Page 8 of The New Couple in 5B

“That’s a good idea.”

Olivia is one of our few friends with a real job. The rest are writers, actors, artists. Olivia is a lawyer at a big firm uptown. She’s on the partner track and is always coming late or leaving early from events, performances, signings. She and Chad used to date a hundred years ago, but it’s not a thing. At least not for me. She was the first of his friends to become my friend, too. Sometimes I do catch her watching him wistfully or watching me—I don’t know how. Not jealous. Just sad maybe. Like maybe she shouldn’t have let him go. But she did.

Chad picks up his phone and I head into the bathroom for a quick shower. I sit on the toilet to pee and when I pull the tissue paper back, it’s dark with blood. Any clinging hope that the test was wrong is dashed. A hard cramp almost doubles me over. And the afterglow of making love to my hot husband fades fast. I think of that smear of blood on the restaurant window, the angry red of Dana’s cheeks. The pain passes as I dig through the cabinet for a pad.

“You know,” yells Chad from outside. “I really think our luck is about to change.”

But I don’t believe in luck—good or bad. Life just happens. It’s a roller coaster; you hang on tight and ride.

three

Chad drifts off as we watchBlade Runner 2049for about the millionth time. He knows Ryan Gosling’s every line, sometimes stands up to perform it for me in unison with the screen. It’s cute that my husband is a huge science-fiction geek and that his dream role is to be like Gosling inBlade Runner, or Harrison Ford inStar Wars—those kind of space swashbucklers, but with layers. He’s currently on off off-Broadway playing a witch in a musical, gender-bending version ofMacbeth—which is actually quite good and getting some nice early reviews. He has his Shakespeare chops having earned his MFA from Columbia University. He still goes to acting class on Thursday nights, always honing and deepening his craft. But his boyish heart dreams of space adventures.

He’s asleep on the couch, snoring. I watch him for a minute because he’s so sweet when his face is relaxed like this. When he’s awake, he’s in constant motion, always hustling from this thing to that, ambitious. I suppose the same is true of me, and sometimes our days are so full that it’s as if we’re always rushing past each other, barely connecting. I push a lock of hair from his eyes, touch the softness of his cheek and he stirs, eyes opening.

“You were sleeping.”

“I was dreaming—about Ivan. About the apartment.” An uncharacteristic worry wrinkles his brow.

“We can talk about it more tomorrow.”

He nods, rising, lifting his arms in a stretch, exposing those taut abs.

“Coming?” he asks, sleepily, heading toward the bedroom. He trails a hand back for me.

“I’m going to work a while.”

This is my time and it’s a known thing between us. He’s an early bird. But my creativity peaks when the day is done, and others sleep.

“Don’t stay up too late,” he says, then leans in to give me a kiss on the head before disappearing into the dark of our bedroom.

I pull my laptop from my tote and get to work.

Once I’m in the document, the revisions come easily, and the structure is clear to me in a way it wasn’t before. I can see it.

Time clicks by. The pages fly.

Dawn is less than an hour away by the time I’m done, the sky already lightening. I’m exhausted but I’m happy with the revisions on my proposal. I just know that it works—I can feel the tingle on my skin.

Maybe Chad is right. It’s kismet that we’ve inherited this apartment. I was meant to write this book and meant to live at the Windermere while I do it. I feel the high-energy vibration.

I draft an email to Max and to my agent Amy, then send it off with the new proposal attached. The time I note is 5:55—that must be a good sign, right? Ivan’s apartment is 5B at 55 Park Avenue.

I am about to turn in, when the glint of our new keys catches my eye. I sit back down and sift through the apartment documents, think back on our conversation with Olivia.

“First,” said Olivia when Chad put her on speaker, “you’ll want to find out how much the apartment is worth.”

“I looked up the last apartment to sell in the Windermere,” Chad told her. “It was bigger, more up-to-date, than Ivan’s—but it went for five million.”

I puzzle at this. When did he look it up? On the way home from the reading of the will? Probably.

“Wowza,” Olivia said. “How much is the monthly maintenance?”

“Well, it’s an old building so they have a lot of expenses, including that full-time elevator operator, so it’s over $2000 a month. But, you know, we’re paying more than that now for rent.”

Olivia’s silent a moment, and we can both hear her tapping her phone, the swish of a text going out.

“I’ll check into it with our probate guy, but I think the exemption is up to ten million. So if all the documents are in order, the language of the will is clear, you guys just got seriously lucky.”