One Fifth Avenue

“Hello, Mindy, dear,” Enid said.

“Hello,” Mindy said coldly. “So you do have the keys.”

“Didn’t Roberto tell you?” Enid asked innocently. “I picked them up yesterday afternoon.”

Philip glanced at Mindy but didn’t acknowledge her. He knew vaguely who Mindy was, knew vaguely that her husband was some kind of writer, but as he didn’t know them, he never said hello. And so, as sometimes happened in these buildings, Mindy and James had decided that Philip Oakland, who was successful, was also smug and arrogant, too arrogant to even greet them politely, making him their sworn enemy.

“You’re Philip Oakland,” Mindy said, wanting to put herself in his face but not wanting to sink to his level of disregard.

“Yes,” Philip said.

“I’m Mindy Gooch. You know who I am, Philip. I live here. With my husband, James Gooch. For God’s sake, the two of you have the same publisher. Redmon Richardly?”

“Ah, yes,” Philip said. “I didn’t know that.”

“You do now,” Mindy said. “So the next time we see you, perhaps you’ll say hello.”

“Don’t I say hello?” Philip said.

“No, you don’t,” Mindy said.

“The bones of this apartment are amazing,” Brenda Lish interjected, wanting to defuse a spat between warring residents. With an apartment like this, there would undoubtedly be many skirmishes ahead.

The group trooped up the stairs, eventually reaching the top floor, which contained the ballroom. The ceiling was a dome, sixteen feet high; at one end was an enormous marble fireplace. Mindy’s heart beat faster. She’d always dreamed of living in an apartment like this, with a room like this, an aerie with three-hundred-and-sixty-degree views of all of Manhattan. The light was astounding. Every New Yorker wanted light, and few had it. If she lived here, in this apartment, instead of in the half-basement warren of rooms her family now occupied, maybe for once in her life, she could be happy.

“I was thinking,” Enid said, “we might want to split up the apartment. Sell off each floor.”

Yes, Mindy thought. And maybe she and James could buy the top floor. “We’d need to have a special quorum of the board,” she said.

“How long would that take?” Brenda asked.

Mindy looked at Enid. “It depends.”

“Well, it would be a shame,” Brenda said. “Apartments like this never come up in Manhattan. And especially not in this location. It’s one of a kind. It should probably be on the National Register of Historic Places.”

“The exterior of the building is on the register. The apartments are not. Residents are entitled to do anything they want with them,” Enid said.

“That’s too bad,” Brenda said. “If the apartment were part of the national register, you’d attract the right kind of buyer, someone you’d probably want in the building. Someone who appreciates beauty and history. They wouldn’t be able to destroy these deco moldings, for instance.”

“We’re not going to turn it into a museum,” Mindy said.

“How much is it worth?” Enid asked.

“My guess? Intact, around twenty million. If you split it up, you’ll hurt the value. Each floor will probably be worth three point five.”

In a fluster, Mindy went down to her apartment. The still air was stifling; in the afternoon on a bright day, when the sun was angled just right, a strip of light illuminated the back of the rooms, which looked out onto a small cement patio. The patio was eight feet wide, and she and James were always thinking about fixing it up, but never got around to it. Any kind of construction had to be approved by the board, which wouldn’t have been a problem, but it also required materials and workers to do the job, and the logistics of organizing such an event were too much on top of everything else she had to do. So, for the ten years she and James had lived there, the patio had remained the same—a cracked cement patch through which stubborn tufts of grass grew. A small Weber barbecue grill and three folding chairs completed the picture.

Mindy went into her office. Finding her latest bank statement, she added up their assets. They had two hundred and fifty-seven thousand in savings, four hundred thousand in a retirement account, thirty thousand dollars in checking, and maybe ten thousand dollars in stocks. A long time ago, James had wanted to invest in the stock market, and Mindy had said, “Do I look like someone who wants to throw away her money? The stock market is nothing more than legalized gambling, and you know how I feel about gambling. And the lotto, for that matter.” Adding up all their cash, they had barely seven hundred thousand dollars. Mindy knew this sum was more than what most Americans had, but in their world, it wasn’t much. It cost thirty-five thousand a year to send Sam to private school, and it would take at least a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to send him to college. On the plus side, their apartment—which they had bought slowly in pieces and put together during the real estate downturn in the mid-nineties—was worth at least a million dollars. And they’d paid only two hundred and fifty thousand. Altogether, their assets were close-ish to two million dollars. If they wanted to buy just one floor of the penthouse, they were still one and a half million short.

Maybe they should sell everything and move to the Caribbean, Mindy thought.

How much could a house in the Caribbean cost? A hundred, two hundred thousand dollars? She could swim and make salads and read. James could write pathetic novels about the local goings-on. They’d be giving up, but so what? The only glitch was Sam. He’d love it, but would it be good for him? He was a genius and such a nice boy. Not the least bit arrogant about his intelligence, unlike some of his friends. But if they left New York, it could throw Sam’s whole educational career off track, meaning he might not get into an Ivy League school. No, Mindy thought, shaking her head. We will not give up. We will persevere. We will stay in New York with our fingernails digging into the cement, if only for Sam’s sake.

The buzzer rang, and she jumped up, wondering who it might be. Probably James, who was out buying overpriced food at Citarella and who’d probably forgotten his keys.

Instead, it was Enid Merle.

“Is Sam home?” Enid asked. “I need to install some new software, and I was wondering if he could help.” Sam was the building’s resident computer expert; whenever anyone had a problem, they called on Sam, who was a computer genius and had built up a cottage industry in the building.