One Fifth Avenue

8

Enid Merle liked to say she could never stay angry at anyone for long.

There were exceptions, of course, such as Mindy Gooch. Now, when Enid saw Mindy in the lobby, she cut her, deliberately turning her head away, as though she literally didn’t see her. Nevertheless, she kept up with Mindy’s comings and goings through Roberto, the doorman, who knew everything about everyone in the building. She found out that Mindy had purchased a dog — a miniature cocker spaniel — and that the Rices were hoping to install through-the-wall air-conditioning units in their apartment, a request that Mindy planned to turn down. Why was it, Enid wondered, that the first thing everyone wanted these days was air-conditioning?

Although she had yet to forgive Mindy, Enid’s ire at the Rices themselves had fizzled with the hot August weather. Mostly because Enid found Annalisa Rice, with her auburn hair and curious wide mouth, intriguing. Several times a day, Enid caught glimpses of Annalisa Rice on her terrace, dressed in a smudged T-shirt and shorts, taking a break from unpacking boxes. Annalisa would lean over the railing to try to catch a breeze, shaking her long hair out of its ponytail for a second before twisting it back up on top of her head. On Thursday, the hottest afternoon of the year so far, Enid left Roberto a note to pass on to “Mrs. Rice.”

Ever helpful, Roberto delivered the envelope to Mrs. Rice’s door himself. As he handed her the missive, he attempted, not very subtly, to peek around her, hoping to get a glimpse of the apartment. Without the furniture or rugs, it appeared vast and echoey, although Roberto was able to see only into the second foyer and the dining room beyond. Annalisa thanked Roberto, firmly closed the door, and opened the envelope. Inside was a light blue card, across the top of which was embossed ENID MERLE, in no-nonsense gold lettering. Underneath was written: “PLEASE COME BY FOR TEA. AT HOME TODAY FROM THREE TO FIVE.”

Annalisa immediately set to work at making herself presentable. She clipped and filed her fingernails and scrubbed her body with a loofah.

She put on a pair of khakis and a white shirt, tying the tails around her waist. The effect was casual but neat.

Enid’s apartment wasn’t what Annalisa was expecting. She’d assumed the apartment would be filled with chintz and heavy drapes, like Louise Houghton’s, but instead, it was a museum of seventies chic, with white shag carpeting in the living room and a Warhol above the fireplace. “Your apartment is beautiful,” Annalisa said after she’d shaken hands with Enid and been invited inside.

“Thank you, dear. Is Earl Grey tea okay?”

“Anything’s fine.”

Enid went into the kitchen, and Annalisa sat down on the white leather couch. In a few minutes, Enid returned, carrying a papier mâché tray, which she set on the coffee table. “I’m so happy to meet you properly,” she said. “Usually, I meet all our newcomers first, but unfortunately, that wasn’t possible in your case.”

Annalisa stirred a spoonful of sugar into her tea. “It all happened so quickly,” she said.

Enid waved this fact away. “It’s not your fault. Mindy Gooch rushed your application through. I’m sure it will work out for the best. No one wants a lot of potential buyers trooping through the building — it’s extra work for the doormen and irritating to the other residents. But we like to take our time approving applicants. We kept one gentleman waiting a year.”

Annalisa smiled tensely, not sure of what to make of Enid Merle. She knew who Enid was, but given Enid’s comments about their entry into the building, Annalisa had yet to discern whether she was friend or foe.

“He was a so-called fertility specialist,” Enid continued, “and we were right to wait. It turned out he was impregnating his patients with his own sperm. I kept telling Mindy Gooch there was something unsavory about the man, although I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Mindy couldn’t see it at all, but it wasn’t her fault, poor dear. She was trying to get pregnant herself then, and she wasn’t thinking clearly. And when the scandal broke, she had to admit I’d been right all along.”

“Mindy Gooch seems very nice,” Annalisa said cautiously. She’d been looking for an opening to talk more about Mindy. Paul mentioned the parking spot in the Mews nearly every other day, and Annalisa wanted to find a way to secure it for him, guessing that Mindy Gooch was the key.

“She can be nice,” Enid said, taking a sip of her tea. “But she can also be difficult. Bullheaded. She’s very determined. Unfortunately, it’s the kind of determination that doesn’t always lead to success.” She leaned forward and whispered, “Mindy lacks people skills.”

“I think I see what you mean,” Annalisa replied.

“But she’ll be nice to you — at first,” Enid said. “She’s always nice, as long as she’s getting what she wants.”

“And what does she want?” Annalisa asked.

Enid laughed. Her laugh was unexpected, a great joyous whoop.

“That’s a good question,” she said. “She wants power, I suppose, but other than power, I don’t think she has a clue. And that’s the problem with Mindy. She doesn’t know what she wants. You never know what you’re going to get with her.” Enid poured more tea. “On the other hand, the husband, James Gooch, is as mild as toast. And their boy, Sam, is brilliant. He’s some kind of computer whiz, but all children are these days — it’s quite frightening, don’t you think?”

“My husband’s what one might call a computer whiz as well.”

“Naturally.” Enid nodded. “He’s in finance, isn’t he? And they do all that wheeling and dealing on computers these days.”

“Actually, he’s a mathematician.”

“Ah, numbers,” Enid said. “They make my eyes glaze over. But I’m just a silly old woman who was barely taught anything in school. They didn’t used to teach girls mathematics, other than addition and subtraction, so one could make change, if necessary. But your husband appears to have done well. I heard he works for a hedge fund.”

“Yes, he’s a new partner,” Annalisa said. “But please don’t ask me what he does. All I know is that it involves algorithms. And the stock market.”

Enid stood up. “Let’s stop kidding ourselves,” she said.

“Excuse me?” Annalisa said.

“It’s four o’clock in the afternoon. I’ve been working all day, and you’ve been unpacking boxes. And it’s ninety-six degrees. What we both need is a nice gin and tonic.”

Several minutes later, Enid was telling Annalisa about the former owners of the penthouse apartment. “Louise Houghton didn’t like her husband at all,” she said. “Randolf Houghton was a bastard. But he was her third husband, and that’s why they moved downtown in the first place. Louise assumed correctly that a twice-divorced woman wouldn’t be completely accepted in Upper East Side society. She convinced Randolf to move here, which was considered very bohemian and original and made everyone forget that Randolf was her third husband.”

“Why was he a bastard?” Annalisa asked politely.

“The usual reasons.” Enid smiled and finished her cocktail. “He drank.

He cheated. Two qualities a woman could live with in those days but for the fact that Randolf was impossible to live with. He was rude and arrogant and quite possibly violent. They had terrible fights. I think he may have hit her. There were servants in the house at the time, but no one ever said a word.”

“And she didn’t divorce him?”

“She didn’t have to. Louise was lucky. Randolf died.”

“I see.”

“The world was a much more dangerous place back then,” Enid continued. “He died from sepsis. He was in South Africa, trying to get into the diamond business, when he cut his finger. While he was traveling back to the States, the cut got infected. He made it back to One Fifth, but a few days later, he was dead.”

“I can’t believe her husband died from a cut,” Annalisa said.

Enid smiled. “Staph. It’s a very dangerous bacteria. We had an outbreak in the building once. Years ago. Spread by a pet turtle. Aquatic creatures don’t belong in apartment buildings. But no matter. Louise had her grand apartment and all of Randolf’s money and the rest of her life to live unencumbered. Marriage was considered a bit of a trial for women back then.

If a woman could manage to live independently, free of the matrimonial noose, it was considered a blessing.”

That evening, Annalisa bought a bottle of wine and a pizza and set this feast out for Paul on paper plates.

“I had the most interesting day,” she said eagerly, sitting cross-legged in the dining room on the recently stained parquet floors. The setting sun made the wood glow like the last embers of a fire. “I met Enid Merle.

She invited me to tea.”

“Does she know anything about the parking space?”

“Let me get to that. I want to tell you everything.” Annalisa tore at a piece of pizza. “First we had tea and then gin and tonics. It turns out that all is not well between Mindy Gooch and Enid Merle. Enid says the only reason the Gooches got into the building at all is because of the real estate crash in the early nineties. The board decided to sell off six little rooms on the ground floor that used to be the coat-check room and tiny bedrooms for the staff and the place where they stored the luggage when the building was a hotel. ‘If it weren’t for baggage, the Gooches wouldn’t be here at all,’ ” Annalisa said, imitating Enid’s voice. “You should have seen her. She’s a real character.”

“Who?” Paul asked.

“Enid Merle. Paul,” Annalisa said, “can you please pay attention?”

Paul looked up from his pizza and, trying to satisfy his wife, said, “As long as she doesn’t give us any trouble.”

“Why would she give us trouble?”

“Why would anyone give us trouble?” Paul said. “As a matter of fact, I just saw Mindy Gooch. In the lobby. She told me we weren’t allowed to put through-the-wall air conditioners in the apartment.”

“That’s just crap,” Annalisa said. “Was she at least nice about it?”

“What do you mean by ‘nice’?”

Annalisa picked up the paper plates. “Don’t fight with her, is all. Enid said Mindy can be tricky. Apparently, the way to get to her is through her son, Sam. He’s a computer whiz — works on everyone’s computers in the building. I could e-mail him.”

“No,” Paul said. “I can’t have some kid messing with my computer. Do you know what’s on my hard drive? Billions of dollars’ worth of financial information. I could destroy a small country if I felt like it.”

Annalisa turned and bent over to kiss Paul on the forehead. “I know how you boys love to play spy,” she said. “But I wasn’t thinking about your computer. I was thinking about mine.”

As she turned to go into the kitchen, Paul called after her, “Can’t we do this the old-fashioned way? Isn’t there someone in the building we can bribe?”

“No, Paul,” Annalisa said. “We’re not going to do that. Just because we have money doesn’t mean we’re going to get special treatment. Let me try it Enid’s way. We’re in a new place, and we have to respect the culture.”

Down below, in the kitchen of the Gooches’ stifling apartment, Mindy Gooch was cutting up vegetables. “Paul Rice basically told me to shove it,” she said to James.

“Did he use those exact words, ‘Shove it’?” James asked.

“No. But you should have seen the expression on his face when I said no to the through-the-wall air conditioners. His expression said, ‘Shove it.’ ”

“You’re being paranoid,” James said.

“I’m not,” Mindy said. Her new puppy, Skippy, jumped up on her leg.

Mindy fed him a bit of carrot.

“You shouldn’t feed the dog people food,” James said.

“It’s health food. No one ever got sick from eating a carrot.” She picked up the dog and cuddled it in her arms.

“You were the one who insisted on letting them into the building,”

James said. “They’re your responsibility.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mindy said. She carried the little dog to the door and put him out onto the cement slab that was their patio. Skippy sniffed around the edges of the slab, then squatted down and urinated.

“What a good dog!” Mindy exclaimed. “Did you see that, James? He peed outside. We’ve only had him for three days, and already he’s house-trained. What a smart doggie!” she said to Skippy.

“And that’s another thing. Skippy. He’s your responsibility, too,” James said. “You can’t expect me to walk him. Not with my book coming out.”

James wasn’t sure how he felt about Skippy. He’d never had a dog growing up, or any pet, for that matter, as his parents didn’t believe in having animals in the house. “Peasants have animals in the house,” his mother always said.

“Can’t I have one thing, James?” Mindy asked. “One thing of my own?

Without you criticizing it?”

“Sure,” James said.

The puppy ran through the kitchen and into the living room. James chased after him. “Skippy!” he commanded. “Come!” Skippy ignored him and skittled into Sam’s room, where he jumped on Sam’s bed.

“Skippy wants to visit you,” James said.

“Skipster. Dude,” Sam said. He was seated at his little desk in front of his computer. “Check this out,” he said to his father.

“What?” James said.

“I just got an e-mail from Annalisa Rice. Paul Rice’s wife. Isn’t that the guy Mom was arguing with?”

“It wasn’t an argument,” James said. “It was a discussion.” He went into his own little office and closed the door. There was a small high window, and in the window was an old air conditioner that snuffled like a child’s runny nose. James pulled his chair around and sat beneath the warmish air, trying to get cool.

Tink, tink, tink went the noise. It was eight in the morning, and Enid Merle looked over the side of her terrace and frowned. Outside the building, the scaffolding was going up, thanks to the Rices, who were about to start renovating their apartment. The scaffolding would be up by the end of the day, but it was only the beginning. Once the actual construction began, there would be weeks of a cacophony of drilling, sanding, and hammering. Nothing could be done about the noise: The Rices had the right to improve their apartment. So far, they had done everything to the letter, including sending out notices to the other residents of the building, informing them of the construction and the length of time estimated to do the work. The apartment would be rewired and replumbed for a washer and dryer and restaurant-quality appliances and, according to Roberto, “high-powered computer equipment.” Mindy had won the first round on the air conditioners, but the Rices were still pushing. Sam told Enid that Annalisa had employed him to construct a website for the King David Foundation, which provided music and art classes for underprivileged teens. Enid was familiar with the charity, which had been started by Sandy and Connie Brewer. At last year’s gala, they were rumored to have raised twenty million dollars at a live auction in which hedge-funders were falling all over themselves to outbid each other on prizes like a live concert by Eric Clapton. So Annalisa was making her way in the new society, Enid thought. It was going to be a very busy and noisy fall.

In the apartment next door, Philip and Lola were awakened by the noise.

“What is that?” Lola complained, putting her hands over her ears. “If it doesn’t stop, I’m going to jump out of my skin.”

Philip rolled over and stared at her face. There was, he thought, nothing like those first mornings of waking up with someone new and finding yourself both surprised and happy to see them.

“I’ll make you forget about it,” he said, putting his hand on her breast.

Her breasts were especially firm, due to the implants. She’d received them as a present from her parents for her eighteenth birthday — a ritual that was apparently now considered a standard milestone for girls approaching adulthood. The surgery had been celebrated with a pool party where Lola had revealed her new breasts to her high school pals.

Lola pushed his hand away. “I can’t concentrate,” she said. “It sounds like they’re hammering into my head.”

“Ha,” Philip said. Although he and Lola had been lovers for only a month, he’d noticed that she had an acute sensitivity to all physical mal-adies, both real and imagined. She often had headaches, or felt tired, or had a strange pain in her finger — probably, Philip had pointed out, the result of too much texting. Her pains required rest or TV watching, often in his apartment, which Philip did not object to at all, because the rest periods usually led to sex.

“I think you’ve got a hangover, kiddo,” Philip said, kissing her on the forehead. He got out of bed and went into the bathroom. “Do you want aspirin?”

“Don’t you have anything stronger? Like a Vicodin?”

“No, I don’t,” he said, once again struck by the peculiarities of Lola’s generation. She was a child of pharmacology, having grown up with a bevy of prescription pills for all that might ail her. “Don’t you have something in your purse?” he asked. He’d discovered that Lola never went anywhere without a stash of pills that included Xanax, Ambien, and Ritalin. “It’s like Valley of the Dolls,” he’d said, alarmed. “Don’t be stupid,” she’d replied. “They give kids this stuff. And besides, the women in Valley of the Dolls were drug addicts.” And she’d given a little shudder.

Now she said, “Maybe,” and crawled across the bed, leaning over the side in a seductive manner and feeling around on the floor for her snakeskin bag. She hauled it up and began digging around inside. The sight of her naked body — spray-tanned bronze and perfectly formed (in an unguarded moment, she’d let slip that she’d also had a tiny bit of lipo on her thighs and tummy) — filled Philip with joy. Ever since Lola had turned up at his apartment that July afternoon, his fortunes had changed. The studio loved his rewrite of Bridesmaids Revisited, and they were going to start shooting in January; off this good news, his agent got him a gig writing a historical movie about an obscure English queen known as Bloody Mary, for which he’d be paid a million dollars.

“You’re on a roll, baby,” his agent said after delivering the news. “I smell Oscar.”

Philip had gotten the phone call the day before, and he’d taken Lola to the Waverly Inn to celebrate. It was one of those evenings when everyone was there and the booths were filled with celebrities, some of whom were old friends. Before long, their table expanded to include a glamorous, bois-terous group that drew envious glances from the other patrons. Lola kept introducing herself as his researcher, and full of everything that was good in life, he corrected her and claimed she was his muse, squeezing her hand across the table. They drank bottle after bottle of red wine, finally stumbling home at two in the morning through a foggy hot night that made the Village look like a Renaissance painting.

“Come on, sleepyhead,” he said now, bringing her two aspirins.

She slipped under the covers and curled into a fetal position, holding out her hand for the tablets. “Can’t I stay in bed all day?” she asked, staring up at him like a beautiful dog who always got its way. “I’ve got a headache.”

“We’ve got work to do. I have to write, and you have to go to the library.”

“Can’t you take the day off? They can’t expect you to start writing right away, can they? You just got the job. Doesn’t that mean you get two weeks off? I know,” she said, sitting up. “Let’s go shopping. We could go to Barneys. Or Madison Avenue.”

“Nope,” he said. He would have revisions on Bridesmaids Revisited until they started shooting, and he needed to finish the first draft of the Bloody Mary script by December. Historical movies about royals were all the rage, his agent said, and the studio wanted to go into production as soon as possible. “I need that research,” Philip said, playfully pulling her toe.

“I’ll order some books from Amazon. Then I can stay here with you all day.”

“If you stay here with me, I won’t get any work done. Hence, it’s off to the stacks.” He pulled on jeans and a T-shirt. “I’m going out for a bagel.

You want anything?”

“Could you bring me back a green-tea-and-apple VitaWater?” she said. “And make sure it’s green-tea-and-apple. I hate the green-tea-and-mango. Mango is gross. Oh, and could you get me a frozen Snickers bar?

I’m hungry.”

Philip went out, shaking his head over the indulgence of eating a candy bar for breakfast.

On the sidewalk, he ran into Schiffer Diamond, who was being helped out of a white van by a Teamster. “Hey!” he exclaimed.

“You’re in a good mood,” she said, kissing him on the cheek.

“Sold a screenplay yesterday. About Bloody Mary. You should be in it.”

“You want me to play a cocktail?”

“Not the cocktail. The queen. First daughter of Henry the Eighth. Come on,” Philip said. “You get to cut off everyone’s head.”

“And have my own head cut off at the end? No, thank you,” she said, walking toward the entrance to One Fifth. “I just spent the whole night shooting in a goddamn church on Madison with no air-conditioning. I’ve had enough of Catholics for the moment.”

“I’m serious,” he said, realizing she’d be perfect for the part. “Will you at least consider it? I’ll personally deliver the screenplay when it’s finished, along with a bottle of Cristal and a tub of caviar.”

“Cristal’s out, schoolboy. Make it a magnum of Grande Dame and I’ll think about it,” she called over her shoulder. She was always walking away from him, he thought. Wanting more of their banter, he asked where she was going.

She folded her hands and lay them next to her chin. “Sleep,” she said.

“I’ve got a six P.M. call.”

“Catch you later, then,” Philip said. As he walked away, he was reminded of why it had never worked out with Schiffer. She wasn’t available for him.

Never had been and never would be. That was what was so great about Lola. She was always available.

Back in Philip’s apartment, Lola dragged herself out of bed and went into the kitchen. She idly thought about surprising Philip by making coffee, but after finding the bag of whole coffee beans next to a small grinder, decided it was too much trouble. She went into the bathroom and carefully brushed her teeth, then pulled her lips back into a grimace to check their whiteness. She thought about the trek up to the library at Forty-second Street on what was going to be another hot day, and she felt irritated. Why had she taken this job as Philip’s researcher? For that matter, why did she need to have a job at all? She was only going to quit as soon as she got married. But without an engagement, her mother wouldn’t let her stay in New York without a job — “it would look whor-ish,” she’d said. Continuing on her path of random thoughts, Lola reminded herself that if she hadn’t taken the job, she wouldn’t have met Philip and become, as he’d put it, his muse. It was incredibly romantic, being the muse of a great artist, and what always happened was the great artist fell in love with his muse, insisted upon marrying her, and had beautiful children with her.

Until then, being wise in the matter of cliques and social order, Lola could already see that in Philip’s world, this muse business might not be enough. It was one thing to be around famous people, quite another to have them accept you as one of their own. In particular, she recalled an interaction last night with the world-famous movie star who’d sat at their table. He was a not particularly attractive middle-aged man who was distinctly before her time; she couldn’t recall exactly who he was or which movies he’d starred in. But since everyone else was making a huge fuss of him, hanging on his every word like he was Jesus, she realized she ought to make some effort. As it happened, he was squeezed into a chair next to her, and when he finished a long soliloquy about the beauty of seventies movies, she asked him, “Have you lived in New York long?”

He slowly turned his head and stared at her, and the fact that it took him about a minute to complete this movement made her wonder if she was supposed to be afraid of him. She wasn’t — and if he thought he could intimidate Lola Fabrikant with a look, he had another thing coming.

“And what do you do?” he asked, mocking the tone of her question.

“Don’t tell me you’re an actress.”

“I’m Philip’s researcher,” she replied with the edge to her voice that usually silenced strangers. But not this man. He looked from her to Philip and back again. He grinned. “A researcher, eh?” He laughed. “And did I tell you I’m Santa Claus?”

The whole table erupted in laughter, including Philip. Sensing this was not a good time to go into high dudgeon, Lola laughed along gamely, but really, she told herself, it was too much. She wasn’t used to being treated this way. She would let it go this once but not again. Of course, she planned to bring it up with Philip, but would be careful about how she did so. In general, it wasn’t a good idea to complain about a man’s friends to his face — it could hurt his feelings, and then he would associate you with negativity.

In the meantime, she thought, she should find a way to be taken a bit more seriously. No man wanted a woman whom other people thought silly — in which case, a visit to the library might not be a bad idea after all.

When Philip returned to the apartment, however, he found Lola had gone back to bed and appeared to be in a deep sleep. He went into his office and quickly knocked off five pages. From the other room, he heard the sound of Lola’s gentle snoring. She was so natural, he thought. Reading through his pages, which were excellent, he decided she was his good-luck charm.

