The first place I checked was the dresser in the alcove, which seemed like the only place Mom would have put anything of value to her; the rest of the room was nothing but piles of clothes, a chair, a couple of books on the floor, and the unmade bed. Besides, it looked as if she’d been using the dresser as a vanity; there was an old gilt mirror on the wall above it, with the feet of a cherub hanging down from the top. The top of the dresser held a few items—a hairbrush, a comb, an empty glass with a little dry well of alcohol stuck to the bottom. There was a tarnished small round silver box thing, with curlicues and a big French fleur-de-lis on top, and inside was a whole bunch of keys and an old wedding ring and three medals. One of them said CHEMISTRY. There were a couple of really old frames with old photographs of no one I knew, and behind them a couple of unframed photos with the edges curling toward the middle. One was of me when I was about fifteen and going on the first of many disastrous dates with Ed Featherstone. He was a mighty jerk, but at fifteen who knew? But it is a bit of a shock to see yourself seventeen years ago, with your arms around someone who is now seventeen years older and who made a fortune on Wall Street back when everyone was doing that, got out while the getting was good, and now owns lots of property in Connecticut. Whatever. I set aside the silver can of keys, which I thought might be useful for future exploration, and then I looked in the dresser.
The top drawer held her underwear, lots of sad bras and panties, several old pairs of neutral-colored support hose, and a quart bottle of that good vodka. In the drawer just beneath it was Bill’s underwear, gigantic white and light blue cotton briefs. I so did not want to paw through that stuff—I mean, really, I wanted that little bottle of perfume, which I didn’t think anyone else would want, but I was quickly losing my nerve. I had never even met this nutty alcoholic—who knew what lurked in his underwear? Rather than give up, I pulled the drawer all the way out of the dresser and upended it. There was nothing in there except all those huge pairs of underwear, and a wallet.
A wallet, there was a wallet, and the guy who owned it was dead, and everything he owned got left to my mom, who apparently left everything she owned to me and my sisters. I figured that gave me some rights, so I sat on the floor and looked through it, and lo and behold there were three receipts from a liquor store, a couple more pictures of people I didn’t know, and a lot of money. Bill had seven hundred dollars in that wallet, which would be a significant windfall to pretty much anybody, I think, but it was a miracle to a person of my limited means. I pocketed the cash.
When I leaned over to scoop the now empty wallet and all that underwear back into the drawer, I also happened to notice the no-man’s-land under the bed, which was crowded with boxes. These turned out to be really hard to get to, because they all were just a little bit too big for the space, which meant they were really squashed in there. They also each weighed a ton, as I discovered, since they were full of used paperbacks, most of them mysteries. After about twenty minutes of dragging the boxes out, I was ready to completely give up, until I got to the very last box, which was up by the headboard on the far side of the bed. That one was not full of books. It was full of junk—a crummy handbag, a little red change purse, two pairs of reading glasses, another quart of vodka, nearly empty, and an old cedar jewelry box filled with fake pearls and junky necklaces and a tiny bottle of French perfume.
It looked just the way I remembered it, pitch black and shaped like a heart. The ghost of the word Joy ran across one side in elegant gold letters. I tipped the bottle to one side, trying to figure out how much perfume was still in there after thirty years. It was impossible to tell.
It was not until that very moment that I remembered I had left a pan of water boiling on the stovetop this whole time. Which I have done several times in the past, in different apartments, with more or less disastrous results, so I jolted myself out of my mournful and useless reverie and ran back to that lousy kitchenette, where I put more water on to boil, made another cocktail, cooked up some noodles, had another drink, watched the end of a documentary about Egypt, and had a good cry. I thought about just passing out on that couch in front of the television set, but that seemed like a really poor idea, because it’s the sort of thing that leads one to think one might actually be an alcoholic, which was a thought I didn’t want to entertain that night. So I stood up, definitely wobbly, but I didn’t judge myself, because Mom was dead and I was feeling hideous, and then I thought about climbing into her bed, and that was just not an option, so I wandered back through that maze of rooms until I found the one with the stars on the ceiling and the little beds on the floor, and one of those beds was made up with a couple of pillows and a kid’s dark blue coverlet with rocket ships and planets all over it. I slid off my jeans and got under that cover and cried a little more, and then I went to sleep.
“WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?”
The next thing I knew, two guys were standing in the doorway, staring at me. One of them had flipped on the overhead light, so I could see there were two of them, two fucking huge guys staring at me sleeping in that little bed on the floor of that little room.
“What?” I said, blinking. “What?”
“Answer the fucking question! Who the fuck are you, and what the fuck are you doing here?” The first guy, standing inside the room with his hand on the light switch, was drunk, I could tell that right away.
“What time is it?” I said. I didn’t know what else to say. And I really wanted to know what time it was. I was completely confused.
“It’s two A.M. Who the fuck are you?” the first guy said again.
“Shit,” I said. Which may not have been the brightest thing to say?
But this guy was scaring me.
“Answer the fucking question. And get out of that bed. Get up. Get up!” Now he was barking orders and totally freaking me out. I was still blinking and trying to wake up and figure out what time it was and how much of a hangover I had, and this big guy was reaching over to grab me. Honestly, I remember thinking, what a fucking drag, I’m in a mess again, and this time it isn’t even my fault—my staying here was Lucy’s dumb idea, I was just doing what Lucy wanted, and here I am in a total fucking mess. I squeezed myself back against the wall, ducked my head, and threw my arm across my face because it was taking a long time to wake up and I was scared. Oh, what a drag, I thought, what a complete hideous drag.
“Stop it, Pete—you’re scaring her,” said the other guy.
“Good, I want to scare her. Breaking and entering is a fucking crime—she should be scared,” said Pete, still coming at me like he was going to drag me out of that bed.
“I didn’t break and enter, excuse me, EXCUSE ME, but do you think I could put my pants on?” I yelled. “Get away from me—BACK OFF, YOU JERK!” I smacked Pete’s hand away before he could touch me, and surprisingly, he did back off. I continued yelling. “Turn around. Would you please TURN AROUND?”
Okay. Why this worked I have no idea, but it did; both of those guys did as they were told. I was freaked out, because seriously these were two huge guys, maybe six-two or six-four, and I’m a bit of a peewee, so I totally did not expect them to do as I said. I grabbed my jeans off the floor and slid them on fast. Being half-naked was not going to be an advantage in this situation, that much was certain.
“Who the fuck are you guys?” I said, trying to sound angry and sure of myself. I was scared out of my mind, no question, so I wanted to keep the upper hand as long as I could.
“We’re the ones asking questions here,” Pete said. “I hope you’re dressed, because that’s as much privacy as you’re going to get.” He turned around just as I finished zipping up my pants, and when I looked up he was taking a hit off a beer bottle. They both were tanked. This was a very bad situation. “So what’s your name?” he demanded.
“I don’t have to tell you my name. You tell me your name,” I said.
“You’re sleeping in my fucking bed, so yeah, you do have to tell me your name,” Pete countered.
/> “Forget it, let’s just call the police,” said the other guy.
“I am the police,” Pete told him, annoyed. “You can’t call the police when the police are already here.”
“Well, who cares who she is?” asked the other guy. “Just get her out of here.” He looked toward the back of the apartment, like what was back there made him sad. Pete looked like he wanted to argue about this, but all of a sudden he was too tired to do it. He looked at me and reached out like he was going to grab me. I backed up. He didn’t get mad this time, though, he just moved his hand, that little gesture that means come on, let’s go.
