The Other Ground Zero

And women, like fashion mannequins, sun angling down their healthy faces, hair bouncing to the beat of heels8212;so perfect, and so perfectly programmed. Everyone stopping only to provide appreciative applause and a coin to a chamber music trio on the way to a brioche lunch or a client meeting. People hidden and entirely unapproachable.

The New York skyline has even produced special high-rise housing for them: The million dollar luxury apartment. On the ground floor, it has a lobby with a bank of elevators and a close circuit security system; in the middle, 60 floors of apartments interspersed every 10 floors with a floor of mechanical equipment and air conditioning; and finally, a penthouse, that spills out on terraces and8212;if it costs in the neighbourhood of two million dollars8212;provides a view of Central Park. Affluence, like poverty, has never bothered New Yorkers, and the facilities they need are merely the buffer that separates them from their less well-off brothers in Harlem, who have an equally expansive view of a Bronx sewage treatment plant. But facilities are what separate the rich from the excessively rich, the super rich from the obsessively rich.

As practitioners of international capitalism and owners of corporations, the feudal character of the apartments, their services and arrangements are now an accepted norm. No one asks about the 24-hour fully manned security or the health club. They are just there. The Astors and the Vanderbilts of the new century need them like you and I need water.

Luxury apartments along the East Side of Central Park cost anywhere between two and four million. What that figure gets you cannot be measured in architectural terms. But landed people like Sally and Robert J Pricewater Jr8212;whose names have been changed to protect the real Sally and Robert J Pricewater Jr8212;are not looking for architecture; architecture is for the poor. For a man who earns half a million a year, buys orchids for his wife, owns two cars and orders wine by the crate through a Rare Wine Auction House, architecture can go hang. What matters is a place so exclusive that even he has a problem getting past the concierge.

But once you do, the place radiates facility. You turn the key to operate the elevator to your own home in the sky where, as you turn the key again, you wait a while before switching on the light, for there before you is your dream, in complete and final submission8212;New York, lights twinkling in the autumn dusk. How you8217;ve worked for it, and how you deserve it. Just a sweet moment with your fantasy, before you remind yourself of the perks of the good life8212;maid, valet, pool, bilingual secretary, hairdresser, health club, personal trainer, rooftop tennis and pool. And all yours. For the low monthly maintenance of 20,000.

Ann Hagerty, a classmate of mine from architecture school, lived somewhere high above Central Park. Married to a banker, Ann8217;s life was doubtlessly made. But not having met in a quarter century, I didn8217;t know whether she was still around or had moved to London or Tokyo, the way successful banker couples move. The concierge at her apartment glanced balefully at my muddy shoes, and before he could direct me to the service entrance, I had pressed the elevator button on No 52.

Fifty-two floors above Central Park, Ann had wasted no time in using her architectural skills and husband8217;s income to good effect. Walls in a buffed Texas Travertine led me past the formal rooms into a terrace garden that paralleled the greater park below. Southern gazebos, framed in white cedar and entwined in a rose and vine, sat amongst trees I was sure had rooted deep into the roof of the apartment below. At the edge of the terrace was the pale blue light of a pool as big as the Delhi Gymkhana8217;s. 8220;There8217;s a pool in the building,8221; explained Ann, 8220;but George likes to swim nude8230;8221;

Everywhere there are reminders of vast sums of money being made and spent. In Times Square, the Nasdaq and Dow Jones boards are constantly lighting up and dying; a second-by-second reminder of the rise and fall of fortunes and investment empires. Gold-haired women in select mink and sable walked in and out of Tiffany and Bergdorf Goodman. Black-suited chauffeurs sprang to attention at cars the length of a bus.

And there are other equally graphic signs. Destitution at a scale only New York can allow. New York is an unkind city. Made on the fortunes of a few, it tells you in no uncertain terms that there8217;s place for you if you8217;re in the same league, if not, it will dump you on the sidewalk, an alcoholic panhandling mess of bones and skin, half dead on a subway grate. Like any other city, the poor and the rich live there in uncomfortable proximity.

I didn8217;t want to be poor in New York. Downtown, near the former World Trade Centre, I spotted the place for the perfect picture postcard. On a parking lot stood a Jaguar convertible, glinting lines of the Astoria Tower in the background. With a Pakistani parking attendant, this was going to be easy. Five dollars in his pocket, he became a pimp with a beautiful whore, allowing me 10 minutes with the car.

First I had my 12-year-old son lean against the windshield in a trial run. With the Astoria Tower behind him, I shot what would be a happy lie for the family album. But as I clicked his picture, he filled the frame with a guilty expression that clearly said the car didn8217;t belong to him. And followed it quickly with one that said, 8216;Why can8217;t I have a normal father like other kids, someone who accepts poverty as his natural condition8217;.

Then with him behind the camera, I performed the same action for myself. Without guilt or remorse.

I leaned against the door in a proprietorial sort of way. I put one foot on the bumper and sat lightly on the hood; I stroked the steering wheel. For 10 minutes it was great to feel rich in New York. Only when the Pakistani returned the five dollars, saying he couldn8217;t take the money from someone from Punjab, even if from the wrong side, did I really feel rich.