The Rices’ apartment was slowly taking shape. The once empty dining room now held an ornate table with six Queen Anne chairs that Billy had mysteriously conjured from a friend’s storage bin somewhere on the Upper East Side. The table was on loan until a proper (meaning larger) table could be found; in the meantime, it was strewn with decorating books and color swatches, both fabric and paint, and Internet printouts of various pieces of furniture. Annalisa looked at the table and smiled, recalling something Billy Litchfield had said to her weeks ago.

“My dear,” he’d admonished her when she brought up the fact that she might, in the future, go back to work as a lawyer, “how do you expect to do two jobs?”

“Excuse me?”

“You already have a job,” he explained. “From now on, your life with your husband is your job.” He corrected himself. “It’s more than a job.

It’s a career. Your husband makes the money, and you create the life. And it’s going to take effort. You’ll rise each morning and exercise, not simply to look attractive but to build endurance. Most ladies prefer yoga.

Then you will dress. You’ll arrange your schedule and send e-mails. You’ll attend a meeting for a charity in the morning, or perhaps visit an art dealer or make a studio visit. You’ll have lunch, and then there are meetings with decorators, caterers, and stylists; you’ll have your hair colored twice a month and blow-dried three times a week. You’ll do private tours of museums and read, I hope, three newspapers a day: The New York Times, The New York Post, and The Wall Street Journal. At the end of the day, you’ll prepare for an evening out, which may include two or three cocktail parties and a dinner. Some will be black-tie charity events where you’ll be expected to wear a gown and never the same dress twice. You’ll need to have your hair and makeup done. You’ll also plan vacations and weekend outings. You may purchase a country house, which you will also have to organize, staff, and decorate. You will meet the right people and court them in a manner both subtle and shameless. And then, my dear, there will be children. So,” Billy concluded, “let’s get busy.”

And busy they had been. There were so many tiny details to put together: bathroom tiles handmade in South Carolina to complement the marble floors (the apartment held five bathrooms, and each needed its own theme), rugs, window treatments, even door handles. Most of Annalisa’s days were spent in the furniture district in the East and West Twenties, but there were all the antique shops on Madison that had to be explored, as well as the auction houses. And then there were the renovations themselves. One by one, each room was being torn apart, rewired, replastered, and put back together. For the first month, Annalisa and Paul had moved an air mattress from one room to another to get out of the way of the construction, but now, at least the master bedroom was finished, and she was, as Billy said, “beginning to put together a bit of a closet.”

The intercom buzzed exactly at noon. “A man is here to see you,” Fritz said from below.

“Which man?” Annalisa asked, but Fritz had hung up. The intercom was in the kitchen, on the first floor of the apartment. Annalisa ran through the nearly empty living room and up the stairs to the bedroom, where she quickly tried to finish dressing.

“Maria?” she said, sticking her head out of the bedroom door and calling down the hall to the housekeeper, whom she’d heard rustling around in one of the back bedrooms.

“Yes, Mrs. Rice?” Maria asked, coming out into the hall. Maria was from an agency and cooked and cleaned and ran errands and would even, supposedly, walk your dog if you had one, but so far Annalisa hadn’t felt comfortable asking her to do much of anything, not being used to having a live-in housekeeper.

“Someone’s coming up,” Annalisa said. “I think it’s Billy Litchfield. Do you mind answering the door?”

She went back to the bedroom and into the large walk-in closet. The beginnings of the closet were not the closet itself but its contents. According to Billy, she was to have an array of shoes, bags, belts, jeans, white shirts, suits for luncheons, cocktail dresses, evening gowns, resort clothes for both mountain and island, and any sport in which one might be called upon to participate: golf, tennis, horseback riding, parasailing, rappelling, white-water rafting, and even hockey. To help her get her wardrobe together, Billy had hired a famous stylist named Norine Norton, who would pick out clothing and bring it to her apartment. Norine was famously busy and wasn’t able to schedule their first appointment for two weeks, but Billy was thrilled. “Norine is like the best plastic surgeons. It can take six months to get an appointment with her — and that’s only for a consultation.”

In the meantime, one of Norine’s six assistants had begun the task of dressing Annalisa, and on a low shelf were arranged several shoe boxes with a photograph of the shoe pasted on the front of the box. Annalisa selected a pair of black pumps with a four-inch heel. She hated wearing high heels during the day, but Billy had said it was necessary. “People expect to see Annalisa Rice, so you must give them Annalisa Rice.”

“But who is Annalisa Rice?” she’d asked jokingly.

“That, my dear, is what we’re going to find out. Isn’t this fun?”

Right now the visitor was not Billy Litchfield but the man coming to see about Paul’s aquarium. Annalisa led him upstairs to the ballroom and glanced regretfully at the ceiling, painted in the whimsical Italian view of heaven, with puffy clouds in a halo of pink on which sat fat cherubs.

Sometimes, when she had a moment, Annalisa would come up here for a brief rest, lying on the floor in a patch of sunlight, utterly contented, but Paul had declared the ballroom his private space and planned to turn it into “command central,” from where, Annalisa teased him, he could take over the world. The French windows were to be reglazed with a new electrical compound to render them completely opaque with the touch of a button — thus thwarting any attempts to photograph the room or the actions of its occupant by the employment of a long-lens camera from a helicopter — while a three-dimensional screen would be installed above the fireplace. On the roof, a special antenna would scramble cell and satellite transmissions. There would be a state-of-the-art aquarium, twenty feet long and seven feet wide, which would allow Paul to pursue his new hobby of collecting rare and expensive fish. It was a shame to destroy the room, but Paul wouldn’t consider any arguments to the contrary. “You can do what you like with the rest of the apartment,” he’d said. “But this room’s mine.”

The aquarium man began taking measurements, asking Annalisa about voltage and the possible construction of a subfloor to support the weight of the aquarium. Annalisa did her best to answer his questions but then gave up and fled downstairs.

Billy Litchfield had arrived, and five minutes later, they were sitting in the back of a crisp new Town Car heading downtown.

“I have a welcome surprise for you, my dear,” he said. “After all that furniture, I thought you might like a break. Today we’re looking at art.

Last night I had a brilliant idea.” He took a breath. “I’m thinking, for you, feminist art.”

“I see.”

“Are you a feminist?”

“Of course,” Annalisa said.

“Either way, it doesn’t matter. For instance, I doubt you’re a cubist, either. But think how much cubist art is worth now. It’s unaffordable.”

“Not for Paul,” Annalisa said.

“Even for Paul,” Billy said. “It’s only for the multibillionaire, and you and Paul are still working your way into the multimillionaire category.

Cubist art isn’t chic, anyway. Not for a young couple. But feminist art — that’s the future. It’s just about to break, and most of the really great work is still available. Today we’re going to look at a photograph. A self-portrait of the artist nursing her child. Wonderful shock value. And striking colors. And there’s no waiting list.”

“I thought a waiting list was good,” Annalisa said cautiously.

“The waiting list is excellent,” Billy said. “Especially if it’s a particularly difficult list to get on. And you do have to pay cash up front for a painting you’ve never seen. But we’ll get to that in time. In the meantime, we need one or two spectacular pieces that will increase in value.”

“Billy?” Annalisa asked. “What do you get out of this?”

“Pleasure,” Billy said. He looked at her and patted her hand. “You mustn’t worry about me, my dear. I’m an aesthete. If I could spend the rest of my life looking at art, I’d be happy. Every piece of art is unique, made by one person, one mind, one point of view. In this manufactured world, I suppose I take solace in it.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Annalisa said. “How do you get paid?”

Billy smiled. “You know I don’t talk about my finances.”

Annalisa nodded. She’d tried to bring up the topic several times, but every time, he changed the subject. “I need to know, Billy. Otherwise, it’s not right, your spending so much time with me. People ought to be paid for their work.”

“On art, I take a two percent commission. From the dealer,” Billy said, pressing his lips together.

Annalisa was relieved. Billy occasionally mentioned a million-dollar sale in which he’d been involved, and after doing the math, she came up with twenty thousand dollars as his fee. “You must be rich, Billy,” she’d said, half joking.

“My dear,” Billy said, “I can barely afford to live in Manhattan.”

Now, in the gallery, Billy took a step back and, folding his arms, nodded at the photograph as if he approved. “It’s very modern, but the com-position is classic mother and child,” he said. The photograph was a hundred thousand dollars. Annalisa, feeling the sharp pang of guilt that was always under the surface due to her own good fortune, bought it.

She paid with a MasterCard, which Billy said everyone used for large purchases in order to get extra airline miles. Not that any of these people needed airline miles, as most of them flew in private planes. Nevertheless, leaving the gallery with the bubble-wrapped photograph in the trunk of the car, Annalisa reminded herself that it was two thousand dollars in Billy’s pocket. It was the least she could do.

Lola sat at the long counter in the window of Starbucks, reading through a printout of an article she’d found on the Internet. She hadn’t been able to work herself up for a trip to the library after all. As she’d suspected, it would have been a waste of time anyway. There was plenty of information online. Lola adjusted her glasses and prepared to read.

On the way to Starbucks, she’d purchased a pair of black frames in order to appear more serious. Apparently, the glasses were working. As she was reading about Queen Mary’s obsession with Catholicism, a nerdy young man sat down next to her, opened a laptop, and kept jerking his head above it to stare at her. Lola did her best to ignore him, keeping her head down and pretending to be absorbed in the text. From what she could gather, Queen Mary, who was described as “sickley and fraile,”

which Lola interpreted as anorexic, was some kind of sixteenth-century fashionista who never appeared in public without wearing millions of dollars’ worth of jewelry in order to remind the masses of the power and wealth of the Catholic Church. Lola looked up from her reading and saw that the nerd was staring at her. She looked down at the pages, and when she looked up, he was still staring. He had reddish-blond hair and freckles but was better-looking than her first assessment. Finally, he spoke.

“Did you know those are men’s?” he asked.

“What?” she said, giving him a glare that should have sent him away.

The nerdle wasn’t put off. “Your glasses,” he said. “Those are men’s glasses. Are they even real?”

“Of course they’re real,” she said.

He rolled his eyes. “Do they have a real prescription in them? Or are they just for show?”

“It’s none of your business,” she said, adding, for good measure, a threatening, “if you know what I mean.”

“All you girls wear glasses now,” the young man continued on, unabated.

“And you know they’re fake. How many twenty-two-year-olds need glasses? Glasses are for old people. It’s another one of those fake things that girls do.”

She sat back on her stool. “So?”

“So I was wondering if you were one of those fake girls. You look like a fake girl. But you might be real.”

“Why should you care?”

“I think you’re kind of cute?” he asked sarcastically. “Maybe you can give me your name, and I can leave you a message on Facebook?”

Lola gave him a cold, superior smile. “I already have a boyfriend, thanks.”

“Who said I wanted to be your boyfriend? Christ, girls in New York are so arrogant.”

“You’re pathetic,” she said.

“Uh-huh,” he said. “And look at you. You’re wearing designer clothes at a Starbucks, your hair is blown dry, and you have a spray tan. Probably from City Sun. They’re the only ones who do that particular shade of bronze.”

Lola wondered how this kid knew about the subtleties of spray tans.

“And look at you,” she said in her most patronizing tone of voice. “You’re wearing plaid pants.”

“Vintage,” the kid said. “There’s a difference.”

Lola gathered her papers and stood up.

“Leaving?” the kid asked. “So soon?” He stood up and fished around in the back pocket of his hideous plaid pants. They were not even Burberry plaid, Lola thought, which she could have excused. He handed her a card.

THAYER CORE, it read. In the bottom right-hand corner was a 212 phone number. “Now that you know my name, will you tell me yours?” he said.

“Why would I do that?” Lola asked.

“New York’s a tricky place,” he said. “And I’m the joker.”

9

A few weeks later, James Gooch sat in the office of his publisher.

“Books are like movies now,” Redmon Richardly said, waving his hand as if to dismiss the whole lot. “You get as much publicity as you can, have a big first week, and then drop off from there. There’s no traction anymore. Not like the old days. The audience wants something new every week. And then there are the big corporations. All they care about is the bottom line. They push the publishers to get new product out there. Makes them feel like their people are doing something. It’s heinous, corporations controlling creativity. It’s worse than government propaganda.”

“Uh-huh,” James said. He looked around Redmon’s new office and felt sad. The old office used to be in a town house in the West Village, filled with manuscripts and books and frayed Oriental carpets that Redmon had taken from his grandmother’s house in the South. There was an old down-filled yellow couch that you sat on while you waited to see Redmon, and you leafed through a pile of magazines and watched the pretty girls go in and out. Redmon was considered one of the greats back then. He published new talent and edgy fiction, and his writers were going to be the future giants. Redmon made people believe in publishing for a while — up until about 1998, James reckoned, when the Internet began to take over.

James looked past Redmon and out the plate-glass window. There was a view of the Hudson River in the distance, but it was small consolation for the cold, generic space.

“What we’re publishing now is an entertainment product,” Redmon continued. Redmon hadn’t lost his ability to pontificate about nothing, James thought, and found comfort in this fact. “Oakland’s a perfect example. He’s not so great anymore, but it doesn’t matter. He still sells copies — even for him, not as many. But it’s the same story with everyone.”

Redmon threw his hands into the air. “There’s no art anymore. Fiction used to be an art form. No more. Good, bad, it doesn’t matter. The public is only interested in the topic. ‘What’s it about?’ they ask. ‘Does it matter?’

I say. ‘It’s about life. All great books are about only one thing — life.’ But they don’t get that anymore. They want to know the topic. If it’s about shoes or abducted babies, they want to read it. And we don’t do that, James. We couldn’t even if we wanted to.”

“We certainly couldn’t,” James agreed.

“ ’Course not,” Redmon said. “But what I’m saying is ... Well, you’ve written a great book, James, an actual novel, but I don’t want you to be disappointed. We’ll definitely get on the list, right away, I hope. But as to how long we’ll stay on the list ...”

“It doesn’t matter to me,” James said. “I didn’t write the book to sell copies. I wrote it because it’s a story I needed to tell.” And I won’t be corrupted by Redmon’s cynicism, he thought. “I still believe in the public. The public knows the difference. And they’ll buy what’s good,” he added stubbornly.

“I don’t want you to have your heart broken,” Redmon said.

“I’m forty-eight years old,” James said. “My heart’s been broken for about forty years.”

“There is good news,” Redmon said. “Very good news. Your agent and I agreed that I should be the one to tell you. I can offer you a million-dollar advance on your next book. Corporations are bad, but they’re also good. They have money, and I intend to spend it.”

James was so shocked, he couldn’t move. Had he heard correctly?

“You’ll get a third on signing,” Redmon continued, as if he gave away million-dollar advances all the time. “With that and the money we’ll get from the iStores’ placement, I think you can expect to have a very good year.”

“Great,” James said. He still wasn’t sure how to react. Should he jump out of his chair and do the watusi?

But Redmon was being calm about it. “What will you do with the money?” he asked.

“Save it. For Sam’s college education,” James said.

“That will about use it up,” Redmon agreed. “Six, seven hundred thousand dollars — what does it get you these days? After taxes ... Christ. And with those guys on Wall Street buying Picassos for fifty million.” He put up his hands as if to push away this reality. “It’s our new world order, I suppose.”

“I suppose,” James agreed. “But one could always pursue the teenage fantasy. Buy a little sailboat in the Caribbean and disappear for a few years.”

“Not me,” Redmon said. “I’d be bored in two days. I can hardly stand to take a vacation. I like cities.”

“Right,” James said. He looked at Redmon. How lucky to know one’s own mind. Redmon was always pleased with himself, James thought.

While James did not, he realized, know his own mind at all.

“I’ll walk you out,” Redmon said. Standing, he made a face and put his hand to his jaw. “Damn tooth,” he said. “Probably needs another root canal. How are your teeth? It’s extraordinary, getting old. It is as hard as people say.” Exiting the office, they came out into a maze of cubicles.

“But there are advantages,” Redmon continued, his overweening confidence firmly back in place. “For instance, we know everything now. We’ve seen it all before. We know there’s nothing new. Have you noticed that?

The only thing that changes is the technology.”

“Except we can’t understand the technology,” James said.

“Bullshit,” Redmon said. “It’s still a bunch of buttons. It’s only a matter of knowing which ones to press.”

“Like the panic button that blows up the world.”

“Wasn’t that disabled?” Redmon said. “Why can’t we have another cold war? It was so much more sensible than a real war.” He pushed the button for the elevator.

“Mankind is going backward,” James said. The elevator came, and he got on.

“Say hi to your family for me,” Redmon called out with genuine urgency as the doors were closing.

Redmon’s admonishment struck James as extraordinary. Family concerns were something Redmon never would have considered ten years ago, when he was out bedding a different woman in publishing every night and drinking and doing cocaine until dawn. For years, people had postulated that something terrible would happen to Redmon — he appeared to deserve it, although what the terrible thing was, no one could say — rehab, maybe? Or some kind of death? But nothing terrible ever did happen to him. Instead, he slid into his new life as a married father and corporate man with the agility of a skier. James had never understood it, but he thought perhaps Redmon, instead of being a source of consternation, ought to be considered an inspiration. If Redmon could change, why not he?

I have money now, James thought, the reality hitting him at the same time as the crisp September air. At least New York appeared to be having a real fall this year. Ordinary occurrences were now a pleasure and a relief to him, a reminder that in some ways, life could go on as before.

But would it now that he had money? Passing the chain stores that lined lower Fifth Avenue with their wares displayed in great glass cases like a middle-class shopper’s dream, he reminded himself that it wasn’t so much money. Not enough even to buy a tiny studio apartment in this great and expensive metropolis. But he had a bit of money. He was no longer — for this moment, anyway — a loser.

At Sixteenth Street, he passed Paul Smith and, out of habit, stopped for a second and gazed into the windows. Paul Smith’s clothing was a status symbol, the choice for the sophisticated, urbane downtown male.

Mindy had bought him a Paul Smith shirt years ago, for Christmas, when she was feeling proud of him and, apparently, had decided he was worth a splurge. Staring into the window at a pair of velvet pants, it occurred to James that for the first time in his life, he could afford anything in this store. This new feeling empowered him, and he went in.

Almost immediately, his phone rang. It was Mindy.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“Shopping.”

“You? Shopping?” Mindy said with faux astonishment that was edged ever so slightly with disdain. “What are you buying?”

“I’m in Paul Smith.”

“You’re not going to actually buy anything, are you?” Mindy said.

“I might,” he said.

“You’d better not. That store is too expensive,” she said. James had thought he’d call Mindy first thing about his advance, but he surprised himself by wanting to keep it to himself.

“When are you coming home?” she asked.

“Soon.”

“How did it go? With Redmon?”

“Great,” he said, and hung up. He shook his head. Both he and Mindy had a quaint, puritan approach to money. Like it was always about to run out. Like it shouldn’t be squandered. One’s feelings about money were a gene one inherited. If your parents were afraid about money, then you’d be afraid. Mindy came from New England stock, where it was considered tacky to spend a lot of money. He came from immigrant stock, where money was needed for food and education. They’d survived in New York because they saved and didn’t get their self-esteem from their outward appearances. But maybe that wasn’t the solution. Because, James thought, neither he nor Mindy seemed to have much self-esteem at all.

James looked around the store and, walking to a rack of jackets, fingered a fine cashmere overcoat. He did not know what it was like to have money. Not having money had kept him tied to Mindy’s apron strings.

He knew it, had known it for years, had denied it, had rationalized it, had been ashamed of it, but what was most shameful was that he’d never been willing to do anything about it. Because, he’d told himself, he believed in the purity of his pursuit of literature. He’d been willing to sacrifice his manhood for this higher ideal. He’d taken succor in the fact that he was an honorable struggler.

But he had money now! He looked around the store, inhaling the manly scent of leather and cologne. The shop was like a stage set, with its wood-paneled walls — a cornucopia of anything a man with taste, sophistication, and style might want. And, he thought, looking at the three-thousand-dollar price tag on a cashmere jacket, a sense of irony at how much money it cost to keep warm.

In an act of defiance, he took the jacket off the hanger and carried it into the dressing room. He took off his own jacket, which was a sensible navy wool bought during a sale at Barneys five years ago, and looked at his body. He had the advantage of height, but he was a gangle of limbs with a soft belly. His legs were still firm, but his butt was flat, and his chest was flabby (“man boobs” was the current term, he believed), but all this could be hidden with the right clothing. He slipped his arms into the sleeves and buttoned the jacket across his chest. He was transformed into a man who had something big going on in his life.

He stepped out of the dressing room and ran into Philip Oakland.

James’s confidence dispersed like a mist. He did not belong in this store, he thought in panic. Even a store was about a tribe, and he was not part of this tribe; Philip Oakland was sure to sense this. James often saw Philip in the lobby or on the streets around One Fifth. Philip never acknowledged him, but perhaps he’d have to in this store, wearing this jacket, the kind of jacket Philip himself might own. Indeed, Philip Oakland looked up from a pile of sweaters and, as if they were casual friends, said, “Hey.”

“Hey,” James said.

That might have been the end of it if it weren’t for the girl, the beautiful girl who was with Philip and whom James had seen around the building, coming in and out at odd hours during the day. He’d always wondered who she was and what she was doing in One Fifth, but now it made sense: She was Philip’s girlfriend.

She spoke, startling James. “That looks good,” she said to him.

“Really?” James said, staring at the girl. She had the unassailable confidence that comes from having been pretty her whole life.

“I know everything about clothes,” she said boldly. “My friends are always saying I should have been a stylist.”

“Lola, please,” Philip said.

“It’s true,” Lola said, turning to Philip. “You look so much better since I started helping you with your clothes.”

Philip shrugged and rolled his eyes at James, as if to say, “Women.”

James took the opportunity to introduce himself. “I’ve seen you before,” Lola said. “Yes,” James said. “I live in One Fifth, too. I’m a writer.”

“Everyone’s a writer in One Fifth,” she said with a dismissive arrogance that made James laugh.

“We should be going,” Philip said.

“But we didn’t buy anything,” she protested.

“ ‘We,’ ” Philip said to James. “Notice that? Why is shopping with women always a group sport?”

“I don’t know,” James said. He glanced over at Lola, wondering how one managed to get a girl like that. She was saucy. He liked the way she stood up to the great Philip Oakland and wondered how Philip felt about it.

