s meeting Michael, her boyfriend, at LaGuardia, straight from the office, which she hates doing, so that they can take off on a much-needed weekend getaway to Palm Beach. Michael is an up-and-coming actor, and although his work is of an entirely different sort than her own, he applies himself to it with the same fierce and determined desire to succeed. And succeed he has, already having played very small roles on 30 Rock, Law & Order SVU, Damages, and, when he was first starting out, the last season of Sex and the City. Just recently, through a friend of a friend who told him about an audition in L.A., he was able to get a tiny part as a waiter on Brothers & Sisters, one of Isabel and Kate’s favorite shows.