Chapter 5 #2
She shifts her reasoning at that, without acknowledging it.
“Well, It’s a larger unit, there are a limited number in the building of this size, you’re already in possession of one.
It should go to someone who intends to make the most of it, not—” She pauses to carefully choose her words in the most unrushed way possible.
Forcing me to sit in silence on the edge of my seat for whatever excuse she is about to deliver. “A bachelor play pad.”
A laugh escapes me, which could tip my hand that she’s gotten to me, because it’s a completely ridiculous notion. “I don’t know what’s more ludicrous, the decision or the reason. I’ve owned my current unit for years, I’m trying to expand that, not turn it into some kind of orgy den.”
She gasps and then there is a cathedral-type silence, that would have anything echo off the vaulted ceiling and be considered a confession.
Perhaps I’ve gone too far. Orgy den might have been over the line.
The line she already had imagined with her stress on the term bachelor.
Maybe imagining I’ll center the design around a large hot tub to hand out roses with every failed date.
“Mr. Ellis,” she says, her voice climbing in octaves as she does.
“This is precisely what I mean. These units should encourage families into the building, but you want to turn it into some big, wild… sex space!” And I’m not exactly sure what she’s envisioning, sounds worse than a hot tub, and I definitely don’t want to find out now.
“Yes, you've owned 7A for years and in that time, you’ve never attempted to contribute to the building community. The only thing we know about you besides that your maintenance checks are on time and clear is that we’ve observed a considerable rotation of…
guests.” Another pause as she builds her case.
“You had that lovely girlfriend for some time, but since then, the comings and goings at all hours—”
The mention of Claire, twice in a week when we broke up six months ago, feels great on this morning already from hell.
The fact she happens to be clicking her heels somewhere outside my glass door doesn’t help my tone.
But our relationship ended and since then, sure, I’ve leaned into the fact that I am single.
“My personal life—” I begin, having heard enough.
“Is entirely your own business,” she says pleasantly. “Which is why I haven't raised it formally. I’m simply expressing the board’s feelings about the application.”
“The board, or you?”
“We,” she stresses, “feel that a second unit, at this time, would be better suited to someone else.” She takes a breath that carries satisfaction. “You understand, of course.” Her tone is ever so slightly more sweet, but the intention isn’t.
From the outside of my fishbowl office, I look like a man having a calm, professional phone call. From inside myself, I am doing something resembling a controlled forest fire.
Having paced outside my office long enough, Lucas seems to decide there is no phone call of mine he wouldn’t be allowed to interrupt.
He’s not wrong. He enters without knocking, which is a habit I never corrected from him.
He’s the only one with the free-entry pass. And everyone in this office knows it.
He drops into the chair across my desk because unlike me, he is a man who is comfortable everywhere he goes, which is either a personality trait or a consequence of being genuinely liked by most people he encounters.
Probably both. He peers over my desk at the phone to see who I’m so entangled in conversation with, the question on his face prompting me to respond.
‘Apartment.’ I mouth to him.
‘Neighbor?’ he mouths back. Asking about the other thing about my place of residence that keeps me up at night. Literally. I just shake my head, and get back to the pressing issue at hand.
“Is there anything that can change the board’s position?
” I say. Lucas nods, arriving at an understanding of the situation, knowing well the rounds of this fight.
Now just listening to this conversation in a way I may be able to have him debrief with me afterwards.
I speak slowly, intentionally trying not to scare her more than my ‘bachelor ways’ seem to.
The way you approach a negotiation when you’ve identified the only variable that matters but need the other side to say it out loud.
A pause gives me hope she may finally say it.
“I’m not telling you how to live your life,” she says.
Beneath the frailty of her voice is a woman who has no problem telling people exactly how they should be living their lives.
She knows which doors she’s slamming in my face, and which she’s leaving unlikely but still slightly ajar. “I'm simply explaining where we are.”
She hangs up.
Lucas and I are left sitting here in the momentary silence of the ended phone call.
We went to law school together and he is, without qualification, the best lawyer I know, which is not something I assign carelessly.
