Hot Property

by Michele Kleier

Once she’s riding the slow, dilapidated, trembling elevator down to the ground floor, she wonders why Bart has no issues with the elevator. The elevator is a real problem. Oh, well, this is all going to fall apart anyway, and she decides she’ll pass Bart on to someone else in her office, maybe Lorelei Lyne, who can put up with anybody.

  On her way back uptown she hears Billy Joel’s “My Life” playing on her cell phone. This is one of Jonathan’s favorite songs; he’s programmed her phone to ring with it whenever he calls. She assumes he’s calling from home now. Though she’d been vehemently opposed to Jonathan taking time off from school because she worried that he’d never go back, in the end, she’d said yes when everybody else in the family—even Tom—supported it. And so she’s come to see it, as the rest of the Chases do, as a once-in-a-lifetime chance for Jonathan.

  “Hi, Mom,” he says. “Just spoke to Dad. I have this program I just downloaded and copied onto a DVD. If you install it on somebody’s computer, it basically monitors every key stroke a person makes. If I install it tonight, tomorrow when Teddy goes to the office and signs on to his personal e-mail, we’ll have a record of his user name and password. And then we can start digging.”

  “It’s as easy as that?”

  “Yup. We just need to read through the transcripts of key strokes until we find what we’re looking for. It could take a while, but it’s definitely doable.”

  Elizabeth is silent. She considers herself to be highly scrupulous. And even though she’s agreed with Tom that it is time to hack into Teddy’s e-mail, a part of her still feels weird about it; it’s not illegal, but she feels it is somehow not right.

  “Mom, I think we really have to do this,” Jonathan is saying.

  “I know.”

  “Why don’t you just give me a key to the office, and I’ll do it,” he says.

  “Okay, I’ll give it to you when I get home,” Elizabeth says.

  “Love you,” Jonathan says, and hangs up.

  Roberta Green, chubby and totally frumpy, raven-haired with no makeup, thick glasses, and dressed in a navy blue jumpsuit, arrives at the empty four-bedroom, three-bath on East 70th Street with Barry Kessler, a sixtyish, nervous-looking man. Having once been a resident of the building and thus already familiar with the particular layout of the apartment, he moves through the high-ceilinged rooms briskly, confirming that the apartment is in excellent condition. Approaching a large living room window and peering down on Madison Avenue for a moment, he takes a deep breath and turns to Elizabeth.

  “It doesn’t take me long to make up my mind.”

  “Sounds like you’d made up your mind long before now,” she says. There’s something between a raffish grin and a smirk on his face. She feels an aggressive self-promotion about to begin and deflects it by saying, “So I understand you once lived in this building, Barry.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “And why did you move?”

  “Kids went to college. Our apartment was slightly bigger than this one. And we didn’t like the empty-nest feeling. So we downsized. But now we’re expecting a grandchild, and we want more room again. My wife and I—we loved it here.” Massaging his hands, he says, “Look, I’m prepared to offer 9.43 million.” Roberta nods as though she is his walker in Best in Show.

  Two hundred thousand dollars more than her accepted offer from Ai-Ling Chua and her husband; Elizabeth is taken aback for a few moments.

  “Well, I’m happy to present the offer as soon as my seller returns from France,” Elizabeth says. “But in the meantime, I’d like to see your financials. I need to be sure they’re still suitable for the co-op board.”

  Looking impatient, Roberta now says, “He’s already lived in this building.”

  “Roberta,” Elizabeth says, “you and I both know that finances can change in a day, let alone ten years. I’m sure they’re fine, but I’d like to see them.”

  “Yeah, it’s changed—he’s richer now,” she says.

  Oh, Elizabeth hates this woman’s guts. So she pretends she is not there. “Barry,” she says, “I certainly think my seller will take the best offer. But I must show him your financials before we speak any further.”

  “So what do you need, exactly?” Roberta asks.

  At this point, Barry interrupts. “Roberta, I’ll take care of this. I know what she needs. I would assume you do, too—you’ve been a broker for over twenty years.” And then he shakes Elizabeth’s hand, thanks her for her time, and says, “I expect to hear favorably from you.” And then he walks out the door.

