Love Saves the Day

“Almost always, in the end,” Perry replied, nodding. “There was one situation back in 2007 with a Mitchell-Lama building up in the Bronx, where the tenants organized and were able to bring enough political pressure to bear that the DHCR ended up denying the request to opt out. That was the only time I’ve seen it happen, though, in the twenty-five years or so since the buildings started privatizing.”

“Thanks, Perry.” Laura prepared to rise and leave his office.

“I’m assuming this client you’re preparing the opinion letter for is interested in privatizing the property?” Laura nodded, feeling the color rise in her cheeks for a second time. Perry gestured her back down in her chair. “You should know that sometimes, if the tenants’ organization is very well organized, and if they can generate enough negative publicity for the building’s owner, and if they have an attorney who’s an ace—someone who can ferret out every problem in the building, every contradiction in the statutes, and who can bury the owners and developers in paperwork and make the whole process even more painful and expensive—assuming a scenario where the tenants’ association has the intellectual and financial resources to mount a large-scale resistance like that, then it might be in the owner’s best interests to find a way to compromise with them. People don’t always like to see their neighborhoods change too quickly, and they’ll fight hard to keep it from happening. As the Talmud says, Customs are more powerful than laws.”

Laura thanked Perry again and rose. She had been hoping for something—a word, a gesture—that would let her know things between Perry and her were what they’d always been. She’d gotten nothing from this conversation to confirm that wish, but then nothing to contradict it, either. Her hand was on the doorknob when Perry said musingly, “Yes … there’d be a lot of potential billable hours for an attorney on either side in something like this.” The look he leveled at Laura was inscrutable. For a fleeting moment, it reminded her of Prudence.

Perry had a way of knowing things that nobody had ever told him. Laura wondered if this last statement was meant to urge her on to wring more hours out of this possibly lucrative client she’d hinted at, or if some instinct had whispered that her motivations for asking weren’t what she’d led him to believe. Perhaps he was warning her against letting her priorities drift in unprofitable directions.

Not that Laura needed to be reminded where her priorities lay. At least the tenants have a process, she thought. At least they have a chance.

A chance was more than she and Sarah had ever had.

Laura had spent the past sixteen years of her life worrying about money. The day she and Sarah had been thrown out of their apartment—along with Mr. Mandelbaum and her best friend Maria Elena and everybody else who’d lived there—she’d heard people say how something like this would never have been done to people with money, how it wouldn’t have happened if they’d all lived on Park Avenue instead of Stanton Street.

In high school, she’d gone one day with a friend to visit the friend’s father, who was a partner in a large law firm much like the one Laura worked for now. Laura would never forget the first time she’d been inside one of those huge, prosperous Midtown skyscrapers. There had been an atrium in the lobby with trees over twenty feet tall, and Laura had been astounded. That there could be trees that big growing indoors! A building so enormous, so obviously wealthy, so confident in its own permanence that it could afford the time and money to plant trees within its walls and wait for them to grow—surely the people who worked in such a building could go to and from their offices every day in complete confidence that they would still have homes when they returned to them in the evening. And from that day, Laura had wanted nothing more than to be one of the chosen, happy few who could take such permanence for granted. She imagined opening her eyes one fine morning without even a flicker of memory of what it had felt like to worry about the things that might happen to her if she didn’t have enough money.

Laura’s philosophy of life was simple. It was that money, money safely in the bank, money enough to pay all your bills, was the most important thing in the world. It was better and more important than youth or fame or having fun or being pretty or anything other than (Laura would grudgingly concede) one’s health. Maybe it wasn’t more important than love, but even love would crumble in the face of true poverty. When poverty comes in the door, love flies out the window, Laura had heard Perry say once, quoting his grandmother. And Laura, remembering the catastrophic days after she and Sarah had lost their home, had known he was right.