One Fifth Avenue

Leaving the suite of offices, she rode the elevator to the ground floor of the massive new office building—where the first three floors were an urban mall of restaurants and high-end shops that sold fifty-thousand-dollar watches to rich tourists—and then she rode an escalator down into the damp bowels of underground corridors and walked through a cement tunnel to the subway. She’d been riding the train ten times a week for twenty years, about a hundred thousand rides. Not what you thought when you were young and determined to make it. She arranged her face into a blank mask and took hold of the metal pole, hoping no male would rub up against her, rub his penis on her leg, the way men sometimes did, like dogs acting on instinct. It was the silent shame endure

d by every woman who rode the subway. No one did anything about it or talked about it because it was performed mostly by men who were more animal than human, and no one wanted to be reminded of the existence of these men or the disturbing baseness of the natural male human. “Don’t take the train!” exclaimed Mindy’s assistant after Mindy regaled her with yet another tale of one such incident. “You’re entitled to a car.” “I don’t want to sit in traffic in Manhattan,” Mindy replied. “But you could work in the car. And talk on the phone.” “No,” Mindy said. “I like to see the people.” “You like to suffer, is what,” the assistant said. “You like to be abused. You’re a masochist.” Ten years ago, this comment would have been insubordination. But not now. Not with the new democracy, where every young person was equal to every older person in this new culture where it was difficult to find young people who even cared to work, who could even tolerate discomfort.

Mindy exited the subway at Fourteenth Street, walking three blocks to her gym. By rote, she changed her clothes and got onto a treadmill. She increased the speed, forcing her legs into a run. A perfect metaphor for her life, she thought. She was running and running and going nowhere.

Back in the locker room, she took a quick shower after carefully tucking her blow-dried bob under a shower cap. She dried off, got dressed again, and thinking about the rest of her day—more meetings and e-mails that would only lead to more meetings and e-mails—felt exhausted. She sat down on the narrow wooden bench in the changing room and called James. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Didn’t we discuss this? I have that lunch,” James said.

“I need you to do something for me.”

“What?” James said.

“Get the keys to Mrs. Houghton’s apartment from the super. I can’t have those keys floating around. And I need to show the real estate agent the apartment. Mrs. Houghton’s relatives want it sold quickly, and I don’t want the place sitting empty for long. Real estate is at a high now. You never know when it might drop, and the price of that apartment needs to set a benchmark. So everyone’s apartment is worth more.”

As usual, James zoned out when Mindy talked real estate. “Can’t you pick them up when you get home?” he asked.

Mindy was suddenly angry. She had excused much over the years with James. She had excused the fact that at times he would barely make conversation other than to respond with a two-syllable word. She’d excused his lack of hair. She’d excused his sagging muscles. She’d excused the fact that he wasn’t romantic and never said “I love you” unless she said it first, and even then he only, when obligated, said it three or four times a year. She’d excused the reality that he was never going to make a lot of money and was probably never going to be a highly respected writer; she’d even excused the fact that with this second novel of his, he was probably going to become a bit of a joke. She was down to almost nothing now. “I can’t do everything, James. I simply cannot go on like this.”

“Maybe you should go to the doctor,” James said. “Get yourself checked out.”

“This has nothing to do with me,” Mindy said. “It’s about you doing your part. Why can’t you help me, James, when I ask you to?”

James sighed. He’d been feeling up about his lunch, and now Mindy was spoiling it. Feminism, he thought. It had wrecked everything. When he was younger, equality meant sex. Lots of sex, as much as you could grab. But now it meant doing all kinds of things a man wasn’t prepared to do. Plus, it took up a huge amount of time. The one thing feminism had done was to make a man appreciate what a bummer it was to be a woman in the first place. Of course, men knew that anyway, so maybe it wasn’t much of a revelation.

“Mindy,” he said, feeling kinder, “I can’t be late for my lunch.”

Mindy also tried a different approach. “Have they told you what they think of the draft of your book?” she asked.

“No,” James said.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. Because they’ll tell me at lunch. That’s what the lunch is about,” James said.

“Why can’t they tell you on the phone? Or by e-mail?”

“Maybe they don’t want to. Maybe they want to tell me in person,” James said.

“So it’s probably bad news,” Mindy said. “They probably don’t like it. Otherwise, they’d tell you how much they loved it in an e-mail.”

Neither one said anything for a second, and then Mindy said, “I’ll call you after your lunch. Will you be home? And can you please get the keys?”

“Yes,” James said.

At one o’clock, James walked the two blocks to the restaurant Babbo. Redmon Richardly, his publisher, wasn’t there, but James hadn’t expected him to be. James sat at a table next to the window and watched the passersby. Mindy was probably right, he thought. His book probably did suck, and Redmon was going to tell him they weren’t going to be able to publish it. And if they did publish it, what difference would it make? No one would read it. And after four years of working on the damn thing, he’d feel exactly the same way as he had before he started writing it, the only difference being that he’d feel a little bit more of a loser, a little bit more insignificant. That was what sucked about being middle-aged: It was harder and harder to lie to yourself.

Redmon Richardly showed up at one-twenty. James hadn’t seen him in over a year and was shocked by his appearance. Redmon’s hair was gray and sparse, reminding James of the head of a baby bird. Redmon looked seventy, James thought. And then James wondered if he looked seventy as well. But that was impossible. He was only forty-eight. And Redmon was fifty-five. But there was an aura about Redmon. Something was different about him. Why, he’s happy, James thought in shock.

“Hey, buddy,” Redmon said, patting James on the back. He sat down across from James and unfolded his napkin. “Should we drink? I gave up alcohol, but I can’t resist a drink during the day. Especially when I can get out of the office. What is it about this business now? It’s busy. You actually have to work.”

James laughed sympathetically. “You seem okay.”

“I am,” Redmon said. “I just had a baby. You ever have a baby?”

“I’ve got a son,” James said.

“Isn’t it just amazing?” Redmon said.