One Fifth Avenue

13

“Listen to this,” Mindy said, coming into the bedroom. “ ‘Is sex really necessary?’ ”

“Huh?” James said, looking up from his sock drawer.

“ ‘Is sex really necessary?’ ” Mindy repeated, reading from the printout of her blog. “ ‘We take the importance of sex as a given. Popular culture tells us it’s as essential to survival as eating or breathing. But if you really think about it, after a certain age, sex isn’t necessary at all ...’ ”

James found two socks that matched and held them up. The only thing that wasn’t necessary, he thought, was Mindy’s blog.

“ ‘Once you’re past the age of reproduction, why bother?’ ” she continued reading. “ ‘Every day, on my way to my office, I pass at least five billboards advertising sex in the form of lacy lingerie ...’ ”

Pulling on the socks, James imagined how Lola Fabrikant would look in lacy lingerie. “ ‘As if,’ ” Mindy continued, “ ‘lacy lingerie is the answer to our dissatisfactions with life.’ ” It might not be, James thought, but it couldn’t hurt. “ ‘I say,’ ” Mindy went on, “ ‘rip down the billboards. Burn the Victoria’s Secret shops. Think about how much we could accomplish as women if we didn’t have to worry about sex.’ ” She paused triumphantly and looked at James. “What do you think?” she asked.

“Please don’t write about me again,” James said.

“I’m not writing about you,” Mindy said. “Did you hear your name mentioned?”

“Not yet, but I’m sure it will be.”

“As a matter of fact, you’re not in this particular blog.”

“Any chance we can keep it that way in the future?”

“No,” Mindy said. “I’m married to you, and you’re my husband. The blog is about my life. Am I supposed to pretend you don’t exist?”

“Yes,” James said. It was a rhetorical answer, however. For reasons unfathomable to him, Mindy’s blog had become more and more popular — so popular, in fact, that she’d even had a meeting with a producer from The View, who was considering featuring Mindy on a regular basis.

Since then there had been no stopping her. Never mind that he had a book coming out, that he’d just landed a million-dollar advance, that he was finally about to become a success. It was still all about Mindy.

“Couldn’t you at least change my name?” he asked.

“How can I do that?” she said. “It’s too late. Everyone knows you’re my husband. Besides, we’re both writers. We understand how it works.

Nothing in our lives is off-limits.”

Except, James thought, for their sex life. And that was only because they didn’t have one. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready for dinner?” he said.

“I am ready,” Mindy said, indicating her woolly gray slacks and turtleneck sweater. “It’s only dinner in the neighborhood. At Knickerbocker. It’s ten degrees out. And I’m not going to dress up for some twenty-two-year-old chippy.”

“You don’t know that Lola Fabrikant is a chippy.”

“That is such a typical male remark,” Mindy said. “Neither you nor Philip Oakland can see the truth. Because you’re both thinking with your little heads.”

“I’m not,” James said innocently.

“Is that so?” Mindy said. “In that case, why are you wearing a tie?”

“I always wear ties.”

“You never wear ties.”

“Maybe it’s a new me,” James said. He shrugged, trying to make light of it.

Luckily, Mindy didn’t seem too concerned. “If you wear a tie with that V-neck sweater, you look like a dork,” she said.

James took off the sweater. Then he gave up and removed the tie.

“Why are we having this dinner again?” she asked for the fourth or fifth time that day.

“Oakland invited us. Remember? We’ve been living in the same building for ten years, and we’ve never gotten together. I thought it would be nice.”

“You like Oakland now,” Mindy said skeptically.

“He’s okay.”

“I thought you hated him. Because he never remembered who you were.”

Marriage, James thought. It really was a ball and chain, keeping you forever tethered to the past. “I never said that,” he said.

“You did,” Mindy said. “You said it all the time.”

James went into the bathroom to try to get away from Mindy and her questions. Mindy was right — he had lied to her about the circumstances of the dinner. Philip hadn’t asked them to dinner at all; indeed, for the first two weeks of January, he seemed to be trying to avoid the possibility by rushing past James when they passed in the lobby. But James had been insistent, and finally, Philip had to give in. James couldn’t stand Philip, but he could stand Lola. Ever since he’d met her in Paul Smith with Philip, James had nursed an irrational belief that she might be interested in him.

Reminding himself that in a few minutes, he’d be seeing the lovely Lola Fabrikant in the flesh, James took off his glasses and leaned in to the mirror. His eyes had a naked quality, as if they belonged to one of Plato’s cave dwellers who had yet to see the light. In between his eyes were two deep furrows, where the seeds of his life’s discontent had been planted so often they’d become permanent. He tugged on the skin, erasing the evidence of his unhappiness. He went to the bathroom door.

“What’s that stuff?” he asked Mindy.

“What stuff?” Mindy said. She had taken off the slacks and was pulling on a pair of heavy black tights.

“That stuff that socialites use. To get rid of wrinkles.”

“Botox?” Mindy said. “What about it?”

“I was thinking I might get some.” On Mindy’s look of astonishment, he added: “Might be good for the book tour. Couldn’t hurt to look younger.

Isn’t that what everyone says?”

Lola hated the Knickerbocker restaurant, which was filled with old people and Village locals — a motley crew, she thought, and not at all glamorous, with their pilled sweaters and reading glasses. If this turned out to be her life with Philip, she would kill herself. She consoled herself with the fact that they were having dinner with James Gooch, who had a book coming out that everyone was supposedly talking about, although Philip claimed he couldn’t understand why. James Gooch was a second-rate writer, he said. Even if he was, Lola still didn’t understand why Philip didn’t like James. James was sweet, she decided, and easily manipulated.

He kept glancing over at her, catching her eye, and then looking away.

His wife, Mindy Gooch, was another story. Every time Mindy spoke, Lola felt her hackles rising. Mindy couldn’t be bothered to disguise the fact that she was deliberately behaving as if Lola were not sitting in the same booth right next to her. Mindy wouldn’t even turn her head to look at her, instead focusing all her attention on Philip. Not that Lola wanted to talk to Mindy anyway. Mindy was a little scary, with her eighties bob and her pointy nose and pale skin, and most mysterious of all, she acted as though she were pretty. It crossed Lola’s mind that perhaps a million years ago, when Mindy was eighteen, she was attractive. If so, her looks had faded quickly. Lola believed that any girl could be pretty at eighteen, but the real test of beauty came with age. Were you still pretty at twenty-two? Thirty? Even forty? This reminded her of Schiffer Diamond and how Philip claimed she was still a great beauty at forty-five. Lola had disagreed on principle. Philip claimed she was jealous. She denied this, insisting it was the reverse — other women were jealous of her. Philip didn’t buy it, and eventually, she’d had to concede that Schiffer Diamond was beautiful “for her age.”

With Mindy Gooch, there was no possibility of jealousy. Lola only wanted to stab her with a fork. “I’d like my steak well done,” Mindy was saying to the waiter. “With steamed vegetables. Steamed, not sautéed. If I see butter, I’ll send it back.”

“Of course, ma’am,” the waiter said.

If I ever turn out like Mindy Gooch, I will kill myself, Lola thought.

Apparently, Mindy was like this all the time, because Philip and James were ignoring this exchange, caught up in their own one-upmanship.

“What is the function of the artist in today’s society?” James was asking.

“Sometimes I wonder if he really has a point anymore.”

“He?” Mindy interjected. “What about she?”

“He used to reflect man,” James continued. “The artist held up a mirror to society. He could show us the truth or inspire.”

“If it’s about reflecting society, we don’t need artists anymore,” Philip countered. “We have reality TV for that. And reality TV does it better.”

“Has anyone ever seen My Super Sweet 16 ?” Lola asked. “It’s really, really good.”

“I have,” James said.

“And what about The Hills?” Lola asked. “How great is that?”

“What the hell is The Hills?” Mindy grumbled. James caught Lola’s eye and smiled.

After the dinner, James found himself on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, alone with Lola. Mindy was in the bathroom, and Philip had run into some people he knew. Lola was buttoning her coat. James looked up and down the street, trying not to stare at her. “You must be cold,” he said.

“I don’t get cold,” she said.

“Really? My wife is always cold.”

“That’s too bad,” Lola said, not interested in discussing Mindy. “When does your book come out?”

“In six weeks. Exactly,” James said.

“You must be so excited. I can’t wait to read it.”

“Really?” James said in surprise, thinking about how interesting Lola was. Mindy was completely wrong. Lola wasn’t a little chippy at all. She was smart. “I could get you an advance copy,” he said.

“Sure,” she said with what James perceived as genuine enthusiasm.

“I can bring it upstairs. Tomorrow. Will you be home?”

“Come by at ten,” Lola said. “That’s when Philip goes to the gym. I’m always so bored in the mornings.”

“Ten o’clock,” James said. “Sure.”

She took a step closer. James saw that she was shivering. “Are you sure you’re not cold?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Maybe a little.”

“Take my scarf.” He unwound the striped woolen scarf he’d purchased from a street vendor. Glancing into the restaurant and seeing neither Mindy nor Philip, he tenderly placed the scarf around Lola’s neck. “That’s better,” he said. “You can give it back to me tomorrow.”

“I may not give it back at all,” she said, looking up at him. “It’s not every day a girl gets a scarf from a famous author.”

“There you are,” Mindy said, coming out the door with Philip behind her.

“Anyone want a nightcap?” James asked.

“I’m beat,” Mindy said. “It’s only Tuesday, and I’ve got a long week ahead of me.”

“Might be fun,” James said to Philip.

“I’m done, too,” Philip said. He took Lola’s arm. “Some other time, maybe.”

“Sure,” James said. He felt crushed.

Lola and Philip strolled home a few feet ahead of him and Mindy.

Lola walked with youthful energy, tugging on Philip’s arm. Every now and then, she’d look up at Philip and laugh. James wished he knew what was entertaining her. He longed to stroll down the sidewalk with a girl, having fun. Instead, he had Mindy next to him. She was, he knew, freez-ing, refusing to wear a hat because it messed up her hair, walking silently with her shoulders hunched and her arms crossed against the cold. When they reached the lobby of One Fifth, Philip and Lola went right up in the elevator with vague murmurings of doing dinner sometime again in the future. Mindy went into the bedroom and changed into flannel pajamas. James thought more about Lola and how he was going to see her the next day.

“Damn,” Mindy said. “I forgot about Skippy.”

“Don’t worry,” James said. “I’ll walk him.”

He took the dog into the cobblestone street of the Washington Mews next to the building. While Skippy did his business, James stared up at the top of the building, as if he might catch a glimpse of Lola hundreds of feet above his head. All he saw, however, was the imposing facade of gray stone, and when he returned to the apartment, Mindy was in bed, reading The New Yorker. She lowered the magazine when he came in.

“What was that business, anyway?” she asked.

“What business?” he said, taking off his shoes and socks.

“About watching My Super Sweet 16.” Mindy turned off her light.

“Sometimes I really do not get you. At all.”

James didn’t feel tired, so he left the room and went into his office.

He sat at his desk, his feet bare, looking out the small window that framed the tiny courtyard. How many hours had he spent at this desk, looking out this window, and laboring on his book one word at a time? And for what? A lifetime of seconds wasted in front of his computer, endeavor-ing to re-create life when life was all around him.

Something’s got to change, he thought, remembering Lola.

He got into bed and lay stiffly next to his wife. “Mindy?” he said.

“Mmmm?” she asked sleepily.

“I do need sex,” he said. “By the way.”

“Fine, James,” she said into her pillow. “But you’re not getting it from me. Not tonight.”

Mindy fell asleep. James lay awake. Several pernicious sleepless seconds ticked by, then minutes and probably hours. James got up and went into Mindy’s bathroom. He rarely ventured there; if Mindy caught him in her bathroom, she would demand to know what he was “doing in there.” He’d better not be relieving himself, she would warn.

This time he did relieve himself, urinating carefully into the bowl without lifting the toilet seat. Searching for aspirin, he opened Mindy’s medicine cabinet. Like everything else in their lives, it hadn’t been cleaned out in years. There were three nearly empty tubes of toothpaste, a greasy bottle of baby oil, makeup in smudged containers, and a dozen bottles of prescription pills, including three bottles of the antibiotic Cipro dated October 2001 — which Mindy had obviously hoarded for the family in case of an attack after 9/11 — along with a bottle of malaria pills and antihistamines (for bites and rashes, the label read), and a container of sleeping pills, on which DANGER OF OVERDOSE was typed. Here was Mindy, he thought, prepared for any emergency, including the necessity of death. But not sex. He shook his head, then took one of the pills.

Back in his bed, James immediately fell into a brilliant Technicolor dream-filled sleep. He flew over the earth. He visited strange lands where everyone lived on boats. He swam across a warm salty sea. Then he had sex with a movie star. Just as he was about to come, he woke up.

“James?” Mindy said. She was already up, folding laundry before she went to the office. “Are you all right?”

“Sure,” James said.

“You were talking in your sleep. Moaning.”

“Ah,” James said. For a moment, he wished he could go back to his dream. Back to flying and swimming and having sex. But he was seeing Lola, he reminded himself, and got out of bed.

“What are you doing today?” Mindy demanded.

“Don’t know. Stuff,” he said.

“We need paper towels and Windex and garbage bags. And aluminum foil. And dog food for Skippy. The Eukanuba mini-chunks. Mini. It’s very important. He won’t eat the big chunks.”

“Can you make a list?” James asked.

“No, I cannot make a list,” Mindy said. “I’m done with doing everything and being everyone’s mama all the time. If you need a list, make it yourself.”

“But I’m the one doing the shopping,” James protested.

“Yes, and I appreciate it. But you need to do the whole job, not half of it.”

“Huh?” James said, thinking that this was yet another great beginning to a typical day in the life of James Gooch.

“I’ve given it a lot of thought,” Mindy said. “As you know, writing my blog has made me examine things I haven’t wanted to confront.”

Perhaps it had, James thought, but it didn’t appear to have made Mindy any more sensitive. She just went on and on, running people over.

“And I’ve come to the conclusion,” she continued, “that it’s crucial to be married to another adult.” Before he could respond, Mindy rushed out of the room. “Aha!” he heard her exclaim, indicating that she’d had a burst of inspiration about her blog.

“One of the joys of not having it all is not doing it all,” Mindy wrote.

“This morning I had a Network epiphany. ‘I’m not going to take it anymore!’ The constant doing: the laundry, the shopping, the folding, the lists. The endless lists. We all know what that’s like. You make a list for your husband, and then you have to spend as much time making sure he follows the list as it would have taken you to do the job yourself. Well, those days are over. Not in my household! No more.”

Satisfied, she went back into the bedroom for another round of hounding James. “One more thing,” she said. “I know your book comes out in six weeks, but you need to start writing another one. Right away.

If the book is a success, they’re going to want a new one. And if it’s a failure, you need to be working on another project.”

James looked up from his underwear drawer. “I thought you didn’t want to play mama anymore.”

Mindy smiled. “Touché. In that case, I’ll leave your future up to you.

But in the meantime, don’t forget about the mini-chunks.”

After she left, James dressed carefully, changing his jeans and shirt several times, finally settling on an old black turtleneck cashmere sweater that had just the right amount of dash and writerly seriousness. Looking in the mirror, he was pleased with the result. Mindy might not be interested in him, but it didn’t mean other women weren’t.

On his way to the gym that morning, Philip ran into Schiffer Diamond in the deli. She’d been on his mind ever since her phone call on New Year’s Eve. He told himself that he hadn’t done anything wrong, and yet still felt a need to apologize — to explain. “I’ve been meaning to call,” he began.

“You’re always meaning to call, aren’t you?” she replied. Now that Lola was moving in to his apartment, it should have been the absolute end of Schiffer’s feelings for Philip. Unfortunately, her feelings hadn’t gone away, causing an irrational irritation toward him. “Too bad you never do.”

“You could call me,” Philip said.

“Oakland.” She sighed. “Have you noticed we’re grown-ups now?”

“Yeah. Well,” he said, shifting through a display of PowerBars. This reminded him of the dozens of times he’d been in this deli with her in the past — buying ice cream and bread after sex, coffee and bacon and The New York Times on Sundays. There was a comfort and peace in those moments that he couldn’t recall having had again. He’d assumed then that they’d be together forever doing their Sunday-morning routine when they were eighty. But there were the other times, like after a fight, or when she’d left again for L.A. or a movie location after making no plans for their future, when he’d stood here bitterly, buying cigarettes, and promising himself he’d never see her again.

“Listen,” he said.

“Mmmmm?” she asked. She picked up a magazine with her face on the cover.

He smiled. “Do you still collect those things?” he asked.

“Not the way I used to,” she said. She bought the magazine and headed out of the store.

He followed. “The thing about Lola,” he began.

“Philip,” she said. “I told you. It’s none of my business.” But she only ever called him by his name when she was angry with him.

“I want to explain.”

“Don’t.”

“It wasn’t my choice. Her parents lost all their money. She didn’t have anyplace to live. What was I supposed to do — put her out on the street?”

“Her parents lost all their money? Come on, Philip,” she said. “Even you’re not that gullible.”

“They did,” he insisted, realizing how ridiculous it sounded. He un-wrapped his PowerBar and said defensively, “You were with Brumminger.

You can’t be mad at me about Lola.”

“Who said I was mad?”

“You’re the one who’s never around,” Philip said, wondering why women were always so difficult.

“I’m here now, Philip,” she said, stopping on the corner of Eighth Street and Fifth Avenue. “And I’ve been here for months.”

She’s still interested, Philip thought. “So let’s have dinner.”

“With Lola?” Schiffer said.

“No. Not with Lola. How about next Thursday? Enid’s taking Lola to the ballet.”

“That’s an honorable plan,” she said sarcastically.

“It’s two old friends having dinner together. Why can’t we be friends?

Why do you always have to make such a big deal out of everything?”

“Fine, schoolboy,” she said. “We’ll have dinner. I’ll even cook.”

Meanwhile, upstairs in One Fifth, James Gooch was preparing to make love to Lola Fabrikant. Not actual love — not sex, which he knew was most likely beyond the realm of possibility — but verbal love. He wanted her interest and appreciation. At ten-ten, not wanting to appear too eager, he rode the elevator to the thirteenth floor. He was thinking only of Lola, but when she opened the door, some of his attention was diverted by Philip’s apartment and the inevitable comparisons to his own. Oakland’s place was a real apartment. No string of boxlike rooms for him.

There was a foyer and a large living room, a fireplace, hallways, and when James followed Lola into the living room, he caught a glimpse of a proper-sized kitchen with granite countertops and a table large enough for four. The place smacked of old money, personal taste, travel, and a decorator, encapsulating that mix of antique and contemporary. James took in the Oriental rug, African sculpture, and leather club chairs in front of the fireplace. How often did Oakland sit there with Lola, drinking Scotch and making love to her atop the zebra rug? “I brought you my book,” he said awkwardly. “As promised.”

Lola was wearing a fancy T-shirt, even though it was winter — but didn’t all young girls bare their almighty flesh in all kinds of weather these days? — and plaid pants that hugged her bottom, and on her feet, pretty little blue velvet slippers embroidered with a skull and crossbones.

As she held out her hand for the book, she must have caught him looking at her feet, for she touched the heel of one slipper with the toe of the other and said, “They’re last year’s. I wanted to get the ones with the angels or butterflies — but I couldn’t. They’re six hundred dollars, and I couldn’t afford them.” She sighed and sat down on the couch. “I’m poor,” she explained.

James did not know how to respond to this flood of random information. Her cell phone rang, and she answered it, followed by several “ohmigods” and “fucks,” as if he weren’t in the room. James was slightly hurt. In the run-up to this encounter, he’d imagined she truly was interested and the delivery of the book partly ruse, but now he wasn’t sure.

After ten minutes, he gave up and headed toward the door. “Wait,” she said. She pointed to the phone, making a talking motion with her hand as if it were out of her control. She held the phone away from her ear.

“Are you leaving?” she asked James.

“I guess so,” he said.

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t have to go. I’ll be off in a minute.” James doubted this but sat down anyway, as hopeful as an eighteen-year-old boy who still thinks he has a chance to get laid. He watched her pacing the room, fascinated and frightened by her energy, her youth, her anger, and mostly by what she might think about him.

She got off the phone and threw it onto the couch. “So,” she said, turning to him, “two socialite girls got into a fight at a club, and a bunch of people videotaped it and put it on Snarker.”

“Oh,” James said. “Do girls still do those things?”

She looked at him like he was crazy. “Are you kidding? Girls are vicious.”

“I see,” James said. A painful pause ensued. “I brought you my book,” he said again, to fill up the silence.

“I know,” she said. She put her hands over her eyes. “I’m just so confused.”

“You don’t have to read it if you don’t want to,” James said. The book was sitting on the coffee table between them. On the cover was a color rendering of New York harbor circa 1775. The title of the book, Diary of an American Terrorist, was written across the top in raised red type.

She took away her hands and stared at him intently, then, remembering the book, picked it up. “I want to read it. I really do. But I’m upset about Philip.”

“Oh,” James said. For a moment, he’d forgotten all about Philip.

“He’s just so mean.”

“He is?”

She nodded. “Ever since he asked me to move in with him. He keeps criticizing everything I do.” She readjusted herself on the couch. “Like the other day. I was doing a salt scrub in the bathroom, and some of the salt got on the floor. And then I had to do something right away — like go to the drugstore — and Philip came home and slipped on the salt. So when I came back, he started yelling at me about being messy.”

James moved closer to her on the couch. “I’m sure it’s nothing,” he said. “Men are like that. It’s an adjustment period.”

“Really?” she asked, looking at him curiously.

“Sure,” he said, bobbing his head. “It always takes men awhile to get used to things.”

“And that’s especially true of Philip,” she said. “My mother warned me.

When men get older, they get set in their ways, and you just have to work around them.”

“There you go,” James said, wondering how old she thought he was.

“But it’s hard for me,” she continued. “Because I’m the one taking all the risks. I had to give up my apartment. And if things don’t work out, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

“I’m sure Philip loves you,” James said, wishing that Oakland did not and that he could take his place. But that wasn’t possible unless Mindy decided to get rid of him as well.

“Do you really think so?” she asked eagerly. “Did he tell you that?”

