Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
A solid maple antique rolltop desk that is quintessentially Henry and almost so pretentious it hurts sits there, waiting for brilliance.
Frannie’s not sure she has any. But it’s there, pushed up to the big picture window overlooking Central Park, and she’s still got Hot Ghost Mom’s words ringing in her ears.
People would kill for this view. People probably have. Apartments in the Dakota go for tens of millions of dollars. Surely somewhere in its sordid history, someone has killed for the chance to live here. Maybe that’s how Hot Ghost Mom died.
Frannie winces, glancing around, like thinking about her might summon Hot Ghost Mom out of the air. But Frannie’s alone. Right?
Slowly, she places her work laptop onto the desk and sinks into Henry’s brown leather Hekman Executive Office Chair.
She sends a few confirmations for Henry’s upcoming car service and dinner reservations, and then sends reminders for Henry to email his publicist back, and call his attorney, and call his brother.
She rolls her neck. She needs to raise Henry’s chair to sit even close to ergonomically. But she can’t muster the damn courage to change anything.
There’s a knock at the door and Frannie startles. She walks over and opens it, surprised to find a clutch of grocery bags waiting on Henry’s welcome mat. Damn, she forgot to cancel his weekly grocery delivery.
Frannie hauls the bags into the apartment and sets to stocking the fridge, like any normal Thursday.
Yogurt and a whole basket of the good Whole Foods strawberries, milk, two cartons of eggs, and a slew of finger-food vegetables go into the fridge, along with four different cartons of sparkling water.
She closes the fridge and stares at her hazy reflection in the stainless steel. She should cancel next week’s delivery. He’ll never notice, but it would be wrong to eat his food for the next two months … wouldn’t it?
The memory of Hot Ghost Mom’s assessing stare taunts her. Henry could have offered, after all. Henry should have offered. It’s been three years. Surely, Frannie’s at least earned the right to work out of the apartment when he’s not even here.
She stands up and opens the fridge, tearing into the carton of grapefruit sparkling water. She marches to the desk, reaches down, and raises his chair. Plopping down, she shifts the angle, too, just out of spite. Then, with a fizzy swallow, she glares at her computer.
Her transcription’s not going to type itself, regardless of how frustrated she is with her boss.
With a sigh, Frannie pulls out the printed scans of Henry’s handwritten pages.
She glances out at Central Park and has to admit that the next two months should be a marked improvement on her usual day-to-day.
Not that she’ll ever tell Hot Ghost Mom that.
She sits up straighter in the chair at the thought. Hot Ghost Mom could be watching her right now. So, she should … what? What’s she going to do, type pretty to impress her? That’s annoyingly needy and pathetic, isn’t it?
The thought makes her close Henry’s laptop and reach into her backpack. She sets her personal MacBook on the desktop. Is she really going to sit at Henry L. Olsen’s desk and try to write her own book? It feels sacrilegious somehow.
But Henry told her to write a book. She’d just be doing her job by following directions. Even if he didn’t actually mean for her to do it at his desk.
With a deep breath, she opens her laptop and forces herself to scan through the fifteen pages of what she helpfully titled Ghost Book.
Her frustration with Hot Ghost Mom made for surprisingly good inspiration last night. Of course, in her story, Hot Ghost Mom is not a cold, imperious socialite, but a softer, more curious former inhabitant of the Dakota who’s as interested in not-Frannie as not-Frannie is in her.
Frannie might even call the pages atmospheric. And her counterpart, Charlie, feels suitably freaked out about being haunted, while Frannie’s—
No. Charlie isn’t Frannie. Charlie is her own character. And she needs a proper family backstory. “Happily married mom and dad with a brother in real estate” isn’t something anyone wants to read about.
She takes a sip of her sparkling water and leans back in the chair, thinking.
“Maybe her dad could be a train conductor.”
Frannie jumps. Charlie’s startle reflex is much subtler than Frannie’s.
Bridgette grins at her, leaning against the side of Henry’s desk, red ball in hand. “Or an astronaut.”
Something twists uncomfortably in Frannie’s stomach. “You shouldn’t be reading this,” she says, her voice tight.
“I like reading your stories,” Bridgette replies, all innocence and that wide smile. “You’re funny.”
“Thanks,” Frannie says, glancing behind her. “Should you be in here?”
“Mom’s just being silly. It’s not like your music or books are as inappropriate as other stuff I see.”
Frannie can only imagine. Which makes her more indignant. What does Hot Ghost Mom have against her, if Bridgette could be wandering into God-knows-what around the building?
