You know that feeling you get when everything seems to be right with the world? When the planets seem to be in alignment? One of those days when you’re actually running on time, your apartment is (relatively) clean, and you haven’t gotten into an argument with your mother/best friend/boss/therapist in at least a week? That was exactly how I felt as I strolled home from work down Mercer Street to my apartment on 301 Prince.
I had left my office that evening at 8:30 p.m., which—at Gilson, Hecht and Trattner, the large Manhattan law firm where I work—is actually considered early, so I was feeling like I had the whole night ahead of me. And I was going home to pick up my gorgeous Scottish boyfriend so that we could go out and meet friends for supper at some fabulous little downtown brasserie where everyone is European and the waiters only speak French, so I could hardly wait. I had the perfect New York City evening planned out.
Since I usually got out of work closer to 9 p.m. than 5 p.m., I considered myself lucky to have a boyfriend who liked to eat dinner late. I once dated a math teacher who left work at 4 p.m. and was in bed by 10. That relationship was destined to fail. Ditto for the guy who traded foreign something or others who started his day at 3 a.m. and ate his dinner before I even thought about getting lunch. My boyfriend, Douglas, on the other hand, thought that people who eat dinner before 8 p.m. were uncivilized.
I walked into the lobby of my apartment building—the poshest building in all of Soho— with a skip in my step. The Soho Triumphe, a building so fancy that, in addition to its staff of eight doormen, it boasts a 24 hour concierge who can get you into any restaurant in Manhattan (not like Douglas ever needed any such help). It even has in-house dry cleaning, like at a hotel. I said hello to the evening doorman who, despite the fact that I had moved into Douglas’s apartment a full two years ago, still couldn’t quite remember my name.
“32G?” he asked with a pained expression that indicated to me that he was thinking, at least, very very hard about who I was. I nodded my head ‘yes’ and pulled my hair out of the bun I usually wore at work while he checked his book for deliveries. Douglas loved my hair—dark brown with natural auburn highlights that was so long it fell down my back to just below my bra strap—so I always took it down right before I got up to our apartment.
The doorman handed me a mountain of dry cleaning, five custom made Italian suits (Douglas’s), five monogrammed shirts (Douglas’s) and one skirt (mine). I checked the mail and took out four bills (Douglas’s) and the Barneys New York Spring Look Book (mine)… or maybe it was Douglas’s. You never could tell with European men.
Balancing it all in the crook of my arm, with my oversized work bag forcing my body to lean perilously to the right, I made it to the elevator just as the door was about to close. I kicked my foot out and stopped the door with my leg. Inside, I could see a tiny little man furiously pressing the “door close” button.
“You could lose a limb trying to get to your apartment,” I said to the man with a laugh. Rather than being embarrassed for not holding the elevator for me, he looked annoyed that I had made it in.
“Or you could just wait for the next elevator,” he replied under his breath. And they say that chivalry is dead.
With my free arm, I pressed the button for thirty-two. My work bag slid down my shoulder, catching my long hair underneath the strap. I tried to jump up to release my hair, turning my head quickly to the left as I did so. The dry cleaning began to slip from my grip and I begged it not to fall, saying “we’re almost there” to it as if talking to a small child. The man looked at me, his expression saying, ‘The economy must really be bad if our co-op board let this woman into the building.’
But I didn’t care. The night would still be perfect. No doubt I would get back to my apartment, and Douglas would be waiting for me with open arms. Seeing me with all of my packages, he would grab them from me, throw them on the couch and kiss me passionately. In his charming Scottish accent, he would say, “Darling, I missed you so much today I could barely stand it,” or something as equally romantic and heartfelt and we would go meet our fabulous friends for a fabulous evening out. On our way to the restaurant, he would turn to me and say, “How is it that you look even more beautiful after working a full ten hour day?”
I bet that that tiny little man in the elevator didn’t have a gorgeous Scottish boyfriend to go home to. Or, actually, maybe he did. He was wearing really, really nice shoes.
But, I did. I walked in the door to my apartment, starving to death (because, let’s face it, I’m totally uncivilized), and before I even had a second to put down our dry cleaning, my gorgeous Scottish boyfriend broke up with me.