“Men never know what to buy on their own,” she replied. “My mother let my father go shopping once, and he came back with an acrylic striped sweater. She said, ‘Never again.’ What do you write?” she asked James, not missing a beat.

“Novels,” James said. “I have a book coming out in February.” He was pleased to be able to deliver this information in front of Philip. Take that, he thought.

“We have the same publisher,” Philip said, perhaps, James thought, finally figuring out who he was. “What’s your print run?”

“Don’t know,” James said. “But we’ve got two hundred thousand copies going out to iStores in the first week.”

Philip looked suitably bothered. “Interesting,” he said.

“It is,” James said. “I’m told it’s the future of publishing.”

Lola was suddenly bored. “If we’re not buying anything here, can we please go to Prada?”

“Sure,” Philip said. “See you around,” he said to James.

“Right,” James said.

As they walked away, Lola turned back to James. “You should buy that jacket. It looks great.”

“I will,” James said.

James paid for the jacket. As the salesman was putting it into a garment bag, James had an inspiration. “Don’t bother,” he said. “I’m going to wear it home.”

That afternoon, Norine Norton, the stylist, came to Annalisa’s apartment for their third appointment. Norine, with her hair extensions and her subtle facial work and seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of the latest bag, shoe, designer, fortune-teller, trainer, and cosmetic procedure, made Annalisa uncomfortable. Her nickname, she informed Annalisa during their first meeting, was “the Energizer Bunny” — an energy that, Annalisa suspected, might be drug-induced. Norine never stopped talking; no matter how often Annalisa tried to remind herself that Norine was a woman, an actual human being, Norine always managed to convince her otherwise.

“I have something you’ll die for,” Norine said. She snapped her fingers and pointed to her assistant, Julee. “The gold lamé, please.”

“The golf outfit?” Julee asked. She was a frail girl with spindly blond hair and the fearful eyes of a rabbit.

“Yes,” Norine said with faux patience. With her assistant, Norine appeared to be on the edge of snapping at any moment. But when she turned back to Annalisa, it was with all the solicitude of a merchant presenting his wares to a grand lady.

Julee held up a clear plastic hanger from which hung a tiny gold top and matching miniskirt.

Annalisa regarded the garment with dismay. “I don’t think Paul will like that.”

“Listen, sweetie,” Norine said. She sat down on the edge of the four-poster bed with the pleated silk canopy that had recently arrived from France, and patted the place next to her. “We need to talk.”

“Do we?” Annalisa asked. She didn’t want to sit next to Norine; nor did she want one of Norine’s lectures. So far, she had forced herself to tolerate them, but she wasn’t in the mood today.

Annalisa looked from Norine to Julee, who was still standing there, holding up the hanger like one of those girls on a game show. Her arm had to be tired. Annalisa felt bad for her. “Fine,” she said, and went into the bathroom to try it on.

“You’re so shy,” Norine called after her.

“Huh?” Annalisa said, poking her head out the door.

“You’re so shy. Changing in the bathroom. You should change in here so I can help you,” Norine said. “You don’t have anything I haven’t seen before.”

“Right,” Annalisa said and shut the door. She turned to look at herself in the mirror and grimaced. How the hell had she gotten herself into this situation? It had sounded like such a good idea at first, hiring a stylist. Billy said everybody did it these days, meaning everyone with money or status who had to go out and be photographed. It was the only way, Billy said, to get the best clothes. But this was out of control. Norine was always calling or sending e-mail attachments of the clothes, accessories, and jewelry she photographed while shopping or visiting designer showrooms. Annalisa had had no idea there were so many lines. Not just spring and fall but resort, cruise, summer, and Christmas. Each season required its own look, and getting the look required as much planning as a military coup. Clothing had to be chosen and ordered months in advance, otherwise it would be gone.

Annalisa held the gold lamé up to her chin. No, she thought. This has gone too far.

But perhaps everything had gone too far. Despite the progress she’d made on the apartment, Paul was unhappy. The lottery had been held for the parking space in the Mews, and Paul hadn’t won. Coupled with this disappointing news was a letter from Mindy Gooch, officially informing them that their request for through-the-wall air-conditioning units had been denied.

“We’ll make it work without them,” Annalisa had said, trying to soothe him.

“I can’t.”

“We have to.”

Paul glared at her. “It’s a conspiracy,” he insisted. “It’s because we have money and they don’t.”

“Mrs. Houghton had money,” Annalisa said, trying to reason with him.

“And she lived here without any trouble for years.”

“She was one of them,” Paul countered. “And we’re not.”

“Paul,” she said patiently. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m making real money now,” he said. “And I expect to be treated with a certain amount of respect.”

“I thought you were making real money six months ago,” she said, attempting to lighten the situation.

“Forty million isn’t real money. A hundred million is getting there.”

Annalisa felt queasy. She knew Paul was making a lot of money and planned to make more. But somehow it had never hit her that it was going to become a reality. “That’s insane, Paul,” she protested. But it also excited her, the way looking at dirty pictures excited you even though you didn’t want to feel turned on and felt guilty about the excitement.

Perhaps too much money was like too much sex. It crossed the line and became pornographic.

“Come on, Annalisa. Open the door. Let me see you,” Norine said.

There was something pornographic in this, too. In this being seen, this unrelenting demand to be constantly seen everywhere. Annalisa felt worse than naked, as if her private parts were on display, open to all for examination.

“I don’t know,” Annalisa said, coming out. The gold lamé golf suit consisted of a skirt cropped mid-thigh and a shirt cut like a polo shirt (they’d been Lacoste shirts when she was a kid; she’d called them “alligator shirts,” a testament to how blissfully unfashionable she’d been growing up), pulled together by a wide belt slung low on the hips. “What am I supposed to wear under this?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Norine said.

“No underpants?”

“Call them panties, please,” Norine said. “If you want, you wear gold lamé panties. Or maybe silver lamé. For contrast.”

“Paul would never allow it,” Annalisa said firmly, hoping to put an end to the discussion.

Norine took Annalisa’s face in her hands, holding it between her manicured fingers, and squeezed Annalisa’s face like a child’s. She shook her head, pursing her lips. “You mustn’t, mustn’t say that again,” she said in a baby voice. “We don’t care what Daddy Paulie likes or dislikes. Repeat after me: ‘I will choose my own clothes.’ ”

“ I will choose my own clothes,” Annalisa said reluctantly. Now she was stuck. Norine never seemed to understand that when Annalisa said Paul wouldn’t like something, it meant she didn’t like it but didn’t want to offend Norine.

“Very good,” Norine said. “I’ve been doing this a long time — too long —

but the one thing I know is that men never mind what their wives are wearing as long as the wives are happy. And look great. Better than the other men’s wives.”

“But what if they don’t?” Annalisa said, thinking she’d had enough of this exercise.

“That’s why they have me,” Norine said with unbridled confidence.

She snapped her fingers at her assistant. “Photo, please,” she said.

Julee held up her phone and snapped Annalisa’s picture.

“How is it?” Norine asked.

“Good,” Julee said, clearly terrified. She passed the phone to Norine, who peered at the tiny image.

“Very good,” Norine said, showing Annalisa the photograph.

“Ridiculous,” Annalisa said.

“I think it’s fabulous,” Norine said. She handed Julee the phone and crossed her arms, preparing for another lecture. “Look, Annalisa,” she said. “You’re rich. You can do anything you want. There’s no bogeyman around the corner who’s going to punish you.”

“I thought God punished us,” Annalisa said under her breath.

“God?” Norine said. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. Spirituality is only for show. Astrology, yes. Tarot cards, yes. Ouija boards, Kundala, Sci-entology, and even born-agains, yes. But a real God? No. That would be inconvenient.”

In her office, Mindy wrote: “Why do we torture our husbands? Is it necessary or the inevitable result of our inherent frustration with the opposite sex?” She sat back in her chair and regarded the sentence with satisfaction. Her blog was a success — over the past two months, she’d received 872 e-mails congratulating her on her courage in addressing topics that were off-limits, such as whether a woman really needed her husband after he had given her children. “It’s all about the existential question,” Mindy wrote. “As women, we’re not allowed to ask existential questions. We’re supposed to be grateful for what we have, and if we’re not, we’re losers. Can’t we take a break from imposed happiness and admit that despite what we have, it’s okay to feel empty? It’s okay to feel that something is missing and life may be meaningless? Instead of feeling bad about it, why can’t we admit it’s normal?”

This same unsentimental eye was applied to men and relationships.

Mindy’s conclusion was that marriage was like democracy — imperfect but still the best system women had. It was certainly better than prostitution.

Mindy reread her opening sentence for the week’s blog entry and considered what she wanted to say next. Writing a blog was a bit like going to a shrink, she thought — it forced you to examine your real feelings. But it was also better than a shrink, because you got to do your navel-gazing in front of an audience of several thousand as opposed to one. And in her experience, that one — the shrink — was usually half asleep and expected money. “This week, I realized I spend at least thirty minutes a day nagging my husband,” she wrote. “And to what end?

There are no consequences.” She looked up and saw that her assistant was standing in front of her desk.

“Do you have an appointment with a Paul Rice?” the assistant asked, as if Paul Rice were a thing as opposed to a person. Catching the surprise on Mindy’s face, she said, “I didn’t think so. I’ll have security send him away.”

“No,” Mindy said a little too eagerly. “He’s from my building. Send him up.”

She put her feet back in her shoes and stood, smoothing her skirt and rearranging her blouse, over which she was wearing a woolly vest. The vest was not sexy, and she debated taking it off but wondered if it would be obvious that she had made an effort. Then she realized she was being ridiculous: Paul Rice wouldn’t know she’d been wearing the vest all day. She took it off. She sat down behind her desk and fluffed her hair.

She rummaged in the top drawer of her desk, found an old lip gloss, and rubbed a dab on her mouth.

Paul Rice appeared in her doorway. He was dressed in a beautifully tailored suit with a crisp white shirt. He looked, Mindy noted, expensive. More like a sophisticated European as opposed to an ink-stained mathematician. But mathematicians wouldn’t be ink-stained anymore.

They did their work on computers, like everyone else.

Mindy stood up and leaned over the desk to shake his hand. “Hello, Paul,” she said. “This is a surprise. Have a seat.” She gestured to the small armchair in front of her desk.

“I don’t have long,” Paul said. He pointedly held out his wrist and looked at his watch, a large vintage gold Rolex. “Exactly seven minutes, to be precise. Which should be the amount of time it takes my driver to circle the block.”

“Not at four-thirty in the afternoon,” Mindy disagreed. “It will take him at least fifteen minutes in rush-hour traffic.”

Paul Rice stared at her, saying nothing.

Mindy began to feel slightly excited. “What can I do for you?” she asked. Since she’d met Paul at the board meeting, it had crept up on her that she was secretly affected by him. She found him sexy. Mindy had always been a sucker for a man of genius, and Paul Rice was rumored to be one. Plus, there was all his money. Money didn’t matter, but men who made a lot of it were always interesting.

“I need those air conditioners,” he said.

“Now, Paul,” Mindy said, sounding slightly schoolmarmish to her own ears. She leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs and began picturing herself as a Mrs. Robinson type. She smiled. “I thought I explained this in my letter. One Fifth is a landmark building. We’re not allowed to alter the face or the structure of the building in any way.”

“What does that have to do with me?” Paul said, narrowing his eyes.

“It means you can’t have in-the-wall air-conditioning units. No one can,”

Mindy said.

“An exception will have to be made.”

“I can’t do that,” Mindy said. “It’s illegal.”

“I have a lot of expensive computer equipment. I need to keep my apartment at a precise temperature.”

“And what would that be?” Mindy said.

“Sixty-four point two degrees.”

“I’d like to help you, Paul, but I can’t.”

“How much money will it take?” Paul asked.

“Are you suggesting a bribe?”

“Call it whatever you like,” Paul said. “I need my air conditioners. And the parking spot in the Mews. Let’s make this as easy as possible for both of us. Name your price.”

“Paul,” Mindy said slowly. “This is not about money.”

“Everything is about money. It’s all about numbers.”

“In your world, maybe. But not in One Fifth,” Mindy said in her most patronizing tone. “It’s about preserving a historical landmark. That’s something money can’t buy.”

Paul remained impassive. “I paid twenty million dollars for that apartment,” he said. “So you will approve my air conditioners.” He looked at his watch again and stood up.

“No,” Mindy said. “I will not.” She stood up as well.

“In that case,” Paul said, taking a step closer, “it’s war.”

Mindy gasped involuntarily. She knew she should have sent the Rices the official letter denying the air conditioners weeks ago, when they’d first presented their plans for the renovation, but she’d liked having an excuse to talk about something with Paul when she ran into him in the lobby. But this was not how the game was supposed to play out. “Excuse me?” she asked. “Are you threatening me?”

“I never threaten anyone, Mrs. Gooch,” Paul said, emotionless. “I merely state the facts. If you don’t approve my air conditioners, it’s war.

And I will win.”

10

“Look,” Enid Merle said the next afternoon. “Schiffer Diamond’s new TV series premiered with a two point oh share. And four million viewers.”

“Is that good?” Philip asked.

“It’s the highest cable opening in history.”

“Oh, Nini,” Philip said. “Why do you pay attention to these things?”

“Why don’t you?” Enid asked. “Anyway, it’s a hit.”

“I’ve read the reviews,” Philip said. SCHIFFER DIAMOND SHINES, declared one. DIAMOND IS FOREVER, gushed another.

“Schiffer is a star,” Enid said. “She always was, and she always will be.”

She put down Variety. “I do wish ...”

“No, Nini,” Philip said firmly, knowing what she was getting at. “It’s not going to happen.”

“But Schiffer is so ...”

“Wonderful?” Philip said with an edge of sarcasm. Enid looked hurt.

“I know you adore her,” Philip said. “But it’s impossible to be with an actress. You know that.”

“But you’ve both grown up,” Enid countered. “And I’d hate to see you...”

“End up with Lola?” Philip said. It could happen. Lola was crazy about him. “I wish you’d try to get to know her a little better. It would mean a lot to me.”

“We’ll see,” Enid said.

Philip went back to his apartment. Lola was curled up on the couch, watching TV. “Where were you?” she asked.

“Visiting my aunt.”

“But you just saw her yesterday.”

Philip felt snappish. “You call your mother every day.”

“But she’s my mother.”

Philip went into his office and closed the door. After a couple of minutes, he got up from his desk, opened the door, and stuck his head out.

“Lola,” he said. “Can you please turn down that damn TV?”

“Why?”

“I’m trying to work,” he said.

“So?” She yawned.

“I’ve got a rewrite due in four days. If I don’t get it finished, we don’t start shooting on time.”

“What’s the problem?” she asked. “They’ll wait. You’re Philip Oakland.

They have to wait.”

“No, they do not,” Philip said. “It’s called a contract, Lola. It’s called being an adult and honoring your commitments. It’s called people are counting on you to produce.”

“Then write,” she said. “What’s stopping you?”

“You are,” he said.

“All I’m doing is sitting here. Watching TV.”

“That’s the point. I can’t concentrate with the TV on.”

“Why should I have to stop doing what I want to do so you can do what you want to do?”

“What I have to do.”

“If you don’t want to do it, if it doesn’t make you happy, then don’t do it,” Lola said.

“I need you to turn off the TV. Or at least turn it down.”

“Why are you criticizing me?”

Philip gave up. He closed the door. Opened it again. “You need to do some work, too,” he said. “Why don’t you go to the library?”

“Because I just got a manicure. And a pedicure.” She held up a foot and wiggled her toes for his inspection. “Isn’t it pretty?” she asked in her baby-girl voice.

Philip went back to his desk. The noise from the TV continued unabated. He put his hands in his hair. How the fuck had this happened?

She’d taken over his apartment, his life, his concentration. His bathroom was littered with makeup. She never put the cap back on the toothpaste.

Or bought toilet paper. When the toilet paper ran out, she used paper towels. And stared at him accusingly, as if he had fallen down on the job of making her life easy. Every one of her days was a never-ending orgy of pampering. There were hairstyling appointments and massages and exercise classes in obscure Asian martial arts. It was, she explained, all in preparation for some great, future, unnamed, and undefined event that would inevitably happen to her and would change her life, for which she needed to be ready. Camera-ready. And he couldn’t get her to go home.

“You could go back to your apartment,” he’d suggest.

“But your apartment is so much nicer than mine.”

“Your apartment is so much nicer than most twentysomethings’,” he’d point out. “Some of them live in the outer reaches of Brooklyn. Or New Jersey. They have to cross the river by ferry.”

“What are you saying, Philip? That it’s my fault? Am I supposed to feel guilty about other people’s lives? I don’t have anything to do with their lives. It doesn’t make sense.”

He tried to explain that one ought to feel guilty about other people’s hardships and struggles because that was how decent people felt about the world, it was called a conscience, but when pressed by her, he had to admit that feeling guilty was a legacy of his generation, not hers. She was, she explained, a child of choice — her parents chose to have her. Unlike previous generations in which parents, like his mother, didn’t have a choice about having kids, and therefore made their children feel guilty about coming into the world. As if it were the kid’s fault!

Sometimes it was like trying to argue with someone from another planet.

He got up and opened the door again. “Lola!” he said.

“What is wrong with you?” she said. “I haven’t done anything. You’re in a bad mood because your writing isn’t going well. Don’t you dare blame that on me. I won’t tolerate it.” She got up.

“Where are you going?” he said.

“Out.”

“Fine,” he said. He shut the door. But now he did feel guilty. She was right, she hadn’t done anything wrong. And he was in a bad mood. About what, he didn’t know.

He opened the door. She was carefully sliding her feet into ballet flats.

“You don’t have to go.”

“I’m going,” she said.

“When are you coming back?”

“I have no idea.” And she left.

In the elevator, Lola checked her Facebook page. Sure enough, there was a message from Thayer Core. He left her messages regularly, although she rarely responded. From her Facebook page, he’d found out she was from Atlanta and, from the photos she’d posted, seemed to think she was a party girl. “Hey Southern Girl,” he’d written. “Let’s hook up.” “Why?” she’d texted back. “Because you’re crazy about me,” he wrote. “All girls are.”

“IDTS,” she responded. Which meant “I don’t think so.”

Now, however, might be a good time to take Thayer Core up on his offer. The best way to get back at a man was to make him jealous, although she wasn’t sure Thayer Core would make Philip squirm. Still, Thayer was young, he was hot, and he was better than nothing. “What are you doing?”

she texted Thayer.

A reply came back immediately. “Torturing the rich.”

“Let’s hang,” she wrote. He texted back his address.

His apartment was on Avenue C and Thirteenth Street, in a low brick building with a dirty Chinese restaurant below. Lola rode a narrow elevator to the third floor. The hallway was tiled with large squares of brown linoleum. A door opened at one end of the short hallway, and a bristled man in a stained wifebeater stared at her briefly and went back inside.

Another door opened, and a pimply-faced kid stuck his head out. “You here to see Thayer?” he asked.

“Yes,” Lola said. “What was that about?” She indicated the occupant of the other apartment.

“Pay no attention. The guy’s a drug addict. Probably jonesing for his dealer to bring him a fix,” the kid said casually, as if thrilled to be in possession of such knowledge. “I’m Josh,” he said. “Thayer’s roommate.” The apartment was all that Lola had been expecting and worse. A board atop two plastic crates made a coffee table; in one corner was a futon with egg-plant-colored sheets, barely visible under a pile of clothes. Pizza boxes, Chinese food containers, bags of Doritos, a bong, dirty glasses, and a bottle of vodka littered the counter that separated the tiny living room from the kitchen area. The place smelled of dirty socks, nighttime emissions, and marijuana.

“Are you Thayer’s new girlfriend?” Josh asked.

“Hardly.”

“Thayer’s juggling three or four girls right now. I can’t keep track of them, and neither can he.” Josh knocked at a flimsy wooden door in the middle of a makeshift plywood wall. “Thay?”

“What the fuck?” came a voice from inside.

“Thayer’s a serious writer,” Josh said. “He’s probably working.”

“I’m going to go,” Lola said.

Suddenly, the door opened and Thayer Core came out. He was taller than Lola remembered, at least six-two, and was wearing madras pants, flip-flops, and a ripped pink Lacoste shirt. Ironic preppy, Lola thought.

“Hey,” Thayer said.

“Hey,” Lola replied.

“I was telling Lola that you’re a writer. He’s a real writer,” Josh said, turning to Lola.

“Meaning?”

“I get paid to write shit,” Thayer said, and grinned.

“He’s published,” Josh said.

“You wrote a book?” Lola asked.

“Josh is an idiot.”

“He’s a writer for Snarker,” Josh said proudly.

“Give me your stuff, Josh,” Thayer said.

Josh looked annoyed. “There’s hardly anything left.”

“So? Give it to me. I’ll get more later.”

“That’s what you said last night.”

“Give me a break. I had that obscene cocktail party at Cartier, where they wouldn’t let us in. Then some art party at the Whitney, where they wouldn’t let us in, either. Then the Box. Which was groovy. Full of hip-sters. But no pot. Only coke. Dammit, Josh, come on. I need your stash.”

Josh reluctantly reached into his pocket and handed over a small bag of marijuana.

“You carry it with you? You’re such a skive,” Thayer said.

“I never know when I might need it.”

“Like now,” Thayer said.

“I’m going,” Lola said.

“Why?” Thayer asked. “I thought you wanted to hang out. You have someplace better to go? This is the best spot in Manhattan. Center of the universe here. Going to destroy Manhattan from this tiny rat-infested three-thousand-dollar-a-month shithole.”

“That’s nice,” Lola said.

Thayer handed her the bong, and she took a hit. She hadn’t meant to smoke marijuana, but it was there and she was there and she thought, Why not? Plus, Thayer irritated her in an intriguing sort of way. He didn’t seem to understand she was superior to him.

“Where’s your boyfriend?” Thayer said.

“I’m pissed at him.”

“You see, Josh?” Thayer said. “All roads lead to me.”

Lola’s phone rang. She looked at the number. It was Philip. She hit ignore.

“Who was that?” Thayer asked.

“None of your business.”

Thayer took a hit from the bong. “Bet it was the boyfriend,” he said to Josh. “Bet he’s some boring premed student from the South.”

“He isn’t,” Lola said proudly. “He’s famous.”

