High Maintenance Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  High Maintenance

  BY JENNIFER BELLE

  “The poet laureate of the Manhattan apartment hunt.”

  —New York magazine

  “Novelist Jennifer Belle has, with her second novel, confirmed what many New York women know but don’t want to admit: The most important relationship in their lives will not be with a man but an apartment…. All the New York characters who pass through or near a real estate agency have been captured with fresh wit by Belle, who lives in a Greenwich Village apartment herself and knows the city very well. And she inserts the hilarious situations that don’t seem to happen anywhere else but in Manhattan.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “Fans of Bridget Jones’s Diary will find Jennifer Belle’s send-up of all things New York, High Maintenance, sharp, incisive and laugh-out-loud funny…. A gal, a gun and a gorgeous apartment all combine for an explosive denouement…. Read this witty book.”

  —The Baltimore Sun

  “A stylish, funny, set-in-Manhattan story about a woman who leaves her husband and misses their apartment more than him…. Belle’s unpretentious humor and clean prose style are in an entirely different neighborhood than your average single-in-the-city author.”

  —Minneapolis Star Tribune

  “Satisfying. Even non–New Yorkers will be sucked in as Liv navigates her way through heartache and the city.”

  —Mademoiselle

  “Looking for a good laugh? Enter the world of twenty-six-year-old Liv Kellerman…. Her nutty sagas will have you rolling on the floor.”

  —Cosmopolitan

  “[Jennifer Belle’s] first novel, Going Down, zoomed to the top of our best-five list in 1996, and ever since then we’ve been anxiously awaiting her second, High Maintenance, and here it is! Woo-hoo!”

  —New York Observer

  “Compared to everyone from Dorothy Parker to Liz Phair … Belle has pulled through with a book I certainly wouldn’t kick off my beach blanket…. Belle can make a classic New York comic incident out of anything from asking someone for the time on a Manhattan street (unquotable due to Eminem-level profanity) to watching a dining companion send back a plate of pasta in a restaurant (“I’m just not happy at all.”). The voice in this book is irresistible…. Take Belle to the beach with confidence.”

  —Newsday

  “Going Down [was Jennifer Belle’s] wise, wry story about a college student–turned-hooker…. High Maintenance is every bit as addictive and captivating as her first literary venture. She has deviously replaced prostitution with real estate (because how different are they, really?), and the new book’s main character, Upper East Side housewife Liv Kellerman, is just as deadpan as Going Down’s Bennington Bloom…. And the same wisecracking, fierce yet vulnerable point of view that made Going Down so special is taken even further in High Maintenance.”

  —Time Out New York

  “Hugely funny.”

  —New York Daily News

  “Liv’s wackiness gives this unruly novel moments of great humor, but in the end the book is as much about the peculiar landscape of the New York housing market—the snooty upper-class clients and the real estate agents who kowtow to them—as it is about a young woman finding her independence.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  “Belle deftly mines real estate as a metaphor, especially in Liv’s affair with an impulsive architect, and her clients and fellow brokers are both terrifying and hilarious by turns.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “In this latest New York romp … Belle draws both Liv and the idiosyncrasies of the Manhattan real estate market so well that one can’t help wondering just what is fiction (Belle did a stint as a broker herself) and what may be biography…. Belle’s skewed take on life in the big city keeps the smirk-per-page ratio high … off-beat observations … hilarity and pathos.”

  —The Denver Post

  “[An] amusing … humorous real-estate romp with Manhattan views.”

  —US Weekly

  “If you think the Hub housing market is tough, take a look at this tale of high-stakes real estate—and sexual—wheeling and dealing. Belle knows the world she depicts.”

  —Boston Herald

  “Like a hot fudge sundae … delicious. Gutter-mouthed, smart-ass Liv, she’s a Becky Sharp for our time.”

  —Gotham

  “You’ll feel right at home with Belle’s … follow-up to her racy debut, Going Down.”

  —Glamour

  “Brimming with Gotham references, weird but lovable characters and typical urban scenes, [High Maintenance] is a witty and engaging tale of love and real estate in Manhattan…. Belle’s tongue-in-cheek style and laugh-out-loud antics keep the pages turning … fresh and invigorating.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “With deadpan wit and brutal sarcasm, Belle paints an unforgiving portrait of New Yorkers and idiosyncratic behaviors, which, in their context, have come to be regarded as normal. Capturing a chorus of vastly different voices with deft skill, while making out-rageous happenings seem utterly mundane, Belle has created a wonderfully engrossing plot and a fresh and funny heroine…. If Going Down was a promise made by a debut novelist, then High Maintenance is its fulfillment—sharp, insightful, as harsh and gritty as the city itself, but irresistible for its uniqueness, charisma and charm.”

  —The Tampa Tribune

  “This work continues in the same tradition of Belle’s highly praised first novel, Going Down, with equal parts hilarity and pain … in turns funny and poignant.”

  —Library Journal

  “Quite entertaining.”

