"Just down the street. At the Caldwell Hotel."
Hearing the name Caldwell made me shudder. It was like no matter how hard I tried not to think ofthe incident…it kept popping up.Curse you, Matthew freaking Caldwell.I tried not to think about it as the hotel came into view.Wow.I didn't know if my 750,000 Monopoly dollars would even make a dent in the down payment for a place at the Caldwell Hotel. I'd never been inside, but I knew that Chastity's boss and Matthew’s older brother, Mason Caldwell, owned the building. He'd bought the Manhattan a few years ago and totally rebuilt it. Now it was one of the most expensive hotels in the city. And it showed.
Every bit of the building oozed class. Gold trim, polished marble…even the doorman’s forest-green suit looked like it had been handcrafted by some name-brand designer.
“I thought this was a hotel?” I asked as Frankie led me to the elevators.
“Only the bottom 20 floors or so. The rest is residential.” The elevator dinged open and a liftman held the doors open for us. Unlike the doorman who had been well over 60, the liftman was around my age. Anddamnwas he handsome. Was he part of theSociety? I was so busy checking him out that I nearly tripped. I tried to play it off like it was no big deal.
“41stfloor, please,” said Frankie.
“My pleasure.” The liftman pressed the button and up we went.
On the ride up, Frankie explained that all the apartments had access to all the amenities of the hotel, including a heated indoor pool, a fully equipped gym, room service from the restaurant downstairs, a la carte bath butler services, and daily maid service.
"This first apartment is the base model here. Two bedrooms, one and a half baths. Pretty standard. Nothing too fancy, but it's a good solid apartment. You really can't go wrong with it."
"Sounds boring," I said. If I was going to splash almost a million fake dollars, I didn't want the base model. I wanted something freaking amaze-balls.
"Noted. Just try to keep an open mind and afterward we can discuss what you liked and what you didn't."
Maybe if she'd asked me better questions than if I wanted a "completely smooth" floor she'd have known that I didn’t want something #Lame, as Chastity would say. Score! I’d finally used a hashtag right! I couldn’t wait to tell Chastity all about it. But right now I needed to focus.
Frankie swiped a keycard through the lock and the door clicked open. I went immediately to the kitchen. That was always my favorite thing to see on all those HGTV shows. Well, that andthe master bathrooms. This kitchen was okay. Not amazing, but definitely better than mine. I was looking at the stack of listing flyers when a man said, "Hello."
Holy shit!I threw the entire stack of papers in the air and nearly fell over.
"Sorry, didn't mean to startle you," he said.
"Are you the owner? I'm so sorry. I just assumed Frankie had arranged for us to be here. We'll leave right away."
"I'm the listing agent. John." He stuck his hand out for me to shake. "Nice to meet you."
I shook it, but I didn't reach in far enough, so he just ended up wiggling my fingers like wet noodles. "Cool," I said.
"Cool," he agreed. "Just let me know if you have any questions." He gave me a friendly smile. I know that you're probably thinking he was super hot and that I was going to rape him or something. But that wasn't the case. Other than his smile, the rest of him wasn't really worth describing. Actually, I don't really remember what he looked like. I think he was average height with an average build, probably dressed in a standard realtor outfit of a white button-down and some slacks.
It only took me a few minutes to tour the entire apartment. According to the listing flyers I had thrown all over the kitchen, it was only 730 square feet. Most importantly, I didn't once try to get naked or rape John during the entire tour. I was very proud of myself. My reintroduction into the wild was going quite well, other than the whole pie thing with my stalker. And the moretime I spent out in the wild, the more I realized that had totally been my stalker’s fault. What kind of stalker didn’t know where his stalkee was at all times? I just taught him a lesson to step up his game. He’d thank me later.
Frankie was waiting for me in the foyer. "So what'd you think?" she asked.
"I think we should keep looking."
John looked disappointed. Maybe he was really in need of that commission check of Monopoly money. "Well, thanks for considering it. Good luck finding an apartment."
"You too."Damn it.I always said shit like that. Especially at restaurants when the waiter would tell me to enjoy my meal. Or when people wished me happy birthday. The worst was one time when I said it to some girl who had the same birthday as me. I immediately took it back, and then I really looked like an asshole.You too. Actually, don’t have a nice birthday, bitch!Rather than try to awkwardly backtrack with John I just walked out and hoped he hadn't noticed.
"So what turned you off about this one?" asked Frankie when we were alone in the hallway.
"It was okay. It was just so...boring."
"I get that. But what specifically didn't you like? The more you give me, the better I'll do with the next one."
"Well I definitely didn't like how John surprised me in the kitchen. Why was he there? Was he having an open house?" Ifhe was, he did a terrible job advertising it. There hadn't been a single sign anywhere on the way up. And there weren’t any glasses of complimentary champagne. In all the fancy showings on TV, there was always champagne. Poor, simple John. He wasn’t going to sell that place in a million years.
"For apartments this expensive, the listing agent usually likes to be there to answer any questions."
"Ah, gotcha."Crazy rich people.
