Philadelphia Noir - Carlin Romano [70]
“I guess I can’t say I’ve never slept with my realtor,” Isaac offered, hoping for a smile.
“No, you can’t,” Christy replied, not granting one.
A week later, Isaac made clear to Christy that he wasn’t kidding about the side yard. His 401K had dropped 40 percent in the recession. His bridge loan on 401 would come due in two more years. Isaac wanted to know if, at least, the second-house idea was feasible.
In the eleven years since they’d stopped sleeping together, Christy had never made a dime off Isaac. Now, she thought, she should.
“Look, Isaac, if you’re really serious about this,” she told him on the phone, “let’s deal. The first thing you have to do is to see if it’s even possible to lay a foundation and build there. If you’re serious, for a $5,000 retainer, with you bearing the costs, I’ll arrange for the initial testing.”
“Five thousand is pretty steep,” said Isaac. “How much would the testing cost?”
“Probably a couple of thousand.”
“Five thousand is too high,” Isaac said. “What would you think of doing it as a team, with you taking a commission if I build the little house? You said all along that this was a unique property and situation—sort of ‘Own your own block right smack in University City.’ You could sell both together for over a million. I’d give you 10 percent on the whole thing.”
Christy liked the idea. She’d never seen a Philadelphia city block with only one house. A wild notion that she’d had before about 401 came back. It could be her signature project. She could explore that craziest of all inner-city ideas: trying to turn the 400 block of St. Irenaeus Square into a private street. Or a gated area like one of those suburban enclaves she’d long admired. Isaac’s prominence as an Inky writer might get her coverage as an innovator.
“Okay, let’s do it,” Christy replied after a long pause. “I mean, the project—the house!”
“You can’t tell Irina,” Isaac said.
“Of course not,” agreed Christy.
Isaac gave Christy a set of keys—he traveled half the time anyway, and trusted her. Christy arranged for Eric Busby, who’d worked on some of the town houses that replaced the imploded Southwark Towers, to do the initial research, checking city records on underground lines and obstacles, checking out the yard. Isaac would be off in Europe for three weeks right after the semester ended in May. She might get things off the ground by then. She told Isaac as much.
It didn’t turn out as Christy planned. Most of the time, when she thinks of Isaac and 401—and, occasionally, when she sleeps there (deals often leading to other deals)—she’s glad about that. The sixteen trees make it feel like someplace else, not Philadelphia. Isaac’s sudden avaricious side—the instant developer eager to make a profit and let nature be damned—didn’t become him. When they both realized they had to stop cold on the second-house idea, Isaac seemed vulnerable again, even sexy, as he had when they first met. Just a writer, and a dreamer, in a house full of books.
Christy broke it to him pretty quickly after he came back from Europe in June. They were sitting in Isaac’s living room, on the old Imperial couch.
“There’s not going to be a second house,” she began. “It can’t happen.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Eric dug down into the yard about forty feet back from the sidewalk.”
“So?”
“So, he hit something. An obstruction.”
“An obstruction?”
Christy got up, walked over to her travel bag, and took out something wrapped in old pages of the Daily News.
It was a matryoshka doll.
“That’s what Eric hit in the yard?” Isaac asked, his eyes riveted on it.
“That’s not all he hit,” Christy answered, with an efficient air that suggested—this thing is over: game, set, match.
“Try part of a rib cage next to it, not quite separated from its accessories.”
Isaac looked at Christy as if she’d just told him that she’d gotten pregnant by him years ago, given birth, and now it was time for Isaac to meet his daughter. Christy looked at Isaac with an expression that said: You owe me for the rest of your life.