by Ruby Lang
“Oh my God, get out of here, please.”
She laughed as she disappeared into the elevator. “Even when he’s kicking me out, he says please.”
Chapter Three
Saturday
When Magda peeked through the monitor that morning, she recognized Tyson Yang on her doorstep.
Well, technically it was Uncle Byron’s doorstep. But still.
She tugged at her suit jacket, smoothing it down self-consciously. Then she remembered herself. She didn’t need to primp for him. She took a breath and opened the door. Or rather, she tried. It wouldn’t release. Damn it. Uncle Byron had ordered electronic locks installed during the week, and either they were malfunctioning or she had used the wrong setting. Either way, she hated them and she secretly wondered if engaging real estate brokers was Byron’s way of getting people to supervise the improvements he was making on the house while he stayed in his primary residence in Miami.
She fumbled for her phone as Tyson rang the doorbell again.
“One minute,” she yelled. “I’m coming.”
Well, she was already there but—
A few taps on her phone and luckily she heard the beep telling her that the security system was going to let her get away with opening the drawbridge.
“Really? You’ve taken to locking out the rabble?” Ty asked.
She’d been ready to be civil to him, she’d even been glad to see him. So much for the fluttering in her stomach when she’d peeked at the screen and saw his dark flop of hair, his wide eyes.
The fluttering had probably been the dregs of bodega coffee curdling in her stomach.
At the same time, it was a relief that she didn’t have to be polite to him. “Do you have an appointment, Mr. Yang?”
He frowned. “No. But isn’t this an open house?”
“Are you interested in buying?”
She gave him a saccharine smile. She was being an asshole. She could see his hesitation. But even now, he was honest. “I wouldn’t be able to afford it.”
“I’m afraid I’m busy with serious buyers only.”
“Are you?”
He peered inside. “I’m the only person here.” His tone softened. “And I promise not to take up much of your time. You wouldn’t return Mrs. E’s calls.”
“You’ll have to make an appointment.”
“For an open house? I just—”
“Ap-point-ment.”
She pointed at her phone.
He really looked puzzled now. “Look, English isn’t quite my first language, but it is a pretty close second, and I’m pretty sure I know what open house means.”
She grimaced. “It means what you think it means, but this is to cut down on gawkers and to help keep track of potential buyers.”
“You mean it’s open for rich people.”
“No, it’s for won’t-waste-my-time people.”
She’d finally snapped and, of course, that was the thing that made him laugh. But almost immediately he sobered.
“Okay, I apologize. I showed up here instead of making an appointment. I promise I’m not trying to be obnoxious or intimidating. I’ll leave if you tell me again. Again, I know you’re not the owner of the garden—just the representative. And I wanted to ask questions and you’re the only one who can help me.”
He held his palms out and she couldn’t help looking down at them. His hands were clean, his fingers slightly curled, the lines etched deeply in them. Her eyes traced the curve of his thumb down to his wrists, over the bony joint to where the dark hairs of his arms started. She was alarmed to discover she liked looking at them. His wrists were a lot like the rest of him: strong, stark, beautiful.
She raised her gaze to his and tried to dispel her wandering thoughts with a huff. “You can come in.”
She stepped back and held the door open wider. “But when one of my real appointments shows up you have to be quiet.”
Magda tried to tell herself it would be better to have him here. Sometimes seeing people in this vast, empty house did spook her. Tyson Yang did many things to her that she didn’t feel like analyzing, but he didn’t creep her out.
He stepped inside carefully and wiped his feet on the mat, which made her want to smile. He wasn’t muddy today. He was wearing khakis and a blue button-down shirt and part of her wondered if he’d dressed up for her. His eyes were traveling all over the entrance gallery, clearly somewhat overwhelmed. “Wow, this staircase, and all the light. This is incredible. I’m not used to this much space and I’m only in the lobby, or whatever this is called. Okay, I really have the overwhelming urge to take off my shoes so I don’t get everything dirty.”
She did have to laugh at that, especially because he clearly was restraining himself from coming further off the rug, even as he twisted his body around to look at everything around him.
“I’ve already invited you in,” she said. “So come.”
It was funny. She wouldn’t say she was quite used to the place after a month spent getting the rooms staged, and photographing and showing it. She would never be able to pass the china cabinets in the dining room without touching them, for instance, which is why she also spent a lot of time polishing them. And there were signs of renovation all over—ladders leaning in the hallways, buckets of plaster, paint and drop cloths at random and inconvenient intervals throughout the house. But some people made her gaze around anew, made her admire it. Annoying Tyson, with his clear delight, was one of them.
She couldn’t help a rush of pride over the fact that she was the one showing it—even if she was the last resort.
“When was this built?” he was asking.
“Early 1890s. They had great views of City College, plus they had all the conveniences of 1891, I guess. Those gates at 138th and 139th that say Private Road, Walk Your Horses? You could have delivery out back. They got Bruce Price, and Clarence Luce’s firm to work on the other houses along the row. They were notable architects at the time. Stanford White’s firm designed the houses on this side of 139th.”