“Oooooh, Joshie boy. Did you hear that? He’s famous. Nothing but the best for our Southern princess. Would I know him?” Thayer asked Lola.

“Of course,” she said. “Philip Oakland? The novelist?”

“That guy?” Thayer said. “Baby, he’s old.”

“Got to be over forty, at least,” Josh agreed.

“He’s a man,” Lola said.

“You hear that, Josh? He’s a man. And we’re not.”

“You’re certainly not,” Lola said to Thayer.

“What am I?”

“An asshole?” Lola said.

Thayer laughed. “Didn’t used to be,” he said. “Until I came here. Until I got into this stinking, corrupt business called media.”

“You still have your book,” Josh said. “Thayer’s going to be a great writer.”

“I doubt it,” Lola said.

“I like that you’re sleeping your way to the top,” Thayer said. “I’d do it if I could. But I don’t relish the thought of a dick up my ass.”

“It’s the metaphorical dick that counts,” Josh said.

“What do you talk to Oakland about?” Thayer asked. “He’s an old man.”

“What does any girl talk to you about?” Josh said. “I thought talking wasn’t the point.”

“As if you’d know,” Thayer said, looking at Josh in disgust.

It went on like this for a while, and then some other people showed up.

One was a girl with very pale skin and dyed black hair and a face that resembled a pug’s. “ I hate beauty queens,” she screamed when she saw Lola.

“Shut up, Emily. Lola’s okay,” Thayer said.

More time passed. Thayer played seventies music, and they drank the vodka and danced in weird ways, and Josh filmed it on his cell phone. Then two guys and a girl came in. They were tall and pretty, like models, but Thayer said they weren’t models, they were the rich-kid offspring of some famous New Yorkers, and if their kids didn’t look like models, they would disown them. The girl was named Francesca, and she had long, narrow hands that she moved around when she talked. “I’ve seen you before,” she said to Lola. “At that Nicole Kidman screening.”

“Yes,” Lola said loudly, over the music. “I was with my boyfriend, Philip Oakland.”

“I love Nicole.” The girl sighed.

“Do you know her?” Lola asked.

“I’ve known her my whole life. She came to my third birthday party.”

Francesca took Lola into the bathroom, and they put on lipstick. The bathroom smelled of damp towels and vomit. “Philip Oakland is cool,” Francesca said. “How’d you meet him?”

“I’m his researcher,” Lola said.

“I dated my teacher when I was sixteen. I love older men.”

“Me, too,” Lola said, glancing out at Thayer and Josh, who were pretending to box each other. She rolled her eyes and decided she’d tortured Philip long enough. “I have to go,” she said.

When she got back to One Fifth, she found Philip in the kitchen, pouring himself a glass of wine. “Kitty,” he exclaimed. He put down the glass and immediately gave her a hug, then he tried to make out with her and put his hand on her breast. She stiffened and pulled away.

“What’s wrong?” he said. “I tried to call you.”

“I was busy.”

“Really?” he asked, as if surprised that she might have something else to do. “Where were you?”

She shrugged. “With friends.” She took out a glass and poured herself some wine, taking the glass with her into the bedroom.

He waited a beat and then followed her. “Kitty?” he said, sitting next to her on the bed. “What are you doing?”

“Reading Star magazine.”

“You don’t have to be pissed off,” he said, trying to pull the magazine away.

“Stop it,” she said, swatting at his hand and pretending to concentrate on an ad for Halloween costumes. “I have to figure out what I should be for Halloween.” She paused. “I could be Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton, but then I don’t know what you would be. Or I could be a dominatrix.

Then you could be a businessman, like that guy who lives in the penthouse. The one you hate.”

“Paul Rice?” Philip said. “A scumbag hedge-fund guy? Lola.” He stroked her leg. “I will do nearly anything for you. But I will not dress up for a child’s holiday.”

She sat up and glared at him. “It’s Halloween,” she said pointedly, as if the subject wasn’t open for discussion. “I want to go to parties. That’s what people do on Halloween. It’s the biggest holiday of the year.”

“Tell you what,” Philip said. “You can dress up however you want for me. We’ll stay home and have our own Halloween.”

“No,” Lola said. “What’s the point of dressing up if no one sees you?”

“I’ll see you,” Philip said. “Am I no one?”

Lola looked away. “I want to go out. There’s a Halloween party at the Bowery Hotel. This guy Thayer Core told me about it.”

“Who’s Thayer Core?”

“He’s this kid who works for Snarker.”

“What’s Snarker?” Philip asked.

Lola sighed dramatically and jumped off the bed, throwing down the magazine. She went into the bathroom. “How come we never do what I want to do? Why do we always have to go out with your friends?”

“My friends happen to be very interesting,” Philip said. “But it’s okay.

If you want to go to this Halloween party, we’ll go.”

“Will you dress up?”

“No,” he said.

“Then I’ll go by myself.”

“Fine,” he said, and went out of the room. What was he doing, playing this game? He was too old for this, he decided. He picked up the phone and called the director of Bridesmaids Revisited, who happened to be home, and got into a discussion with him about the film.

A few minutes later, Lola came into his office and stood in front of him with her arms crossed. Philip looked at her, looked away, and went back to his conversation. Lola went into the living room, steaming. Trying to think of a way to push his buttons, she remembered the spread of him and Schiffer Diamond in Vogue magazine. Removing the magazine from the shelf, she banged it down noisily on the coffee table and opened it up.

Sure enough, Philip came in a few minutes later, looked at her, saw what she was reading, and stiffened. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

“What does it look like I’m doing?”

“Where did you get that?” he said, standing over her.

“It was on your bookshelf,” she said innocently.

“Put it back,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because I’d like you to,” he said.

“Who are you? My father?” she asked teasingly, pleased to have gotten such a big reaction out of him.

He grabbed the magazine out of her hands. “This is off-limits,” he said.

“Are you embarrassed about it?”

“No.”

“Oh, I get it,” Lola said, narrowing her eyes. “You’re still in love with her.” She jumped up and ran into the bedroom and started pounding on a pillow.

“Lola, stop,” Philip said.

“How can you be in love with me when you’re still in love with her?”

Lola shrieked.

“It was a long time ago. And I never said I was in love with you, Lola,”

he said firmly, then immediately realized his mistake.

“So you’re not in love with me?” she asked, her voice rising in outrage.

“I didn’t say I wasn’t in love with you. I’m saying we’ve only known each other for two months.”

“More than that. Ten weeks. At least.”

“Okay.” Philip sighed. “Ten weeks. What’s the difference?”

“Were you in love with her?” Lola said.

“Come on, Kitty,” Philip said. “You’re being silly.” He went up to her, but she tried — not very hard, Philip noted — to push him away. “Listen,”

he said. “I’m very, very fond of you. But it’s too soon to say ‘I love you.’ ”

She crossed her arms. “I’m going to leave.”

“Lola,” he said. “What do you want from me?”

“I want you to be in love with me. And I want to go to that Halloween party.”

He sighed. Relieved to be off the topic of his feelings for her, he said,

“If you want to go to the party, we’ll go.”

This seemed to mollify her, and she put her hands in the waistband of his jeans. She unzipped his pants, and unable to object, he put his hands in her hair as she knelt in front of him. At one point, she pulled her mouth away from his penis and, looking up at him, said, “Will you dress up?”

“Huh?” he said.

“For Halloween?”

He closed his eyes. “Sure,” he said, thinking, If it means more blow jobs, why not?

In the week before Halloween, the city was hit by a cold snap. The temperature dropped to thirty degrees, causing people to remark that maybe global warming wasn’t such an issue. For Thayer Core, the weather simply put him in a bad mood. He didn’t own an overcoat, and the cold air reminded him that he was about to experience his third winter in New York, in which his lack of proper attire would make him hate the cold, hate the businessmen in their long cashmere coats and cashmere scarves and thick, leather-soled loafers. He hated everything about winter: the giant puddles of slush on the street corners and the disgusting puddles of dirty water in the subway and the puffy coat filled with acrylic batting that he was forced to wear when the temperature dropped below forty. His only protection against the icy weather was this silly ski jacket his mother had given him for his birthday the year he’d moved to New York. She’d been so excited about the gift, her flat brown eyes exuding a rarely seen sparkle of anticipation that had hurt him because his mother was pathetic, and irritated him because he was her son. Still, she loved him no matter what he did. She loved him although she had no idea who he was or what he really thought. Her assumption that he would love the gift of a ski coat for its practicality annoyed him and made him want to drink and drug away his infuriation, but when winter came to New York, he wore the coat. He had nothing else.

In the middle of the day in the middle of the week, when he imagined most people in America were wasting the company’s time at their dull and unrewarding office jobs, Thayer Core took the subway to Fifty-first Street and walked up Fifty-second to the Four Seasons, where he would eat caviar and drink champagne under the pretense of reporting on how the privileged filled up their many hours of free time.

It was his third attendance at such a lunch, which appeared to be a regular once-a-week event, the purpose of which was the promotion of a movie (independent, often worthy, and usually boring). The guests were supposed to discuss the movie, like one of those middle-aged-lady book clubs that his mother belonged to, but no one ever did. Instead, they cooed over each other about how fabulous they were, which was especially galling to Thayer, who saw them as old and frightening and misguided.

Nevertheless, he had managed to keep himself invited each week by not yet writing about the event in Snarker. He would have to soon. But in the meantime, he planned to enjoy his free lunch.

Thayer was always one of the first people to arrive, in order to do so anonymously. He took off his coat and was about to hand it to the coat-check man when he saw that Billy Litchfield had come up behind him.

The sight of Billy filled Thayer with bile. Billy, Thayer had decided, was what could happen to a person who stayed too long in New York. What was his point? He appeared to do nothing but go to parties. He was a hanger-on to the rich and privileged. Didn’t he get bored? Thayer had been going to parties for only two years, and already he was bored out of his mind. If he wasn’t careful, time would pass, and he would end up like Billy Litchfield.

And now Billy had seen his coat.

“Hello, young man,” Billy said pleasantly.

“Hello,” Thayer muttered. No doubt Billy Litchfield couldn’t remember his name. He held out his hand aggressively, forcing Billy to take it.

“I’m Thayer Core,” he said. “From Snarker?”

“I know exactly who you are,” Billy replied.

“Good,” Thayer said. Giving Billy a backward glance, he bounded up the steps ahead of him, if only to remind himself — and Billy — of his youth and energy. Then he took up his usual position at the bar, where he could observe and overhear and largely be ignored until lunch.

Billy handed his overcoat to the coat-check man, wishing he could have avoided shaking the hand of Thayer Core. Why was he here? Billy wondered. Thayer Core was a blogger on one of those vicious new websites that had popped up in the last few years, displaying a hatred and vitriol that was unprecedented in civilized New York. The things the bloggers wrote made no sense to him. The readers’ comments made no sense to him. None of it appeared to be written by humans, at least not humans as he knew them. This was the problem with the Internet: The more the world opened up, the more unpleasant people seemed to be.

It was one of the reasons he’d begun taking the pills. Good old-fashioned Prozac. “Been around for twenty-five years. Babies take it,” the shrink said. “You’ve got anhedonia. Lack of pleasure in anything.”

“It’s not a lack of pleasure,” Billy protested. “It’s more a horror of the world.”

The doctor’s office was located on Eleventh Street in a two-bedroom town house apartment. “We’ve met before,” the doctor said the first time Billy walked in.

“Have we?” Billy said. He was so hoping this wouldn’t be true, that he and his psychiatrist would have no acquaintances in common.

“You know my mother.”

“Do I?” Billy said, trying to put him off. But there was a degree of comfort in the information.

“Cee Cee Lightfoot,” the doctor said.

“Ah. Cee Cee,” Billy said. He knew Cee Cee well. The muse to a famous fashion designer who had died of AIDS back in the days when fashion designers had muses. How he missed those times, he thought.

“What happened to your mother?” he asked.

“Oh, she’s still around,” the doctor said with a mixture of what sounded like despair and amusement. “She still has a one-bedroom apartment here.

And a house in the Berkshires. She spends most of her time there.”

“What does she do?” Billy asked.

“She’s still very, very active. She’s involved with charity. She rescues horses.”

“How wonderful,” Billy said.

“How are you feeling?” the doctor asked.

“Not so good,” Billy said.

“You’ve come to the right place,” the doctor said. “We’ll have you feeling good in no time.”

And the pills — they actually worked! No, they didn’t solve your problems, didn’t make them go away. But one no longer cared quite so much.

Now Billy took a seat at the bar and ordered a glass of water. He stared at Thayer Core and briefly felt sorry for him. What a terrible way to earn a living. The young man must be filled with self-loathing. He was only a few feet away, but an enormous ocean of thirty years of knowledge separated them like two continents in which neither population understood the other’s customs and mores. Billy decided he didn’t care about that, either, and, glass of water in hand, went off to work the room.

Thirty minutes later, the luncheon was in full swing. “I love your TV

show,” shrieked a woman dressed in a beaded suit to Schiffer Diamond, leaning across Billy to address her.

Schiffer looked at Billy and gave him a wink. “I thought no one was going to talk about the TV show. I was promised.”

Ever since Lady Superior had aired three weeks ago on Showtime, Schiffer had been invited everywhere and decided to enjoy herself in the little playground of New York society. Everyone wanted to fix her up.

So far she’d dated a famous billionaire who’d been more intelligent and pleasant than she’d expected, but who, after a three-hour dinner, had said he didn’t believe they were suited to each other and should move on; and a famous movie director who was desperately looking for a third wife. Today she was seated next to Derek Brumminger, who was sixty-three years old and rugged and pockmarked (by both acne and life, Schiffer decided), who had been fired two years before from his position as CEO of a major media corporation and been given eighty million dollars in compensation. He had just returned from a yearlong worldwide journey on which he had tried to find himself and failed. “I realized I wasn’t ready to retire. I don’t want to get off the stage. And that’s why I came back,” he said. “What about you?”

“I’m not ready to get off the stage, either,” she said.

At the next table, Annalisa Rice was sitting next to Thayer Core. “That must be a very interesting job, blogging,” she said.

“Have you ever done it?” Thayer asked.

“I’ve sent e-mails,” she said.

“It’s the kind of thing anyone can do. And does,” Thayer replied with a mix of disdain and loathing.

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

“It is,” Thayer said. “It’s a bullshit way to make a living.”

“Being a lawyer might be worse,” she joked.

“It might be,” he agreed. “I thought I was going to be a novelist. What did you think you’d be?”

“I always wanted to be a lawyer. Once you’re a lawyer, you’re always a lawyer, I suppose. But today I went to see a piece of art — everyone was talking about it — and it turned out to be a pair of running shoes and a plastic dinosaur glued to a baby’s blanket. For half a million dollars.”

“Doesn’t that piss you off? It pisses me off. We live in a world full of douchebags.”

“I guess one person’s baby blanket is another person’s art,” Annalisa said, smiling at him.

“That’s not a very original thought,” he said, finishing off his third glass of champagne.

“Oh, I’m not trying to be original,” she said without malice. “This room is full of original people. I’m still trying to figure out New York.”

Thayer thought Annalisa was one of the most decent people he’d met at one of these things in a while. “If you were an emoticon, what would it be? A smiley face?” he asked.

Annalisa laughed. “I’d be perplexed. A K with a colon underneath.”

“Because of the baby’s blanket. For half a million dollars. You didn’t buy it, I hope.”

“No,” she said. “But my husband is building a giant aquarium in our apartment.”

“Where do you live?” Thayer asked casually.

“One Fifth,” she said.

Thayer put it together: Annalisa Rice was one half of the couple who’d bought Mrs. Houghton’s apartment. Her husband was Paul Rice, some scummy hedge-fund guy who was only thirty-two years old and already worth millions. The purchase had been noted in the real estate section of The New York Observer.

After the lunch, Thayer Core returned to his apartment. It was especially depressing, coming from the clean glamour of the Four Seasons.

The windows were closed, and steam hissed from the old radiator. His roommate, Josh, was asleep on the pile of clothing he called his bed, his mouth open, wheezing in the deadly dry air.

Who was Thayer kidding? Josh was a loser — he would never make it in this town. It was the assholes who cleaned up, like Paul Rice, sitting in his giant apartment on Fifth Avenue looking at fish, while his beautiful, gracious wife, who was clearly too good for him, was forced to spend her time looking at fraudulent art with that creep Billy Litchfield.

In this state of moral indignation, Thayer went into his room and sat down in front of his computer, ready to write a blistering attack on the Rices and Billy Litchfield and the lunch at the Four Seasons. Usually, his ire carried him through five hundred words of nasty hyperbole, but all at once, his anger deserted him and was replaced by a rare circumspec-tion. He remembered Annalisa’s face, smiling at him with what appeared to be delight in his charm, and completely innocent of his true intentions. Yes, he “hated” those people, but hadn’t he come to New York to be one of them?

He was the next F. Scott Fitzgerald, he reminded himself, and someday he would write the Great American Novel and they’d bow down before his genius. In the meantime, Annalisa Rice would be his Daisy Buchanan.

“Every now and then, one meets a creature of the female persuasion who is so natural, so lovely, it’s enough to make one consider not quit-ting this hellhole that is New York,” he wrote.

Two hours later, his blog entry appeared on Snarker, earning him twenty dollars. In the meantime, Mindy Gooch, sitting in her generic office in midtown Manhattan, was also working on her blog. “When my son was born,” she wrote, “I discovered I wasn’t Superwoman. Especially when it came to my emotions. Suddenly, I no longer possessed the emotional energy for everyone, including my husband. All my emotions went to my son. My emotions, I learned, were limited, not limitless. And my son used them up. There was nothing left for my husband. I knew I should have felt guilty. And I did feel guilty. But not for the right reasons. I felt guilty because I was perfectly happy.”

She sent the file to her assistant. Then she began surfing through her regular rotation of blogs: The Huffington Post, Slate, The Green Thumb (an obscure site about gardening that Mindy found soothing), and finally, steeling herself against shock, horror, and degradation, Snarker.

Each week, Snarker made fun of her blog in a feature called “Middle-aged Mommy Crisis.” It wasn’t healthy to read hateful comments about oneself (some of the comments said simply, “I hate her. I wish she would die”), but Mindy was hooked. The comments fed her demons of self-hatred and insecurity. It was, she thought, the emotional version of cutting yourself. You did it so you could feel. And feeling awful was better than feeling nothing.

Today, however, there were no items about her. Mindy was relieved — and slightly disappointed. It would make her evening with James more dull, with nothing to rail about. As she was about to close the website, a new item popped up. Mindy read the first sentence and frowned. It was all about Annalisa Rice. And Paul Rice. And his aquarium.

This, Mindy thought, was exactly what she didn’t want to happen.

When it came to One Fifth, no publicity was good publicity.

Early the next morning, Mindy Gooch stationed herself at the peep-hole, intending to confront Paul Rice when he passed through the lobby on his way to work. Skippy, the cocker spaniel, was by her side. Perhaps it was the atmosphere in his home and not his inherent personality, but Skippy had developed a vicious streak. He was perfectly pleasant for hours, and then, without warning, he would attack.

At seven A.M. on the dot, Paul Rice came out of the elevator. Mindy opened her door. “Excuse me,” she said. Paul turned. “What?” he demanded. At that moment, Skippy slipped out the door. Baring his teeth, he closed in on Paul’s pant leg. Paul turned white. “Get your dog off me,” he shouted, hopping on one leg while he tried to shake Skippy free. Mindy waited for a moment, then came out, pulling Skippy away from Paul’s leg. “I could sue you for that,” Paul said. “Dogs are perfectly legal in this building,” Mindy said, baring her own teeth. “But I’m not sure about fish. Oh yes,” she said, noting the look of surprise on Paul’s face. “I know all about your aquarium. There are no secrets in this building.” She went back inside and kissed Skippy on the top of his head. “Good dog,” she cooed. And from then on, a routine was established.

The Halloween party Lola insisted she and Philip attend wasn’t at the Bowery Hotel after all, but in an abandoned building on the next block.

Lola was dressed as a showgirl, in a sequined bra and panties, fishnet stock-ings, and high heels. She looked sensational, like a girl on the cover of a men’s magazine. “Are you sure you want to go out like that?” Philip asked.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“You’re practically naked.”

“No more naked than I am at the beach.” She wrapped a feather boa around her neck. “Is that better?”

Trying to get into the spirit of things, Philip was dressed as a pimp, in a striped suit, white sunglasses, and a fur hat. On Eighth Street, Lola had bought him an imitation diamond necklace, at the bottom of which dangled a diamond-encrusted skull.

“Isn’t this fun?” Lola exclaimed, walking to the party. The streets were filled with revelers dressed in every kind of costume. Yes, Philip thought, taking her hand. This was fun. He hadn’t allowed himself to have this kind of silly fun for years. What had happened to him? When had he become so serious?

“You’re going to love Thayer Core,” she said, tugging on his hand to hurry him along.

“Who’s he?” And seeing Lola’s irritated expression, said, “I know, I know — the young impresario who wants to be a writer.”

“Not wants, is,” Lola said. “He writes every day for Snarker.”

Philip smiled. Lola seemed incapable of making distinctions between the artist and the hack, the real and the wannabe. In her mind, a blogger was the same as a novelist, a star on a reality show was equal to an actress. It was her generation, he reminded himself. They had grown up in a culture of insistent democracy in which everyone was the same and everyone was a winner.

A large crowd was gathered in front of a decrepit building. Gripping Lola’s hand, Philip pushed through. At the entrance were two guys with pierced faces, a transvestite in a pink wig, and Thayer Core himself, smoking a cigarette. He shook Philip’s hand. “It’s a destructor party, man,”

Thayer said. “Building’s going to be torn down tomorrow. We do our best to destroy the place until the police get here.”

Philip and Lola went in the door and up a wooden staircase. The air was hot and thick with smoke, lit by a single bulb. There was the sound of retching, and upstairs, music thumped out of two speakers set in the windows. The room was packed. “What is the point of this?” Philip said into Lola’s ear.

“There is no point. Isn’t it great?” Lola said.

They pushed their way up to a makeshift bar, where they were handed a slosh of vodka and cranberry juice in a red plastic cup, no ice.

