The Chrysalis Read online

  Four stories below, his fellow New Yorkers milled about, cabbies honking and cursing at each other. The streets glimmered with slowly drying rainwater. He suddenly felt inspired, knew which color he was going to use to begin his painting. Gray was always a good way to start.

  “What are you talking about?” Tom said. He inhaled deeply; smoke trickled out of his mouth and nose as he continued, “You can come drink for free at my bar anytime you want. You know that.”

  “Ahh, fuck that. I wanna go out, man. You know, to someplace that’s not a dive. No offense. Someplace where I’m not the only black guy and you’re not walking away every five minutes and I can talk to real women, not underage NYU students or barflies with three teeth.”

  Tom laughed and took another deep puff. Kevin had a fair point.

  “Okay, fine. I’ll talk to Jenny and we’ll figure out a date. Or I’ll come alone the next time she makes plans with Victoria. I’d rather hang out with you anyway. I’ll text you soon to set it up.”

  “Yeah yeah yeah, that’s what you said a month ago. I told you you were gonna get boring when you got married.”

  “Fuck. You.” Tom smiled and tapped the cigarette, watching the ash float off into the wind before dispersing completely. He observed the people below entering and leaving buildings, like insects. The painting was continuing to come together in his mind.

  “Ha, okay,” Kevin said, the sound of typing increasing. “Well, let me know. And remember, anytime you want a real job, I could always use a new sales associate.”

  “No way,” Tom answered, looking up into the sky and letting the sun temporarily blind him. “Never. Not in a million years.”

  * * *

  Jenny choked down the last of her nine-dollar beer, feeling her stomach revolt.

  That first drink after a weekend of intense boozing was always the toughest, but she could already feel the lingering hangover starting to recede. Her older sister, Victoria, stared at her with a blank expression. Blank but somehow deeply judgmental. She had barely touched her own drink. Of course.

  “Lookin’ a little green around the gills there, Jen,” Victoria said, smiling. Not a mean smile, Jenny conceded, but sure as hell not a nice one either.

  “Ah, you know, the perks of being married to a bartender.”

  Victoria raised her eyebrows at this remark and sipped daintily at her drink, some fruit-infused concoction that cost almost twice as much as the beer. “Speaking of which, how’s his ‘art’ going?”

  Hearing the quotation marks, Jenny bit back the urge to unleash an obscenity-laced retort. She was in no mood to hear her sister trash her husband. “Good, actually. He’s probably painting right now. He loves working when the sun comes out right after it rains.”

  “Mm-hm.”

  “How’s Lakshmi?” Jenny asked quickly, both of them knowing it was a loaded question. Lakshmi, Victoria’s younger wife, was always moving from one entrepreneurial idea to the next, with Victoria usually acting as her primary investor. So far, nothing had panned out.

  Jenny’s older sister squirmed in her expensive business suit. “She’s doing amazing, thanks. She has this new diet regimen that she created. It’s pretty groundbreaking. I think it would make a fantastic book. She was actually hoping she could talk to you about it.”

  “Well,” Jenny said, cringing inside, “I mean, yeah, I’m a personal trainer, but I don’t think I’m any kind of diet expert. Maybe I can—”

  Victoria laughed—that loud, bitchy laugh Jenny had hated her whole life. It usually preceded some comment that made her want to cry or punch her sister in the mouth or both.

  “Oh, no, honey, not for diet advice. Obviously. In case someone you train at the bank might be interested in investing. You know, to pay for one of those New York Times–bestselling ghostwriters or something.”

  Obviously? Fucking obviously?

  Jenny was about to unload on Victoria when their waitress reappeared. Saved by the bell, sis.

  “Can I get you ladies another round?”

  “No, thank you. I think just the ch—” Victoria started.

  “I’ll take a shot of whiskey and another beer, and then she’ll take the check,” Jenny interrupted.

  The waitress clearly got the signal because she backed away without another word. Victoria raised her eyebrows at her sister again.

  “How’s work?” Jenny said, biting down on each word.

