“And did you get the toilet paper and paper towels?” Mindy asked.
“I did it yesterday. Didn’t you notice?” James asked.
“Well, really, James,” Mindy said, “I’m a little busy here. Renovating the house and turning my blog into a book. That reminds me, Sam is bringing his little girlfriend to the wedding. I’ve asked Thayer Core to come by here at two o’clock to pick Sam up, then they’ll meet Dominique at Penn Station. She’s coming in from Springfield, Massachusetts. You can thank me for that—I thought you’d probably want to spend the day undisturbed, so you can work on your new book.”
“Thanks,” James muttered.
“And one more thing,” Mindy continued. “Dominique is Billy Litchfield’s niece. Ironic, isn’t it? But I suppose life is like that—it’s a small world. Sam met her at tennis camp, and she’s going to Miss Porter’s in the fall. So don’t say anything negative about Billy. She’s very sensitive, I think. But we don’t have to feel too sorry for her. Sam says she inherited three million dollars from Billy’s estate. It was in a Swiss bank account. Who would have thought Billy had so much money?”
Later that day, around midafternoon, Lola Fabrikant awoke in Thayer Core’s bed, exhausted. Thayer was out—probably running errands for that awful Mindy Gooch, she thought—and out of habit, Lola immediately turned her phone on. She was supposed to have Saturdays off, but her new boss, the crazy director Harold Dimmick, had already sent her six frantic e-mails, demanding that she come by his apartment so she could advise him on what to wear to Schiffer and Philip’s wedding. For a moment, Lola considered ignoring the e-mails but thought better of it. Harold Dimmick had bizarre habits and barely spoke, but he was so crazy he had to pay his assistants a salary of eighty thousand dollars a year to get anyone to work for him. Lola needed both the job and the money, so she put up with Harold and the long hours. Harold had just started shooting an independent film and was working round the clock; consequently, she was as well.
She got up and went into the small bathroom, splashing water on her face. Looking in the mirror, she wondered once again what had happened to her life. After James had refused to see her, her fortunes had quickly taken another turn for the worse. Marquee had disappeared, along with his website, The Peephole, and while Lola was furious because he still owed her two thousand dollars, there wasn’t a thing she could do. She’d tried living on her own for a bit, but her money had begun to run out quickly, and she’d had to beg Thayer to let her move in with him. She’d even tried looking for a regular job, but it turned out James had been right about the effects of writing a graphic sex column. Every potential employer seemed to know about it, and she couldn’t even get an interview for an interview. Then she’d run into Schiffer Diamond during one of her stakeouts of One Fifth. Schiffer had spotted her standing by the bushes in front of Flossie Davis’s building, and had crossed over to greet her. “Hey, kiddo,” she said, as if they were actual friends and she hadn’t stolen Philip away from her. “I’ve been wondering what happened to you. Enid said you were back in town.”
Lola tried to remind herself of her hatred of Schiffer Diamond but was overwhelmed by Schiffer’s persona—she was a movie star, after all, and if someone had to take Philip away, wasn’t it better that it was Schiffer Diamond and not some other twenty-two-year-old like herself? So Lola found herself pouring out all her troubles, and Schiffer agreed to help her, saying it was the least she could do. Schiffer had arranged for her to meet Harold Dimmick, one of the directors on Lady Superior. Due to Schiffer’s recommendation, Harold had hired her, but Lola no longer believed Schiffer had anything to do with it. Harold was such a freak, only someone as desperate as Lola would even consider the job.
“So you’re finally up,” Thayer said, coming into the apartment.
“I worked last night until three A. M., if you recall,” Lola snapped. “Not everyone has a cushy nine-to-five job.”
“Try nine-to-seven,” Thayer said. “And the Gooch is making me work today. Have to take her kid to the train station to meet his girlfriend.”
“Ugh,” Lola said. “Why can’t she go herself? It’s her kid.”
“She’s working,” Thayer said. “On her book.”
“It’s going to be horrible. I hope it’s a flop.”
“It’ll probably be huge. She gets over a hundred thousand views on her blog.”
“She could have at least gotten us invited to the wedding.”
“You still don’t get it, do you?” Thayer scoffed. “We’re considered the help.”
“Well,” Lola said, insulted. “If you want to think about yourself that way, go ahead. I never will.”
“What do you plan to do about it?” Thayer asked.
“I’m not going to just sit around and let things happen to me. And neither should you. Listen, Thayer,” Lola said, going into the tiny kitchen and taking a bottle of VitaWater out of the mini refrigerator, “I’m not going to continue to live like this. I’ve been looking at ads for real estate. There’s a tiny apartment in the basement of a building on Fifth Avenue, between Eleventh and Twelfth Streets, for four hundred thousand dollars. The building just went co-op.”
“Ah,” Thayer said. “Billy Litchfield’s old building.”
“With your hundred thousand a year and my eighty, that’s ninety thousand a year after taxes. That’s almost eight thousand a month. We ought to be able to afford a mortgage on that.”
“Right,” Thayer said. “And the apartment is probably the size of a shoe box.”
“It was a storage room. But so what? It’s on Fifth Avenue.”
“And the next thing you know, you’ll be wanting to get married,” Thayer said.
“And?” Lola said. “It’s not like you’ll ever find anyone better than me.”
“I’ll think about it,” he said. The skies outside the window were darkening, and there was a clap of thunder. “Storm’s coming,” Thayer said. “I’d better get moving.”
While he was waiting in Penn Station with Sam, the clouds passed over without producing rain. Coming out
of the station on Seventh Avenue with Dominique in tow—she was a scrawny kid with limp blond hair, Thayer noted—the air was so still and hot, it was almost nauseating. Thayer flagged down a taxi and urged his charges into the backseat. “I’ve never been to New York before. It’s so crowded. And ugly,” Dominique exclaimed.
“You haven’t seen the good part yet. Don’t worry, kid, it gets better,” Thayer said. As the taxi edged down Fifth Avenue, another bank of thunderclouds rolled across lower Manhattan. The skies opened just as the taxi pulled up in front of One Fifth, pelting Thayer and Sam and Dominique with drops of rain the size of pennies.