Claire LaZebnik: Knitting Under the Influence

Kathleen was very good at changing her mind when it was expedient to do so, and by the time she had arrived at her destination, she had already decided that there was nothing morally compromising about her using the car, that she had earned it by working for her sisters as long as she had.

She parked the Mini Cooper in front of the address she'd been given, which turned out to belong to one of the high-rise buildings that line Wilshire Boulevard near Westwood Avenue. She entered off the street, through the building's big glass front doors.

Kathleen gave her contact's name-Sam Kaplan-to both the doorman and the security guard at the front desk. The elevator man, who wore a red suit and an air of frosty boredom, took her up to the penthouse floor, gestured toward the only door in the foyer, and closed the elevator doors behind her as soon as she stepped out.

Kathleen wondered if this meant that the penthouse apartment was available, and that Sam Kaplan might offer it to her. It would have to be at a hugely reduced rate, of course. She hadn't saved much while working for the twins-she liked to buy clothes and go out to clubs and bars. So there was no way she could afford a penthouse, except by special arrangement.

The door was slightly open. She knocked on it, didn't hear a response, and went on in, calling “Hello?” as she entered.

The living room was completely-and expensively and beautifully-furnished, and there were current newspapers on the coffee table. Which meant that someone was already living there, so she could forget about moving in.

A man's voice called out, “Come back here, to the kitchen,” in reply to her shouts.

Kathleen followed the sound of his voice out of the living room into a wide hallway hung with enormous framed paintings-all of them very modern and graphic-and then on into the kitchen. The owner of the voice stood at a six-burner Wolf range, his back to her.

“I assume you're Kathleen,” he said with a quick glance over his shoulder. “You're late. Sit down. Are you hungry? I’m making eggs.”

“I’m always hungry,” Kathleen said and sat down at the half-round dark green marble table that was attached to a higher and extremely long island made out of the same marble.

Sam Kaplan-she assumed-went back to his cooking. Kathleen craned her neck to see his face again. He was thin in a wiry way, with thick black hair that was graying at the sides and a hawkish face, pursed in concentration at the moment.

“You want toast?” he said after a little while.

“Why not?” she said. “I’m easy.”

He made no reply to that, just scraped the eggs onto a couple of plates, pulled some bread out of a toaster-oven, and tossed a slice on each plate, then brought the dishes over to the table. “I’ve got beer, if you want it and you're old enough. If not, there's orange juice.” He foraged through a drawer and transferred a couple of forks to the table.

Kathleen said, “Do you need to see some ID? Or will you take my word for it?”

He glanced at her briefly. “You're old enough.”

“Then I’ll take the beer.”

He nodded at that and extracted two beers from one of two Sub-Zero refrigerators. He also got two crystal highball glasses out of a glass-front cabinet.

“I’m fine with the bottle,” Kathleen said. In college, she had left a trail of beer bottles wherever she went. Her roommates once got so sick of her leaving her empties around their dorm room that they built a pyramid of them right in front of her bedroom door when she was asleep, so she had to dismantle it before she could go anywhere. Made her late for class that day.

No, wait-not late-she had just skipped class completely and gone back to bed.

Sam Kaplan said, “In my house, we use glasses.”

“Yes, sir,” Kathleen said, snapping him a salute.

He raised his eyebrows without saying anything, then flicked the beer caps off with a bottle opener, threw them both in the trash, and poured the drinks. The empty beer bottles went into a recycling bin under the sink. He put one filled glass in front of her and one in front of his own plate, then squinted at the whole presentation. “Have I forgotten anything?”

“Looks good to me,” Kathleen said. The plates were large and white without a single scratch, and the flatware was real silver and very heavy.

“Napkins,” he said, raising a finger, and turned around to slip two out of a drawer. They were linen and impeccably starched and ironed.

“It goes in your lap,” he said, handing one to her.

“Yeah, I’ve heard that.” She spread it across her legs.

“All right,” he said. “Now we eat.” He sat down at the table, and, for a moment, they ate in silence.

Kathleen looked up to find Sam Kaplan studying her face.

“What?” she said. “Do I have egg on my chin?”

He shook his head. His eyebrows were heavy and dark and his eyes were even darker. “So you need a place to stay?”

“Yeah.”

“How much can you afford?”

“Not much. I’m momentarily unemployed.”

“Why?”

“I had a falling-out with my… employers.”

“Whose fault?”

“Mine,” she said with a shrug. “I was what you might call indiscreet.”

“Meaning what?”

She gave him a big smile. “If I told you, then I’d be even more indiscreet, wouldn't I?”

He didn't seem amused, but he let it go. “Who were you employed by?”

“A small production company.” Well, it was true, wasn't it? “I did PR, mostly.”

“I assume you finished college?”

She nodded.

“Any graduate school?”

“No.” She hadn't considered that for a second, having spent her entire academic career counting the days until she'd be done with school forever. Sitting in a dark classroom on a beautiful day was her idea of torture.

“What did you major in?”

“Economics. And I had a B minus average, if that's what you were going to ask me next. Do you always ask this many questions when you're helping someone out with an apartment?”

“I don't usually ‘help people out’ with apartments,” he said. “I’m in the business of buying, selling, and leasing real estate.”

“Well, you should know right now, I can't afford to buy or even rent an apartment.”

“Yes,” he said. “I’m aware of that. Which is why I’m trying to figure out whether you're responsible enough to house-sit.”

“I am.” She was glad she had worn her responsible clothes.

“We'll see. So what kind of job are you going to be looking for now? Something else in entertainment?”

“Probably not. I never really wanted to go into it in the first place-”

“Then why did you?”

“I just kind of fell into the job.”

“Ah,” he said. “So what's next?”

“I don't know. I don't want to jump at the first thing that comes along. I want to figure out what's right for me long term.”

“And what have you figured out so far?” He dotted his mouth carefully with his linen napkin, then set it back across his lap. His fastidiousness was more suited to a fancy dinner party than to a couple of people sitting around a breakfast table on a Sunday evening eating eggs and drinking beer.

“I don't know,” she said again. “The only thing I liked in college was playing sports.”

“Sports? Well, have you thought about coaching kids? Maybe teach PE at a local school?”

“I’d hate that.”

“How about professional sports?”

“I’m not in that kind of shape anymore. I run, but I don't do much else.”

Sam Kaplan had finished his eggs. He leaned back in his chair. Up close, his face was craggier than it had looked from a distance. He said, “I think I can help you out.”

Turned out, there was an empty apartment on the floor right below him, and, for complicated legal reasons, they couldn't put it on the market. “It's all tied up,” was all Sam Kaplan would say about it. “And since we've got plenty of other vacancies right now, I’m not even going to show it until things are settled. You could live there for a while, but I can't make any promises for how long, and you might have to vacate very suddenly. You have family around, right? I mean, other than your father? You wouldn't end up on the street?”