Lincoln ran up her front steps, brushing the snow off his hair, and pressed the button by her name.
She buzzed him in. “I’m on the third floor,” she yelled down. “Come on up.” It smelled good in the stairwell. Dusty. Old. Lincoln wondered how Doris had made it up all these stairs every day with her bad knee. She was waiting for him in her doorway.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “They turned off the heat already, and I’m freezing. The cabinet’s right over there.”
There was nothing left in the apartment but the Bubble-Wrapped cabinet. Lincoln looked around the living room, at the high tin ceiling and creamy plaster walls. The wood floors were dark and scratched, and the light fixture looked like something you’d see in an old opera house. “Have you lived here long?” he asked.
“Since I got married,” she said. “Do you want the thirty-second grand tour?”
“Sure.”
“Well, this is it. Back there’s the bedroom.” Lincoln walked through a doorway into the sun-filled bedroom. There was a tiny bathroom through another door, with a freestanding tub and an old- fashioned sink (small, with separate taps for hot and cold water).
“Over there’s the kitchen,” Doris said. “It’s all old as sin. Those countertops have been here since World War Two. You should see my new kitchen—wall-to-wall Corian.” Lincoln checked out the kitchen. The fridge was new, but the rest of the room did indeed know the difference between Red Skelton and Red Buttons. There was a rotary phone attached to the wall. Lincoln reached out to touch the Bakelite handle.
“Will you miss this place?” he asked.
“Oh, I suppose,” Doris said. “Like anything.” She was opening the kitchen drawers, making sure she hadn’t left anything behind. “I won’t miss the radiators. Or the draft. Or those goddamn stairs.”
He looked out the window over the sink and down into the courtyard. “Is it hard to get into this building?”
“Well, it’s secured access.”
“I mean, to rent.”
“Why, are you looking for a place?”
“I …well …” Was he?
No.
But if he was …This was exactly the sort of place he’d want.
“We can talk to Nate, the super, on the way out if you want. He’s a good guy. One of those alcoholics that doesn’t drink. If he forgets to fix the toilet, he’ll give you an amends.”
“Yeah,” Lincoln said, “sure, let’s talk to him.”
He picked up the curio cabinet, a few bubbles popped. “Lift with your knees,” Doris said.
NATE SAID A few people had asked about the apartment, but that it was available until someone wrote him a check for the deposit. Lincoln didn’t carry a checkbook, but Doris did. “I know you’re good for it,” she said.
Nate took Doris’s key and handed it to Lincoln. “That was a short day’s work,” Nate said.
Lincoln rode with Doris to the new retirement tower. He carried up the cabinet, met her sister, and admired their Corian kitchen. Then Doris offered him some Sara Lee pound cake, and they looked at old pictures of her and Paul with a series of basset hounds.
“Boy, this is exciting,” she said, when she dropped him off at his car. “I feel like we’re keeping this old place in the family. I’ll have to introduce you to all the neighbors.”
After she drove away, Lincoln walked back to the building, up to the third floor, and opened the door to the apartment. His apartment.
He walked through each room, trying to take everything in. Every cranny. There was a window seat in the bedroom—he’d missed that before—and lamps that reached out of the walls like calla lilies.
There were tall oak-framed windows in the living room and a tiled area inside the entryway that said “welcome” in German.
He’d have to buy a couch. And a table. And towels.
He’d have to tell his mom.
From: Beth Fremont
To: Jennifer Scribner-Snyder
Sent: Mon, 01/31/2000 11:26 AM
Subject: Have you seen Amanda?
Seriously, have you seen her today?
<<Jennifer to Beth>> Seen her? I feel like I have to buy her dinner.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> How can she walk around the newsroom, making eye contact with people, when she’s practically naked to the waist?
<<Jennifer to Beth>> I couldn’t conduct a telephone interview in a blouse like that.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> I’m used to her wearing low-cut shirts (or refusing to button decent ones), but seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that much of another woman’s breasts. Maybe in junior high, in the locker room …