“Why?”
“It’s just a reminder of how much competition there is for the few good men out there.”
“You have no competition, Carolina.”
“That’s very sweet of you, Ann. But I need results, not a support group.”
“But I’m serious. You turn every sidewalk into a movie set with your looks and charming style. And you’re only twenty-five for God’s sake. You’ve got plenty of time.”
“Your flattery is too kind, Ann. But I’ve been single for seven months now, without one fruitful encounter besides the lesbian masseuse who offered to give me weekly massages at no charge after I told her that I’m straight.”
“It’s not like no one’s interested…What about that guy, John, who started dancing with you when we were out last Saturday?”
“Very nice. As long as he doesn’t talk.”
“What about that grad student, Eric, from your comparative literature class?”
“He’s great. As long as he only talks.”
“But I thought great conversations turn you on.”
“They do. But he just doesn’t do it for me. He’s too much of a pencil-head. And his nose comes up to my breasts for God’s sake. I need a little more height than that.”
“How about that tall venture capital guy you said wants to invest in your company?”
“He just wants to invest in my pants. And I think his portfolio is already diverse enough without me.”
“What about that guy your parents set you up with?”
“Please.”
“Really?”
“Any question that consists of the words ‘What about that guy your parents set you up with?’ has already answered itself.”
“What about getting back together with Hal?”
“Hal? Are you joking?”
“What would be so bad about that? You Europeans are famous for your environmentally enlightened ways. Why not recycle a little?”
“He was far too middle America for me.”
“What do you mean?”
“He spent his entire life in Missouri before we met at Stanford. He had American flags on his underwear for God’s sake.”
“You know he’d fly out here for you in a heartbeat.”
“I know. He’s a real sweetheart. But too provincial for me. I need someone a bit more worldly. Looks and brains alone aren’t enough. I spent two years realizing that.”
“So what are you looking for exactly?”
“A virgin Latin lover with manners, culture, and a brain. Is that so much to ask?”
“A virgin Latin Lover? That’s an oxymoron! I think you’re being way too picky, Carolina.”
“Maybe.”
Carlos opened the front door to Arezzo Properties Limited, a midtown real estate brokerage firm advertised in the newspaper that he had scoured during the long ride down from Boston. He walked into a superbly stylized yet minimalist office with black and white photos of great Manhattan architecture, marble floors, white walls, and a black leather couch positioned next to a splendid window view of the city, twenty-eight floors below. A pretty receptionist told him that a broker would be with him shortly and that he could take a seat on the sofa until then.
Through the closed circuit camera transmitting images of the waiting area to Carolina’s large computer screen, Carolina noticed Carlos take a seat. She zoomed the camera in for a closer look at his face. He sat there, cool and in his element, as he waited for a broker. His thick black hair, still moist from his shower, blended with his chocolate eyes and his golden dark skin.
“Why don’t you try letting go a little?” Ann suggested.
“What do you mean?”
“Why don’t you just go with the flow? Guys come up to you constantly. Why not just start dating the first one who looks remotely appealing?”
“Now there’s an idea.” Carolina zoomed in some more and adjusted the camera’s focus a bit.
“Just try suspending all judgments for a while. Let go and have some fun.”
She moved the camera down a little. His broad shoulders and strong dark arms were subtle suggestions under the curves of his loosely fitting beige T-shirt. His firm thighs filled out the khaki trousers that ended just above his stylish, Italian-made leather sandals. A flood of warm and nervous tingles erupted in her gut.
“Listen, I have to take care of something. Let me call you back.”
“Cheer up, Carolina. Your life can change in an instant.”
“I know,” she said, with a smile. “You’re a sweetheart, Ann. I’ll call you tonight.”
Carolina hung up the phone and then called the receptionist to tell her not to pass the customer to any brokers because she would handle this client herself.
“But you haven’t shown an apartment to anyone in almost a year.”
“That’s precisely what I was thinking today…I’m very out of practice. Every business is in danger of failing when top management forgets the bread-and-butter work – the essential goods and services that actually produce revenue for the company.”
She hung up the phone, picked up a folder of properties, and – for a moment – gazed out at the inspiring view behind her corner office. On her way to the door, Carolina looked into the full-length mirror by the door. The mirror stared at her slim figure – a poised, five-nine sculpture of grace and elegance shrouded in loose-fitting white cotton pants, and a beige, unbuttoned long-sleeve shirt, fluttering open to reveal a white cotton undershirt snugly covering her firm breasts, with the shirt sleeves rolled up to expose her long, smooth, tan arms.
She walked out into the reception area and approached Carlos, who was looking out the window, admiring the picturesque view of the city.
“So you need an apartment?” she began, looking him over with a nervous smile.
As Carlos turned towards her and saw her for the first time, he hesitated with an almost reverent awe at what was undoubtedly the most breathtaking woman he had ever seen. He stood up in a bit of a daze, still looking at her, and then looked away for an awkward moment.
When he returned to her hazel eyes, he realized that he had forgotten what it was like to try to be smooth with a female he found so attractive. For the first time ever, he was genuinely unsure as to whether he had enough Kojak.