“Even so, don’t tell your mom about this, okay?” Frannie mumbles, closing the document.
She can’t let Bridgette tell Hot Ghost Mom about … whatever she’s writing. “Book” seems premature somehow. It’s more like real-person fanfiction, and the very thought of Hot Ghost Mom reading it sends heat into Frannie’s cheeks and makes her stomach clench with embarrassment.
Bridgette considers her, her red ball trapped between her stomach and the desk, her smile sly. “Okay, but you have to come somewhere with me.”
Frannie is negotiating with a tiny emotional terrorist.
“Fine,” she says, and even she can hear that she’s barely disgruntled about it.
Hot Ghost Mom will be mad, but that can’t extinguish Frannie’s curiosity. She just has to give into it at this point. She’s not a smart ingenue.
Frannie locks Henry’s apartment and takes Bridgette’s little hand.
The tingling sensation shoots up her arm, but she doesn’t shiver.
She doesn’t gasp when she notices that her body’s invisible again, either, even though she can still see Bridgette.
She’s getting better at being haunted. Which isn’t a flex, is it?
“Where are we going?” Frannie whispers.
Somehow, she doesn’t think Bridgette can make her silent as well as invisible.
“Apartment 26,” Bridgette says.
The famously vacant Apartment 26 has been on the market for years. Frannie thinks it’s currently for sale for thirty million. Henry complains about it regularly. Apparently, anytime someone makes a bid for it, the co-op meetings are insufferable.
Frannie watches Bridgette reach out and touch the doorknob on the unassuming front door. It swings open almost instantly, and she drags Frannie into the dark apartment, closing the door behind them with barely a snick.
Ghosts can unlock locks?
But all thoughts of ghost powers drop clean out of Frannie’s head when Bridgette flips on the lights.
Even unfurnished, Apartment 26 is astounding.
The entrance hall is high and narrow, and so long that it has a corner at the end leading to yet more hallway.
The whole space is bathed in a mellow yellow light that bounces nicely off the solid hardwood flooring.
Frannie’s head twists this way and that. She barely even notices her body reappearing. She’s too busy peering into the three bedrooms that look out on Seventy-Second Street with wide eyes. Bridgette leads her into an expansive parlor that backs up on an even larger dining room.
The life you could live in a place like this.
“You should squat here,” Bridgette says brightly. “Michael and I play hide-and-seek here, and if there was furniture, it would be better!”
Frannie looks around the huge room, with its red walls, parquet floor, and window alcoves. “I don’t think any of my furniture would fit in here,” Frannie admits, tugging Bridgette gently through the wood-lined archway into the dining room.
“But we could have so much fun. And it’s much better than your ‘office.’ ”
Frannie snorts. “I do have an actual apartment, you know. And it’s pretty nice. It’s just not … this.”
“It’s definitely one of the more spectacular units.”
Frannie and Bridgette turn to find Michael leaning against the doorway to the dining room. He’s got his argyle sweater tied around his waist today, leaving him in a white collared shirt.
“I do like Mr. Hughes’s place too,” he goes on. “It’s got that real prewar feeling.”
“Yeah, this does feel a little more sixties or seventies, with all the wood,” Frannie agrees, surprised.
Michael considers her. “There’s one on the seventh floor that’s straight out of the eighties. The bathrooms make your head spin.”
“I’d love to see that,” Frannie says tentatively. “Do you hang out there?”
“No. That’s Maude Loit’s place, and she’s a bad egg.”
“A bad egg, huh?” Frannie asks, tickled by Michael’s suddenly sour face.
“She’s the worst,” Bridgette agrees, making a “come on” gesture with her hand.
“If you like postwar, you should see the kitchen,” Michael says abruptly.
He turns and walks out of the room. Bridgette starts after him and Frannie’s left to follow along, confused. She supposes it fits that Michael’s interested in the apartments, if he’s curious about the architecture of the building. Kids tend to have special interests, right?
“Oh, wow,” she says as Michael flicks the lights on in the kitchen.
Where the golden oak cabinets in her apartment look harsh, here, against the soft cream walls and tile floor, they’re bright and welcoming.
There’s an enormous gas stove, a huge stainless-steel refrigerator with a glass door, a massive dishwasher, a drawer microwave, and a window that looks out on the courtyard.
“Look at this,” Bridgette adds, opening a door at the back of the space and guiding Frannie in.
“Jesus,” Frannie says. To have the money to fill a full-room wine rack.
She turns back to the kitchen just as the door swings shut. She goes to push it open, but it won’t budge, stuck. She huffs and pushes harder.