Essay #28
Wherein I get fired, but find redemption on W. 68th…
I got a part-time job, via a temp agency that Tim recommended. It was doing paperwork for an architectural firm in the Flat Iron District. Every morning, I waved to the Flat Iron building on my way into the office. One time, I walked past Sarah Jessica Parker’s townhouse in Gramercy.
I hated the job, and it hated me right back. They had me filing bills. This was like hiring Michael Bay to direct a rom-com. I would put 2015 bills in 2013, and April in August. (But you could see how I mixed them up, right?) My supervisor was a woman named Pearline, who was about one year out from her retirement, after 36 years of service. She followed the boss around our sterile labyrinth of an office with border collie energy. When I would put checks on the bottom, she would lean in and whisper, “you’re on the bottom, girl, you want to be on top!” Then she would giggle in delight as I pretended to be scandalized. (“Now I know why they named you Pearline,” I’d cluck, “Because I’m always clutching my pearls around you!”)
Pearline told me once, at the copier, that i didn’t need to come in three days a week, every week. “Some weeks, two is fine,” she demurred. The next day, I pulled a Ferris Bueller and treated myself to a senior skip day. I think Svetlana and I called one her psychics, then I went to an open house for a $2.6 million dollar condo in a faux fur, masquerading as a potential buyer, but really trying to learn how the pros did it (“Sarabeth shortbreads and a hot carafe of La Colombe — got it.”) I got a steak, cooked rare, at Smith & Wollensky afterward, assuaging the guilt of my Trimalchion decadence with the reminder that pay day was on Friday; I was going to start making commissions soon; and I still had enough in the bank to pay for four years of college tuition at a state school. (I always quantified my money in real life purchases — it soothed me). I didn’t bother calling in, because, well, I thought Pearline said it was okay.
The next day, I got fired.
“We’re going in a different direction,” the boss told me, rapping his knuckles on my desk. I tried to explain that I thought this was a week where I could enjoy a lighter load, but it didn’t do much to move him.
Pearline consoled me while I cried by the copier. My greater sorrow, apart from rejection, was that I let the old gal down. And one year off from her retirement, too.
Tim met me at a Starbucks three blocks away. He dispensed sympathy like a good hair stylist whose client’s been cheated on.
“Is there anything sadder than getting fired from a job you don’t like?” I sniffed. It was like going on a date with a mediocre guy and agonizing over what to do with him (“keep him around for cheap validation? Try again?”), only to have him text you that he didn’t feel a spark. A straight pie to the face.
I felt desperate again: Svetlana and I were on the waning crescent of our month together; I had to find a new spot; and when I checked my bank account — the number I dreaded like the scale after a holiday bender — I realized that my accounting skills were off: I actually only had enough money left to buy, say, a new double-wide trailer. (How the hell did that happen??)
But, life has a way of turning around just as you’re ready to move to Mars. Robert texted me, bluntly blessing me with the words that every agent prays to hear:
We got a listing
A listing — a real listing! This meant that it was guaranteed to close.
When you were a buyer’s agent, you had to take clients out looking at property, then hope that they made an offer. But even if they did, the market was highly competitive, and the offer may not be accepted — or even countered. For instance, I had spent the last five Saturdays taking out a couple from Westchester named Mr. and Mrs. Chen. They were hell-bent on purchasing a pied-a-terre in Tudor City, which is the buildings of studio apartments near Grand Central Station and the United Nations. So far, the Chens had made several offers 10–15% below ask, as much as I tried to “wheedle up the needle.” In lieu of a counter, I was told by a listing agent: “your clients are best advised to stop playing games.” (I pictured myself as Jewel in the ‘Foolish Games’ music video, singing to the Chens, in a light of sorrowful turquoise that, theeeese foolish games are tearing me, tearing me, tearing me apart, which made me giggle, at least).
But, no longer would I depend on people like the Chens, who were fated to be outbid by their Beijing brethren. I would be the one hosting the open houses catered by La Colombe and Sarabeth; possibly the lox from Zabar’s. I would stack up my offers — oh, how sweetly I would present them to my sellers!! I would actually get to utter the words around the office, “We’re going to Best and Final next week…”
Robert was hard at work, running comps to determine our listing price. I double-texted him, sending a :) and a “take your time!” (lolzzzzzzzzzzzz). This wasn’t Charlie, the Frat King to my Frat Queen, who I could pummel with a string of question marks, and call 40x a day. And this wasn’t the ZBT house drizzled in piss and stale ale. Robert was a stoic, litigious, orderly, boomer male, offering to share his pristine Upper West Side listing with me. A little decorum was required.
Finally, he answered: “it’s a 2 bedroom on the UWS. We’re listing at $1.5 MM.”
155 West 68th Street — that was the address of our new listing. It was a two-bedroom condo on the 14th floor, and overnight it became my spiritual vortex to a higher dimension.
“Dorchester Tower” was the building’s formal name, which I loved. Despite its Southie, Massachusetts pretext, I felt the name carried the crisp elegance of the British peerage. The Earl of Dorchester sounded like the suitor in a Merchant Ivory film, did it not? Someone Emma Thompson’s character would be engaged to marry, while having an emotional affair with the butler.
And I would get a 40% of his 3% commission. (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
Never before had I loved math so much.
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