Annalisa led him down the hall to the cheerful little room, done up in light blues and greens, that she called her office. She flipped open the top of her computer. “I can’t get on the Internet,” she said. “I’m supposed to have some kind of advanced wireless system that allows you to go online anywhere in the world. But it’s not much use if I can’t even get online in my own apartment.”
Sam sat down in front of the computer. His hands flew over the keys. “That’s funny,” he said. “The signal is scrambled.”
“What does that mean?”
“In layperson’s terms, it means there’s a giant computer, maybe even a satellite, that’s scrambling the signal. The question is, where is the satellite system coming from?”
“But aren’t there satellites everywhere?” Annalisa asked. “For GPS? And those satellite images of people’s neighborhoods?”
“This one’s stronger,” Sam said, frowning.
“Could it be coming from upstairs? From my husband’s office?”
“Why would he have a satellite system?”
Annalisa shrugged. “You know how men are. For him, it’s another toy.”
“A satellite is not really a toy,” Sam said with adult authority. “Governments have them.”
“In a large or small country?” Annalisa asked, attempting to make a joke.
“Is your husband home? We could ask him,” Sam said.
“He’s almost never home,” Annalisa said. “He’s at his office. He’s planning to go from his office to the airport.”
“I should be able to fix it without him,” Sam said. “I’ll change your settings and reboot, and you should be fine.”
“Thank God,” Annalisa said. She knew Paul would have been irritated if Sam had had to go into his office, but on the other hand, if he had, she simply wouldn’t have told Paul. Exactly what did he have in that office, anyway, besides his fish? What if something went wrong while they were away? They had enough trouble in the building as it was—the in-the-wall air-conditioning units hadn’t been approved, so Paul had had the French doors cut in half and air-conditioning units installed in the bottom portion, which was what he should have done in the first place—but Mindy Gooch still refused to talk to her. When Annalisa approached her in the lobby, Mindy would say coldly, “Enjoying the apartment, I hope,” and walk away. Even the doormen, who had been friendly at first, had become somewhat aloof. Paul suspected the doormen didn’t deliver their packages on time, and although she said he was being paranoid, he wasn’t all wrong. There had been a contretemps over a beaded Chanel jacket worth thousands of dollars that the messenger service had sworn was delivered; it was finally discovered two days later, having been left in Schiffer Diamond’s apartment by mistake. True, the bag hadn’t been labeled properly, but even so, it did make Annalisa wonder if the other residents disliked them. Now she was worried about Paul’s computers. What if something happened while they were halfway around the world in China?
“Sam?” she said. “Can I trust you? If I gave you my keys—to keep, just while we’re away, in case something happens—could you keep it a secret? Not tell your mother or anyone? Unless there was a real emergency. My husband’s a little paranoid…”
“I get it,” Sam said. “I’ll guard the keys with my life.”
And moments later, he was headed downstairs with the keys to the magnificent apartment hanging heavy in the pocket of his jeans.
Later, at the house in Windsor Pines, Beetelle sat at the vanity in her powder room and rubbed the last of the La Mer cream into her face. Cem, she knew, would be hiding in the entertainment center, where he now spent all his time. Ever since the foreclosure notice had come from the bank two weeks ago, Cem had taken to spending the night on the couch, falling asleep in front of the giant flat-screen TV. Lola, Beetelle imagined, was in her room, trying to digest the reality of the situation.
But how could Lola understand when Beetelle could barely comprehend it herself?