“No ...” James said. “But why wouldn’t he?” he added quickly. “You’re so” — he hesitated — “beautiful.”

“Do you really think so?” she asked, as if she were insecure about her looks.

She’s sweet, James thought. She really doesn’t know how gorgeous she is.

“I wish Philip would tell me that,” she said.

“He doesn’t?”

She shook her head sadly. “He never tells me I’m beautiful. And he never says ‘I love you.’ Unless I force him.”

“All men are like that,” James said wisely. “I never tell my wife I love her, either.”

“But you’re married,” Lola protested. “She knows you love her.”

“It’s complicated,” James said, sitting back on the couch and crossing one leg over the other. “It’s always complicated between men and women.”

“But the other night,” Lola began. “You and your wife — you seem so happy together.”

“We have our moments,” James said, although at that moment, he couldn’t remember any. He recrossed his legs, hoping she couldn’t see his hard-on.

“Well,” she said, jumping up, “I’ve got to meet Philip.”

James stood reluctantly. Was the visit over so soon? And just when he thought he was making progress.

“Thank you for bringing me your book,” she said. “I’ll start reading it this afternoon. And I’ll let you know what I think.”

“Great,” James said, thrilled that she wanted to see him again.

At the door, he attempted to kiss her on the cheek. It was an awkward moment, and she turned her head away, so his kiss landed somewhere in her hair. Overcome by the sensation of her hair on his face, he took a step backward, tripping on the corner of the rug.

“Are you okay?” she asked, grabbing his arm.

He adjusted his glasses. “I’m fine.” He smiled.

“See you soon.” She waved and closed the door, then turned back into the apartment. It was cute the way James Gooch was so obviously interested in her. Naturally, she didn’t return his feelings, but James was the kind of man who might do anything she wanted. And he was a best-selling author. He might come in very handy in the future.

Meanwhile, James stood waiting for the elevator, feeling his descending hard-on poke against his pants. Philip Oakland was a fool, he thought fiercely, thinking of Lola’s breasts. Poor kid, she probably had no idea what she was getting into.

On the floor above, Annalisa Rice placed a large red stamp on the corner of an envelope and passed it to her neighbor. Six women, including Connie Brewer, sat around her dining room table, stuffing envelopes for the King David charity ball. The King David Foundation was the Brewers’ personal charity, and had grown from a dinner party at a Wall Street restaurant into a multimedia extravaganza held in the Armory. All the new Wall Streeters wanted to know Sandy Brewer, wanted to rub shoulders with him and do business, and were willing to pay the price by supporting his cause. Connie had asked Annalisa to be a cochair. The requirements were simple: She had to buy two tables at fifty thousand dollars each — for which Paul had happily written a check — and be involved in the planning.

Annalisa had thrown herself into the work with the same passion she’d brought to being a lawyer. She’d studied the financials — last year, the event had raised thirty million dollars, an extraordinary amount, and this year they hoped to raise five million dollars more. She went to tastings and examined floral arrangements, went over lists of invitees, and sat through hours of committee meetings. The work wasn’t exciting, but it gave her a purpose beyond the apartment and kept her mind off Paul. Ever since the trip to China, where Paul and Sandy had done business during the day while Connie and Annalisa were driven around in a chauffeured Mercedes with a guide who took them on tours of temples and museums, Paul had become increasingly secretive and withdrawn. When he was home, he spent most of his time in his office on lengthy phone calls or making graphs on his computer. He refused to discuss his business, saying only that he and Sandy were on the verge of doing a groundbreaking deal with the Chinese that would change the international stock market and make them billions of dollars.

“What do you know about this China deal?” Annalisa asked Connie one afternoon when they were first back in New York.

“I stopped asking those questions a long time ago,” Connie said, flipping open her tiny laptop. “Sandy tried to explain it a few times, and I gave up.”

“Doesn’t it bother you, not knowing what your husband really does?”

Annalisa asked.

“No,” Connie replied, studying a list of names for the benefit.

“What if it’s illegal?” Annalisa said. She didn’t know why this thought crossed her mind.

“Sandy would never do anything illegal. And neither would Paul. He’s your husband, Annalisa. You love him, and he’s wonderful.”

Spending so much time with Connie had given Annalisa a new perspective on her character. Connie was naively romantic, a simple optimist who admired her husband and believed she could get everything she wanted with sugar as opposed to vinegar. She took Sandy’s money for granted, as if she’d never considered what life would be like if she had less. Her attitude was due, Annalisa discovered, not to arrogance but to a lack of complexity. From the age of six, Connie’s life had been dedicated to one thing — dance — and having become a professional dancer at eighteen, she’d never finished high school. Connie wasn’t dumb, but she knew everything by rote. When it came to analysis, she was lost, like a child who has memorized the names of the states but can’t picture where they are in relation to one another.

Having the stronger personality, Annalisa had quickly come to dominate Connie, who seemed to accept Annalisa’s alpha status as a given. She made sure Annalisa was invited to lunches and the nightly cocktail parties in boutiques; she gave her the names of the people who would come to her house to cut and style her hair and perform waxing, manicures, and pedicures — “so you don’t have to be seen in public with that tissue between your toes,” Connie said — and even highlighting. Connie was obsessed with her own image and assumed Annalisa was as well, printing out photographs of Annalisa from the society websites she checked every morning. “There was a great picture of you in Women’s Wear Daily today,” Connie would crow with childish excitement. Or “I saw the best pictures of us from the perfume launch last night.” Then she would dutifully ask if Annalisa wanted her to messenger the prints to her apartment. “It’s okay, Connie, I can look them up myself,” Annalisa would say. Nevertheless, two hours later, the doorman would buzz and an envelope would be delivered upstairs. Annalisa would look at the photos and put them in a drawer. “Do you really care about these things?” she’d asked Connie one day.

“Of course,” Connie had said. “Don’t you?”

“Not really,” Annalisa said. Connie looked hurt, and Annalisa felt bad, having inadvertently dismissed one of Connie’s great pleasures in life. And Connie took such pride in the fact that Annalisa was her friend, boasting to the other women about how Annalisa had written a scholarly book in college and appeared on Charlie Rose, how Annalisa had met the president, and how she had worked in Washington. In turn, Annalisa had become protective of Connie’s feelings. Connie was such a tiny thing, reminding Annalisa of a fairy with her small bones and graceful hands. She loved everything sparkly and pretty and pink and was always nipping into Harry Winston or Lalaounis. Displaying her recent jewelry acquisitions, she would insist that Annalisa try on a yellow diamond ring or a necklace of colored sapphires, pressing Annalisa to borrow the piece.

“No,” Annalisa always said firmly, handing the jewelry back. “I’m not going to walk around wearing a ring worth half a million dollars. What if something happened?”

“But it’s insured,” Connie would say, as if insurance mitigated one from all responsibility.

Now, sitting in her dining room in her grand penthouse apartment, stuffing envelopes with Connie and the other women on the committee, Annalisa glanced around and realized they were like children working on a craft project. She placed another stamp on another envelope as the women chitchatted about the things women always talked about — their children and their husbands, their homes, clothes, hair, a piece of gossip from the night before — the only difference being the scale of their lives. One woman was debating sending her daughter to boarding school in Switzerland; another was building a house on a private island in the Caribbean and was urging the other women to do the same “so they could all be together.” Then one of the women brought up the story in the latest W that had dominated the conversation of this clique for the past three weeks. The story had been a roundup of possible socialites who might take the place of the legendary Mrs. Houghton, and Annalisa had been named third in the running. The story was complimentary, describing Annalisa as the “flame-haired beauty from Washington who had taken New York by storm,” but Annalisa found it embarrassing.

Every time she went out, someone mentioned it, and the story had increased her visibility so that when she appeared at an event, the photographers shouted her name, insisting that she stop and pose and turn.

It was harmless, but it freaked Paul out.

“Why are they taking your picture?” he’d demanded, angrily taking her hand at the end of a short red carpet behind which sat posters with the logos of a fashion magazine and an electronics company.

“I don’t know, Paul,” she’d said. Was it possible Paul was this naive about the world of which he’d insisted they become a part? Billy Litchfield often said these parties were for the women — the dressing up, the showing off of jewelry — so perhaps Paul, being a man, simply didn’t understand. He had always been terrible at anything social, having nearly no ability to read people or make small talk. He became stiff and angry when he was in a situation he didn’t understand, and would thrust his tongue into his cheek, as if to forcibly prevent himself from speaking.

That evening, seeing his cheek bulge, Annalisa had wondered how to explain the rules of this particular society. “It’s like a birthday party, Paul.

Where people take photographs. So they can remember the moment.”

“I don’t like it,” Paul said. “I don’t want pictures of me floating around on the Internet. I don’t want people to know what I look like or where I am.”

Annalisa laughed. “That’s so paranoid, Paul. Everyone has their picture taken. Even Sandy’s photograph is everywhere.”

“I’m not Sandy.”

“Then you shouldn’t go out,” she said.

“I’m not sure you should, either.”

His remark had infuriated her. “Maybe we should move back to Washington, then,” she’d said sharply.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She shook her head, frustrated but knowing it was useless to fight with him, which she’d discovered early on in their marriage. When they disagreed, Paul picked apart the exact words she’d used, managing to divert attention away from the topic so it could never be resolved and they could never agree. Paul wouldn’t give in on principle. “Nothing,” she said.

She did stay home three nights in a row, but Paul wouldn’t make any adjustments to his schedule, so she was alone in the big apartment, wandering from room to room until Paul came home at ten o’clock, ate a peanut-butter sandwich that the housekeeper, Maria, prepared, and went upstairs to work. Billy Litchfield was still at his mother’s house, and Annalisa felt the sharp emptiness of being alone in a big city where everyone else seemed to have something important to do. On the fourth night, she gave up and went out with Connie, and the photographers took more pictures, and Annalisa put the prints in her drawer and didn’t tell Paul.

Now one of the women, obsessed with the story in W, turned to Annalisa and casually said, “How did you get on that list? And only having been in New York for six months.”

“I don’t know,” Annalisa said.

“Because she is going to be the next Mrs. Houghton,” Connie said proudly. “Billy Litchfield says so. Annalisa would make a much better Mrs. Houghton than I would.”

“I certainly would not,” Annalisa said.

“Did Billy put you up for it?” asked one of the women.

“I love Billy, but he can be pushy,” said another.

“I don’t know why anyone cares,” Annalisa said, pressing another stamp onto another envelope. She still had a pile of at least a hundred in front of her. “Mrs. Houghton is dead. Let her rest in peace.”

The other women twittered at the outrageousness of this remark. “No, really,” Annalisa said, getting up to ask Maria to bring in lunch. “I don’t understand why it’s a goal.”

“It’s only because you don’t want it,” one of the women replied. “It’s always the people who don’t want things who get them.”

“That’s right,” Connie agreed. “I wouldn’t give Sandy the time of day when I met him, and we ended up getting married.”

“Maria,” Annalisa said, pushing through the swing door into the kitchen. “Could you serve the Waldorf chicken salad and the cheese biscuits, please?” She returned to the table and began to attack the pile of envelopes again.

“Did you get the parking space yet?” Connie asked idly.

“No,” Annalisa said.

“You have to be adamant with the people in your co-op,” said one of the women. “You can’t let them walk all over you. Did you make it clear you’d pay extra money?”

“It’s not that kind of building.” Annalisa felt the beginnings of a headache. The parking space, like the air conditioners, had been yet another disaster. Paul had gone to the resident who had won the lottery for the parking space, a quiet man who was a heart surgeon at Columbia, and asked if he could buy it from him. The doctor had complained to Mindy, and Mindy had sent Paul a note asking him not to bribe the other residents.

When Paul saw the note, he turned white. “Where did she get this?” he demanded, indicating the paper on which the note was written. It was a sheet from a notepad from the Four Seasons hotel in Bangkok. “She was in our apartment,” Paul said, his voice rising. “That’s where she got the paper. From my desk.”

“Paul, don’t be crazy.”

“Then where did she get this?” Paul demanded.

“I don’t know,” Annalisa said, remembering how she’d given Sam the keys over Christmas. So Sam, who had returned the keys, had given them to his mother after all. But she couldn’t tell Paul that, so she insisted the paper had to be a coincidence. It was another thing she’d had to lie to Paul about, and it made her feel horribly guilty, as if she’d committed a crime. Paul had the locks changed, but it only increased his hatred of Mindy Gooch and made him vow to get “that woman” out of the building one way or another.

Maria brought in the lunch and set it out on the table with silver cut-lery from Asprey and the Tiffany china, which Billy said was still the best.

“Cheese biscuits,” one of the women exclaimed, looking doubtfully at the golden biscuits piled up on the crystal platter. “Annalisa, you shouldn’t have,” she scolded. “I swear to God, you’re trying to make us all fat.”

14

As if he weren’t neurotic enough to begin with, in the weeks leading up to the publication of his book, James became more so. He hated himself for it, having always disdained writers who checked their Amazon and Barnes & Noble ratings every half hour and scoured the Internet for reviews and mentions. His obsession left him harrowed, as if he were an insane person who believed he was being pursued by imaginary wraiths. And then there was Lola. In his occasional moments of sanity, James concluded that she was some kind of master lure, a shiny bright irresistible thing lined with hooks on both sides. On the surface of things, their relationship was still well within the concept of perfectly innocent, for nothing had happened other than the exchange of text messages and a few impromptu visits to his apartment. About twice a week, she would show up at his place unexpectedly, languishing on the folding chair in his office like a sleek black panther. She would have easily caught him under any circumstances, but in this case, the snare was made doubly secure by the fact that she had immediately read his book and wanted to discuss it while at the same time seeking his advice about Philip.

Should she marry Philip? Of course she loved him, but she didn’t want him to marry her under the wrong circumstances — those being that he felt obligated. On this question, James was as torn as Solomon.

He wanted Lola for himself, but he wanted her in the building more, no matter what the circumstances. As he couldn’t kick out his own wife and install Lola, having her upstairs was better than nothing. And so he lied, finding himself in the unexpected position of giving relationship advice to a twenty-two-year-old girl.

“I believe it’s generally understood that one is supposed to give these things a try,” James said, floundering like a fish. “They say you can always get divorced.”

“I could never do that,” she said. “It’s against my religion.”

Which religion was that? James wondered. “But since you say you love Philip ...”

“I say I think I do,” she corrected him. “But I’m only twenty-two. How am I supposed to know? For sure?”

“You can never know for sure,” James said, thinking of Mindy. “A marriage is something that goes on and on unless one person really puts an end to it.”

“You’re so lucky.” She sighed. “You’ve made your decision. And you’re a genius. When your book comes out, you’ll make millions of dollars.”

The secret visits continued for several weeks, and then the Wednesday came when James’s publisher was to receive his early review from The New York Times Book Review. Lola came by the apartment bearing a gift — a stuffed teddy bear “for good luck,” she said — but James was too nervous to acknowledge the gift and absentmindedly shoved it in the back of the overcrowded coat closet.

Everything was riding on his review in the Times. As an author whose previous book had sold seventy-five hundred copies, he would need exorbitant praise to smash through the glass ceiling of previous book sales.

He pictured this smashing as akin to smashing through the roof of Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory in the great glass elevator, and he wondered what was happening to his brain.

“You must be so excited,” Lola said, following him to his office. “You’re going to get a great review. I just know it.”

James didn’t just know it, but poor Lola was too young to understand that usually, things did not work out as one hoped. His mouth was dry with nerves. All morning, his mood had veered between elation and despair. He was now on the downward cycle of this emotional roller coaster. “Everyone always wants to think he’s a winner,” he said thickly. “Everyone thinks if they only behave the way people do in the movies, or on Oprah, or in those so-called inspiring memoirs, and never give up, that they’ll triumph in the end. But it isn’t true.”

“Why shouldn’t it be true?” Lola said with irritating confidence.

“The only guarantee of success is hard work,” James said. “Statistically speaking, that is. But even then, it’s not a sure bet. The truth is, there are no sure bets.”

“That’s why there’s true love,” Lola said.

James’s mood turned and his emotions began to chug upward like the little train that could. What a darling, he thought, looking at Lola. She didn’t know a thing about life, but still, she believed in herself so purely, it was almost inspirational. “It’s all about the numbers,” he said, nodding at this realization. “Numbers upon numbers upon numbers. Maybe it always was,” he went on musingly.

“Was what?” Lola asked. She was bored. The conversation had taken an unexpected turn not only away from her but into an area she equated with taxes. Meaning something she hoped never to think about.

“Ratings. Bottom lines,” James said, thinking he wouldn’t mind seeing Lola’s bottom line. But he couldn’t exactly say that, could he?

Or could he?

“I have to go,” she said. “Hug your teddy. Kiss him for luck. And text me later. I can’t wait to read the review.”

After she left, James got back on the Internet. He checked and rechecked his e-mails, his Amazon ranking, his Google ranking, and looked up his name on any possible media-related website, including The Huffington Post, Snarker, and Defamer. The next five hours passed in this most unpleasant manner.

Finally, at three-fifteen, his phone rang. “We did it,” Redmon said, his voice filled with triumph. “You got the cover of The New York Times Book Review. And they called you a modern-day Melville.”

At first James was too shocked to speak. But after a moment, he found his voice and, as if he had books on the cover of The New York Times Book Review all the time, said, “I’ll take that.”

“Damn right we’ll take it,” Redmon said. “It couldn’t be better if we’d written it ourselves. I’ll have my assistant e-mail you the review.”

James hung up. For the first time in his life, he was a success. “I am a man of triumph,” he said aloud. Then he began to feel dizzy — with joy, he told himself — and then oddly nauseated. He hadn’t thrown up in years, not since he was a boy, but the nausea increased, and he was finally forced to go into the bathroom to perform that most unmasculine of all rituals — spitting up into the toilet bowl.

Still unsteady on his feet, he went back to his office, opened the attachment on his computer, and printed it out, eagerly reading each page as it shot from the machine. His talent was at last recognized, and no matter how many books he sold, it was this acknowledgment of his place in the literary pantheon that mattered. He had won! But what was he supposed to do now? Ah — sharing the news. That’s what one did next.

He began to dial Mindy’s number but hesitated. Plenty of time to tell her, he thought, and there was one person who would appreciate the news more: Lola. She was the one who ought to hear first, who had sweated out this most fateful of days with him. Grabbing the three pages of the review, he went into the lobby, impatiently waiting for the elevator, planning exactly what he might say to her (“I did it”? “You’re going to be proud of me”? “You were right”?) and what might happen afterward. (She would hug him, naturally, and that hug might turn into a kiss, and the kiss might turn into ... ? God only knew.) At last the elevator arrived from the top of the building, and he got on and sent it right back up, looking back and forth from the slow ticking off of the floors to the words printed in the review and now imprinted on his brain: “Modern-day Melville.”

Full of brio, he pounded on the door of Apartment 13B. He heard scuffling inside and, expecting Lola, was shocked when Philip Oakland opened the door. Seeing James, Philip’s face became cold and annoyed.

“Gooch,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

It was, James thought, a scene straight out of the schoolyard. He tried to peer unobtrusively around Philip, hoping to catch sight of Lola. “Can I help you with something?” Philip asked.

James did his best to recover. “I just got a great review in The New York Times Book Review.” The pages flapped uselessly in his hand.

“Congratulations,” Philip said, making as if to close the door.

“Is Lola home?” James asked in desperation. Philip looked at him and gave a half-sardonic, half-pitying laugh as if he at last understood James’s true mission. “Lola?” he said, calling out behind him.

Lola came to the door, wrapped in a silk robe, her hair wet, as if she’d just come out of the shower. “What?” she said. She casually slipped her hand into the back of Philip’s jeans.

James awkwardly held out the pages. “Here’s the review in the Times,” he said. “I thought you might want to see it.”

“Oh, I do,” she said, as nonchalantly as if she hadn’t been in his apartment hours before, had never been in his apartment ever, and hardly knew him at all.

“It’s a good one,” James said, knowing he was beaten but not wanting to acknowledge defeat. “It’s great, as a matter of fact.”

“That’s so cute of you, James,” she said. “Isn’t that cute?” she asked, addressing Philip.

“Very nice,” Philip said, and this time, he did close the door.

James wondered if he’d ever felt quite so foolish.

Back in his apartment, it took him several minutes to recover from this disquieting scene, and it was only because his phone rang. Mindy was on the line. “I just heard,” she said accusingly.

“About what?” he said, falling into their old married habits like a grown-up visiting his parents.

“The cover of The New York Times Book Review?” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me? I have to read about it on a blog?”

James sighed. “I only just found out myself.”

“Aren’t you excited?” Mindy demanded.

“Sure,” he said. He hung up the phone and sat down in his chair. He hadn’t expected the pleasure of his triumph to last forever, but he’d never imagined it would be so short-lived.

Billy Litchfield returned to Manhattan a few days later. His mother was better, but they both understood she’d begun to make the inevitable descent into death. Nevertheless, his month in the remote suburbs on the edge of the Berkshire Mountains had taught him a great deal — namely, how lucky he’d been in life. The reality was that he wasn’t to the manor born, but to the suburb, and the fact that he’d managed to escape the suburbs for over thirty years was extraordinary. His relief at being back in Manhattan, however, was brief. When he walked into his apartment building, he found an eviction notice on his door.

Restitution involved a trip to housing court on State Street, where he mingled among the hoi polloi of Manhattan. This was the real Manhattan, where everyone had a ragged sense of his own importance and his rights as a person. Billy sat among a hundred such people in a molded plastic chair in a windowless room until his case was called.

“What’s your excuse?” the judge asked.

“My mother was sick. I had to leave town to take care of her.”

“That’s negligence.”

“Not from my mother’s point of view.”

The judge frowned but appeared to take pity on him. “Pay the rent due and the fine. And don’t let me see you in here again.”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Billy said. He waited in another long line to pay cash, then took the subway uptown. The warm, putrid air in the subway car clamped down on his mood like a vise. Scanning the faces around him, he was struck by the pointlessness of so many lives. But perhaps it was his own expectations that were too high. Maybe God hadn’t intended for life to have a point beyond reproduction.

