One Fifth Avenue - Candace Bushnell [194]
For some reason, he had taken her advice. The woman was right, he’d thought, upon returning to his disgusting apartment. It wasn’t good enough for him. He was twenty-five years old. There were men his age who were billionaires, but he was making a hundred thousand a year, an enormous sum compared to that of his friends. After scouring Craigslist, he’d found an apartment on Christopher Street, a walk-up with a bedroom that was barely large enough to contain a queen-size bed. It was twenty-eight hundred a month, which ate up three quarters of his monthly salary, but it was worth it. He was moving up in the world.
Seated behind her desk with her reading glasses perched on her nose, Mindy carefully read the latest installment of Lola’s sex column. Lola had quite a way with the description of the sex act and, not content to limit it to plumbing, also provided a detailed account of her partner’s physical characteristics. The first four columns had featured Philip Oakland as her lover, but this column and the previous one were most definitely about James. Although Lola called the man the Terminator, which made Mindy laugh out loud, the description of his penis, with its “constellation of tiny moles on the shaft, forming, perhaps, Osiris,” was James. Nor was it only the comments about his penis that gave him away. “I want to know every part of you. Including the dirty place,” the Terminator had said. It was exactly the same argument James had used on Mindy in the early years of their marriage when he’d wanted to try anal sex.
Putting the column aside, Mindy went back to her computer and, typing in the address of the Litchfield County real estate agency, scrolled down and found the photographs and description of a house. The past weekend, looking at real estate, the agent had explained that there was very little in their price range—there was hardly anything on the market for under a million three. She did have the perfect house for them, but it was a little more expensive. Did they want to look at it anyway? Yes, they did, Mindy said.
The house was a bit of a wreck, having only been recently vacated by an aged farmer. But these kinds of houses almost never came up. It still had twelve original acres, and the house, built in the late seventeen hundreds, had three fireplaces. There was an old apple orchard and a red barn (falling down, but barns were very inexpensive to restore), and it was located on what was considered one of the best streets in one of Litchfield County’s most exclusive towns—Roxbury, Connecticut. Population twenty-three hundred. But what a population. Arthur Miller and Alexander Calder had lived nearby, as well as Walter Matthau. Philip Roth was only miles away. And the house was a steal—only one point nine million.
“It’s too much,” James protested in the rental car on the way back to the city.
“It’s perfect,” Mindy said. “And you heard what the real estate agent said. Houses like this one never come up.”
“It makes me nervous, spending all that money. On a house. And it needs lots of restoration. Do you know how much that costs? Hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yes, we have the money today. But who knows what will happen in the future?”
Indeed, Mindy thought now, pressing the intercom button on her phone. Who knew? “Thayer,” she said, “could you come into my office, please?”
“What now?” Thayer asked.
Mindy smiled. She’d been pleasantly surprised by Mr. Thayer Core, having discovered that he was not only a crackerjack assistant but a fellow trafficker in evil, paranoia, and bad thoughts. He reminded her of