“You’ve always been weak. People look at you, and they think, I have a pass to jerk off to her milky tits. She’s mousy and pathetic and hasn’t showered in a week.”
“Four days.”
“You need to get back to writing. You were really good.”
“Everything I write is stupid.”
Daisy looks at me. “That’s okay.”
I trust Daisy, not the way I trust Dr. Brooke, but the way I trust that the Earth will turn and that every twenty-nine and a half nights, we’ll get another full moon.
“This could work,” Daisy says.
And I agree. This could definitely work.
—
The next day, we get to Daisy’s early. We meet on the thirtieth floor in a co-working space where no one ever works. There’s a spread of Kossar’s bagels and a full matcha bar. I never did understand why someone with a multimillion-dollar condo would need a communal office with fast wi-fi and kombucha on tap, but why not? Daisy convinces me to take my matcha with no milk, no sweetener, the bitter way, the way she used to drink it in Tokyo, when she was living with a Lebanese auto executive she met in Davos.
We pop our bagels out of the Wolf gourmet toaster and take Holden outside to a playground in the condo’s courtyard. It has all the latest equipment and Astroturf under artificial mega-grass, sothat if a kid did fall off the wooden pirate ship or the NASA-approved model space shuttle, they’d land on a soft, fluffy evergreen lawn, just as God and every gentle parenting influencer intended. It is vacant except for us. An LLC shell of a playground. Daisy is rocking Holden in his Yoyo with the tip of her McQueen heel. I rattle off ideas to enhance the play space.
“Ohh, I stole these luscious Coterie organic diapers from this law office that helped me find you; we should get some of those.”
“So many questions. Why did you need a lawyer to find me? What did they find on me? Why did a law office have diapers?”
“Top law firm in the city. They were very helpful. They said you aren’t dead, but you aren’t alive. Just add Coterie diapers to our list?”
Holden drops Sophie on the ground. I pick her up and hand her back to Holden, who puts Sophie right back into his mouth. I am not even worried about germsoutside. It’s like we aren’t even in New York, but in some sanitized Epcot version of the city.
I’d resisted the urge to ask Daisy about her work, but I did wonder if all of this could implode. “What do we do if the Greek comes back, or somebody finds out?”
“Finds out what?”
“That we invited people over.”
“Look around, Em. This place could use a little life. Besides, it’s sort of my job?” Daisy explains that the Greek told her to “make it look lived-in, fix it up.”
“Because it is so shabby?”
“You’d be surprised.”
Daisy then tells me about the leaks, the stalled elevator cars, the swaying in a heavy wind, the crappy plumbing, the rushed, shoddy electrical installation that has rendered sixty-five units and a common area unusable. A Potemkin pied-à-terre. “It looks posh, but I swear, Em, it’s held together with Scotch tape. But who cares? New Yorkreal estate is a way more solid investment than the S and P.” Daisy leans down and, noticing Holden’s eyes are open, taps the tip of his nose. “The Greek just bought it as a place to hide his money. Isn’t that right, cutie-pie? Yes. Yes, it is, all the billionaires are doing it. Yes, they are.” She is baby talking about the proliferation of foreign money laundered through high-end New York real estate to my baby. Daisy hides her face—“Anonymity”—and peekaboo—“Liquidity.” It’s like Dr. Seuss swallowedThe Wall Street Journal. I do not like oligarchs, Sam-I-am.
I look up, my neck craned all the way back, the full force of aggressive architecture and the security cameras staring down on me. “Who lives in the penthouse?”
I notice Daisy’s eyes flinch a bit, like I’ve crossed a line. She holds her cup with both hands and takes a long sip of matcha. When she comes up for air, she’s forgotten that I ever asked. “Anyway, the Greek gave me all this shit, about how I’m always reading and how I don’t have any female friends, like there’s something wrong with me.”
“What a dick.”
“Eh. He is actually a decent guy, you know, as far as they go.” I do not know, but I also don’t ask. I don’t ever ask. “He’s not like these men who just want me to invite other professionals, escorts or whatever, over,” she says. “He wants me to have, like, ‘normal’ friends, and where am I supposed to find those? I mean, you’re the closest thing I’ve got, and you are definitely not normal.” She winks. “The apartment needs to feel homey, in case the feds show up or whatever.”
Daisy explains that since the Hu scandal, federal officials had been cracking down on condos bought under LLCs, particularly the ones purchased with foreign money. The Greek needed some laundry around, so the place would look less laundered. Daisy was under strict instructions to really use the place, mess it up a little. What better way to do that than to invite over a bunch of babies? After theMalaysian fled, Daisy’s name started to circulate in certain very specific, very high-net-worth circles. For a tiny cadre of obscenely rich men, Daisy provided an essential service beyond sex. She was a kind of house manager, available, for the right price, to be trapped in a Rapunzel tower for the über-rich.
“Is it legal?” I regret the question immediately.
Daisy takes a sip of matcha. “Oh, Em. Everything is legal if you’re rich enough.”
She squeezes Holden’s thigh. “This, you, being together, it makes me feel a sense of home. Besides, operating a whole day care is cheaper than those Wolf appliances that no one ever uses. Money means nothing to these people. But it means a lot to you.”