  At first, Victoria seemed ready for a standoff, but then she sighed and looked away. Jenny saw the black circles under her eyes, and felt bad. She knew how hard Victoria worked, knew how much she had to fight to be taken seriously at her high-pressure, extremely high-paying marketing job, where most of the other executives were older men. Victoria had overcome a lot of sexism and general disdain to get where she was. She was tough, yes, maybe sometimes downright mean, but she was a strong woman, a great role model for a younger sister, and Jenny respected the hell out of her. Not that she’d readily admit it.

  “Oh, you know,” her sister said, almost dreamily. “Never enough hours in the day. Or night. Lakshmi says I work too much. That I need to relax more. That we need to take more vacations. Like I have time for any of that. How about you? How’s the gym?”

  “Oh, you know,” echoed Jenny with a grin, and saw Victoria’s expression soften. They’d fought constantly growing up, and still did often, but were fundamentally a tight unit, especially when dealing with their aging, increasingly obnoxious parents. “Nothing better than having a ninety-year-old corpse trying to paw your tits with his zombie hands.” Jenny held up her arms like the undead and swiped at her sister’s chest, and Victoria burst out laughing in a rare moment of pure emotion. Flooded with affection, Jenny laughed, too.

  “I needed that,” Victoria said.

  The waitress returned with the shot and the beer. Jenny pounded the former and chased it with a huge gulp of the latter while her sister shook her head. But there was still a smile on her face.

  * * *

  Jenny walked into her apartment building vestibule, tripping slightly on the uneven floor—she was nowhere near as drunk as she’d been two nights earlier, but certainly wasn’t sober. She’d convinced Victoria to stay and have a couple more drinks, then splurged for a cab after hugging her sister goodbye—two things she rarely did. Both felt great.

  Approaching the row of small metal mailboxes built into the far wall, she tried to ignore the large cockroach she could see scuttling across the floor out of the corner of her eye. The building was fairly clean, especially for Alphabet City, but the dark, smelly garbage room was directly across from the mailboxes, and you could never really get away from the vermin in New York City. Shortly after she and Tom moved in, they’d heard scratching sounds in the walls and realized they had mice. They’d set out glue traps, and to this day Tom still refused to tell her how he’d disposed of the writhing, still-breathing, terrified rodents. He’d always looked pale and upset afterwards. He hated killing anything.

  It was a struggle to maneuver the tiny key into the lock of their mailbox, but Jenny eventually succeeded, opening the metal door with a clang. There was rarely anything good in there—once in a while an envelope from her father, full of news clippings and comic strips from their hometown paper in Upstate New York. Otherwise, all they got were bills and junk mail.

  As she riffled through the envelopes, she came upon one that wasn’t junk or a bill or a letter from her dad: something from the building’s management firm. Probably about renewing their lease, which was expiring soon. She hoped the rent wasn’t going up too much. A year earlier, around the time they were shelling out money for their wedding, it had jumped up a hundred dollars a month. Which was doable, but they’d had to cut back on booze and eating out, two of their absolute favorite things.

  Leaning against the wall, cradling her purse in the crook of her elbow, Jenny ripped open the envelope and scanned the letter. She cocked her head in confusion and then read it again, more slowly, forcing her eyes
to focus through the haze of alcohol.

  “No … no … no…,” she repeated as she slid down the wall, landing on her ass, reading the letter for a third time. Finally, she closed her eyes and let out a shaky breath. The letter slipped from her fingers and fell to the floor as her eyes filled with tears.

  “Fuck…,” she whispered.

  * * *

  The letter from the management company, which Jenny had ripped into shreds, was splayed across their dining room table, as was most of the Chinese food that they’d had delivered, one of those extra expenses they almost never indulged in anymore. Chopsticks jutted out of barely touched white boxes like strange sculptures. Though neither Tom nor Jenny had much of an appetite, they’d polished off a bottle of white wine and were halfway through a second. Tom had rushed home as soon as he closed the bar.

