Chapter Twenty #2
Jonathan shook his head. “Politics. The poor are not a powerful constituency, so public housing gets shortchanged at every turn. Albany is too broken to fix this problem. That’s why they need us.
NYCHA can’t afford repairs and the tenants can’t afford to leave.
Worsening income inequality combined with how rents have skyrocketed in the city, the tenants are trapped.
” Jonathan’s face darkened. “Just like they were trapped that day of the Hendricks explosion.”
The table fell silent for a moment.
“It infuriates me that it took a preventable tragedy for politicians to listen to what I and many others have been saying for a long time. Last year, I told the city council they were allowing ‘demolition by neglect’ in public housing. Toxic mold, lead paint, asbestos, broken elevators, no heat in winter and no air in summer, and now a fatal gas leak. They should’ve let me start a year ago when I wanted to. ”
“Thank you again for your generous donation to the Hendricks emergency shelter fund. It’s much appreciated,” Bill said.
Jonathan waved him off like it was nothing. “I can’t wait to start their rebuild.”
“Wait, Hendricks is the site you’ll be working on?” Iris asked.
“Yes. It’s been my dream to revitalize the downtown-west area in a way that serves communities at every income level, from Oasys to Hendricks Houses.”
“My friend’s family lived there.”
“Your friend?” Bill asked, lifting an eyebrow.
“Thankfully they weren’t hurt, but they lived close to the blast. Actually it was my friend’s fifteen-year-old niece who smelled the gas and warned her neighbors. She helped a lot of people get out in time.”
Jonathan sat back. “A teenager did that? That’s heroic! She should be on the news.”
“That’s what I said!” Iris shook her head. “But they were excluded from the emergency housing because his sister was in some prior eviction dispute. So now they’re homeless and crammed in my friend’s apartment. It’s terrible.”
Jonathan touched her arm, his eyes full of concern. “Please email me and cc Marilyn with their names. I’ll look into it personally.”
His generosity, or his touch, flustered her. “Oh, I didn’t mean for, you don’t have to—”
“I do mean it. Please do as I ask. I want to help.”
Iris was moved. “Thank you, I will.”
—
Food began to arrive, and from the first bite Iris knew this was the best restaurant she had ever been to.
The appetizers: a tower of paper-thin fried zucchini and eggplant; a large plate of Greek salad with chunks of vibrant tomato, cucumber, and ribbons of purple onion and parsley; giant scallop sashimi served on a Little Mermaid–sized shell.
Then the show-stopping entrée of a large whole fish baked in mounds of salt like a snowdrift, accompanied by an array of grilled vegetable sides.
As they passed the family-style dishes around the table and the drinks flowed, the conversation got looser and lighter.
“I’m sorry I missed your walk-through. I know it’s a bigger project than you’ve headed up before. Marilyn told me you seemed a bit overwhelmed.”
“Oh, no…” It’s giving frenemy, Marilyn. But Iris remembered what the older woman had said about acting the part. “Not at all. I was moved by the canvas you’ve given me. I have a decade of experience. I’m young, but I’m not green.”
Jonathan smiled. “?‘Green.’ Are you an equestrian?”
“I grew up riding.”
“My daughter, Allegra, is eleven and officially horse crazy, so I’m in the market for a pony. Her riding instructor recently taught me the meaning of ‘green’—it means ‘gives Daddy a heart attack . ’ Maybe you can advise me while I try to find the equine equivalent of a babysitter.”
Iris laughed. “Anytime. It’s a wonderful sport for a young woman, it builds confidence. Time spent in the saddle gave me my happiest memories.”
Bill swirled his drink and smirked. “You know what they say about why girls love horses?”
Iris knew exactly where he was headed; she had always hated this joke.
Jonathan looked wearily at him. “Careful, Bill, this is my daughter we’re talking about.”
She hated this rejoinder too. It was a scummy way to talk about any young girl, the ones with fathers and without.
“All right, Allegra excluded. But Iris knows what I’m talking about. The friction…?”
The heat radiating off Iris’s blotchy chest sent a waft of the perfume up to her flaring nostrils. “People who think riding horses gives women orgasms don’t know how to do either thing right.”
Both men burst out laughing, Jonathan harder than Bill. Iris, too, but only in disbelief—had she really just said that, aloud, at a work dinner?
And had she gotten away with it?
“I think I heard a mic drop,” Jonathan said.
“I see why you like her,” Bill replied.
Like her—as a designer or as a woman ? She wondered how exactly Jonathan Wolff had described her to Bill before she arrived.
“Excuse me, I gotta go to the little boys’ room.” Bill rose from the table and left.
“I’m sorry about that, Bill’s something else. But I needed him for this deal.”
“It’s fine.”
“You handled him perfectly. Men like him are all ego. Humiliation is the only boundary they respect.”
—
They had finished dinner and were walking toward the glowing staircase when Iris saw an incoming phone call from her aunt Beth. Bill and Jonathan were talking, so she excused herself to quickly answer it. Only it wasn’t Beth on the line, it was Alison, and she cut straight to the point.
“Jacob is dead.”
Iris held one hand to her ear to close out the mall noise. “What?”
“He OD’d. They found him in a motel in Tampa. It was too late to do anything.”
Her heart was racing but her body felt frozen, her thoughts voided.
“I’m trying to help Beth and Clay get the word out to family, since they’re overwhelmed, obviously. Beth needed a break from her phone. It looks like the funeral will be on the thirteenth near their place. I’ll forward the details as soon as I know them…Are you there? Can you hear me?”
“Y-yeah,” her voice cracked. “I’m here.”
“I know this is a shock. I mean, we knew it could end this way, he was killing himself for a long time, but…I can’t believe it’s really over.” The detachment in Alison’s voice told Iris that after twenty years of addiction, Jacob had burned every bridge in the family.
“Was anyone with him?”
“Someone he was with called an ambulance but bounced before they arrived, a real hero.”
Iris felt flushed and hot.
“I’m sorry, I know you guys used to be close.” Then Alison added, softer, “I don’t think he died alone, if that’s what you meant.”
Iris didn’t know why she’d asked it or what she meant. She rubbed her brow. Her hand was shaking.
“Iris?”
“Thanks for calling. Give my sympathy to Beth and Clay,” she said before hanging up. She couldn’t continue the conversation.
She’d texted Jacob last week but never heard back. A gnawing feeling told her to double-check. She opened her text messages, searched his name, and tapped the conversation. Her message to him remained typed in the entry field beside the blue arrow, still waiting to be sent.
Iris shut her eyes against the cluster headache that gathered like a storm.
When she opened them again, she steadied her focus on the brightly lit fish, caught in the unseeing gaze of a pink snapper that curved out of a pile of chipped ice, its glassy amber eyes staring, mouth agape in a silent scream.
“Everything okay?” Jonathan appeared beside her.
Iris meant to nod in the affirmative.
Instead, she fainted.