Steven Stein

The Apartment Steven Stein

In his mid sixties, Jay Lerner was still at the top of his game, a partner at a prestigious New York law firm, married for over forty years to his college sweetheart, father of three successful children and adoring and adored grandfather of seven grandchildren all living within an hour of Jay's Westport Connecticut home. His life was productive, fulfilling until one day in the late winter of 2006, a piece of mail arrived at his home. In the mail was a letter, actually a notice, addressed to Jay's father, dead over ten years, that taxes on a condominium apartment in Forest Hills, Queens, were unpaid and overdue and that unless paid within thirty days the tax lien would be foreclosed. Jay's investigation into the mysterious tax claim led him to an apartment that his family had rented for a few years in the 1950s, but never, to Jay's knowledge, had been owned by his father. Not only did Jay learn that his father had secretly bought the apartment, but also that he used it to provide a home for his long time mistress and for trysts over a thirty year period starting while Jay and his sister still lived with the family in their new home in another part of Queens, an affair that continued to the end of his father's life. The love affair was further revealed in considerable detail by letters that his father had written which were given to Jay by a sister of his father's paramour. The story culminates with a further discovery, one that would change Jay's life and his family's permanently. In the course of telling the story Jay reveals details of his life as a lawyer including many vignettes that are filled with humor and warmth.