Because the floor plan of my brownstone is so enormous, the idea was to split each of the first three floors into two ultra-modern luxury apartments. Opulent near-city homes for the highest paid young professionals looking for a view of the Manhattan skyline, a ferry to work, and twenty-four-hundred square feet of voice-and-iPad-controlled automation that, in retrospect, totally takes the “living” out of “living space.” But, to each their own.
I also built out a basement apartment where my landlord slash handyman slash new-stay-at-home-dad slash younger brother lives rent free. His name is Bill. He’s got the same modern set-up as the six above ground apartments, minus the Manhattan view. He’s also got a truly miserable, high-power attorney wife named Betsy and a two-year-old daughter named Bitsy. They landed on the name Bitsy after a whole year of indecision, during which the baby began looking more and more like my ball-busting sister-in-law. So they ultimately decided on Bitsy because it sounded like “a little Betsy,” and they had been calling her Bitsy that whole time, anyway. Bitsy – sure, there’s a name that’s got legs.
My unit is where the top two floors used to be. I don’t like calling it a penthouse because I don’t think any top-floor apartment that isn’t at least ten stories high should be called a penthouse, but this doesn’t make it any less impressive. It is, in industry terms, a double-wide, double-high. Meaning it’s the width of two apartments and the height of two apartments. Meaning the original brownstone was a five-story building, and I collapsed the fifth floor into the fourth floor to make a bigger box. Originally there were going to be several split levels throughout the unit. Until I opted for, what you might call, a more open format.
“I love it,” I remember saying to Gwen – what was it, a year ago next month? We’d blown out the fifth floor, stripped the walls down to the original exposed brick, ground the floor to an ice rink of bare, polished concrete. Temporary wire-cage working lights were draped all along the high ceiling. No rooms, no stairs, no drywall or dividers. The place was an enormous, echoing twentieth century cave not yet touched by modern tech. Gwen, eyes glued to her oversized iPad, might as well have been in a Starbucks for all she noticed.
But there was something hushed and holy about the place, like some kind of ancient church.
And we were going to ruin all of it.
This is when I came out of the windfall daze that had been blurring my thoughts and vision since I’d sold my company. And this release was like I’d dropped a whole bunch of heavy stuff that I didn’t even know I’d been carrying.
“This is good,” I said.
Gwen continued to swipe through the interior designs on her iPad, enthusiastically pointing out how my unit would be the next gen of next gen daily tech living. Lighting, heat, sound, security, all activated via a central voice recognition system. Dozens of recessed lights and giant screens that would slide up from the floor or out from the walls on command. A lot of the furniture would be automated, too, digitally linked to the central system. It was going to have five Japanese toilets. If my downstairs units were The Jetson’s, my upstairs unit was Star Trek, The Next Generation. Gwen made cute little shrieks, she was so excited, reviewing each design tech function. I’ve always hated Gwen. Which is funny, because she reminds me so much of Clancy.
Back then, Clancy was as jacked about five Japanese toilets as Gwen was, but she had nothing to gain in the bargain other than getting hot water and air blown on her crotch at twelve different speeds, in five different bathrooms. Don’t get me wrong. A Japanese toilet is nice when you’re, like, in Japan or if you stumble onto one at some rich dude’s party. But it’s just a novelty, not some kind of yardstick for finally having made it.
“This is good,” I said again.
Gwen shoved the tilted screen of her iPad a little further in my direction, not wanting me to miss a single feature.
“Awesome!” Gwen replied, actually jiggling with excitement. “Great. That’s great. Just give me a digital signature… here, and the contractors can get started on Monday.”
“No, no. I mean this,” I said, spreading my palms outward at the brick and concrete box surrounding us. “This is good. We’re going to leave it just like this.”
Gwen’s eyes widened. And then she laughed. Which made me laugh. But I’m pretty sure we weren’t laughing at the same thing. She smacked my shoulder. Hard. Like, good one, dude! And then our laughter slowly expired into a few hiccups and I explained to her, totally and completely serious, that I wanted to leave my unit exactly the way it was. Leave it a bare brick and concrete box. I have to admit I wasn’t really considering anyone else’s feelings when I made this decision.
That’s when Gwen went all Tasmanian Devil on me.
It took my general contractor and five construction workers to pull her frantic, clawing, screaming self from my body and restrain her while we waited for the security guards to come up from the lower units. Since then, my relationship with Gwen has been a bit strained.
Chapter Three
“Baby, I know you don’t want to talk about it, but all I can think about when I walk into this place is how you totally submarined Gwen’s career,” Clancy says in hyperbolic misery, glancing at my bare brick walls.
“How about we talk about why you’re here?” I ask. “We did break up, right?”
“I mean, this project was going to get Gwen into the magazines, turn her name into a brand, give her the chops to make partner and maybe, eventually, even start her own firm.”
“And I could be mistaken, going by the literal definition of a break-up and all, but doesn’t that mean we don’t just stop by each other’s places unannounced?” I am not going to engage in a dialogue about Gwen right now.
“Gwen totally blames you, you know. But I tell her it’s not your fault. Every time I see her, I tell her that.”
“Yet here you are, despite our break-up, throwing rocks at my building and disturbing my neighbors.”
“I keep telling Gwen that people have nervous breakdowns sometimes – like, that’s life, you know? You sold your company. You made a lot of money in a very short timeframe. Something like that can take a toll on a person. But I think, deep down, Gwen knows that everything will eventually work itself out. Look, you haven’t even changed the upper unit since the tear down. So, I tell Gwen that when things get back to normal, she’ll be right where you left her, you know, career-wise.”