One Fifth Avenue Read Online Free PDF

vagina. She could still remember that first moment of intercourse with Philip: their mutual surprise at how good it felt, then the sensation that their bodies were no longer relevant; then the world fell away and it seemed all of life itself was concentrated in this friction of molecules that led to an explosion. The sensation of completion, the closing of the circle—it had to mean something, right?

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    There were times now when Mindy Gooch wasn’t sure what she was doing in her job, when she couldn’t see the point of her job, or even exactly what her job was. Ten years ago, Mindy, who had been a cultural columnist for the magazine, who at thirty-three had been ambitious, smart, full of beans and fire, and even (she liked to think) ruthless, had managed to ratchet herself up to the head of the Internet division (which no one had really understood back then) to the tuneful salary of half a million dollars a year. At first she had flourished in this position (indeed, how could she not, as no one knew what she was doing or what she was supposed to do), and Mindy was considered one of the company’s brightest stars. With her sleek, highlighted bob and her plain but attractive face, Mindy was trotted out at corporate events, she was honored by women’s media organizations, and she spoke to college students about her “recipe” for getting ahead (“hard work, no job too small, no detail too unimportant,” words no young person really wanted to hear, though they were true). Then there were rumors that Mindy was being groomed for a bigger position, an executive position with domin-ion over many minions—the equivalent, she’d liked to think, of being O N E F I F T H AV E N U E
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    made a knight in the sixteenth century. At that time, in the beginning of the upswing of her career, Mindy was full of a magical hubris that allowed her to take on any aspect of life and succeed. She found the apartment in One Fifth, moved her family, got herself on the board, got her son, Sam, into a better private kindergarten, made Toll House cookies and decorated pumpkins with nontoxic finger paints, had sex with her husband once a week, and even took a class with her girlfriends on how to give a blow job (using bananas). She’d thought about where she might be in five years, in ten years, in fifteen. She did have fantasies of flying around the world in the corporate jet, of heading up meetings in foreign countries. She would be a noble star while being silently and secretly beleaguered by the pressure.
    But the years had passed, and Mindy had not fulfilled her promise. It turned out there were no extra innings in which to make her dreams come true. Sam had had a brief bout with “socialization issues”; the experts at the school thought he’d benefit by spending more time with other children—not unusual in a household consisting of a single child and two adults—requiring subsequent layers of organization and the forcing of Sam into afterschool sports, playdates (the apartment filled with the bells and whistles of video games as “the boys” engaged in side-by-side playing), and the pricey ski weekends in Vermont (during one such jaunt, Mindy sprained her ankle and was on a crutch for a month).
    And then James, who had won the National Magazine Award in 1992, had decided to write fiction; after three years of what felt to him like hand-to-hand combat with the written word, he managed to publish a novel that sold seventy-five hundred copies. His depression and resentment permeated their lives, so in the end, Mindy saw that everyday life with its everyday disappointments had simply worn her down.
    And yet she often thought, all this she could have overcome if it weren’t for her personality. Anxious and awake in the middle of the night, Mindy often examined the details of her interactions with “corporate” and saw they were lacking. Back then, corporate had consisted of people like Derek Brumminger, the pockmarked perpetual