Twelve Rooms with a View (40 page)

“Relax, Alison,” Lucy warned her. “We’re not losing anything. It’s just going to take a bit longer to win. We have to be both wily and tenacious, and as you and I both know, Tina is completely capable of that.”

“Oh great. I can’t wait to hear what I’m capable of,” I said. “Keep going, Lucy.”

“Vince would really like to have dinner with you.”

“So you arranged for that. For me to have dinner with him.”

“You have a reservation at Neal’s, for seven-thirty. He’ll meet you there.”

“And then we can cab back home together,” I observed, picking up on the genius of the plan fast enough.

“Well, that would be up to you, but since you live in the same building I don’t know why not.”

“Perfect,” I said. “I’m really looking forward to sharing a cab with that octopus.”

“He’s quite attractive,” Lucy told Alison, ignoring my tone. “He looks like a supermodel. I can’t believe he looks like that
and
he has money! Oh, you put water on for tea! Is there enough for me?” She sailed back into the kitchen and started looking around for the tea bags.

“Yes, there’s water. I don’t think it’s ready yet, but maybe it is,” Alison twittered. “I don’t know how long you keep it on.”

“You keep it on until it
boils,”
I said. “Are you kidding me? You really don’t even know how to boil
water?”

“We don’t have tea very often, Tina,” she replied, with an air of offended dignity. “I just heat up the water in the microwave.”

“Well, let me clue you in to something. The microwave uses up sixty zillion times as much energy as you need, and it
doesn’t get the water hot enough.”

“Don’t yell at her,” Lucy warned me.

“How about if I yell at you?” I said, furious.

“What, what?” said Alison. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, stop acting like an idiot, Alison,” I sneered. “I’m being pimped out by my own sisters, and you want me to act like there’s nothing
wrong?”

“Inflammatory language is not going to be helpful here,” Lucy announced.

“Inflammatory language is
never
helpful, that’s not why I use it!” I hissed. “You want me to fuck that guy. I’m supposed to fuck Vince Masterson because his father is on the fucking co-op board.”

“He is the
president
of the co-op board.”

“No one said you had to sleep with him,” Alison protested. “We just thought that since he liked you already, that you could ask for his help, Tina, that’s all we were talking about.”

“Alison, grow up and get a clue, would you, please? Vince Masterson does not want to have
dinner
with me.”

“A couple of months ago, I almost walked in on you and Vince doing the deed right out front on that hideous shag rug,” Lucy pointed out, unimpressed with my moral outrage. “I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that if you decided to follow through on that impulse, it might put things on a friendlier footing. Between us and the co-op board.”

“Why don’t
you
have sex with him, you think it’s such a great idea.”

“Why would I when you and he have already established such a rapport.”

“You don’t have to have sex with him, Tina, come on,” Alison interjected with a note of pleading. “Just have dinner with him, that’s all, and remind him that we’re really good people and we want to do what’s best for the building and the apartment, we want it to be safe and have it go into the right hands. That’s really what we want, and they don’t have to worry about that.”

“Great, that’s great, I’m sure that will make a big impression on old Vince,” I said, not really caring about any of this, I found the whole scenario so depressing. “My sisters are pimping me out,” I muttered. “That’s great. My sisters are pimping me out.”

“Please stop saying that, it’s just not true,” said Alison.

“You know, Mom would not want this,” I said. “You know that.”

“She doesn’t get a vote,” Lucy said.

“What do you think?” I said to Alison. “You think Mom would want me to do this? Just go have sex with this guy because Lucy thinks maybe that’ll help?”

“It’s because of what
she
wanted. You don’t know, Tina, Mom wanted—”

“Alison—” Lucy began.

“No, we have to tell her. If we don’t tell her, how will she know?”

“Know what?” I asked.

They stared at each other. Lucy was clearly both furious and calculating,
while Alison pleaded with her sad, puppylike eyes. Lucy looked up at the ceiling, like Pontius Pilate about to dip his bloody hands into a plate of water in the picture my mother had on the wall of the living room when we were kids.

“Well, now you have to tell me,” I pointed out.

“Fine,” said Lucy. “Alison, be my guest.”