“When can we get out of here?” Philip shouted over the music.

“You want to leave already?” Lola said.

Philip looked around. I don’t know one person here, he thought. And they were all so young, with their smooth faces and their attitudes, preening and shouting at each other. And the music. Loud, thumping, with no discernible melody. Yet they were all dancing, moving their hips while keeping their upper bodies still. I can’t do this, Philip thought.

“Lola,” he shouted into her ear. “I’m going home.”

“No,” she shrieked.

“You stay. Have a good time. I’ll meet you back at the apartment in an hour.”

Walking back to One Fifth, Philip was relieved and then perplexed.

He couldn’t imagine anything worse than being stuck at that crowded, hot, filthy party. How was that possibly fun? But he had gone to parties like that when he was twenty-two, and they were fun. There were scav-enger hunts in limousines, endless evenings in tiny, smoke-filled clubs or in enormous spaces with a different theme every night; there was a club in an old church where you danced on the altar, and another one containing an abandoned subway tunnel where people went to take drugs.

Manhattan was a giant playground where there was always music, always a party. One hot August night, he and Schiffer had crashed a party of transvestites on a decaying pier on the Hudson River, where several people fell in and had to be rescued by the fire department. He and Schiffer had laughed and laughed, laughed until they were crying. “Hey, schoolboy,” she’d gasped, bent over in hilarity, “let’s do this forever. Let’s never work again and become twenty-four-hour party people. Wouldn’t that be glamorous? And when we’ve had enough, we’ll live in an old farmhouse in Vermont.”

What happened to those days? he wondered. Coming into One Fifth and catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror next to the elevators, he realized he looked a fool, a middle-aged man trying to pretend he was young. When had he gotten so old?

“Philip?” He heard a voice. “Philip Oakland, is that you?” Followed by the familiar peals of laughter.

He turned. Schiffer Diamond had come in and was standing with a pile of scripts folded across her chest. It was obvious she’d just come from the set, in full hair and makeup, wearing jeans, fuzzy boots, and a bright orange parka. A white cashmere scarf was tied around her neck.

She looked good — her mocking, amused expression was reminiscent of how she’d looked when he’d first met her. How was it that she seemed not to have aged at all, while he’d become such an obvious victim of time? “Schoolboy,” she said. “It is you. What the hell are you wearing?”

“It’s Halloween,” he said.

“I know that. But what are you supposed to be?”

Philip felt embarrassed and irritated. “Nothing,” he said, pressing the button for the elevator.

The doors opened and they got in. “Like the hat,” she said, looking him up and down. “But you were never good at disguises, Oakland.” The elevator stopped on her floor. She looked again at his getup, shook her head, and got out. And once again, he thought, she was gone.

Hanging out with Thayer at the party, Lola lost track of time. Thayer seemed to know everyone and kept introducing her to people. She sat on his lap. “Can you feel my hard-on?” he said.

Francesca showed up. She and Lola went into the stairwell and smoked marijuana. Then they found someone with a bottle of vodka.

One of the speakers fell out the window. The night went on and on.

At three A.M. the room lit up with the red and white lights of several police cars. The cops came in with flashlights, and Lola ran as fast as she could down the stairs and up Third Avenue. At Fifth Street, she stopped, finding herself alone outside in the dead of night. It was cold and her feet hurt and her mouth was dry and she couldn’t think of what to do.

She began walking, wrapping her arms around her chest to keep warm. The streets were still filled with people and taxis, and it struck her as funny that she was walking around outside in little more than a bra and panties. “I love your ass,” Thayer Core had kept telling her.

If she weren’t with Philip Oakland, she just might go after Thayer. But that would make her desperate. She’d go crazy hanging out in Thayer’s terrible apartment, with that awful Josh there all the time. That’s how it was for most girls. They were lucky if they found a guy who was interested, and then he lived in a terrible place. She could never live in New York like that. As her mother would say, “That isn’t living, it’s surviving.”

She finally made it to Fifth Avenue. The street was deserted, yellow and spooky under the streetlights. She’d never come into the building so late and found the door was locked. She banged on it in a panic, rousing the doorman, who’d been sleeping in a chair. He didn’t know her and gave her a hard time, insisting on ringing Philip on the house phone. When she finally got upstairs, Philip was standing in the hallway in his boxer shorts and a Rolling Stones T-shirt.

“Jesus Christ, Lola. It’s three in the morning,” he said.

“I was having fun.” She giggled.

“I can see that.”

“I tried to call you,” she protested innocently. “But you didn’t answer your phone.”

“Uh-huh,” Philip said.

“It’s not my fault,” she insisted. “This is what happens when you don’t answer your phone.”

“Good night,” Philip said coldly. He turned and went into the bedroom.

“Fine,” she said. She went into the kitchen. She was angry. This wasn’t the reception she’d been expecting. She marched into the bedroom to confront Philip about his attitude. “I had fun, okay?” she said. “Is that such a big deal?”

“Go to sleep. Or go to your own apartment.”

She decided to try a different tactic. She slipped her hand under the covers and put her fingers over his penis. “Don’t you want to have fun?”

He pointedly removed her hand. “Go to bed. Please. If you can’t sleep, go to the couch.”

Lola glared at him, slowly took off her clothes, and got into bed. Philip was lying there with his eyes shut tight. She lay down next to him. Then she rolled onto her side. Then she accidentally kicked him with her foot.

He sat up. “I mean it,” he said. “If you can’t sleep, you should go to the couch.”

“What is your problem?” she said.

“Look,” he said. “I need to get some sleep. I have a big day tomorrow.”

“Take it easy,” she said. “I’ll take a sleeping pill.”

“That’s always the solution, isn’t it?” Philip muttered. “A pill.”

“You’re the pill,” Lola said.

She didn’t fall asleep right away. She lay in the dark, hating Philip. He was no fun, and she probably should break up with him and go out with Thayer. But then she thought about Thayer’s apartment again, and how he had no money and was basically an asshole. If she broke up with Philip, she’d be back where she was when she started in New York. Living in that tiny apartment on Eleventh Street and going to destructor parties every night. There would be no movie openings, no dinners at the Waverly Inn, no rubbing shoulders with glamour. She needed to stay with Philip for at least a little while. Either until he married her, or something happened and she became famous in her own right.

The next morning, Philip greeted her with a chilly “Good morning.”

Lola’s head felt like a bowling ball, but for once, she didn’t complain, knowing she needed to mollify him. She dragged herself out of bed and went into the bathroom, where he was shaving. She sat down on the toilet seat, put her arms between her legs, and looked up at him through her mess of dark hair. “Don’t be mad at me,” she said. “I didn’t know you’d be so upset.”

Philip put down his razor and looked at her. Last night, after the embarrassment of running into Schiffer and then lying alone in his bed waiting for Lola to come home, he’d begun to wonder what he’d gotten himself into. Maybe Nini was right: He was too old to be dating a twenty-two-year-old. But what was he supposed to do? Schiffer Diamond was obsessed with her career and didn’t need him. He supposed he could find a nice, accomplished woman who was his age, like Sondra, but that might mean accepting the fact that the exciting part of his sex life was over.

He couldn’t do it. It was the equivalent of giving up.

And here was gorgeous Lola Fabrikant, in his bathroom, contrite and pliable. He sighed. “Okay, Lola,” he said. “Just don’t do it again.”

“I won’t,” she said, jumping up. “I promise. Oh, Philip, I love you so much.” And she went back to bed.

Philip smiled. Where did she pick up her crazy ideas about love?

he wondered. “Hey, Lola,” he called. “Why don’t you make us some breakfast?”

She laughed. “You know I don’t cook.”

“Maybe you should learn.”

“Why?” she asked. Philip finished shaving, examining his skin in the mirror. He’d had young girlfriends before, but none had been quite like Lola, he thought. Usually, the young women were much more accom-modating. He took a step back and patted his face, shaking his head. Who was he kidding? Schiffer Diamond had been much wilder than Lola. But he’d been in love with Schiffer, so her antics had driven him crazy — once she’d even suggested they have sex with another man. She might have been joking, but he never knew for sure. On the other hand, he wasn’t in love with Lola, so, he told himself, he was safe — her actions couldn’t really affect him.

He went into the bedroom. Lola was lying on her stomach, naked under the covers, as if she were waiting for him. “Oh, hello,” she said, turning her head to greet him. Pulling back the covers, he forgot all about Schiffer Diamond as he surveyed Lola’s body. She opened her legs invitingly. He dropped his towel and, kneeling behind her, lifted her hips and slipped his cock in from behind.

He came quickly and felt the sleepy calm that followed the satiation of pleasure. He closed his eyes. Lola rolled over and began playing with his hair. “Philip?” she asked sweetly. “What are you doing for Thanksgiving? Do you want to come to Atlanta with me?”

“Maybe,” he said before he fell asleep.

11

The drilling had begun again in the Rices’ apartment. Enid Merle got up from her desk in annoyance and went outside. On the terrace above was a pile of copper pipes. So the Rices still hadn’t finished the renovations on their bathrooms. Or maybe the pipes were for the aquarium Paul Rice was rumored to be installing in Mrs. Houghton’s ballroom. Enid hoped the renovation wouldn’t drive her into becoming one of those particular types of old people who, with little in their lives on which to focus, become obsessed with their neighbors. She turned on the History Channel to distract herself. The programs were a reminder of the true nature of human beings — while there were always a few who strived for greatness, most of humankind was engaged in the crude art of staying alive, reproduction, and indulgence in the baser instincts, including murder, paranoia, and war.

Her bell rang. Expecting Philip, she opened the door and found Mindy Gooch standing in the hallway. Mindy’s arms were crossed, and she wore her usual grim expression. “I need to talk to you about something,” she said.

“Come in.” Enid held open the door so Mindy could pass. Mindy’s visit was curious, Enid thought, as they hadn’t spoken since Mrs. Houghton’s funeral.

“I think we have a problem,” Mindy said.

Enid smiled. “I’ve lived in this building my entire life, dear,” she said, thinking that Mindy was referring to their lack of communication. “I was here before you moved in. And I expect to be here after you move out.

If we don’t speak for the next five years, it won’t be an issue for me.”

“I’m not talking about you,” Mindy said. “I mean the Rices. Something has to be done about them.”

“Is that so,” Enid said coldly.

“Paul Rice came by my office last week.”

“Trying to be friendly, I suppose.”

“Trying to bribe me to approve his in-the-wall air conditioners.”

“And what did you say?”

“I told him no.”

“Well, then,” Enid said. “What’s the problem?”

“This,” Mindy said. She opened her hand and held up a tiny green plastic toy soldier thrusting a bayonet.

“I don’t understand,” Enid said.

“This morning, when I opened my door to get the newspaper, I found a whole troop of them arranged on the mat.”

“And you think Paul Rice did it,” Enid said skeptically.

“I don’t think he did it. I know he did it,” Mindy said. “He told me if I didn’t approve his air conditioners, it was war. If this isn’t a sign,” she continued, shaking the little green army man in Enid’s face, “I don’t know what is.”

“You must confront him,” Enid said.

“I can’t do it alone,” Mindy said. “I need your help.”

“I don’t see how I can help you,” Enid said calmly. “Dealing with unpleasant residents is your job. After all, you are the president of the board.”

“You were the president of the board for fifteen years,” Mindy said.

“There must be something we can do. Some way to get them out.”

Enid smiled. “They’ve only just moved in.”

“Look, Enid,” Mindy said, beginning to lose patience. “We were friendly once.”

“Yes, we were.” Enid nodded. “We were friendly for a long time.We were even friendly after you conspired to have me removed as president.”

“I thought you didn’t want the job anymore,” Mindy protested.

“I didn’t, and that’s why I forgave you. I thought, If she wants the job that much, why not let her have it?”

Mindy looked away. “What if the approval was a mistake?” she asked tentatively.

Enid sighed. “There’s nothing we can do. The only way we can force them out is if they don’t pay their maintenance. And given the circumstances, I’d say that’s highly unlikely.”

“I’m not sure I can live in the same building with this man,” Mindy said.

“Then perhaps you’ll have to move,” Enid said. She held open her door.

“So sorry I can’t help you, dear. Have a good day.”

Lola put down the novel Atonement and, opening the door to the terrace, stepped out onto the icy surface in her high-heeled Chloé boots.

She peered over the edge and, still seeing no sign of Philip, went back inside. She closed the book and glared at the cover. It was a gift from Philip, although “gift” probably wasn’t the right word. “Suggestion” was more like it. He had given her the book after they’d had a disastrous dinner with one of his old friends. “This is a great book,” he’d said. “I thought you might enjoy it.”

“Thank you,” she’d said gratefully, although she knew exactly what he was up to. He was trying to educate her, and while she thought it was sweet of him, she couldn’t understand why he found it necessary. As far as she was concerned, it was Philip who needed educating. Every time she mentioned a hot new actor or some YouTube video everyone was talking about, or even when she played music for him off her iPod, he claimed never to have heard of any of it. This was frustrating, but she always refrained from criticizing him. She at least had the decency not to hurt his feelings and make him feel old.

In adopting this attitude, she’d found she could pretty much get Philip to do whatever she wanted. Today, for instance, they were going to visit the set of Schiffer Diamond’s new TV show. Everyone was talking about the show, and knowing Philip was, as he put it, “old friends” with Schiffer, Lola had wondered why he hadn’t gone to see her. Philip seemed to wonder, too, and, with her urging, went down to her apartment and left her a note. One evening, Schiffer called, and Philip went into his office and talked to her on the phone for an hour with his door closed while Lola waited impatiently outside. When he came out, he said he was going to see Schiffer on the set, but Lola shouldn’t bother coming with him, as it would be dull and she would be bored. This after it was her idea to go in the first place! Then she’d given him a foot massage and, while she was rubbing his feet, pointed out that a set visit would be good for her education. As his researcher and girlfriend, naturally, she wanted to understand everything about his work. “You know what I do,” he’d protested, but only mildly. “I sit at a computer all day.”

“That’s not true,” she said. “You’re going to Los Angeles for two weeks in January. And I’ll probably come out for a week. I’ll have to go to the set with you then — you can’t expect me to sit in a hotel room all day.”

“I thought we discussed L.A.,” he said, tensing his foot. “It’s going to be a nightmare. The first two weeks of production always are. I’ll be working sixteen-hour days. It won’t be fun for you at all.”

“You mean I won’t see you for two weeks?” she’d exclaimed. He must have felt guilty, because almost immediately, he agreed to take her with him to the set of Lady Superior after all. She was so pleased, she didn’t even mind about him not going to her parents’ house for Thanksgiving; she told herself it was too soon in their relationship to be spending holidays with each other’s families. She wouldn’t have wanted to spend Thanksgiving with Enid, which was what Philip had done, taking his aunt to a boring lunch at the Century Club. Philip had dragged Lola there once, and she’d vowed never to return. Everyone was over eighty. So Lola happily went back to Windsor Pines and met up with her girlfriends and stayed up until two A.M. on Friday night and showed off pictures of her and Philip and Philip’s apartment. One of her friends was engaged and planning a wedding; the others were trying to get their boyfriends to marry them. They looked at the photographs of Philip and his apartment and sighed in envy.

That was three weeks ago, and now it was nearly Christmas, and Philip had finally come up with a day for the set visit. Lola spent two days get ting ready. She’d had a massage and a spray tan, her dark hair was highlighted with strands of gold, and she’d bought a dress at Marc Jacobs. After the purchase, her mother called, wondering if she had indeed just spent twenty-three hundred dollars. Lola accused her mother of using her credit card to spy on her. They had had a rare fight, and Lola hung up, felt terrible, then called her mother back. Beetelle was nearly in tears. “Mommy, what’s wrong?” Lola demanded. When her mother didn’t respond, Lola asked in a panic, “Are you and Daddy getting a divorce?” “Your father and I are fine.” “So what’s the problem?” “Oh, Lola,” her mother said, sighing.

“We’ll talk about it when you come home for Christmas. In the meantime, try to be careful with money.”

This was very strange, and Lola hung up, perplexed. But then she decided it wasn’t important. Her mother got upset about money every now and again, but she always got over it and, feeling guilty, usually bought Lola a trinket like Chanel sunglasses.

Philip, meanwhile, was around the corner, getting his hair cut. He’d frequented this particular salon, located on Ninth Street off Fifth, for thirty years. His mother started coming to the salon in the seventies, when the clients and stylists would play music on a boom box and snort cocaine.

Naturally, the proprietor was a dear friend of his mother’s. Everyone was a dear friend of his mother’s. She’d had that charming neediness that made people want to take care of her. She’d been a trust fund girl and considered a great beauty, but there was an air of tragedy about her that only increased her fascination. No one was surprised when she killed herself in 1983.

The proprietor, Peter, had been giving Philip the same haircut for years and was nearly finished, but Philip was trying to kill time. Peter had recently recovered from cancer and had begun to work out at a gym every day, so they talked about his routine. Then they talked about Peter’s house upstate in the Catskills. Then they talked about how the neighborhood was changing. Philip was dreading the set visit and the impending meeting of his former love and his current lover. There was a bald difference between “love” and “lover,” the first being legitimate and honorable, the second being temporary and even, he thought, when it came to Lola, slightly embarrassing.

This unpleasant reality had come to light during the dinner with the Yugoslavian director. The director, who happened to have won two Academy Awards, was an elderly man who drooled, and whose Russian wife, dressed in gold Dolce & Gabbana (and twenty years younger, about the same difference in age, Philip guessed, as he and Lola), had had to feed him his soup. The director was a curmudgeon, and his wife was ridiculous, but still, the man was a legend, and despite his age (which couldn’t be helped) and his silly wife, Philip had the utmost respect for him and had been looking forward to the dinner for months.

Lola, intentionally or not, was on her worst behavior. During a long dis-course during which the director explained his next project (a movie about an obscure civil war in Yugoslavia in the thirties), Lola had attended to her iPhone, sending texts and even taking a call from one of her girlfriends in Atlanta. “Put it away,” Philip had hissed at her. She gave him a hurt look, signaled to the waiter, and asked for a Jell-O shot, explaining to the table that she didn’t drink wine, as it was for old people. “Stop it, Lola,” he said.

“You do drink wine. You’ll have what everyone else is having.” “I don’t drink red wine,” she pointed out. “Besides, I need something strong to get through this dinner.” She’d asked the director if he’d ever worked on any popular movies. “Popular?” he’d asked, startled. “Vat is zat?”

“You know,” Lola said. “Movies for regular people.”

“Vat is regular people?” the director asked, insulted. “I think my tastes are too sophisticated for a young lady such as yourself.”

The old man hadn’t meant to be insulting, but it had come out that way. And Lola took the bait.

“What’s that mean?” she’d said. “I thought art was for the people. If the people can’t understand it, what’s the point?”

“This is zee problem with America,” the director said. He’d lifted his glass of wine to his mouth, his hand shaking so violently he spilled half the glass. “Too much democracy,” he exclaimed. “It’s zee death of art.”

For the rest of the evening, everyone ignored Lola.

In the taxi on the way back to One Fifth, Lola was fuming, staring out the window and playing with her hair.

“What’s wrong now?” Philip had asked.

“No one paid any attention to me.”

“What are you talking about?” he said.

“I was ignored, Philip. Why should I be there if I’m going to be ignored?”

“You wouldn’t have been ignored if you hadn’t made that stupid remark about his films.”

“He’s an insignificant old man. Who cares about him and his movies?

Oh, excuse me,” she added with vehemence, “his films.”

“He’s a genius, Lola. He’s allowed his idiosyncracies. And he’s earned his respect. You need to learn to honor that.”

“Are you criticizing me?” she said warningly.

“I’m pointing out that you could stand to learn a thing or two about life.”

“Listen, Philip,” she’d said. “In case you haven’t figured it out, I don’t put anybody above me. I don’t care what they’ve accomplished. I’m as good as anyone. Even if they have won two Academy Awards. Do you really think that makes a person better than other people?”

“Yes, Lola, I do,” he said.

They went into the building in stony silence. It was yet another spat that ended in sex. She seemed to have a sixth sense about when he might be angry with her, and she always managed to divert his attention with some new sexual trick. That evening, she came out of the bathroom in crotchless panties, showing off the Brazilian wax she’d had that afternoon, as a “special treat” for him. He was helpless in the face of such sexual temptation, and the next morning, they went on as before.

Now, as he shook his head about Lola while the stylist brushed the clipped hair from his shoulders, who should walk by the plate-glass window but James Gooch. Was Philip always going to run into James Gooch now, too? he wondered. How had this happened? They’d lived in the same building for years and had managed to coexist peacefully, without the acknowledgment of each other’s presence, and all of a sudden, ever since that afternoon at Paul Smith, he ran into James nearly every other day. He did not wish to increase his acquaintance with James, but it was probably inevitable, as James struck him as one of those men who, knowing he is not wanted, only becomes more insistent on pushing his way in. Sure enough, James spotted him through the selection of wigs in the shop window and, with a look of surprise, came into the salon.

“How are you?” he asked eagerly.

Philip nodded, trying not to speak. If he spoke, it was all over.

“I didn’t know they cut men’s hair here,” James said, taking in the purple velvet chairs and the fringed wall hangings.

“Been doing it forever,” Philip murmured.

“It’s so close to the building. Maybe I should start coming here. I still go to a guy on the Upper West Side.”

Philip politely inclined his head.

“We used to live up there,” James said. “I tell everyone my wife rescued me from my studio apartment and loft bed. If it weren’t for her, I’d probably still be there.”

“I hope not.” Philip stood up.

“What about you?” James asked. “Have you always lived downtown?”

“I’ve always lived in One Fifth,” Philip said. “I grew up there.”

“Nice,” James said, nodding. “What do you think about the Rices, by the way? Guy seems like an asshole to me. He hassles my wife, and then he’s putting in a two-thousand-gallon aquarium.”

“I’ve learned not to get involved in the altercations of the other residents,” Philip said dryly. “That’s my aunt’s area.”

“I thought you knew Schiffer Diamond, though,” James said. “Didn’t you two used to date?”

