Mike and Jenny talked for a while longer about her classes, her roommate, and the summer internship she had landed, although it was only March. He was going to miss her during the summer, but she was coming home for a month before going back to Stanford for her junior year.
“Have you heard from Zack?” he asked, worried about his son, the great adventurer, wandering around Europe.
“I had a text from him a few days ago. He was back in Munich. He said the sausages and the beer gardens are great.”
“Sounds like a very cultural tour he’s on,” Mike said with the usual tone of concern when he spoke of his son.
“He’s fine, Dad. It’s good for him to figure things out on his own.”
“That’s what your mother says. I just hope he figures out that going to college is in his plans for next year. He should have applied by now.”
“Maybe he applied from Europe,” she said to calm her father. She knew he worried about Zack, and she did too. But maybe he’d grow up during the time he was away. Zack was different, and never wanted to do what everyone else did. He had to find his own path. Their father was a tough example to follow. He had been so successful at a young age. Jenny was sure her brother would figure things out eventually. And he was loving Europe.
Mike was smiling when he hung up. He loved talking to his daughter. She was so levelheaded and sensible and mature for her age. He didn’t worry about her the way he did about Zack, who was always a little lost and out of step.
Mike was in bed falling asleep when he heard Maureen come in. But he was too tired to get up to say hello to her, and he guessed that she didn’t want him to anyway. He would see her in the morning before he left for work if she was up early enough. If she wasn’t, they’d catch up sooner or later. As he thought that, Mike fell asleep, alone in the guest room bed, where he was happy to sleep on his own and have the room to himself.
Chapter 3
Mike was in a cab on his way uptown from his apartment on lower Fifth Avenue, just a block from Washington Square. He liked living at the edge of the Village. He always thought it was too bad none of his kids had wanted to go to NYU, since it was only a few blocks away. Maybe Zack would apply there.
He had left the apartment later than usual, after taking a conference call from London. Maureen was still asleep when he left, and he guessed she had read late the night before. She had no reason to get up early, or at any set hour. The cab had gone ten blocks north when he remembered his conversation with Jenny the night before, and with his mother. He Googled the location of Brooke’s on his phone and gave the driver the address. They had gone only half a dozen blocks by then. The address was west and a few blocks north of where he was right now, on the southern edge of Chelsea, which was a mix of fashionable renovated houses, and seedy old buildings, some of which had been rebuilt to rent. There were lots of young people in the area, and a few of the old tenements remained. It was a very mixed neighborhood, most of it trendy and fashionable, and some of it not gentrified yet. He noticed a number of homeless people roaming around pushing shopping carts, and a few camped in doorways.
He was surprised by the store when he saw it. It was a rambling old building with turrets that looked like a small fortress. It was weather-beaten, and ugly. From the outside, it looked like an architectural mistake. There were fashionable clothes in the windows, which were well done to catch a passerby’s eye. There was a doorman in a neat uniform standing outside the main door, with revolving doors on either side.
He paid the driver and got out of the cab, and the doorman smiled as Mike approached.
“Good morning, sir,” he greeted Mike politely. His uniform and cap were impeccable, and he wore a heavy coat with epaulets and gold buttons, which looked military. Just seeing the doorman and the building made Mike feel as though he were going backward in time to a more genteel era of good manners and people who were properly dressed. The female employees he saw as he went into the store were wearing simple black dresses, stockings, and high heels, and had neatly combed hair. It looked like a world he remembered seeing with his mother when he was a little boy. As he glanced around, he saw elegant luxury items beautifully displayed. There was a rich smell of fine leather, and a hint of delicate perfume in the air. It wasn’t overpowering, but it was a subtle, fresh, pleasant scent, as he threaded his way among the counters, admiring the goods in the vitrines. It was exactly what his daughter had described, a place filled with extremely handsome things to buy, and as he walked to the back of the store he saw the hat department, filled with pretty hats, and he wondered if that was where his mother had gone with her grandmother to buy the hat she still remembered.