In this mood, he met Annalisa in front of One Fifth and got into her newly purchased green Bentley, complete with a chauffeur, which Billy had helped to arrange through a service. Not having seen her in a while, he was struck by her appearance, thinking how much she’d changed from the tomboyish woman he’d met nine months ago. But she still had that knack for appearing natural, as if she were wearing no makeup and hadn’t had her hair styled and wasn’t wearing five-thousand-dollar trousers, all the while, he knew, putting a great deal of time and effort into her appearance. It was no wonder everyone wanted her at their events and the magazines always featured her photographs. But he found himself feeling surprisingly hesitant about her budding success. This caution was new for him, and he wondered if it was due to recent events or to the realization that his own years of striving had added up to nearly nothing. “A photograph is only an image. Here today, gone tomorrow,” he wanted to say. “It won’t satisfy your soul in the long run.” But he didn’t. Why shouldn’t she have her fun now, while she could? There would be plenty of time for regrets later.

The car took them to the Hammer Galleries on Fifth Avenue, where Billy sat on a bench and took in the recent paintings. In the clean white rarefied air of the gallery, he began to feel better. This was why he did what he did, he thought. Although he couldn’t afford art himself, he could surround himself with it through those who could. Annalisa sat next to him, staring at Andrew Wyeth’s famous painting of a woman in a blue room at the beach. “I’ll never understand how a painting can cost forty million dollars,” she said.

“Oh my dear,” he said. “A painting like this is priceless. It’s absolutely unique. The work and vision of one man, and yet in it, one sees the universal creative hand of God.”

“But the money could be spent to really help people,” Annalisa said.

Her argument made Billy feel weary. He’d heard it so many times before. “That’s true, on the surface of things,” he said. “But without art, man is an animal, and a not very attractive animal at that. Greedy, striving, selfish, and murderous. Here is joy and awe and regard.” He indicated the painting. “It’s nourishment for the soul.”

“How are you, Billy?” Annalisa asked. “Really?”

“Just peachy,” Billy replied.

“If there’s anything I can do to help your mother...” She hesitated, knowing how Billy hated talking about his financial situation. But charity got the better of her. “If you need money ... and Paul is making so much ... He says he’s on the verge of making billions” — she smiled as if it were an uncomfortable joke — “and I would never spend ten million dollars on a painting. But if a person needs help ...”

Billy kept his eyes on the Wyeth. “You don’t have to worry about me, my dear. I’ve survived in New York this long, and I reckon I’ll survive a little longer.”

When he got back to his apartment, the phone was ringing. It was his mother. “I asked the girl to bring me cod from the supermarket, and it had turned. You’d think a person would know if fish were bad or not.”

“Oh, Ma,” he said, feeling defeated and frustrated.

“What am I supposed to do?” she asked.

“Can’t you call Laura?” he said, referring to his sister.

“We’re not speaking again. We were only speaking because you were here.”

“I wish you would sell the house and move to a condo in Palm Beach.

Your life would be so much easier.”

“I can’t afford it, Billy,” she said. “And I won’t live with strangers.”

“But you’d have your own apartment.”

“I can’t live in an apartment. I’d go crazy.”

Billy hung up the phone and sighed. His mother had become impossible, as, he supposed, all elderly people were when they refused to accept that their lives had to change. He had hired a private nurse to visit his mother twice a week, as well as a girl who would clean her house and run errands. But it was only a temporary solution. And his mother was right — she couldn’t afford to sell her house and buy a condo in Florida. During his month in the Berkshires, he’d consulted a real estate agent who’d informed him that the housing market had plummeted and his mother’s house was worth maybe three hundred thousand dollars.

If she’d wanted to sell two years ago, it would have been a different story — the house might have sold for four-fifty.

But he hadn’t been concerned about his mother’s situation two years ago. She was okay for the moment, but eventually, she’d have to go into some kind of assisted living facility, the cost of which, he’d been informed by his sister, was upward of five thousand dollars a month. If she sold the house, the money from the sale would last about four years. And then what?

He looked around his little apartment. Was he about to lose his own home as well? Would he, too, become a charity case? The fact that Annalisa Rice had asked him if he needed money was a bad sign. Was it apparent to all how desperate he was? Once people sensed his weakness, he’d be cut off. “Did you hear what happened to Billy Litchfield?” they’d ask. “He lost his apartment and had to leave New York.” They’d talk about it for a little while, but then they’d forget about him. No one cared to think about the people who didn’t make it.

He went into his bedroom and opened the wooden box Mrs.

Houghton had left him. The Cross of Bloody Mary was still in its suede pouch in the hidden compartment. He’d considered renting a safe deposit box in which to store the cross, but he worried that this action alone might arouse suspicion. So he had kept it, as Mrs. Houghton had, on top of his bureau. Unwrapping the cross, he recalled something Mrs.

Houghton had once said: “The problem with art is that it doesn’t solve people’s problems, Billy. Money, on the other hand, does.”

Billy put on his reading glasses and examined the cross. The diamonds were crudely cut by today’s standards and were far from perfect in color or clarity, with cloudy occlusions. But the stones were old and enormous.

The diamond in the middle was at least twenty carats. On the open market, the cross might be worth ten to twenty million dollars.

This particular circumstance dictated that he mustn’t be greedy, however — the more money he demanded, the more likely the sale would attract attention. He would ask for only three million dollars — just enough, he reasoned, to take care of his mother and ensure his relatively modest lifestyle in New York.

Then the reality of what he was about to do caused his body to react in fear. He felt a damp sweat beginning to form in his armpits, and leaving the cross on the bed, he went into the bathroom, took two Xanaxes, and stepped into the shower.

Afterward, patting himself dry with a heavy white towel, he sternly told himself that he must be resolute in his decision. He would have pre-ferred to sell the cross to Annalisa Rice, whom he trusted completely, but Annalisa was a lawyer and would know the transaction was illegal. That left one other choice — Connie Brewer. Connie’s blithe lack of intelligence might prove to be his downfall someday, but on the other hand, she was good at following instructions. As long as he constantly reminded her to keep quiet, he would probably be safe. Wrapping himself in his paisley silk robe, he reminded himself if the thing be done, it best be done quickly. Picking up the phone next to his bed, he called Connie.

She was collecting her children from school but would meet him at four o’clock. At four-thirty, his bell rang, and Connie came fluttering into his cramped apartment. “You’re being so mysterious, Billy,” she said.

He held up the cross.

“What is it?” she squealed, thrusting her head forward to get a better look. “Is it real? Can I hold it?” She put out her hand, and he placed it in her palm. She gasped. “Are those diamonds?”

“I hope so,” he said. “It belonged to a queen.”

“Oh, Billy, I want it. I want it,” she repeated. “I have to have it. It’s mine.” She held the cross to her chest and stood to look at herself in the mirror above the mantelpiece. “It’s speaking to me. Jewelry speaks to me, you know — and it’s saying it belongs to me.”

“I’m so glad you like it,” Billy said casually. Having begun the transaction, he felt calm. “It’s special. It needs the right home.”

Connie became businesslike, as if fearful that the cross might get away from her if she didn’t buy it right away. “How much do you want for it?”

she asked, sitting on the couch and taking her iPhone out of her handbag.

“I can call Sandy right now and have him write you a check.”

“That would be lovely, my dear. But I’m afraid it’s a bit more complicated than that.”

“I want it now,” she insisted. Billy let her take it with her, and was almost relieved to have it out of his apartment. Now all he needed was the money.

He had a cocktail party that evening but stayed home to wait for Sandy.

At eight o’clock, Sandy rapped impatiently on the door. He’d never been in Billy’s apartment, and he looked around, surprised and possibly shocked, Billy thought, by how small it was. “When you get the money, I guess you’ll be buying a bigger place,” Sandy said, opening his briefcase.

“No,” Billy said. “I like it here.”

“Suit yourself,” Sandy said, pulling out a yellow legal pad. He began outlining the particulars, and within twenty minutes, he and Billy had come to an agreement.

Afterward, Billy got into bed, exhausted. Sandy, no doubt, found the need for secrecy strange, but he’d assumed the cross was merely a bibelot, and Billy eccentric. But the arrangements were easy enough, and the money couldn’t be traced to the sale of the cross. Sandy would open an investment account for him at a bank in Geneva, Switzerland, and would transfer the three million dollars into the account in increments of just under ten thousand dollars a day over the next ten months, which would avoid alerting the authorities, who tracked only transactions of over ten thousand dollars. Wrapping up their business, Sandy jokingly suggested Billy make a will.

“Why?” Billy said, taken aback.

“If something happens to you, the government will try to claim the money,” Sandy said, snapping his briefcase shut.

Billy closed his eyes. It was done now, and there was no going back.

He promptly fell asleep and didn’t wake until morning. It was the first night in weeks he’d been able to fall asleep without taking a pill.

Two nights later, however, he had a terrible fright. It was the opening night of Balanchine’s Jewels at the New York City Ballet, and Billy decided to go alone, wanting an evening off from the obligation of having to maintain his persona in front of other people. He should have known better — as soon as one left one’s apartment, there was no privacy in New York — and strolling through the promenade in the State Theater during the first intermission, Billy ran into Enid Merle, accompanied, incongruously, by a cookie-cutter young beauty with enormous teeth.

Enid didn’t introduce the girl and was, in fact, distinctly unfriendly. “Ah, Billy” was all she said before she turned away.

Billy didn’t put too much emphasis on it, reminding himself that Enid could be that way. Besides, he thought, rationalizing her behavior, like everyone else he’d known in New York for years, Enid Merle was finally old.

In the next second, he was distracted by a pat on the shoulder. Billy turned and found himself face-to-face with David Porshie, the director of the Metropolitan Museum. David Porshie was a bald man with olive skin and deep bags under his eyes; at fifty-five, he was relatively young to hold such a position, the hope of the board being that he might remain the head of the Met for another thirty years. “Billy Litchfield,”

David said, folding his arms and looking at Billy scoldingly, as if he’d done something wrong.

Billy was terrified. As the director of the Met, David would know all about the mystery of the Cross of Bloody Mary, and it crossed Billy’s mind — irrationally — that somehow David had found out that Mrs.

Houghton had had the cross and given it to him. But he was only being paranoid, because David said, “I haven’t seen you in ages. Where have you been keeping yourself?”

“I’ve been around,” Billy said cautiously.

“I never see you at our events anymore. Ever since Mrs. Houghton passed — God rest her generous soul — I suppose you don’t think we’re important enough.”

Was he somehow digging for information? Billy wondered. Struggling to maintain his composure, he said, “Not at all. I’ve got my calendar marked for the gala next month. I’m arranging to bring Annalisa Rice.

She and her husband bought Mrs. Houghton’s apartment.”

He didn’t need to say more. David Porshie immediately understood the ramifications of bringing a potential donor into the fold. “Well done,”

he said, pleased. “We can always count on you to have the inside track.”

Billy smiled, but as soon as David walked away, he rapidly made his way to the men’s room. Was it going to be like this from now on? Was he always going to be looking over his shoulder, wondering if people like David Porshie suspected him? Everyone in the art world knew him. He would never be able to avoid them, not as long as he lived in Manhattan.

He felt around in his pocket for an orange pill and slipped one in his mouth, swallowing it dry. It would only take a few minutes for the pill to take effect, but he decided it was too late. The evening was spoiled.

There was nothing to do but go home. And passing through the promenade on his way out, he again spotted Enid Merle. She looked up at him briefly. He waved, but she didn’t wave back.

“Who was that?” Lola asked.

“Who, dear?” Enid said, ordering two glasses of champagne.

“That man who waved to you.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about, dear,” Enid replied. She knew exactly to whom Lola was referring, but she still felt a residual annoyance at Billy Litchfield over Mrs. Houghton’s apartment. She’d always considered Billy a good friend — so he should have come to her first and at least have had the courtesy to inform her of what he was planning to do with the Rices.

But she didn’t want to think about Billy Litchfield or the Rices and their apartment. She was at the ballet now. Attending the ballet was one of the great pleasures in Enid’s life, and she had her rituals. She always sat in the first row in the first ring in seat 113, which she considered the best seat in the house, and she always treated herself to a glass of the most expensive champagne during the intermissions. The elegant first act, “Emeralds,” was over, and after paying for the champagne, she turned to Lola. “What did you think of it, dear?” she asked.

Lola stared at the piece of strawberry in her glass. The ballet, she knew, was supposed to be the height of culture. But the first movement had more than bored her, it had literally made her want to scream and tear her hair out. The slow classical music grated on her nerves; it was so excruciating that for a moment, she actually questioned her wisdom in being with Philip. But she reminded herself that this wasn’t Philip’s fault — he wasn’t even here. He wisely — she realized — was at home.

“I liked it,” Lola said cautiously.

They moved away from the stalls and sat at a small table on the side, sipping their champagne. “Did you?” Enid said. “There’s a great debate over which ballet is better, ‘Emeralds,’ ‘Rubies,’ or ‘Diamonds.’ I personally prefer ‘Diamonds,’ but many people love the fire in ‘Rubies.’ You’ll have to make your own decision.”

“There’s more?” Lola said.

“Hours and hours,” Enid declared happily. “I’ve done quite a bit of thinking on the matter, and I’ve decided ballet is the very opposite of the Internet. Or those things you watch on your phone. What are they — podcasts? Ballet is the antidote to surfing the Web. It forces you to go deep. To think.”

“Or fall asleep,” Lola said, attempting a joke.

Enid ignored this. “Ideally, the ballet should put you into a transportive state. I’ve often said it’s a version of meditation. You’ll feel wonderful afterward.”

Lola took another sip of champagne. It was slightly sour, and the tiny bubbles caught in her throat, but she was determined to keep her dis-pleasure to herself. The evening was an opportunity to make Enid like her — or at the very least, to make Enid understand that she meant to marry Philip, and there was no use in Enid standing in the way. But still, Enid’s invitation to the ballet had taken Lola by surprise. When she and Philip had returned from Mustique, she’d expected Enid would be furious about her moving in. Instead, Enid pretended to be overjoyed and immediately asked her to the ballet. “A girls’ night,” she’d called it, although Enid couldn’t possibly believe she was still a girl, Lola thought.

And then a more disturbing idea had crossed her mind: Perhaps Enid didn’t object to her moving in with Philip at all, and planned to spend lots of time with them. Lola lowered her head over her glass and glanced up at Enid. If that were so, she thought, Enid would be in for a shock. Philip was hers now, and Enid would have to learn that when it came to relationships, three was a crowd.

“Did Philip tell you he danced ballet as a boy?” Enid asked. The thought of Philip in white tights startled Lola. Could this be true, she wondered, or was it merely a sign that Enid was becoming senile? Lola carefully took in Enid’s appearance. Her blond hair was coiffed, and she was wearing a black-and-white plaid suit with a matching emerald necklace and earrings, which Lola coveted and wondered if there was some way she could get Enid to leave to her when she died. Enid did not look particularly crazy — and Lola had to concede that for an eighty-two-year-old woman, Enid looked pretty good.

“No, he didn’t tell me,” Lola said stiffly.

“You two have only just gotten to know each other, so naturally, he hasn’t had time yet to tell you everything. But he was in The Nutcracker as a boy. He played the young prince. It was, and still is, a terribly chic thing to do. Ballet has always been a part of our lives. But you’ll learn that soon enough.”

“I can’t wait,” Lola said, forcing herself to smile.

The bells signaling the end of intermission began to chime, and Enid stood up. “Come along, dear,” she said. “We don’t want to miss the second act.” Holding out her arm, she motioned for Lola to take it, and when she did, Enid leaned heavily on her, shuffling slowly toward the door to the theater and keeping up a relentless prattle. “I’m so happy you love the classic arts,” she said. “The winter season of the ballet only lasts until the end of February, but then there’s the Metropolitan Opera. And of course, there are always wonderful little piano concertos and even poetry readings. So one never need be deprived of culture. And now that you’re living with Philip, it’s so easy. You’re right next door. You can ac-company me to everything.”

Back at One Fifth, Philip was shaving for the second time that day. As he scraped the side of his cheek, he paused, holding up his razor. Something was missing. Noise, he thought. There was no noise. For the first time in months.

He went back to shaving. Splashing his face with water, he felt guilty about sneaking around behind Lola’s back. Then he was irritated. He had every right to do as he pleased — after all, he wasn’t married to the girl.

He was only trying to help her by providing her with a roof over her head until she could figure out her situation.

Passing through the living room on his way out, he noticed that Lola had carelessly left her magazines strewn on the couch. He picked up Brides, then Modern Bride and Elegant Bride. This was too much. He would need to have a talk with her — one of these days — and make it clear where he stood in the relationship. He wasn’t going to be backed into making promises he couldn’t keep. And making his point, he took the magazines into the kitchen, where he pushed them down the incinerator chute, even though this was against the building’s rules.

Then he took the elevator down to the ninth floor.

“Well, there. Look at you,” Schiffer Diamond said, opening her door.

“Look at you,” Philip replied.

She was dressed casually in jeans and a blue-and-white-striped French sailor’s shirt, and she was barefoot. She still had that ability of making simple pieces of clothing look elegant, Philip noted, and unconsciously comparing her to Lola, found Lola lacking.

Schiffer put her hands on either side of his head and kissed him. “It’s been too long, Oakland,” she said.

“I know,” he said, stepping in and looking around. “Wow,” he remarked.

“The apartment is exactly the same.”

“I haven’t done a thing to it. Haven’t had time.”

Philip went into the living room and sat down. He felt wonderfully at home, and strangely young, as if time hadn’t passed at all. He picked up a photograph taken of the two of them in Aspen in the winter of 1991. “I can’t believe you still have this,” he said.

“The place is a time capsule. God, we were kids,” she said, coming over to examine the photograph. “But we looked good together.”

Philip agreed, struck by how happy they seemed. He hadn’t felt that way in a long time. “Jesus,” he said, replacing the photograph. “What happened?”

“We got old, schoolboy,” she said, going into the kitchen. She was, as promised, making him dinner.

“Speak for yourself,” he called back. “I’m not old.”

She popped her head out the door. “Yes, you are. And it’s about time you realized it.”

“What about you?” he said. He joined her in the kitchen, where she was placing cut-up pieces of lemon and onion into the cavity of a chicken. He perched on the top of the stepstool where he’d sat many times before, drinking red wine and watching her prepare her famous roast chicken. She made other things as well, like chili and potato salad and, in the summer, steamed clams and lobsters, but her roast chicken was, to his mind, legendary. The very first Sunday they’d spent together, years and years ago, she’d insisted on cooking a chicken in the tiny oven in the kitchenette of her hotel room. When he teased her about it, pointing out that knowing how to cook wasn’t very women’s lib–ish, she’d replied, “Even a fool ought to know how to feed himself.”

Now, putting the chicken in the oven, she said, “I’ve never lied about my age. The difference between us is that I’m not afraid of getting older.”

“I’m not afraid, either,” he said.

“Of course you are.”

“Why? Because I’m with Lola?”

“It’s not just that,” she said. She went into the living room and put a log in the fireplace. She lit a long match and let it burn for a moment.

“It’s everything, Philip. Your whole demeanor.”

“Maybe I wouldn’t be like this if I had a hit TV show,” he replied teasingly.

“Then why don’t you do something about it? Why don’t you go back to writing books? You haven’t had a book out in six years.”

He sighed. “Writer’s block.”

“Bullshit,” she said, lighting the fire. “You’re scared, schoolboy. You used to be different. Now you’re reduced to writing these silly movies. Bridesmaids Revisited? What is that?”

“I’ve got the screenplay about Bloody Mary. It’s going well,” he said defensively.

“It’s a soap, Philip. Another escape for you. It doesn’t have anything to do with real life.”

“What’s wrong with escapism?”

She shook her head. “You’ve lived in the same apartment your entire life. You haven’t moved an inch. And yet somehow you’ve managed to keep running away.”

“I’m here, aren’t I?” he said, echoing her line to him from the other day.

“You’re here because you need a release from Lola. You need to pretend you have someplace else to go in case it doesn’t work out. Which it won’t. And then where will you be?”

“Is that what you really think?” he asked. “That I’m here to get away from Lola?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m not,” he said.

She walked past him and hit him playfully on the head. “Then why are you here?”

He grabbed her wrist, but she pulled away. “Don’t bore me with that speech about how you can be in love with someone but can’t be with them,” she said.

“Well, it’s true.”

“It’s utter crap,” she replied. “It’s for the weak and uninspired. What’s happened to your passion, Oakland?”

He rolled his eyes. She always had that way of stirring him up, of making him feel potent and inadequate at the same time. But wasn’t that what one wanted from a relationship? “It’s not going to work,” he said.

“Your penis?” she asked jokingly, going into the kitchen to check on the chicken.

“Us,” he said, standing in the door. “We’ll try it again, and it won’t work. Again.”

“So?” she said, opening the oven. She was as hesitant about it as he was, he thought.

“Do you really want to go there — again?” he asked.

“Christ, schoolboy,” she said, holding up an oven mitt. “I’ve had it with convincing you. Can’t you ever make an honest, decent decision on your own?”

“There it is,” he said, coming up behind her. “You’re always acting. Did you ever think about what it would be like if you weren’t pretending to be in a scene?”

“I don’t do that.”

“You do. All the time.”

She tossed the oven mitt on the counter and, closing the oven door, turned to face him. “You’re right.” She paused, holding his eyes with her stare. “I’m always acting. It’s my defense. Most people have one. I, however, have changed.”

“You’re saying you’ve changed?” Philip said, with playful disbelief.

“Are you saying I haven’t?”

“I don’t know,” Philip said. “Why don’t we find out?” He lifted her hair and began kissing the back of her neck.

“Cut it out,” she said, swatting at him.

“Why?” he asked.

“Okay, don’t cut it out,” she said. “Let’s have sex and get it over with.

Then we can go back to being as we were.”

“I may not want to,” he said warningly.

“You will. You always do.”

She ran into the bedroom ahead of him and took off her shirt. She still had those small rounded breasts that always made him crazy. He stripped down to his boxer shorts and joined her. “Remember when we used to do that thing?” she asked.

“Which thing?”

“You know — that crazy thing where you lie on your back and put your feet up and I go on my stomach and pretend I’m flying.”

“You want to do that thing?”

“Come on,” she said, coaxing him onto his back.

