The Apartment Page 4

  “So what do you do?” he asked her, shouting over the din of the noisy restaurant after they had ordered. She noticed that his muscles rippled under the black T-shirt he was wearing with black jeans. He was in fantastic shape, and it was easy to guess he worked out every day.

  “I’m a doctor,” she shouted back, “an obstetrician.” He looked stunned by her response.

  “I thought you were a model, like your sister.” She shook her head with a broad grin.

  “No, I’m an OB/GYN resident at NYU hospital. I deliver babies.” What she told him left him momentarily speechless, and then he nodded.

  “I guess that’s cool.” He had no idea what she did for a living when he asked her on a date. He just liked the way she looked, and had lusted after Valentina for months. Sasha didn’t say it, but Ryan was too young and too poor for her sister, who only dated very rich, much older men. Ryan was no match for her. “Do you like being a doctor?” He didn’t know what to say to her.

  “Very much. Do you like being an actor?”

  “Yeah, I’m up for a part in a movie in L.A. I’m waiting to hear. I auditioned for it last week. I’ve had a few parts on daytime soaps, and the Calvin Klein ads have been great.” She nodded, and as their dinner arrived and the noise level rose around them, they were spared further conversation until they were back on the street. He put an arm around her when they left the restaurant, with an expectant look. “Do you want to come to my place? It’s a few blocks from here.” The geography wasn’t an issue, but she didn’t know him, and it was obvious that he expected to sleep with her in exchange for dinner. And handsome as he was, having sex with a stranger didn’t appeal to her.

  “I have to be at work at six tomorrow morning. I should get home,” she said, not knowing what else to say. Are you kidding? would have seemed rude, and she didn’t want to sound like a prude.

  “Yeah, right. We’ll have to do this again sometime,” he said, sounding unconvincing. She could tell that he thought that if she wasn’t going to sleep with him, there wasn’t much point in seeing her again. He put her in a cab five minutes later and waved as it drove her away. She was feeling dazed, the evening had been noisy, boring, and unfulfilling, and she knew nothing more about him than she had when they met, except that he was being considered for a part in a movie in L.A. And she got the feeling that the object of dates like it, with men like him, was not to get to know each other, but just to get out, dress up, share a meal, network at the gallery party, and if possible get laid. Almost none of it appealed to her, and was so superficial that it made watching game shows on TV seem more intimate. She felt like she had wasted the entire evening, and her feet hurt from the ridiculously high heels she’d borrowed from Claire. None of it seemed worth it. And it felt humiliating and stupid to have participated at all.

  She heard sirens in the distance as the cab approached her street, and she saw half a dozen fire trucks and a chief’s car, parked helter-skelter, and several policemen blocking traffic from entering the street. The cabdriver stopped, looked at what was happening, and turned to tell her that he couldn’t drive into her street.

  “It’s okay,” she told him as she paid him and gave him a decent tip. “I can walk in from here.” Although as she got out of the cab, she felt a tingle of fear race up her spine. There were fire engines and police cars, an ambulance, and two paramedic trucks jamming the entrance to the street, and a policeman stopped her as soon as she tried to walk in.

  “You can’t go in there, miss. Several of the buildings are on fire. It’s too dangerous. You’ll have to wait here.” He indicated a police line she couldn’t cross, and she craned her neck to see which buildings were on fire. The hub of activity appeared to be in the middle of the block, where men were running. Firefighters wearing heavy packs, helmets, and face masks were lumbering down the block at full speed. She could see ladders going up the front of two buildings, and then realized how close their building was to the fire. Her heart started to pound as she watched, wondering where her roommates were. They were all supposed to be home that night, and she wondered if they were on the other side of Thirty-ninth Street, waiting on Tenth Avenue, and took out her cell phone to call them and check. As she did, she could see that Engine 34, housed only a block away from them, had sent two trucks to the scene.

  Sasha watched the frenetic activity up and down the street, and now she could see flames coming from both buildings. And there were firemen on the roof to make holes in it with axes to let out some of the heat, while others shot water into the blaze. The smoke emerging from the buildings was inky black, which she knew meant the fire was still raging. Once under control, the smoke would be white, but it wasn’t yet.

  “Holy shit!” Sasha said, sounding shocked and nervous when Claire answered her phone. “What happened? Why didn’t one of you call me?”

  “There was nothing you could do. We didn’t want to spoil your date. We’ve been out here since half an hour after you left. It started in one building, and set fire to the one next to it about an hour ago. They can’t seem to get it under control.”

  “Shit, and we’re only two buildings away. Where are you guys?”

  “On Tenth. Morgan went to Max’s to get us some bottles of water. You can feel the heat all the way down here.” And the smoke was heavy in the air. As Sasha watched, she could see two firemen with face masks come down the ladders carrying people wrapped in blankets. One of them wasn’t moving, and the other was an old woman, who looked terrified as the firefighter made his way down the ladder with her. It was obvious, watching the smoke billowing from the building, that by now there must have been very little left intact inside. And what wasn’t being devoured by the fire was being drowned with the high-powered blasts of water being hosed into the building. It looked like they could lose the apartment, but for some reason the fire headed west instead of toward her, and another building on the far side of them caught fire as everyone stood watching. She felt guilty that she was relieved when she saw it head away from their building, though sorry for the people who lived on their other side, in the building that exploded into flames.

