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either have to buy or move out.”
    “Don’t they have to honor the terms of your lease?”
    “My lease comes up for renewal next January, and they’re not going to renew it. I’ve got to figure out a way to buy this place, or else Reva and I will have to move.”
    “You’ll never find a place like this for what you’re paying,” Vivienne said, words Libby certainly didn’t need tohear. She knew she was paying a remarkably low rent for her six-room pre-war, with its nine-foot ceilings, its tall, sunlit windows and its fireplace. She could afford a rent increase. She could even afford the monthly costs of a mortgage. But she didn’t have the funds for a down payment, even at the cut-rate insider’s price the new company had quoted.
    “And you need how much?” Vivienne asked her.
    Libby winced. “A quarter million, minimum.”
    “Oy vey.” Vivienne dropped her bagel and pressed a hand to her chest, as if to contain the convulsions of her heart. “Where are you going to come up with money like that?”
    “You know any rich single guys?” Libby said, then grinned so Vivienne would understand she was kidding. Vivienne tended to take things literally. If Libby wasn’t careful, Vivienne would start interrogating the new bachelor members of her synagogue about their net worth.
    Vivienne’s heart must have calmed down, because she lowered her hand to her mug and sipped her coffee. “I know a rich married guy,” she said.
    “Thanks, but I’m not that desperate.”
    “Harry,” Vivienne said.
    “Harry?” Libby’s ex-husband?
    “He’s rich. He pulls down a huge income working at that law firm—a position that you, let us not forget, supported him through law school to obtain. Plus Reva is his one and only child, and he has a moral obligation not to allow her to become homeless.”
    “She wouldn’t be homeless,” Libby protested. “We could move someplace less expensive.”
    “Where? Jersey?” Vivienne wrinkled her nose.
    “I’m not asking Harry for money.” Asking her ex-husband for money would be an admission of failure—and Libby wasn’t the one who’d failed. The real-estate companythat owned her apartment failed. But Harry wouldn’t see it that way. He’d give her a hard time. After all, he’d wanted the apartment as much as she had when they’d decided to get a divorce. Back then, the odds of its going co-op were minimal, and the lease had locked them into a remarkably affordable rent, but after a bit of back and forth, Harry had acquiesced.
    As divorces went, hers wasn’t bad. She and Harry could speak civilly to each other. Harry generally deferred to her when it came to Reva, and he’d let Libby have primary custody, although she felt that was largely because his wife was too busy being glamorous to fuss with a stepdaughter. Whenever Reva returned from a visit with her father, she regaled Libby with stories about how utterly inept Bonnie was as a stepmother.
    “I think you should ask him,” Vivienne said. “He’s such a schmuck. He owes you, Libby.”
    “He’s your brother,” Libby reminded her.
    “Yeah, and I’ve been exposed to his schmuckiness my whole life. Get the money from him.”
    Libby pursed her lips and shook her head. Harry Kimmelman might be her last resort, but she hoped she’d find a few other resorts first. Anything to avoid having to go to him, hat in hand, and plead with him for—God!—a quarter of a million dollars.
    “What, you’re too proud to ask?” Vivienne pressed. “You’d rather wind up homeless than hit him up for money?”
    “It’s not just asking for money, Viv. It’s asking for a small fortune.”
    “He’s got a big fortune. He can afford it.”
    “Can he?” Harry didn’t discuss his finances with Libby. But he was a partner at his firm, and Bonnie had to earn a decent salary as a fashion editor for one of the major glossies, and they were dinks—double income, no kids.
    Libby had never been grasping and greedy during their