For a moment, she balanced above him, putting her arms out to the sides, and then his legs began to buckle, and she collapsed on top of him, laughing. He was laughing, too, at the sheer silliness of it, realizing he hadn’t laughed like this in a long time. It was so simple. He recalled how they would spend hours and hours together, doing nothing but playing on the bed, making up silly words and games. That was all they’d needed.

She sat up, brushing the hair out of her face. There it was, he thought.

He was falling in love with her again. He pulled her down and rolled on top of her. “I may still love you.”

“Aren’t you supposed to say that after we have sex?” she murmured.

“I’m saying it before.” In unison, they slipped off their underpants, and she held his penis as if weighing his hard-on.

“I want to feel you inside me,” she said.

He slipped in, and for the first few seconds, they didn’t move. She sighed, and her head fell back. “Just do it,” she said.

He began moving, going in deeper and deeper, and it was one of those times when they were immediately in sync. She began to orgasm, screaming out freely, and he started to come himself, and when they were finished, fifteen minutes later, they looked at each other in awe. “That was amazing,” he said.

She wriggled out from under him and sat on the edge of the bed, looking back at him. Then she lay back, resting her head on his chest. “Now what?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Maybe we shouldn’t have done it.”

“Why?” he asked. “Are you going to run away again?”

He got up and went into the bathroom. “No,” she said, sitting up. She followed him and watched while he peed, crossing her arms. “But what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“You want to eat?”

“Yes,” he said gratefully.

“Good. I’ve been dying to tell you about our new director. He doesn’t speak. Only uses hand motions. So I’ve named him Béla Lugosi.”

Philip opened a bottle of Shiraz, and seated himself on the stepstool, watching her while he sipped the wine. Once again, he was overwhelmed by a deep sense of contentment that seemed to make time stand still.

There was only him and her in this kitchen at this moment. He’d always been here, he thought, and he always would be. He made a decision. “I’m going to tell Lola it’s over,” he said.

The ballet didn’t end until after eleven, so Lola and Enid got back to One Fifth close to midnight. Lola was exhausted, but Enid’s energy hadn’t flagged, despite her insistence on leaning on Lola for physical support.

Halfway through the ballet, she’d asked Lola to take charge of her handbag, claiming it was too heavy — the ancient crocodile bag did weigh at least five pounds — and Lola was forced to spend the rest of the evening fishing out Enid’s reading glasses, lipstick, and powder. The third time Enid asked for her compact, Lola had realized Enid was doing it on purpose to try to irritate her. Why else would the old woman be so insistent on continually touching up her makeup?

But then riding down Fifth Avenue in the taxi, they’d come upon the mighty glory of One Fifth, and Lola decided the evening had been worth all the trouble. Reaching the thirteenth floor, Lola found Enid’s keys, opened her door, and handed Enid back her handbag. Enid rewarded her with a kiss on the cheek, something she’d never done.

“Good night, dear,” she said. “I had such a good time. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Do we have plans?” Lola asked.

“No. But now that you’re living with Philip, we don’t need plans. I’ll knock on your door. Maybe we can go for a walk.”

Great, Lola thought, going into Philip’s apartment. Tomorrow was going to be about twenty degrees. “Philip?” she called.

When she didn’t get an answer, she went through the apartment, looking for him. Philip wasn’t home. This was perplexing. She called his cell phone and heard it ringing in his office. He’d probably gone to the deli and would be back in a minute. She sat down on the couch, took off her shoes, and kicked them under the coffee table. Then she noticed that her bridal magazines were missing.

She stood up, frowning, and began searching for them. There had been a dress in one of the magazines that was particularly fetching — it was beaded and strapless, with a long train that flowed out when you walked, and pooled elegantly around the feet when you stood still. If she couldn’t find the magazine, she might never find that particular dress, because the bridal magazines didn’t put all their pages on a website, so prospective brides actually had to buy the publication. She looked in the kitchen and then Philip’s office, coming to the conclusion that he had accidentally thrown them out. She would have to scold him for it — he had to learn to respect her things. Going back into the kitchen, she poured the last of a bottle of white wine into a glass, then opened the garbage chute to dispose of the bottle. Philip had repeatedly told her not to put glass down the chute, but she refused to follow his orders. Recycling was such a pain, and besides, it was completely useless. The planet had already been ruined by previous generations.

And lo, stuck in the top of the narrow chute was one of her magazines. She pulled it out and, smacking it on the counter, glared. So Philip had thrown out her magazines on purpose. What did that mean?

Taking the glass of wine into the bathroom, she began running a bath.

She assumed Philip wanted to marry her — why wouldn’t he? — but that it would take some urging to pull it off. What she’d been telling James Gooch about Philip wasn’t true at all. She was perfectly happy to force Philip down the aisle if she had to. Everyone knew that men needed to be marched to the church, but once they were, they were grateful. If necessary, she was even willing to get pregnant. Celebrities were always getting pregnant first and married later, and if she had a baby, it could be dressed up like a little bridesmaid and carried down the aisle in a basket by her mother.

She was stripped down to her bra and panties when she heard the key turn in the lock. Without covering up, she hurried into the foyer. Philip came in, unencumbered, she noted, by a deli bag, and wouldn’t look her in the eye. Something was wrong.

“Where were you?” she asked, then adjusted her attitude to make it seem like she didn’t care. “I had the best time with Enid at the ballet. It was so beautiful. I didn’t know it would be like that. And ‘Diamonds’ was so cute. And Enid said you danced in The Nutcracker when you were a kid. Why didn’t you tell me?”

He turned around and closed the door. When he turned back, he appeared to register the fact that she wasn’t dressed. Usually, this excited him, and he’d put his hand on her breast. But now he shook his head.

“Lola.” He sighed.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Put on your clothes and let’s talk.”

“I can’t,” she said gaily, as if everything were fine. “I was just getting into a bath. You’ll have to talk to me while I’m under bubbles.” Before he could say more, she darted away.

Philip went into the kitchen and put his hands in his hair. Riding up in the elevator from Schiffer Diamond’s apartment, he’d somehow imagined this would be easy, or at least straightforward. He would tell Lola the truth — that he didn’t think it was a good idea if they lived together after all — and he would offer her money. She still had two weeks left on the lease of her old apartment, and he would take over the rent for six months until she found a regular job. He would even pay her cell phone bills and take her shopping on Madison Avenue if necessary. He considered telling her the whole truth — that he was in love with someone else — but decided that might be too cruel. Nevertheless, she was going to make this as difficult as possible. He was slightly drunk from having consumed nearly two bottles of wine with Schiffer, but feeling in need of an extra dose of Dutch courage, he poured himself a glass of vodka over ice. He took a swig and went into the bathroom.

Lola was soaping her breasts. He tried not to be distracted by her pink nipples, pert from their immersion in hot water. He flipped down the toilet seat and sat. “So where were you, anyway?” Lola asked playfully, flicking soap bubbles at his leg.

He took another sip of vodka. “I was with Schiffer Diamond. I had dinner with her in her apartment.” This should have triggered the impending discussion about their own relationship, but instead, Lola barely reacted.

“That’s nice,” she said, drawing out the I in “nice.” “Did you have a good time?”

He nodded, wondering why she wasn’t more upset.

“You’re old friends,” she said and smiled. “Why shouldn’t you have dinner? Even though you said you were going to work. I guess you got hungry.”

“It wasn’t exactly like that,” Philip said ominously.

Lola suddenly understood that Philip was about to break up with her — probably over Schiffer Diamond. The thought made her insides twist in alarm, but she couldn’t let Philip know. She ducked under the water for a second to get her bearings. If she could somehow prevent Philip from breaking up with her now, at this moment, his desire to be rid of her might pass, and they could go on as before. When she popped out of the water, she had a plan.

“I’m so glad you’re home,” she said, grabbing a pumice stone and briskly sanding her heels. “I’ve had some bad news. My mother just called, and she needs me to go to Atlanta for a few days. Or longer.

Maybe a week. She’s not doing very well. You know the bank took the house?”

“I know,” Philip said. The financial woes of Lola’s family terrified him, constantly pulling him back into this relationship and her dependency on him.

“So anyway,” Lola continued, examining her feet as if trying to be brave about the situation, “I know you’re leaving for L.A. in three days. I don’t want to upset you, but I won’t be able to come after all. It’s too far away, and my mother might need me. But I’ll be here when you get back,” she promised, as if this were a consolation prize.

“About that...” Philip began.

She shook her head. “I know. It’s kind of a bummer. But let’s not talk about it, because it makes me sad. And I have to go to Atlanta first thing in the morning. And I need a really, really big favor. Do you mind if I borrow a thousand dollars for my plane ticket?”

“No.” Philip sighed, resigning himself to the fact that he couldn’t have the discussion now, but also somewhat relieved. She was leaving tomorrow anyway. Maybe she wouldn’t come back, and there would be no need to break up with her after all.“It’s no problem,” he said. “I don’t want you to worry. You help your mother — that’s what’s most important.”

She stood up, and with water and soap sliding off her in a slurry mess, she embraced him. “Oh, Philip,” she said. “I love you so much.”

She moved her hands down his chest and started trying to unbutton his jeans. He put his hands on hers and pulled them away. “Not now, Kitty,” he said. “You’re upset. It wouldn’t be fun for either of us.”

“Okay, baby,” she said, drying herself off. Playing to the moment, she went into the bedroom and began packing wearily, as if someone had died and she was going to a funeral. Then she went into Philip’s office and wrote a note. “Could you give this to Enid?” she asked, handing it to him.

“It’s a thank-you for the ballet. I told Enid I would see her tomorrow, and I don’t want her to think I forgot about her.”

Early the next morning, Beetelle Fabrikant was surprised to get a phone call from Lola, who was at La Guardia airport, about to board a plane for Atlanta. “Is everything all right?” Beetelle asked, her voice rising in panic.

“It’s fine, Mother,” Lola replied impatiently. “I told Philip I was worried about you, and he gave me money to visit you for the weekend.”

Lola hung up and paced the small waiting area. Now was the worst possible time to leave Philip alone, when he was all hopped up on Schiffer Diamond and separated from her by only four floors. But if Lola had stayed, he would have tried to break up with her. And then she would have had to cry and beg. Once you did that with a man, it was as good as over. The man might keep you around, but he would never respect you. It wasn’t fair, she thought, scuffing her foot on the dirty airport carpet. She was young and beautiful, and she and Philip had great sex. What more did he want?

Her perambulations took her by a small newsstand, where Schiffer Diamond’s face stared out at her from the cover of Harper’s Bazaar. She was wearing a blue halter-necked dress and was in one of those model-y type poses with her back arched and her hand on her hip, her long dark hair glossy and straight. I hate her, Lola thought, having a visceral reaction to the photograph, but she bought the magazine anyway, and pored over the cover, looking for flaws in Schiffer’s face. For a moment, Lola despaired.

How could she compete with a movie star?

Her flight was called on the loudspeaker, and Lola went to stand in line at the gate. She glanced up at the TV monitor, which was broadcasting one of the morning shows, and there was Schiffer Diamond again. This time she was wearing a plain white shirt with the collar turned up, a profusion of turquoise necklaces, and slim black pants. As she stared at the monitor, Lola felt a vein in her throat thumping in anger.

“I came back to New York to start over,” Schiffer was saying to the host. “New Yorkers are wonderful, and I’m having a great time.”

“With my boyfriend!” Lola wanted to scream.

Someone bumped her. “Are you going to get on the plane?” the man behind her asked.

Jerking her Louis Vuitton rollerboard, Lola shuffled through first class to the back of the plane. If she were Schiffer Diamond, she’d be riding in the front, she thought bitterly, heaving her suitcase into the overhead compartment. She arranged herself in the tiny seat, smoothing down her jeans and kicking off her shoes. She examined the cover of Harper’s Bazaar again and nearly wanted to cry. Why was Schiffer Diamond ruining her dream?

Lola leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. She wasn’t finished yet, she reminded herself. Philip hadn’t broken up with her, and on Sunday, he was going to Los Angeles for two weeks. He’d be busy with his movie — too busy, she hoped, to think about Schiffer Diamond. And while he was away, she would move the last of her things into his apartment. When he returned, there she’d be.

Arriving at the house in Windsor Pines, Lola saw that the situation had indeed taken a turn for the worse. Most of the furniture was gone, and all the precious artifacts from her childhood — her plastic ponies and Barbie Fun House and even her extensive collection of Beanie Babies —

had been sold in a tag sale. All that remained was her bed, with its lacy white bedskirt and frilly pink comforter. This time around, Beetelle insisted on being determinedly cheerful. She dragged Lola to a barbecue at the neighbors’, where she told everyone that she and Cem were so happy to be moving to a condo where they wouldn’t have to worry about upkeep on a house. The neighbors tried not to acknowledge the Fabrikants’ situation by showing off pictures of their new grandson. Not to be outdone, Beetelle exclaimed how Lola herself was almost engaged to the famous writer Philip Oakland. “Isn’t he a bit old?” said one of the women with disapproval.

Lola gave her a dirty look, deciding the woman was jealous because her own daughter had only married a local boy who ran a landscaping business. “He’s forty-five,” Lola said. “And he knows movie stars.”

“Everyone knows actresses are secretly whores,” the woman remarked.

“That’s always what my mother said, anyway.”

“Lola is very sophisticated,” Beetelle jumped in. “She was always more advanced than the other girls.” Then they all started talking about their little investments in the stock market and the falling prices of their homes.

This was both depressing and boring. Glaring at the woman who’d made the remark about Philip, Lola realized that they were all just petty and narrow-minded. How had she ever lived here?

Later, lying in her bed in her barren room, Lola realized she would never have to sleep in this bed, in this room, in this house, ever again. And looking around the nearly empty space, she decided she wouldn’t miss it one bit.

15

Connie Brewer promised Billy never to wear the Cross of Bloody Mary. She kept her promise, but as Billy hadn’t said anything about framing it and putting it on the wall, two weeks after Sandy purchased it for her, she took the cross to a renowned framer on Madison Avenue. He was an elderly man of at least eighty, still elegant with slicked-back gray hair and a yellow cravat at his neck. He examined the cross in its soft suede wrapping and looked at her curiously. “Where did you get this?” he asked.

“It was a gift,” Connie said. “From my husband.”

“Where did he get it?”

“I have no idea,” she said firmly. She wondered if she’d made a mis -

take by taking the cross out of the apartment, but then the framer said nothing more, and Connie forgot about it. The framer, however, didn’t.

He told a dealer, and the dealer told a client, and soon a rumor began to circulate in the art world that the Brewers now possessed the Cross of Bloody Mary.

Being a generous girl, Connie naturally wanted to share her treasure with her friends. On an afternoon in late February after a lunch at La Goulue, she invited Annalisa back to her apartment. The Brewers lived on Park Avenue in an apartment in which two classic-six units were combined into one sprawling apartment with five bedrooms, two nannies’ rooms, and an enormous living room where the Brewers hosted a Christmas party every year, with Sandy dressed up as Santa and Connie as one of his elves, in a red velvet jumpsuit with white mink cuffs.

“I have to show you something, but you can’t tell anyone,” Connie said, leading Annalisa through the apartment to her sitting room, located off the master bedroom. In consideration of Billy Litchfield’s insistence that the cross remain a secret, she had hung the framed artifact in this room, accessible only through the master bedroom, making it the most private room in the apartment. No one was allowed in except the maids. The room was Connie’s fantasy, done up in pink and light blue silks, with gilt mirrors and a Venetian chaise, a window seat filled with pillows, and wallpaper with hand-painted butterflies. Annalisa had been in this room twice, and she could never decide if it was beautiful or hideous.

“Sandy bought it for me,” Connie whispered, indicating the cross. Annalisa took a step closer, politely examining the piece, which was displayed against dark blue velvet. She didn’t have Connie’s interest in or appreciation for jewelry, but she said kindly, “It’s gorgeous. What is it?”

“It belonged to Queen Mary. A gift from the pope for keeping England Catholic. It’s invaluable.”

“If it’s real, it probably belongs in a museum.”

“Well, it does,” Connie admitted. “But so many antiquities are owned by private individuals these days. And I don’t think it’s wrong for the rich to guard the treasures of the past — I feel it’s our duty. It’s such an important piece. Historically, aesthetically ...”

“More important than your crocodile Birkin bag?” Annalisa teased.

She didn’t for a moment think the cross was real. Billy had told her that Sandy had been buying Connie so much jewelry lately, he was developing a reputation as an easy mark. Knowing Sandy, he’d probably bought the piece from a shady dealer and had made the guy’s day.

“Handbags are not important anymore,” Connie admonished her. “It said so in Vogue. Right now it’s all about having something no one else possesses. It’s about the one of a kind. The unique.”

Annalisa lay down on the Venetian chaise and yawned. She’d had two glasses of champagne at lunch and was feeling sleepy. “I thought Queen Mary was evil. Didn’t she have her sister killed? Or have I got the story wrong? You’d better be careful, Connie. The cross might bring you bad luck.”

Meanwhile, a few blocks away in the basement offices of the Metropolitan Museum, David Porshie, Billy Litchfield’s old friend, hung up the phone. He had just been informed about the rumor of the existence of the Cross of Bloody Mary, which was said to be in the hands of a couple named Sandy and Connie Brewer. He sat back in his swivel chair, folding his hands under his chin. Could it be true? he wondered.

David was well aware of the mysterious disappearance of the cross in the fifties. Every year it appeared on a list of items missing from the museum. The suspicion had always been that Mrs. Houghton purloined the cross herself, but as she was beyond reproach and, more importantly, donated two million dollars a year to the museum, the matter had never been thoroughly investigated.

But now that Mrs. Houghton was dead, perhaps it was time — especially as the cross had surfaced shortly after her death. Looking up Sandy and Connie Brewer on the Internet, David discovered exactly who they were. Sandy was a hedge-fund manager, of all things — typical that an arriviste should end up with such a rare and precious antiquity — and while he and his wife, Connie, deemed themselves “important collectors,” David suspected they were of the new-money ilk who paid ridiculous prices for what David considered junk. People like the Brewers were not generally of interest to people like himself, a steward of the great Metropolitan Museum, except in how much money one might extract from them at the gala.

He couldn’t, however, simply call up the Brewers and ask if they had the cross. Whoever sold it to them would have been smart enough to warn them of its provenance. Not that a shady past ever stopped a buyer. There was a certain psychology in the purchaser of such an item that wasn’t dis-similar to the buyer of illegal drugs. There was the thrill of breaking the law and the high of getting away with it. Unlike the drug buyer, however, the illegal-antiquities purchaser had the continued elation of owning the piece, along with a feeling of immortality. It was as if mere proximity to such a piece might also convey everlasting life to its owner. And so, David Porshie knew, he was looking for a specific personality type along with the cross. The question was only how to make such a discovery.

David was prepared to be patient in his pursuit — after all, the cross had been missing for nearly sixty years — and what he needed was a mole. Immediately, he thought of Billy Litchfield. They’d been at Harvard together.

Billy Litchfield knew quite a bit about art and even more about people.

He found Billy’s cell number on a guest list from the events office and called him up the next morning. Billy was in a taxi, coincidentally on his way to Connie Brewer’s to discuss the Basel art fair. When Billy heard David’s voice on the phone, he felt his whole body redden in fear, but he managed to keep his voice steady. “How are you, David?” he asked.

“I’m well,” David replied. “I was thinking about what you said at the ballet. About potential new patrons. We’re looking for some fresh blood to donate money to a new wing. The names Sandy and Connie Brewer came up. I thought you might know them.”

“I do indeed,” Billy said evenly.

“That’s wonderful,” David said. “Could you arrange a small dinner?

Nothing too fancy, maybe at Twenty-One. And Billy?” he added. “If you don’t mind, could you keep the purpose of the dinner quiet? You know how people get if they suspect you’re going to ask them for money.”

“Of course,” Billy said. “It’s just between us.” He hung up the phone in a panic. The taxi felt like a prison cell. He began hyperventilating.

“Could you stop the cab, please?” he asked, tapping on the partition.

He stumbled out onto the sidewalk, looking for the nearest coffee shop. Finding one on the corner, he sat down at the counter, trying to catch his breath while ordering a ginger ale. How much did David Porshie know, and how had he found out? Billy swallowed a Xanax, and while he waited for the pill to take effect, tried to think logically. Was it possible David only wanted to meet the Brewers for the reason he’d stated? Billy thought not. The Metropolitan Museum was the last bas-tion of old money, although recently, they’d had to redefine “old” as meaning twenty years instead of a hundred.

“Connie, what have you done?” Billy asked when he got to the Brewers’ apartment. “Where’s the cross?”

Following her to the inner chamber, he regarded the framed cross with horror. “How many people have seen this?” he asked.

“Oh, Billy, don’t worry,” she said. “Only Sandy. And the maids. And Annalisa Rice.”

“And the framer,” Billy pointed out. “Whom did you take it to?” Connie named the man. “My God,” Billy said, sitting on the edge of the chaise.

“He’ll tell everyone.”

“But how does he even know what it is?” Connie asked. “I didn’t tell him.”

“Did you tell him how you came to have it?” Billy asked.

“Of course not,” Connie assured him. “I haven’t told anyone.”

“Listen, Connie. You have to put it away. Take it off your wall and put it in a safe. I told you, if anyone finds out about this, we could all go to jail.”

“People like us don’t go to jail,” Connie countered.

“Yes, we do. It happens all the time these days.” Billy sighed.

Connie took the cross off the wall. “Look,” she said, taking it to her closet, “I’m putting it away.”

“Promise me you’ll put it in a vault. It’s too valuable to be left in a closet.”

“It’s too valuable to be hidden,” Connie objected. “If I can’t look at it, what’s the point?”

“We’ll discuss that later,” Billy said. “After you put it away.” It was possible, Billy thought with a glimmer of hope, that David Porshie didn’t know about the cross — if he did, Billy reasoned, he’d be sending detectives, not arranging dinner parties. Nevertheless, Billy would have to make sure the dinner took place. If he didn’t, it would further raise David’s suspicions.

“We’re going to have dinner with David Porshie from the Met,” Billy said.

“And you’re not to say a word about the cross — neither you nor Sandy.

Even if he asks you point-blank.”

“We’ve never heard of it,” Connie said.

