“Ah,” James said, holding up a finger. “That’s New York real estate. If we hadn’t taken the apartment, it would have been gone in an hour. You’ve got to act fast.” At the Door Store, James purchased a couch with a queen-size foldout bed in a sensible navy blue fabric that wouldn’t show stains, the feel of which made Lola shudder. It was the floor model, James exclaimed, saying it was a great deal. And another fifteen hundred dollars was gone.
James finally escorted her back to the empty apartment, where she was to wait for the bed to be delivered. “I don’t know how you managed to do all this,” Lola said weakly. “Thank you.” She kissed James on the cheek.
“I’ll come by tomorrow and see how you’re settling in,” he said.
“I can’t wait,” Lola said. There was still the remainder of the fifteen thousand dollars James might give her, but she didn’t dare ask for it now. S
he would have to talk to him about it tomorrow, though.
When James left, she immediately went to Thayer Core’s apartment. “I got my own place,” she said.
“How’d you manage that?” Thayer said, looking up from his computer.
“James Gooch found it,” Lola said, taking off her coat. “He paid for it, too.”
“He’s an idiot.”
“He’s in love with me.” Lola was suddenly thrilled to be getting out of Thayer and Josh’s apartment. Thayer was becoming unreasonable, asking her for oral sex and pouting when he didn’t get it, saying he had something on her and would use it if he had to. “What?” she’d scoff. “You’ll see,” he’d say vaguely.
“Shut up, Thayer. You’re a douchebag,” she reminded him now.
“I thought you were trying to get back into One Fifth. I need information.”
“I’ll get it from James.”
“What if he requires sex in exchange?”
“I have sex with you, so what’s the difference?” Lola replied. “At least he doesn’t have diseases.”
“How do you know?”
“I know,” she said. “He’s only been with one woman for the past twenty years. His wife.”
“Maybe he sleeps with hookers on the side.”
Lola rolled her eyes. “Not every man is like you, Thayer. Decent men do exist.”
“Uh-huh,” Thayer said, nodding. “Like James Gooch. A man who’s an inch away from cheating on his wife. Although if I were married to Mindy Gooch, I’d cheat, too.”
The next day, knocking on the door of her new apartment, James found Lola sitting on the bare mattress of the foldout couch, crying. “What’s wrong now?” James said, edging next to her.
“Look around,” Lola said. “I don’t even have a pillow.”
“I’ll bring you one from home. My wife won’t notice.”
“I don’t want some old pillow from your house,” Lola said, wondering how she’d managed to pick the cheapest man in Manhattan as her savior. “Do you think you could give me some money? Maybe the fifteen thousand dollars?”
“I can’t give it to you all at once,” James said. “My wife will get suspicious.” Having given the matter a great deal of thought, James had settled on a plan to pay Lola’s rent for six months while giving her two thousand dollars a month in spending money. “And when you get a job,” he said, “you’ll be fine. You’ll have much more money than I did at your age.”
From then on, James went by the apartment every afternoon, often taking Lola to lunch at the Irish pub downstairs—to make sure she had one decent meal a day, he said—and then hung around her apartment afterward. He liked the uncluttered space and the afternoon sunlight that poured through the windows, noting that Lola’s apartment got more light than his own. “James,” she said. “I need a TV.”
“You have your computer,” James said. “Can’t you watch TV shows on that? Isn’t that what everybody does these days?”
“Everybody has a computer. And a TV.”
“You could read a book,” James said. “Have you read Anna Karenina? Or Madame Bovary?”
“I have, and they’re boring. Besides, I don’t have room for books,” she complained, gesturing at the tiny space.