Emmy And Me

The decision to move to Los Angeles after I graduated lifted a weight off my shoulders I hadn’t even realized was there. I mean, sure, Emmy had her New York townhouse pet project, but that wasn’t where we were going to live full time- just an outrageously expensive pied-à-terre.

Los Angeles was going to be our future, and my preparations were just that much easier than they would be if we were to move to the other coast. I contacted NYU to let them know I wouldn’t be pursuing my MBA in New York after all, and talked to the admissions people at UCLA’s school of business about attending there instead. My grades from Stanford were certainly good enough to make the cut to get into UCLA Anderson, but really, the fact that I’d built a company into nearly half a billion dollars of assets over the last three years sealed the deal.

I also had to make the preparations for moving my location to our office in Santa Monica, which meant a physical expansion since it would now be the corporate headquarters. Of course, this meant a bit of a shakeup among the old hands in the San Jose office, and more than a few of them came to me with worries that they would be sidelined and the erstwhile main office would become a backwater. I was really grateful to the staff there, so I offered to move anybody that was willing, and reassured the rest that I would still have a presence in the Bay Area as well.

It was during this period that Grace left us to go to college in Flagstaff. I had invited her parents to come to her high school graduation, but they didn’t even respond. Emmy and I were there, of course, and so were a number of other friends (including her old best friend Mary), but nobody from her birth family could be bothered to put in the effort.

It didn’t seem to bother Grace all that much, though. I think she’d written her parents off well before that moment, so she made out that it was no big deal. I’m sure it must have stung inside, but she played it off as if it meant nothing. The two years she’d spent with us had seen a fairly dramatic transformation, so the shy, soft girl that I’d brought back from Arcata was unrecognizable in the butch, athletic girl who drove off in her blue and white Toyota four-by to settle in in her new apartment in Flagstaff that May. Her decision to spend the summer there by herself before college started in the fall made sense, since we were going to move to L.A. in another couple of months anyway. Why move twice, right? She’d packed up all her stuff in (or on) the Toyota and a small U Haul trailer, waved goodbye and left a week after graduation. I stood on the sidewalk and watched until I lost sight of the mountain bike on the roof rack vanishing down the street, realizing that I was feeling a little bit like Mom must have felt when I came to Stanford.

It was sad to see her go, but she’d promised she would come to L.A. for a visit once we settled in down there, so it wasn’t going to be all that long before we got to see her again. On the positive side, it meant that Emmy and I had the place to ourselves for the first time in two years, and that empty nest feeling was a bit of its own reward.

Of course, Donny, Sana and their little baby Aaron were over for dinner at least twice a week, and so were Jassie and Michael, so we really didn’t have as much alone time as one might think. Still, after the guests left in the evenings we were just the two of us, and that was very special indeed.

“Want to go to New York for a few days?” asked Emmy one evening.

“What’s in New York?”

“I have a meeting scheduled with the designer for the house, and the builder, and also a meeting with the specialist who will build out the recording studio,” Emmy answered. “Hopefully we can get some ideas firmed up.” Then, after a moment, she asked “You do not mind spending this money, do you?”

“Of course not, Em,” I replied. “We’ve been over this already. Spend whatever you want- we have the money, after all.”

“But you are the one who watches our finances,” Emmy objected. “I do not even really know how much money we even have access to without liquidating assets,” she said.

Surprised by this admission, I asked, “Do you want to see the numbers? I can show you where we stand pretty easily.”

“No, that is not necessary. If you say that we have enough money, I believe you. You have done so well with our portfolio- it amazes me, really. You have been incredible.”

“Well, it’s not hard to make a ton of money if you have a ton of money to start with,” I laughed. “Seriously, it wasn’t rocket science.”

“But still,” Emmy objected. “You have built a lot- I know that the money my parents gave us was quite a lot, but you have leveraged it many times over now.”

“But back to your question, Em. We’re good for pretty much anything you want to spend on the townhouse there in New York. As long as you don’t start buying Rembrandts at auction to hang on the walls, that is,” I said.

“No, no Rembrandts,” Emmy said. “They look nice in my parents’ house, but I do not want any Dutch masters in our house.”

“Of course your parents have Rembrandts. Probably been in the family for hundreds of years, right?” I said, rolling my eyes.