Billy passed his hand over the top of his bald head. Despite all his efforts to stay in New York, he saw his future. As soon as the three million dollars were available, he would have to leave the country. He’d be forced to settle in a place like Buenos Aires, where there were no extradition laws. Billy shuddered. Involuntarily, he said aloud, “I hate palm trees.”

“What?” Connie said, thinking she’d missed a part of the conversation.

“Nothing, my dear,” Billy said quickly. “I have a lot on my mind.”

Coming out of Connie’s building on Seventy-eighth Street, he got into a taxi and instructed the driver to take Fifth Avenue downtown. The traffic was backed up at Sixty-sixth Street, but Billy didn’t mind. The taxi was one of the brand-new SUV types and smelled of fresh plastic; from the mouth of the driver came a musical patter as he conversed on his cell phone. If only, Billy thought, he could stay in this taxi forever, inching down Fifth Avenue past all the familiar landmarks: the castle in Central Park, the Sherry-Netherland, where he’d lunched at Cipriani nearly every day for fifteen years, the Plaza, Bergdorf Goodman, Saks, the New York Public Library. His nostalgia engulfed him in a haze of pleasure and sweet, aching bitterness. How could he ever leave his beloved Manhattan?

His phone rang. “You’ll be there tonight, won’t you, Billy boy?” Schiffer Diamond asked.

“Yes. Yes, of course,” Billy said, although given the circumstances, it had crossed his mind that he should cancel all his events for the next week and lie low.

“Good, because I can’t stand these things,” Schiffer said. “I’m going to have to talk to a bunch of strangers and be nice to all of them. I hate being trotted out like a show pony.”

“Then don’t go,” Billy said simply.

“Billy Bob, what’s wrong with you? I have to go. If I cancel, they’ll write about what a bitch I am. Maybe I should be a bitch from now on.

The lonely diva. Ah, Billy,” she said, sounding slightly bitter, which wasn’t like her. “Where are all the men in this town?” She hung up.

Two hours later, Schiffer Diamond sat on a stool in her bathroom, having her hair and makeup done for the fourth or fifth time that day, while her publicist, Karen, sat out in the living room, reading magazines and talking on her cell phone while she waited for Schiffer to get ready. The hair and makeup people fluttered around the bathroom, wanting to make conversation, but Schiffer wasn’t in the mood. She was feeling foul. Coming into One Fifth that very afternoon, she’d run into none other than Lola Fabrikant, who was scuttling into the building like a criminal.

Perhaps “scuttling” wasn’t exactly the right word, as Lola hadn’t scuttled but had walked in pulling her Louis Vuitton rollerboard behind her like she owned the place. Schiffer was momentarily shocked. Hadn’t Philip broken up with her? Apparently, he hadn’t had the guts. Damn Oakland, she thought. Why was he so weak?

Lola came in while Schiffer was waiting for the elevator; as a consequence, Schiffer was forced to ride up with her. Lola gushed over Schiffer as if they were best friends, asking how the TV show was going and saying how much she liked Schiffer’s hair — although it was the same as always — and being careful to make no mention of Philip. So Schiffer brought him up. “Philip told me your parents are having some trouble,” she said.

Lola sighed dramatically. “It’s been awful,” she said. “If it weren’t for Philip, I don’t know what we’d do.”

“Philip’s a peach,” Schiffer remarked, and Lola agreed. Then, rubbing salt into the wound, Lola added, “I’m so lucky to have him.”

Now, thinking about the encounter, Schiffer glared at herself in the mirror. “You’re done,” the makeup artist said, flicking Schiffer’s nose with powder.

“Thank you,” Schiffer said. She went into the bedroom, put on the borrowed dress and the borrowed jewelry, and called to her publicist to help zip her up. She put her hands on her waist and exhaled. “I’m thinking about moving out of this building,” she said. “I need a bigger place.”

“Why don’t you get a bigger place here? It’s such a great building,”

Karen said.

“I’m sick of it. All these new people. It’s not like it used to be.”

“Someone’s in a mood,” Karen said.

“Really? Who?” Schiffer asked.

Then Schiffer, the publicist, and the hair and makeup people went downstairs and got into the back of a waiting limousine. Karen opened her bag, took out several sheets of paper, and began consulting her notes. “Let-terman’s confirmed for Tuesday, and Michael Kors is sending three dresses for you to try. Meryl Streep’s people are wondering if you’ll do a poetry reading on April twenty-second. I think it’s a good idea because it’s Meryl and it’s classy. On Wednesday, your call time is one P.M., so I scheduled the Marie Claire photo shoot for six in the morning, to get that out of the way — the reporter will come to the set on Thursday to interview you. On Friday evening, the president of Boucheron is in town, and he’s invited you to a private dinner for twenty. I think you should do that, too — it can’t hurt, and they might want to use you in an advertising campaign. And on Saturday afternoon, the network wants to shoot promos. I’m trying to push the call time to the afternoon so you can get some rest in the morning.”

“Thank you,” Schiffer said.

“What do you think about Meryl?”

“It’s so far away. I don’t even know if I’ll be alive on April twenty-second.”

“I’ll say yes,” Karen said.

The makeup artist held up a tube of lip gloss, and Schiffer leaned forward so the woman could touch up her lips. She turned her head, and the stylist fluffed her hair and sprayed it. “What’s the exact name of the organization again?” Schiffer said.

“The International Council of Shoe Designers. ICSD. The money is going to a retirement fund for shoe workers. You’re giving the award to Christian Louboutin, and you’ll be sitting at his table. Your remarks are on the teleprompter. Do you want to go over them beforehand?”

“No,” Schiffer said.

The car turned onto Forty-second Street. “Schiffer Diamond is arriving,” Karen said into her phone. “We’re a minute away.” She put down the phone and looked at the line of Town Cars and the photographers and the crowd of bystanders roped off from the entrance by police barricades. “Everyone loves shoes,” she said, shaking her head.

“Is Billy Litchfield here?” Schiffer asked.

“I’ll find out,” Karen said. She talked into her cell phone like it was a walkie-talkie. “Has Billy Litchfield arrived? Well, can you find out?” She nodded and snapped the phone shut. “He’s inside.”

The car was waved forward by two security men, one of whom opened the door. Karen got out first and, after consulting briefly with two women dressed in black and wearing headsets, motioned for Schiffer to come out of the car. A ripple of excitement went through the crowd, and the blaz-ing flashes began.

Schiffer found Billy Litchfield waiting just inside the door. “Another night in Manhattan, eh, Billy?” she said, taking his arm. Immediately, she was accosted by a young woman from Women’s Wear Daily who asked if she could interview her, and then a young man from New York magazine, and it was another half hour before she and Billy were able to escape to their table. Making their way through the crowd, Schiffer said, “Philip is still seeing that Lola Fabrikant.”

“Do you care?” Billy said.

“I shouldn’t.”

“Don’t. Brumminger is at our table.”

“He keeps turning up like a bad penny, doesn’t he?”

“More like a million-dollar bill,” Billy said. “You can have any man you want. You know that.”

“Actually, I can’t. There’s only a certain kind of man who will deal with this,” Schiffer said, indicating the event. “And he’s not necessarily the kind of man one wants.” At the table, she greeted Brumminger, who was seated opposite her on the other side of the centerpiece. “We missed you in Saint Barths,” he said, taking her hands.

“I should have come,” she said.

“We had a great group on the yacht. I’m determined to get you on it.

I don’t give up easily.”

“Please don’t,” she said, and went to her seat. A plate of salad with a couple of pieces of lobster was already set at her place. She opened her napkin and picked up her fork, realizing she hadn’t eaten all day, but the head of the ICSD came over, insisting on introducing her to a man whose name she didn’t catch, and then a woman came over who claimed to have known her from twenty years ago, and then two young women rushed over and said they were fans and asked her to sign their programs. Then Karen arrived and informed her it was time to go backstage to get ready for her speech, and she got up and went behind the platform to wait with the other celebrities, who were being lined up by handlers and mostly ignoring each other. “Do you need anything?” Karen asked, fussing. “Water?

I could bring you your wine from the table.”

“I’m fine,” Schiffer said. The program began, and she stood by herself, waiting to go on. She could see the crowd through a crack in the plasterboard, their eager and politely bored faces lifted in the semi-darkness.

She felt a creeping loneliness.

Years and years ago, she and Philip would go to these kinds of events and have fun. But perhaps it was only because they were young and so wrapped up in each other that every moment had the vibrancy of a scene in a movie. She could see Philip in his tux, with the white silk scarf he always wore slung over his shoulders, and she remembered the feel of his hand around hers, muscular and firm, leading her out of the crowd and across the sidewalk to the waiting car. Somehow they would have gathered an entourage of half a dozen people, and they’d pile into the car, laughing and screaming, and go on to the next place, and the next place after that, finally heading home in the gray light of dawn with the birds singing. She would lie halfway across the seat with her head on Philip’s shoulder, sleepily closing her eyes. “I’d like to shoot those birds,” he’d say.

“Shut up, Oakland. I think they’re sweet.”

Peeking once more through the crack, she spotted Billy Litchfield at the front table. Billy looked weary, as if he’d tilted his head too many times at too many of these events over the years. He had recently pointed out that what was once fun had become institutionalized, and he was right, she realized. And then, hearing the MC announce her name, she stepped out into the lights, remembering that there was not even a warm hand to lead her away at the end of the evening.

When she was able to return to the table, the main course had been served and taken away, but Karen made sure the waiters had saved a plate for her. The filet mignon was cold. Schiffer ate two bites and tried to talk to Billy before she was interrupted again by the woman from the ICSD, who had more people Schiffer had to meet. This went on for another thirty minutes, and then Brumminger was by her side. “You look like you’ve had enough,” he said. “Why don’t I take you away?”

“Yes, please,” she said gratefully. “Can we go someplace fun?”

“You have a seven A.M. call tomorrow,” Karen reminded her.

Brumminger had a chauffeur-driven Escalade with two video screens and a small refrigerator. “Anyone for champagne?” he asked, extracting a half-bottle.

They went to the Box and sat upstairs in a curtained booth. Schiffer let Brumminger put his arm around her shoulder and lace his fingers through hers, and the next day, Page Six reported that they’d been spotted canoodling and were rumored to be seeing each other.

Returning to Philip’s apartment on Tuesday, Lola dug out the old Vogue magazine with the photo spread of Philip and Schiffer (he hadn’t, at least, tried to hide it, which was a good sign), and looking at the young, handsome Philip with the gorgeous young Schiffer made her want to march down to Schiffer’s apartment and confront her. But she didn’t quite have the guts — what if Schiffer didn’t back down? — and then she thought she should simply throw out the magazine, the way Philip had thrown out hers. But if she did that, she wouldn’t have the pleasure of staring at Schiffer’s photographs and hating her. Then she decided to watch Summer Morning.

Viewing the DVD was a kind of divine torture. In Summer Morning, the ingenue saves the boy from himself, and when the boy finally realizes he’s in love with her, he accidentally kills her in a car crash. The story was somehow supposed to be autobiographical, and while Philip wasn’t actually in the movie, every line of dialogue delivered by the actor playing Philip reminded her of something Philip would say. Watching the love story unfold between Schiffer Diamond and the Philip character made Lola feel like the third wheel in a relationship where she didn’t belong. It also made her more in love with Philip, and more determined to keep him.

The next day, she got to work and enlisted Thayer Core and his awful roommate, Josh, to help her officially move into Philip’s apartment. The task required Thayer and Josh to pack up her things in boxes and plastic bags and, like Sherpas, carry it all to One Fifth.

Josh grumbled throughout the morning, complaining about his fingers, his back (he had a bad back, he claimed, just like his mother), and his feet, which were encased in thick white sports shoes that resembled two casts. Thayer, on the other hand, was surprisingly efficient. Naturally, there was an ulterior motive behind Thayer’s efforts: He wanted to see the inside of One Fifth and, in particular, Philip Oakland’s apartment.

Therefore, he didn’t object when Lola required him to make three trips, back and forth, dragging a garbage bag filled with Lola’s shoes down Greenwich Avenue. In the past two days, Lola had sold off everything in her apartment, posting the details of the sale on Craigslist and Facebook, and presiding over the sale like a dealer of fine antiques. She took nothing less than top dollar for the furnishings her parents had purchased under a year ago, and consequently, she had eight thousand dollars in cash. But she refused to pay for a taxi to transport her belongings.

If the last month of penury had taught her anything, it was this: It was one thing to lavishly spend someone else’s money but quite another to shell out your own.

On the fourth trip, the trio ran into James Gooch in the lobby of One Fifth. James was pushing two boxes of hardcover copies of his book across the lobby with his foot. When he spotted Lola, he reddened. Her visits and text messages had stopped abruptly after his encounter with Philip, leaving James confused and hurt. Seeing Lola in the lobby with what appeared to be a young asshole and a young loser, James wondered if he should speak to her at all.

But in the next minute, she’d not only engaged him but convinced him to help her carry her things. So he found himself squeezed next to her in the elevator with the young asshole, who glared at him, and the young loser, who kept talking about his feet. It could have been his imagination, but holding a box of old shampoo bottles in his arms, James swore he felt waves of electricity coming from Lola and commingling with the electricity from his own body, and he imagined their electrons doing a little sex dance right there in the elevator in front of everyone.

Putting down the box in the foyer of Philip’s apartment, Lola introduced James as “a writer who lives in the building,” to the young asshole, who immediately began challenging James about the relevance of every successful living novelist. With Lola as his audience, James found himself easily rising to the occasion, putting the boy in his place by citing DeLillo and McEwan, whom the young asshole hadn’t bothered to read.

James’s knowledge infuriated Thayer, but he reminded himself that this James person was insignificant, nothing more than a member of the hated boomer tribe who happened to live in this exclusive building. But then Lola began gushing about James’s new book and his review in The New York Times, and Thayer figured out exactly who James was, sight-ing him in the crosshairs of his ire.

Later that evening, after Thayer had consumed two bottles of Philip Oakland’s best red wine and was back in his dank hole of an apartment, he looked up James Gooch on Google, found he was married to Mindy Gooch, looked him up on Amazon, found that his yet unpublished novel was already ranked number eighty-two, and began constructing an elaborate and vicious blog entry about him in which he called James “a probable pedophile and word molester.”

Lola, meanwhile, still awake and bored, sent James a text message warning him not to tell Philip he had been in the apartment because Philip was jealous. The message caused James’s phone to bleat at one in the morning, and the uncharacteristic noise woke Mindy. For a moment, she wondered if James was having an affair, but dismissed it as impossible.

On most weekday mornings in One Fifth, Paul Rice was the earliest riser, waking at four A.M. to check the European markets, and to wheel and deal fish. His tank was completed and installed, running nearly the length of Mrs. Houghton’s ballroom, and the interior was a model maker’s dream, a replica of Atlantis half buried under the sea, complete with old Roman roads leading out of sandy caves. The acquisition of his coveted fish was a cutthroat business and required viewing videos of hatchlings and then engaging in bidding wars in which the best fish went for a hundred thousand dollars or more. But every successful man needed a hobby, especially when most of his day entailed either making money or losing it.

On an unusually warm morning on a Tuesday at the end of February, however, James Gooch was also up early. At four-thirty A.M., James got out of bed with a stomach full of nerves. After a night of tossing and turning in anticipation, he had finally fallen asleep only to awaken an hour later, exhausted and hating himself for being exhausted on the most important day of his life.

The pub date for his book had finally arrived. That morning, he had an appearance on the Today show, followed by several radio interviews, and then a book signing in the evening at the Barnes & Noble on Union Square. Meanwhile, two hundred thousand copies would be released in bookstores all over the country, and two hundred thousand copies would be placed in iStores, and on Sunday, his book would be featured on the cover of The New York Times Book Review. The publication was going exactly according to plan, and since nothing in his life had ever gone according to plan, James was seized with an irrational sense of doom.

He showered and made coffee, and then, although he’d promised himself he wouldn’t, he checked his Amazon rating. The number shocked him — twenty-two — and there were still five hours left until it was technically released. How did the world know about his book? he wondered, and decided it was a kind of mysterious miracle, proof that what happened in one’s life was absolutely out of one’s control.

Then, just for the hell of it, he Googled himself. On the bottom of the first page, he came across the following headline: GOOFY BOOMER HOPES

TO PROVE LITERATURE IS ALIVE AND WELL. Clicking on it, he was taken to Snarker. Curious, he began reading Thayer Core’s item about him. As he read on, his jaw dropped, and the blood began pounding in his head.

Thayer had written about James’s book and his marriage to Mindy, referring to her as “the navel-gazing schoolmarm,” followed by a cruel physical description of James as resembling an extinct species of bird.

Gaping at the item, James was filled with rage. Was this what people really thought of him? “James Gooch is a probable pedophile and word molester,” he read again. Wasn’t this kind of statement illegal? Could he sue?

“Mindy!” he shouted. There was no response, and he went into the bedroom to find Mindy awake but pretending to sleep with a pillow over her head.

“What time is it?” she asked wearily.

“Five.”

“Give me another hour.”

“I need you,” James said. “Now.”

Mindy got out of bed and, following James, stared sleepily at the blog entry on his computer. “Typical,” she said. “Just typical.”

“We have to do something about it,” James said.

“What?” she asked. “That’s life these days. You can’t do anything about anything. You just have to live with it.” She read through the item again.

“How’d they find out this stuff about you, anyway?” she asked. “How do they know we live in One Fifth?”

“I have no idea,” James said nervously, realizing that the item could be traced back to him. If he hadn’t run into Lola that day when she was moving, he would have never met Thayer Core.

“Forget about it,” Mindy said. “Only ten thousand people read this stuff, anyway.”

“Only ten thousand?” James said. Then his phone bleeped.

“What is that?” Mindy demanded in annoyance. She stared up at him with her pale, mostly unlined face, the result of years of avoiding the sun.

“Why are you getting text messages in the middle of the night?”

“What do you mean?” James asked defensively. “It’s probably the car service from the Today show.” When Mindy left the room, James grabbed his phone and checked the message. As he’d hoped, it was from Lola. “Good luck today,” she’d written. “I’ll be watching!” followed by a smiley-face emoticon.

James left the apartment at six-fifteen. Mindy, unable to help herself, reread the blog item on her and James, and her mood became increasingly foul. Nowadays, anyone who committed the crime of trying to do something with her life became a victim of Internet bullying, and there was no retribution, no control, nothing one could do. In this frame of mind, she sat down at her computer and began a new blog entry, listing all the things in her life over which she had no control and had made her bitterly disappointed: her inability to get pregnant, her inability to live in a proper apartment, her inability to lead a life that didn’t feel like she was always racing to catch up to an invisible finish line that moved farther away the closer she came. And now there was James’s impending success — which, instead of relieving these feelings, was only bringing them into sharper focus.

When she heard the elevator ding at seven A.M., signaling Paul Rice’s arrival in the lobby, she deliberately opened her door and let Skippy loose.

Skippy, as usual, growled at Paul. Mindy, still in a lousy mood, didn’t snatch Skippy away as quickly as she normally did, and Skippy attacked Paul’s pant leg with a rabid viciousness that Mindy wished she herself could express. During the tussle, Skippy managed to rip a tiny hole in the fabric of Paul’s pants before he was able to shake Skippy off. He bent down and examined the tear. Then he stood up, making an odd thrusting motion of pushing his tongue into his cheek. “I will sue you for this,”

he said coldly.

“Go ahead,” Mindy said. “Make my day. It can’t really get any worse.”

“Oh, but it can,” Paul said threateningly. “You’ll see.”

Paul went out, and upstairs, Lola Fabrikant got out of bed and turned on the TV. Eventually, James appeared on the screen. Perhaps it was the makeup, but James didn’t look so bad. True, he appeared unnecessarily formal, but James was a little stiff in general. It would be interesting to loosen him up, Lola thought. And he was on TV! Anyone could be on YouTube. But real TV, and network TV at that, was a whole different level. “I watched you!” she texted. “You were great! xLola.” Underneath, she included her new tagline, with which she signed off on all her e-mails and blog posts: “The body dies, but the spirit lives forever. ”

Up at Thirty Rock, the publicist, a lanky young woman with long blond hair and a bland prettiness, smiled at James. “That was good,” she said.

“Was it?” James said. “I wasn’t sure. I’ve never done TV before.”

“No. You were good. Really,” the publicist said unconvincingly. “We’ve got to hurry if we’re going to make it to your interview at CBS radio.”

James got into the Town Car. He briefly wondered if he would be famous now, recognized by strangers after appearing on the Today show. He didn’t feel any different, and the driver took as little notice of him as he had before. Then he checked his e-mails and found the text from Lola. At least someone appreciated him. He opened his window, letting in a rush of damp air.

The day of Sam’s father’s book signing was strangely warm, leading to the inevitable discussion among his classmates about global warming.

They agreed it was terrible to be born into a world where the adults had ruined the earth for their children, so that the children were forced to live under the shroud of impending Armageddon in which all living things might be wiped out. Sam knew his mother felt guilty about this — she was always telling him to recycle and turn off his light — but not every adult felt the same way. When he brought up the topic with Enid, she only laughed at him and said it had always been so: In the thirties, children had lived with food rationing and the threat of starvation (indeed, in the Great Depression, some people had starved); in the forties and fifties, it was air raids; and in the sixties and seventies, a nuclear bomb. And yet, she pointed out, people continued not only to survive but to flourish, given the fact that there were billions more people now than ever before. Sam didn’t find this reassuring. It was the billions of people, he argued, that were the problem.

Marching through the West Village with his friends, Sam talked about how the earth was already two degrees cooler than suspected due to the proliferation of airplanes, which caused cloud cover and the dimming of the canopy, mitigating 5 percent of all sunlight. It was a scientific fact, he said, that during the two days following 9/11, when there were no flights and therefore less cloud cover, the temperature on earth had registered two degrees higher. The exhaust from airplanes caused a smaller particulate in the air and a greater reflection of light away from the earth’s surface, he said.

Walking up Sixth Avenue, the group passed a basketball court with a game in progress. Sam forgot about climate change and peeled away to get in on the action. He’d been playing basketball on this particular litter-strewn, cracked asphalt court since he was two, when his father would bring him on spring and summer mornings to teach him how to dribble and throw. “Don’t tell your mother, Sammy,” his dad would say.

