Page 589 - WhyAsInY

“resolvinG tHe Crisis; restorinG tHe ConfiDenCe”
with Jacobs and his people, I would obviously have to be ready to move to Washington! Needless to say, I had had no idea that that would be required. I had assumed that the RTC had an office in New York City. It didn’t. So I had no choice but to tell Goldstein that I would have to get back to him and, as if there were a lengthy line of qualified applicants from which one had to be chosen within moments, he gave me all of one day to respond.
Punching the Shuttle Clock
All I needed, however, was about ten minutes to confer with Kathy, who, you will recall, is a wise woman. I didn’t really have to move to Wash- ington; I could commute! Well, not every day. But often enough.
Kathy’s parents had a wonderful apartment on Connecticut Avenue in the D.C. area and vacated it for almost six months of each year to repair to their home in Martha’s Vineyard. They were happy to offer it to me. That left six months per annum for which I would have to find and rent an apartment during my intended two-year tour of duty (assuming, oh yes, that I got the job), but money was not the object here.
Well, not entirely: When one takes into account—as I, of course, did—the facts that (a) rent for a good one-bedroom apartment in the D.C. area would be about $2,000 per month when the Baums were back in their Connecticut Avenue home, (b) the N.Y.–D.C. shuttle flight would cost about $350 per week, (c) transportation to and from La Guar- dia Airport would cost precisely $182.95 per annum,16 (d) the commute
16. That was easy to compute, all within the same ten minutes, of course: I assumed gasoline efficiency of 20 miles per gallon for the car in New York traffic, a cost of $2.00 per gallon for fuel, and 19.28 additional miles of driving each week for my volunteer cabbie, Kathy (two legs per week of 20.3 miles between Church Lane South and LaGuardia, and two legs per week of 9.64 miles between LaGuardia and the garage on East 17th Street between First and Second Avenues, in which Beth Israel provided a space to her, less the thereby avoided twice-weekly 23.29-mile legs between Church Lane South and that garage, for an incremental net of 13.66 miles per week).
• 571 •