Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty
Iris had come to learn that Frank wasn’t exaggerating when he described how micromanaging working with Wolff could be, although it wasn’t Jonathan who called Iris every morning, it was Marilyn.
On Monday: “Good morning, Iris. Jonathan was sorry to miss you at the walk-through. He can do lunch Wednesday. Do you have any dietary restrictions or preferences?”
“Oh great, Wednesday works for me.” Not that Marilyn had asked. “And no restrictions. I’m not a big meat eater, but I can find something on any menu.”
“Prefers pescatarian. I’ll email you the details by end of day.”
“Great, thanks.” Marilyn’s ultra-efficient energy made her nervous. She reached for a Post-it and jotted “find new word for GREAT” and stuck it to her computer screen.
On Wednesday: “Good morning, Iris. Unfortunately, Jonathan has a conference call with the London team, so lunch today doesn’t work. He’d like to do dinner instead.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes. He apologizes for the change. I’ll arrange a car to come pick you up and drop you home.”
“No problem, dinner would be—” she glanced at the Post-it—“lovely.”
“Excellent. We have your home address. The car will arrive at seven. Jonathan is looking forward to seeing you.”
“Great.” Gah!
—
The change of plans gave Iris enough time to overthink things at home.
Iris had never been so high up on a project to be on the receiving end of a free meal.
She wondered if she should change clothing— no , she was already wearing her carefully chosen Mr.Wolff lunch outfit, it was good enough for a Mr. Wolff dinner.
The real question was, should she wear the perfume?
Since Marilyn had told her to “bring back that spark,” Iris had begun wearing the perfume every day. But smelling good at lunch is incidental; smelling good at dinner is a signal, one she wasn’t sure she wanted to send.
But the perfume gave her something more than sex appeal, it gave her confidence. It gave her a sense of control over herself and her surroundings. She needed the invisible suit of armor. Jonathan Wolff had money, power, and summer-weight cashmere.
She was deliberating when her apartment buzzer rang.
Her doorman’s voice crackled through the intercom: “Car here for you.”
“Thanks, Sammy. Be right out.” She crossed to her window and peeked out the blinds. A gleaming Mercedes sedan idled beside the parked cars on her street.
She blotted her neck, each wrist, and only one elbow crease—the bandage from that morning’s blood test tugged at the other.
—
They were meeting at a restaurant not far from the building site, Estiatorio Milos, inside the Hudson Yards luxury shopping complex.
The Mercedes pulled up around the back, giving Iris a close-up view of the Vessel, a sixteen-story open-air honeycomb structure that was supposed to be an architectural “attraction” until it fatally underestimated humanity’s capacity for despair.
Since its opening in 2019, it had been forced to close repeatedly after its open levels, intended as lookout points and photo ops, had been used by four people to leap to their death.
Iris thought grimly of one of Frank’s favorite sayings, “Think like a person! Not like a designer. Great design serves human nature, bad design succumbs to it.”
“The restaurant is on the top floor,” the driver said without turning. Iris noticed the cartilage of his ear was puffy like a boxer’s, she forgot what they called it. “I’ll wait here to take you home.”
“Oh, no. You should get yourself dinner. Do you have a card so I can call you when I’m done?”
“It’s no problem. I’m Mr. Wolff’s private driver.”
“Oh, okay.” She was surprised and a little sheepish for thinking it was a generic hired car and for bogarting the boss’s ride. “I didn’t catch your name.”
“Esdras.”
“Thank you, Esdras.”
“Enjoy your evening, Ms. Sunnegren.”
—
Iris pushed through the rotating glass doors, which seemed to exhale as they deposited her onto the glossy tile of the shopping center.
The luxury stores had closed for the evening, but the emptied window displays remained spotlit.
Iris passed by the bare busts of Van Cleef & Arpels and naked mannequins of Dior and Fendi, like headless women for sale.
On the elevator to the top floor, Iris saw she’d received an Instagram DM from someone she didn’t follow, @AliAlways, it read: “ Hey Iris, can you give me a call at 610-555-7648? It’s about Jacob.
” She guessed it was Alison Cooper, a second cousin on Clay’s side whom she’d met only a few times. She’d deal after dinner.
What Iris saw when she emerged from the elevators on the top floor was no ordinary mall restaurant.
In fact, the dining space was secluded from view, only the wine bar was accessible from the main floor.
