Love Saves the Day

She’d been certain his interest in the building would fade after a few days. Instead, Josh had committed himself full-time to the project, making endless phone calls, creating a blog and Facebook pages, sending out a steady stream of emails. He’d pressed his niece and nephew into service, bringing them to the apartment once a week to clip together press releases and informational one-sheets that would be packaged and mailed to reporters, music journalists, city council members, congressmen, anybody who might choose to get involved. Even Prudence had gotten caught up in the frenetic activity, making sudden wild leaps onto the small folding table Josh had set up in his overcrowded home office (he’d had to move a few boxes of his own into their spare bedroom to accommodate it), scattering orderly stacks of papers in all directions. “Look, Prudence is helping!” Robert would shriek, and he and Abbie would collapse into uncontrollable laughing fits—especially when Prudence would accidentally get a mailing label stuck to the bottom of one paw and walk around shaking her paw furiously, assuming an air of injured dignity and refusing to let anybody close enough to pull the sticker off for her.

“It’s one of those Mitchell-Lama buildings,” Josh had told Laura a few days after he’d first gone there with the children. “You know, those middle-income apartment buildings they started putting up in the fifties.”

Laura did know. She and Sarah had moved into a Mitchell-Lama complex farther uptown back in the ’90s, when they’d left the Lower East Side.

“Anyway, now the building owner is trying to opt out of the program so he can sell to a developer who’ll reset the rents to ‘market rate.’ Which would basically quadruple or even quintuple what the tenants are paying. A lot of them are elderly and on fixed incomes, or war veterans. There’s a cop who lives in the building, and the new rent would be twice what he takes home in a month!”

Laura was only half listening. Of all the buildings in Manhattan, she wondered, why did Josh have to pick this building to worry about? She remembered Sarah, on the day they’d gone to Alphaville Studios, adjusting a set of headphones to fit over Laura’s ears and saying, This way we can hear ourselves while we record, so we’ll know what we sound like. Laura had asked, But won’t we know what we sound like just by listening to ourselves? And Sarah had explained that the way you sounded to yourself and the way you sounded to other people were two very different things.

“The building’s property value has been assessed at seven-point-five million,” Josh had continued, “and the tenants’ association has raised ten million from city subsidies and a handful of private donations. They want to buy the building themselves so they can keep the rents where they are. But the landlord has an offer of fifteen million from a developer, and he’s holding out.”

Laura had tried to quell the beginnings of panic as she listened to him talk. “It’s a terrible thing,” she’d said. “But this is just what happens in this city, Josh. There’s not even any point in fighting it. One way or another, the developers always win.”

“And the music studio!” Josh exclaimed, as if she hadn’t spoken. “Do you know how many great artists rehearsed and recorded there? Evil Sugar, Dizzy Gillespie, Tom Waits, the Ramones, Richard Hell. And the space is still in use! This isn’t just gentrification, this is decapitalization of the arts in New York.” He was pacing the room in his excitement. “Clarence Clemons, Nile Rodgers, Dylan, all the sessions guys who backed up the big-name performers on their albums and played in clubs all over town. The list is endless!”

It was an uncanny thing, Laura thought, to hear the exact same words her dead mother might have used coming from her husband’s mouth.

“But, Josh,” she’d tried again. “This is a lost cause. Surely, you can see that. You and I, we are not a lost cause. We need someplace to live, too, and we can’t live here forever on my salary alone. The last of your severance is coming up in two months.”

“Laura,” Josh had replied, and his frustration was evident in the way he said her name. “I’ve worn my fingers down to nubs making phone calls and sending out résumés. And at this point, nobody’s making any major hiring decisions until after Labor Day, anyway. At least this way I could possibly make some new contacts, or maybe it’ll lead to something else.” Josh had paused to give Prudence, who’d taken up diligent residence in front of the couch, a dollop of tuna salad from his half-eaten sandwich. “It beats the hell out of sitting around here doing nothing.”

“Maybe you could try writing again,” Laura had suggested. “Isn’t that what you did when you first moved to New York? You know people at so many different magazines …”