Christopher Smith - Fifth Avenue

George’s first mistake was saying that he would. His second was sealing the deal with a handshake. What began as the beginning of his dream, ended with years of fighting Louis Ryan in court-only to lose. Miserably.

He finished his run in just under twenty-four minutes. Winded, he leaned against the trunk of an elm and stretched his legs before leaving the park. The city was coming to life. Cars were shooting down Fifth, rich widows and hip divorcees were walking their well-groomed dogs on retractable leashes and the sun, visible now, gilded the cluster of limestone buildings surrounding Central Park, turning their beige facades to gold.

He bought the Times from a newspaper-vending machine, tucked it beneath his arm without looking at the headline and started down the avenue toward his building, which towered above its neighbors.

Just looking at it filled George with pride. The new Redman International Building was as extravagant in design as its predecessor on Madison Avenue had been conventional. Instead of having four straight sides, the new building sloped gently upward, narrowing from its base to its roof, producing a rather uneasy effect of a hill carved from glass and stone. It trumped everything on Fifth Avenue-especially Louis Ryan’s Manhattan Enterprises Building, which was two blocks south.

Before entering Redman International, George stopped and looked at Ryan’s building. Despite the years that had passed, anger still seized him when he saw it. To this day, he could remember Ryan telling the court that there had never been a partnership between him and George. To this day, George could remember Ryan standing up and calling him a liar for saying so.

While waiting for Michael to arrive for their eight o’clock appointment, Louis Ryan stood high above Fifth Avenue in his corner office, his hands clasped behind him as he looked out a wall of windows and took inventory of his empire.

From where he stood, he could see the many hotels, condominium and office complexes that he had either owned for years, or were presently under construction. There was the new hotel he was building on the corner of Fifth and 53rd. It would be the city’s largest, it would open shortly and it was nearly $13 million under budget.

He learned how to control his costs years ago. When they worked together, George Redman taught him well.

On Central Park South, ground was being broken for Louis’ new condominium complex. The demolition of the two prewar buildings had been completed four weeks earlier, the foundation one.

He still had to laugh at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, who asked if he would donate the four demi-relief Art Deco friezes that decorated the exterior of each building. At first, Louis agreed, seeing no reason why he shouldn’t donate them. If anything, it would be good press and free publicity for the new building. But once he learned that it would take weeks to remove them properly-not to mention hundreds of thousands of his own dollars-Louis had the friezes torn down, not wanting or willing to pay for what he considered worthless art.

He moved away from the window and walked the few steps to his desk. His office was large and filled with things he never had as a child.

Born in the Bronx, Louis came from a poor, working-class family. He looked across the room at his parents’ wedding picture. In it, his mother was seated on a red velvet chair, her hands arranged in her lap, a faint smile on her lips. She was in the simple, ivory-colored wedding dress her mother and grandmother wore before her. She was seventeen in that photo and Louis thought she was beautiful.

Standing behind her was Nick Ryan, wearing one of the few suits he ever owned. It was dark blue and a few sizes too large for his slim frame, but the smile on his face and the defiant way he held his head made one notice not the suit, but the man himself.

He wished his parents could have witnessed his success. In the fall of 1968, Nick Ryan had been killed while on duty in Vietnam. On the day Louis learned of his father’s fate, he quickly learned his own. At the age of thirteen, he was thrust into the position of provider and nothing was the same for him after that. While his mother took in laundry and became a seamstress on the side, Louis worked forty hours a week washing dishes at Cappuccilli’s, the Italian restaurant at the end of their block. He pulled straight A’s in school. He and his mother planned budgets together and managed to put something aside for a future they were hesitant to face.

As a team, they were invincible. It was in his eighteenth year, only days after Harvard offered him a full scholarship, that his mother became ill. She was tired all the time. There were lumps in her neck and groin. Her joints ached. “I’ve lost a lot of weight, Louis. There’s blood in my stool.”

He brought her to the hospital. The doctor was crass, frank and cold. After examining Katherine Ryan, he took her son aside. “There are holes in your mother’s bones,” he said. “She has cancer. It’s beyond treatment. She’ll need to be hospitalized, if only to keep her comfortable. That will be expensive. Do you have insurance?”

Louis looked the man hard in his eyes. “We don’t,” he said. “But we have money, so you treat her right just the same.”

His private hell began then. Times were hard and the hospital was overcrowded. His mother was placed in a room with three other women-each struggling to hang on to lives that were leaving them. Louis wouldn’t forget the days that followed-working three jobs so he could afford bills that were scarcely affordable; going without sleep so he could spend time with a woman who no longer resembled his mother; holding her hand because he knew that she was frightened and missing her husband.

He remembered the never-ending stream of specialists injecting poison after poison into a body that was manufacturing poisons of its own. He watched his mother slowly slip away from him. Her skin gradually becoming too large for her body. The experience hardened Louis. Made him see things differently.

At the end of her first week’s stay, Katherine, so weakened by the toxins in her system, reached out a hand and gripped Louis’ knee. Her voice unusually strong, resolve still burning in her eyes, she spoke calmly and clearly. “I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “But you won’t drop out of school. I won’t hear of it.”

“Mom-”

“You listen to me, Louis. My life will have been for nothing if you don’t succeed. God gave you that scholarship and God gave me this cancer. He’ll take me, but He won’t take that scholarship. You go to school in the fall. You become a success.”

“But the bills-”

“-will take care of themselves.” Her face softened. Drugs had clouded her eyes and they now were as gray as the four walls surrounding them. “Don’t you see?” she said, squeezing his knee. “Don’t you see what you’re going to become?”

She died three weeks before he started Harvard. On the night before her death, she said to him in a whisper, “I want to be cremated. If I’m going to die, this cancer is dying with me. I’m not going to let it feed off my body any longer. I’m going to burn it up. I’m going to have the last say.”

He granted her wish and scattered her ashes in the park she and his father used to bring him to in upstate New York. It was then that he made a vow-no matter what the costs, he would conquer the business world. He would become the best of the world’s best.

His focus wasn't broken until his Junior year at Harvard, when he met Anne.

He had been walking home one afternoon when he heard what sounded like a woman shouting and several barking dogs. Curious, Louis stopped to listen. For a moment, he thought he was hearing things-there now was nothing but the buzz of traffic and the sound of leafless trees clicking in the stiff March wind.