Twelve Rooms with a View. Theresa Rebeck

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СКАЧАТЬ much as we can, for whatever they throw at us. What the hell is this?” We had stepped into the front room, which was filled with light from top to bottom. In spite of that hideous wall-to-wall shag rug, and all the crazy trouble with Doug Drinan, that room was really gorgeous so I got distracted for a minute just staring at it, and didn’t know what she was talking about, again. “Tina, hellloooo,” she said, waving her hand in front of my face and snapping her fingers.

      “What?” I said.

      “What,” she asked, impatient, “is this?” And with her toe she nudged a small wooden tool kit, which had been placed neatly against the wall, next to the doorway which led to the mossery.

      “Oh, that’s Len’s,” I said.

      “Len,” she repeated, looking at me like I had of course once again slept with someone I shouldn’t have.

      “He was a friend of Bill’s, and Mom’s. That’s his moss in the kitchen. They let him grow it there. He’s some kind of botanist kind of person. He lives in the building,” I explained. “He was here when the phone got cut off, and he, you know, he said I should go get a cell phone for now.” Lucy flipped the light switch. Nothing happened.

      “Yes, I see.” She sighed. “And what did you do, once you bought the cell phone? Did you call me at work, as I asked you to, and say, Lucy, the phone has been cut off and they’re probably going to try to cut the electricity as well, and maybe change the locks, could you come over and help me handle this? Did you do that?”

      “No, I didn’t do that,” I started.

      “No, you didn’t,” she said, continuing to flip the useless light switch for effect. “You went shopping.”

      “Why would I assume this guy was going to do all that stuff you said? We don’t even know these people.”

      “Tina, honestly, would you try to think for once? Hello, Monica, hi.” She was on her cell now, firing on all jets. “I’m going to need you to call Keyspan and Con Ed, the gas and electric got turned off in my mom’s apartment and we need to get it turned back on right away and I mean now. My sister is living here and she obviously can’t stay if there’s no gas or electricity, so if you need to run down to their offices then do it. I left three copies of the will on my desk; take them with you so if they give you any trouble you can prove we have the right to put the accounts in my name. Here, you can also give them the number of the building, tell them the doorman can verify that we’ve taken possession. What’s his name?” She asked me.

      “Frank,” I said.

      “Frank,” she said to the phone, and then she rattled off the phone number of the building, which of course she knew even though I did not. She finished up the call by snapping her cell shut and then continued explaining things, just continuing the story as if there had been no interruption at all. “I checked in with that Long person, the lawyer, from yesterday?”

      “I remember. Lucy, could you not talk to me like I’m an idiot?”

      “Don’t get snippy, Tina. You almost completely blew it today—”

      “I told you, I didn’t know.”

      “No, you didn’t think; you just took off for three solid hours on a shopping spree, and I’m not going to ask you where you got the money because honestly I don’t care. But you should rest assured, while I don’t think Doug Drinan has any sort of legal claim on this apartment, I don’t necessarily think that he is a liar. Did you find money here?” She waved her hands idly at the many shopping bags I had dumped on the floor.

      “I didn’t have anything to wear,” I said, trying to get to the beginnings of a defence here. She was not interested. “You listen to me,” she snapped. “If I hadn’t gotten worried about not hearing from you, and showed up, what would have happened?”

      “I don’t actually care what would have—”

      “You’d be locked out. We all would be locked out. We would not have access to the apartment or the building, for that matter, for months. We’d have to go to a judge to get an injunction to get permission to even get a look at the place, by which point the Drinan brothers will have filed to legally contest their father’s will, which depending on how long that takes to get through the courts? Cuts us off for years. Years. I checked this out with Daniel’s friend, the real estate lawyer, who assures me that, contrary to what that idiot told us yesterday, a scenario like that leaves us with virtually no standing whatsoever. If they can prove that Bill was of unsound mind, and Mom was of unsound character, and none of us had ever met Bill and had never even set foot in this apartment, it is not that far a leap to making the claim that Mom tricked him into changing that stupid will, and that we have no claim upon this place. And that is what they are going to try to do. So do me a favor and don’t make their case for them, would you? We put you here for a reason. Stay put.”

      “You expect me to never leave.”

      “Not unless you pick up your handy new little throwaway cell phone, and call me first, and let me know that you need to go out for two hours and that Alison or I need to come by and be on site while you are off traipsing about.”

      “Well, so how long—”

      “As long as I say! If you don’t like this deal, let me know. Let me know, and you can go back to Darren and the trailer park and the Delaware Water Gap now, instead of later. Because if you don’t help me make this work? That is where you’re going to end up anyway.”

      Now even though I thought Lucy really was overreacting and being obviously a total nightmare, this argument made a relatively significant impression on me. Even though I couldn’t fully follow the dastardly legal turns she had already worked out for herself, in terms of where this situation maybe could go? It was pretty clear that me getting booted out of there, and back to cleaning houses in Delaware, was in the cards if we didn’t pull this off.

      “Okay okay okay,” I said.

      “Not okay okay okay!” she snapped. “I don’t want to hear some sort of snotty okay! I want to hear, Yes Lucy I Will Do Whatever You Say.”

      “Well, I’m not going to say that,” I snapped back. “I’ll do it, but I’m not going to say it.”

      “Fine,” she said, clearly sick of me. “Now, what’s the story with all this moss? This is actually here for a reason?” Which, look, I find it impressive when she does that. In the middle of all that arguing, she still remembered the one thing I told her about the moss.

      “Len, it’s Len’s moss. He lives on the top floor,” I said.

      “Well, Len is going to have to get his moss out of here,” she said, shoving his little tool box with one of her slick black heels.

      “I don’t have his number,” I said. “But I could go downstairs and get that doorman to buzz up and see if he’s there.”

      “That’s a good idea,” she said, only half paying attention again.

      “Maybe I should get the keys copied, while I’m down there.”

      “Now that, actually, would be useful,” Lucy noted. She was dialing her cell, then she popped it to the side of her head while she held out the keys. I took them. “Listen, don’t panic, there’s СКАЧАТЬ