Read Online The View From Penthouse B by Elinor Lipman - Free Book Online Page A

activity and every piece of homework?”
    “Is he married?” I asked.
    “That I don’t know.”
    “Still, you’re having coffee with him,” I said.
    “Did you ever know such a babe in the woods?” Margot asked Anthony. She tapped me on the wrist. “It’s coffee. Even if it was more than coffee, even if we were going out for a drink, for martinis, for mojitos, for—God forgive me—dinner, there are people around! I’m not going down any dark alleys. We are cohorts, fellow soldiers, victims. I think I can be friends with a man who’s married. Who knows? He might bring his wife along. Or his boyfriend! What do I know?”
    Anthony said, “My money’s on him being divorced or separated, with joint custody of the kid, and the website makes him feel as if you’re friends and he’s ready for the next step.” I noticed a charitable tilt of his head in my direction, which Margot wasn’t interpreting.
    “What?” she asked. “Just say it.”
    He said, “Have you ever heard of those parties where single women invite their nonstarter ex-boyfriends so they can meet all the single friends? Like a rejects party?”
    “No,” I said.
    “I have,” said Margot.
    “So what I was thinking was if you don’t feel any chemistry and this Roy is, in fact, available . . .” He now points at me, all subtlety abandoned.
    I said—and how many times was I required to announce this?—that I was not looking for a boyfriend.
    Anthony said, “Not a boyfriend.” He smiled. “Just a good time.”
    “He’s actually right,” said Margot. “Your circle of friends seems to have shrunk to nobody.”
    I asked, “Why would I be looking to make friends with an angry, penniless blogger?”
    “A good time has nothing to do with friendship,” said Margot. “Jesus! A good time means—you tell her.”
    Anthony said, “Recreational sex.”
    I declared, in an effort to improve my image, “I can find my own recreational sex partners, thank you.”
    “Some day we’ll tell Roy about this conversation,” said Anthony. “How we hemmed and hawed and practically took a vote on whether Margot should meet him in broad daylight for a cup of coffee.”
    “This is New York City,” I said. “This isn’t Grover’s Corners. People leave their homes and are never seen again.”
    “That’s a no vote,” said Anthony.
    “What choice do I have,” Margot asked, “if I want my two boxes of Thin Mints and two of Do-si-dos?”
    “My money says he’s already got a crush on you from your très charmant blog entries and that very nice headshot on your home page,” said Anthony.
    Margot yelped, “Really? That was taken when I was, like, forty!”
    I said, “I don’t think you’ve changed.”
    “Me, neither,” said Anthony. “In fact, I think you look younger in person.”
    Margot laughed, giving me permission to follow suit.
    Anthony said, “Some great guy is going to come along and sweep you off your feet. You’ll see. You, too, Gwen. Both sets of feet. And neither one is going to be an adulterer or a penniless blogger or a serial killer.”
    That was so Anthony, our optimist. Margot and I said we wished the same for him.

We’ll Never See Those Pearls Again
    I T ISN’T JUST CHARLES who hovers and haunts from prison, but his mother, Lenore, who does so from Brandywine Senior Living in New Jersey. She declares in frequent phone calls that the money Margot lost was her son’s and therefore rightfully, morally, and every which way hers.
    “Then what’s your point?” we hear Margot ask. “What part of zero would you like to collect?”
    That is when her ex-mother-in-law changes the subject from bill collection to marriage vows. What, she demands, did Margot mean when she stood before God and said the words “for better or for worse” if not that she would swim alongside Charles when he found himself in hot water?
    Margot was weary. She used to deliver a litany of her ex’s broken commandments, but now says only “C’mon,