Chapter 5
Chapter Five
ORGY DEN DENIED
HUDSON
After starting this morning from hell trapped in an elevator, I missed the most important standing meeting of my week. I’ll hear about that later. I’m sure of it.
By the time I get into work, I am so behind schedule and so many degrees off from the axis of myself that every encounter I have from the door to my office is short and annoying in a way that makes even me hate myself a little bit more.
But the part of myself that operates best was left on the floor of that elevator as soon as it came to a stop.
And I know it even in the smallest way that I set my coffee cup on my desk with more force than necessary.
Or the way my attention drags before locking in on the topic.
Of all the people to be stuck in that elevator with, it would be her.
Of course it would be her. In her mind, the universe is giving me some grand reason I needed to be late.
Or my favorite explanation, that ‘someone else needed a good day.’ It’s not the first time she’s used that exact ideological belief to try and talk me off the ledge of a disastrous morning.
Never in my life have I met anyone so far from any version of reality I exist in. I almost, almost envy it.
She arrives everywhere like a desirable disruption, half-dressed, or half-shoed, in mid-motion, incapable of moving through a space without leaving some degree of chaos behind.
A trail of rainbow sprinkles left in her wake.
She lost a shoe, stalled the elevator, and talked the entire fucking time.
Like we weren’t hanging between floors with no clear exit strategy and I wasn’t suspended on the wrong side of my own sanity.
And as she was frozen in that elevator, it took all I had not to just yank her by the ankle.
I should have walked away, left it to the professionals, I couldn’t fucking help myself.
All because, apparently, the universe had plans.
Lucky me. But I don't believe in the universe as an acting force. I believe in cause and effect, poor timing, and the mechanical failure of an old elevator that the building’s maintenance log has flagged twice in the last eighteen months, which I know because I read the maintenance log as part of the co-op board minutes, because that is the kind of person I am.
Through the glass walls of my office I can see the open-plan of the law firm churning with well-paid purpose and associates bent over monitors with poor posture and the belief that sleep is a lifestyle choice.
I remember those days. I turn my back to the sound of billable hours and face the window and city below.
This is a city that rewards people who are willing to work harder than the person next to them.
I am and always have been. It has gotten me here and I intend it to get me further.
“Hudson Ellis,” I answer the phone before it has a chance to get to the second ring.
“Ah, Mr. Ellis.” The voice on the other end has never been in a hurry, except now, when she clearly doesn't want to be speaking to me despite being the one who called.
The pause that precedes her sentences is heavy with the fact that she had no intention in speaking them to me and was prepared to leave them recorded in a specific sequence, and now has to have a conversation, something she confirms. “I was hoping to reach your voicemail.” I knew it.
“You’ve reached me instead, Mrs. Saraceno.
” I set my coffee on the desk. “What can I do for you?” What I can do for her, as I have been doing for the better part of six months, is jump through whatever configuration of hoops she has decided are relevant this particular week to my application to purchase the unit directly above mine, 8A.
The apartment whose previous and still technically current owner relocated to Scottsdale before ripping the place down to its studs.
No drywall, no floor finish, raw beams and exposed wiring and the cold skeletal openness of a space that has been stripped of every decision anyone ever made about it in preparation for a blank slate of new ones.
Knowing full well that blank slate will require a blank check for someone to complete.
He accepted my offer in principle before the co-op board’s supreme leader made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that their approval was not a formality.
A mistake I should not have made. Resulting in me being no better than a man who bought his plane ticket before confirming he had a passport.
Idiot move. I know better than to assume anything is settled before it is signed, I'm a fucking attorney. A mistake I’ll never make again.
I bought 7A four years ago. Corner unit, three bedrooms, with eastern-facing windows that matter enormously in winter when the light can still find its way in.
I used that year’s bonus to buy it, which tells you two things: what kind of year it was and also what kind of decisions I make. Calculated without emotional decisions.
What 7A and 8A could become, together, is the thing I've been seeing for the last two years. The same footprint, stacked. Connected by an interior staircase, which structurally can be supported, I hired contractors to confirm. And the current owner, an architect in a former life, drew up the plans. It would take two years of work and a significant investment. I’ve done the numbers several times.
I have an actual folder in my home office that contains all the architectural plans, the contractor quotes, the board application materials in multiple unsuccessful drafts, and a running document of every objection Mrs. Saraceno has raised and the legal counterargument for each.
I have counterarguments for everything. That is not the problem.
The problem is that the board has five members and four of them are, on any given day, potentially reasonable, persuadable.
Board politics are not unlike litigation in this respect.
You identify who you need to build your case, you address the objections before they become objections.
I have done all of this many, many times.
And I’ve done all of it correctly. But Mrs. Saraceno remains.
One vote by one little old lady. The vote she has cast against me at every interval and will apparently continue to cast until I satisfy criteria she has not fully articulated, only implied, across a series of interactions that I would describe as professionally painful and that she would probably describe as thorough and necessary.
She has all the time in the world to go in circles on this. Whereas I am also heads down on one of the biggest cases of my career.
“The board met last week,” she says. The shaky quality of her voice is age, not uncertainty. She is not uncertain about anything. Especially not this. “We've been discussing your application again.”
“I see.” I don’t see at all. I have no clue why this has dragged out the way it has. The request isn’t unreasonable, I went through the co-op board bylaws and there is nothing that prevents it. This is preference and preference alone.
“We cannot allow the transaction to go through.” No apology.
She stopped apologizing for the rejections because she isn’t sorry at all.
She’s actually pleased with herself. Deciding to stop performing the courtesy that neither of us is fooled by.
I can respect that, technically, while still finding it deeply irritating in practice.
I close my eyes, setting my phone on the table as I rub my temples, taking a slow four-count breath in through my nose, as a way to keep my shit together, which I know I must, because the second I let loose, I can kiss 8A goodbye for good.
Each round she has a different reason, be it permits or financing.
Both of which I managed to quickly convince everyone were not viable concerns.
But this is a new round of bullshit. I slowly exhale as I lean back in my chair.
The leather gives as it is expensive and well-used, and the motion buys me two seconds of silence in which to run through my options and next steps.
I’ve read all the building's governing documents. Nothing there. There is the precedent set by the last two purchase approvals, but that won’t help.
The specific language of the co-op agreement regarding board discretion and the limits thereof.
It all protects the board's decision making power.
I have read all of it. I have read all of it more than once.
I know the edges of my legal position, and if I wanted to fight Mrs. Saraceno through official channels, I could.
It would require a reasonable argument that her repeated rejections constitute an abuse of discretionary authority.
But as ridiculous as I have found each rejection, she has been within her rights.
It would be an effort that costs us more money and gets me no closer to the resolution of what I want.
Because even if it did work, Mrs. Saraceno has lived in The Richmond for longer than I have been alive, she has an extensive social network amongst its residents, and will absolutely outlive me.
Some wars are not worth the ground they're fought over, even when you're right.
Which means I need her to say yes. Not to be forced to..
“What is it this time?” I keep the gritted teeth out of my voice. Mostly.
“The Richmond is not a building for investment portfolios.”
“Right,” I say with a firmness she needs to understand.
“I’m not building a real-estate portfolio.
I fully intend to live there, you know this.
You’ve seen the plans.” It feels like she is just trying to run out the clock as we do this dance.
I presented the plans to the building two rounds ago.
So she is either senile, or intentionally being obtuse to wear me down.
Fine by me, I’ve gone up against much worse, and I can go for hours.