Beetelle dug out the last of the precious cream with her manicured fingernail. When had the trouble started? Six months ago? She’d known Cem wasn’t happy at his company. He’d never said so specifically—Cem kept his thoughts to himself—and although she’d sensed something was wrong, she’d ignored her feelings, convincing herself instead that, thanks to the cell-phone alert system Cem had invented, they were about to become very rich. But three months ago, Cem had come home unexpectedly early from work. “Are you sick?” she’d asked. “I quit,” he’d said. He had his pride, he said. A man could take only so much. “So much of what?” she cried. “Disrespect.” Eventually, she got it out of him: He’d quit because his boss was claiming Cem’s invention as his own. The boss claimed the company owned the patent, and Cem wouldn’t get a penny. Beetelle and Cem had hired a patent lawyer from Atlanta who came highly recommended, but he was no use at all. The lawyer, Beetelle discovered, was oily—and not only because his skin glistened against his navy blue pin-striped suit and red tie. Their one-hour meeting had cost them seven hundred dollars. Then the lawyer supposedly looked over the case. “There’s no evidence that Cem developed this on his own,” he said over the phone. “But he did. I saw him working on it,” Beetelle protested. “How?” the lawyer asked. “On his computer.” “I’m afraid that doesn’t give us much of a case, Mrs. Fabrikant. You can proceed, if you’d like, but it’ll cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars to take this to court. And you’ll probably lose.” Hanging up the phone, Beetelle suspected Cem had been lying to her all along. The cell-phone alert wasn’t solely his invention; it was merely something he’d worked on with other people. But why would he lie? To please her, she guessed, to make himself more important in her eyes. She was such a dynamo, perhaps he’d felt emasculated and lied to make himself look better. He made a good salary, three hundred and fifty thousand a year, but after the first week of Cem’s unemployment, she realized his salary was only more smoke and mirrors: They were living paycheck to paycheck and had three mortgages on the house, the last one taken out six months ago to enable Lola to move to New York. They owed over a million dollars. They might have survived by selling the house, but the market had dropped. The house that was worth one point two million a year ago was now worth only seven hundred thousand. “So you see,” the banker had said while she and Cem sat trembling before him, “you actually owe three hundred thirty-three thousand dollars. And forty-two cents,” he added.
Three hundred thirty-three thousand dollars. And forty-two cents, she repeated in her head. She’d said it over and over so many times it no longer had any effect. It was just a number, unattached to real life.
New York, Beetelle thought with a pang. If only circumstances had been different. What a life she’d have now, free from the horror of penury. Lucky Lola had moved to New York with every advantage, not the way Beetelle had when she’d gotten her first job as a medical technician at Columbia Hospital, making twelve thousand dollars a year. She’d lived in a run-down two-bedroom apartment with three other girls, and she’d loved every minute. But it didn’t last long. After three happy months, she’d met Cem at the old convention hall on Columbus Circle, where there was now a fancy office tower with a mall. It hadn’t been fancy then. Aisle after aisle of booths constructed of plasterboard sold everything from ball bearings for heart valves to magnets that would cure anything. Back then technology was only a little more advanced than witchcraft and sorcery. And so, in between the valves made of titanium and the magnets to reverse cancer, she’d found Cem.
He’d asked her for directions to the exit, and the next thing she knew, they were going out for coffee. The afternoon stretched into the early evening, and they meandered into the bar at the Empire Hotel, where he was staying. They were full of youth and career aspirations and New York City, drinking tequila sunrises while they looked at the view of Lincoln Center. It was spring, and the fountain was going, gushing great glittery streams of water.
Afterward they had sex—the kind of sex people had in 1984 when they didn’t know better. Her breasts were heavy and full, the type of breasts that sagged almost immediately but had one season of ripeness with which to attract, and what she attracted was Cem.
He was sexy then. Or he was to her untested mind. She had had no experience, and the fact that Cem was interested in her thrilled her. For the first time, she was living life—a secret, unexplored, forbidden life. The next morning, feeling free and modern, she woke up expecting never to see Cem again. He was going back to Atlanta in the afternoon.
But for days afterward, he pursued her, sending flowers, calling, even writing a postcard. She tucked them away, but by then she’d met another man and fallen in love, and she stopped responding to Cem’s entreaties.
The man was a doctor. For the next few weeks, she did everything to keep him interested. Made a fool of herself playing tennis. Cleaned his kitchen. Showed up at his office with a sandwich. She managed to only let him kiss her (and then go to second and third base) for six weeks. And then she gave in. The next morning, he told her he was engaged to someone else.
She was confused and, when he wouldn’t take her calls, devastated.
A week later, during a routine visit to the gynecologist, she discovered she was pregnant. She should have known, but she’d confused her nausea with the giddiness that comes from being in love. At first she thought the baby was the doctor’s, and she constructed scenes in her head of when and how she would inform him, after which he would realize she was the one for him after all and would marry her. They’d have to do it quickly, before anyone suspected. But when the pregnancy test came in, the gynecologist informed her that she was almost three months pregnant. Beetelle counted backward, feeling her entire life switch into reverse. It wasn’t the doctor’s child. It was Cem’s. The doctor said she ought to have it, as she was nearly too far gone for an abortion.