Living the Good Life

I slid into the chair that my husband, Claus, had brought to the lobby for me for the damn monthly Co-op Board Meeting. The Board Members were still milling around some twenty minutes after our supposed seven o'clock start.

Of course, I was annoyed. I’d called a car service to make it to the meeting on time, full well knowing the meeting would start late. It always did. All right, I admit I’m compulsive about time. After all I know that getting from my home to my office would take 10 minutes in the summer, when a quarter of the workforce was on vacation, 20 minutes when school opened in September, and anywhere up to an hour the closer we got to Christmas mayhem in the city that never sleeps.

I was always calculating something. A blessing and a curse; I never missed a school meeting, and I always waited as patiently as possible for idiots to find the red, 2 inch heeled shoes that I wanted to try on in a 71/2 narrow.

And these monthly meetings always were subject to ridiculous delays. Someone forgot some papers, the management company representative was late, a necessary quorum of apartment owners had not come down yet, delayed by a phone call or a dinner that just didn’t come together as quickly as expected.

It was one reason I hated these meetings, well to be fair they reminded me of all the unnecessary meetings in my world, but not in my company. I ran it with a format that insisted the reason for a meeting had to be spelled out in the invitation to attend and that the invitation had to be posted three days before the meeting and that the invitees could respond to all if they thought something had or was planned to happen making the meeting unnecessary. It cut the number of meetings down 56% a year, on average.

Claus chuckled softly, teasing me, "Ready to explode?"

Before I could answer him, the main elevator door slid open, and our overdressed, over made up Diva from the penthouse apartment emerged, carrying a tray of something.

She began weaving around the packed lobby, offering fancy French macarons ordered, she said, "From Paree for the occasion."

"Some occasion," my husband said, loud enough for others to hear, and for many to laugh.

I wondered what she was up to now. A problem child of some fifty years, botoxed and dieted and massaged to aim at thirty five, she always had something to ask the board to do, something expensive, something that would be voted down, something to pout about as a result of our refusal to replace the very nice sconces with a spectacular crystal chandelier, or our refusal to purchase a marble table to set a fancy vase on and fill with fresh flowers every three days.

She seemed to forget on that last one, that a number of residents had children who ran around the lobby freely while their parents picked up their mail or packages or just spent a few minutes chatting to one another.

When that was pointed out, her response was, "Couldn't a Nanny or maid just take them up and deal with them. In fact, perhaps we should add to the By-laws that children were not to be allowed in the lobby except to enter the service elevator immediately."

The meeting had descended into chaos after that one, shouting at her all sorts of nasty remarks to the effect that she was “insane, mean, anti-children." Our Diva responded to that by breaking into sobs and moaning that she'd never been able to have a child, and how nobody understood her, and then running to the elevator to escape our outrage.

All I could think was Nanny, maid, given that most of the residents were having a hard enough time paying for private school costs or after school lessons and activities, and babysitters to cover the few hours two working parents couldn’t manage.

More, to say that the cost of flowers was nonsense, was to admit one wasn't as rich as the Diva with her trust fund and alimony, an admission she fervently longed for.

Suddenly, I noticed some new people standing around, people I'd not seen before. I'd known some apartments had changed hands, but the newcomers seemed somehow different. Not that we weren't a rather mixed lot, typical of the more liberal West Side of Manhattan’s nicer, that is, more well known, buildings. Think John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and the Dakota.

However, ours was not that well known or that expensive. Most of the residents or their parents had bought in during the 60s and 70s when the area had been filled with single-occupancy tiny apartments that were home to aspiring creative types and rather unsavory characters.

But New York was a city of constant change and the expectation that gentrification might change our area with the coming of Lincoln Center and TV shows like Friends, of opera stars and ballet notables. And it did, changing the Upper West Side as landlords turned their buildings into co-ops, undoing the stock of tiny one-room apartments back into the sizeable dwellings they once were.

And new buildings rose, as well, welcoming authors galore, young professionals, and professors, CPAs, and white-collar managers. Soon it became a desirable location. It was filled with lovely old and new museums and art galleries, noted restaurants of different national origins from Indian to Ethiopian to Brazilian, Thai to Mexican to Scandinavian, as well as, because it was The Big Apple, both low- and high-end Chinese and Italian joints and coffee shops galore.

When newlyweds, with the help of our parents, Claus and I joined the club. We loved our location, subways and buses nearly at our doorsteps, Central Park a couple of blocks away, practically everything available 24 hours a day. Later, given my crazy schedule, we relished all night places for a very late-night dinner when planes arrived after long delays. Or just for a chance to take a walk when work that had piled up was finished.

Suddenly, Claus’s elbow poking me brought my attention back to the meeting. I moved closer to him knowing he’d let me daydream as long as possible.