  He looked back down at the screen of his crappy laptop, its case covered with stickers for obscure indie rock bands. They’d been looking at real estate websites for at least an hour, with little success.

  “We’re fucked,” he muttered. “Even the shitty parts of Brooklyn have gotten too expensive for us.”

  “I told you,” Jenny said, “we can look at the Br—”

  “No way,” Tom interrupted, shutting the computer angrily. “I am not moving to the Bronx. Or to Queens, for that matter. I’d rather just give up entirely and move back to Pennsylvania. I can work in my cousin’s coffee shop, sweeping floors and taking out the garbage, and slowly shrivel up and die.”

  Jenny knew he was kidding but could still see the look of enraged desperation in his eyes. Tom wasn’t always great under pressure, something that continued to surprise her considering how cool and collected he normally was.

  “I just don’t get it. How can they jack up our rent so much? It’s almost tripled.”

  “It’s the end of our lease and this place isn’t rent-controlled,” Tom answered. “They can do pretty much whatever the hell they want. They’re putting up all these new buildings … closing all the cool old-school stores … more room for fancy fucking wine bars and high-priced coffee shops and lame-ass Wall Street yuppies. It’s how they get rid of the undesirables.”

  He chugged the rest of his wine and refilled his glass. Silence descended on the apartment. It was dark outside and weirdly quiet for Alphabet City. They looked at each other, neither sure what to say, how to proceed.

  Jenny sipped her wine, weighing her next words before deciding to blurt them out.

  “I can call Victoria.”

  Tom stared at her for a long moment, unmoving. Jenny felt a ball of panic beginning to form in the pit of her stomach but forced it out of her system, knowing this was their only logical way forward.

  “And why would you do that?” he said, barely audible.

  “Tom,” Jenny said quickly, knowing how much he hated when she used his name like that, “We don’t make anywhere near enough for us to get another apartment like this. We got lucky last time and we both know it. And, whether you like it or not, Victoria is very well connected. She must know at least one Realtor who will help us out. If not a bunch of them.

  “Trust me, I don’t love the idea of going to her, begging for help. It kind of makes my skin crawl. Do you think I want to give her more ammo? I just don’t know that we have much choice. Neither of us knows the first thing about real estate, and who knows which of these sites we can even trust.

  “We’re probably missing a bunch of opportunities. We’ve only looked for an hour. Who knows how many cheap, great apartments are right under our noses? I think calling Victoria is the best thing we can do.”

  Tom stared at his wife. She had so much more that she wanted to say, but she held her tongue. She knew how her husband’s thought process worked. She had presented her case and now he had to convince himself. A long moment of silence passed.

  “Fine,” he said finally, looking down at the floor.

  * * *

  Tom and Jenny pulled the rental car up to yet another tiny house in New Jersey.

  Chelsea, the unbelievably positive and thoroughly made-up real estate agent whom Victoria had gone to college with, was already there. Standing next to her immaculate white minivan in her bright-blue power suit, she beamed at them with a smile that looked painted onto her face.

  “I don’t know if I can do this again,” Jenny muttered. It had been a long day already. Each house they’d seen was worse than the one before.

  “Yeah,” Tom agreed. “I mean, that last one was obviously a crack den at some point. Did you see that mattress in the backyard? And some of these neighborhoods … I thought Alphabet City was bad.”

  They both looked at the still-smiling Chelsea, who hadn’t moved, and grinned back. The smile standoff lasted for a few moments, then Tom sighed and pushed the car door open, unfolding himself up and out of the rental. Jenny joined him on the sidewalk in the warm June sunlight and growing wind.

  Chelsea approached, pushing a strand of bleached platinum hair off her face and trying to tuck it back into her shockingly tight bun.

  “So,” she said, waving her arm toward the small red house as if she were a game show hostess, “what we have here is a delightful two-bedroom ranch. It’s a little small compared to the last few I’ve shown you, but it has the cutest yard and the taxes are very reasonable. I think you’re going to like it a lot!”

  Wrinkling her nose in what she probably thought was childlike cuteness, Chelsea sashayed up the walk to the almost nonexistent concrete porch. Jenny looked at Tom, and they locked hands.