Careless isn’t a word anyone would use to describe me.
He is also the kind of person who remembers your coffee order, knows your assistant’s children’s names and birthdays, and can walk into a room of strangers and leave with three people who would do him a favor.
These are not skills I have. I have other skills people find valuable. But somehow, I also have Lucas.
“That went well,” he says with some humor.
Knowing by the way it ended it remains an open wound that I won’t let scab over.
Anytime it does, I just return ready to pick it off again.
To an actual disadvantage for myself. At this point, I could buy a house somewhere on the outskirts of the city, a vacation property, or hell, sell my current apartment and just buy something else, not worry about any of this.
But this apartment has been the first thing in a long time that is a challenge, an investment that would allow me to actually reap the benefits of my hard work.
“She compared my reno plans to an orgy den, so I’d say so.”
Lucas is doing genuine work not to smile at that. “And you said?”
“Technically, I said orgy den first, so nothing helpful.”
He does let it out now, large and childlike, laughing my name out of his wide smiling mouth. “Hud.” Even in the middle of this shit-show co-op board coup, he is always positive. A pragmatic optimist. He usually attributes it to his wife, but I’ve known him long enough to know, it’s him, too.
Lucas married Paola three years ago, which is relevant only because it did change him in that marrying the right person does.
Not something I have experience with. Except watching him.
It settled him without weakening him. It grounded him in a way I see every time I’m with them.
He comes back from lunch slightly later on Tuesdays because he calls her on his walk and they get lost in each other as he takes the same laps around the block and she laps him in conversation.
She is a woman who has never let him know a moment of peace, and he drops to his knees in gratitude for any chance he gets.
He has a photograph on his desk that is not a formal portrait like so many of the partners here do, showcasing their families as part of their success.
He refers to her in conversation with the unconscious frequency of someone who has reorganized their whole frame of reference around another person and finds this completely unremarkable.
But it’s remarkable from where I’m standing.
“Here’s the thing,” he says. He leans forward, elbows on knees. The posture that means he’s about to say something I won’t want to hear.
“You’ve lived there for a while.”
“And?”
“And your relationship with your neighbors is—” He waits for me to complete the sentence.
“Functional.” Save for one.
“Do you know any of their names?”
“Mrs. Saraceno.” I smile at him sarcastically, because I know what he’s doing. Leading me right to the fucking point. I’m the horse he’s leading to water, and he might be the only person that can make me drink it.
“That’s because she’s actively stopping you from getting what you want.
That’s not the same thing.” He gives me the look he’s given me since law school to prepare me for landing point.
“You don't make it easy on anyone, Hud. You’re not warm.” He doesn’t hold back, like the implication that I’m cold and distant is something he has teed up to tell me for some time.
Like it isn’t something I’ve heard firsthand from nearly every failed relationship.
Part of the reason Claire and I were so well-matched was just that.
She’s equally harsh, ambitious, and self-involved.
Or so I thought. Months wasted, at least that’s what she said when she broke up with me, only for us to continue to interact on the daily as we both are constantly vying for the same cases.
“I'm not trying to be warm. I’m trying to buy an apartment.” I let the false smile pin my cheeks as I flutter my eyes, mockingly. To which he rolls his. A very adult exchange.
“You could buy any apartment, renovate a fixer-upper and get your hands dirty anywhere. You’re only hell-bent on this because you’re being told no, so now you’re trying to prove a point.
Thinking you’ll be able to build a home in a building full of people you’ve made no effort to know.
And you’re surprised that no one wants to do you a favor.
” He shrugs. “She doesn’t know you. All she knows is what she’s seen. ”
“There have not been that many guests.” I say under my breath. Knowing that if I wanted, it could have been more. But it’s been a very respectable, totally normal amount of guests.
“I’m not judging,” he says, throwing his hands up in defeat. Maybe just conceding for my own comfort. Because as the most brilliant legal mind, he knows when to let someone sit with what he’s said, and that is exactly what he’s doing.