Chapter Five
Chapter Five
Iris burst out the doors of her office building fueled by anger.
But the lion’s share of her fury wasn’t at Nate, or at Frank, or any of the guys, it was at herself.
Raising her hand like a schoolgirl while the boys steamrolled her, again.
And right after Frank had said he wanted to see more from her, right after she’d told him he would.
Why hadn’t she shut Nate down right then?
Why did she always freeze when she needed to act?
Iris stepped into the flow of end-of-workday commuters that streamed down Sixth Avenue toward the subway stations on the corner.
Six in the evening and the weather remained chokingly hot and humid, and the prospect of squeezing into a sweaty subway car felt as appealing as crawling into an armpit.
Speaking of which, she wanted to avoid pit stains at her birthday dinner, so she treated herself to an Uber to the restaurant.
Iris had hit the final location confirmation for her Uber when she received a text from Hannah:
I’m sooo sorry to do this, I was TRYING to rally, but I have been vomiting non-stop, I don’t think I can hold it together for dinner tonight. I’m sorry!!! Preggo problems. But I’ll make it up to you! Birthday brunch Sunday?
Iris’s shoulders sank. This was shaping up to be the worst birthday in memory. But she knew Hannah felt bad already, so she texted back:
No worries! Sorry you’re sick Sunday’s good!
Yay! Sry again about tonite. I know Roman will take good care of you! Have fun! xo
She double-tapped Hannah’s text to add a thumbs-up to it; white lies were easy via emoji.
Shoot, Iris remembered the Uber—currently one minute away, but redirecting it to drive her home would take forever in rush hour traffic and be way too expensive.
She canceled the ride, but a pop-up informed her she’d be charged for the late cancel.
The fee was still cheaper than the ride, so Iris grudgingly hit Accept and descended into the grimy sauna of the subway.
Waiting on the crowded platform with only her elbows’ width of personal space, Iris cancelled her Resy app reservation for dinner that night, incurring a late cancel fee—Accept.
Then she opened WoofIt, her dog walker app, and canceled the seven p.m. walk she’d scheduled for her dog, with another late cancel fee—Accept.
Then one more text chimed in from Hannah:
Forgot to ask! How did promotion talkgo???
The A train screeched into the platform like Iris’s frustration made manifest, screaming for her.
—
Iris put her key in her front door and eased it open an inch at a time.
A neighbor she didn’t know passed by in the hall and shot Iris a quizzical look; Iris smiled, aware that she appeared to be sneaking into her own home.
In a few more inches, she was confident enough the other side was clear and entered.
The stocky beagle was snoring against the wall of her front hall, his tail flopped over the doorstop. Hugo always slept by the front door, waiting for her to return. But he was thirteen years old now and sometimes he no longer heard her come in, so she had to be careful not to bump him.
Getting home to her dog earlier than expected was the sole upshot of the day.
Iris stepped out of her shoes, set down her purse, and crouched beside him.
His cinnamon muzzle, now sugared with age, quivered with a dream.
One of his ears was turned inside out, showing the faded blue number tattooed inside.
Before Iris adopted him from the beagle rescue, Hugo had spent his early life as a test subject in a laboratory.
Iris named him in homage to Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, because like the hero of that story, he didn’t let an unjust imprisonment corrupt his pure soul. He was the sweetest baby.
Iris lightly stroked his smooth head, warm as an egg beneath a hen.
On the second caress, he awoke with a start, the floor side of his face still smushed.
She hated when she startled him awake, hated to think she’d triggered his puppyhood trauma.
But Hugo never stayed scared. As soon as his twitching nose inhaled her scent, his tail thumped against the floor, and he hustled to press into her waiting arms.
On her way out with Hugo, Iris saw her cute neighbor David and his dog, a fawn French bulldog named Gronk, because, as David joked, “He makes every catch.” David hailed from Boston, and dogs couldn’t help it when their namesake players got traded.
David and Iris often seemed to be walking their dogs around the same time, their schedules loosely synced.
She liked it. It had engendered a camaraderie between them; they bonded over politics, whispered gripes about their surly super, Ervin, and of course the dogs.
David wasn’t Tom Brady, but he was tall and around her age, with a laid-back affability, and since Ben moved out, Iris’s neighborly affection had budded into a crush.
On the days she just missed them coming home as she was going out, she was always sorry. She wondered if he was sorry too.
Hugo was a great wingman. He tugged toward David in the lobby, tail wagging, and as soon as Gronk spotted them from one googly eye, he planted himself for playtime in a wide-legged stance. David and Iris had no choice but to say hello. “Hey, David.”
“Yo, Iris and Huuug!” He bent to greet Hugo, who was preoccupied with trying to sniff Gronk’s butt while the bulldog spun with snorty excitement, nails clacking on the polished floor. David laughed. “Let’s get them out.”
They dragged the dogs outside and started walking in the same direction.
“Ervin finally came to fix my air conditioner yesterday, only eight days after it conked out,” David said.
“Ugh, this week was one of the hottest. How did you survive?”
“Multiple cold showers a day and basically stripping naked as soon as I walked in the door,” he said, making Iris blush.
“But it’s Gronk I was worried about; Frenchies can’t handle the heat.
I put him in doggy daycare so he’d stay cool during the day, and he wouldn’t leave the bathroom tile all night. ”
“Aw, poor little guy.” Her esteem for David went up a notch. “I’m glad Ervin fixed it.”
“Oh, he didn’t fix it,” David corrected. “But he satisfied himself that it was actually broken and not just my helplessness and called the commercial repairmen. They came today.”
“I’m sorry to laugh.”
