Life at the Top – Two Liberty Place – Cole Hamels

“They’re lovely,” says Marsha, an anesthesiologist whose husband, Stephen, is a neurologist at Jefferson. Together they live in a legendary apartment in Two Liberty, which they’ve wildly decorated to resemble a funhouse. “That’s one of the things about living in this building,” she tells me. “Your privacy is respected.” Because inside Two Liberty, there is no difference between Cole and Heidi Hamels and Marsha and Stephen Silberstein. Or so residents such as the Silbersteins like to think. Ironically, I end up sitting next to Terena (and behind the ubiquitous Susan Vineberg, who turns around to remark, “We missed you in yoga this morning”).

Two nights later, I’m sitting in the Silberstein place for book club with Marsha, Jamie (who runs it), Dana and Kimberly (who, like Jamie, work for Two Liberty), and several other residents, including Terena and Susan Vineberg. After we slog through a discussion of the treacly chick-lit mess that is Firefly Lane, the topic turns to … gossip. And not “Oh, did you read in People magazine” gossip. Two Liberty gossip.

I can see panic creep onto Jamie’s face as resident Barbara Meier (who, it should be noted, hated Firefly Lane as much as I did) tosses her book onto an end table, crosses her legs, and asks, “So … what’s the new guy like?”

Murmuring, tittering and mumbling usually reserved for paternity test results on Maury ensue. I quickly discern that they’re talking about the Indian mogul with the bodyguard. The two have been hauling in boxes all week.

Dana jumps in. “Well, evidently he sold his microchip company,” she says.

“So, what’s he like? What’s his story?” Barbara asks. “Because, you know, I have a sister-in-law … ”

Before Dana can answer, Jamie interjects. No one has had a chance to really get to know him, she says. It’s early; they need to give him time to settle in. She shoots me a level gaze. Too late. Secret’s out.

And that secret is that when you seal a bunch of rich people inside a glitzy walled fortress and pull up the drawbridge, those rich people still need to be entertained. And they don’t get entertained by reading Firefly Lane. They do so in the most old-fashioned way possible: by talking about each other.

GLANCING OUT OF THE DUSTY WINDOWS of the 11,000-square-foot space on the 37th floor that will, this fall, be the rebirth of his acclaimed restaurant Rae, Daniel Stern looks tired. Being a celebrity chef can be a chore, especially the parts like this — posing for pictures in your chef’s whites. His PR firm wants to issue an update on construction of what will be called R2L, an effort to capitalize on Two Liberty’s sweeping views and blot out Rae’s woeful failure in its Cira Centre incarnation.

Stern has wolfen, slate-gray eyes that betray his fatigue, even as he smiles wanly for the click-click-click of the camera. But when he talks about opening here, he rallies. “There’s nothing else like it in the city,” he says of the space, which will offer a bar and seating for 120 as well as private dining, all with those can’t-stop-gawking views. “I want this to feel like a big cocktail party, a sleek and sexy space.”