  —Booklist

  MORE PRAISE FOR JENNIFER BELLE

  (named Best New Novelist of the Year by Entertainment Weekly)

  AND HER FIRST NOVEL,

  Going Down

  “A witty, gritty, and thoroughly convincing first novel.”

  —Nick Hornby

  “A rollicking debut.”

  —The Village Voice

  “A funny, sad, nasty little gem of a novel.”

  —Jay McInerney

  “A kind of twisted version of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes … Delightfully, sickeningly, hilariously enthralling.”

  —Tama Janowitz

  “Imagine Holden Caulfield’s sister, Phoebe, growing up and turning tricks to study acting, and you have Bennington Bloom…. Alternately vulnerable and self-possessed, Bloom is the main attraction of this book, but there are others: a riveting plot with menacing undercurrents and creepy details, a cast of colorful minor characters, and a happy but not sappy ending. Going Down is loaded with comical ironies…. A wonderful, aberrant, compulsively readable novel.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “The best thing about Jennifer Belle’s appealing first novel is Bennington Bloom, the near-tragic yet fantastically winning narrator…. Belle has created an oddly affecting character whose self-reflexive candor and wry observations add up to an astringent, darkly comic view of New York life.”

  —Elle

  “Belle combines very funny, sharply written prose and superb grasp of narrative in her debut novel…. The arresting combination of her caustic wit and insightful observations makes for a wickedly hilarious sense of humor evoking Dorothy Parker…. Belle’s riotous, vivid debut has the energy and gritty appeal of New York City itself.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  ALSO BY JENNIFER BELLE

  Going Down

  High Maintenance

  Jennifer Belle

  Riverhead Books, New York

  RIVERHEAD BOOKS

  Published by The
Berkley Publishing Group

  A division of Penguin Putnam Inc.

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2001 by Jennifer Belle

  Book design by Judith Stagnitto Abbate and Claire Vaccaro

  Cover photo © Renzo Mancini/The Image Bank

  All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  First Riverhead hardcover edition: May 2001

  First Riverhead trade paperback edition: July 2002

  Riverhead trade paperback ISBN: 1-57322-930-X

  Riverhead ebook ISBN: 9781101549667

  Visit the author’s website at

  www.jenniferbelle.com

  Visit our website at

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  The Library of Congress has catalogued

  the Riverhead hardcover edition as follows:

  Belle, Jennifer.

  High maintenance / Jennifer Belle.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 1-57322-185-6

  1. Apartments—Fiction. 2. Divorced women—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3552.E53337 H54 2001 00-069045

  813’.54—dc21

  Version_2

  For Andrew Krents

  Table of Contents

  Part I

  1. Zen Loft—Back on Mrkt

  2. Diamond in Rough—Needs Work

  3. GV Prime/Charming!!!

  4. FNCL Dist—Walk to Work

  5. PIC Postcard VUS

  6. BLCNY Ovrlooks RIV

  7. Live/Work Ok

  8. No Dogs, No Bkrs

  9. Walk-Up—But Worth It!

  10. Nonstructural Walls

  11. 2 ½ Baths

  12. Centrl Heat

  13. HRDWD FLRS

  14. All About WNDWS

  15. WEA/80’s 3BR—This Won’t Last

  16. SUB-O

  17. E-I-K

  18. Pre-War Gem—Bing & Bing

  Part II

  19. Breathtakng VUS of PRK

  20. XXX Mint PIED-À-TERRE

  21. Bachelor Pad—Conv MDTWN Loc

  22. ARCH Designed

  23. Corner APT, EXPSD BRK

  24. MNTH-2-MNTH

  25. W/D in BSMNT

  26. Flrthru Artist Loft—7 Skylts

  27. Deal Fell Thru—Owner Anxious

  28. Chelsea/Seminary BLK— Parlor FL W/PVT GRDN

  29. Raw Space

  30. Downing St—Pnthse Sanctuary

  31. No Fee

  32. Montague St

  33. Convrtd Synagogue—Cathdrl Ceils

  34. Wash SQ North—Landmrk Twnhse

  35. Journal SQ—Minutes from MNHTN

  Part III

  36. 24HR DRMN

  37. Open House WED 12-2

  38. Why Rent??? Postwar STU Low Maint

  39. All Orig Details

  40. No Flip Tax

  41. Fully Renovated

  [Part I]

  O! I have bought the mansion of a love,

  But not possess’d it, and, though I am sold,

  Not yet enjoy’d …

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,

  Romeo and Juliet, III, 2

  1.

  ZEN LOFT—BACK ON MRKT

  The morning before I was planning to leave my husband, my friend Violet convinced me to go with her to see a swami in someone’s townhouse. I was surprised to see that he was an American guy in an orange dress sitting under a real Picasso.

  “When we meditate we keep our eyes open,” the swami said. I was relieved. I didn’t want to sit in a strange room with a bunch of freaks with my eyes closed. “Even when we look deeply inside our-selves, we never stop looking out at the world,” he said.

  I sat there for forty-five minutes with my eyes open thinking about my situation and looking around the room. It was a beautiful living room, all very upholstered, with stairs behind me that led to a private garden. The woman who owned it, our hostess, had been proudly running around, fluffing pillows and pouring the swami tea. It wasn’t as nice as my apartment.

