One Fifth Avenue - Candace Bushnell [7]
Usually, Enid did not find these thoughts depressing but, rather, exhilarating. In her experience, she’d found that most people did not manage to grow up. Their bodies got older, but this did not necessarily mean the mind matured in the proper way. Enid did not find this truth particularly bothersome, either. Her days of being upset about the unfairness of life and the inherent unreliability of human beings to do the right thing were over. Having reached old age, she considered herself endlessly lucky. If you had a little bit of money and most of your health, if you lived in a place with lots of other people and interesting things going on all the time, it was very pleasant to be old. No one expected anything of you but to live. Indeed, they applauded you merely for getting out of bed in the morning.
Spotting the paparazzi below, Enid realized she ought to tell Philip about Mrs. Houghton’s passing. Philip was not an early riser, but Enid considered the news important enough to wake him. She knocked on his door and waited for a minute, until she heard Philip’s sleepy, annoyed voice call out, “Who is it?”
“It’s me,” Enid said.
Philip opened the door. He was wearing a pair of light blue boxer shorts. “Can I come in?” Enid asked. “Or do you have a young lady here?”
“Good morning to you, too, Nini,” Philip said, holding the door so she could enter. “Nini” was Philip’s pet name for Enid, having come up with it when he was one and was first learning to talk. Philip had been and was still, at forty-five, a precocious child, but this wasn’t perhaps his fault, Enid thought. “And you know they’re not young ladies anymore,” he added. “There’s nothing ladylike about them.”
“But they’re still young. Too young,” Enid said. She followed Philip into the kitchen. “Louise Houghton died last night. I thought you might want to know.”
“Poor Louise,” Philip said. “The ancient mariner returns to the sea. Coffee?”
“Please,” Enid said. “I wonder what will happen to her apartment. Maybe they’ll split it up. You could buy the fourteenth floor. You’ve got plenty of money.”
“Sure,” Philip said.
“If you bought the fourteenth floor, you could get married. And have room for children,” Enid said.
“I love you, Nini,” Philip said. “But not that much.”
Enid smiled. She found Philip’s sense of humor charming. And Philip was so good-looking—endearingly handsome in that boyish way that women find endlessly pleasing—that she could never be angry with him. He wore his dark hair one length, clipped below the ears so it curled over his collar like a spaniel’s, and when Enid looked at him, she still saw the sweet five-year-old boy who used to come to her apartment after kindergarten, dressed in his blue school uniform and cap. He was such a good boy, even then. “Mama’s sleeping, and I don’t want to wake her. She’s tired again. You don’t mind if I sit with you, do you, Nini?” he would ask. And she didn’t mind. She never minded anything about Philip.
“Roberto told me that one of Louise’s relatives tried to get into the apartment last night,” Enid said, “but he wouldn’t let them in.”
“It’s going to get ugly,” Philip said. “All those antiques.”
“Sotheby’s will sell them,” Enid said, “and that will be the end of it. The end of an era.”
Philip handed her a mug of coffee.
“There are always deaths in this building,” he said.
“Mrs. Houghton was old,” Enid said and, quickly changing the subject, asked, “What are you going to do today?”
“I’m still interviewing researchers,” Philip said.
A diversion, Enid thought, but decided not to delve into it. She could tell by Philip’s attitude that his writing wasn’t going well again. He was joyous when it was and miserable when it wasn’t.
Enid went back to her apartment and attempted to work on her column about Mrs. Houghton, but found that Philip had distracted her more than usual. Philip was a complicated character. Technically, he wasn’t her nephew but a sort