The wealthy tend to live high on the hills; the more modest homes are further down. "It's all about getting water in your basement," one of my uncles used to tell me. "All the water runs into the basements of the people at the bottom." At 409 feet above sea level, Todt Hill is the highest point on the Eastern Seaboard south of Maine; other parts of the island are below sea level and prone to frequent flooding. Ward Hill, located on the North Shore, is the most extreme example of this hilltop caste system, looking like something out of modern-day Brazil. Gorgeous, well-kept homes are nestled on the very top of Ward Hill. But hugging the sides and bottom are low-income neighborhoods, and on one side -- just three or four blocks from the top of the hill -- is Jersey Street, one of the most poverty-stricken places on the island, plagued by drugs and burned-out buildings. Grymes Hill, too, is bordered on one side by what Joann calls "a bad neighborhood that I'm not allowed to drive through with the Jaguar."

Joann and I pull into her driveway, and she takes me on a tour of her massive brick contemporary house, showing me the teal-and-black Ultrasuede couches, the leopard-print sofas, and the floors of terra-cotta tiles that were cured naturally outdoors in Spain and even have paw prints in them here and there. But she doesn't like the floors very much, or some of the other accoutrements left by the previous owner, whose taste was "really Italian, too Italian." Second- and third-generation Italian-Americans, a group that dominates Staten Island, tend to disdain those who adhere too closely to the ornate style of Southern Italians.

"They like antiques, and some Deco, but they like a lot of modern, a lot of contemporary -- glass block and granite," says John LaPolla, one of a small handful of local interior designers whose homes grace the society pages of the Staten Island Advance, the island's Newhouse-owned daily newspaper, talking about his clients. "They like to mix it up a bit." La Polla designed Joann and Paulie's previous home in Prince's Bay. He also designed their summer home on Long Beach Island, New Jersey, a sort of Southampton for the Staten Island set and a place they often describe as "the exit right before Atlantic City," which they visit often. La Polla is now working with Joann on the new house at the Enclave.

The house is a fairly standard suburban structure with a built-in pool and a patio. Its most spectacular features are the picture windows that frame the Manhattan skyline, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, and assorted oil tankers and ocean liners sailing into and out of New York Bay.

The tour takes us into the bathroom off the master bedroom. "This bathroom has a story of its own," Joann says. "The Jacuzzi was installed but never hooked up. So we banged out two tiles, and they worked under there to fix the plumbing. I had my engagement ring on and I was washing my hands in the sink, and I don't know where it went, but I think it went under the Jacuzzi through the hole. We couldn't find it. So we closed the hole up. But now Paulie feels that the hot tub is too low, that it should be up higher so that when he's sitting in the hot tub he can look out and see the view, so he wants to raise it up. I said, 'Paulie, don't you get enough view? What is the difference? This is ridiculous.' But I also thought, No, let's do it, because I want to get my ring. I mean, I have no ring!"

Downstairs, off the kitchen, a pair of high-powered binoculars are perched on a pedestal facing the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the harbor. "I bought these for Paulie for Christmas," Joann explains. "You can see everything through there, the top of the Williamsburg tower, every car on the Verrazano bridge." At just that moment, the telephone rings. It's Paulie on his way home in the car, asking her for a traffic report. Like a lot of other Wall Street management types who live on Staten Island, he drives to work -- via Brooklyn -- rather than cram himself onto the ferry.

Joann looks into the binoculars with the phone on her ear. She can see much of the route he takes, from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in Brooklyn Heights to the Verrazano. "The top level has a couple of cars," she reports. "But I don't see any on the bottom. Both levels are moving."

In a sitting room off the main living room, Joann shows me some of her artwork. "You see my sculpture?" she asks, pointing to a curious abstract glass sculpture sitting on an even more curious glass table right out of a Maurice Villency ad. "It's from a gallery, and it's from Italy," she explains, noting that it's unlike the acrylic abstract sculpture nearby. "That one's just, you know, from a factory, but this one is real art," she clarifies. "It's special blown glass. The artist is Emilio something, some guy." She picks up the sculpture to take a look. "Let me see, Dino Rogan -- no, Rodini. Oh, I don't know, but it's from Italy. It's funky, right? I love it. It was a couple of thousand dollars, I think. Hopefully, it'll be worth a lot more someday -- when he drops dead." We both burst into laughter.