And that’s what he said. “Come on, let’s go. I don’t know how you got here and I don’t care. Count yourself lucky. Just get lost.” He wasn’t even looking at me, he was half following the other guy, who was already heading down the hall. Pete took a hit of beer. He looked totally wiped and worried about the other guy, and also like all he really cared about was finishing the one beer and finding another. Now that he wasn’t screaming at me, I could see he was not bad-looking; he needed a shave, and he was a little paunchy around the middle, but he had great eyes, dark brown, kind of shrewd and sad, which made him look like a worried kid even while he was being mean. Under the circumstances I wasn’t falling for it, plus I truly didn’t get what was going on here. These guys had barged in and woken me up maybe a minute ago. And now what, I was supposed to leave? Who the fuck did they think they were? I mean obviously I was grateful that they weren’t rapists, but after my initial terror some sense of reality was setting in. What the hell?
“I’m not going anywhere,” I told Pete. “This is my apartment. I live here. And and and I think it’s a good idea to call the cops because you’re the ones who, what the fuck are you doing here? Who the fuck are you?”
“You live here?” he said. “You live here?”
“Yes,” I said. “This is my apartment. I own it.”
“You own it?” he replied, taking a step back and calling down the hall. “Hey, Doug! Get back here! This chick says she owns this place!” He looked back at me, angry again, but in a calmer, nastier way. He also seemed to find my claim that I owned the apartment sort of quietly hilarious. He took a step back into the bedroom. “Maybe you should tell me your name after all, sweetheart.”
“I don’t, I don’t—you tell me your name,” I insisted. I shoved my hands into the back pockets of my jeans and felt the hard edge of the bills I had stashed there. I was glad I had taken the precaution of pocketing them right away; it looked like I might need that money sooner rather than later. “I mean this is like my house and you’re like, you’re like …”
“Your house?” said Pete, half laughing. “Your house. That would make you—what was your name again?”
“Tina Finn?” I said. Okay, I shouldn’t have caved like that, making my name a question at the last minute, but it wasn’t so easy keeping up the act that I was on top of this situation.
“Tina Finn,” he said, smiling now. “Tina Finn. One of the daughters of Olivia Finn, would I be too far off the mark assuming that?”
“Yeah, actually, she was my mom, and she just died two days ago, and and and—”
“Yesterday was the funeral.”
“Yes, yesterday was the funeral.”
“Yesterday was the funeral, and you managed to slime your way into our apartment the same night. How very resourceful of you.” This was a creepy guy, smart and wily and drunk and way too fucking good-looking. He was the kind of guy who knew he could get away with complete shit, and say and do completely shitty things because he was both great-looking and smart. I wanted to get away from this guy as fast as I could, but I couldn’t give any more ground. If I did, there was no question I’d be kicked out of there, and where was I supposed to go?
“Okay, you got my name, how about you give up yours?” I said. “Somebody Drinan, yeah? Pete, that’s your first name? So that makes you Pete Drinan. Bill was your dad?”
“Give the little lady a prize,” he said with a smirk.
“Well, listen, Pete Drinan,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere tonight. Now that you know who I am? Maybe you should just piss off.”
“Maybe you should stop thinking you have any rights here.”
“Maybe you should stop thinking I don’t.”
“And what gives you rights again? Your mother conned my father into marrying her, which gave her rights for a while, I guess, but you, I’m guessing not so much.”
“He left her this place, so that does give me rights,” I said.
“Really,” he said back, like what I had said meant nothing. He took another hit of beer.
“Yeah, really. He left it to her, and she left it to us.”
None of this seemed surprising to Pete Drinan, but it didn’t seem totally familiar with the story either. He made that little come on, let’s go wave with his hand again.
“I’m not leaving,” I said. “I don’t have to leave.”
“Well, that’s debatable, but I’m not asking you to leave. Hey, Doug!” he yelled, going toward the back of the apartment. “Listen to this!” Then he yelled at me, without even turning around, “Come on, Tina Finn, I think you should explain this situation to my big brother. Come on.”
What a jerk, I thought, and boy does he know how to order people around. I followed him back to television land to see what fresh hell this great-looking asshole was about to cook up for me.
