Novel West Midtown Reviews Novels & Stories

He turns slightly into it without looking away from the screen. "Don't wait up if I'm late." "I won't." The driver opens the rear door as I step outside. "Midtown," I say after climbing in. "Fourteenth floor." The revolving doors turn silently beneath my hand, sealing the noise of Manhattan outside before it can follow me in. The lobby opens around me in polished stone and floor-to-ceiling glass, washed in pale afternoon light that reflects off white marble until the entire room feels almost too pristine to touch. A long black reception desk anchors the space beneath the silver ‘NORTHSTAR HOLDINGS’ logo mounted on a slab of veined marble. Men and women in tailored suits cross the lobby with

As the Midtown breeze blows between the tall buildings, I brush strands of hair that have escaped my workday bun away from my cheeks and freshly painted lips. Shielding my eyes from the early evening sun, I gaze up at the giant limestone building in front of me. In a few minutes, I'm supposed to meet my best friend and roommate on the top floor at one of the newest, swankiest restaurants in Manhattan, Gaston's.

Le Velours. The exclusive gentlemen’s club in Midtown Manhattan was a completely different world from their cramped Bronx apartment. The moment she stepped inside, the atmosphere wrapped around her, dim red and golden lighting, thick velvet curtains, soft expensive leather booths, and the low, pulsing beat of sensual music. This was a place where rich men came to indulge without consequences.

Outside, the city settled into its evening. Somewhere in Midtown, Gabriel Duval was making plans he believed were still intact. Somewhere across the city, Will Banks and Charlotte Doyle were sitting in a hotel room with a drive on the table between them, and the specific electric quality of two people who are in the process of discovering, despite everything, that what is between them is real. And on the fourteenth floor of a building on the Upper West Side, a man who had lost a gallery today sat beside a woman who was twenty-two weeks pregnant and had painted a true thing, and together they held the quiet in both hands.

I got home a little after one, with my lipstick still intact, my head still full of Italian men, and my patience already in the ICU ever since Zach Bandini said, Ms. Moguel is coming. My house was in The Whitmore Mews, a private townhouse complex in the West Village that was very beautiful, very quiet, and very expensive in the kind of way that made normal people automatically lower their voices when they walked through the iron gates. From the outside, it looked like a row of old red-brick townhouses too polite to admit they had private elevators, twenty-four-hour security, a small garden in the middle of the courtyard, and neighbors who bought organic almond milk like they were signing an

Maybe my intuition was kicking in, but I just knew that I was right. My mind was lured away from the supernatural as I took in the beauty of the city on my left and the Hudson River on my right. Traffic was thick, but we managed to make decent time down the parkway toward West Midtown. I’ve always loved the city lights at night. The reflection of the lights on the icy water made it all seem even more wonderful.

“She’s been asking me about trees since we got back to the city. Specifically why there aren’t more of them.” He smiled. It changed his face in a way I had not seen often enough to stop noticing. “Good question.” We sat in comfortable silence for a moment. Outside the small window beside our table the West Village moved through its evening, unhurried, the particular quality of that neighborhood at night, warm light in the windows of old buildings, the sound of the city at a gentler register than Midtown or downtown ever produced. “Can I ask you something,” I said. “Yes.”

From my perspective the apartment was my guarantee of next year's housing. Although I hadn't seen Nox's apartment on West 77th, I was certain my little one-bedroom couldn't compare to it or to Patrick and to Cy's on the Upper East Side. Nevertheless, I liked it. With its wood floors, white walls, and a galley kitchen, it wasn't pretentious. It was cozy. From its large old windows, I couldn't see the park. Instead, they looked out onto a tree-lined street, and just down the block was Tom's Restaurant on the corner. I planned to tell Nox—eventually.

////////////////////////////////////////////// POV(FIONA), I walked down straight to the beach in my uniform heading to the serving point, darkness had took over the day and the moon came to light it up, it was a full moon tonight, and it was somewhat special. I smiled at the amazing view of the tents, the tents were arranged with ranks, the first one was for the Alpha, the second for the Beta, the third for the Zeta's, the fourth for the Gammas, the fifth for the delta and I wouldn't call the last one, a rank, but I'll say it anyway, the Omega's tent since it was our serving center, the tents were half filled, and we expected more guests. The higher-ups were clanking their cups of wine whil

Maya held the West Village morning with the quiet authority of someone who had found her right place, and the Cobble Hill location ran on its established rhythm, and Renee moved between both with the organised efficiency of a woman who had been waiting for a challenge equal to her spreadsheets. The wholesale accounts had expanded. A food publication had reached out about a feature. The cardamom brown butter tart had been described, in a review I had read three times and pretended to be professional about, as the best thing currently available in downtown Manhattan, which was a lot. I had taken the review home and read it to Marcus over dinner and he had listened with the focused attention he