  Barry reminds her of an old client of hers, Adam Kamenstein, who was looking at prewar co-ops asking between $13 and $20 million. When one particular listing came up in a building that required a minimum of three times liquid after closing, Elizabeth felt compelled to ask him what, exactly, his liquidity was. The girls were sitting next to her on her sofa in the library as she had the phone conversation, and they heard the client on the other end of the line.

  “Oh, I just can’t bring myself to say the number out loud,” he told Elizabeth.

  And Elizabeth said, “Well, give me a hint.” She had been working with the client for quite some time, and they had a friendly, flirty rapport. As he started hinting, she began motioning with her hand, flicking all ten fingers out at once, over and over and over again, as she balanced the phone on her ear, until the girls counted to 100 million.

  In fact, this turned out to be no exaggeration at all, and, happily for both the client and Chase Residential, in the end he bought a triple-mint fifteen-room on Fifth Avenue for slightly less than $30 million!

  Tonight is movie night with the whole family, including Jonathan. They order in a couple of extra-cheese pizzas and then gather around in the library to watch North by Northwest, one of the family’s all-time favorites; Elizabeth especially loves the famous opening scene where Cary Grant is having lunch at the Oak Room at the Plaza just before he’s abducted.

  Kate and Isabel are sitting in club chairs that they’ve rearranged to face the television screen. Jonathan is lying on his back on the Oriental rug, eating extra-salty pretzels as Roxy, Lola, and Dolly stand on him, kissing his face. He’s grown his hair longer; it’s become curly and tousled. Elizabeth thinks it’s flattering, that it brings out his cheekbones and his gorgeous green-blue eyes. She’s been so thrilled to have him back home, hearing the patter of his feet at two, three, five in the morning as he shuffles out of his room in his boxers into the kitchen for a snack of pickles or those salty pretzels, or to make himself a cup of coffee. And she loves seeing his door closed in the morning as she leaves for work, knowing he will probably sleep till noon, sometimes two, and then will come out, yawning, in his blue plaid boxers and a worn Polo teddy bear T-shirt, yelling, “Mom!” She even hides the Vico bills from Tom—Jonathan has been ordering in his favorite salad and Spaghetti Vico nightly, and they like to throw away the evidence quickly before Tom catches them. Tom is more of a believer in balancing your checkbook, and spending only what you can afford. Elizabeth, a “more is more” kind of woman, is all about indulgence, especially when it comes to her son.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Kate

  Perfection on CPW

  70s west/7 rooms. Turn-of-the-century building, 3 master bedrooms with en suite baths, new EIK, solid oak floors. Wine cellar, full-service cooperative. $7.3 million.

  “Oh, my God!” Kate says into her phone. “Don’t tell me you took three Ativan before your board interview! Andy, are you kidding me?” Rushing up Madison Avenue in four-inch Manolo stilettos to meet Scott for dinner at Vico, one of the family’s favorite Italian restaurants on 92nd and Madison, she pulls her black cashmere coat closer together with one hand to shield herself from a horrible November wind. She is too rushed to stop and actually button her coat. Andy Candel graduated a year ahead of her from Penn, and shares a very successful legal practice in the city with
his father. The SoHo apartment he wants to buy is in a very cool, very downtown sort of building, one that has a different feel from so many of the apartments she sells on the Upper East Side. In addition to its loftlike open space, it has soaring windows, twelve-foot ceilings, and a hot tub in the master bath; Andy had described the property as “basically perfect” for him, and Kate is horrified to think he just may have lost it.

  “Tell me what you talked about at the interview. Maybe it’s not as bad as you think,” Kate says hopefully.

  “I’m screwed. Totally,” Andy insists. “Things were going fine, I think—we talked about my financial package and clearly they were happy with it, and then, after a while, we somehow, I guess it was my fault, got onto the subject of Sarah Palin, and well, I just couldn’t—”

  “Oh, no! How did you get on the subject of Sarah Palin? We went over this—you never talk politics during a board interview! Never! Oh, no!” Kate says. She likes Andy a lot (they tutored inner-city kids in West Philadelphia together in college, and both of them volunteered at a local animal shelter in her junior year) and he is just one of those utterly likable people. But how could he be such an idiot!

