Carnegie Hill, page 28
“Hey,” Caleb said. “How are you feeling? I heard you had the flu.”
“I am fine. I needed some—how do you call it? Mental-sick days.”
“Mental-health days,” Caleb corrected.
“No need for this hair-splitting while we are freezing our asses off. Can we talk inside?”
“I’m pretty sure my folks are home.”
“Maybe I could meet them?” Sergei smiled, which made Caleb want to cry with relief. By some miracle, he had come around.
They climbed the stairs to the fourth floor, and Caleb unlocked the dead bolt, the only one of three locks that worked. His parents’ bedroom door was shut; instead of disturbing them, he led Sergei to his bedroom.
“Nice digs,” Sergei said, staring at each wall in turn as if memorizing every detail.
Caleb heard that as sarcasm. Assuming no one, not a relative, neighbor, or lover, would ever set foot in his room, he hadn’t bothered taking down his teenage decorations—posters of shirtless heartthrobs, a framed inspirational artwork from his aunt about genius being 99 percent perspiration, high school track trophies and medals that his mother didn’t want him to throw away, magnetic letters that spelled I AM MY FUTURE on his mini fridge. He hadn’t really noticed any of it in years. Now it all came rushing to the forefront, and he was embarrassed that Sergei might think this stuff described him, more so because in a small way, it still did.
“I was going to take all this down; I just didn’t have anything to replace it with,” Caleb said. It was partly true.
“No, it is cute. You are earnest.”
They took off their coats and lay them over the footboard of Caleb’s single bed. Caleb plopped down on the mattress, thudding onto the deadened springs.
“Mr. Douglas McAllahan offered me a job,” Sergei said. “He is needing a doorman captain for his new condominium tower in Hell’s Kitchen.”
Mr. McAllahan, the richest member of the co-op board, had developed condo skyscrapers all over Manhattan. He was also known for inviting twink hustlers up to his apartment in the middle of the night. His housekeeper met Sergei for cigarette breaks and told him everything.
“He hired you because you’re gay?” Caleb asked.
Sergei smiled. “The people who live there are gay. They want gay doormen, but there are not so many to choose from.”
Caleb was a little peeved that Dougie hadn’t asked him too. Maybe they didn’t need more porters. “You didn’t get fired, did you? Not to rub it in or anything.”
“I did not. You were right about that.”
“And you’re taking the job?”
“The pay is better. I am sick of the Chelmsford Arms. Too much gossip.”
Caleb laughed. “You wouldn’t believe the crazy shit people have been saying to me.”
“Bastards,” he said with a laugh. “They love their secrets.”
“We don’t have to be a secret.”
Sergei grunted, which Caleb took to mean either that he was tired of hiding or that he didn’t want to argue. He sat next to Caleb and put his hand on his leg, and Caleb put his hand on Sergei’s hand. They stared out the dirty window, across the air shaft at the brick wall and a window that was curtained off with a flowery bedsheet. It had been that way as long as Caleb could remember. He still didn’t know whose apartment it was.
“I have been thinking a lot during my mental-health time,” Sergei said. “You have been wanting me to be open since the beginning, and I have not listened to you. I say I love you, and I say I will do anything for you, and I did not do this one most important thing that you have asked again and again. I love you but I have not been good to you, and for that I am very, very sorry. I promise to you now that I will be more open.”
Caleb had never been with someone who changed for him. It was gratifying and scary, and it felt like proof that their relationship was going to last. “Thanks. That means everything to me.”
“But I need to go slow. You will tell me if it is too slow.”
“There’s pleasure in being known, you know,” Caleb said, remembering Francis’s desperation the day before. “If you stop worrying about how much people are judging you, it’s kind of important to be honest about who you are. I think it might be the most important thing there is.”
Sergei took his hand away. “If you are trying to convince me to tell my parents, the answer is no. Never. It would be cruel. But for now, I will be out at work, and we can go on dates outside of Brooklyn.”
“But we still have to ride separate trains to your apartment?” Caleb knew he should be grateful for Sergei’s willingness to change—and for still having a boyfriend when he was sure it was over—but it pained him to imagine keeping Sergei’s secret to anyone. He didn’t think he could do it anymore.