“A long time ago,” Philip said. He handed the cashier forty dollars and tried to get away from James by quickly slipping out the door. But James followed him. Now Philip was stuck with James for the two-block walk back to One Fifth. It seemed an eternity. “We should have dinner sometime,” James said. “My wife and I, you and your girlfriend. What’s her name again?”

“Lola,” Philip said.

“She’s young, isn’t she?” James asked nonchalantly.

“Twenty-two,” Philip said.

“That is young,” James said. “She could be your daughter.”

“Luckily, she isn’t,” Philip said.

They reached the building, and James repeated his offer of dinner.

“We can go someplace in the neighborhood. Maybe Knickerbocker?”

Philip couldn’t see a way out. What could he say? “I never want to have dinner with you and your wife”? “Maybe after Christmas,” he said.

“Perfect,” James said. “We’ll do it the first or second week after New Year’s. My book comes out in February, so I’ll be away after that.”

“What are you doing for Christmas?” Brumminger asked Schiffer Diamond over the phone.

“No plans,” Schiffer said, leaning forward in the makeup chair. She’d had four dates with Brumminger; after the fourth dinner, they’d decided to sleep together to “get it out of the way” and ascertain whether or not they were compatible. The sex was fine — adult and technically correct and slightly passionless but not unsatisfying — and Brumminger was easy and intelligent, although somewhat humorless. His lack of humor came from a residual bitterness over being fired from his position as CEO two years ago, then struggling with his perceived loss of status. If he wasn’t CEO, if he didn’t have a title after his name, who was he?

Brumminger’s yearlong hejira had taught him one thing: “Soul searching is good, but achievement is better.” He, too, had returned to New York to start over, trying to put together some deals with other former CEOs who’d been put out to pasture at sixty. “The First CEOs Club,”

he joked.

Now he said: “Want to go to Saint Barths? I’ve got a villa from the twenty-third until January tenth. If you can leave on the twenty-third, I can give you a lift. I’m flying private.”

Alan, the PA, stuck his head into the room. “You have visitors,” he mouthed. Schiffer nodded. Philip and his young girlfriend, Lola, came into the room. Philip had mentioned he’d be bringing her, and Schiffer had agreed, curious about this girl who had managed to hold on to Philip longer than Schiffer had expected.

Stating the obvious, Philip said, “I brought Lola.”

Schiffer held out her hand. “I’ve heard about you from Enid.”

“Really?” Lola said, looking pleased.

Schiffer held up one finger and went back to her phone call. “What do you think?” Brumminger asked.

“It’s a great idea. I can’t wait,” Schiffer said, and hung up.

“Can’t wait for what?” Philip asked with the curious familiarity of having once had an intimate relationship.

“Saint Barths. At Christmas.”

“I’ve always wanted to go to Saint Barths,” Lola said, impressed.

“You should get Philip to take you,” Schiffer said, looking at Philip. “It’s one of his favorite islands.”

“It’s one of everyone’s favorite islands,” Philip grumbled. “Who’re you going with?”

“Brumminger,” Schiffer said, looking down so the makeup artist could apply mascara.

“Derek Brumminger?” he asked.

“That’s right.”

“Are you seeing him now?”

“Sort of.”

“Oh,” Philip said. He sat down on the empty chair beside her. “So when did that happen?”

“It’s new,” Schiffer said.

“Who’s Brumminger?” Lola asked, inserting herself into the conversation.

Schiffer smiled. “He’s a man who was once rich and powerful and now isn’t quite as powerful. But definitely richer.”

“Is he old?” Lola asked.

“Positively ancient,” Schiffer said. “He may even be older than Oakland.”

“They’re ready,” Alan said, poking his head in.

“Thanks, darling,” Schiffer said.

Schiffer took Lola and Philip to the set. Walking through the maze of hallways, Lola kept up a pleasant patter about how excited she was to be there, oohing and ahing over a backdrop of the Manhattan skyline, the number of people milling around, the plethora of cables and lights and equipment. Schiffer wasn’t surprised Enid hated the girl — Lola seemed to have Philip wrapped around her black polished fingernail — but she wasn’t so bad. She was perfectly friendly and seemed to have some spunk. She was just so young. Being with her made Philip look slightly desperate. But it wasn’t, Schiffer reminded herself, her problem.

Both she and Philip had moved on years ago. There was no going back.

With a glance at Lola, who was sitting blithely in the director’s chair, completely unaware of her faux pas, Schiffer stepped onto the set and tried to put Philip and his girlfriend out of her mind. The scene she was shooting took place in her office at the magazine and involved confronting a young female employee who was having an office affair with the boss. Schiffer sat down behind her desk and put on a pair of black-framed reading glasses from the props department.

“Settle,” the director called out. “And action.”

Schiffer stood up and took off her reading glasses as the young actress approached the desk.

“Ohmigod. It’s Ramblin Payne,” Lola squealed from behind the monitors.

“Cut!” the director shouted. He looked around, spotted the interloper in his chair, and strode over to confront Lola.

Schiffer scooted out from behind the desk and tried to intervene. “It’s okay. She’s a friend.”

The director stopped, looked at her, and shook his head, then saw Philip standing next to Lola. “Oakland?” he said. He went over and shook hands with Philip and patted him on the back. “Why didn’t you tell me Oakland was here?” the director said to Schiffer.

“I wanted to surprise you.”

“How’re you doin’, man? I hear you’re getting Bridesmaids Revisited made.”

“That’s right,” Philip said. “We start shooting in January.”

The director looked at Lola in confusion. “Is this your daughter?”

he asked.

Schiffer tried to catch Philip’s eye, but he refused to look at her. Poor Philip, she thought.

Later, in the car going back to the city, a black cloud of melancholy descended over Philip of which Lola was seemingly unaware. She chattered away, ignorant of his silence, nattering on and on about how she’d had an epiphany standing on the set. It was, she realized, where she belonged. She could see herself in front of the cameras, doing what Ramblin Payne did, which wasn’t so hard, really. It didn’t look hard. But maybe she’d be better off on a reality show. They could do a reality show about her life — about a young woman taking on the big city.After all, she pointed out, she did have a glamorous life, and she was pretty — as pretty as all the other girls on reality shows. And she was more interesting. She was interesting, she asked Philip, wasn’t she?

“Sure,” Philip said, his response automatic. They were crossing the Williamsburg Bridge into lower Manhattan, which presented a very different view than the famous midtown skyline. Here, the buildings were brown and gray, low-slung, in disrepair; one thought of desperation and resignation as opposed to renewal and the fulfillment of one’s dreams.

The sight of these buildings caused Philip to have his own epiphany.

Schiffer Diamond had returned to New York and taken up her new life with ease; she was celebrated and had even found a relationship. But what, Philip thought, of his own life? He hadn’t moved on at all; he’d taken no new steps in years. The subject matter of his work changed, his girlfriends changed, but that was it. Thinking ahead to Christmas, he became more aware of his discontent. His Christmas would be spent with his aunt — usually, they went to the Plaza for dinner, but the Plaza was no longer the Plaza, under renovation as an exorbitantly priced condominium — and now he didn’t know where they’d go. Schiffer was going to Saint Barths. Even Lola was going home to her parents’. He felt old and left behind and had to forcibly remind himself that this wasn’t like him. And then he saw a way out of his depression.

“Lola,” he said, taking her hand. “How would you like to go to the Caribbean for New Year’s?”

“Saint Barths?” she asked eagerly.

“No,” he said, not wishing to spend the holiday running into Schiffer Diamond and her new lover. “Not Saint Barths. But someplace just as good.”

“Oh, Philip,” she said, throwing her arms around him. “I’m so happy.

I was so worried we weren’t going to do anything for New Year’s — I thought maybe you forgot. But I guess you were saving it as a surprise.”

Unable to contain her excitement, she immediately called her mother to give her the good news. Her mother had been funny lately, and Lola thought this would cheer her up.

Three days later, Lola, in a haze of excitement, flew down to Atlanta. Her thoughts were concentrated on her trip with Philip; she would leave on the twenty-seventh and fly directly to Barbados, where she would meet up with him and fly to Mustique. Everyone knew that when a man took you on vacation, he was testing you to see how you got along when you were together all day for several days; if the trip went well, it could lead to an engagement. And so, in the week before she left for the trip, she had almost as much to do as a bride: She needed to buy bathing suits and resort wear, wax herself from head to toe, have her calluses scraped and her elbows scrubbed and her eyebrows threaded. Sitting on the plane, she imagined her wedding day. She and Philip would marry in Manhattan; that way they could invite Schiffer Diamond and that funny novelist James Gooch, and the wedding would get into The New York Times and the Post and maybe even the tabloid magazines, and the world would begin to know about Lola Fabrikant. With these happy thoughts firmly in mind, Lola collected her bags from the carousel and met her mother at the curb. Each of her parents drove a new Mercedes, leased every two years, and Lola felt a swelling of pride at the easy superiority of their lives.

“I missed you, Mother,” Lola said, getting into the car. “Can we go to the Buckhead Mall?” This was a Christmas tradition for mother and daughter. Ever since Lola had gone away to Old Vic University, she and Beetelle would go straight to the mall when Lola came home for the holidays. There, mother and daughter would bond over shoes and accessories and the various outfits Lola tried on while Beetelle waited outside the dressing room to exclaim over the “cuteness” of a pair of jeans or a Nicole Miller dress. But this year, Beetelle was not dressed for shopping. It was her personal edict never to appear in public without her hair straightened and blown dry and her makeup applied, and wearing midpriced designer clothes (usually slacks and a blouse and often an Hermès scarf and several heavy gold necklaces), but today Beetelle wore jeans and a sweatshirt, her naturally curly hair pulled back in a scrunchy. This was her “work” outfit, donned only at home when she jumped in and helped the housekeeper with special chores, such as polishing the silver and washing the Tiffany crystal and moving the heavy oak furniture for a thorough vacuuming of the rugs. “A scrunchy, Mother?” Lola said with affection and annoyance — living in New York had made her mother’s flaws all too apparent — “You can’t go to the mall like that.”

Beetelle concentrated on maneuvering the car through the line of holiday pickups. She’d been preparing for this scene with her daughter for days, rehearsing it in her head like the psychologists suggested in anticipation of a difficult conversation. “Things are a little different this year,” she said.

“Really?” Lola said. She was deeply disappointed, having imagined getting started on her shopping spree right away. But then she was distracted by the satellite radio, tuned to seventies hits. “Oh, Mother,” she said. “Why do you listen to this sentimental crap?”

Beetelle had adjusted to Lola’s dismissive remarks long ago, brushing them away with reminders that this was her daughter who loved her and could never mean to be deliberately hurtful; Lola was, after all, like all young people, occasionally unaware of the feelings of others. But this time the characteristic remark hit Beetelle like a blow to her solar plexus.

“Mother, can we please change the station?” Lola said again.

“No,” Beetelle said.

“Why not?”

“Because I like it.”

“But it’s so awful, Mother,” Lola whined. “It’s so ... out of touch.”

Beetelle took her eyes off the road for a second to regard her daughter, sitting impatiently in the front seat, her eyes narrowed in annoyance.

An irrational anger overwhelmed her; all at once, she hated her daughter. “Lola,” she said. “Will you please shut up?”

Lola’s mouth opened like that of a little fish. She turned to her mother, unable to fathom what she’d just heard. Beetelle’s face was hard, set in an expression Lola saw rarely and only in brief flashes, as when the head of the school board had dismissed Beetelle’s suggestions to serve only organic lettuce. But her ire was never turned on Lola herself, and Lola was shocked.

“I mean it,” Beetelle said.

“All I said was ...” Lola protested.

Beetelle shook her head. “Not now, Lola,” she said.

They were on the highway. Beetelle thought about the forty-minute drive in traffic and decided she couldn’t go on. Lola had to be told. Beetelle took the next exit. “Mother!” Lola screamed. “What is wrong with you?

This isn’t our turn.”

Beetelle pulled in to a gas station and parked the car. She reminded herself that she was a courageous person, a person of honor, who could face the most devastating of circumstances and come out a winner.

“What’s going on?” Lola demanded. “It’s Daddy, isn’t it? He’s having an affair.”

“No,” Beetelle said. She looked at her daughter, wondering what Lola’s reaction would be to the news. She would likely scream and cry.

Beetelle had screamed and cried when she’d first heard as well. But she’d gotten used to it — the way, she’d been told by the hospice patients she occasionally visited, one got used to constant physical pain.

“Lola,” Beetelle said gently. “We’re broke. We’ve lost all our money.

There. I’ve said it, and now you know.”

Lola sat silently for a moment, then erupted into hysterical laughter.

“Oh, Mother,” she said. “Don’t be so dramatic. How can we be broke? I don’t even know what that means.”

“It means we don’t have any money,” Beetelle said.

“How can that be? Of course we have money. Did Daddy lose his job?” Lola asked, beginning to panic.

“He quit,” Beetelle said.

“When?” Lola asked in alarm.

“Three months ago.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Lola said accusingly.

“We didn’t want to upset you,” Beetelle said. “We didn’t want to distract you from your work.”

Lola said nothing, allowing the irony of the situation to sink in.

“Daddy can get another job,” she muttered.

“He might,” Beetelle said. “But it won’t solve our problems. Not for a long time.”

Lola was too frightened to ask her mother what that meant. Beetelle started up the car, and they rode the rest of the way in silence.

Windsor Pines was an idea more than an actual town — a continua-tion of the strip malls and fast-food restaurants that spoked out from Atlanta like the legs of a spider. But in Windsor Pines, the shops were upscale, and the downtown strip sported Mercedes, Porsche, and Rolls-Royce dealerships. There was a Four Seasons hotel and a new town hall built of white brick and set back from the road and fronted by a wide green lawn with a bandshell. The “town” of Windsor Pines, incorporated in 1983, had fifty thousand residents and twelve golf courses, the most golf courses per capita in Georgia.

The Fabrikant manse sat on the edge of one of these golf courses in a gated community. The house was an amalgamation of styles — mostly Tudor, because Beetelle loved all things “English countryside,” with a nod to the great plantation architecture in the form of tall white columns flanking the entrance. There was a three-car garage and, above it, an entertainment center that had a pool table, a giant flat-screen TV, a bar, and sectional leather couches. The large kitchen had marble countertops and opened into the great room; in addition, the house had formal living and dining rooms (hardly ever used), four bedrooms, and six bathrooms. A white gravel driveway, replenished and resurfaced each spring, made a sweeping turn to the columned entrance. As they came up the road to the house, Lola gasped. A FOR SALE sign was poked into the lawn on either side of the driveway.

“You’re selling the house?” she asked, aghast.

“The bank’s selling it.”

“What does that mean?” Lola asked. It began to dawn on her that her mother was serious after all. Dread rose to her throat; she could barely speak.

“They take all the money,” Beetelle said.

“But why?” Lola wailed.

“We’ll talk about it later,” Beetelle said. She popped open the trunk and wearily lifted out Lola’s suitcases. She began carrying them into the house, pausing on the landing, where she appeared dwarfed by the columns, by the house, and by the enormity of her situation.

“Lola,” she asked. “Are you coming?”

Sam Gooch never looked forward to Christmas. Everyone he knew went away, while he was stuck in the city with his parents. Mindy said it was the best time in New York, with everyone gone and just the tourists, who rarely ventured into their neighborhood. Sam would return to school after New Year’s to find a classroom full of kids chattering about their exotic vacations. “Where’d you go, Sam?” one of them would joke. Someone else would answer, “Sam took a tour of the Empire State Building.”

One year, the Gooches had gone away to Jamaica. But Sam was only three then, and he barely remembered it, although Mindy sometimes brought it up with James, making a negative reference to an afternoon he spent with a Rastafarian.

Walking back to One Fifth from Washington Square Park, where Sam had taken Skippy to the dog run (Skippy had attacked a Rottweiler, which gave Sam a perverse sort of pride), he wondered why they couldn’t go away this year. After all, his father was supposedly getting money from his book — but it hadn’t changed their Christmas plans. As usual, they would drive to Pennsylvania early on Christmas morning to visit his mother’s parents; after a traditional Christmas dinner of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, they would drive to Long Island to see James’s father. James’s family was Jewish and didn’t celebrate Christmas, so they would have dinner at a Chinese restaurant.

Skippy was attached to a retractable leash; when walked, he liked to be as far away from his owner as possible. He ran into One Fifth several feet ahead of Sam; by the time Sam got into the building, Skippy had tangled his leash around Roberto’s legs. “You’ve got to train that dog, man,”

Roberto said.

“He’s my mother’s dog,” Sam reminded him.

“She thinks that dog is a child,” Roberto said. “By the way, Mrs. Rice was looking for you. Something’s wrong with her computer.”

Annalisa Rice was on the phone when Sam knocked on her door. “I’m so sorry, Mom,” she was saying. “But Paul wants to go away with these people ...” She motioned for Sam to come in.

Every time Sam stepped into the Rices’ apartment, he’d try to summon up a nonchalance at his surroundings, but he was always awed. The floor in the foyer was a sparkly white marble; the plaster walls were yellow cream and looked like frosting. The foyer was deliberately spare, though an astounding photograph hung on one wall: an image of a large dark hairy woman nursing an angelic blond baby boy. The woman’s expression was both maternal and challenging, as if she were daring the viewer to deny that this was her child. Sam was mesmerized by the woman’s enormous breasts, with areolas the size of tennis balls. Women were strange creatures, and out of respect for his mother and Annalisa, he pulled his eyes away. Beyond this foyer was another entry with a grand staircase, the likes of which one saw only in black-and-white movies. There were a few duplexes in the building, but they had narrow, sharply turning staircases, so anyone over the age of seventy-five always moved out. This staircase, Sam guessed, was at least six feet wide.

You could have an entire party on the staircase.

“Sam?” Annalisa asked. She had a sharp, intelligent face, like that of a fox, and she was a fox, too. When she’d first moved into the building, she’d worn jeans and T-shirts, like a regular person, but now she was always dressed. Today, she was wearing a white blouse and a gray pencil skirt and velvet kitten-heeled shoes and a soft, thick cashmere cardigan that Sam, from his experience with private-school girls, surmised cost thousands of dollars. Usually, when he came up to help her with the website, she spent time talking to him, telling him about when she was a lawyer and had advocated for runaway girls, who were usually running away from abuse, and how they often ended up in jail. She’d traveled to every state to help these girls, she’d said, and sometimes it made her question human nature. There were people out there who were capable of terrible things, of abandoning their children or beating them to death. To Sam, the people she talked about must have lived in a different era, but Annalisa said it was happening every minute — somewhere in America, a girl was abused every nineteen seconds. And then sometimes she’d tell the story of meeting the president. She’d met him twice — once when she was invited to a reception at the White House, and another time when she’d spoken before a Senate committee. It sounded much more interesting to Sam than Annalisa’s life now. Just last week, she told him, she’d gone to a lunch for a new handbag. She found the concept funny and said she was surprised the handbag hadn’t been given its own chair and a glass of champagne.

Annalisa always made jokes about it, but Sam suspected she wasn’t thrilled with this new life. “Oh, I am,” she said, when he asked her about it. “I’m happy to organize a luncheon to raise money to send computers to disadvantaged children in Africa. But all the women attend in their fur coats, and after the luncheon, they all leave in their chauffeured SUVs.”

“New York’s always been that way,” Sam volunteered helpfully.

“There’s no use fighting it. And there’s always some other lady who’d be happy to take your place.”

Today, however, Annalisa was in a rush. “Thank God you’re here, Sam,” she said, starting up the stairs. “I didn’t know what I was going to do. We’re leaving tonight,” she said over her shoulder.

“Where’re you going?” Sam asked politely.

“So many places it’s insane. London. China. Then Aspen. The Aspen part is supposed to be the vacation, I think. Paul has a lot of business in China, and the Chinese don’t celebrate Christmas, obviously. We’ll be gone for three weeks.”

Annalisa led him down the hall to the cheerful little room, done up in light blues and greens, that she called her office. She flipped open the top of her computer. “I can’t get on the Internet,” she said. “I’m supposed to have some kind of advanced wireless system that allows you to go online anywhere in the world. But it’s not much use if I can’t even get online in my own apartment.”

Sam sat down in front of the computer. His hands flew over the keys.

“That’s funny,” he said. “The signal is scrambled.”

“What does that mean?”

“In layperson’s terms, it means there’s a giant computer, maybe even a satellite, that’s scrambling the signal. The question is, where is the satellite system coming from?”

“But aren’t there satellites everywhere?” Annalisa asked. “For GPS?

And those satellite images of people’s neighborhoods?”

“This one’s stronger,” Sam said, frowning.

“Could it be coming from upstairs? From my husband’s office?”

“Why would he have a satellite system?”

Annalisa shrugged. “You know how men are. For him, it’s another toy.”

“A satellite is not really a toy,” Sam said with adult authority. “Govern-ments have them.”

“In a large or small country?” Annalisa asked, attempting to make a joke.

“Is your husband home? We could ask him,” Sam said.

“He’s almost never home,” Annalisa said. “He’s at his office. He’s planning to go from his office to the airport.”

“I should be able to fix it without him,” Sam said. “I’ll change your settings and reboot, and you should be fine.”

“Thank God,” Annalisa said. She knew Paul would have been irritated if Sam had had to go into his office, but on the other hand, if he had, she simply wouldn’t have told Paul. Exactly what did he have in that office, anyway, besides his fish? What if something went wrong while they were away? They had enough trouble in the building as it was — the in-the-wall air-conditioning units hadn’t been approved, so Paul had had the French doors cut in half and air-conditioning units installed in the bottom portion, which was what he should have done in the first place —

but Mindy Gooch still refused to talk to her. When Annalisa approached her in the lobby, Mindy would say coldly, “Enjoying the apartment, I hope,” and walk away. Even the doormen, who had been friendly at first, had become somewhat aloof. Paul suspected the doormen didn’t deliver their packages on time, and although she said he was being paranoid, he wasn’t all wrong. There had been a contretemps over a beaded Chanel jacket worth thousands of dollars that the messenger service had sworn was delivered; it was finally discovered two days later, having been left in Schiffer Diamond’s apartment by mistake. True, the bag hadn’t been labeled properly, but even so, it did make Annalisa wonder if the other residents disliked them. Now she was worried about Paul’s computers.

What if something happened while they were halfway around the world in China?

