“I didn’t have sex with him! I was trying to make friends with him—”
“Well, you seem to have succeeded. Well done, Tina. And what’s this?” She looked at the front door, where my rigged-up spring bolt and door chains sparkled in the afternoon light.
“It’s my security system,” I said. “Too many people have keys to this place and seem to feel they can let themselves in any time they want. We’re not doing that anymore. If I don’t want people to come in, I’m not going to let them in.”
“I didn’t agree to that.”
“I don’t give a shit if you agree or not,” I said, turning back to television land. It was rough coming down from near-sex with a really hot and deeply problematic guy to getting yelled at by your bossy sister. I needed more wine.
“Don’t you dare walk away from me,” Lucy snarled over my shoulder. She was spitting mad. I headed down the hallway.
“Relax, would you?” I said. “I’m getting myself a glass of wine.”
“Don’t you think you’ve had enough to drink?”
“No, actually, I don’t. Want some?” I cut through the TV room and back to the laundry room to score another bottle from the stash.
“No,” Lucy countered, tossing her briefcase onto the couch. It landed right next to Vince’s jacket and tie. “Oh look. Your friend, whom you’re not sleeping with, left his clothes.”
“Yeah, great, I’ll get them back to him. It’ll give me an excuse to go up to his place and not fuck him there.”
“This is no joke, Tina!”
“Lucy, if you want to sell this place, we have to get by the co-op board,” I said, returning with the fresh bottle. “And they can stop a sale if they feel like it, and right now that is how they feel, they don’t like us. Oh wait! One of them likes us—Vince likes me.”
“He wants to have sex with you. It’s not quite the same thing.”
“For most people it’s close enough. And if you had sex on a regular basis, you might know things like that.”
“Thank you for once again elevating the conversation. Really, it’s terrific having you around to put things in perspective.” Lucy stood there in her tight gray suit, not even looking at me, her thumbs moving restlessly through the air above her ever-present BlackBerry, and I knew that nothing I said, sensible or otherwise, would make an impression.
“Look, is there a reason you’re here?” I said. “Is there some dazzling legal maneuver you’re about to pull, or did you just stop by to make me feel shitty?”
Lucy paused for a good long time before deigning to answer. She kept reading her BlackBerry, then decided she was done with that, pocketed it, and reached for her briefcase before glancing in my direction. “Well, let me just tell you this much: we don’t have to worry about the co-op board for now,” she finally said. She snapped open the clasps on her briefcase, flipped the cover up, and reached inside for a crisp manila envelope, which she tossed onto the coffee table. I could tell by the way it hit the wood that it contained freshly minted documents.
“What’s that?” I said, feigning indifference. I was pretty sure it was something big, but she was really working my nerves so I thought I’d return the favor.
“You can read, right? I mean, you did acquire that skill before you dropped out of college to run off with some loser, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I can read, but since I’m stupid it takes me a real long time. Maybe you could just summarize in ten words or less and tell me what I’m supposed to get myself all upset about today.”
“We have a court date.”
“A court date for what?”
“The Drinans are objecting to the will.”
“Well, what does that mean?”
“They’re claiming that their father was mentally incapacitated when the will was executed and that Mom used undue influence, and that we came into possession illegally, so they’re suing for damages.”
“Well, they are damaged, but whose fault is that? Not mine.”
“They’re suing you for it. And they’re suing me, and they’re suing Daniel and Alison to the tune of twenty million dollars.”
“Come on.”
“You asked me to summarize.”
This sounded so bizarre I couldn’t believe it. I decided it might be smart to take a look at the documents myself, so I opened the envelope. Lucy went back to making love to her BlackBerry.
“There’s a preliminary hearing in Surrogate’s Court on December seventh,” she said. “That’s three months from now. It’s unheard of to get a date set that quickly, so they’re clearly pulling strings. They also went judge shopping—we’re scheduled to be heard by the one judge who thinks she can do whatever she feels like with the law. The one who’s a cop, he probably had enough clout in the legal system to put this where they wanted it. The other one is some sort of principal at the Dalton School, so he knows absolutely everybody. In any case, they pulled strings.”
I paged through the papers in front of me and tried to make sense of them. They seemed utterly incomprehensible, and for a moment I thought, Maybe Lucy’s right, maybe I never really did learn to read properly.
“They’re suing us—like suing us, for money?”
“That’s a separate action, they’re just trying to scare us. They want us to make a counteroffer.”
“What kind of counteroffer?”
“Well, let’s see, what do they want? The apartment! I think if we offered them the apartment, this would all go away.”
“What if the judge gives them the apartment?”
“We’re not going to let that happen.”
“But they’re suing us? So we could lose the apartment, and then if they win the lawsuit we’ll have to pay them money too?”
“You’re not going to have to worry about that, though, are you, Tina, because you are completely without resources. Isn’t that right? Do you have any money left from the stash you found in Bill’s wallet?”
“Some,” I admitted.
“How much?”
“Maybe a hundred?”