Sergei pursed his small mouth. “Listen, I have done some thinking about this, too. I will be making more money at my new job. You have a dream in life, to be a social worker. I do not have such a dream, and because I love you, my dream is for you to have your dream. So here is my proposition: come live with me and you can quit your job and go to college full-time. I will pay for your living expenses and as much of your tuition as I can. Your loans will be very tiny. And if you move in with me, I will tell my parents that you are my friend from work who is paying the rent while I save money to buy a home. We can be outside together then. We can smile and laugh without fear.”
Caleb was dumbfounded. Was this a romantic gesture or just a generous one? He did want to live with Sergei, wanted it badly, and he would need to find a place when the Lenox Manor was torn down, which might happen as early as March. And if he went to college full-time, he could finish in two and a half years instead of ten. He could get his MSW before he turned thirty—and then, with a well-paying job helping New Yorkers with real problems, not just the coffee spills and funky smells that his current employers complained about, he could pay Sergei back. If he did accept, though, he would really be locked in that tower.
“I thought you might be happy to hear this,” Sergei added with an uncertain smirk.
“I am, I am,” Caleb said, as he realized he was being ungrateful. “It’s just…” He scooted toward the foot of the bed so that he could look Sergei in the eye. He didn’t want to be touching him for what he had to say. “I do want to move in with you, and get to live with you and go to school full-time—that would be a total dream. But I can’t live in that apartment. I want to move to a neighborhood where we don’t have to be in the closet.”
“Caleb—I cannot afford anywhere else. Not if I am supporting you, too.”
“I don’t want you to support me. I want us to support each other. I’ll keep working. It’s really okay.”
Sergei leaned forward and squeezed Caleb’s forearms. “You are right, of course,” Sergei said. “Let us move somewhere new. Together.”
Sergei cupped Caleb’s head in his hand and kissed his forehead, then his nose, then his lips, tenderly. Caleb relished the moment, the first pleasure he’d had all day. “I missed you,” Sergei said. “I wanted to punish you for what you did, but I found I could not live without you.”
“You don’t have to.”
They lay back on the narrow bed and kissed some more. Sergei rolled on top and unzipped Caleb’s pants.
“My parents are home,” Caleb protested, pushing him away.
Sergei grinned. “What do you think they are doing all shut up in their room?”
“Last week you didn’t want to meet them, and today you want them to hear our sex?” he whispered.
“The human mind is a miraculous treasure.” He kissed Caleb, slow and deep.
PART THREE
13
MADAM PRESIDENT
Stepping into Patricia’s dining room for the January board meeting, Pepper caught the last whispers of a conversation between Francis and a willowy woman with rippling gray hair who was wearing an oversize tan sweater, black yoga pants, and white sneakers. In recent years, the most powerful women in New York had taken to wearing workout clothes to business meetings and lunches. Pepper’s mother abhorred the shift, probably because she couldn’t get away with such a young look. As for herself, Pepper had set out a black sheath dress and pumps but instead put on dark jeans, black medallion flats, and a scoop-necked sequined top. This was going to be a big night, and she wanted to be comfortable.
“Marilyn!” said Ardith, who was setting out appetizer plates by the clipboards around the table. “Welcome to our secret society.”
Of course, Pepper realized—the mystery woman was Marilyn Devine, a retired actress who had won a spot on the board after Birdie stepped down. Devine was a name concocted for the silver screen, of course; her original Polish last name crammed about twenty letters into two syllables. After Marilyn won the seat on the board, Pepper watched one of her movies from the early 1970s called Wounded Love, in which she was miscast as a nurse who fell for a badly burned patient, only to discover when the bandages came off that the patient was her father. The film had aged poorly and, according to the internet, given rise to a drinking game: every time Marilyn presses the back of her hand to her forehead, you take a shot.
Francis tipped his Yankees cap to Pepper and guided her into Patricia’s living room, away from the rest of the board members. He whispered, “Did Ardith give you the all clear?”