  “The city was a bust and New Jersey isn’t exactly stepping up. Pennsylvania is looking better and better…,” he said with the crooked smile she loved.

  She laughed and squeezed his fingers, pulling him forward. “Oh, shut up. This one is going to be perfect for us. I can feel it.”

  * * *

  The smell of stale cat urine assaulted them even though all the house’s windows were cracked open.

  “The layout is supremely functional, it has great feng shui,” Chelsea was saying. It had taken very little time to walk through all the rooms; the ground floor wasn’t all that much bigger than their apartment, and the upstairs was even smaller. “There’s a jitney stop a couple of blocks over, and the shuttle drops you off right in back of the train station. Which is terribly convenient!

  “Now, let me show you the backyard. It’s actually much bigger than it looks at first glance.”

  “Um … Chelsea?” Jenny interrupted.

  “Hm, yes, Jenny?”

  “Isn’t there a … bit of a problem here?”

  Chelsea stared at her with a blankness that Tom found kind of impressive.

  “Problem? No … no, not that I can think of…”

  “The smell, Chelsea,” Tom said after a moment of awkward silence. “I think my wife is talking about the fact that this entire house reeks of cat pee. Not exactly the kind of smell that goes away … you know … ever.”

  “Oh,” Chelsea answered, seemingly shocked by the idea that one of the houses she was showing could be considered somehow less than perfect. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Yeah, okay, but we noticed,” Tom continued, his bullshit meter going off. “I think—”

  “We realize our price range isn’t the most competitive,” Jenny interrupted, stepping closer to Chelsea, “but the apartments and houses we’ve seen so far haven’t really been … our style. I mean, we really appreciate your time—Victoria said you squeezed us in at the last minute. Which is so nice of you. But is there anything else you have … maybe something affordable but with a bit more … personality?”

  Chelsea’s face went slack and Jenny could see her nostrils flare ever so slightly. Then the Realtor blinked several times, as if she were rebooting, and the mask went back up.

  “Personality … personality … hmm. Actually, now that I think about it, I do know about one house that you might adore. It isn’t officially listed yet, but trust me, it has a lot of personality.”


  * * *

  Tom’s left hand was raised in a futile attempt to block the sunlight from his eyes, the late-day clouds having parted and then vanished during the drive over. Jenny stood next to him in the reverse pose, her right hand shielding her eyes as the two of them stared at the large, 112-year-old house.

  “Sorry I’m late!” Chelsea nearly shouted from close behind them, making them both jump. “My husband called, there was some kind of emergency with my youngest.… Isn’t there always? Apparently, multiple adhesive bandages were required!” She laughed.

  Jenny wondered what was so amusing about one of Chelsea’s kids getting hurt. A parent’s prerogative, she decided.

  “This house is almost in our price range?” Jenny asked, focusing on the large structure in front of them and shaking her head in disbelief. “It’s gorgeous.”

  The house at 79 Waldrop Street, in Springdale, New Jersey, one of several homes in a rounded cul-de-sac, was a big Victorian with large bay windows, a slate roof, and a huge porch with iron railings and wide front steps. The third floor boasted a single small, stained-glass window. On the porch, a wooden swing rocked gently in the breeze. The yard was overgrown but clearly had a lot of potential.

  “Shall we?” Chelsea intoned, smiling at them like a cat staring at a couple of mice. She led them up the steps, unlocked the door, and ushered them inside.

  Jenny was sure they were in the wrong house. There was no way they could afford a place like this. On top of that, the place was a mess, practically overflowing with stuff—all of it tacky as hell, in her opinion. A thin layer of dust covered everything.

  The entry opened directly into a dining room. An enormous wooden table with lion’s-paw feet filled most of the floor; a lighter-colored wooden china cabinet stood along the closest wall. Another wooden china area, this one built into the wall to their left, was closed off by small glass doors. An antique-looking wooden display table squatted in the far corner, covered in random bric-a-brac.