Ah, one of the newcomers had started speaking. I recognized the message the clothes had sent me--techies. Black turtlenecks topped with a casual black jacket, classy jeans, and stunning British boots. Smiling falsely, he greeted us, "Hello, I'm so glad to meet all of my new neighbors. Let’s spend a little time getting to know one another. He asked some questions about children, about fun things in the neighborhood, and so on.

Then he got serious and explained that he and his friend and partner, were in the process of buying 8 and 9 B. And added that they had a proposition for us--a no cost to us improvement that would increase the value of the building."

Ah, wondering why since I realized it was an AI company, and they were clearly up to something. Why this building?

I listened carefully to his reasoning--more electric power brought in, a cost they would cover, especially the installation. And new wiring to increase everyone's access to faster wi-fi, and shared lines for easy communication with neighbors.

When he finished, he asked for questions, and I quickly rose to my feet. "Won't the new wiring require a lot of breaking through walls?"

"Well, yes, but we'll also be able to interface with one another. I'm sure your husband can tell you the value of that."

Smiling through my rising anger at the implication that a woman wouldn't know what he was talking about, I glanced at my husband, who calmly said, "Oh she knows that stuff far better than I do."

"Oh, I'm sure she is a computer user, but this is..."

I interrupted. "Beyond my understanding because I'm a female?"

"Well, this is rather technical."

"I'm very aware of that as founder and CEO of Blackmarch Industries."

He looked over, clearly quite angry, at the young, very attractive, man standing near our Diva, holding her tray of sweets.

"You are 6A, Mrs. Armbach, wife of the philosopher Claus Armbach, aren't you?"

"Yes, but my maiden name was Blackmarch, Ph.D. from MIT, professor of physics and computer science at Stanford and Columbia."

"We didn't know that," he said glaring at the young man standing next to the Diva, holding her tray for her.

"Why should it matter?" I asked, smiling.

Before he could answer, I added seeing how furious he was, "Why do you want us to all interface? Is it a way to convince us to vote certain ways, or to support AI publicly, or to use us to learn the language and mindset of this rather integrated group of Westsiders to teach your lovely machines to speak like us for local propaganda. And are you planning an office, with employees? The By-laws do not allow that, you are aware?"

He shouted, “And you and companies like yours are a member of that group of Luddites trying to stop Artificial Intelligence from creating a better world, a world of less work, for example," he snarled, adding, "By-laws can be changed." He turned and looked directly at the President of the Board.

Fred Smyth, Board President, looked panicked.

Suddenly, Mr. Chen from 5C, spoke up. "That was why you asked me about loans from my bank. I take it you’re in deep trouble after your nasty divorce?"

Poor Fred. He didn't know where to look. I wondered how much they had offered him to help them push their plans through.

The game was over. And they knew they were checkmated. The leader of the group said, "Forget our offer. We’re out. And you, Mr. Smithson are fired."

The young man he looked at dropped the tray and went running after them, and when our Diva tried to stop him, he shouted at her, "You idiot."

She burst into tears, mumbling, "He said he loved me; he liked to talk about the people in the building. Why didn't you tell anyone who you are, you snake," she finished walking toward me, claws out.

My son, and partner, Stan stopped her, saying, "You really thought a good-looking man half your age was interested in you?"

Stunned, she stopped, "I want to raise the issue of the shabby condition of the lobby!"

Stan said, "So we'll forget about your age."

Once again, sobbing, she ran for the elevator, joined this time by Fred, who was soothing her, probably with her trust fund in mind.

The Management company's lawyer then said, "We'd better think about choosing a new Board President," looking directly at me.

My husband burst into loud laughter, saying, "No way. She hates meetings."

He grabbed my hand, pulled me to my feet and said, "Cherry Restaurant?"

We ran down the block to our favorite cheap spot to eat since we'd bought the apartment some thirty years ago. Once seated, I caught my breath, then said, "If all meetings provided this much entertainment, I'd be a happy camper." Claus, always a literalist, simply said, "You hate camping," and leaned over the table to kiss me.

Our son, who figured out where we'd gone, burst in, joining us and saying, "Mom you escaped a thousand questions about why you’d never mentioned who you were, two telling me that had a nephew in IT who would love to meet you, a few asking me if I was single, reminding me of their kids who lived here when I was young. They were surrounding me, closing in on me, so I escaped."

Taking a deep breath, he added, "But Mom, I do see why you love that building and never bought something bigger, fancier. They are real people and most of them really nice."

"For us, it's home, filled with years of good memories," Claus said, adding, “Your joy at the membership in the Natural History’s dinosaurs and the Hayden Planetariums’ brought us joy. And those picnics in Central Park.”

I joined in, adding, “Going to Stuyvesant, spending time researching for papers at the New York massive public library, rubbing the heads of Patience and Fortitude once we introduced them as the library’s guardian lions, and Greenwich Village, especially Figaro’s and the Black Cat…”

Claus handed me his handkerchief for I’d started crying.

My men looked lost—I never cried.

I mumbled, “Life, our lives, so good.”