Pepper shook her head. “She still hasn’t made up her mind.”
He had never been able to persuade Ardith to vote for him in the annual officer elections, even after he exposed Patricia’s illegal sublet. So he had asked Pepper to talk to her. She had plenty of opportunity. In the weeks leading up to the Beacon of Hope gala in December, Pepper had spent hours every day in Ardith’s cavernous apartment, soliciting sponsors, confirming with vendors, and planning seating arrangements using swirls of index cards on Ardith’s Tibetan hand-knotted rug. She was excited to be working in a field that she liked, for a worthy cause, though she kept making mistakes: seating archenemies at neighboring tables, inserting a political joke into a speech that might offend the Republicans in the room, or choosing peanut clusters for the dessert table when one of the honorees had a peanut allergy.
Pepper managed to bring up the board elections on Christmas Eve, a few hours before she and Rick were driving up to Vermont to celebrate with her family. All Ardith said was that Patricia’s illegal sublet had given her a lot to ponder. Pepper suspected Ardith relished the power of being a swing voter.
“We have no choice,” Francis said. “The die is cast.” Maybe his whispered conversation to Marilyn had secured her vote.
The problem was, she wasn’t sure Francis would make a much better replacement. Sure, he knew everything about the building, and he was honest to a fault, but he had been acting strangely for months. He went on a deranged rant at the last meeting about his not being nominated to the board, which made it patently clear why Dougie and Chess hadn’t nominated him. His private scheming about ousting Patricia was also tinged with paranoia. She remembered his wit and cheer when they first met in Patricia’s dining room more than a year earlier: the jokes about Empress Pat and the untouchable bar cart. Since then, his roguish humor had become caustic. It seemed he hadn’t smiled in months. But she had to vote for him. She couldn’t stand another day, much less a year, under Patricia’s control.
Ardith hobbled over and kissed Pepper twice on each cheek. Pepper gave her a weightless hug, afraid of applying pressure to her bones. The building’s beloved dowager was probably still in her seventies, but it was hard to be sure.
“My dearest Pepper,” Ardith said, “meet Marilyn.”
“I loved you in Wounded Love,” Pepper said, shaking her limp hand.
“Thank you,” said Marilyn. “It’s a pleasure to meet you too.”
“Pepper is a veritable whiz at organizing and planning,” Ardith said. “She absolutely saved our gala.”
Pepper smiled, enjoying the compliment.
“If you’re not careful,” Ardith said to Pepper, “word will get around of your talent, and you’ll become yet another prisoner of the gala circuit.”
“Is it really a prison?” Pepper asked.
“Joke, darling, joke! It’s a great privilege to improve the lives of those less fortunate without the drudgery of the punch clock. In one of my past lives, a mere nanosecond between husbands two and three, I tried my hand at secretarial work, and I found it not to my liking. I don’t think women were meant to work the eight-hour day. It’s really quite tedious, don’t you think?”
Pepper didn’t think anyone in New York worked just eight hours anymore. Rick worked nine or ten most days—and recently had been working twelve and fourteen, and then most of the weekends, too.
“Carol used to love working,” Francis said, “far more than I.”
“Ah, but Carol has the heart of a man,” Ardith said, shaking her fists in the air. “Robust!”
At Ardith’s trilled “R,” Patricia stepped into the dining room, holding her sleeping Pomeranian like a muff. She wore a long red douppioni-silk coat embroidered with dragons, along with matching emerald earrings and brooch. She always seemed to be dressing for a Chinese emperor’s court, but this election-day getup looked borderline insane. Pepper imagined her in yoga pants and couldn’t help smiling.
It was 7:30, time for the meeting to start, and Chess, the incumbent secretary of the board, had not arrived. Dougie texted him, mouthing the words as he typed, and the six present board members took their seats.
Pepper had been afraid to ask Rick for the usual two bottles of wine. A week before Christmas, he’d been mugged in Central Park. The whole thing was terrifying: it didn’t seem right that they could live in one of the nicest neighborhoods in the city and not be able to prevent a kid with a gun from nearly killing Rick. Now it seemed as though there wasn’t going to be any justice, and though she’d put aside all of her needs to take care of him, he just wanted to be alone. So she basically hid from him, hoping his anger would subside. If she’d learned anything in her six months of being married, it was that in a few weeks, everything could be different, maybe better, maybe worse.