“You’re going to have to come up with some more and buy some decent clothes. And I do mean decent, none of this boho-loser-chic stuff you think is so cool. A skirt and a blouse and sensible shoes. Something good and ugly. You’re going to have to stop dressing like a slut.”
“Anything else, mein führer?”
“When there is, I’ll let you know.” She picked up her briefcase and looked at me, sprawled on the couch, wineglass in hand, watching her with my best sullen disregard.
“Before you take off, can you at least tell me who my lawyer is? You said you were going to replace that nice Egg Man. Did that happen?”
“We have a new and very good lawyer, yes. His name is Ira Grossman, he’s very experienced in these kinds of litigious inheritance situations.”
“Can I call him?”
“No, you can’t call him! Every time you call him it costs a hundred dollars, which you don’t have!”
“Yeah but—”
“Tina, please, I don’t have time to hold your hand on every single thing. If you have questions about your legal status in this situation, read the pleadings.”
“I can’t understand this shit!”
“No? Then I guess you’re going to have to rely on me and Daniel and Alison to tell you what to do. Get that shit off the door, buy some decent clothes, and keep this place clean. Oh, and tell that guy to come down here and get rid of the moss. Sotheby’s has agreed to represent the apartment as a historic property, and no one is going to understand a roomful of moss when they start to show the place.”
“How come—”
“That’s all you have to worry about. Okay? Okay?”
“Okay.”
She smiled grimly, as if she found it satisfactory to hear me say “okay,” but she didn’t look satisfied. She looked like her suit was too tight and she wasn’t eating enough red meat and her shoes hurt. She had little gray smudges under her eyes, and her hair w
as pulled back in a bun, which was an extremely bad look for her, and usually she knew better than to try it. Her mouth was pinched together, bitter and worried, and for the first time I saw what Vince had seen instantly under the skin of my smart, ferocious sister: an old schoolmarm in a rage because the world had overlooked her.
“Hey, Lucy,” I said, feeling completely awful all of a sudden. “No kidding, Lucy. Maybe we should just offer to split it with them. Even split five ways, we’d all end up with a ton of money. Has anyone offered to split it?”
“I don’t believe that’s been discussed, no,” she said, with a kind of infantile brightness that had yet another sneer behind it.
“Yeah, I guess that’s pretty stupid,” I said. “Sorry. ‘Compromise.’ What a boneheaded idea.”
“You said it, not me,” she murmured under her breath.
She left. And I decided to stop asking questions nobody had any answers for anyway and just let things happen.
10
THREE DAYS LATER, WHEN LEN CAME BY TO CHECK IN ON CURRENT events, he was not particularly happy with the state of his mossery. He was thoroughly appalled that someone had been messing with his trays, knocking over bags of mulch, and tossing shards of glass all over the floor. During our abortive but completely memorable makeout session, Vince and I had also, it seems, damaged a display containing a delicate species of hornwort, several large sections of which had turned a distressing shade of mottled brown. The picture of the tree was so far askew it looked like it was about to fall off the wall.
“For seven hundred dollars a month, I think it’s understood that the mossery is protected space,” he informed me, straightening the picture with annoyed precision. “Your mother took great care with it; you, I see, do not have her touch. I’m going to have to ask you to refrain from even entering my room unless I am here to supervise you.”
“It’s not your room, Len,” I reminded him, a tad defensive, since I knew he was right. “You’re just renting it.”
“Renting it from whom, that’s the question,” he said with a sharp little nod of contempt. He leaned past me to open the tiniest sliver of a closet door that was squashed between the refrigerator and the wall. He retrieved a whisk broom and a dustpan, which had been hung just inside the door at eye level. I watched as he swept the shards of glass together and disposed of them in the plastic dustbin next to the sink. Then he swept the floor again, and then he did it a third time, each time picking up ever more delicate pieces of broken glass. Then he reached up, pulled a roll of paper towels out of the cabinet above the moss, and dabbed carefully at every corner of the linoleum, finding little sparkles of glass dust everywhere. He folded the paper towel, put it to one side, and considered the dirty red wine stain that had spilled in ugly blotches everywhere. Honestly, when Vince knocked his wineglass over, it hadn’t seemed like there was much in it. But there was more than I thought and now those little spots of wine had set. Len glanced up at me, his face a mask of disappointed annoyance. “How long has this been here?” he asked, exhausted by my incompetence.
“Just a day. I was going to clean it up. I forgot,” I said, trying a little too hard not to sound like a ten-year-old.
“And how did it happen?” he asked.
“I, um, I met that guy, Vince Masterson? He lives on the fifth floor?”
“Yes, I’m aware of where he lives,” Len said, even more coolly disinterested, if that was possible.
“He wanted to see the apartment. So I invited him up. And I was showing him around and he dropped, he had a glass of wine and he dropped it, so—anyway I met the Whites too, I might be doing some babysitting for them.” Len considered this possibility as he ran a paper towel under the faucet and started working on the wine spots.
“Babysitting?” he said, raising his eyebrows, as if he’d like to see that one.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m good with kids. And, you’ll be stunned to hear, I could use the money.”