“Sam?” she said. “Can I trust you? If I gave you my keys — to keep, just while we’re away, in case something happens — could you keep it a secret? Not tell your mother or anyone? Unless there was a real emergency.

My husband’s a little paranoid ...”

“I get it,” Sam said. “I’ll guard the keys with my life.”

And moments later, he was headed downstairs with the keys to the magnificent apartment hanging heavy in the pocket of his jeans.

Later, at the house in Windsor Pines, Beetelle sat at the vanity in her powder room and rubbed the last of the La Mer cream into her face.

Cem, she knew, would be hiding in the entertainment center, where he now spent all his time. Ever since the foreclosure notice had come from the bank two weeks ago, Cem had taken to spending the night on the couch, falling asleep in front of the giant flat-screen TV. Lola, Beetelle imagined, was in her room, trying to digest the reality of the situation.

But how could Lola understand when Beetelle could barely comprehend it herself?

Beetelle dug out the last of the precious cream with her manicured fingernail. When had the trouble started? Six months ago? She’d known Cem wasn’t happy at his company. He’d never said so specifically — Cem kept his thoughts to himself — and although she’d sensed something was wrong, she’d ignored her feelings, convincing herself instead that, thanks to the cell-phone alert system Cem had invented, they were about to become very rich. But three months ago, Cem had come home unexpectedly early from work. “Are you sick?” she’d asked. “I quit,” he’d said. He had his pride, he said. A man could take only so much. “So much of what?” she cried.

“Disrespect.” Eventually, she got it out of him: He’d quit because his boss was claiming Cem’s invention as his own. The boss claimed the company owned the patent, and Cem wouldn’t get a penny. Beetelle and Cem had hired a patent lawyer from Atlanta who came highly recommended, but he was no use at all. The lawyer, Beetelle discovered, was oily — and not only because his skin glistened against his navy blue pin-striped suit and red tie. Their one-hour meeting had cost them seven hundred dollars. Then the lawyer supposedly looked over the case. “There’s no evidence that Cem developed this on his own,” he said over the phone. “But he did. I saw him working on it,” Beetelle protested. “How?” the lawyer asked. “On his computer.” “I’m afraid that doesn’t give us much of a case, Mrs. Fabrikant. You can proceed, if you’d like, but it’ll cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars to take this to court. And you’ll probably lose.” Hanging up the phone, Beetelle suspected Cem had been lying to her all along. The cell-phone alert wasn’t solely his invention; it was merely something he’d worked on with other people. But why would he lie? To please her, she guessed, to make himself more important in her eyes. She was such a dynamo, perhaps he’d felt emasculated and lied to make himself look better. He made a good salary, three hundred and fifty thousand a year, but after the first week of Cem’s unemployment, she realized his salary was only more smoke and mirrors: They were living paycheck to paycheck and had three mortgages on the house, the last one taken out six months ago to enable Lola to move to New York. They owed over a million dollars.

They might have survived by selling the house, but the market had dropped. The house that was worth one point two million a year ago was now worth only seven hundred thousand. “So you see,” the banker had said while she and Cem sat trembling before him, “you actually owe three hundred thirty-three thousand dollars. And forty-two cents,” he added.

Three hundred thirty-three thousand dollars. And forty-two cents, she repeated in her head. She’d said it over and over so many times it no longer had any effect. It was just a number, unattached to real life.

New York, Beetelle thought with a pang. If only circumstances had been different. What a life she’d have now, free from the horror of penury. Lucky Lola had moved to New York with every advantage, not the way Beetelle had when she’d gotten her first job as a medical technician at Columbia Hospital, making twelve thousand dollars a year.

She’d lived in a run-down two-bedroom apartment with three other girls, and she’d loved every minute. But it didn’t last long. After three happy months, she’d met Cem at the old convention hall on Colum-bus Circle, where there was now a fancy office tower with a mall. It hadn’t been fancy then. Aisle after aisle of booths constructed of plasterboard sold everything from ball bearings for heart valves to magnets that would cure anything. Back then technology was only a little more advanced than witchcraft and sorcery. And so, in between the valves made of titanium and the magnets to reverse cancer, she’d found Cem.

He’d asked her for directions to the exit, and the next thing she knew, they were going out for coffee. The afternoon stretched into the early evening, and they meandered into the bar at the Empire Hotel, where he was staying. They were full of youth and career aspirations and New York City, drinking tequila sunrises while they looked at the view of Lincoln Center. It was spring, and the fountain was going, gushing great glittery streams of water.

Afterward they had sex — the kind of sex people had in 1984 when they didn’t know better. Her breasts were heavy and full, the type of breasts that sagged almost immediately but had one season of ripeness with which to attract, and what she attracted was Cem.

He was sexy then. Or he was to her untested mind. She had had no experience, and the fact that Cem was interested in her thrilled her. For the first time, she was living life — a secret, unexplored, forbidden life. The next morning, feeling free and modern, she woke up expecting never to see Cem again. He was going back to Atlanta in the afternoon. But for days afterward, he pursued her, sending flowers, calling, even writing a postcard. She tucked them away, but by then she’d met another man and fallen in love, and she stopped responding to Cem’s entreaties.

The man was a doctor. For the next few weeks, she did everything to keep him interested. Made a fool of herself playing tennis. Cleaned his kitchen. Showed up at his office with a sandwich. She managed to only let him kiss her (and then go to second and third base) for six weeks.

And then she gave in. The next morning, he told her he was engaged to someone else.

She was confused and, when he wouldn’t take her calls, devastated.

A week later, during a routine visit to the gynecologist, she discovered she was pregnant. She should have known, but she’d confused her nausea with the giddiness that comes from being in love. At first she thought the baby was the doctor’s, and she constructed scenes in her head of when and how she would inform him, after which he would realize she was the one for him after all and would marry her. They’d have to do it quickly, before anyone suspected. But when the pregnancy test came in, the gynecologist informed her that she was almost three months pregnant.

Beetelle counted backward, feeling her entire life switch into reverse. It wasn’t the doctor’s child. It was Cem’s. The doctor said she ought to have it, as she was nearly too far gone for an abortion.

Beetelle cried and then called Cem. Over the phone, she told him she was pregnant. He was ecstatic and flew to New York for the weekend; he took a hotel room at the Carlyle (setting a pattern for spending money he didn’t have) and took her to romantic restaurants. He bought her a half-carat diamond ring at Tiffany’s, claiming he only ever wanted her to have the best. Two months later, they were married by a justice of the peace at her parents’ house in Grand Rapids. After the ceremony, they went to dinner at the country club. And then Lola was born, and Beetelle understood it had all happened for a reason.

How she loved Lola. And naturally, while Beetelle no longer harbored feelings for the doctor, there were times when, seeing Lola so beautiful and bright, a curious sensation overcame her. A tiny part of her still believed, still hoped, that somewhere a mistake had been made, and Lola actually was the child of Leonard Pierce, a famous oncologist.

Beetelle got up from the vanity and went into the bedroom, standing before the bay window that looked out over the golf course. What would become of her and Lola now? There were times in the past when she’d considered what she would do if something happened to Cem. When he was late or driving home from Florida on his yearly pilgrimage to visit his mother, the thought crossed her mind that he could be killed in an accident with a tractor trailer. She pictured herself in mourning in Windsor Pines, dressed in black with a black pillbox hat and veil, although no one wore hats or veils anymore, holding a memorial service for Cem at the big nondenominational church to which everyone in their set belonged. She would never marry again. But along with the loss was a little fantasy.

She would sell the house and be free to do with her life as she pleased.

She might move to Italy, like that girl who wrote Under the Tuscan Sun.

But that was possible only if the house was worth something. Bank-ruptcy was not part of the bargain, and there were moments now, terrible moments, when she wondered if she wouldn’t be better off without Cem. It had crossed her mind that if she did leave, she could move to New York and live with Lola in that sweet little apartment on Eleventh Street.

But there wasn’t even enough money for that. They could no longer afford the apartment, and somehow, Lola had to be told this as well.

Beetelle was startled by the sudden presence of Lola in the room. “I’ve been thinking things over, Mother,” she said, seating herself carefully on the edge of the bed. A quick survey of the house had revealed that things were worse than she’d thought — in the refrigerator was supermarket cheese instead of gourmet; the wireless Internet service had been canceled and their cable plan reduced to basic. “I don’t have to work for Philip. I could get a real job, I suppose. Maybe do something in fashion. Or I could take acting classes. Philip knows everyone — he’ll know the best teacher.

And I’m sure I could do it. I watched Schiffer Diamond, and it didn’t look hard at all. Or I could try out for a reality show. Philip says they’re shooting more and more reality in New York. And doing a reality show doesn’t take any talent at all.”

“Lola, darling,” Beetelle said, overcome by her daughter’s desire to help out, “that would all be wonderful. If only we could afford to keep you in New York.”

Lola’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?” she asked.

Beetelle shook her head. “We can’t afford the apartment anymore. I’ve been dreading telling you this, but we’ve already told the management company. They’re going to let us out of the lease at the end of January.”

Lola gasped. “You got rid of my apartment behind my back?”

“I didn’t want to upset you,” Beetelle said.

“How could you do such a thing?” Lola demanded.

“Darling, please. I didn’t have a choice. As it is, both Mercedes are going to be repossessed in January ...”

“How could you let this happen, Mother?”

“I don’t know,” Beetelle wailed. “I trusted your father. And this is what he does to us. And now we’ll all have to live in a condo someplace —

where no one knows us — and I guess we’ll try to start over ...”

Lola gave a harsh laugh. “You expect me to live in a condo? With you and Daddy? No, Mother,” she said firmly. “I can’t do that. I won’t leave New York. Not when I’ve made so much progress. Our only hope is for me to stay in New York.”

“But where will you live?” Beetelle cried. “You can’t survive on the streets.”

“I’ll live with Philip,” Lola said. “I practically live with him anyway.”

“Oh, Lola,” Beetelle said. “Living with a man? Before you’re married?

What will people think?”

“We don’t have any choice, Mother. And when Philip and I get married, no one will remember that we lived together. And Philip has loads of money now. He just got paid a million dollars to write a screenplay.

And once we’re married” — Lola looked over at her mother — “we’ll figure something out. He probably would have asked me to marry him by now if it weren’t for his aunt. She’s always around, checking up on him.

Thank God she’s old. Maybe she’ll get cancer or something and have to give up her apartment. Then you and Daddy could move in.”

“Oh, darling,” Beetelle said, and tried to hug her. Lola moved away.

If her mother touched her, Lola knew she would fall apart herself and start crying. Now was not the time to be weak. And seeming to channel some of her mother’s former legendary strength in the face of adversity, she stood up.

“Come on, Mother,” she said. “Let’s go to the mall. We may not have money, but that doesn’t mean I can let myself go. You must have some credit left on your MasterCard.”

12

Billy Litchfield was on the train to Springfield, Massachusetts, when he got the call from his sister informing him that their mother had fallen down and broken her hip and was in the hospital. She’d been carrying groceries when she slipped on a patch of ice. She would live, but her pelvis was shattered. The surgeons would put the pelvis back together with metal plates, but it would take a long time to heal, and she could be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. She was only eighty-three; she might easily live for another ten or fifteen years. “I don’t have time to take care of her,” Billy’s sister, Laura, wailed on the phone. Laura was a corporate lawyer and single mom, twice divorced with two children, eighteen and twelve. “And I can’t afford to put her in a nursing home. Jacob’s going to college next year. It’s too much.”

“It’ll be fine,” Billy said. He was taking the news more calmly than he would have expected.

“How can it be fine?” his sister said. “Once something like this happens, it’s downhill all the way.”

“She must have some money,” Billy said.

“Why would she have money?” his sister said. “Not everyone is like your rich friends in New York.”

“I’m aware of how other people live,” Billy said.

“You’re going to have to move back to Streatham and take care of her,”

his sister said warningly. “She was grocery shopping for you. She normally only shops on Thursday mornings,” she added accusingly, as if the accident had been his fault. “She made a special trip for you.”

“Thanks, dear,” Billy said.

He hung up and looked out the window. The train was pulling in to New Haven, where the landscape was depressing and familiarly bleak.

Going home made him sad and uncomfortable; he’d had neither a happy childhood nor a happy home. His father, an orthodontist who believed homosexuality was a disease and that women were second-class citizens, was despised by both Billy and his sister. When his father passed away fifteen years ago, they said it was a blessing. Nevertheless, Laura had always resented Billy, his mother’s favorite. Billy knew Laura thought him frivolous and couldn’t forgive their mother for allowing Billy to study useless pursuits in college, like art and music and philosophy. Billy, on the other hand, thought his sister a dreary bore. She was absolutely ordinary; he couldn’t comprehend how nature could have supplied him with such a dull sibling. She was a drone — the very epitome of everything Billy feared a human life could become. She had no passions, either in her life or for her life, and therefore tended to exaggerate every tiny event out of proportion. Billy guessed his sister was making a bigger deal out of his mother’s fall than was necessary.

But when he got to the hospital on the outskirts of Springfield, he found his mother was worse than he’d hoped. She was always robust, but the accident had turned her into a colorless old lady under white hospital bedding, although she’d colored and permed her hair in preparation for his Christmas visit. “Ah, Billy.” She sighed. “You came.”

“Of course I came, Mother. What made you think I wouldn’t?”

“She’s on morphine,” the nurse said. “She’s going to be confused for a few days, aren’t you, dear?”

His mother began to cry. “I don’t want to be a burden to you and your sister. Maybe they should put me to sleep.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Mother,” Billy said. “You’re going to be fine.”

When visiting hours were over, the doctor pulled him aside. The operation had gone fine, but they wouldn’t know when or if his mother would be able to walk. In the meantime, she’d have to be in the wheelchair. Billy nodded and picked up his Gaultier bag, thinking how incongruous the expensive French luggage looked in this sad local hospital, then waited outside in the cold for thirty minutes for a taxi that took him the twenty miles to his mother’s house. The taxi cost a hundred and thirty dollars, and Billy winced at the price. With his mother injured, he would need to start saving money. In the snow next to the driveway, he saw the imprint of his mother’s body where she had fallen.

The back door was unlocked, and entering the kitchen, Billy found two bags of groceries on the counter, obviously placed there by a kind para-medic. Although he’d always considered himself a cynic, recently Billy had noticed that random acts of human kindness now caused him to become sentimental. Feeling heavy of heart, he began unpacking the groceries. In one bag was a warm container of light cream. This was what would have caused his mother’s unfortunate trip to the store. Billy still insisted on using light cream in his coffee.

He arrived at the hospital the next morning at nine. His sister came shortly thereafter, accompanied by her younger child, Dominique, a scrawny girl with thin blond hair and a nose like a beak; she looked just like her father, a local carpenter who had grown marijuana in the summers and eventually gotten arrested.

Billy tried to talk to the girl, but she was either not interested or not educated. She admitted that she hated reading books and hadn’t read Harry Potter. What did she do, then? Billy asked. She talked to her friends on the Internet. Billy raised his eyebrows at his sister, but she shrugged.

“I can’t keep her off it. No one can keep their kids off it, and frankly, no one has time to monitor their kids every minute. Especially me.”

Billy had some feeling for the girl — after all, she was a blood relative —

but was saddened by her as well. The little girl was on the border of becoming white trash, he decided, and he was struck by the irony of how hard his own parents had worked to be upper-middle-class, to make sure their children were educated, to expose them to culture (his father had played Beethoven in his office), only to produce a granddaughter who would not even read. The Dark Ages, Billy thought, were just around the corner.

He spent a long day with his mother. She was in a cast from her knee to her waist. He held her hand. “Billy,” she said. “What’s going to happen to me?” “You’re going to be fine, Ma, you’ll see.” “What if I can’t drive?”

“We’ll figure it out.” “What if I have to go into a nursing home? I don’t want to go to a nursing home. I’ll die there.” “I won’t let it happen, Ma.”

His stomach churned with fear. If it came to that, how could he prevent it? He had no means to do otherwise.

His sister asked him to dinner at her house — nothing fancy, macaroni and cheese. Laura lived a short distance away from their mother in a large ranch house that their father had bought her after her first divorce. It was a mystery to the family why Laura, who was a lawyer, could never manage to make ends meet, but since she was a writer of legal briefs, Billy suspected she didn’t make as much money as her law degree would imply.

And she was a spender. Her house had wall-to-wall carpeting, a dinette set, display cases of porcelain figurines, a collection of teddy bears, four TVs, and in the living room, a modular sofa in which each piece had cupholders and retractable footrests. The thought of spending the evening in such an environment filled Billy with dread — he knew it would leave him unbearably depressed — and so he invited Laura and her daughter to their mother’s house instead.

He made an herb-roasted chicken, roasted potatoes with rosemary, hari-cots verts, and an arugula salad. He had learned to cook from the private chefs of his wealthy friends, for he always made it a point to mix with the staff in the kitchen. His niece, Dominique, was fascinated — apparently, she’d never seen anyone cook before. Studying the girl, Billy decided she might have potential. Her eyes were wide-set, and she had a pretty smile, although her incisors were as pointy as a dog’s. “What will Dominique do when she grows up?” he asked his sister when they were in the kitchen, cleaning up after the meal.

“How should I know? She’s twelve,” Laura said.

“Does she have any interests? Special talents?”

“Besides pissing me off? She says she wants to be a vet when she grows up. I said the same thing when I was twelve. It’s something all little girls say.”

“Do you wish you were a vet now?” Billy asked.

“I wish I was married to Donald Trump and lived in Palm Beach,”

Laura said. She smacked herself on the forehead. “I knew I forgot something. I should have married a rich guy.”

“You might think about sending Dominique to Miss Porter’s in Connecticut.”

“Right,” Laura said. “So she can marry a rich guy. Of course. There’s only one problem. It takes money to get money, remember? Unless one of your rich-lady friends wants to give her a scholarship.”

“I have connections,” Billy said. “I might be able to make it happen.”

His sister turned on him. “Connections?” she said. “What planet do you live on, Billy? Mom is in the hospital, and all you can think about is sending my daughter to a private school to learn how to sip tea?”

“You might find life more tolerable if you learned to speak to people in a civilized manner,” Billy responded.

“Are you saying I’m not civilized?” Laura threw a dish towel on the counter. “I’m sick of it. All you do is come back here with your snotty New York attitude and act like everyone is below you. Like you’re something special. And what have you done with your life? You don’t even have a job. Unless you call escorting old ladies a job.” She was standing in the middle of the kitchen, straddling the slate-tiled floor like a prize-fighter. “And don’t you even think about going back to New York,” she hissed. “You’re not going to leave me here to clean up the mess. I’ve been taking care of Ma for the last fifteen years. I’m done. It’s your turn.”

They stared at each other with hatred.

“Excuse me, Laura,” Billy said, pushing past her. “I’m going to retire for the evening.” And he went up to his room.

It was his old room, unchanged, although their mother had turned Laura’s room into a guest bedroom. He lay on the bed, a four-poster with Ralph Lauren bedding from the early eighties, when Ralph had just ventured into home furnishings. The bedding was vintage, as, Billy realized, was he. He took a Xanax to soothe his anxiety and, at random, picked out a book from the shelves encasing one window. He turned it over and looked at the title: Death in Venice by Thomas Mann.

This was all too apt, and he put the book aside, wishing he’d bought the tabloid magazines at the supermarket. He took an Ambien, turned off the light, and prepared for the obscurity of sleep, but it wouldn’t come. Instead, the reality of his troubles grew, and he imagined them like boulders being placed, one after another, on top of his body, slowly crush-ing him until eventually, his chest caved into his spinal cord and he was painfully suffocated to death.

But then an idea caused him to sit up and turn on the light. He got out of bed and began pacing in front of the fireplace. He could fix his problems, his mother’s problems, even his sister’s problems with one simple transaction. He could sell the Cross of Bloody Mary. It might easily fetch three million dollars or more. He could pay for private nurses to care for his mother, send Dominique to private school, even buy his apartment. If he owned his apartment outright, he could live out his days on lower Fifth Avenue in a pleasant cocoon of civilized behavior. But in the next moment, reality intruded. He could never sell the cross. It was a purloined antiquity, as dangerous as a loaded gun. There were people who dealt with such items, smuggling them around the world to the highest bidders, who would salivate at the possibility of getting their hands on it. But selling antiquities was an international crime, and people did get caught. Just last month, a smuggler had been arrested in Rome and sentenced to jail for fifty years.

The next morning, his mother was worse; an infection had set in. She might be in the hospital another week or more. Her insurance would run out, and she’d have to go on Medicaid, which meant she’d be moved to a less expensive hospital in the center of Springfield. “I’m sorry, Billy,” she said, squeezing his hand. She was exhausted, and her eyes were full of fear.

“Who would have thought our lives would come to this?” she whispered.

When she fell asleep, Billy went out for some fresh air. He bought a pack of cigarettes at a newsstand, although he’d given up smoking years ago, when hostesses stopped allowing it in their apartments. He sat down on a bench. It was another cold, gray New England day, threatening snow that would not come. He inhaled deeply. The sharp smoke hit his lungs, and immediately he felt dizzy and a little nauseated. He took a breath and kept smoking.

Over the next few days, while his mother remained in the hospital, Billy began smoking again to ease his stress. When he smoked, he had the same conversation with himself: No matter what he did, he was ruined. If he didn’t sell the cross — out of misguided morality — his mother would suffer needlessly and probably die. If he did sell the cross, he would suffer his conscience. Even if he didn’t get caught, he would feel like a criminal among the rarefied set in which he moved. He reminded himself that his kind of morality was old-fashioned, though. Nobody cared anymore.

On the third day, a nurse walked by. “Merry Christmas,” she said.

“Merry Christmas,” he replied, remembering that it was Christmas morning. He ground out his cigarette with the tip of his Prada loafer. He would sell the cross. He didn’t have a choice. And if he could find the right private buyer, he just might get away with it.

Mindy loved the holidays in New York City. Every year, she put up a tree purchased from the deli around the corner — everything was so convenient in Manhattan! — bought four new ornaments at the local gift shop, wrapped the base of the tree in an old white sheet, and set up a crèche nestled into the folds. There sat Mary and Joseph, five sheep, the baby Jesus in the manger, the three wise men, and right above the scene, on the lowest branch of the tree, the carefully hung Star of David. And every year, James looked at the crèche and shook his head.

