Rough Trade

pair of scuffed Ferragamo pumps.
    “You realize this would be much easier if we could do it in the daylight,” complained my mother without bothering to even look up.
    “Unfortunately, I work during the day,” I said.
    Over the years our relationship had acquired a certain efficiency. We no longer worked our way up to an argument, but instead had them always at the ready and just jumped right in.
    “Well, at least you made it. I was beginning to think that your secretary was lying to me again when she said you were on your way. It’s amazing how I can come all the way from Lake Forest and still manage to get here on time while all you have to do is travel a few blocks and yet you always keep us waiting.”
    “Not only do I not have a driver, but traffic is worse in the city,” I pointed out. “Besides, I don’t see Stephen here yet.”
    “Oh, I’m afraid he’s not going to be able to make it, my dear,” cooed Mimi, who adored Stephen with a decorator’s passion for what was pleasing to the eye. “He phoned just as I was leaving to say that his flight was delayed in New York. These ambitious young men have to work so hard these days,” she declared as if sharing some wondrous insight.
    I couldn’t believe it. Of all the passive-aggressive bullshit that had been pulled since we’d started in on the apartment, this had to be a new all-time low. It was bad enough that he’d stood me up on the meeting, but the fact that he didn’t have the nerve to tell me himself and instead had wimped out and called Mimi was the last straw.
    It also didn’t help matters any that by the time Mother and Mimi got through with me, I was practically begging for mercy. I felt as though I’d had my brains scrambled. I don’t care what anyone says, one Brunschwig & Fils wallpaper looks very much like another, especially once you’ve already looked at a hundred. It seemed incredible to me that after everything I’d been through over the past couple of days, it took choosing curtains for the downstairs powder room to send me over the edge.
    After the decorating mafia had gone, I spent some time alone in the apartment, wandering through the empty rooms, reacquainting myself with why I loved it, and marveling at how it was all coming together. It was a magnificent place, one of the last apartments designed by the legendary David Adler, and in every room you could feel his genius given physical expression in plaster, wood, and the space they defined. But as the work moved on toward completion I felt something else, as well: the weight of expectations bearing down on me.
    Mimi assumed that people who chose light fixtures together must also be in love with each other. My mother assumed that because Stephen and I were moving in together, we would, as a matter of course, get married. I could see it in her eyes every time she crossed the threshold of the apartment. It was like she was mentally filling the place with place cards and bouquets.
    My reaction to all of this was visceral and certain. Just thinking about it made me want to run away. Unlike Chrissy, my instincts for rebellion have remained intact from my bad-girl days; now they just play themselves out in different ways. That was the problem. Was it instinct that made me want to run, or was it self-preservation? Was rebellion a habit or a matter of survival? How could I justify saying that I was driven to flee when for three years I have not been bound to Stephen in any way and yet have chosen to stay?
    I was surprised when the house phone rang and even more surprised when Danny, the night doorman, informed me that a Mr. Abelman was downstairs to see me. I told him to go ahead and send him up, but as soon as I hung up the phone I was seized by a kind of panic I hadn’t experienced since junior high school.
    It wasn’t so much the prospect of seeing Elliott, but rather the idea of having him see the apartment. As long as I lived in Chicago and didn’t change my name, there was no way to hide who I was or where I came from, but up until now Elliott’s view of my personal possessions had been limited to my office, which was not technically mine, the apartment I shared with Claudia, which was little more than a student tenement, and my car, which was frankly a disgrace.
    This was different. Even in its present, unfinished state, it was like hanging a sign around my neck.
    I paced nervously across the foyer waiting for the elevator to deposit him. The apartments in this