“Mom called me,” Alison whispered. And then stopped.

“Mom
called
you? When, like last week? From the grave?” I knew it was mean, but I had had it with both of them by that point.

“Before. Before the grave. But just before.”

“Alison, stop beating around the bush!”

“I’m not, I’m telling you! She called me. She was feeling sick. And she was worried. She felt like she couldn’t stay here, that she was living in someone else’s home. But Bill had left it to her, he wanted her to have it, and she wanted to stay here and be close to him, but she was worried that something might happen to her and she wanted to make a will. She wanted to make sure, make sure that his sons would get their home back.”

This revelation landed with some authority.

“When was this?”

“It was just a few days. Before she died. Like three, even,” Alison admitted.

“And—”

“Yes. She wanted to make a will, but she didn’t make a will. We weren’t sure, we thought maybe she called that lawyer—”

“Mr. Long?”

“Yes, him, we thought maybe she had called him and told him?”

“But we’ve seen his deposition, and it wasn’t there,” Lucy narrated. “They asked him specifically, did she ever make statements to the effect that she felt the property was deeded to her improperly. He said no.”

“So we think she never said it to him. We think she only said it to me, then didn’t do it.”

“And you didn’t tell anybody. You didn’t tell the lawyers or the Drinans. Or me.”

“No, she didn’t,” Lucy said. She went to the refrigerator and with one icy motion opened the freezer door and grabbed the vodka bottle,
then pulled the cork out with her teeth. I felt like I was in Russia suddenly. “She didn’t tell anybody at first because she didn’t know what Mom meant,” she continued. “And then when Mom died, we started getting these phone calls about a house—”

“They said ‘apartment,’” Alison added. “But Mom had called it a house. That’s why I was confused. She said it was a house.”

“So you didn’t tell anybody.”

“I told Daniel and Lucy. But they, they said not to tell anybody else. Because if Mom really had wanted to leave it to someone else, she’d had plenty of time to do it. Or she could have called her lawyer. She could have done that anytime. So maybe she was drunk or something. When she called me. And if she was drunk, then she maybe didn’t really mean what she said, and if I told people it would just confuse things.”

“It doesn’t sound too confusing to me,” I said. “You tell somebody—like, Mr. Long, say—that she wanted the Drinans to have the apartment? That kind of statement would make things significantly
less
confusing. You tell them that and all the turmoil goes away, Alison.”

“Yes, people suspected your unpredictable conscience might choose to see things that way,” Lucy said, downing a straight shot of vodka from one of my few clean glasses. “Which is why people felt that the right thing to do, to protect you and your interests, was to keep it to ourselves.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means sometimes you get on a high horse and sometimes you get on quite a different horse, and no one knows which you’re going to choose on any given day.”

“That’s not what I do.”

“Tina. Your immediate reaction to this story is to run off and tell the lawyers? This is what Mom wanted, so that’s what we should do, ‘it’s not confusing,’ ‘it makes all the problems go away.’ But it doesn’t. It’s hearsay. Alison can’t remember exactly what Mom said. And you weren’t on the phone call, you weren’t even on the call list, so you don’t know what Mom may or may not have wanted. So you can’t testify to what Alison just told you anyway. But if Mom called anyone else?” She shrugged and poured herself another vodka.

“Can I have some of that?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said, finding the second clean glass and pouring the shot, which I tossed back. It tasted good.

“You mean one of the Drinans,” I said. “You think she called one of them and said that she wanted to do the right thing and leave them the apartment.”

“Whether or not she did, that would be hearsay too. Unless somebody has it in writing, none of it is admissible.”

“Which is why—what? Which is why the co-op board is the bigger problem today?”

“They’re all problems,” Lucy said. “But today the co-op board is the big one, yes.” She poured me another vodka, rather more than I needed. I knew she was trying to get me drunk so I’d go along with her crazy plot, but I almost appreciated the gesture. “Listen, Tina,” she said. “The Drinans are not going to win this. The one piece of evidence they need—that Mom intended to leave the apartment to them—doesn’t exist! So if the co-op board takes some crazy position against us, it won’t do anybody any good. It will just complicate things. You’ll be doing everyone a favor if you can straighten this out.”