  “This is getting really ugly,” Sasha said sadly. “They just brought an old lady out, put a mask on her, and put her in an ambulance, and now they’re bringing out two more.”

  “Are you going to help?” Claire asked her, as Sasha watched them with wide eyes.

  “They don’t need me, unless one of those old ladies is having a baby. They’ve got three trucks of paramedics who know what to do better than I do.” Two of the ambulances had just gone screaming past her with their sirens on.

  She and Claire continued talking for the next hour, neither of them wanting to leave where they were standing and miss something important that might happen. And then finally, an hour later, the first sign of white smoke came through the holes in the three roofs and out the windows of the buildings. The fire was getting under control. And the ambulances had raced past her several times. Sasha had lost count how many, and she had noticed somberly two gurneys with lifeless forms on them, and blankets covering the bodies, and she had seen a firefighter carried to an ambulance when another firefighter had dragged him out of the building, injured. Trucks and engines had come from all over the city.

  It was two in the morning by the time the frenzy started to die down, but firemen were coming out of all three buildings carrying bodies. Sasha overheard among the police talking around her that seven people had succumbed so far, five were injured, and the fireman she’d seen carried out. She talked to Claire again then, and Morgan and Abby were with her. Morgan suggested they meet at Max’s restaurant, half a block from where they were standing, at the other end of the street. Their building was no longer at risk, but they’d been told it would be another hour or two before they would be allowed back into their home. Sasha was sure it would reek of smoke when they did. But they could easily have lost it that night if the wind had changed direction, and she thought about the people who had died, as she
walked around the block to meet the others on Tenth Avenue. They were quiet on their way to Max’s. He had closed half an hour before, and was counting the money while the kitchen staff and bus boys were cleaning up. Max had come out to see what was happening a couple of times, and brought them more water, and then had gone back to work. It was a busy night.

  “That was quite a blaze,” he commented as they arrived, all four of them looking tired, and Sasha still teetering on Claire’s high heels. The others were all wearing T-shirts, shorts, and flats and looked as though they’d dressed in haste.

  “Seven people died,” Sasha said sadly. “I think they were mostly old people, from smoke inhalation.” They didn’t know any of them personally, but all of the residents of the loft recognized some of their neighbors by sight and waved at them occasionally. It was tragic to think of how their lives had ended. It was one of the risks of very old buildings. One of the firemen had told Morgan it started as an electrical fire, in a building that hadn’t been renovated like theirs, and since it was rent-controlled, it had some of the original tenants in it.

  They shared a bottle of wine at Max’s, and finally at three-thirty, they were allowed to go back to their apartment. The building reeked of smoke, and they opened all the windows when they got home, and turned on their air-conditioning units for ventilation, but they assumed correctly that it would take days or longer for the smell of smoke to dissipate. The buildings only two doors away were still smoldering, and firemen were hosing them down both inside and out. None of the possessions inside would remain.

  “Boy, that was close,” Morgan said as she sat down on the couch with Max. “We could have lost everything.” In their haste, they had taken nothing with them, except Abby, who had grabbed her laptop with her novel on it. And Claire had stuck some photographs of her parents into her purse. The rest had seemed unimportant, but they would have hated losing their home. They had installed smoke detectors in the loft years before, and had never had a fire in the neighborhood come as close as that. It was an eerie, depressing feeling, especially knowing people had died.

  It was five in the morning before they all went to bed, and just before they did, Claire turned to Sasha.

  “By the way, how was your date?” Sasha had already forgotten all about it, in the excitement of the fire.

  “Ridiculous,” she answered. “A total waste of time. I’d rather stay home with all of you, or work, or sleep,” Sasha said with a yawn. “He was pretty to look at, but there was nothing to say.”

  “There are some good ones out there,” Morgan reminded her, as Sasha looked skeptical and Claire shook her head.

  “I think you got the last good one left,” Claire commented, referring to Max with a smile, as he went to get ready for bed and let the girls discuss the date.

  “What do you expect from an underwear model, for chrissake?” Morgan said to Sasha.

  “He kept taking pictures of me to send to his Instagram followers,” Sasha said. “He probably told them he was out with Valentina.” Morgan and Claire suspected that was probably true. He wasn’t likely to be impressed by Sasha’s medical school credentials, and claiming he was out with Valentina would blow the minds of all his friends. Morgan groaned at the description of his sending Instagrams to his followers from their date.

  “At least you tried,” Morgan commended her as Sasha turned to Claire.

  “And how the hell do you walk in those shoes? I was afraid I’d fall and break a hip.”

  “You can’t go on a date in clogs or Crocs,” Claire pointed out to her, and they laughed.