“I feel like I’ve heard that name, Stanford White.”
“There was a movie made about his murder. White was a predator who liked teen girls. He even had a huge twirly villain’s mustache. But he got shot in the head by the husband of one of his onetime victims. Guess he had it coming.”
“I’ll say.”
She found herself enjoying showing off her knowledge to him, and that was...troubling. She cleared her throat. “This isn’t the kind of detail I usually include when I talk about the history of the house to potential buyers.”
He laughed, but his eyes were sincere. “I feel very special.”
“At the time, the developer built up these blocks to sell to upper middle-class white citizens. It was planned so that white folks would settle up here. But that didn’t happen, and they refused to sell to Black families, either, for years and years until about 1920. The houses ended up being bought by upwardly mobile and prosperous Black families—like my Uncle Byron’s great-grandparents. That’s how these houses got their name, Strivers’ Row.”
“Guess those developers had it coming.”
His face shone with mischief. She had to admit grudgingly to herself that she liked that, too. “Thank you. I like to talk about that part.”
“But now you’re selling it. Don’t you wish you could keep it in the family?”
“It’s not my house, not my own background. My uncle Byron isn’t related by blood. He was married to my late aunt. My family’s Afro-Latina, not African American. But I am aware of how important this history is and how complicated it is, and I want to be mindful. It means something that my uncle trusted me to do this.”
And despite how difficult Byron was, it really did matter to her. Who cared if everyone thought she was being set up for failure? She could do this. She wanted to do it right.
He nodded, and in the seriousness of his eyes, she knew there was respect. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”
“It’s fine.”
It would be fine. Eventually.
Another glance, and then he finally took a careful step over the threshold. “Then I apologize if I’m acting like such a gawker, but I’ve never been in one of these grand Harlem houses before. You must be used to it if your aunt lived here.”
“It was divided into two apartments, with Uncle Byron’s parents upstairs for a long time, so I didn’t get a sense of how big it was. Plus I was a kid. When his parents retired and moved to Miami, and my uncle took over the whole house, my aunt became ill and it seemed like she got to enjoy it for a really short time.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“It was a long time ago.”
She paused. “I was a teenager then and I have to admit I didn’t quite understand what was happening. Maybe because my mom kept it from me, but also maybe because I didn’t want to know.”
“It’s a shitty thing for a teenager to have to deal with.”
“Terrible for the whole family. But I remember my aunt couldn’t take the stairs after a while, and they moved her into this front room. My uncle had it completely gutted after she was gone.”
He’d redone it a few times. And then he’d moved down to Florida, too, keeping the house until maybe he’d taken stock and decided he couldn’t ever change it enough.
She and Ty had moved into the kitchen now and she had to shake her head, reminding herself that she wasn’t supposed to be giving him a tour of the place or of her family business. He was the enemy—sort of—she reminded herself. So instead of taking him upstairs to the bedrooms—hush! she told herself fiercely—she asked him to sit down and poured him a cup of coffee.
He also seemed to be trying to remind himself to stay on business as he perched on one of the kitchen stools. “I guess I should ask my questions. I’m not usually so easily sidetracked. I wanted to know if there was any chance that some of us from the garden could contact the owner to talk? We couldn’t find much aside from a name. At this point, we’re not even sure the owner knows that we’ve got a community garden established and that there are people who might be interested in maybe negotiating something with them.”
Magda heaved a sigh. She had asked Keith some of these questions over the course of the week, but Keith had told her it wasn’t her job. And since he was the one who’d given her work when she needed it, she couldn’t quite question him closely. “You can send offers to me. But I’m not the person who’s in contact with the seller. I’m mostly here to field inquiries to show buyers around. My boss is the one who’s in charge of that side of things.”
“You’re not? It’s just surprising to me that you don’t have that responsibility. I mean, you’re selling this place.”
“It’s more that my uncle is doing me a favor by giving me the listing.”
“It’s not really a favor if you’re working for the money. It’s early on a Saturday morning. It seems like you’re earning it,” Tyson said mildly.
“What do you do?”
“I’m a CPA, an accountant.”
“My boss likes to remind me that someone as new to the business as me would never ordinarily land a place like this. I’ve only had my license for a few months.”
“But someone more senior, how do they ‘land’ places? A lot of it is through who you know, your network of contacts, isn’t it. And your uncle is in your network. That’s what people are always saying, right? Use your contacts. And so you are.”
“So I am.”
He’d wandered away with his coffee cup to peek inside a closet. She could have told him she’d hidden a couple of industrial fans and the builder’s shop vac in there, but instead, she was thinking about what he’d said.
