Secrets

Previously published as Secrets by Lance Erikson. There are seventeen apartments in The Majestic, most of them 10,000 square feet in size and featuring terraces with magnificent views across New York's Fifth Avenue to Central Park. The elegant limestone-clad cooperative apartment was designed by Rosario Candela in 1928, the eminent architect responsible for Manhattan s most sought-after residential buildings, including 960 and 834 Fifth Avenue, 778, 740 and 720 Park Avenue, and 25 Sutton Place, among others. None are the equal of The Majestic, the most prized and hardest to get into cooperative building in New York. The list of bold-faced names rejected by the notoriously impossible Board is almost endless. Very few apartments ever change hands at The Majestic, and those which do are transferred only after a tortuous path through reference letters, certified financial statements, Board interviews, and most often, rejections before a final buyer is approved by the Board. Only three apartments in The Majestic have had new owners in the last twenty-four years, with all the newer residents being New Yorkers prominent in the fields of business, philanthropy or the arts, and all with highly pedigreed ancestors. When wealthy Tennessean Marc St. Claire and his beautiful wife, Lisa, ask a real estate agent from The Corcoran Group to show them the one apartment in the building currently for sale, the answer is a resounding "No". No does not sit well with Marc. Follow the saga as he tries to find the secrets which will allow him and his wife admission to the best address in Manhattan.