He awkwardly approached her a little more, so that he could say something to her without the receptionist hearing. Their newfound proximity produced a potently mixed scent of cologne, perfume, sweat, body odor, and Manhattan mugginess.
“Is there any way you could get another broker to show me around?” he whispered coyly.
“Why?” she asked, intrigued.
“Well, I don’t like to mix business with…I mean, I’d really just like to find a good deal and not get fleeced on the rent or anything…”
Carolina smiled and led him out of the reception area and towards the exit.
“It’s good to look at these things objectively, if you know what I mean,” Carlos continued, as they approached the main door. Never had the prince of confident equanimity felt so uncertain about how to proceed with a woman; never had he wished harder for some Kojak. “And it’s my first time looking at New York apartments…Which is why I’m probably going about this all wrong, telling you all of this now…” he said, holding the door open for her. Carlos feared that he was sounding increasingly naïve – even infantile – and had no idea that Carolina actually found this bit of innocence to be endearing and reassuring. It gave her the confidence to press forward with her impulsive attempt to learn more about the first man ever to leave her so nervous and breathless.
As the office door shut behind him, Carlos kept bumbling for a little longer, not really knowing what his verbal strategy was any more but praying that it would take a turn for the better soon: “I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’d just feel more comfortable with someone else showing me apartments…” He hesitantly followed her towards the elevators.
“I’m sorry but I’m the only o
ne available right now, and the first rule of the brokerage business is: never turn away a customer. Besides, honesty is a hallmark of our professionalism. It’s one of the things that sets our company apart from the competition.” She turned around for a moment so that he could catch up a little. “But don’t worry. We’ll figure out a way for you to get fleeced on the rent anyway.”
Carlos loved her style. He loved everything about her. The way she walked with unstoppable vigor. The way she pushed the elevator button as if she owned it. The way she whipped out her sunglasses and brought them to her eyes with the grace of a ballet dancer who divided the unfolding circular motion of her arm into equal segments of movement timed to conclude exactly as the two of them entered the sunlight. He loved that her every answer felt two steps ahead of whatever he said or asked.
And yet all of this grace and confidence belied the fact that she had no idea which apartments to show, how many to show, how long to show them, or what her ultimate plan was for Carlos. The only concern guiding her from moment to moment was how to steal another look at this unprecedented specimen of a man and how to learn all about him while maintaining a veneer of detached professionalism. Her utter lack of a coherent apartment-touring program would have been obvious to any real estate broker, and even to Carlos, were he paying attention to anything other than Carolina.
The first three apartments were spellbinding experiences for Carlos because they were walk-ups. Carolina had chosen the first walk-up purely out of absent-minded convenience (it was the first apartment listing in her folder), rather than out of any calculated expectation that the walk up portion of the visit would intoxicate Carlos. But the opportunity to climb stairs a few steps in front of Carlos and feel her hips swaying rhythmically, no more than three feet ahead of his face was enticing enough for her to take him to a few more walk-ups after that first one, despite the hot and sticky weather.
All of these apartments – and the three elevator-building apartments that followed – were too noisy or too small for Carlos. But there was a tacit conspiracy between Carlos and Carolina not to discuss any specifics that could bring their tour to a premature conclusion because he had never mentioned his budget or general criteria and she had never inquired about these basic details. Carlos just kept feigning an almost academic interest in each apartment without ever explaining why they needed to see the next place on the list (he might as well have been saying, “Hmm…So this too is an apartment, isn’t it?”).
But the seventh apartment that Carolina brought him to was a particularly well lit one that made Carlos finally express, for the first time, an actual preference. Of course, he didn’t tell her that the only reason he wanted an apartment with large open sky views was because when he followed Carolina into a sun-drenched room, the light illuminated her pants into a gossamer hovering over a silhouette of her long, gracefully sculpted legs. He just had a preference for natural lighting, he told her.
The eighth apartment was very well lit by sun, but it was so impressive – a twentieth floor penthouse on Park Avenue – that Carlos actually spent a moment admiring the place rather than the person who brought him there. And in a carelessly naïve and silly moment, he asked a question that suddenly highlighted the absurdity underlying their entire tour of apartments up until that moment: “This is really nice. What’s the rent like?”
“Six thousand a month,” Carolina replied, now embarrassed about the open acknowledgment that there was really no business purpose to viewing any of the residential properties they had visited.
“Wow. I guess I’ll have to get a job soon,” added Carlos, still dazed by their apparently pointless, two-hour tour of Manhattan apartments – particularly now that he may have inadvertently brought it to an end.
Carolina sensed that the tone might awkwardly change for the worse if she didn’t somehow resurrect the previous energy that had pervaded their time together.
“I could always hire you,” she said, breaking into a playful smile.
“You could hire me?” Carlos asked in skeptical amusement.
“Why not?” she insisted.
“Well…I just didn’t think that brokers had the authority to – ”
“It’s my company.”
“Your company?”
Carolina blushed a bit, realizing that she hadn’t even introduced herself properly.
