Philadelphia Noir - Carlin Romano [69]
“Is like Russian forest,” Irina had joked to Isaac the first time she showed him how 401’s side yard, and Gombrowicz’s backyard, combined to form a veritable mini-park of soaring evergreens and overlapping foliage. The only difference was that Gombrowicz’s yard had neatly cut grass on its ground. The vines and weeds to the side of 401 made it look like a house that had landed, Wizard of Oz style, on a jungle floor, with terra firma at least six inches below the sight line.
Christy knew her biz. The sale and closing happened fast. Christy even suspected that Isaac and Irina might have slept together preclosing, despite Irina’s being a few years older than Isaac, which put her about twenty years outside his routine demographic. The only time the three of them had drinks together, she’d seen the flirtation between them, Isaac dropping more than necessary of the fifty words that had gotten him around Russia, and Irina looking overamused at his anecdotes about St. Petersburg.
In the two years since the closing, Christy had seen Isaac about six or seven times for one of their friendly meals or coffees. The conversations took their usual pre-401 course. First they’d gossip about the Inquirer (where Isaac now found himself bored as the paper spiraled downward to irrelevance), City Hall sorts they both knew, what was in the news.
At some point, Isaac would send a signal that he’d still happily sleep with Christy and Christy would gracefully rebuff him. Then they’d share recent romantic wins and losses. The new part, which Christy disliked but also found professionally flattering, were Isaac’s questions about his rights and possibilities as the sole owner and resident on the 400 block of St. Irenaeus.
At dinner the previous Friday, Isaac, oddly, seemed ready for a commitment.
“Seriously,” he’d said, “I know Irina would kill me, but would it really be so hard to get the permission and variances to build a small house in the yard, one that would still leave some greenery and trees?”
“I told you already, Isaac,” Christy replied, “it’s not a big deal. You own that lot. There are no covenants or restrictions on it. Your neighbors and Irina might go apeshit, but it’s a pretty clear path.”
“I’m more afraid of Irina than Derek,” Isaac said. “I’m beginning to think real-estate women have a harder time pulling away from houses they sell than from men they, so to speak, handle—”
“Nice try,” Christy cut it. “But I hear a new form of whining just around the corner. Let’s not go there.”
“The last time she dropped by,” Isaac said, taking Christy’s cue and dropping the “Poor me” tone, “I was watching Larry King do his latest Michael Jackson show, about the endless wait for the funeral. At first Irina was funny. She listened to it for about a minute, then uttered one of those Irina-isms I love.” Isaac shifted into his heavily Russian Irina impersonation and accent. Poor Michael Jackson! Cannot easy normal die!
“So I was feeling obnoxious,” Isaac continued, dropping the accent, “and said, ‘Right, Irina, you can only easy normal die in Russia. You just sit in your car after offending someone powerful, or write the wrong story, and pow—you’re gone.’”
“That was nasty!” Christy said. “You know she loves that whole Russian tough-guy thing, and Putin. Plus she really doesn’t like anyone even noticing her accent, let alone making fun of it.”
“I know, I know,” Isaac said, a little too knowingly for Christy’s taste, “and, yeah, she did act strange, weird, after that. She just looked at me in a way she never has before. Really cold, as if she didn’t recognize me.”
“Have you slept with her?” Christy asked with a chirp in her voice.
“What does that have to do with anything?” Isaac shot back. “I’ve told you before—no.”
“Yes, but you’ve also told me ‘No’ about other women in real estate, then changed it to ‘Yes.’”
“What’s the point?” Isaac asked.
“The point is,” Christy said, her sarcasm getting the best of her, “if she wants to share that unique feeling of being with you,