One Fifth Avenue - Candace Bushnell [19]
The Fabrikants, after endless discussion, had decided the most they could pay in rent was three thousand dollars a month, which was, as Cem pointed out, more than most people’s monthly mortgage payment. For this price, the Fabrikants imagined they’d find a spacious apartment with a terrace; instead, they’d been shown dirty little rooms that were reached by several flights of stairs. Beetelle imagined Lola living in such a space and being attacked at knifepoint in the stairwell. It wouldn’t do. Lola had to be safe. Her apartment must be clean and at least a reasonable facsimile of what she had at home.
Across the room, Cem lay facedown on the bed. Beetelle put her hands over her face. “Cem,” she asked, “did you get the reservations for Il Posto?”
There was a muffled groan into the pillow.
“You forgot, didn’t you?” Beetelle said.
“I was just about to call.”
“It’s probably too late. The concierge said it can take a month to get a reservation at a Mario Batali restaurant.”
“We could eat at the restaurant here,” Cem said hopefully, despite the fact that he knew another dinner at the hotel would result in a very chilly evening with his wife and daughter.
“We’ve already eaten here twice,” Beetelle scolded. “Lola so wanted to go to Il Posto. It’s important. If she’s going to succeed here, she needs to be exposed to the best. That’s the whole point of New York. Exposure. I’m sure most of the people she meets will have gone to a Mario Batali restaurant. Or at least a Bobby Flay one.”
Cem Fabrikant couldn’t imagine that this was true—that recent college graduates regularly frequented two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar-a-person restaurants—but knew better than to argue. “I’ll call the concierge,” he said. And keep my fingers crossed, he added to himself.
Beetelle closed her eyes and folded her lips as if trapping in a sigh of frustration. This was the typical construct of their marriage: Cem would agree to do something and would then take so long to do it that Beetelle would have to take over.
An impatient ringing of the buzzer, which sounded like an angry wasp trying to get into the suite, broke the tension. “Lola’s back,” Beetelle said with relief, getting up and making her way to the door. She pulled it open, and Lola brushed past her, a large yellow shopping bag slung over her shoulder. She let the bag slip to the floor and held out her hands excitedly. “Look, Mom.”
Beetelle examined her daughter’s fingers. “Black?” she asked, commenting on Lola’s choice of nail color.
“No one’s forcing you to paint yours black. So it doesn’t matter,” Lola said. She knelt down and extracted a shoe box from the bag. “Aren’t these amazing?” she asked, lifting the cover and tearing away the tissue paper. She held up a gold platformed boot with a heel at least five inches high.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Beetelle said with dismay.
“What?”
“It’s summer.”
“So what?” Lola said. “I’m going to wear them to dinner tonight. We’re going to Il Posto, right?”
The combination of the boot and the mention of Il Posto roused Cem from the bed. He was a short, round man who resembled a hazelnut and tended to blend into the background. “Why would you buy winter shoes in the summer?” he asked.
Lola ignored him, taking off her current shoes—black leather sandals with a Lucite heel—and slipping on the boots.
“Very nice,” Cem said, trying to get into the spirit of things. After so many years of marriage, however, he knew better than to reveal any vestiges of male sexuality. He aimed to be neutral and enthusiastic, a delicate balance he had learned to attain years ago, shortly after Lola was born. If memory served him correctly, it was precisely at the moment of her birth that his sexuality had