Then there were the traditional family outings. They had to go skating at the Wollman rink (“I’m going to hug you, Sammy,” Mindy said, chasing after him on her skates and embarrassing the hell out of him while James clung to the boards on the side) and to The Nutcracker at the New York City Ballet. Sam had been trying to get out of the performance for the past three years, claiming he was too old, but Mindy wouldn’t hear of it. When the tree grew onstage and the scenery changed to a fantasy woodland glade complete with snow, she even cried. Sam slunk down in his seat, but there was nothing he could do about it. After the performance, they went to Shun Lee West, where Mindy insisted on behaving like a tourist by admir-ing the sixty-foot-long gold papier-mâché dragon that had been transported to Manhattan in pieces in the late seventies. She ordered a dish called “Ants Climb on Tree,” which was only beef with broccoli. But — she reminded James and Sam — she couldn’t resist the name.

This year was like every other year, with one small difference: Sam had a secret.

Through a chance remark by Roberto, the doorman, Mindy discovered that Sam had gone up to the Rices’ apartment just before Christmas to help Annalisa with her computer. Normally, Sam discussed such incidents with her, but Christmas came and went without a peep from Sam. This was odd, and Mindy discussed it with James. “Why would he lie?” she asked.

“He hasn’t lied. He’s omitted to tell you. There’s a difference,” James said.

During the meal at Shun Lee West, Mindy decided the omission had gone on long enough. “Sam?” she said. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

Sam looked briefly alarmed. He immediately guessed what Mindy was getting at, and cursed himself for not having told Roberto to keep it to himself. Everyone in One Fifth was so damn nosy. Why couldn’t they all mind their own business? “Nope,” Sam said, stuffing his mouth with a shrimp dumpling.

“Roberto said you went up to the Rices’ apartment before Christmas.”

“Oh, that,” Sam said. “Yeah. That lady, what’s-her-name, couldn’t turn on her computer.”

“Please don’t call women ‘that lady,’ ” Mindy said. “Always call women ‘women.’ ”

“Okay,” Sam said. “That woman was having trouble with her Internet connection.”

Mindy ignored the sarcasm. “Is that all?”

“Yes,” Sam said. “I swear.”

“I want to hear all about it,” Mindy said. “If there’s anything new or different in that apartment, I need to know.”

“There’s nothing different.” Sam shrugged. “It’s just an apartment.”

Sam hadn’t told Mindy about his visit for one simple reason: He still hadn’t learned how to lie effectively to his mother. Eventually, she would get it out of him that Annalisa Rice had given him the keys, and then Mindy would insist he turn the keys over to her, and she would sneak into the apartment.

That was exactly what happened. “Sam?” Mindy said slyly when they were back home. “What are you hiding?”

“Nothing,” Sam said.

“Why are you acting so strangely?” Mindy said. “You saw something.

And Annalisa Rice told you not to tell me. What is it?”

“Nothing. She just gave me her keys, is all,” he blurted out.

“Give them to me,” Mindy demanded.

“No,” Sam said. “She gave the keys to me, not you. If she’d wanted you to have the keys, she would have given them to you.”

Mindy put the issue aside until the next morning, when she started in on him again. “As the head of the board, it’s my duty to make sure there isn’t anything untoward going on in that apartment.”

“Untoward?” James said, looking up from his cereal. “The only untoward element in this building is you.”

“Besides, they have a housekeeper. She’s probably in the apartment,”

Sam said.

“She’s away. Went back to Ireland for the holidays,” Mindy said.

“Roberto told me.”

“It’s a good thing Roberto doesn’t work for national security,” James remarked.

“Are you going to help me, James?” Mindy said.

“No, I’m not. I refuse to engage in illegal activities. Sam,” James said,

“give your mother the keys. There won’t be any peace in this house until you do.”

Sam reluctantly turned over the keys. At which point Mindy immediately boarded the elevator for the penthouse apartment.

Riding up, she recalled with a pang of envy how she’d never been one of the anointed few who’d been invited to Mrs. Houghton’s apartment for tea, or even to her annual Christmas party. Despite Mindy’s position in the building, Mrs. Houghton had largely ignored her — although, to be fair, when the Gooches moved in, Mrs. Houghton was nearly ninety and mostly housebound. But every now and then, she would descend from above like an angel (or perhaps like one of the Greek goddesses) to walk amongst regular humans. She would ride down in the elevator in her sable wrap, diamonds and pearls slung around her neck — it being rumored that she always wore real jewelry, so confident was she in her fame and reputation as to never worry about being mugged — standing erect on her rickety old legs like a determined general. The nurse or housekeeper would call down ahead to alert the doormen that Her Majesty was “coming down,” and when the elevator doors opened in the lobby, Mrs.

Houghton would be greeted by at least two doormen, a handyman, and the super. “Can I help you, Mrs. Houghton?” the super would ask, offering his arm to walk her out to her ancient Cadillac limousine. On the occasions of Mrs. Houghton’s coming down, Mindy would do her best to be in the vicinity, and even though she refused on principle to bow or scrape to anyone, she found herself doing just that with Mrs. Houghton.

“Mrs. Houghton?” she’d say meekly, shrinking her shoulders into a sort of bow. “I’m Mindy Gooch. I live here? I’m on the board?” And even though Mindy could tell Mrs. Houghton had no idea who she was, she never let on. “Yes, dear!” she’d exclaim, as if Mindy were a long-lost relative. She’d touch Mindy on the wrist. “How are you?” But the brief exchange never evolved into a conversation. And before Mindy could think of what to say next, Mrs. Houghton had moved on to one of the doormen.

And now, instead of the gracious Mrs. Houghton in the building, they had the despicable Paul Rice. Mindy had admitted him to the building; therefore, she reasoned, she had every right to sneak into his apartment.

Paul Rice was probably engaging in illegal and nefarious activities. It was her duty to protect the other residents.

She had a hard time with the keys, which were electronic, in itself a possible violation of a building rule. When the door finally opened, she nearly fell into the foyer. Mindy wasn’t into art (“You can’t be into everything in this city, otherwise you have no time for accomplishments” was something she’d written recently in her blog), and so she barely noticed the lesbian photograph. In the living room, sparsely furnished, either on purpose or because they were still decorating, a freestanding mobile with papier-mâché renderings of cars blocked the view of the fireplace. Kids’ stuff, Mindy thought with disdain, and went into the kitchen. Here again she was disappointed. It was just another high-end kitchen with marble countertops and restaurant-quality appliances. She peeked into the maid’s room. Another bland pro-forma room with a single bed and a flat-screen TV. The bed had a profusion of pillows and a down comforter, and lifting up the corner, Mindy saw the sheets were from Pratesi. This was slightly irritating. These people really know how to waste money, she thought. She and James had had the same sheets for ten years, purchased on discount at Bloomingdale’s. Mindy went upstairs. She passed two bedrooms — empty — and a bathroom. She continued down the hall and went into Annalisa’s office. On top of a bookcase were several framed photographs, possibly the only personal items in the apartment.

There was a large, schmaltzy photograph of Annalisa and Paul on their wedding day. Paul was wearing a tux and was leaner than he was now.

Annalisa wore a small beaded tiara from which extended a lace veil.

They looked happy, but who didn’t on their wedding day? There were also some snapshots of Paul and Annalisa at a birthday party wearing paper cones on their heads; a photograph of Paul and Annalisa with what appeared to be her parents in front of a town house in Georgetown; Paul in a kayak; Annalisa on the Spanish Steps in Rome. All so disappointingly normal, Mindy thought.

She went into the bedroom. This room had a fireplace and built-in bookshelves. She admired the grand canopied bed, but the sheets made her shudder — gold! Mindy thought, How gauche, as she moved on to the bureau, on top of which were several bottles of perfume on a silver tray. Mindy picked up a small bottle of Joy. It was the actual perfume and not the eau de cologne, which James and Sam had given to her for Mother’s Day several years ago and which she never wore because she never remembered about girly things like perfume. But in here, in another woman’s bedroom, Mindy carefully pried open the stopper and put a dab behind each ear. She sat on the edge of the bed, looking around the room. What would it be like to be Annalisa Rice, to never have to worry about money? But those fantasies always came with a price, in this case the price being Paul Rice. How could a woman live with a man like that? At least Mindy could boss James around. James wasn’t perfect, but she could always be herself around James, and that had to be worth more in life than Pratesi sheets.

Mindy got up and, seeing the closet door was slightly ajar, pushed it open. Inside was a huge walk-in closet, at least three times the size of Sam’s bedroom. Along one wall were shelves stacked with shoe boxes; another shelf held handbags, scarves, and belts; and along the other wall was a rack of clothes, some still sporting their price tags. She fingered a leather jacket that cost eighty-eight hundred dollars and felt angry. This was but a tiny example of how the rich really lived. There was no longer any chance of keeping up with the Joneses, not when the Joneses could spend eight thousand dollars on a leather jacket they would never wear.

She was about to leave the closet when she spied a small cluster of worn, misshapen pantsuits on wire hangers. Aha, Mindy thought, these were Annalisa’s clothes from her former life. But why had she kept them? To remind herself from whence she’d come? Or was it the opposite: She had kept them thinking someday she might have to go back?

Mindy threw up her hands, reassuring herself that these rich people were nothing but dull. She and James were a hundred times more interesting, even with a hundred times less money. She left the bedroom and went upstairs to the ballroom. At the top of the steps was another marble foyer and two tall paneled-wood doors. The doors were locked, but Mindy guessed she had the key. She pushed open the doors and paused. Inside, the light was dim, as if the room were heavily curtained, yet Mindy saw no curtains. She stepped carefully into the room and looked around.

So this was what had happened to Mrs. Houghton’s legendary ballroom. She would be turning over in her grave. Probably all that remained of the original room were the fireplace and the ceiling. The famous paneled walls, painted with scenes from the Greek myths, were gone, covered over by plain white plasterboard. In the center of the room was the enormous aquarium, but it was empty. Above the fireplace was a black metal frame. Mindy moved in closer and stood on her toes to examine it. Inside the rim were pinhead-sized colored lights. It was a 3-D projection screen, Mindy decided, like something out of a futuristic spy movie. She wondered if it actually worked or was just for show. There was a closet on either side of the fireplace, but these were locked, and Mindy did not have the key.

She put her ear up to the wood and heard a tiny, high-pitched humming sound. Dammit, she thought. There was nothing here at all. Sam was right, it was just an apartment.

In annoyance, she sat down at Paul’s desk. The swivel chair was up-holstered in chocolate suede, very modern and sleek, like the desk, which was a long slab of polished wood. There was practically nothing on the desk, save for a small pad of paper from a hotel, a sterling-silver container holding six number-two pencils with the erasers neatly pointing into the air, and a silver framed photograph of an Irish wolfhound. Probably Paul’s childhood pet. No doubt Paul’s Rosebud, Mindy thought with disgust.

She replaced the frame and picked up the pad of paper. It was from the Four Seasons hotel in Bangkok. The top page was blank, but the next two were filled with mathematical equations written in pencil of which she could not make heads or tails. On the fourth page, she came across something written in English, in minuscule box letters. Holding it up to her face, she read: WE ARE THE NEW RICH.

And you’re an asshole, Mindy thought. She pocketed the pad of paper, thinking that when Paul Rice came home from vacation and found his pad missing, he’d know someone had been in his apartment, and that would be her little message to him.

Her own apartment felt cluttered and messy in comparison to the clean restraint of the Rice abode. The Rices’ apartment was like a hotel room, she decided as she sat down at her desk to blog. “Today I discovered another one of the joys of not having it all: not wanting it all,” she wrote with relish.

Don’t think, do, Philip reminded himself. This was the only possible philosophy when it came to women. If one thought about them too much, if one really considered a relationship and what it meant, one usually got into trouble. Someone (usually the woman) was disappointed, although (usually) through no fault of the man. A man couldn’t help it if he loved women and loved sex. And so this morning, he had finally capitulated and asked Lola to move in with him.

He immediately realized he might have made a mistake. But the words were out, and there was no taking them back. Lola jumped up and put her arms around him. “There, there,” he said, patting her back. “We’re not getting married. We’re only living together. It’s an experiment.”

“We’re going to be so happy,” she said. And then she went to her suitcase to dig out her bikini. Wrapped in a tiny sarong tied fetchingly around her hips, she’d practically skipped with him down to the beach.

And now she was frolicking in the waves like a puppy, looking back at him over her shoulder and gesturing for him to join her. “It’s too early,”

he called from his lounge chair.

“It’s eleven o’clock, silly,” she said, splashing water at him.

“I don’t like to get wet until after lunch,” he replied.

“You shower in the morning, don’t you?” she said playfully.

“That’s not the point.” He smiled indulgently and went back to reading The Economist.

Lola was so literal, he thought. But did it really matter? Don’t think, he reminded himself. She was moving in with him, and if it worked, great, and if not, they’d move on. It wasn’t such a big deal. He flipped the pages of the magazine — Time Warner was breaking up, he saw — and then put it down in the sand. He closed his eyes. He needed a vacation.

With Lola sorted out now, perhaps he could finally rest.

The prospect had appeared unlikely when he’d met Lola at the airport in Barbados two days ago. Amid the bustle of holiday travelers in gaudy resort wear, she was sitting forlornly on her suitcase — a Louis Vuitton rollerboard — her hair fallen across a pair of large white-framed sunglasses. As he came up beside her, she stood and removed her sunglasses.

Her eyes were puffy. “I shouldn’t have come,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to call you, but I didn’t want to ruin your Christmas. And I didn’t want to disappoint you. There was nothing I could do, anyway. It’s all so depressing.”

“Did someone die?” he asked.

“I wish,” she said. “My parents are bankrupt. And now I have to leave New York.”

Philip didn’t understand how her parents could have lost all their money. Didn’t people have savings? His impression of Fabrikant mère and père was that, while superficially silly, they were simple, practical people who would never allow themselves to be involved in any kind of scandal.

Especially Beetelle. The woman was too voluble, too impressed with her narrow circle of life, but also far too judgmental to get into a position in which she might be unfavorably judged herself. But Lola insisted it was true. She would have to leave New York; she didn’t know where she would go, but not with her parents. Worst of all, she wouldn’t be able to continue to work for him.

He understood immediately what she was angling for. With a word, he could solve all her problems. Taking care of Lola wouldn’t be a burden financially, as he had plenty of money and no children. But was it the right thing to do? His instincts told him no. She wasn’t his responsibility; if she moved in with him, she would be.

When they arrived at the Cotton House hotel in Mustique, they immediately made love, but just as he was about to come, she started crying silently, turning her head away as if she didn’t want him to see. “What’s wrong?” he said. Her legs were over his shoulders.

“Nothing,” she whimpered.

“Something’s wrong,” he said. “Am I hurting you?”

“No.”

“I’m about to come,” he said.

“This might be one of the last times we make love. It makes me sad,” she said.

His hard-on dissipated, and he lay down next to her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, stroking his face.

“We’ve got a whole week to make love,” he said.

“I know.” She sighed and got off the bed and went to the mirror and distractedly began brushing her long hair over her naked breasts, wistfully looking at herself, and him, in the background. “But after this week, we might never see each other again.”

“Oh, Lola,” he said. “That kind of thing only happens in movies. Or Nicholas Sparks’s books.”

“Why do you always make a joke when I’m being serious?” she asked.

“Obviously, you don’t care if I stay in New York or not.”

“That isn’t true,” he said.

Thinking it would make her happy, he took her to Basil’s Bar, famous for being one of Mick Jagger’s favorite haunts. Mick Jagger was even there, but Lola acted as if she didn’t notice or care, drinking her rum punch through a straw and staring determinedly out at the harbor, where several yachts were anchored. She answered his questions in monosyllables, and finally, he got up and talked to Mick and got him to come over and meet Lola, but she only looked up at him with big, sad eyes and limply held out her hand as if Philip were secretly abusing her.

“You met Mick Jagger,” Philip said after Mick walked away. “Aren’t you excited?”

“I guess.” She shrugged. “But what difference does it make? It’s not like he can help me.”

They went back to the Cotton House. She took a walk on the beach alone, saying she needed to think. He tried to take a nap. The bed was surrounded by a canopy of mosquito netting, but he couldn’t manage to get it closed properly, and after being bitten three times, he gave up, went into the bar, and had a few more drinks. At dinner, Lola ordered a three-pound lobster and picked at it.When the waiter saw the uneaten lobster and came over to ask if anything was wrong, Lola began to cry silently.

The next day wasn’t much better. They went to the beach, where Lola alternately moped on her towel and tried to make him jealous by flirting with two young Englishmen. Philip realized he would either have to give in or let her go. Why did women always have to force the issue?

In the afternoon, while he was having a massage, she said she was going to take a nap. When he got back to their bungalow, she wasn’t there.

He panicked. What if he’d underestimated her and she had done something after all? He tried calling her on her cell phone but found she’d left it in the room, along with her purse. This was more troubling, and he went to the main house and found a porter who drove him around the property in a golf cart, looking for her. They searched for an hour; Lola, it seemed, had mysteriously disappeared. The porter reassured him that she couldn’t have gone far — they were on an island, after all. But this only made Philip more nervous, bringing to mind the American girl who’d disappeared on a small Caribbean island two years before. Perhaps she’d gone shopping, the porter suggested. Philip took a taxi to the port, searching the bar and the row of tiny shops. He returned to the Cotton House, defeated. What was he supposed to do now? Call her parents and say, “I heard you lost all your money, and I’m sorry about it, but you just lost your daughter as well”? He called her cell phone again, for the hell of it, hoping she’d come back to the room while he was gone, but it only rang and rang in her purse. He hung up, unable to tolerate the abandoned electronic bleat.

Finally, at six P.M., she came into the bungalow. Her eyes were sad, but her skin was glowing, as if she’d been swimming. “Ah, Philip,” she said dully.

“You’re back.”

“Of course I’m back,” he said. “Where were you? I’ve been searching the island for the past three hours.”

She momentarily brightened at this information but then went back to being depressed. “I figured you probably wanted some time away from me.”

“What are you talking about?” he said. “I went to get a massage.”

“I know. But I’ve been such a downer. I don’t want to ruin your vacation as well.”

“Where were you?” Philip said.

“In a cave.”

“A cave?” he exclaimed.

“I found a little cave. In the rocks down by the water.”

“You’ve been in a cave for the past three hours?” he repeated.

She nodded. “I needed a place to think. And I realized, no matter what happens, I love you. I always will. I can’t help myself.”

Philip felt protective. She was so young. And innocent. He could shape her. What was wrong with him? He pulled her to him. She made love vigorously, sucking his cock while teasing his asshole with her finger. He exploded, gasping with pleasure. How could he give this up?

For some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to ask her to move in with him that night. But during dinner, Lola was nearly back to her old self, texting through dinner and flirting with the waiter and rubbing Philip’s foot with her toe. She didn’t bring up their relationship, her disappearance that afternoon, or her parents’ financial woes, and neither did he.

But the next morning, when he woke up, he found her packing. “What are you doing?” he said.

“Oh, Philip.” She sighed. “One of the things I realized in the cave is that I love you too much to go on like this. If we’re not going to be together, there’s no point in falling more in love with you and being hurt worse in the end. So I’m going to go. My mother needs me, and I’m not sure you do.”

She was right, he realized. He couldn’t go on like this, either. She bent over to rifle through her suitcase and he remembered the sex they’d had the night before. “Lola,” he said. “You don’t have to go.”

“Oh, but I do, Philip,” she said, not looking up.

“I mean” — he hesitated — “you can move in with me. If you want to,” he added, as if it weren’t his decision.

Now, on the beach, Philip leaned back in his lounge chair, folding his arms under his head. Of course she’d said yes. She loved him.

His reverie was broken by the chirrup of his cell phone. It was a number, probably Enid calling him to wish him a happy New Year. He felt a momentary dismay. He would have to tell Enid that Lola was moving in. Enid wouldn’t like it.

“Hello?”

The caller was a welcome surprise. “Schoolboy,” Schiffer exclaimed.

“How are you? What are you doing?”

“What are you doing?” he asked, sitting up. “I thought you were in Saint Barths.”

“Couldn’t do it,” she said. “I thought about it and changed my mind.

Why pursue a relationship with a man I’m not in love with? I don’t need the guy, do I?”

“I don’t know,” Philip said. “I thought ...”

She laughed. “You didn’t think I was serious about Brumminger?”

“Why not?” Philip said. “Everyone says he’s a great guy.”

“Get real, Oakland,” she said. Changing the subject, she asked, “Where are you, anyway? If you’re around, I thought maybe we could get together with Enid. I’ve been neglecting her.”

Philip swallowed. “I can’t,” he whispered.

“Why?” she said. “Where are you? I can hardly hear you. Speak up, schoolboy, if you want to be heard.”

“I’m in Mustique,” he said.

“What?”

“Mustique,” he shouted.

“What the hell are you doing there?”

He felt his shoulders sag. “I’m with Lola.”

“Ahhhhh,” she said, getting it.

“I thought ... you and Brumminger ... Anyway, I’ve asked her to move in with me.”

“That’s great, Oakland,” she said, not missing a beat. “It’s about time you settled down.”

“I’m not settling down. I just...”

“I get it, schoolboy,” she said. “It’s not a big deal. I was only calling you to see if you wanted to have a drink. We’ll get together when you get back.”

She hung up. Philip looked at his phone and shook his head. He would never understand women. He put the phone away and looked for Lola. She was still splashing around in the water, but in the European tradition, she had taken her top off. Everyone on the beach was staring while Lola bounced around, pretending to be oblivious to the attention.

From the other side of the short beach, two white-haired old men were making a beeline for her. “Come on, girly,” one of the men shouted in an English accent. “Let’s have some fun.”

“Lola!” Philip shouted sharply. He was about to tell her to put her top on, then realized how old it would make him sound — like her father. Instead, he smiled and stood up, making as if to join her in the water. He folded his sunglasses and placed them carefully on the table under the umbrella. He was, he thought, looking across the sand at Lola, either the luckiest man in the world or the world’s biggest fool.