  “Why not? I did with the last guy I went out with. He was a resident in orthopedics. We went out after work in scrubs, and we had a fairly decent time, until he admitted that he was engaged, but he wasn’t sure if he was going to go through with it, so he was checking other people out to see how he really felt about his fiancée.”

  “Nice,” Morgan commented.

  “I guess I didn’t do it for him. I hear he got married over the Fourth of July. She’s an ICU nurse, and he thought maybe he should be with a doctor. Maybe they’re all crazy. Thank God I don’t have time to date. I don’t know why I bothered tonight.” Except to keep her hand in, and she thought she should. Her sister always said she had no life. And Valentina wasn’t wrong, but Sasha didn’t mind.

  “Two bad dates are not an excuse to live like a nun. And you have no excuse,” Morgan said to Claire. “You guys can’t stay alone forever. It takes some effort to find the right guy.”

  “And then what? You get married and hate each other for the rest of your life?” Claire said in a negative tone. Her parents didn’t hate each other, but in her opinion, her father had ruined her mother’s life. And her mother had let him, which was even worse.

  “It doesn’t always turn out that way,” Morgan insisted, although it had for her parents, who never should have gotten married in the first place. But her own generation was more careful, and a lot more cautious about who they married and why. Or they just lived together, which made more sense to her. Their parents’ reasons for getting married no longer applied. Giving up lives, careers, and cities for a man seemed like a bad idea to all of them, and led to miserable lives like those of Claire’s and Morgan’s parents.

  “Well, I think I’ll give the dating thing a rest for a while,” Sasha said with relief.

  “You haven’t exactly been knocking yourself out in that department,” Morgan chided her. “You can’t give up after one boring date. That’s ridiculous.”

  “No, it’s ridiculous going out with guys you don’t have anything in common with.” But Sasha was too tired to think about it now. She said goodnight to her roommates, and headed for her bedroom to lie down. She had to be at work at six A.M. to deliver babies. Her life was much too real to be bothered with men like Ryan, and she didn’t need dinner that badly. As she lay down and closed her eyes for a minute, he slipped totally from her mind into oblivion, where he belonged. It had been a long night, and it had been frightening for those at risk of losing their homes, and tragic for those who had died, all of which made her date seem utterly inconsequential. She fell into a deep sleep, grateful for even half an hour, and particularly so that their home was safe.

  Chapter 3

  Abby was painting scenery at the theater again, and Ivan was having lunch with a theatrical agent, when a pretty girl walked in, looking slightly lost and very young. She had enormous breasts that were nearly falling out of a man’s tank top and was wearing skin-tight jeans, and she had tousled, long blond hair that looked as though she had just climbed out of bed. Abby wondered if Ivan had scheduled auditions, but they had no part in their current play, or the next one, for a girl her age.

  Abby stopped painting and looked at her. “Can I help you?”

  “I…I have something I wanted to drop off for Ivan Jones. He told me I could leave it at the theater for him. Is he here?”

  Abby shook her head, and noticed that the girl was holding a thick manila envelope against her chest.

  “It’s…it’s a play I wrote, and he said he’d take a look at it. I’m at the Actors Studio. I’m an actress, but I’ve been working on the play for two years. I think I need some help with it, and he offered. My name is Daphne Blake.” Something about what she said struck a chord of memory. Abby had come to the theater with an envelope just like it three years ago, when Ivan first convinced her to try her hand at writing a play instead of her novel, and then promised to produce it. Abby heard an alarm bell go off in her head, and sensed danger. “Are you a set designer?” the girl asked with interest.

  “No, I’m a playwright too. We all pitch in with odd jobs here, painting sets, working the box office before performances, cleaning up the theater. Do you want to leave the envelope with me? I’ll give it to him when he gets back,” Abby said quietly, trying not to seem nervous or suspicious. There was no reason for her to worry, and Ivan had every right to read other people’s plays. Although he only did his own very avant-ga
rde plays, which never got good reviews, or even attracted the notice of the press. Ivan was particularly irate that every play he had produced and directed was ignored. Even the critics who covered Off Off Broadway said nothing about his work. It was the greatest insult of all. He had a small coterie of supporters who gave him just enough money to get by and believed in his work. But he had used none of the funds to produce one of Abby’s plays.

  “Do you mind if I wait?” the girl asked Abby, continuing to clutch the envelope to her bosom, as though someone would try to steal it from her. Abby used to feel that way about her work too. More so about her unfinished novel than the very experimental work that Ivan wanted her to write. Some of it still felt forced and unnatural to her. But she trusted him.

  “Not at all, but he might be a while, maybe a long while,” Abby said to the girl. “I think he was going to do some errands too.” It was a little bit annoying to have her standing there, waiting for the messiah to come, or the oracle to speak. Abby felt that way about him too. His particular style of writing was ethereal and strange. But he was so knowledgeable about everything involving experimental theater that Abby considered him one of the unsung heroes of his time. And apparently this girl thought so too. She sat down in the second row of the theater and prepared to wait while Abby continued painting scenery with a shaking hand. She was painting a large devil for them to use in the second act, and she had red paint splashed all over her, which looked like drops of blood in her hair.