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Dortmunder said, “The what?”
“N-Joy Theater on Broadway.”
“He stays at a theater?”
“It isn’t Washington, at least, John,” May pointed out. “It’s New York. And you know New York.”
“Sure, I do,” Dortmunder said. “The guy lives in a theater. Everybody in New York lives in a theater, am I right?”
16
Although the two pillars upon which TUI had always stood were real estate (slums, then office buildings, then hotels) and communications (newspapers, then magazines, then cable television), the corporation had also from the begi
The center of Manhattan Island is the absolute zero point of the triangulation of entertainment and real estate in the capitalist world. Here, millions of tourists a year from all around the planet are catered to in and around buildings constructed on land worth hundreds of thousands of dollars a foot.
Max Fairbanks had long wanted an obvious presence in New York City, mostly because there were already a few other prominent billionaires with obvious presences in New York City, and one doesn’t become a billionaire in the first place without some certain degree of competitiveness in one’s nature. The profit motive was there as well, of course—the N-Joy complex was expected to do for New York City what Disney World had done for Orlando; put it on the map—but merely a strong second after self-aggrandizement, which was why the name of the theater: the N-Joy Broadway, for Max’s symbol, Tui, one of the characteristics of which, in The Book, was the Joyous.
The N-Joy Broadway was a legitimate stage theater, suited most particularly for revivals of beloved musicals, but it was much much more than that. Girdling the theater was the Little Old New York Arcade, shops and boutiques recreating an earlier and cleaner version of the scary city outside; no longer would the tourists have to brave the dangers of the actual Fifty-seventh Street, farther uptown.
Above the theater—a state-of-the-art extravaganza replete with spi
Lutetia Fairbanks her name was, most recently, and now Lutetia Fairbanks forever. A tall and handsome woman, with striking abundant black hair, she moved with a peculiarly deliberate walk, a heavy but sensual thrusting forward and bearing down, as though she were always seeking ants to step on. The regal, if slightly Transylvanian, aspect this gave her was enhanced by her predilection for swirling gowns and turba
Lutetia’s home, for the last sixteen months and on into the foreseeable future, was a twelve-room apartment carved into the brow of the N-Joy, above the marquee and below the hotel lobby. Her parlor windows, of soundproof glass, looked out at the world’s most famous urban vista through the giant white neon O of the building’s emblazoned name. Her frequent guests—she was quickly gaining local prominence as one of the city’s premier hostesses—were whisked up to her aerie in a ma
It seemed to Lutetia that Max was, or had been, fucking up. He had that look in his eye, that childish glint of guilty pleasure, risking it all to throw just one spitball at teacher.
They had met here in the ballroom late on Wednesday afternoon, where Lutetia was overseeing the preparations for this Friday’s di
That depending, of course, on just how errant he was being. “What have you been up to?” she demanded, once they’d repaired to the farther end of the ballroom, away from the busily place-setting servants.
“Nothing, my darling,” Max said, blinking those oh-so-i
“You’re in trouble with the bankruptcy, that’s why you’re back in New York.”
“And to see you, my sweet.”
“Bull,” she told him. “What were you doing in Carrport? Who were you there with?”
“Nobody, precious. I needed, I merely needed, to get away from it all, out where no phones would ring, no messengers would descend, no problems would have to be dealt with.”
“That last part didn’t work so well, did it?”
Max spread his hands, with his oh-so-sheepish smile. “How was I to know some dimwit crook would choose that night to attack the place?”
“If he’d only known you were there,” Lutetia pointed out, “he would surely have left you alone, if only out of professional courtesy.”
“You are hard, Lutetia, very hard.”
“Max,” Lutetia said, stalking around him with that boots-of-doom stride, “two things you are not permitted to bring into my house and my life. Scandal, and disease.”
“Pet, I wouldn’t—”
“Scandal is worse, but disease is bad enough. I will not be humiliated, and I will not be put at risk of a disgusting death. I won’t have it, Max. We both know what my lawyers could do, if they wished.”
“But why would they wish? Love petal, why would you wish?”
“I’m busy here, Max,” she informed him. “I will not have my schedule destroyed by some overgrown boy playing hooky.”
“You’ll hardly know I’m here, my sweet.”
“Hardly.”
“Will we dine together, love?”
“Not tonight,” she said, to punish him. She knew he’d had a woman out there on the Island, she could feel it in her ante
“I know I’ll have an appetite then,” he said, and smiled his oh-so-roguish smile at her, adding, “Will I see you later tonight, my lotus blossom?”
She was about to refuse, just on general principles, but the gleam in his eye snagged her. He was, as she well knew, as rascally in bed as out, which was sometimes wearing but sometimes fun. “We’ll see,” she said, with half a smile, and permitted him to bite her earlobe before he scampered off and she returned to the servants, to inform them that they would be wanting the coral-colored napkins on the tables, as any fool could tell from the centerpieces, not the peach.