Dream Girl(2)

“Your medication, Mr. Andersen. It’s very important that you take your medication.”

He has no choice. He swallows.





PART I





DREAMS





January 30




GERRY ANDERSEN’S NEW APARTMENT is a topsy-turvy affair—living area on the second floor, bedrooms below. The brochure—it is the kind of apartment that had its own brochure when it went on the market in 2018—boasted of 360-degree views, but that was pure hype. PH 2502 is the middle unit between two other duplex penthouses, one owned by a sheikh, the other by an Olympic swimmer. The three two-story apartments share a common area, a most uncommon common area to be sure, a hallway with a distressed concrete floor, available only to those who have the key that allows one to press ph on the elevator. But not even the sheikh and the swimmer have 360-degree views. Nothing means anything anymore, Gerry has decided. No one uses words correctly and if you call them on it, they claim that words are fungible, that it’s oppressive and prissy not to let words mean whatever the speaker wishes them to mean.

Take the name of this building, the Vue at Locust Point. What is a vue? And isn’t the view what one sees from the building, not the building itself? The Vue is the view for people on the other side of the harbor, where, Gerry is told, there is a $12 million apartment on top of the residences connected to the Four Seasons Hotel. A $12 million apartment in Baltimore.

Nothing makes sense anymore.

This apartment cost $1.75 million, which is about what Gerry cleared when he sold his place in New York City, a two-bedroom he bought in the fall of 2001. How real estate agents had shaken their sleek blond heads over his old-fashioned kitchen, his bidet-less bathrooms, as if his decision not to update them was indicative of a great moral failing. Yet his apartment sold for almost $3 million last fall and, as he understood the current tax laws, he needed to put the capital gains, less $250,000, in a new residence. Money goes a long way in Baltimore, and it was a struggle to find a place that could eat up all that capital without being nightmarishly large. So here he is at the Vue, where money seems to be equated with cold, hard things—marble in the kitchen, distressed concrete floors, enormous industrial light fixtures.

“Impressive,” his literary agent, Thiru Vignarajah, says, standing in the foyer, or what would be a foyer in an apartment with walls. “But did they mention it was in Baltimore, Gerry?”

“Very funny, Thiru. You know why I bought down here.”

Eight months ago, Gerry had been assured by doctors that his mother had less than two months to live. Her only desire was to die in her home, Gerry’s “boyhood” home. Gerry, ever the dutiful son, figured he could grant that wish. Two months passed. Then three. At month four, the doctors admitted they were fallible and that his mother might live longer than expected—not at home, not forever, but she could remain there for the foreseeable future (which, of course, is an oxymoron; the future cannot be seen). Gerry decided that buying an apartment in Baltimore would solve all his problems. His New York apartment sold quickly, despite the kitchen and bathrooms, and he snapped up this place, fully furnished, from the CFO of some smoke-and-mirrors tech company who was going through a bad divorce.

His mother died on December 31, three days after he closed on the Baltimore apartment. A soft, gentle woman, she had spent much of her life yielding to others, but when she really wanted something, she was stubborn. She wanted to die at home, with Gerry under her roof. So she did.

Now four weeks later, Thiru, always the full-service agent, is here for what he insists on calling the memorial service, which consisted of picking up Gerry’s mother’s ashes and taking them to Petit Louis for lunch. Not that his mother ever ate at Petit Louis, but back in the 1960s and ’70s she chose the old restaurant in this location, Morgan Millard, for every milestone occasion. Gerry’s graduation from middle school, Gerry’s scholarship to Gilman, Gerry’s acceptance to Princeton. Her birthdays. Once, only once, Gerry had persuaded her to breach her loyalty to Morgan Millard, insisting that they dine in New York on the day his second novel was published. He had taken her to Michael’s; she had seen a famous anchorwoman, then pressed Gerry to approach the blond bobblehead and ask her to feature him on her show. Gerry had declined.

At Petit Louis, a perfectly respectable French bistro, he could not help wondering if Thiru was judging it. Gerry actually prefers this restaurant to its New York counterparts, Odeon and Pastis. It’s not so much of a scene. He prefers quite a few things in Baltimore, or maybe it’s simply that it seems important now to keep a running list in his head of things that are better in Baltimore than New York. Movies: it’s almost unheard of to encounter a sold-out movie here. Weather: the winters are a tad milder, shorter. Grocery stores? The Whole Foods on Smith Avenue is just as awful as the one on the Upper West Side, so that’s a push.

Thiru proclaimed himself charmed by Petit Louis, by all of North Baltimore. He seems less charmed as they approach Gerry’s new home in Locust Point, a working-class neighborhood that is allegedly gentrifying, with the Vue as exhibit A. Thiru is uncharacteristically silent as they pull into the garage, leave the Zipcar in its designated space, take the elevator to the main floor, where Gerry picks up the mail from Phylloh at the front desk. Thiru does brighten at the sight of Phylloh, a curvy girl whose ethnicity is a mystery to Gerry, although he knows that he must never inquire how she has come by those eyes, that skin, that hair. Would Thiru be allowed to ask? Is it wrong to wonder if Thiru would be allowed to ask? The modern world is forever flummoxing Gerry.