“She’ll think we were goofing off.”

Today the pickup game was particularly vicious, due perhaps to the warm weather in which everyone had come outside with their pent-up winter energy. Sam was off his game, and after being elbowed in the throat and knocked against the chain-link fence, he called it quits. He picked up a bagel with cream cheese on his way home, then worked on his website, which he was upgrading to Virtual Flash. Then the buzzer rang, and the doorman said he had a visitor.

The man standing in the foyer had a distinct air about him — seedy, Sam thought. Looking Sam up and down, the man asked if his parents were home, and when Sam shook his head, he said, “You’ll do. You know how to sign your name?” “Of course,” Sam said, thinking he ought to close the door in the man’s face and call the doorman to escort him out.

But it all happened so quickly. The man handed him an envelope and a clipboard. “Sign here,” he said. Unable to challenge grown-up authority, Sam signed. In a second, the man was gone, disappearing through the revolving doors of the lobby, and Sam was left holding the envelope in his hand.

The return address was for an attorney on Park Avenue. Knowing he shouldn’t, Sam opened the envelope, figuring he could explain later that he’d opened it by mistake. Inside was a two-page letter. The attorney was writing on behalf of his client, Mr. Paul Rice, who was being maliciously and systematically harassed by his mother, without cause, and if such actions did not cease immediately and reparations begin, a restraining order would be placed on his mother by Paul Rice and his attorneys, who were prepared to pursue this case as far as the law allowed.

In his bedroom, Sam read the letter again, feeling a white-hot adolescent rage engulf him. His mother was often annoying, but like most boys, he felt a fierce protectiveness toward her. She was smart, accomplished, and in his mind, beautiful; he placed her on a pedestal as the model to whom other girls must compare, although so far he had yet to meet another member of the female species who measured up. And now his mother was being attacked once again by Paul Rice. The thought infuriated him; looking around his room for something to break, and finding nothing of use, he changed his shoes and headed out of the building.

He jogged down Ninth Street, past the porno shops and pet stores and fancy tea outlets. Sam meant to run along the Hudson River, but the entrance to the piers was blocked by several red and white barriers and a Con Edison truck. “Gas leak,” a beefy man shouted as Sam approached.

“Go around.”

The utility vehicle gave Sam an idea, and he headed back to One Fifth. He suddenly saw how he might get even with Paul Rice and his threatening letter. It would inconvenience everyone in the building, but it would be temporary, and Paul Rice, with all his computer equipment, would be the most inconvenienced of all. He might even lose data. Sam smiled, thinking about how angry Paul Rice would be. Maybe it would make him want to leave the building.

At six-thirty in the evening, Sam headed over to the Barnes & Noble bookstore on Union Square with his parents. It was ten blocks from One Fifth, and the publicist wanted to send a car — no doubt, Mindy said, to make sure James would get there — but Mindy turned it down. They could walk, she declared. And reminding everyone of her recent vow to go green, she pointed out that there was no reason to waste gas and fill the air with carbon monoxide when God had given them perfectly good implements on which to get around. They were called feet. Ignoring his parents’ banter, Sam walked a few feet ahead of them, still brooding about his day. He hadn’t shown his mother the letter from Paul Rice’s attorney. He wasn’t going to allow Paul Rice to ruin his parents’ big day.

Sam wouldn’t have been surprised if Paul had done it on purpose.

Outside the store, the Gooch family stopped to admire a small poster announcing James’s reading, featuring the photograph of James taken at the shoot on the day he’d gotten the ride from Schiffer Diamond. James was pleased with the image: He looked appropriately brooding and in-tellectual, as if he alone were privy to some great universal secret. Stepping inside the store, he was greeted by the blasé publicist from that morning and two employees who escorted him up to the fifth floor. They sequestered him in a tiny office at the back of the store to wait while a cartload of books was brought in for him to sign. Holding a Sharpie, James paused, staring down at the title page and his name: James Gooch. This was, he thought, a historical moment in his life, and he wanted to remember his feelings.

What he felt, however, was a little disappointing. There was some elation, a bit of dread, and a lot of nothing. Then Mindy barked out, “What’s wrong with you?” Startled, James quickly signed his name.

At five minutes to seven, Redmon Richardly came in to congratulate him and walked James toward the stage. James was astounded by the size of the audience. Every folding chair was filled, and the standing-room-only crowd swelled around the stacks. Even Redmon was shocked. “There must be five hundred people,” he said, clapping James on the shoulder. “Good job.”

James awkwardly made his way up to the podium. He could feel the crowd like one giant animal, anticipatory, eager, and curious. Again, he wondered how this had happened. How had these people even heard of him? And what could they possibly want — from him?

He opened his book to the page he’d selected and found his hand was trembling. Looking down at the words he’d struggled to write over so many years, he forced himself to concentrate. Opening his mouth and praying he could survive this ordeal, he began to read aloud.

Later that same evening, Annalisa Rice greeted her husband at the door, dressed provocatively in a short Grecian column, her hair and makeup expertly applied so she appeared to have made hardly any effort at all.

The look was slightly tousled and overwhelmingly sexy, but Paul barely noticed.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, heading up the two flights of steps to his office, where he fiddled around with his computer for a moment and then gazed at his fish. Annalisa sighed and went into the kitchen, walking around Maria, the housekeeper, who was rearranging the condiments, and fixed herself a stiff drink. Carrying the vodka, she peeped into Paul’s office. “Paul?” she said. “Are you getting ready? Connie said the dinner starts at eight. And it’s eight now.”

“It’s my dinner,” Paul said. “We’ll get there when we get there.” He went downstairs to change his suit, and Annalisa went into her pretty little office. She stared out the window at the monument in Washington Square Park. The perimeter of the park was encased in chain-link fencing and would be for at least the next year. The residents of the Village had been lobbying for years to have the fountain moved so it lined up perfectly with the monument, and they had finally won their bat-tle. Sipping her cocktail, Annalisa understood the desire and pleasure in the attention to details. Thinking again about the time, she went into the bedroom to hurry Paul along. “Why are you hovering?” he asked. She shook her head and, once again finding communication difficult, decided to wait in the car.

Over at Union Square, James was still signing books. At eight o’clock, three hundred people were in line, eagerly clutching their copies, and as James felt obligated to speak to each and every one of them, it was likely he’d be there for at least another three hours. Mindy sent Sam back to One Fifth to do his homework.Walking down Fifth Avenue, Sam spotted Annalisa getting into the back of a green Bentley idling at the curb. Passing the car on the way into the building, Sam was strangely disappointed in her, and hurt. After helping her so often with her website, Sam had developed a little crush. He imagined Annalisa as a princess, a damsel in distress, and seeing her in the back of that fancy car with the chauffeur who was actually wearing a cap destroyed his fantasy. She wasn’t a damsel in distress at all, he thought bitterly, but just another rich lady with too many privileges, married to a rich asshole. And he went inside.

Sam opened the refrigerator. As he seemed to be all the time now, he was ravenously hungry. His parents didn’t understand how a growing boy needed to eat, and all he could find in the refrigerator were two containers of cut-up fruit, some leftover Indian food, and a quart of soy milk.

Sam drank the soy milk straight from the carton, leaving a squirt for his mother’s coffee in the morning, and decided he needed red meat. He would go to the Village restaurant on Ninth Street, sit at the bar, and eat a steak.

Stepping into the lobby, he came right up behind Paul Rice, who was heading out to the Bentley. Sam’s heart began beating rapidly, and he was reminded of his scheme. Sam hadn’t decided when he would execute his plan, but seeing Paul get into the backseat of the car, he decided he would do it tonight, while the Rices were out. Passing by the Bentley, he waved to Annalisa, who smiled at him and waved back.

“Sam Gooch is such a sweet boy,” Annalisa said to Paul.

“His mother’s a cunt,” Paul said.

“I wish you would end this war with Mindy Gooch.”

“Oh, I have,” Paul said.

“Good,” Annalisa said.

“Mindy Gooch and her stupid dog have harassed me one time too many.”

“Her dog?” Annalisa said.

“I had my lawyer send her a letter this afternoon. I want that woman, that dog, and that family out of my building.”

This was outrageous, even for Paul, and Annalisa laughed. “Your building, Paul?”

“That’s right,” he said, staring at the back of the driver’s head. “The China deal went through today. In a matter of weeks, I’ll be able to buy every apartment in One Fifth.”

Annalisa gasped. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m telling you now.”

“When did it happen?”

Paul looked at his watch. “About forty minutes ago.”

Annalisa sat back in the seat. “I’m astounded, Paul. But what does it mean?”

“It was my idea, but Sandy and I pulled it off together. We sold one of my algorithms to the Chinese government in exchange for a percent-age of their stock market.”

“Can you do that?”

“Of course I can do it,” Paul said. “I just did.” Without missing a beat, he addressed the driver. “Change of plans,” he said. “We’re going to the West Side heliport instead.” He turned to his wife and patted her leg. “I thought we’d go to the Lodge for dinner to celebrate. I know how much you’ve always wanted to see it.”

“Oh, Paul,” she said. The Lodge was an exclusive resort in the Adiron-dacks that was rumored to be stunningly beautiful. Annalisa had read about it years ago and mentioned to Paul that she wished they could go there on their anniversary. But at three thousand dollars a night, it had been too expensive back then for them to even consider. But Paul had remembered. She smiled and shook her head, realizing that her slight dissatisfaction with Paul in the last couple of months was something she’d made up in her mind. Paul was still Paul — wonderful in his unique and unfathomable way — and Connie Brewer was right. Annalisa did love her husband.

Paul reached into the pocket of his pants and withdrew a small black velvet box. Inside was a large yellow diamond ring surrounded by pink stones. It was beautiful and gaudy, exactly the sort of thing Connie Brewer would love. Annalisa slipped it onto her right middle finger. “Do you like it?” Paul asked. “Sandy said Connie has one just like it. I thought you might want one, too.”

“Oh, Paul.” She put her hand on the side of his head and stroked his hair. “I love it. It’s stunning.”

Back in the Gooches’ apartment, Sam rifled through his mother’s underwear drawer and, finding a pair of old leather gloves, tucked them into the waistband of his jeans. From the toolbox in the cramped coat closet, he extracted a small screwdriver, a pair of pliers, an X-Acto knife, wire clippers, and a small spool of electrical tape. He stuck these items in the back pockets of his jeans, making sure the bulges were covered by his shirt. Then he rode the elevator up to Enid and Philip’s floor and, slipping through the hallway, took the stairwell up to the first floor of the penthouse apartment.

The stairwell led to a small foyer outside a service entrance, and there, as Sam had known, was a metal plate. He put on his mother’s gloves, took out the screwdriver, and unscrewed the plate from the wall. Inside was a compartment filled with cables. Every floor had a cable box, and the cables ran from one floor to another. Most boxes contained one or two cables, but on the Rices’ floor, due to all of Paul’s equipment, there were six. Sam tugged the cables out of a hole in the back and, using the X-Acto knife, cut away the white plastic casing. Then he clipped the wires and, mixing them up, spliced the wrong wires together using the pliers. Finally, he wrapped the newly configured wires in the electrical tape. Then he pushed the cables back into the wall. He wasn’t sure what would happen, but it was guaranteed to be big.

16

Under regular circumstances, Paul Rice, the early riser, would have been the first to discover The Internet Debacle, as it would be later referred to by the residents of One Fifth. But on the following morning, James Gooch happened to be up first. Following his triumphant book reading the night before (“Four hundred twenty books sold, it’s practically a record,” Redmond had boasted), James was booked on the first flight from La Guardia to Boston at six A.M.; from Boston, he would go on to Philadelphia, Washington, St. Louis, Chicago, Cleve-land, and then Houston, Dallas, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

He would be away for two weeks. As a consequence, he had to get up at three A.M. to pack. James was a noisy, nervous packer, so Mindy was up as well. Mindy normally would have been testy about this disturbance to her sleep — considering sleep the most precious of all modern-day commodities — but on this day, she was forgiving. The evening before, James had made her proud. All the years of supporting him were paying off when they easily might not have, and Mindy found herself imagining enormous sums of money coming their way. If the book made a million dollars, they could send Sam to any university — Harvard, or perhaps Cambridge in England, which was even more prestigious — without feeling a pinch. Two million dollars would mean university for Sam, and maybe the luxury of owning a car and housing it in a garage and paying off their mortgage. Three million dollars would get them all that plus a tiny getaway home in Montauk or Amagansett or Litchfield County in Connecticut. Beyond this, Mindy’s imagination could go no further. She was so accustomed to living a life of relative deprivation, she couldn’t picture herself needing or wanting more.

“Do you have toothpaste?” she asked, following James into his bathroom. “Don’t forget your comb. And dental floss.”

“I’m sure they have drugstores in Boston,” James remarked.

Mindy closed the toilet seat and sat down, watching him go through his medicine cabinet. “I don’t want you to have to worry about details,”

she said. “You’re going to need all your concentration to handle the readings and interviews.”

“Mindy,” James said, putting a bottle of aspirin into a Ziploc bag.

“You’re making me nervous. Don’t you have something to do?”

“At three in the morning?”

“I could use a cup of coffee.”

“Sure,” Mindy said. She went into the kitchen. She was feeling sentimental about James. In fourteen years of marriage, they’d never spent more than three nights apart, and now James would be away for two weeks. Would she miss him? What if she couldn’t manage without him?

But that, she reminded herself, was silly. She was a grown woman. She did practically everything herself anyway. Well, maybe not everything.

James spent a lot of time looking after Sam. As much as she liked to complain about him, James wasn’t all bad. Especially now, when he was finally making money.

“I’ll get your socks,” Mindy said, handing James his cup of coffee.

“Do you think you’ll miss me?” she asked, placing several pairs of worn socks into his suitcase and wondering how many pairs he would need for two weeks.

“I can do that,” James said, annoyed by all the attention. Mindy came across a hole in the toe of one of his socks and stuck her finger through.

“A lot of your socks have holes,” she pointed out.

“It doesn’t matter. No one is going to see my socks,” James said.

“So will you miss me?” Mindy asked.

“I don’t know,” James said. “Maybe. Maybe not. I might be too busy.”

In a last-minute panic, James left the apartment at four-fifteen A.M.

Mindy considered going back to sleep but was too keyed up. She decided to check James’s Amazon rating instead. Her computer came on, but there was no Internet service. This was strange. She checked the cables and turned the box on and off. Nothing. She tried the browser on her BlackBerry. Also nothing.

Paul Rice was now up as well. At five A.M. on the dot, he was to launch his algorithm in the Chinese stock market. At four-thirty A.M., he was seated behind his desk in his home office, a cup of café con leche sitting neatly on a coaster nearby, ready to begin. Out of habit, he plucked a pencil out of the silver holder and examined the tip for sharpness. Then he turned on his computer.

The screen flashed its familiar and comforting green — the color of money, Paul thought with satisfaction — and then ... nothing. Paul jerked his head in surprise. Powering the computer should have kicked on the satellite system and Internet backup. He clicked on the Internet icon. The screen went blank. Finding a key, he unlocked the cabinet doors behind him and looked inside at the stacked metal hard drives. The power was on, but the array of lights indicating the exchange of signals was black. He hesitated for half a second and then ran downstairs to Annalisa’s office. He tried her computer, which he’d always joked was like a Stone Age tool, but the Internet was out there as well.

“Holy fuck!” he screamed.

In the master bedroom next door, Annalisa stirred in her sleep. At the celebration dinner the night before, the Rices and Brewers had consumed over five thousand dollars’ worth of rare wines before helicoptering back to the city at two A.M. She turned over, her head heavy, hoping Paul’s voice had come from a dream. But there it was again: “Holy fuck!”

Now Paul was in the room, pulling on his pants from the night before. Annalisa sat up. “Paul?”

“There’s no fucking Internet service.”

“But I thought ...” Annalisa mumbled, gesturing uselessly.

“Where’s the car? I need the fucking car.”

She leaned over the bed, picking up the handset on the landline. “It’s in the garage. But the garage is probably closed.”

In a frenzy, Paul buttoned his shirt while trying to hop into his shoes.

“This is exactly why I wanted that parking spot in the Mews,” he snapped.

“For just this kind of emergency.”

“What emergency?” Annalisa said, getting out of bed.

“There’s no fucking Internet service. Which means I am fucked. The whole fucking China deal is fucked.” He ran out of the room.

“Paul?” she said, following him and leaning over the banister. “Paul?

What can I do?” But he was already in the hallway, punching the button for the elevator. It was all the way down in the lobby. Glancing at his watch, Paul decided he didn’t have time to wait and began clatter-ing down the steps. He burst into the lobby, waking the night doorman, who was dozing in a chair. “I need a taxi,” Paul shouted breathlessly. “A fucking taxi!” He ran into the empty street, waving his arms.

When no taxis appeared, he started jogging up Fifth Avenue. At Twelfth Street, he finally saw a cab and fell into the backseat. “Park Avenue and Fifty-third Street,” he screamed. Pounding on the divider, he shouted, “Go, go. Go! ”

“I cannot run a red light, sir,” the driver said, turning around.

“Shut up and drive,” Paul screamed.

The journey to midtown was agony. Who would have thought there would be traffic before five A.M.? Paul rolled down his window and stuck his head out, waving and shouting at the other drivers. By the time the taxi pulled up in front of his office building, it was four-fifty-three A.M.

The building was locked, so it took another minute of kicking and screaming to arouse the night watchman. It was another couple of minutes to get upstairs and use his pass to unlock the glass doors of Brewer Securities, and a few more seconds to run down the hall to his office.

When he got to his computer, it was five-oh-one and forty-three seconds.

His fingers flew over the keyboard. When he was finished, it was five-oh-one and fifty-six seconds. He collapsed on his chair and leaned back, putting his hands over his face. In the two-minute delay, he had lost twenty-six million dollars.

Back at One Fifth, Mindy Gooch poked her head out the door.

“Roberto,” she said to the doorman, “there’s no Internet service.”

“I don’t know anything about it,” he said. “Ask your son, Sam.”

At six-thirty, she woke Sam up. “There’s no Internet service.”

Sam smiled and yawned. “It’s probably Paul Rice’s fault. He’s got all that equipment up there. It probably knocked out the service in the entire building.”

“I hate that man,” Mindy said.

“Me, too,” Sam agreed.

Several floors above, Enid Merle was also trying to get online. She needed to read the column composed by her staff writer in the wee hours of the morning, to which she would add her trademark flourishes.

But there was something wrong with her computer, and desperate to approve the column before eight A.M., when it would be syndicated online and then appear in the afternoon edition of the paper, she called Sam. In a few minutes, Sam and Mindy appeared at her door. Mindy had pulled on a pair of jeans below her flannel pajama top. “No one’s computer is working,” she informed Enid. “Sam says it has something to do with Paul Rice.”

“Why would he be involved?” Enid asked.

“Apparently,” Mindy said, glancing at Sam, “he’s got all kinds of powerful and probably illegal computer equipment up there. In Mrs.

Houghton’s old ballroom.”

When Enid looked doubtful, Mindy said, “Sam has seen it. When he went up to help Annalisa Rice with her computer.”

Annalisa herself was nervously pacing the living room with her cell phone in hand when Maria came in. “Some people are here,” Maria said.

“The police?”

“No. Some people from downstairs,” Maria said.

Annalisa opened the front door a few inches. “Yes?” she asked impatiently.

Mindy Gooch, who still had smudges of mascara under her eyes from the night before, tried to push her way in. “The Internet service is out.

We think the problem is coming from your apartment.”

“We don’t have Internet service, either,” Annalisa snapped.

“May we come in?” Enid asked.

“Absolutely not,” Annalisa said. “The police are on their way. No one is to touch anything.”

“The police?” Mindy shrieked.

“That’s right,” Annalisa said. “We’ve been sabotaged. Go back to your apartments to wait.” She closed the door.

Enid turned to Sam. “Sam?” she asked. Sam then looked at his mother, who put her arm around his head protectively. “Sam doesn’t know anything about this,” Mindy said firmly. “Everyone knows the Rices are paranoid.”

“What is happening in this building?” Enid asked.

Then everyone went back to their respective apartments.

Back in the living room, Annalisa folded her arms, shook her head, and continued to pace. If no one in the building had Internet service, then perhaps Paul was wrong. He’d called her at five-thirty A.M., screaming about how he’d lost an enormous amount of money and claiming that someone had found out about the China deal and deliberately sabotaged his home computers. He insisted she call the police, which she had, but they only laughed and told her to call Time Warner. After ten minutes of begging, the representative agreed to send a repairman in the afternoon. Meanwhile, Paul was insisting that no one be allowed in the apartment until the police had dusted it for fingerprints and performed other forensic duties.

Downstairs at the Gooches’, Mindy took a box of frozen waffles out of the freezer. “Sam?” she called out. “Do you want breakfast?”

Sam appeared in the doorway with his backpack. “I’m not hungry,” he said.

Mindy put a waffle in the toaster. “Well, that’s interesting,” she said.

“What?” Sam asked nervously.

“The Rices. Calling the police. Over a little interruption of Internet service.” The waffle popped out of the toaster, and she put it on a small plate, smeared it with butter, and handed it to Sam. “That’s the way it is with out-of-towners. They just don’t realize that in New York, these things happen.”

Sam nodded. His mouth was dry.

“When are you getting home from school?” Mindy asked.

“The usual time, I guess,” Sam said, looking down at the waffle.

Mindy picked up Sam’s knife and fork and cut off a piece of his waffle, put it in her mouth, and chewed. She wiped the butter off her lips with the back of her hand. “Whenever you get home, I’ll be here,” she said. “I’m going to take the day off. As the head of the board, I need to deal with this situation.”

Three blocks away, Billy Litchfield wasn’t having any trouble with his Internet service. After a sleepless night of worry, he was up, checking the art blogs, The New York Times, and every other newspaper he could think of to see if there was any mention of the Cross of Bloody Mary. There wasn’t, but Sandy Brewer was all over the financial pages with the announcement of his deal with the Chinese government to own a piece of their stock market, and already the outrage had begun. There were two editorials about the moral implications of such a deal, and how it might be a sign that high-earning individuals in the financial world could bond together to form their own kind of uber-government, with influence over the policies of other countries. It should be illegal, but at the moment, there were no laws in place to guard against such a possibility.