She hadn’t considered it that way before. Maybe she’d been so worried over the past few months that she’d concentrated mostly on the fact that everyone told her the listing was a lost cause. Sometimes it crossed her mind that maybe she hadn’t gotten much at all, that nothing was what she deserved at this point. And yet, did Keith deserve his commissions? She was the one scouring the real estate database for his clients, and she was probably going to do the actual work at the lot, and deal with the people who were already there.
She shook her head. None of this helped her. “Listen, I sympathize, I really do. But I think you believe I have more power than I do here. I just started all this—” She didn’t want to say she was in over her head, but she felt it. “I just started. I’m learning the ropes and I can try to talk to my boss, but I—”
Tyson Yang’s face had gone flat. “So you won’t help us.”
“I said—”
He stood up. “No, it’s fine. You’re right. You’re wasting your time with me. You obviously have a lot to do in this enormous expensive house that’s owned by a member of your family—”
“Hey, I just finished telling you that it’s not really my family’s,” she said, the frustration showing in her voice.
He took his cup and rinsed it in the sink. “Thank you for the coffee.”
Without looking at her again, he walked out of the kitchen. In a minute, she heard the door close gently. The alarm system didn’t even give a single peep.
* * *
Mrs. Espinosa marched up to where Ty was turning over compost, and pulled an iPad out of her bag.
“I asked a friend of mine who works for the city. She said we could talk to the Parks Department’s Green Thumb program and the Trust for Public Land.”
Usually, people did not disturb Ty when he was in the compost corner. But shoveling shit was the only thing that was helping him work off his stress. Although he’d been at it all morning if he counted how much crap Magda Ferrer had already given him in less than an hour.
He’d stopped to wipe his forehead and realized he was still in the good clothes that he’d worn in order to show up at her pricey house sale. He should send her the cleaning bill.
He was being unfair.
He didn’t know her. No matter how much she seemed like a rich girl in a suit, she’d told the story about the house, about her aunt, as if it mattered. Maybe it did.
Anyway, what exactly had he expected her to be able to do? Call up her client, and with a twinkle and a laugh convince them to give the garden up to the community? He’d gone in thinking magically, just as he’d started helping the garden without being practical and considering the implications. It was unlike him to have ignored the fact that had been staring him in the face: none of the people here knew who owned the lot, and they’d never bothered to try to secure it. It was never theirs. It was always going to go away, like everything in his life that he cared about. He should have known better than to get involved.
He turned to Mrs. E and noted that a few others had assembled. Some of them had travel coffee mugs and were obviously getting ready to get in a couple of hours of digging under the sun.
From the back, someone called, “Are these Green Thumb Parks whatever really going to give us money?”
“I heard this place is worth a million dollars at least,” someone else called.
“City’s so slow about everything.”
Mrs. E said, “We’ve got to get going, that’s the important thing. We need to make a presentation at the community board—”
Someone in the back yelled, “Ty can do that! He cleans up nice.”
Mrs. E ignored her. “We’ll get a bunch of people. We want the community board to see all the different ages and colors and groups we represent here. We’ll have to talk about the way the garden is good for the neighborhood. Maybe if anyone has any pictures—we need some before and after. Especially the before.”
“I got a picture of a huge rat from that time. One of my favorites I ever took.”
�
�Well, uh, good. If you can find more of those maybe we can use them. We should talk to our city councilor again, any community leaders. Your priest, your pastor, if you or anyone you know owns a business in the area. Famous people—”
Mrs. Freeman sang out, “My aunt’s hairdresser knows someone whose cousin is Lin Manuel Miranda!”
“We know! You won’t stop talking about it.”
Mrs. E said, “I started a list of people we could talk to and we can expand it. Any of you who knows anyone, talk to them, bring them by to talk to me.”
Ty looked around at everyone. “This is a great action list, Mrs. E.”
Mrs. E raised her iPad and said clearly to everyone, “It’s work, that’s what this is. But we’re gardeners. We’re not afraid of work and we’re used to being patient while things grow.”
“But do we have time?”
“We’re also not afraid of getting a little dirty.”
The crowd laughed. There were a few cheers, and then, as if by agreement, everyone began to disperse.
Mrs. E stayed with Ty.
She seemed to be waiting for him to say something.
“That really was wonderful, Mrs. E. You know exactly what to do and tell people. It sounds like you know how we have to organize this.”
“This ain’t my first rodeo, sweetheart. It’s not exactly like I’ve spent my whole life growing flowers in Harlem. I worked at City Hall for years. It can take a while and the system is frustrating, but stuff gets done, and I’ve still got a lot of friends there.”
“We’re going to need them.”
“What we’re going to need is your help, Ty.”
“Well. I can try.”
Dammit. It was hard to say no when she cornered him like this.
“I talked to the broker, Magda Ferrer, this morning,” he said.
He scraped the ground with his shovel. For some reason, he couldn’t look at Mrs. E, so he stared at his dirty oxfords.
He wasn’t sure quite what to tell her about it. “I wanted to help at least get some contact information.”