  “I know, I know,” Andy is saying, “it’s just that I was so nervous before the interview, and I didn’t want to have a drink and then smell like a bar, so I figured a little extra Ativan would only make me feel even more relaxed. I guess I got a little too relaxed.”

  Kate moans and ties her coat—what street is she on? Only 87th; there are no cabs and she’s walking as fast as she can, regretting her heels.

  He continues, “After I told them that if Sarah Palin were ever elected president, I’d seriously consider moving out of the United States, preferably to someplace in the Caribbean, like, maybe, Turks and Caicos, they—”

  “No!” Kate says. “No, no, no! You didn’t!”

  “Well, I did, and then I started talking about Bristol Palin and how she and her ex should have used birth control, and then—”

  “Oh, Andy!” Kate interrupts him as she arrives at Vico. “I’m laughing and crying for you! I’m walking into Vico now, I’m very late for a dinner, can I call you back in an hour and a half or so?” She feels badly hanging up, but there is unfortunately nothing she can do now. Scott is sitting at the table, nearly finished with a glass of red wine already.

  “How about if I e-mail the board an apology, and then send them like . . . maybe . . . a really good bottle of wine, a nice French Bordeaux, umm, maybe a Château Mouton Rothschild . . .”

  “I don’t know, let me think about it and ask Mom,” Kate says. “I’ll call you later.”

  Settling in at their table for two at the restaurant, Kate looks over at Scott seated across from her, wearing a blue-and-white-checked button-down, perfectly worn jeans, and a pair of lightly scuffed loafers.

  “I got you a glass of wine,” Scott says, and she is dying to just lean across the table and kiss him. But instead she sits down, sips her wine, and tells him about Andy and his ill-advised remarks about the Palins. Scott laughs. “So there goes that?” he asks.

  “If I had to guess, I’d say yes. Poor Andy, I love him.”

  “Let’s order, I’m starved,” Scott says.

  “If I have the balsamic chicken, will you get the Rigatoni Siciliana, and we can split it? And I don’t feel like a salad,” she says.

  Sal, their favorite waiter, takes their order, and then asks about Isabel and the rest of the family, who have all been coming to Vico since Kate can remember. “She’s getting married,” Kate reports, smiling, and Sal smiles back and says, “Congratulazioni!” He sends over the dashing owners, Nino and Genero, motorcycling “cool guys”—who she, Isabel, and Jonathan have grown up with—to say congratulations as well.

  While Scott is eating his buffalo mozzarella with tomato, and Kate is drinking her second glass of Montepulciano, her BlackBerry begins to vibrate. It’s Isabel, who’s sent an e-mail about a showing she finished late in the day. She asks Kate to guess what was in the condo’s oven when her client opened it. Kate has no idea, but Isabel’s answer comes a moment later: “Books! An oven full of books!” “HA!” Kate writes back, and shakes her head. And then Isabel e-mails back, asking her to guess again, this time about what was in one of the cabinets in the master bath. Kate’s shocked by the answer, which turns out to be a 9mm pistol. “UGTBK” she types back—You’ve got to be kidding. “The buyers, a young couple from Great Neck, got a great kick out of it,” Isabel e-mails her.

  “What’s going on?” Scott says. “Your sister?”

  “Yes, she was showing an apartment today and her clients opened the medicine cabinet and there was a gun in it!” Kate says, and dips a piece of bread into a small plate of olive oil.

  “Don’t read into this any more than what I’m saying, but you and your family are in touch every single minute,” Scott says. “I don’t know, maybe it’s because I’m a guy and my two brothers are out in San Francisco and Seattle and I’m just not into checking in with them and my parents every five minutes, but you guys are together like, ninety-nine percent of the time, and you’re on the phone or e-mailing when you’re not. I mean, don’t you get tired of each other? Ever?”

