One Fifth Avenue

Beetelle examined her daughter’s fingers. “Black?” she asked, commenting on Lola’s choice of nail color.

“No one’s forcing you to paint yours black. So it doesn’t matter,” Lola said. She knelt down and extracted a shoe box from the bag. “Aren’t these amazing?” she asked, lifting the cover and tearing away the tissue paper. She held up a gold platformed boot with a heel at least five inches high.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Beetelle said with dismay.

“What?”

“It’s summer.”

“So what?” Lola said. “I’m going to wear them to dinner tonight. We’re going to Il Posto, right?”

The combination of the boot and the mention of Il Posto roused Cem from the bed. He was a short, round man who resembled a hazelnut and tended to blend into the background. “Why would you buy winter shoes in the summer?” he asked.

Lola ignored him, taking off her current shoes—black leather sandals with a Lucite heel—and slipping on the boots.

“Very nice,” Cem said, trying to get into the spirit of things. After so many years of marriage, however, he knew better than to reveal any vestiges of male sexuality. He aimed to be neutral and enthusiastic, a delicate balance he had learned to attain years ago, shortly after Lola was born. If memory served him correctly, it was precisely at the moment of her birth that his sexuality had effectively been neutered, save for the four or five times a year his wife allowed him intercourse.

“I told you,” Lola said, examining herself in the large round mirror above the couch. She didn’t go on to explain the meaning of her comment, but it didn’t matter. Standing up, Lola towered above her parents, and confronted with the sight of a creature so stunning that she had to remind herself that this girl was indeed the result of her very own genes, Beetelle immediately forgot her dismay over the black fingernails and the gold boots.

Having grown up in an era when young women pampered themselves as vigorously as Roman royalty, Lola was like a piece of granite that had been rubbed and polished until it nearly resembled marble. She stood five feet eight inches tall, had a surgically enhanced chest, wore Victoria’s Secret lacy bras, and weighed 130 pounds. Her teeth were white and perfect, her eyes hazel with long mascaraed lashes, her skin buffed and moisturized. She’d decided her mouth wasn’t wide enough, but the lips were plump, made more so by regular injections of collagen.

Satisfied with her appearance, Lola plopped down on the couch next to her mother. “Did you get those sheets I wanted?”

“Sheets and towels. But how was the interview? Did you get the job?”

“There was no job. As usual,” Lola said, picking up the clicker for the television and turning it on. “And the woman who interviewed me was kind of hostile. So I was kind of hostile back.”

“You must be nice to everyone,” Beetelle said.

“That would make me a hypocrite,” Lola said.

A muffled chortling came from Cem’s vicinity.

“That’s enough, you two,” Beetelle said firmly. She turned once again to her daughter. “Darling, you have to find a job. Otherwise…”

Lola looked at her mother. Wishing her mother wouldn’t hover so much, she decided to punish her by delaying the news about the possible job with Philip Oakland. She took her time changing the channels on the TV, and after she got to four hundred and decided there was nothing worth watching, finally said, “I did hear about something today. Working for Philip Oakland. The writer.”

“Philip Oakland?” Beetelle repeated with fervent interest.

“He’s looking for a researcher. I met a girl at the interview who e-mailed me his information. Then I e-mailed him myself, and he e-mailed me right back. I have an interview next week.”

Beetelle was nearly speechless. “Darling, that’s wonderful.” She pulled her daughter into a smothering embrace. “Philip Oakland is exactly the kind of person you came to New York to meet. He’s an A-list screenwriter. Think of the people he must know—and the people you’ll meet through him.” Gaining momentum, she added, “This is everything I always wanted for you. I just didn’t expect it to happen so soon.”

Lola wriggled out of her mother’s grasp. “It hasn’t happened yet,” she said. “He still has to hire me.”

“Oh, but he will,” Beetelle insisted. She sprang up. “We’ll have to get you a new outfit. Thank goodness Jeffrey is right around the corner.”

Hearing the word “Jeffrey,” Cem shuddered. Jeffrey was one of the most expensive stores in Manhattan. “Weren’t we just there?” he asked cautiously.

“Oh, Cem,” Beetelle scolded. “Don’t be silly. Please, get up. We need to shop. And then we’ve got to meet Brenda Lish. She has two more apartments to show us. I’m so excited, I don’t know what to do.”

Fifteen minutes later, the threesome exited Soho House and came out on Ninth Avenue. Lola had decided to break in her new boots; in the gold platform heels she elicited gaping stares from passersby. After a few feet, they were forced to stop when Cem brought up a map on his iPhone. “We go straight. And then we veer to the left at the fork.” He looked down at the iPhone again. “At least I think we do,” he added. His few days in the West Village had been a continual exercise in navigational frustration.

“Oh, Daddy, come on,” Lola said, and strode off ahead of them. She had officially outgrown her parents, she thought, teetering along a cobblestoned street. They were just too slow. The evening before, it had taken her father ten minutes to work up the confidence to flag down a cab.

The Fabrikants met the real estate agent, Brenda Lish, in front of a plain white brick building on West Tenth Street, one of many constructed all over the city in the sixties as middle-class housing. Brenda would not normally have dealt with such small potatoes as the Fabrikants, who were only seeking a rental, but Cem was an acquaintance of one of Brenda’s major clients, who had asked if she would help them out. Since the client was spending several million dollars on an apartment, Brenda was happy to be generous to these nice people with the beautiful daughter.

“I think this will be perfect for you,” Brenda said in her happy, flighty voice. “It’s a twenty-four-hour doorman building, and it’s filled with young people. And you can’t beat the West Village location.”