Instead of asking for his wine, she’d baked macarons with Birdie. After five hours of exhaustive precision, the tiny sugar sandwiches turned out perfect: airy, crisp, and not too sweet. It had been unnerving to hear George watching TV in the other room while they baked, especially because Birdie wouldn’t even refer to him, nor did she mention her plans to move out. If Birdie did end up leaving, Pepper was going to miss her.
Patricia noticeably did not offer to open a bottle of her own—she still provided nothing at the meetings and kept her fancy spring water for herself—but Ardith lived a few flights above Patricia and nabbed three bottles of red from her apartment. “Today, we’ll need the extra,” she said. Since Letitia wasn’t around—Pepper hadn’t seen her in months—Dougie poured everyone a glass except Marilyn, who somberly informed all present that she had not touched alcohol in thirty-two years.
“Watch the drips,” Patricia said.
“Aye, aye, Madam President,” Dougie said as a droplet fell onto the tablecloth and grew into a large purple splotch. “Sorry.”
“Douglas!” Patricia hustled into the kitchen for a liter of club soda and a roll of paper towels. For someone who flaunted her wealth and pooh-poohed the middle class, she was awfully anxious about a little stain.
Once the tablecloth was clean, she sat down and composed herself. “Any response from Chess?”
“Not yet,” Dougie said. “He was supposed to fly in this morning from Aspen. I hope his plane didn’t crash.”
“Behind the fear lies the wish,” Francis said, widening his eyes.
“You’re a laugh a minute, Francis.”
“Let’s get started without him,” Patricia said. “We’ll simply delay the officer elections until he shows up.”
“That’s not in the bylaws, Patricia,” said Francis. “We’ve always done the officer elections at the start of the January meeting. If he’s not here, tough.” Chess, of course, would be voting for Patricia.
“As board president, the meeting agenda is under my responsibility. And I say that we will vote at the end of the meeting.” Her eyes darted to each board member. “How is everyone tonight? Were you all sufficiently fatigued by the holidays?”
“Please call it what it is, and say Christmas,” Francis said. “Hanukkah has nothing to do with it.”
Pepper had grown accustomed to his gentle corrections, but now he snapped over the slightest annoyance. Maybe he was going senile.
“Francis, darling,” Ardith chimed in, “if we just say ‘Christmas,’ we leave out that delightful little turd known as New Year’s Eve.”
“Don’t forget Kwanzaa,” Dougie pointed out with a straight face.
“Please,” Pepper said, feeling brazen. “Not only do we have no black shareholders, you don’t have a single person of color on your staff.”
“We’re supposed to say ‘person of color’ now?” Dougie asked. “As in, ‘person of interest’?”
“Enough of that PC rubbish,” Patricia said, restraining Helen of Troy, who was trying to poach a macaron off Patricia’s plate. “As it happens, we have a—what would you have me say?—colored? No, of course not. We have one such family applying to purchase 14C. So Penelope, you may finally get your wish. Or maybe not.” She passed around the binders, which were twice as thick as usual. “On the surface, the financials are respectable, but I do have some serious concerns.”
“They’ve got a parakeet!” Dougie said, flipping pages.
“That apartment shares a wall with my bedroom,” Marilyn sighed. “I have enough trouble sleeping as it is.”
“Worry not, Marilyn,” Ardith said, her plumped lips forming into a semblance of a smile. “It’s an absolute breeze to get rid of a bird. One simply opens a window.” She opened her binder and took out a magnifying glass from her structured orange-leather handbag.
“I’m not worried about the bird,” Patricia said. “If there isn’t already a no-birds clause in the bylaws, we can pass one tonight. It’s the job, the previous residence, the tax returns, the ex-wife—everything stinks like an old fish.” She refilled her wine glass. Pepper wasn’t one to police drinking, but Patricia was going to get sloppy at this rate.