  Shrugging one shoulder, Kate says, “My family—the five of us—has always been the center of my life.” She and Scott have had this conversation before, of course; in fact, it’s a conversation she’s had with nearly every man she’s dated for more than a few weeks. The center of my life. She and Isabel have always said that if they could, they’d be living in a family compound of sorts, an enormous apartment large enough to accommodate all of them—their parents, Jonathan, Isabel, future husbands, wives, someday, their children, and all the dogs . . . they are soul mates, the Chases.

  “I honestly don’t know any other family like yours,” Scott says. “Don’t you ever worry about being suffocated by it?” His face, angular, with ruddy cheeks and that stubble she goes crazy for, wears an expression of vague bemusement; a moment later, he looks at her affectionately, then leans over and kisses her mouth.

  “Suffocated?” Kate says. “Never!” Kate, the hopeless romantic, believes that in all matters of the heart, you can never have too much love.

  By the time their tartufo comes, she feels Scott staring at her, so much so that she just wishes they were home alone. When the check arrives, he reaches for it quickly, and when they walk out the front door he pulls her close. “There’s something I want to talk to you about,” he says, and for an instant she feels dread.

  “Okaaay?” she hears herself say softly, and then in her head, Don’t do this again, please.

  “Well, don’t faint or anything, but—I’m thinking about going back to school,” Scott tells her.

  She stops in the middle of Madison Avenue, right in front of the 90th Street Pharmacy, the mom-and-pop drugstore where the Chases have had a family account for decades, and shrieks, “OMG!”

  Scott smiles a very shy little smile, sort of crooked and as though he is trying to conceal it. She sees his dimples and wants to kiss them. “In fact, I’ve already taken the LSATs and sent in my law school applications to NYU, Columbia, and Fordham. I did pretty well on them!”

  “I don’t even know what to say,” Kate says. “When did you study? I’m speechless!”

  “No, you’re not,” Scott says, and she sees that he’s laughing at her. “I think you and your sister haven’t stopped talking since the day you were born!”

  “You aren’t the first to say that,” Kate says. She holds his arm tightly as they walk east toward her apartment. The side streets on the Upper East Side are dark and quiet and nearly deserted on this chilly autumn evening, except for the occasional dog walker. She is always so thankful that her whole family paper-trains and they don’t have to be out walking the girls at all hours of the day and night.

  “So?” Scott is asking her now. “Thumbs up or thumbs d
own for the law school applications?”

  As if he hadn’t already heard her joyous shriek of approval. “Umm, let’s see,” Kate says, as if she needs time to think this over. She jumps up to give him a kiss and screams, “Yesss!”

  “Sorry, what did you say?” Scott teases.

  “Should I scream louder?!” Kate says and kisses him again.

  “Don’t you want to know what I got on my LSATs?” he says, pretending to sulk.

  “Oh, please, I know you well enough to know that you probably got pretty close to perfect.”

  “One seventy-six out of one eighty,” Scott says casually. He’s an innately modest person, Kate knows, but she can see that he’s really excited. She imagines Scott with his book of practice tests in his un-air-conditioned bedroom last summer, sitting on his unmade bed with stacks of art magazines on his floor, a box of Hershey bars and bottles and bottles of Coke, some half-empty, concentrating intently on endless pages of short-answer questions, biting one pen, another in his ear, contemplating this change of direction. Although Scott could have lived in the city (his parents offered to get him an apartment dozens of times), he chose to live with his friends in Brooklyn, in a shabby apartment filled with furniture and sets of dishes and mismatched silverware they got from their families. In all the years she has known him, he’s never seemed interested in the life he grew up with, on Central Park West, in a beautiful prewar duplex where a dirty pair of jeans left on the floor was put back in its proper place two hours later, clean and pressed. Now his laundry sits in a bag on his floor, piling up weeks at a time, to the point where he sometimes buys a new set of boxers before taking the bag to the cleaners. She can’t ask him why—she did once, but Scott wasn’t one to discuss matters like that; when she asked him something complicated, something he didn’t want or wasn’t ready to discuss, he answered with a look and then a short but firm kiss that said “enough.”

  They’ve arrived at the awning of her building now, and just before they step into the small lobby, Kate presses herself against his chest, resting the side of her face in the soft wool of his navy jacket.