Iris waited her turn to speak to the modelesque hostesses stationed in front of a grand white marble staircase that wound upward in a nautilus spiral, with warm, glowing step lights.
“Hi, I’m meeting Jonathan Wolff.”
“Ms. Sunnegren, welcome. They’re waiting for you. I’ll show you to your table.” She stepped aside as another beautiful employee took her place and gestured for Iris to follow.
They? Maybe Marilyn was joining them. Iris followed her upstairs.
Milos was a sweeping space with white marble floors and white tablecloths, evoking the sun-bleached limestone of Mykonos.
The focal point was the wraparound view of the Vessel and the sunset over the Hudson River, made more glittering by the reflection of the tables’ candlelight in the glass walls.
The exposed kitchen at her left was bordered by a coastline of chipped ice displaying fresh fish that glinted silver and orange, crab claws the size of dinner rolls, and one wilted octopus, its lifeless arms tumbling down like tendrils of wet hair.
And yet the space was devoid of any fish smell—a reminder that you could excise the unpleasantness from any experience, for market price.
In a shark-gray dress, the hostess glided through the tables as the servers darted out of her way, fleet as minnows, clearing their crowded path.
Iris followed in her slipstream through the first level, down onto the premium tier of tables along the windows.
The hostess extended her arm to indicate the table front and center, where Jonathan Wolff was deep in conversation with two other men.
It took a moment for Iris to realize that one of his guests was the mayor of New York City.
Iris stood back from the table, not wanting to interrupt.
It took a moment, but Wolff registered her presence and stood to greet her.
He remained disconcertingly good-looking in a fine-knit crewneck in lapis blue.
He introduced her to the mayor, who clasped her hand in both of his and flashed a megawatt smile before apologizing that he couldn’t stay.
Iris mumbled she was honored and hopefully something more normal.
When he left, Iris said, “Wow, that was cool. He’s a friend?”
Jonathan leaned in. “Everyone’s a friend with an election coming up.
” He graciously pulled out Iris’s chair and introduced her to the guest that remained.
“Bill, this is Iris Sunnegren, my lead lighting designer for Oasys, my new residence going up on Eleventh. Iris, Bill Hargrove, executive vice president for real estate development at NYCHA—did I get that title right, Bill? Bill and I are at the start of a very important new project.”
Jonathan went on to explain that Wolff Development had just won a bid to take over the renovation and management of one of the many public housing locations that had fallen into dangerous disrepair.
Attempts at a private-public cooperative solution had been percolating since Bloomberg’s administration but had been stymied over politics.
Now, at last, the logjam had broken, and a pilot program was approved with Wolff at the helm.
“The deal is, we rebuild brand-new apartments for NYCHA residents on the existing site, and in exchange, we’re permitted to build an additional apartment building that could be offered to mixed-income renters.
I think it will be a game changer for the benefit of all the residents, and I hope it’s the first of many Wolff-NYCHA collaborations. ” He raised a glass to Bill.
Iris was surprised to hear Jonathan had been gunning to work with NYCHA, when his previous work had been exclusively high-end. “What drew you to public housing?”
“I’m passionate about housing equity and building safe, quality homes for all. It’s part of why your lighting pitch spoke to me so much.”
Iris’s cheeks bloomed.
“What’s happened to NYCHA housing in this city should bring shame to us all—no offense, Bill. You’ve been fighting the good fight much longer than I.”
Bill nodded. “Sadly, we’ve reached a breaking point.
New York State has underfunded NYCHA for decades, the last federal infrastructure bill slashed public housing before passage, and it’s only gotten worse.
Since the pandemic rent moratoriums, we’ve been in a rent shortfall of half a billion dollars.
We need outside investment to do the needed repairs.
I’m glad they finally saw that partnering with private developers was the only way forward. ”
Jonathan tsked-tsked. “The irony has always been that NYCHA owns some of the most valuable open land in the city, and yet the program’s broke—because they can’t sell it.”
Bill took a swig of his drink. “Worse than broke, our capital backlog for needed repairs exceeds forty billion dollars.” He saw Iris’s eyes go wide.
“I’m not kidding, that’s the real number.
We project that by 2027, ninety percent of NYCHA apartments will be effectively totaled, meaning it would cost as much to demolish and rebuild as it would to repair them. ”
She looked back to Jonathan, aghast. “How did it get so bad?”