The Metropolis Case_ A Novel - Matthew Gallaway [83]
Martin extinguished his cigarette; he didn’t really care how old Leo was but remained curious. “And—and do you still live in Paris?”
“Yes.” Leo smiled. “Although I still keep something here.”
“ ‘Here’ meaning?”
“I have a house in Washington Heights.”
“Washington Heights,” Martin repeated, as if trying to place it. “Uptown?”
“You’re familiar with it?”
Martin shook his head. “I don’t think I’ve ever been north of Columbia.”
“That’s too bad,” Leo said. “I’m about ready to sell.” He smiled at Martin. “And since fate—or Ghislaine, if there’s any difference—has brought us together, I thought I’d give you first dibs.”
Martin resisted the temptation to roll his eyes, having over the years endured his share of sleazy come-ons and farcical invitations that made sense only in the inebriated aura of night; in Leo’s case, however, there was a pleasing ambivalence to the offer—a complete lack of desperation—that intrigued him. It was the sort of conversation that pulsed through uncountable bars and cafés and restaurants of Manhattan every single night and—whether anything materialized or not—served as a barometer for any potential relationship, even one that could be expected to last no more than a few minutes. “Okay, I’m game,” he answered. “What kind of house?”
“A small-but-charming kind,” Leo playfully replied. “It’s perched on the cliffs of Washington Heights, and has the loveliest views of the Hudson. It’s also secluded in a way that in my experience is most difficult to find in Manhattan.”
“Why would you want to be secluded in Manhattan?” Martin asked, although even as the words left his mouth, it occurred to him that—though he had never thought about it in these terms—he could very much understand the desire. He saw a new version of himself, devoted to his new job during the day and returning home each night to somewhere peaceful and distant, not so far away from the heart of the city that he would obsess about leaving or missing it, but far enough so that he would not be distracted by those parts of his life he was ready to leave behind.
“Isn’t that for you to tell me?” Leo smiled and to Martin’s disappointment got up from the table; apparently Ghislaine was ready to leave. Before he stepped away, he presented Martin with a calling card. “Here’s the address,” he said. “If you have any interest, I’ll be there tomorrow afternoon—come up and I’ll show you around.” He then shrugged. “And if not, à la prochaine.”
“Until the next time,” replied Martin, who already suspected—or was beginning to hope—it would not be very far away.
THE NEXT DAY, after referring to a map of Manhattan, he walked to 14th Street and Eighth Avenue, where he took an A train all the way up to 190th; having no idea what to expect as he emerged from the station, he was surprised to find a hilly neighborhood, filled with five- and six-story prewar apartment buildings, that on the whole resembled a European city more than an American one. The streets were quiet and clean, and this part of Washington Heights, at least, seemed to have little in common with the “drug-infested” quarters to the south and east about which he had read; Martin knew that, as with Harlem, large swaths of the neighborhood had given way to a form of blight and disrepair that mirrored what he had seen in the East Village during his first years in the city.
He walked west to Letchworth Terrace, a street just one block long that jutted out from Cabrini Boulevard, and here paused in front of a stone wall to admire the view. To the south was the George Washington Bridge, while the sheer cliffs of the New Jersey Palisades extended impressively to the north. The bridge seemed to bring the same order to his thoughts as it did to the cars streaming over it, and as he considered the river, he was struck by a stillness and a grandeur that had nothing to do with the more frenzied atmosphere in which he had lived for the previous twelve years. It was difficult to believe he was still in Manhattan,