“It is amazing to me that we have still not gone to Paris together,” Emmy said. “We must do that. And go to the chateau, too. You must see it.”

“Chateau?” I asked. “You’ve never mentioned any chateau before.”

“It is the ancestral home,” Emmy said. “It’s in southwest France, near the Pyrenees.”

“Let me guess. It’s a castle, right?”

“Yes?” Emmy said, at a loss as to why I would even have thought otherwise.

“Well, maybe we can take a break and go over there this summer, after graduation and once we get situated down there in L.A.,” I suggested.

“That would be wonderful,” Emmy said. “But for now, would you like to go to New York next week?”

Laughing, I said, “Sure. Nothing is happening at work right now, and it’s all just review at school. I can take a few days off.”

“That is wonderful! We will have so much fun,” Emmy exclaimed.

“Yeah, it’ll be nice to get away for a few days and not be in any sort of rush or anything,” I agreed. “Maybe we can do some sightseeing, too. There are a lot of things I’ve never seen that would be cool to check out.”

“And pickles!” Emmy said. “We must have some traditional New York delicatessen pickles!”

“Uh, O.K., if you really want, we can do that, but you get to do the research on that to figure out where to go,” I said, chuckling at Emmy’s enthusiasm.

I made sure my plate was cleared before we left for New York- I didn’t want to deal with school, work, or any issues with the Strays while we were out there, so I made certain that I’d taken care of any loose ends before packing to go.

When I’d asked Emmy if she had made any hotel reservations, she just laughed and said that we would stay in our new house.

“Yes, I agree that the furnishings are out of date, but the seller included them all with the sale, so at least we will have a bed to sleep on and a table to eat at,” she said. “Also, Jacqui has recommended a housekeeper, and I have hired her to have the house ready for us. If we like her, it might make sense to keep her on permanently.”

“Jacqui?” I asked.

“You must remember her,” Emmy admonished. “She is the one who sold us the house!”

Flying into New York is always stunning, and this time was no different. The late afternoon sun streaming through the skyscrapers of Manhattan was spectacular and the city looked amazing, and for a brief moment I did wonder if maybe we should move to the East Coast after all.

Of course, the limo ride from JFK Airport into town cured me of that momentary lapse of reason. Our driver was good and the ride was smooth, but still… the traffic was a complete cluster. After carrying our bags into the house, the driver made to leave, but Emmy stopped him.

“Excuse me,” she said. “It was very rude of me, but I forgot to ask your name.”

“Wally, miss,” replied the guy. I was sure that wasn’t what his family called him- he looked Lebanese, or maybe Syrian to me.

“Wally, thank you for driving so carefully this evening. I am very grateful,” Emmy said, taking his hand and slipping a folded up bill into it. “Can we request you in specific for our needs this week?”

He had the class to simply slip the folded up money into his pocket discreetly and not check it in front of us, showing that he was used to dealing with high-dollar clients. “Yes, miss. If you want me to be your personal driver you can tell the dispatcher at this number,” he said, smoothly producing a business card from his vest pocket. “Tell them that you would like to keep me on retainer for a week, and they will explain the additional charges and limitations.”

“Which are?” Emmy asked.

“Since I would be reserved for your exclusive service, I can’t drive any others, so it removes a car and driver from the fleet, in essence. This means that the service must charge more. Also, if you call for me at a time outside of normal hours, it would likely take me longer to arrive than it would for whatever driver is on call and closest to your location, so there would be a longer lead time," he explained.

“Of course,” Emmy agreed. “Wally, I have one more question. We would probably need your services through the day and into the night as we go shopping, see plays, and so on. This will take up a lot of your day. Would the company make it worth your while? Would this be good for you?”

“The company pays extra for personal service, miss. It is considered quite a bonus amongst the drivers to get such an assignment.”

“Well, then, that is what we will do. Thank you very much, Wally. Oh, and please, call me Emmy. This is Leah,” she said, introducing me. “We won’t need you any more tonight, but if you could bring us typical New York bagels at nine tomorrow morning I would really appreciate it. Thank you very much.”

“Thank you, Miss Emmy. Have a wonderful evening. You too, Miss Leah,” he said, giving us a bow as he turned to leave.

Once he left, I asked Emmy “How much did you slip him?”

“I gave him a hundred dollars,” Emmy replied offhandedly.

“That’s a pretty big tip,” I said.