“Yes. My name is Carolina Arezzo. Pleased to meet you.”
Carlos reddened a little as he extended his hand to meet hers. “The pleasure has been memorably mine.”
They looked each other in the eye, as her hand fit snugly into his firm but gentle handshake. The tension was too much. Carolina turned away and started leading him out of the apartment, gradually letting go of his hand. He followed, feeling somewhat dizzy.
“I’m serious,” she continued, trying to keep an even keel. “It’s not every day that I meet a bilingual Harvard graduate with a sense of humor and charming people skills. And we do need some help.”
“What about an apartment?”
“Did you like any of the ones I showed you?”
“I liked a lot of them…I mean, yes, they were all nice, but I’m not sure if any of them was quite right for me.”
“Let me show you a few more.”
“OK.”
In the cab ride to the next apartment, Carlos tried to process everything that had happened. Carolina sat quietly next to him, looking out the window while trying to calm the churn in her stomach, but stealing occasional glances, as she wondered what exactly was on his mind.
Like a detective who has been reluctantly avoiding a difficult conclusion, but who has an overpowering suspicion that compels him to return to the evidence and review the overall meaning of all of the separate and unrelated clues before him, Carlos mulled over all of the facts that he had discovered about Carolina during their two hours together – two hours that felt as rich and varied as two weeks, yet had passed like two minutes. She was born and raised in Italy but spent ten of her formative years in Spain and Portugal. She speaks fluent English, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. In just three years, she graduated from Yale College at the age of twenty, and finished her MBA from Stanford by the age of twenty-two. She’s been in New York since then. In three years, Arezzo Properties Limited grew from one to twenty employees and made a net profit of 1.4 million dollars last year. Carolina Arezzo is the founder and owner of Arezzo Properties Limited. In her spare time, she has been earning her PhD in comparative literature from Columbia University. Carolina Arezzo is by far the most beautiful woman Carlos has ever met. She was born Catholic but no longer practices the religion. Her name begins with the letter C. And she is sitting next to him in the cab.
“Carolina, do you have a valid European passport?”
“Yes. From Italy. Why?”
“And can you name at least five great Latin American writers, at least two of whom are Mexican?”
“Why?”
“It’s too crazy to explain to you right now, but I just need to know.”
“OK,” she said, taking it all in humorous stride. “I’ll give you five great Latin American writers with two from Mexico. Miguel Angel Asturias is from Guatemala and he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1967. Pablo Neruda is from Chile and he won the same prize in 1971. Gabriel Garcia Marquez is from Colombia and he won in 1982. Octavio Paz is from Mexico and he won in 1990. And Juan Jose Arreola is from Mexico; he never won the Nobel Prize, but he’s definitely considered a great writer.”
Carlos was blissfully mystified.
Carolina was just one criterion away from being the perfect woman, but it was the fifth – and arguably most difficult – of the “Coherent Carlos Criteria.” He still didn’t know if she was a non-smoking vegetarian with a Buddhist worldview and environmentalist values. As he thought of how painful it would be to have to walk away at this point, he struggled with his longstanding, tenacious commitment to the Carlos criteria – an unyielding fidelity that had always baffled Heeb. He sudde
nly wished that Heeb were there so that he could consult with him, even though he knew exactly what Heeb would say.
“Are you crazy, Carlos?!” Heeb would exclaim. “You deserve to be castrated if you blow this one because of your idiotic criteria!” The imaginary Heeb looked particularly agitated as his scalp flushed.
“But my whole life I’ve respected these criteria…I’ve never compromised on them for anyone – I mean, in terms of giving up my virginity…Can I really be sure that no one will come closer to satisfying my standards?”
“Carlos, the odds of someone else coming closer are so bad that if you stall on this for another second I’m personally going to castrate you myself and then you won’t have to worry about how and when to lose your virginity anymore.”
“I’m sorry, I’m just – ”
“Carlos, this woman is heaven. You probably don’t even deserve her. Especially with these completely irrational doubts you’re having about details that are stupider than stupid.”
“But I’ve respected those stupid details my whole life. There’s something to be said for consistency about one’s convictions.”
“Especially if they’re stupid convictions.”
“I guess I could compromise on the Buddhist environmentalist bit. I mean, she could always evolve into that over time, right?”
Heeb exhaled a sigh of exaggerated relief: “I see a light of reason at the end of a very dark and celibate tunnel…But you’re not done. I mean what about the vegetarianism? Don’t even think about asking her if she eats meat, because I can tell you right now that she loves a good filet mignon, and if that’s a deal-breaker on this woman, then you deserve to die alone on a vegetable farm.”
“OK, that’s gone too. I guess we just won’t be able to share our food all the time.”
“So you’re ready?”
“Well there’s still one thing. One deal-breaker that I do have to ask her about.”
“What?” Heeb’s patience was at its limit.
“She can’t be a smoker…And I’m worried, because Europeans tend to be smokers.” Heeb appeared frustrated like never before. Carlos continued, defensively: “Look, that’s a health issue. I just can’t be breathing unnecessary impurities, or kissing someone who breathes them.”