Sandy Brewer wasn’t the only person in the blogs. James Gooch was as well. Someone had taken a cell-phone video of James during his reading at Barnes & Noble and posted it on Snarker and YouTube. And now the hoi polloi were attacking James for his hair, his glasses, and his style of speaking. They were calling him a talking vegetable, a cucumber with specs. Poor James, Billy thought. He was so meek and mild-mannered, it was hard to understand why he could possibly be worth the negative attention. But he was successful now, and success was its own kind of crime, Billy supposed.

A few minutes later in midtown, Sandy Brewer, bloated and in a foul mood from the amount of alcohol he’d consumed the night before, strode into Brewer Securities, grabbed the soft basketball from the chair in his office, went into Paul Rice’s office, and threw the basketball at Paul’s head. Paul ducked. “What the fuck, Rice? What the fuck?” Sandy screamed. “Twenty-six million dollars?” The blood rushed to his face as he leaned across Paul’s desk. “You’d better make that money back, or you’re out of here.”

With Philip away in Los Angeles, Thayer Core was having a grand old time hanging out in Philip’s apartment, drinking his coffee and red wine and occasionally having sex with his girlfriend. Thayer was far too self-centered to be particularly good at sex, but every now and then, when she let him, he would go through the motions with Lola. She made him wear a condom and sometimes two because she didn’t trust him, which made it much less exciting but was made up for by the thrill of doing it in Philip’s bed. “You know you don’t love Philip,” Thayer would say afterward. “Of course I do,” she’d counter. “You lie,” Thayer would say. “What kind of in-love woman has sex with another man in that man’s bed?” “It’s not really sex with you and me,” Lola replied. “It’s more something to do when I’m bored.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“You don’t expect me to fall in love with you, do you?” Lola would ask, screwing up her face in distaste, as if she’d just eaten something unpleasant.

“Who’s that young man I always see coming into the apartment?”

Enid asked Lola one afternoon. She’d popped in to borrow a cartridge for her printer. She was always “borrowing” Philip’s office supplies, and Lola couldn’t understand why Enid didn’t go to Staples, like everyone else. “You know, you can order supplies online,” Lola said, crossing her arms.

“I know, dear. But this is much more fun,” Enid said, pawing through Philip’s stuff. “And you didn’t answer my question. About the young man.”

“Could be anyone,” Lola said nonchalantly. “What does he look like?”

“Tall? Very attractive? Reddish-blond hair and a disdainful expression?”

“Ah.” Lola nodded. “Thayer Core. He’s a friend of mine.”

“I assumed he was,” Enid said. “Otherwise, I can’t imagine why he’d be spending so much time in Philip’s apartment. Who is he, and what does he do?”

“He’s a gossip columnist. Just like you,” Lola said.

“For whom?”

“Snarker,” Lola said reluctantly. “But he’s going to be a novelist. Or run a TV network someday. He’s brilliant. Everyone says no matter what he does, he’s going to be big.”

“Ah, yes,” Enid said, finding the cartridge. “I know exactly who he is. Really, Lola.” She paused. “I’m a little worried about your judgment. You shouldn’t be allowing that type of person into Philip’s apartment. I’m not even sure you should be allowing him into the building.”

“He’s my friend,” Lola said. “I’m allowed to have friends, aren’t I?”

“I didn’t mean to interfere,” Enid said curtly. “I was only trying to give you some kind advice.”

“Thank you,” Lola said pointedly, following Enid to the door. When Enid had gone, Lola crept out into the hallway and examined the peep-hole in Enid’s door. Was she standing on the other side, watching? How much could the old lady see out of that little hole, anyway? Apparently, too much. Returning to Philip’s apartment — Philip’s and her apartment, Lola reminded herself — she concocted a little story to explain Thayer’s presence. Thayer was helping with her research for Philip. Meanwhile, she was helping Thayer with his novel. It was all perfectly innocent. Enid couldn’t actually see into the apartment, so how could she know what was going on?

Lola hadn’t meant to get so involved with Thayer Core. She knew it was dangerous but found she enjoyed the thrill of getting away with it.

And being uncertain about her relationship with Philip, she justified her behavior by reminding herself that she needed a backup in case things with Philip didn’t work out. Admittedly, Thayer Core wasn’t much of a consolation prize, but he did know lots of people and claimed to have all kinds of connections.

But then Philip was coming home in a few days, and Lola warned Thayer that their time together had to end. Thayer was annoyed. Not because he wouldn’t be seeing Lola but because he so enjoyed spending time in One Fifth. He liked everything about it, and simply entering the building on Fifth Avenue made him feel superior. Before going in, he often looked around the sidewalk to see if anyone was watching, envying him his position. Then he’d pass by the doormen with a wave. “Going up to Philip Oakland’s,” he’d say, making a jerking motion with his thumb. The doormen regarded him with suspicion — Thayer could tell they didn’t like him and didn’t approve — but they didn’t stop him.

Dropping by Philip’s apartment that morning, Thayer suggested he and Lola look at some Internet porn. Lola was eating potato chips, crunching them obnoxiously just for the hell of it, Thayer thought. “Can’t,” she said.

“Why not? You a prude?” Thayer said. “Nope. No Internet service. It’s all Paul Rice’s fault. That’s what everyone is saying, anyway. Enid says they’re going to try to kick him out. Don’t know if they can, but now everyone in the building hates him.”

“Paul Rice?” Thayer asked casually. “The Paul Rice? Who’s married to Annalisa? The society tartlet?”

Lola shrugged. “They’re super-rich. She rides around in a Bentley and has designers send her clothes. I hate her.”

“I hate them both,” Thayer said, and smiled.

Heeding the call to action, Mindy and Enid had scheduled an emergency meeting of the board. On her way down to Mindy’s, Enid paused outside Philip’s door. Sure enough, she heard voices — Lola’s and that of an unidentified man who, she assumed, was Thayer Core. Had Lola will-fully misunderstood what she’d said? Or was she simply dumb? Enid knocked on the door.

Immediately, there was silence. Enid knocked again. “Lola?” she called out. “It’s me. I need to talk to you.” She heard hurried whispers, and then Lola opened the door. “Hi, Enid,” she said with false cheer.

Enid pushed past her and found Thayer Core sitting on Philip’s couch with a script in his hand. “Hello,” Enid said. “And who might you be?”

Thayer suddenly became the proper prep-school boy whose image he’d been trying to shed for the past five years. He stood up and held out his hand. “Thayer Core, ma’am.”

“Enid Merle. I’m Philip’s aunt,” Enid said dryly.

“Wow,” Thayer said. “Lola didn’t tell me you were Philip’s aunt.”

“Are you a friend of Philip’s?”

“Yes, I am. And of Lola’s. Lola and I were discussing my script. I was hoping Philip might be able to give me some pointers. But I can see you two have things to talk about,” Thayer said, looking from Enid to Lola.

“I need to get going.” He jumped up and grabbed his coat.

“Don’t forget your script,” Enid said to him.

“Right,” Thayer said. He exchanged a look with Lola, who smiled stiffly. Thayer picked up the script, and Enid followed him into the hall.

They rode down to the lobby without speaking, which was fine by Thayer. His head was full of ideas, and he didn’t want to lose them by talking. In the past thirty minutes, he’d gleaned enough interesting material for several blog items. One Fifth was a hotbed of intrigue; perhaps he might create an entire series dedicated to the goings-on in the building. He could call it “The Co-op.” Or perhaps “The Lives of the Rich and Privileged.”

“Goodbye,” Enid said firmly when the elevator doors opened into the lobby. Thayer nodded at her and hurried out. All he needed to continue his attack on the residents of One Fifth was a steady supply of information. He turned over the script in his hand and smiled. It was the first draft of a screenplay by Philip Oakland with a working title of “Bloody Mary.” Philip Oakland would be furious if he discovered Lola had allowed an unfinished script to get out. And it wouldn’t get out as long as Lola was a good girl and played along. From now on, Thayer decided, Lola could come to his apartment. She would keep him up to date on the goings-on in One Fifth, and when she was finished talking, she could give him a blow job.

Enid rang Mindy’s bell. The door was opened by Sam, who had changed his mind about going to school, claiming he was sick. He led Enid into the tiny living room, where the three members of the board were engaged in a fierce discussion about Paul Rice.

“Can’t we force him to allow Time Warner into his apartment?”

“Of course. It’s the same as a handyman. And it’s affecting the other residents. But if he refuses, we have to get a letter from the building’s attorney.”

“Has anyone tried to talk to him?”

“We all have,” Enid said. “He’s impossible.”

“What about the wife? Maybe someone should talk to his wife.”

“I’ll try again,” Enid said.

On the other side of the wall, Sam Gooch lay on his bed, pretending to read his mother’s New Yorker. He’d left his door open so he could overhear the conversation. He looked up at the ceiling, feeling extremely pleased with himself. True, his actions had caused a great deal of trouble for everyone in the building, and he was scared to death of being found out, but it was worth it to get even with Paul. Sam guessed Paul would not be harassing anyone anymore, especially his mother. He would never say anything to Paul, but when they passed in the lobby, he would give Paul a certain look, and Paul would know Sam had been responsible.

Hopefully, he’d never be able to prove it.

A few minutes later, Enid knocked on the Rices’ door. Maria, the housekeeper, opened it a crack and said through the tiny slit, “No visitors.”

Enid stuck her fingers in the crack. “Don’t be silly. I need to see Mrs.

Rice.”

“Enid?” Annalisa called out. She stepped into the hallway, closing the door behind her. “This is not our fault.”

“Of course it isn’t,” Enid said.

“It’s because everyone hates Paul.”

“A co-op is like a private club,” Enid said. “Especially in a building like One Fifth. You may not necessarily like all the other members, but you do have to get along with them. Otherwise, it tears the whole building apart. Word gets out that it’s not such a great building, and then everyone’s real estate goes down. And no one likes that, my dear.”

Annalisa looked down at her hands.

“There is an unspoken code of behavior. For instance, residents must strive to avoid unpleasant encounters. We can’t have neighbors insulting each other. Yes, One Fifth is a fancy apartment building. But it’s also people’s homes. It’s their sanctuary. And without the security of that sanctuary, people become angry. I’m afraid for you and Paul. Afraid of what will happen if you don’t allow the repairman from Time Warner into your apartment.”

“He’s already here,” Annalisa said.

“Ah,” Enid replied, taken aback.

“He’s by the service entrance. Perhaps you’d like to talk to him.”

“Yes, I would,” Enid said.

She followed Annalisa through the door that led to the stairwell. The repairman held several cables in his hand. “They’ve been cut,” he said grimly.

“Hey, Roberto,” Philip Oakland said, coming into One Fifth with his suitcase. “How’s it going?”

“Been crazy around here,” Roberto said, and laughed. “You missed a lot.”

“Really?” Philip said. “Like what?”

“Big scandal. With the billionaire. Paul Rice. But your aunt took care of it.”

“Ah, yes,” Philip said, waiting for the elevator. “She always does.”

“And then it turned out that someone cut the cables outside the billionaire’s apartment. No one knows who did it. Then the billionaire called the police. Big scene between Mindy Gooch and Paul Rice. Those two really hate each other. So Paul Rice is making the co-op pay for cameras in the stairwells. And there was nothing Mrs. Gooch could do about it.

Man, that lady was mad. And Mrs. Rice won’t talk to anyone. The housekeeper calls ahead when she’s coming down, and we have to motion to the driver to bring the car around. No one’s mad at them, though, because someone did cut their wires, and Paul Rice gave the doormen a thousand bucks each to protect his wife. But now everyone who comes into the building, even the dry cleaner, has to register at the front desk and show ID. And if they don’t have ID, the residents have to come down and get them. It’s like a prison in here. Thing is, some people think it was your girlfriend’s friend that did it.”

“What?” Philip said. He jabbed the button for the elevator.

“That won’t make it come any faster.” Roberto laughed again.

Philip got into the elevator and punched the button for the thirteenth floor three times. What the hell was going on?

In Los Angeles, he’d gone right to work on the revisions for Bridesmaids Revisited. For the first couple of days, he’d put Lola out of his mind. She’d called him ten times, but he hadn’t returned the calls. On his third evening in L.A., he’d phoned her back, thinking she would still be at her mother’s house. She wasn’t. She was in New York in his apartment. “Lola, we have to discuss this,” he said.

“But I’ve already moved in. I thought that was the plan. I unpacked all my stuff. I only took a small corner of the closet in the bedroom, and I put some of your things in your storage locker in the basement. I hope you don’t mind,” she’d said, as if suddenly realizing he might.

“Lola, it’s just not a good idea.”

“What isn’t? You asked me to move in with you, Philip. In Mustique.

If you’re saying you don’t love me anymore ...” She’d started crying.

Philip had buckled under her tears. “I didn’t mean that. I do care for you, Lola. It’s just that...”

“How can you say you care about me when you’re trying to tell me you don’t want me around? Fine. I’ll leave. I’ll go live on the street.”

“Lola, you don’t have to live on the street.”

“I’m twenty-two years old,” she’d said, sobbing. “You seduced me and made me fall in love with you. And now you’re ruining my life.”

“Lola, stop. Everything is going to be okay.”

“So do you love me?”

“We’ll discuss it when I get back,” he’d said resignedly.

“I know you’re not ready to say it yet. But you will,” she chirped. “It’s just an adjustment period. Oh, I almost forgot — your friend Schiffer Diamond is dating some guy named Derek Brumminger. It was in the Post.

And then I saw them together, leaving the building in the morning. He’s not very attractive. He’s old and he’s got bad skin. You’d think a movie star could do better, but maybe she can’t. She’s not so young anymore, either.”

For a moment, Philip had been silent.

“Hello? Hello?” Lola had said. “Are you there?”

So she’s gone back to Brumminger, he’d thought. After telling him to get rid of Lola. Why had he thought she’d changed?

“Lola,” he said now, going into his apartment. “What’s this business about your friend?”

He looked around. Lola wasn’t home. He put his suitcase on the bed and knocked on his aunt’s door.

Lola was with Enid. “Philip! You’re home,” Lola said, throwing her arms around him. He patted her on the back and looked at his aunt, who smiled and rolled her eyes. Lola went on, “Enid was showing me her gardening books. I’m going to fix up your terrace this spring. Enid says I can make tulip boxes. And then we can have cut flowers.”

“Hello, Philip, dear,” Enid said, slowly getting up from the couch. Not having seen her for two weeks, Philip realized she was getting old. Someday he would lose her, and then he’d truly be alone. The thought changed his mood: He was happy he still had his aunt, and that Lola was still living in his apartment, and that Enid and Lola were getting along. Perhaps it would work out after all.

“I want to show you what I did in the kitchen,” Lola said eagerly.

“You were in the kitchen?” he asked in mock surprise. He followed her back to his apartment, where she showed off her handiwork. She had rearranged the contents of his kitchen cabinets so he no longer knew where anything was.

“Why did you do this?” he asked, opening the cabinet that had once held coffee and condiments but now contained a stack of plates.

She looked crushed. “I thought you’d like it.”

“I do. It’s better,” he lied, looking carefully around the apartment and wondering what else she’d disturbed. In the bedroom, he cautiously opened the closet. Half his clothes — the jackets and shirts that had hung in an orderly fashion for years — were missing; in their place, Lola’s clothing hung haphazardly, dangling from his hangers like Christmas ornaments.

“Have you forgotten about me?” she said, coming up behind him and slipping her hands into the front of his jeans. She scooted back onto the bed. With a hard-on that reminded him he hadn’t had sex in two weeks, Philip put her ankles over his shoulders. For a second, he looked down at her bare, waxed pussy, remembering that this was not what he wanted.

But it was there before him, and he dove in.

Afterward, searching through his kitchen for his misplaced wine-glasses, he said, “What’s this story about your friend cutting the Internet cables to the Rices’ apartment?”

“Oh. That.” She sighed. “It was that horrible Mindy Gooch. She’s jealous of me because her husband, James, is always trying to come on to me behind her back. She said Thayer Core did it. You remember, we went to his Halloween party. Thayer was only here like two times — he wants to write screenplays, and I was trying to help him — and Thayer keeps writing about Mindy and her husband on Snarker, so Mindy was trying to get even with him. And Thayer wasn’t even in the building when it happened.”

“How often has he been here?” Philip asked, his annoyance rising.

“I told you,” she said. “Once or twice. Maybe three times. I can’t remember.”

In the apartment next door, Enid picked up her gardening books and shook her head in frustration. She’d tried everything she could think of to get rid of Lola — forcing her to go along to three upscale supermarkets on Sixth Avenue in search of canned flageolet beans, taking her to a Damien Hirst retrospective of dead cows and sharks, and even introducing her to Flossie — all to no avail. Lola claimed that she, too, had a love for flageolets, was grateful to Enid for introducing her to art, and was not even put off by Flossie. Begging Flossie to tell her about her old days as a showgirl, Lola sat rapt at the foot of the bed. Enid realized she’d underestimated Lola’s tenacity. After the Internet Debacle, when Enid confronted Lola once again about her relationship with Thayer Core, all Lola did was look at her innocently and say, “Enid, you were right. He is a scumbag. And I’m never going to talk to him again.”

Unlike Mindy Gooch, Enid did not believe Thayer Core had cut Paul Rice’s cables. Thayer Core was a bully, and like most bullies, he lacked courage. He was far too fearful to take physical action, instead striking out at the world from behind the safety of his computer. Mindy’s accusation was an attempt to divert attention from the real culprit, whom Enid suspected was Sam.

Luckily for Sam, the police made only a cursory investigation. The incident was a prank, they said, due to animosity between residents. These pranks were becoming more and more common even in high-class apartment buildings. They received all kinds of complaints about neighbors now — from residents banging on ceilings with broomsticks, or ripping down each other’s Christmas decorations, or insisting that a neighbor’s cigarette smoke was drifting into their apartment and putting their children at risk for cancer. “I say live and let live,” one of the officers said to Enid.

“But you know what people are like these days. There’s too much money and not enough space. And no manners. Makes people hate each other.”

There had always been petty issues between residents at One Fifth, but until now, they had been countered by the collegial air of pride the residents took in living in the building. Perhaps the balance had been tipped by the Rices, who were so much wealthier than anyone else. Paul had threatened to sue, and Enid had to give Mindy a severe talking-to, reminding her that if Paul Rice went through with a lawsuit, the building would be forced to pay legal fees, which would be passed on to the residents in the form of an increase in monthly maintenance payments. After she saw the matter in financial terms that could directly affect her, Mindy agreed to back down and even wrote Paul and Annalisa Rice a note of apology. A tense truce was established, but then detailed items about these skirmishes began appearing in Snarker. Enid was sure the information was coming from Lola, but how could she prove it? As if Enid herself had something to do with it, Mindy took every opportunity to harass Enid about it, stopping her in the lobby to see if she’d read it and forwarding the blog to Enid’s e-mail address.

“This can’t go on. Something has to be done,” Mindy exclaimed that morning.

Enid sighed. “If it bothers you so much, then hire the young man.”

“What?” Mindy said, outraged.

“Hire him,” Enid repeated. “He must be a hard worker if he puts so much effort into writing about One Fifth. He’s at least halfway intelligent — I’m assuming he knows how to form a sentence, otherwise you wouldn’t be so angry. Pay him a decent salary and work him hard. That way he won’t have enough time to write anything on the side. But don’t pay him so much that he can save up money to quit. Give him insurance and benefits. Turn him into a corporate drone, and you’ll never have to worry about him again.”

If only, Enid thought, all problems could be solved so easily. She went into the kitchen and made a cup of tea, sipping it carefully to avoid burn-ing her mouth. She hesitated, then took her tea into the bedroom. She turned off the phones, pulled back the covers, and for the first time in years, got into bed during the day. She closed her eyes. She was finally getting too old for all this drama.

The recent events in One Fifth had made Paul Rice more paranoid and secretive than normal, and he was continually losing his temper over things he might once have ignored. He screamed at Maria for folding his jeans the wrong way, and then one of his precious fish died and he accused Annalisa of killing it on purpose. Fed up, Annalisa went to a spa in Massachusetts with Connie Brewer for six days, and Paul was left facing a lonely weekend. He spent most weekends pursuing his own interests anyway, but he liked the comfort of having Annalisa around, and the fact that she’d left him, even temporarily, made him fear she might someday leave him permanently.

Apparently, Sandy Brewer didn’t have the same concerns about his own wife. “Dude,” he said, going into Paul’s office, “the girls are away this weekend. Thought you might want to come to my house for dinner.

There’s someone I want you to meet.”

“Who?” Paul asked. Ever since Sandy had flipped out about the two-minute delay in launching the algorithm, Paul had been watching Sandy closely, looking for evidence that Sandy was trying to replace him. Instead, Paul had found payments to an escort company that revealed Sandy had been paying prostitutes to service him during business trips.

With Annalisa away, Paul wondered if Sandy would try to introduce him to a hooker.

“You’ll see,” Sandy said mysteriously. Paul agreed to go, thinking if Sandy had invited one of his prostitutes, Paul could leverage the information to his advantage.

Sandy loved to show off what his success and hard work had brought him, arranging for a formal dinner for three in his wood-paneled dining room, where two enormous David Salle paintings hung. The third dinner companion wasn’t a prostitute after all, but a man named Craig Akio.

Paul shook Craig’s hand, noting only that Craig was younger than he and possessed sharp black eyes. They sat down to a glass of a rare white wine and a bowl of seafood bisque. “I’m a big admirer of your work, Paul,”

Craig Akio said from across the polished mahogany table. “Your work on the Samsun scale was genius.”

“Thanks,” Paul said curtly. He was used to being called a genius and took the compliment as a matter of course.

“I’m looking forward to working with you.”

Paul paused with his spoon halfway to his mouth. This was unexpected. “Are you moving to New York?” he asked.

“I’ve already found an apartment. In the new Gwathmey building. A masterpiece of modern architecture.”

“On the West Side Highway,” Sandy joked.

“I’m used to cars,” Craig said. “I grew up in L.A.”