  The question was who would be forced to leave the apartment—me or Jack. Jack owned the apartment, and I didn’t. Jack could afford the maintenance, and I couldn’t without his help. And Jack had announced that the only way he was leaving the apartment was in a pine box.

  I didn’t want to leave but I refused to be like my mother, a character from a Jacqueline Susann novel complete with gold ankh necklace, turning a blind eye or cheek or whatever it was to her husband’s infidelity.

  So I would have to be the one to leave. I had spent five years married to a man named Jack. I had hung all my hopes on a man with the name of Jack. As if my life were a roadtrip in a car with flat tires and the most important thing to have was a jack. I had wanted a jack even though I would have no idea how to use one if my life depended on it.

  I sat there crying until someone finally hit a tiny gong with a stick and the swami asked if anyone had any questions. I thought about asking if I would ever have love again, but I didn’t.

  He looked right at me and said, “Yes, you will.”

  I looked behind me, then back at the swami. “I will what?” I said.

  “Get a boyfriend,” he said sweetly. Everyone laughed. “As long as you don’t get too hysterical about it.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about getting a boyfriend,” I said. “I’m a married woman,” I added. At least I was for one more day. I felt stupid for thinking about love when I should actually be more concerned about getting a job and an apartment.

  “My advice is to keep your overhead low,” the swami said.

  The girl sitting cross-legged on the floor next to me nodded as if deeply moved. A lot of people were nodding and bursting into tears.

  “That’s especially important for you,” he said to me.

  When it was over everyone smiled at me as if I were some kind of meditation celebrity. As if I were the luckiest person to be given the news that I, more than anyone, should keep my overhead low. I felt like I had been given a curse.

  Of course Violet never even showed up. I stood there by myself drinking tea and reluctantly hugging people.

  “Do you have the time?” I asked a man on the corner when I left the swami.

  He extended his arm to raise the sleeve of his suit in a cartoonish gesture and looked at his watch. He told me. I thanked him and began to cross the street, noticing that I actually felt more relaxed and open.

  “Get a watch, lady,” he mumbled under his breath.

  “What?” I said, turning around.

  “Get a fucking watch, lady,” he said, loudly.

  “Nice. Nice. Really nice,” I said. It felt exhilarating to have such an intimate fight on the street, even though when I really looked at him I saw he was pimply and didn’t look much older than seventeen. People stared. I felt almost wide-awake.

  “What do I fucking look like, Big Ben?” he shouted.

  I had sat in a strange living room praying for a man to be sent to me. This was something. The swami had already come through. This boy might not be the man I spent the rest of my life with but it was something. A small beginning. I knew from this that I was ready to date again. It was a sort of warm-up.

  “You don’t look a thing like Big Ben. There’s obviously nothing big about you,” I said. “What time did you say it was?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Fuck you,” I said, and walked away.

  I bought The New York Times and went to a café so I could sit
there pathetically circling things like everyone else. I tried to think of what I could do.

  I didn’t know what I had been thinking ending up in a café at twenty-six with no skills or education. I had gone to NYU for eight days and hated every minute of it. I went the first Monday through Friday, had the weekend off, went back Monday, Tuesday, and dropped out at the end of Wednesday. That’s where I met Violet. My father had offered to get me a suite at the Plaza Hotel complete with room service, which was his idea of an apartment, but I had decided to live in a dorm because I wanted to feel like a normal person, and Violet was my roommate. For eight days, I had to overhear her on the phone crying to her parents in Texas that she had fallen off a curb and broken her ankle and that all New Yorkers were the ugliest, thickest-lipped people she had ever seen.

  That comment always stayed in my mind. I had always thought it was good to have voluptuous lips. Her lips were the only things about her that weren’t thick. But she was my roommate, my college roommate, and I loved the idea of that. I admired women who stayed friends with their college roommates and had them as bridesmaids at their weddings. I spent eight days bringing her trays of food because she was on crutches and trying to find charm in the fact that she had never seen a Woody Allen movie.

  Then I met Jack in an elevator at the Supreme Court at 60 Centre Street. I was looking into changing my name after the New York Post ran a blind item about my father on Page Six (“What famous clothing designer was caught with a transvestite prostitute in Riverside Park and punched out a police officer?”), and we got married two years later. After that it always seemed like there was so much to do. The five years just flew by. First of all, we went to his country house every single weekend and that time didn’t even count because we weren’t in New York. As soon as we hit the Saw Mill it just wasn’t my life anymore. There was no sex, no fun, no friends. The most I could hope for was the occasional movie or antique. All I did was listen to the teenage daughter of our closest neighbor talk about all the different places she managed to have sex with her boyfriend without her parents knowing, while I spread jam on saltines in the kitchen, and my husband took naps alternating between the two white couches on the screened-in porch. And then, Mondays through Fridays back in the city, my husband always needed me to do things like buy a chrome orange juicer or interview maids. But at least I hadn’t relied on my parents.