“It was not a tip,” Emmy said, correcting me. “It was an incentive. He will be that much more attentive if he thinks that we are generous and will reward him for good service. Besides, we will be keeping him away from his family for quite a bit this week, at our whim. It is the least we can do to pay for his inconvenience.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” I agreed. “So why did you want to make sure we have the same driver the entire time? As Wally pointed out, it’s an inconvenience for us as well as for him.”

“Security, mostly,” Emmy said. “We won’t be getting into random cars with unknown drivers each time we need a ride- we will always know that Wally will be the one driving us. This reduces the possible risks by quite a lot.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” I admitted. “I hadn’t thought of it like that. I guess I need to talk to Grant about that sort of security thinking, because I’m obviously still terrible at it.”

“Do not be hard on yourself,” Emmy said as she loaded her clothes into the ornate antique dresser and I hung up my suits in the walk-in closet. “You have only been thinking about these things for a little while, but I have had to think this way my whole life.”

After Emmy called the livery service and put in the formal request to have Wally assigned exclusively to us for the week, she called another number. At my puzzled expression, she put her hand over the phone and whispered “Chinese food delivery. Another New York thing I’ve always wanted to try.”

She ordered orange beef and General Tso’s chicken, gave them the address and said she’d be paying cash. After ending the call, she said “This is regarded as one of the finest traditional Hunan-style restaurants in New York, and it is only a few blocks away. I am excited to try it!”

Emmy’s enthusiasm still struck me as endearing, even after five years. We weren’t kids any more, but sometimes she still acted like one. I hoped that would never change, to be honest. I loved her just the way she was.

We had dinner at the little table in the sun room, even though it was twilight. The lights across the East River were pretty, but just as importantly it would have felt strange eating Chinese take-out out of cardboard boxes at the fourteen-seat formal dining table down on the first floor, with its chandeliers and satin-upholstered antique chairs.

It was actually pretty nice, just the two of us in that room with views on three sides. Sure, the northeast and southwest sides mostly had a view of trees, but the southeast side out over the river had a great view of Roosevelt Park and then Long Island City beyond that. We could see ships and boats of various sizes and purposes traveling up and down the river and the lights of the cars crossing the Queensborough Bridge all made for a wonderful backdrop to our first meal in our New York townhouse.

Making conversation, I asked about the place Emmy grew up in. “Your townhouse in Paris,” I said. “What is it like? How does it compare to this one?”

“It is not like this house at all,” Emmy replied, thinking about it. “It is the same in the sense that it is a mansion in a dense city environment, yes, but it is very, um, unusual in its layout. This house, you see, is visually and architecturally distinct from the two on either side, yes?”

I nodded that I understood, so she continued. “Our house in Paris looks like any other hotel particulier, which simply means ‘mansion’. On one side is a building that has a six-story apartment building, with shops on the ground floor. On the other side is the garden, then another six-story apartment building- in Paris, you see, almost all such buildings are six stories tall, because they were built before elevators, and six stories is all anyone would ever want to walk up. What makes our house so different from most hotels particuliers is that we own both buildings, and in fact part of our living space is in the nearest of the two buildings. The other building has no windows or balconies that face our house, and there is a wall in front of our house as well as all the sides of the garden in back. It is difficult to describe, but it is very, very large but looks much less impressive from the street. It is obviously a mansion, but one cannot tell how large it is or what it is like. It is significantly larger than the house in Fallbrook, in complete floor space, but much of it is underground,” she explained. “I am dying to show it to you! I cannot wait until we have time to spend in Paris.”

“This house is about twelve thousand square feet, and you said the Fallbrook house was about twenty thousand,” I said, thinking about it. “How much bigger is the Paris house?”

“It is hard to know,” Emmy admitted. “If you include the apartments and the tunnels, it may be twice as big as the house in Fallbrook? Maybe more? I am not certain. The part of the house we lived in was roughly the size of the Fallbrook house, I would guess.”

“Wow,” I said, trying to imagine an ancient house in the middle of Paris that big.

“But to call it a single house is misleading,” Emmy admitted. “It is really a series of interconnected spaces.”

“That does nothing to help me imagine it,” I said, laughing.

“It does not matter much,” Emmy said, putting down her chopsticks and coming over to sit in my lap. “That was where I lived when I was a child. Here, with you, I have a more welcoming home than I ever had there.”