“Lucy says Vince is really nice,” Alison said sadly. “She thinks he wants to help us.”

“Oh, for crying out loud,” I said. “I was going to make a dinner.”

“You can do it tomorrow,” Lucy told me. “Maybe you could wear that black dress you wore to the press conference at Sotheby’s. You really look terrific in that.”

I
WENT TO THAT RESTAURANT TO MEET
V
INCE
. W
HY NOT?
I thought. The honest pleasure I had felt when I saw Alison poking around my mossless kitchen had completely evaporated; I didn’t want to even try cooking now, I just wanted to get away from my sisters. Plus, even though I didn’t know what the dead people who had put all this in motion had wanted, I knew that handing the apartment over to the building was what they
didn’t
want. Plus the food would be good. Plus I was out of cash, and under the circumstances Vince would definitely have to pay for it.

“Tina, hi,” he said, smiling, as I walked into the bar. He stood up from his stool and leaned over and kissed me on the mouth, quick but deliberate. There would be no mystery around the assumptions of the evening. “That dress really is stunning; I was hoping you’d wear it.”

“My sister suggested you might feel that way,” I replied. “We aim to please.”

“And you do,” he said, slightly gallant but also slightly creepy. Then he turned to the bartender, who of course was right there waiting for his next command. “A vodka gimlet for the lady,” Vince told him. “And can we have some of those cheese things that keep wandering by? I’m
starving.”

Those “cheese things” turned out to be some sort of cheddar cream puff, which was all we ate while Vince poured vodka gimlets into me at the bar.

“Aren’t we going to eat?” I asked, as the bartender delivered my third gimlet. “I’m getting drunk.”

“But you’re so charming when you’re drunk,” Vince reassured me. “I confess I was hoping to get you a little inebriated and then lure you
back into that hot tub. I can still see you there, surrounded by naked men. I can’t believe I missed that.”

“A little louder, Vince, I don’t think the entire restaurant heard you. And by the way, I do understand what the intentions of the evening are, but can’t you at least pretend?” I leaned over the bar and spoke to the bartender. “We’re going to be eating at the bar,” I told him. “I’d like a big steak, the best one you’ve got, medium rare.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied discreetly. Vince raised his Scotch glass, which was empty for the third time.

“I’d slow down, Vince, you’ve got a long night ahead of you.”

“I’m looking forward to it. You’ll not escape me again, Tina Finn, and while we’re on the subject, I have a bone to pick with you. Why are you playing so hard to get? I know you like me.”

“Yeah, I love it when people try to extort me into having sex with them. That’s my favorite, favorite thing.”

“If your sister hadn’t interrupted us, we’d have consummated our friendship the first day I met you. Nobody was extorting you then.”

“What can I say, Vince? Somehow the mystery’s lost,” I said, but when I glanced over at him, honestly, I had to admit in my heart that maybe he had a point. His jacket hung beautifully across his back, and his blue eyes considered me with a kind of animal intelligence it was hard not to appreciate. The guy just radiated money and charisma. When he caught on to the fact that I was sizing him up, he grinned, which made him look both better and worse.

“Extortion, my ass,” he said, leaning in and kissing me. This time there was nothing fast about it, and it involved a lot of tongue. On top of the three gimlets, it made me see stars, but I was not ready to hurl myself down the rabbit hole just yet. I pushed him back.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said.

“I have a steak coming,” I reminded him.

“For crying out loud, I’m jumping out of my skin here,” he informed me. “How long am I going to have to wait for this?”

“I don’t know, Vince,” I said, “but the whining is not doing it for
me at the moment. I thought we were having dinner. You need to slow the train down.”

This pissed him off. “You need to be nice,” he said darkly.

“I
am
being nice,” I retorted. “As nice as I get in situations like this. So what is going on with your stupid co-op board anyway? Lucy was acting like six years of legal hassle is nothing compared to what those jerks might be cooking up.”

“Well, they’re legally evicting you this week, so she might have a point,” he informed me, continuing in the tone of careless nastiness we had both been taking. As soon as he said it, he half regretted it, I could tell, but only because it meant he wasn’t going to get laid until he explained what that idle but utterly specific comment meant.