The Museum of Modern Love(40)
By her mid-thirties she was so in demand that she could choose one or two commercial projects and a house or two to do each year. She liked to be there when Alice came home from school. She had a waiting list two years ahead. Invitations to travel and speak piled up on her desk. Awards and citations cluttered her shelves. Some days Levin wondered how to reach out and touch her. She seemed to belong to other people. Was he even visible when she had flown in from Shanghai or Madrid? She kissed him, hugged him, was gone into the bathroom, dressing, asking him how he was, how Alice was, and all the time she was watching the clock, considering how long his answer was taking in relation to the traffic that would catch them at 51st on their way downtown to see the Philharmonic and the things she had yet to prepare for the next day.
When they made love it felt like the only time he could really hold her. When she woke in the night, she would reach out and curl herself around him, and he felt as if he was the luckiest man in the world. When he woke she was often gone to her desk. In her pale blue hooded dressing-gown she had the look of a nun at prayer.
Washington Square had been her dream. He didn’t know why she wanted to live on Washington Square. She just liked it. Of course it had to be the right building, have the right bones. So they had thrown themselves into the New York real estate Olympics. For every co-op they had to provide his work history, her work history, their financials for the last five years, everything that captured them on paper: references, qualifications, memberships. Their personal details laid bare for strangers to assess, compare and pass judgement.
‘There are new apartments on the river over in the Meatpacking District,’ Anastasia, the Russian realtor, advised them. ‘They’re very sizeable. Views over the Hudson. Near the High Line. They’re also in your price range.’
‘Lydia wants Washington Square,’ Levin said.
‘Okay,’ Anastasia said, picking up the red leather folder. ‘Some very nice places on offer just now, plenty of movement and good prices.’
Several times they missed out. And then this apartment had come up.
A gracious (approx. 3382 sq. ft.) home. Rarely does a home come on the market with such a large interior space and vast, luxurious outdoor space . . . parallel and herringbone-laid hardwood flooring . . . huge master suite bathed in sunlight with eastern and southern exposures . . . marble, granite . . . large private study also opening to balcony, two additional bedrooms . . . storage . . . magical view over Washington Square Park.
Lydia saw the possibilities the balcony and the southern light afforded them. They had talked of ideas to reconfigure it at some point in the future. She had gone back and forth across town. Produced endless paperwork for him to sign and complete. And then they got the call. It was theirs.
Lydia had been looking drawn as fall faded and winter wrapped the city. She’d been back and forth to London all year, working on an interactive installation for children commissioned after the launch of her Rain Room in Cairo. Because no English child needed an education in varieties of rain, it was to be a horizontal and vertical flower and fruit garden within a vast bee house. She called it the Pollen Project. It was meant to be ready for the London Olympics in 2012.
He was used to her translucence by the end of a project, as if she had poured the substance of herself into it. She had flown to London for final meetings ten days before Christmas. Two days before they were due to move into the new apartment, she had rung from London to say she had to stay another day. She was so sorry. There was a new hurdle with the Department of Agriculture.
‘We’ll have to cancel the move,’ he’d said.
‘No, no,’ she’d protested. ‘We can’t. The settlement is done. Everything is booked. It will take weeks to reschedule. Everything is ready to go. They’ll pack and unpack. I’ve fully briefed them. I’ve told them it has to be done by the end of the day. You just need to let them in uptown and welcome them downtown, okay? You shouldn’t even have to wrap or unwrap a cup. But if you want to do your studio, you just need to let them know.’
He wanted to do his studio. And he told her so.
‘If they put stuff in the wrong places, we’ll sort it out in the new year,’ she said. ‘We can do that together. What matters is getting it all moved. I’m so looking forward to two whole weeks off to just enjoy our new home. I’m not even going to check my email.’
For two days the packers had been in their old apartment and he had made himself scarce packing albums and equipment in his studio. When he was done, and the reality of leaving their home of twenty years, the chaos and the effort of strangers in every room, was all too much, he had taken a room at the Algonquin and drunk a bottle of good French wine while watching Inglourious Basterds.
He’d thought it an unnecessary expense, hiring unpackers, but when he saw the scale of the boxes that were arriving at Washington Square, he’d been relieved. He had all the boxes marked Arky’s Studio sorted first. Then he’d taken a Stanley knife and, slitting open the packing tape, he’d begun untangling the leads and considering how he was going to set it all up. From time to time he’d listened out for a plate lowered too heavily on a stack, or wineglasses being irreverently handled. He’d wondered if he’d find a favourite jacket was missing. Or a box of CDs. But no such thing seemed to have occurred.
When he went to inspect the work, the wardrobes looked like a Benetton shop. Everything was colour coordinated and folded. There was the familiar linen on their bed and the liquid soap Lydia liked in the bathroom. He did not know the smell of this place, the noise the water made refilling the toilet cistern, the snap of the light switches, the sound of his shoes on the parquetry or the door to the bedroom closing behind him. But it now housed their furniture, their art.