“Once, I called him when my toilet kept running, and it was a really easy fix, and he’s never let me forget it. He thinks I’m soft.”
“He never gives me a hard time about needing help. Sexism for the win!”
“He’s old school all right.”
“But I’m actually pretty handy with home stuff, so the next time you have a problem, feel free to knock on my door, I’m 1-F.”
“You wanna fix my toilet?” David smiled at her like she was nuts.
“Well, no, I mean—” she stammered.
Frenchie grunts drew their attention down to the dogs playing again. Gronk opened his clamshell mouth, baring the wonkiest tiny teeth, and Hugo held his ears back and tried to engage in some friendly humping.
“All right, you horndogs, break it up.”
They passed the nylon leashes to and fro, their hands coming close to touching, but not.
“Gronkster, we gotta get down to business. See you around, Iris.”
“?’Bye,” Iris said, disappointed to have let the conversation die.
But her awkwardness was a mercy. Even single, she would never act on her crush. Not with someone in her building. There was one social rule even dogs understand: Don’t shit where you eat.
—
Iris walked Hugo alone to the next block, to the more historic part of the West Village, where the boxy apartment buildings of the 1980s gave way to the elegant brownstones of the 1880s.
Though she could never afford to live in one, these were the homes that had made her fall in love with the neighborhood.
On these night walks, her favorite thing was to pass a lit window and glimpse the glowing diorama inside, like a life-size dollhouse.
She told herself her interest was professional and not merely voyeuristic, as from her lower vantage point, she could mainly see the top half of the rooms, ornate crown molding and crystal chandeliers, midcentury modern Nelson bubble lights, fine art worthy of its own tiny lamp.
But it was the lives beneath the lighting that Iris longed to know and liked to imagine.
Still, she figured, you were entitled to be nosy about people wealthier than you.
She wondered if the residents left their curtains open on purpose, forgetfulness as a form of noblesse oblige.
She should feel more guilty for peeping, but to be a voyeur in New York City required one only to open one’s eyes.
Manhattan was home to 1.6 million people stacked on top of each other like an ant farm.
Precious “units” of real estate, obscenely priced by the square foot, were pressed flush against, above, below, and beside other people.
You could smell the neighbor’s cooking, hear the couple on the other side of the wall making love or screaming at each other, see someone undressing in the apartment across the street—but you abide by the city’s cardinal rule: Mind your business.
For the residents beneath the penthouses and beside the brownstones, privacy is a social contract rather than a physical barrier.
This definition of private as merely unacknowledged was tested every day when you passed someone unsheltered, doing what others did behind closed doors, you afforded them privacy with your inattention.
Even if they called out to you directly, with Bible verses or psychosis, even if you gave them what they asked, you did so with eyes averted.
You told yourself that that was a kindness.
To stare was rude.
To care was untenable.
That was how the city’s population could be at once so cramped and yet so atomized.
The sensory overlap was unavoidable, but you ignored it completely or, as a second choice, complained about it, fruitlessly, to friends.
What other choice was there? There were simply too many people to comprehend, too many wishes and desires, fears, problems, and needs jammed up in one place for everyone to stay connected and still get by. It was a numbers problem.
For all the crowds and false privacy in this town, there was real loneliness. But acknowledging that was more embarrassing and transgressive than walking naked before an open window.
To live in Manhattan required willful dissociation.
Normally Iris was better at it.
—
Iris ate her dinner straight from the takeout containers beside the pamphlets from Family Tree Fertility spread out before her.
Candela provided her basic health insurance but none that covered fertility treatment.
On the back of an envelope, she had added up the expected costs of the egg freezing process and circled the total: $16,000.
Without the promotion, it felt out of reach, or at least unwise.
She had always been careful with money. On her eighteenth birthday, Iris gained control of her late parents’ estate, although she let her grandparents manage it while she went to Penn State.
On her twenty-first birthday, instead of planning her drink order, Iris sat across from her grandfather for a serious talk about money.
She remembered him saying, “Buy your home. No matter what people say, buy it outright. Debt is dangerous. Your friends can go home and live with their parents if things go sideways, but not you. Find a place you love, no more than you need, and live off the money you make. Property is always a good investment. And I won’t rest easy unless I know you’ve got a roof over your head. ”
It was good advice. Iris graduated with her master’s in architecture from Stuckeman and landed in New York City.
She felt as if her grandfather was watching over her when she found a great deal on a first-floor apartment in the West Village.
So, at twenty-four, Iris bought her first home, all cash.
The sellers must have thought she was an heiress; technically, she was, but it took nearly all the money she had.
She didn’t regret it, even if she was house-poor.
When she and Ben wanted to move in together, there was no question, he was moving into her place, and when they broke up, he was the one who had to move out.
And her apartment had certainly gone up in value—but only if she sold.
Her net worth on paper didn’t make paying for this egg freezing any easier.
For most of her life, Iris had felt rushed ahead of her peers, forced to grow up fast and privileged to land her dream job and home in her early twenties. Somewhere along the way, her milestones stalled. Today’s thirty-fifth birthday did not look the way she had imagined.
But she was here. Her parents got to only thirty-eight and forty.
Iris always thought of them on her birthdays, and she owed it to them to celebrate.
She started a new order at Seamless.com, found Raffaela’s restaurant, and tipped five bucks on an order that included only one item: a single slice of ricotta cheesecake.
In the Special Directions section, she typed: If possible, please include one candle, thanks!
Iris brought up a streaming episode of Sex and the City , her comfort show. The salsa theme music began to play, and before she could hit Skip Intro, her phone pinged with a new message. She opened it, expecting a confirmation of her order.
It was from Ben: “Happy birthday!”