His older brother was sitting on the sad little couch in front of the TV set, sort of slumped over, looking at the empty bowl of noodles and the half-empty glass of vodka and grapefruit juice. When he glanced up, I got a better look at him; he had the same tired, smart brown eyes as his brother, but they didn’t scare me as much for some reason. It might have been the rest of his face; his mouth was thinner and kind of kept in one line, like it was so used to being disappointed it didn’t even bother to find another shape anymore. His hair was thinning too; I could see the beginnings of a bald spot dead center on the top of his head, and his hairline had crept so far up the dude looked startled all the time. So Doug Drinan managed to look shrewd, old, startled, and disappointed.
“There’s hardly any furniture left,” he observed to no one in particular. “I wonder what he did with it all? You think he sold it? He must’ve sold it, but why?” It sounded like what it was: a very good question.
Pete was on his own track, though. He turned to me and tipped his head, like I was some kind of circus animal he could order around with these little gestures.
“Tell my brother your name,” he said, all arrogant and smug.
“Why don’t you do it for me, you seem to think it’s so funny,” I countered. He really was the kind of guy who instead of doing the simplest thing he asked, you’d really rather just irritate the shit out of him.
Pete grinned. “Oh, no, I don’t think it’s funny at all. Tina Finn. Her name is Tina Finn, and she has just shared with me a few truly remarkable facts,” he said. Then, before he could get around to narrating these fascinating facts, he glanced into the next room, which was just as I had left it: an unmade bed, piles of clothes on the floor, underwear and books and empty boxes everywhere. The place looked absolutely ransacked, because in fact I had ransacked it. “What the fuck?” He looked back at me, all angry again. “What the fuck. You went through his stuff. You went through my father’s shit?”
I blushed like a teenager. “I didn’t, I was just—um …”
“You were just what?” he asked, tossing underwear at me. “You were just casually going through my father’s underwear drawer?”
“I’m sorry, I was looking—my mom had this old bottle of perfume, and I was—”
“You were looking for a bottle of perfume in my father’s underwear drawer, and what you found was—his wallet.” He unearthed it, looked through it swiftly. “And, oh look, there’s nothing in there now, is there?” He closed the wallet and tossed it to Doug, on the couch.
“I didn’t ta
ke anything from your dad’s wallet,” I said.
“That’s a lie,” he noted correctly.
“It’s NOT a lie,” I said, continuing to lie. “Yeah, I found it in there, but I mean there was nothing in it.” It was clear that this guy was one hell of a bully, but I was pretty sure he wouldn’t actually frisk me, so he had no way to prove I had the cash, which by the way I was not about to give up. “I was looking—”
“You were looking and looking and you also found—the vodka!” he exclaimed, picking up the bottle off the coffee table, where I had left it.
“Knock it off, Pete.” The other Drinan stood, shaking his head, like he was used to this nonsense from crazy Pete but wasn’t in the mood. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said to me. “You must still be in shock.”
“Oh,” I said, surprised. Doug Drinan expressing sorrow for my loss was strangely touching, under the circumstances. “Thanks. I mean, thanks.”
“It was sudden, yes? I mean, she wasn’t sick,” he said.
“No, they, they said it was a heart attack. I don’t know.”
“That makes it hard.”
“Don’t make friends with her; she’s not staying,” Pete advised his sad big brother. He had pulled the cork out of the vodka bottle and started pouring it into a dusty glass, which he seemed to have located in one of those cabinets.
“You’re going to regret that in the morning,” said Doug.
“I’m going to regret everything in the morning; I regret everything now,” Pete informed him. “But since you’re so interested in making friends with our little intruder, maybe you should hear what she has to say about the apartment and why she’s here.” He took a hit of straight vodka. I was hardly listening. I was suddenly desperate for a drink myself and wondering if I could make one without losing any more ground with these guys. Doug looked at me with a kind of puzzled weariness, like he was sincerely curious about what I’d say in response to Pete’s nasty prodding, but also like he didn’t believe that anything really horrible was going to come out of my mouth. Seriously, he was such a tired and sad person, sort of like he’d already been through so much bad luck that he didn’t think anything could get any worse.
Twelve Rooms with a View Page 3
