Read The View From Penthouse B for Free Online Page B

minimum-security prison. He calls every other week.”
    “Collect,” said Margot.
    Poor Anthony. “Wow,” he said. “I’m sorry. Are you sure this is a good time for you to be taking in a stranger?”
    Margot said, “I know that it seems as if every topic has a touch of the tragic, but now you’ve heard the worst.”
    “Dessert?” I asked.
    “Not yet,” said Margot. “Are your parents alive?” she asked him.
    “They are. Both.”
    “Still together?”
    “Still together.”
    “Are you estranged from them?” I asked.
    “Not estranged, just far away. They moved to Arizona when they retired. For the climate. My dad has asthma.”
    “Otherwise you might have moved home when you lost your job?” I asked.
    “Maybe,” said Anthony. “But unlikely.” He hesitated. “They lived way out on the island. Hauppauge.”
    “How far is that via the Long Island Railroad?” I asked.
    Margot said, “This is getting very boring. Shall we open another bottle? Gwen, tell Anthony about your business idea while I get dessert.”
    Alone with Anthony, I said, “It’s nothing. A fleeting idea I had for an escort service of the platonic kind.”
    From the other side of the swinging door, Margot yelled, “Strictly G-rated. Believe me. She’d find men who take presentable members of her widows’ support group out to dinner and maybe get a peck on the cheek when they part at the coatroom.” She returned with her own dessert concoction: baked fruit cocktail, a 1950s recipe that cost no more than the dented can its principal ingredient came in—and one white cupcake cut into thirds. “I took you at your word, that the cupcakes were a hostess gift. They’re adorable.”
    Out of politeness—surely a cake mix, not worth the calories—I helped myself to my one-third of the cupcake. I tasted it, finished it, closed my eyes, and smiled.
    “Like it?” he asked.
    “It’s unbelievable.”
    “I’m glad. Not everyone likes coconut.”
    Margot claimed her portion and moaned as soon as her mouth closed over the first bite. She pronounced something with her mouth full that I didn’t get until she repeated it: “Butter.”
    “Correct,” said Anthony.
    “Whose recipe?” I asked.
    “Mine. I’ve had a little too much time on my hands.”
    “You could make a killing with these,” Margot said.
    Anthony said, “Everyone who bakes a good cake thinks that. The cupcake market is saturated.”
    I asked what the other flavors were. He said, “I think I brought red velvet, mocha, rum-raisin . . . chocolate-chocolate, of course. Um . . . I think I included one I call carrot and burnt sugar.”
    Margot murmured in my direction. “I think this is going very well, don’t you?”
     
    Anthony was gathering dishes and stacking them with the expertise of a young man whose parents had raised him doing chores. Backing through the swinging door, he said, “I’ll let you two conference.”
    Margot said, “We only need a minute.” As soon as he was gone, she said, “Do you love him? What if we put a bed in the storeroom? He can put his stuff in a pantry drawer.”
    “Did you say ‘Put a bed in the storeroom’?”
    “With all our junk out of there, it’s got bedroom potential. I happen to know that my sellers used it as a maid’s room.”
    “Were they slave owners?” I asked.
    Minutes later Anthony agreed to take the closetless one hundred square feet that was currently housing all the boxes I’d never unpacked. Whatever downsizing had brought him to our door made him agree without whining to quarters big enough for only a narrow bed and stubborn built-in pantry drawers originally meant for table linens.
    “I’m very grateful,” Anthony told us. “And I’m sending out résumés by the dozen every day. And don’t worry about the size of the back room, because it looks to me like home sweet home.”
    “How long do you think—” I started to ask, but Margot interrupted with “We’re glad we can help a fellow victim