“Where’d you go to school?” Paul asked evenly. But he felt uneasy. It struck him that perhaps it would have been normal behavior for Sandy to have told him about this new associate before hiring him.

“MIT,” Craig said. “You?”

“Georgetown,” Paul replied. He looked past Craig’s head to the David Salle paintings on the wall. Normally, he didn’t notice such things, but the paintings were of two jesters with terrifying expressions — both jovial and cruel. Paul took a gulp of his wine, feeling inexplicably like the jesters were real and mocking him.

For the rest of the dinner, the talk was of the upcoming political election and its impact on business; then they moved into Sandy’s study for cognac and cigars. Passing out cigars, Sandy began talking about art, boasting about his dinner with a man named David Porshie. “Billy Litchfield, he’s a good friend of my wife’s — when you get married, he’ll be a good friend of your wife’s as well,” he explained to Craig Akio. “He set us up with the head of the Metropolitan Museum. Decent fellow. Knows everything about art, but I suppose that’s not surprising. He got me thinking about improving my own collection. Going for the old masters instead of the new stuff. What do you think, Paul? Anyone can get the new stuff, right? It’s only money. But no matter what they tell you, no one knows how much it’ll be worth in five years or even two. Might not be worth anything at all.”

Paul just stared, but Craig nodded enthusiastically. Sandy, sensing an audience for not only admiration but awe, opened the safe.

Connie had done what Billy had asked. She had put the cross away — into the safe in Sandy’s study — so she could visit it anytime she liked.

Nevertheless, she’d managed to keep the cross a secret. Sandy, however, was a different story. When Billy first came to him with the opportunity to buy the cross, Sandy hadn’t thought much about it, considering it nothing more than another piece of old jewelry his wife wanted to acquire. Connie told him that the piece was important, a true antiquity, but Sandy hadn’t paid attention until that evening with David Porshie.

David approached art on a whole different level. After returning home that evening, Sandy had examined the cross again with Connie and began to understand its value, but was more taken by the coup he’d scored in obtaining it at all. It was something no one else had, and unable to keep this spectacular possession to himself, he had taken to bringing one or two select guests into his study after dinner to show it off.

Now, untying the black cords that bound the artifact in its soft suede wrappings, he said, “Here’s something you won’t see every day. In fact, it’s so rare, you won’t even find it in a museum.” Holding up the cross, he allowed Craig and Paul to examine it.

“Where do you get a piece like that?” Craig Akio asked, his eyes glittering.

“You can’t,” Sandy Brewer said, wrapping up the cross and replacing it in the safe. He sucked on his cigar. “A piece like that finds you. Not unlike you finding us, Craig.” Sandy turned to Paul, blowing smoke in his direction. “Paul, I’ll expect you to teach Craig everything you know.

You’ll be working together closely. At least at first.”

It was that last sentence that woke Paul up — “At least at first.” And then what? He suddenly saw that Sandy meant for him to train Craig; once he’d accomplished this task, Sandy would fire him. There was no need for two men to do his job. Indeed, it was impossible, as the work was secretive, instinctive, and off-the-cuff. All at once he felt as if he were on fire and, standing up, asked for water.

“Water?” Sandy barked dismissively. “I hope you’re not turning into a lightweight.”

“I’m going home,” Paul said.

He left Sandy’s apartment, fuming. How long would it be before Sandy dismissed him from his job? Crossing the sidewalk, he got into the back of the chauffeured Bentley and slammed the door. Would he lose the car as well? Would he lose everything? At the moment, he couldn’t keep up his lifestyle or even his apartment without his job. Yes, technically, he had plenty of money, but it fluctuated on a daily basis, flitting up and down and, like the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, was impossible to pin down. He had to wait for exactly the right moment to make a killing, at which point he could cash out with what could be a billion dollars.

Unable to stop thinking about Sandy and how Sandy planned to ruin him, Paul spent the next thirty-six hours in his apartment in a panic. By Sunday morning, even his fish couldn’t soothe him, and Paul decided to take a walk around the neighborhood. On the table in the foyer, he found The New York Times. Without thinking, he spread it open on the living room rug and began turning the pages. And then he found the answer to his problem with Sandy on the cover of the arts section.

It was a story — complete with photographs taken from a portrait of Queen Mary — about the unsolved mystery of the Cross of Bloody Mary.

Having met the Brewers and suspecting that Sandy fit the profile of an art thief, David Porshie had arranged the story, thinking it might draw out someone who had information on the cross.

Now, reading the story while squatting on his haunches, Paul Rice put two and two together. He sat back, and as he explored the potential results of piecing together this information, the possibilities grew exponen-tially in his mind. With Sandy occupied in the legal entanglements of possessing a stolen artifact, he would be too busy to fire Paul. Indeed, Paul would go further — with Sandy gone, he could insert himself into Sandy’s place, taking his position. Then he’d be running the fund, and Sandy, having garnered himself a criminal record, would be banned from trading. It would all be his, Paul thought. Then and only then would he be safe.

Taking the newspaper with him, he went out to the Internet café on Astor Place. He did some research and, finding the information he needed, constructed a fake e-mail account under the name Craig Akio. Then he composed an e-mail stating that he — Craig Akio — had seen the cross in the home of Sandy Brewer. Paul addressed the e-mail to the reporter who’d written the piece in the Times. Out of habit, Paul reread the e-mail, and, finding it satisfactory, hit “send.”

Heading out into the weekend bustle of lower Broadway, Paul felt calm for the first time in weeks. As he entered One Fifth, he smiled, thinking about how no one was safe in the information age. But for the moment, at least, he was.

17

For Billy Litchfield, April brought not only spring showers but debil-itating tooth pain. The miserable weather was exacerbated by what felt like one endless visit to the dentist’s office. A dull pain that grew into a pounding percussion of agony finally drove him to the dentist, where an X-ray revealed that he had not one, but two decaying roots demanding immediate surgery. The situation required several appointments involving novocaine, gas, antibiotics, soft foods, and thank-fully, Vicodin to ease the pain.

“I don’t understand,” Billy protested to the dentist. “I’ve never had even a cavity.” This was a bit of an exaggeration, but nevertheless, Billy’s teeth — which were naturally white and straight, requiring only two years of braces as a child — had always been a source of pride.

The dentist shrugged. “Get used to it,” he said. “It’s part of getting older. Circulation goes to hell, and the teeth are the first to go.”

This made Billy more depressed than usual, and he upped his dosage of Prozac. He’d never been at the mercy of his body, and he found the experience not only humbling but capable of erasing every important achievement in his life. What the philosophers said was true: In the end, there was only decay and death, and in death, everyone was equal.

One afternoon while he was recovering from the latest injustice done to his jaw (a tooth had been removed and a metal screw inserted in its place — he was still waiting for the fake tooth to be constructed in the lab), there was a knock on his door.

The man who stood in the hallway was a stranger in a navy blue Ralph Lauren suit. Before Billy could respond, the man flashed a badge at him.

“Detective Frank Sabatini,” he said. “Can I come in?”

“Of course,” Billy said, too shocked to refuse. As the detective followed him into his tiny living room, Billy realized he was still wearing his robe and had a vision of himself, hands cuffed, going to jail in the paisley silk number.

The detective flipped open a notebook. “Are you Billy Litchfield?” he asked.

For a second, Billy considered lying but decided it might only make things worse. “I am,” he said. “Officer, what’s wrong? Has someone died?”

“Detective,” Frank Sabatini said. “Not Officer. I worked hard for the title. I like to use it.”

“As well you should,” Billy said. Explaining the robe, he added, “I’m recuperating from some dental work.”

“That’s tough. I hate the dentist myself,” Detective Sabatini said pleasantly enough.

He didn’t sound like he was ready to make an arrest, Billy thought.

“Do you mind if I get changed?” Billy asked.

“Take your time.”

Billy went into his bedroom and closed the door. His hands shook so fiercely, he had a hard time taking off the robe and putting on a pair of corduroy slacks and a red cashmere sweater. Then he went into his bathroom and gulped down a Vicodin, followed by two orange Xanaxes. If he was going to jail, he wanted to be as sedated as possible.

When he returned to the living room, the detective was standing by the side table, examining Billy’s photographs. “You know a lot of important people,” he remarked.

“Yes,” Billy said. “I’ve lived in New York a long time. Nearly forty years.

One accumulates friends.”

The detective nodded and got right to it. “You’re a sort of art dealer, aren’t you?”

“Not really,” Billy said. “I sometimes put people together with dealers. But I don’t deal in art myself.”

“Do you know Sandy and Connie Brewer?”

“Yes,” Billy said softly.

“You were helping the Brewers with their art collection, right?”

“I have in the past,” Billy admitted. “But they were mostly finished.”

“Do you know about any recent purchases they might have made?

Maybe not through a dealer?”

“Hmmm,” Billy said, stalling. “What do you mean by ‘recent’?”

“In the last year or so?”

“They did go to the art fair in Miami. They may have bought a painting. As I said, they’re mostly finished with their collection. I’m actually working with someone else right now, quite intensely.”

“Who would that be?”

Billy swallowed. “Annalisa Rice.”

The detective wrote down the name and underlined it. “Thank you, Mr. Litchfield,” he said, handing Billy his card. “If you hear anything else about the Brewers’ collection, will you contact me?”

“Of course,” Billy said. He paused. “Is that it?”

“What do you mean?” the detective asked, moving to the door.

“Are the Brewers in trouble? They’re very nice people.”

“I’m sure they are,” the detective said. “Keep my card. We may be contacting you again soon. Good afternoon, Mr. Litchfield.”

“Good afternoon, Detective,” Billy said. He closed the door and collapsed onto his couch. Then he quickly got up and, sidling next to the curtain, peered out at Fifth Avenue. Every kind of cheap television crime scenario entered his mind. Was the detective gone? How much did he know? Or was he out there in an unmarked car, spying on Billy? Would Billy be tailed?

For the next two hours, Billy was too terrified to make a call or check his e-mail. Had he given himself away to the detective with his question about that being it? And why had he given the detective Annalisa Rice’s name? Now the detective would get in touch with her. How much did she really know? Sick with fear, he went into the bathroom and took two more pills. Then he lay down on his bed. Mercifully, sleep came, a sleep from which he prayed he wouldn’t have to wake.

He did, however — three hours later. His cell phone was ringing. It was Annalisa Rice. “Can I see you?” she asked.

“My God. Did the cop call you, too?”

“He just came by here. I wasn’t home. He told Maria it had something to do with the Brewers and did I know them.”

“What did she say?”

“She said she didn’t know.”

“Good for Maria.”

“Billy, what’s going on?”

“Are you alone?” Billy asked. “Can you come over here? I’d come to you, but I don’t want the doormen seeing me going in and out of One Fifth. And make sure you aren’t followed.”

Half an hour later, Annalisa, seated in front of Billy, held up her hands. “Billy, stop,” she said. “Don’t tell me any more. You’ve already told me too much.” She stood up. “You mustn’t tell anyone anything.

Not a word about this. Anything you say from now on can be used in a trial.”

“Is it really that bad?” Billy said.

“You need to hire a lawyer. David Porshie will convince the police to get a search warrant — for all we know, the attorney general is already involved — and they’ll search the Brewers’ apartment and find the cross.”

“They might not find anything,” Billy said. “The cross isn’t even in the apartment anymore. I told Connie to put it in a safety-deposit box.”

“Eventually, they’ll search that, too. It’s only a matter of time.”

“I could call Connie. And warn her. Tell her to take the cross away.

Stash it in the Hamptons. Or Palm Beach. It was in One Fifth for sixty years, and no one knew a thing about it.”

“Billy, you’re not making sense,” Annalisa said soothingly. “Don’t make this worse for yourself than it already is. You’re implicated, and if you contact the Brewers, you’ll be charged with conspiracy as well.”

“How long before they get me?” Billy asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Before I go to jail?”

“You won’t necessarily go to jail. There are all kinds of things that can happen. You can plea-bargain or do a deal. If you went to the police right now, to the attorney general, and told him what you know, he’d probably agree to give you immunity.”

“I should turn in the Brewers to save myself?” Billy said.

“That’s what it amounts to.”

“I couldn’t,” Billy said. “They’re my friends.”

“They’re my friends, too,” Annalisa said. “But Connie hasn’t committed a crime by taking a gift from her husband. Don’t be foolish,” she added warningly. “Sandy Brewer won’t think twice about doing the same thing to you.”

Billy put his head in his hands. “This kind of thing, it just isn’t done.

Not in our set.”

“It’s not a child’s tea party,” Annalisa said sharply. “Billy, you’ve got to understand. All of the imagined traditions in the world won’t help you.

You’ve got to face the facts squarely and decide what to do. Meaning what’s best for you.”

“What happens to the Brewers?”

“Don’t worry about the Brewers,” Annalisa said. “Sandy is beyond rich.

He’ll buy his way out of this, you’ll see. He’ll claim he didn’t know what he was buying. He’ll claim he bought art from you all the time. You’ll take the fall, not him. I was a lawyer for eight years. Trust me, it’s always the little people who get thrown under the bus.”

“The little people,” Billy said, shaking his head. “So it’s come to that.

I’m one of the little people after all.”

“Billy, please, let me help you,” Annalisa said.

“I just need some time. To think,” Billy said, showing her to the door.

Two days later, Detective Frank Sabatini, accompanied by four police officers, arrived at the offices of Brewer Securities at three P.M. sharp.

Detective Sabatini had found this hour most propitious for the arrest of white-collar criminals: They were back from their lunches by then and, with their bellies full, were much more compliant.

Frank Sabatini was very sure of his man. The day before, Craig Akio, having denied any knowledge of either the e-mail or the cross to Detective Sabatini, had mysteriously left for Japan, and citing the fact that his suspect might be given to run, like Mr. Akio, Detective Sabatini was able to obtain a search warrant for the Brewer abode. It happened to be the week of school vacation, and Connie had taken the whole brood, including the two nannies, to Mexico. The only ones home were the maids, who were helpless in the face of the law. It was, Sabatini thought, a very exciting morning, as the safe had to be opened by use of explosives. Nevertheless, his gunpowder man was very good, and nothing in the safe was damaged, including the cross. The confirmation that this was indeed the stolen item long missing was made by David Porshie, who’d been waiting for the detective’s call.

Now, at Brewer Securities, hearing a commotion in the hallway, Paul Rice walked out of his spacious, entirely white office to join the few other partners and employees in watching Sandy Brewer being led out in handcuffs. “Jezzie,” Sandy said to his assistant on his way out, “call my lawyer. There must be some mistake here.” Expressionless, Paul observed the spectacle, and when Sandy was safely in the elevator, Paul went back to his desk. The office erupted in gossip and speculation: Everyone assumed Sandy had committed some kind of financial fraud, and they hurried back to their computers to clean up their accounts. Paul decided to take the afternoon off.

He found Annalisa in her prettily decorated office, researching something on the Web. When he appeared in the doorway, she jumped and quickly hit a button on her computer. “What are you doing home?” she asked in alarm. “Has something happened?”

“Nothing at all.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Of course,” Paul said. “Why shouldn’t it be?”

“Considering what’s gone wrong in this building in the past two months,” she said with an edge of sarcasm, “I don’t know.”

“There’s nothing to worry about now,” Paul said, heading upstairs to visit his fish. “I’ve taken care of it. From now on, everything is going to be fine.”

Billy Litchfield spent the two days leading up to Sandy Brewer’s arrest in a haze of fear. He called no one, not trusting himself to behave normally, afraid, if asked, that he would inadvertently blurt out the story of his involvement with the cross. Four or five times, he considered leaving the country, but where would he go? He had a little bit of money, but not enough to stay away forever. Perhaps he could go to Switzerland, where he’d be able to collect some of his money. But the fear paralyzed him. Although he spent hours on the Internet Googling Sandy Brewer’s name to see if anything had happened, the reality of booking a flight and packing a suitcase overwhelmed him. The very thought sent him to his bed, where he curled up in the fetal position under the covers. He had random, unhealthy, repetitive thoughts and kept thinking about a line from a ghost story that had terrified him as a kid — “I want my liver.”

It also occurred to him that maybe Sandy Brewer wouldn’t be caught, and they’d both go free. Who knew how much evidence the detective had? Perhaps it truly was nothing more than a rumor that might persist for a while and then go away. Mrs. Houghton had kept the cross on her bureau in her bedroom in One Fifth Avenue for years with no one the wiser. If he wasn’t caught, Billy vowed he would somehow change his life. He had predicated his entire existence on social obligations, on the desire to be with the right people at the right time and in the right place. Now he saw all too clearly his mistake. He’d thought that this desire for the best in life was going to add up to something substan-tial and concrete. It hadn’t.

Trapped in his apartment, he remembered the many times in his life when he had told himself, “Who needs money when one has rich friends?” He wondered how his rich friends could help him now.

Staring out his living room window at the same view he’d had for years — the Episcopal Church, the stones brown with grime — he saw that a scaffolding was being erected around his building. Of course. The owners were renovating to prepare for the conversion to co-op. He’d done nothing about his apartment situation, not knowing if he would be able to stay in New York City. Was it too late? Would it even matter? Taking himself back to bed, he turned on the television.

The story about Sandy Brewer’s arrest was all over the evening news.

The clip of Sandy being led out in handcuffs and then, with a policeman’s hand on his head, pushed into the backseat of a squad car, played over and over. The newscasters claimed Sandy Brewer had been caught in possession of an invaluable English treasure believed to have come from the estate of one of the city’s most important philanthropists, Mrs. Louise Houghton. There was no mention of Billy.

Immediately, Billy’s house phone and cell phone began ringing inces-santly. Friends or reporters? he wondered. He didn’t answer either line.

His apartment buzzer went off five or six times — apparently, whoever was trying to get in had made it up to his floor, because then there was a pounding at his door that eventually went away. Billy took refuge in his bathroom. It was only a matter of time before they came for him.

He, too, would be all over the newspapers and the Internet, and there would be clips of him on the news and on YouTube, his head bowed in disgrace. His behavior was justifiable, perhaps, because he needed money, but no one would see it that way. Why hadn’t he immediately turned the cross over to the Met? Because it would have besmirched Mrs. Houghton’s name. But she was dead, and now her name was besmirched anyway, and he was probably going to jail. In despair, he even wondered why he had ever moved to New York in the first place. Why couldn’t he have stayed in the Berkshires and been happy with what life had handed him in the beginning?

He opened his medicine cabinet and took out all his pills. He had several kinds now: two types of sleeping pills, Xanax, Prozac, and the Vicodin for his tooth pain. If he took all the pills and drank a bottle of vodka, he might be able to end it. But staring at the pills, he realized he didn’t even have the courage to kill himself.

He could at least knock himself out. He took two Vicodins, two Xanaxes, and one of each kind of sleeping pill. Within minutes, he was asleep in a vibrant, multicolored dream that seemed to go on forever.

Enid Merle was one of the first people to hear about Sandy Brewer’s arrest. A reporter from the paper who was on the scene called her immediately. As yet, all the facts weren’t in, and the conclusion was that Sandy had somehow managed to buy the cross from Mrs. Houghton, who had stolen it from the Met. This allegation, Enid knew, was false. While it was true that Louise had possessed the cross, Enid guessed that she hadn’t taken it from the Met but from Flossie Davis. Flossie had always been the obvious culprit, but what had never made sense to Enid was why Louise hadn’t returned the cross to the Met in the first place. Instead, she’d kept both the cross and the secret, protecting Flossie from being punished for her criminal act. Louise was a devout Catholic; perhaps a moral imperative had prevented her from revealing Flossie’s crime.

Or perhaps, Enid thought, there was another reason. Maybe Flossie had something on Louise. Enid should have gotten to the bottom of this mystery long ago, but she’d never considered it important enough. At the moment, there wasn’t time. She had a column due, and since it concerned Louise Houghton, she would have to write it herself.

Enid looked through several printed pages of research on Sandy and Connie Brewer. The story wasn’t of much importance in the larger world — certainly nowhere near the impact of a presidential election, or the innocent murder of civilians caught in a war, or all and any of the insults and indignities suffered by the common man. It was only about New York “society.” And yet, she reminded herself, the desire for some kind of society was an innate human trait, for without it, there could be no hope of civilized man. Picking out a clip of an article from Vanity Fair written about Connie Brewer and her fabulous country house in the Hamptons, Enid wondered if it was possible to have a desire for too much society. The Brewers had everything in life — four children, a private plane, no worries.

But it wasn’t enough, and now the children’s daddy might be going to jail.

It was ironic that Sandy Brewer and Mrs. Enid Houghton should end up in the same sentence. If Mrs. Houghton had been alive, she never would have acknowledged an arriviste like Sandy. Enid sat back in her chair. There was a big chunk of the story missing, but her column was due in four hours.

Positioning her hands above the keyboard, she wrote, “Louise Houghton was a good friend of mine.”

Eight hours later, Billy Litchfield woke up in his claw-footed bathtub.

Checking his arms and legs, he was surprised to find himself still very much alive — and inexplicably exultant. It was the middle of the night; nevertheless, he felt an overwhelming desire to hear David Bowie. Sliding a CD into the machine, he thought, Why not? and decided to play the entire four hours of a two-CD set spanning Bowie’s career from 1967 to 1993.

As Billy listened, he walked around his apartment, dancing occasionally on the worn wooden floors in his bare feet, and flinging his paisley robe around his body like a cape. Then he started looking at photographs. He had hundreds of framed photographs in his apartment — hung on the walls, lined up on the mantelpiece, piled on top of books, and packed into drawers. While he was looking at his photographs, he thought he might as well play all his CDs. During the next twenty hours, he sensed that either his cell phone or land line was ringing again, but he didn’t answer either one.

He took more pills and at some point discovered that he’d consumed nearly a whole bottle of vodka. Then he found an old bottle of gin and, singing loudly along with the music, drank it down. He began to feel queasy, and wanting to maintain his dizzy feeling of pleasure in which nothing that had happened in the past seemed to matter, he took two more Vicodins. He felt a little better, and with his music still blaring — it was now Janet Eno — he passed out on top of his bed.

At one point, like a sleepwalker, he did get up and go to his closet.

But then he collapsed again, and sometime in the middle of the night, his kidneys gave out, followed by his heart. Billy didn’t feel a thing.