“Your mother never had any money,” Len observed, glancing up. “Bill didn’t either. I used to ask them about it. They were both eligible for Social Security. But Bill wouldn’t cash the checks. There was some sort of pension out there, but Bill wrote to them and told them he had moved. So those stopped coming too. Neither one of them had any money, really, at all.”
“They didn’t cash the checks?”
“Bill wanted to live off the grid.”
“He lived in New York City!”
“Yes, that’s true. Nevertheless. His need for privacy went beyond any other concern in his life. Except, perhaps, his love for your mother. If you had any real interest in the details of their life here together—”
“Of course I’m interested!”
“You might have put two and two together and realized that for Bill privacy was everything. Everything.”
“Why are you so mad at me?”
“Why are you letting people parade in and out of your home?”
“Well, the Drinans parade in and out because they think it’s their home—”
“Which you are determined to dissuade them of, even though they were both raised here.”
“The only other people parading in and out are my sisters.”
“And?”
“And, okay, the real estate people, but what am I supposed to do about that?”
“And?”
“And you, you’re the only other person ‘parading’ in and out. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Stop acting like a child.”
“What is the big deal! It was one person!”
“A trustworthy person, I’m sure. Someone with unassailable character. Who will treat this apartment and its history with the respect it deserves.”
“You were the one, you told me to make friends—”
“Whatever you say.”
“Oh, for crying out loud. You’re a guy who talks to plants!”
“Then why do you care what I think?”
He turned back to check on his hornwort. He was right; I did care. I so did not want him to be mad at me.
“I’m sorry,” I finally said. “I mean it. I won’t let it happen again. I didn’t know. I mean, I knew that privacy was important to Bill, but how was I supposed to … I mean, people knew they were in here! Didn’t they? They went out and stuff.”
“They did not.”
“But they—they weren’t really off the grid, were they? In the middle of the city? You can’t live off the grid in New York City. They had heat and water and telephones, and television.”
“Bill set up a trust that his lawyer took care of. The rest was absorbed by the building.”
“Absorbed by the building?”
“Honestly, Tina, I don’t have time to explain everything to you. Just do me a favor: next time you have friends in to take a look at this wonderful and very private old place, please do not let them in the mossery. It is officially off-limits to you now, is that understood?” He actually tried to shoo me out of the room so he could continue cleaning up in peace.
“They want you to get it out of here. Lucy says you have to take it out by next week.”
“Quite frankly, I don’t believe you’ll be here that long,” he said icily.
“I wouldn’t bet on it if I were you.” I leaned against the refrigerator and watched him work. The place was almost back to normal. The floor was spic-and-span, the cedar boxes were restacked, and the half-spilled bag of plant food was tidied and tucked back into its corner. Now that Len had bent his attention to the tray of hornwort, his anger had cooled, and he was murmuring comfort to the things.
“You’re okay. Oh, no no, this isn’t a tragedy. We’ll fix you right up,” he cooed. Seriously. The guy was talking to moss.
“I’m not kidding, Len, Lucy is dead set on you getting this stuff out of here pronto.” He looked over at me, annoyed again. “Look, I’m sorry to interrupt your conversation with the hornworts,” I said, “but you can’t just boss me around and expect this probl
em to go away. I’m going to need a little more help than that.”
“How about two hundred,” he said suddenly. “Will that help?”
That wasn’t what I had been going for, but given the life I lead, I am never averse to taking money. “Yes, I think that will help me figure out how to solve this. I really do.”
“Why don’t you let me finish up here,” he said, turning his gaze back to his wounded moss. “Maybe twenty minutes?”
“Great,” I said. “I’ll go take a shower.”
After Len had finished tending his moss, and I had dried my hair with the thirty-year-old blow-dryer I found underneath a sink, we took the elevator up to the greenhouse, where Len apparently kept piles of hundred-dollar bills hidden in corners.
“Seriously, you have that kind of money lying around?” I asked him, impressed.
“You live in New York City, you have to expect that someone will come along and try to extort you at any time of the day or night. As you seem to have managed to do today, Tina.”
“Come on, Len, you offered,” I started lamely.
“Are you saying you don’t want the money?”
“We have a court date, I need some decent clothes,” I protested.
“And of course I would be responsible for that,” he replied, not impressed with my logic. When the elevator dinged, he slid the grille back, pushed the outer door open, and stepped onto the landing. I stepped out behind him and slammed right into him because he had stopped. Literally, he just stood there, holding the elevator door open.
“Hey, Len, is there a problem?” I asked, trying to look over his shoulder.
“No, no problem.” His voice had fallen back from the bossy exasperation he had come to use as his regular tone with me, into a kind of effortless chill that I had come to recognize as bad news.
“What is it?” I said. He still hadn’t moved. I had a feeling he might shove me back into the elevator and send me off, so I turned and nudged him with my shoulder, just enough to get the right side of my body past him and onto the landing. He looked back at me, annoyed.
“That hurt,” he announced.
“Well, why are you just standing there?”
Twelve Rooms with a View Page 13