“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 nothing to get upset about,” she said, by which I knew she was talking to Alison. “But I’m over at the apartment. There’s a lot going on.”
Okay, now you do have to wonder why people like Lucy believe people like me when we suddenly cave and agree to all sorts of nonsense in the middle of an argument. Because really I had no intention of calling Len and telling him he had to move his moss. Instead, I went downstairs, waved to Frank, walked over to Columbus and found the one inexplicable bodega which actually hovers there, and I bought myself a box of Dots. Then I walked around the block, ate the Dots, and thought about what it was that I was going to do next. Then I wandered around the Upper West Side some more and I found a crummy little hardware store, where they made some new keys for me. While I was there I bought a few more choice items. Then I went back home, and more and more I felt I had every right to think of it that way.
“The moss guy isn’t in. Frank buzzed him about eight times but he wasn’t answering,” I told Lucy. “So I asked for his phone number, but it’s unlisted and the doorman isn’t allowed to give it out. Anyway, I left him a message with the doorman to call as soon as he got in, so when he does I’ll tell him that we need him to move all that stuff. Here, I got a set of keys for you and then also an extra one, in addition to the ones I have. Soaring right through the lie about Len, I started fumbling with the keys. She didn’t even look up as she took them from me.
“You didn’t leave my number as well?” she asked, pecking away at her laptop. She had set it up on that little coffee table back in the apartment side of the apartment and there was a whole mess of documents and file folders kind of falling out of her briefcase on the couch. She clearly had decided to spend the rest of the day back there. I felt like I had been invaded.
“He and I got kind of friendly so I just thought it would be better for him to call me,” I said.
“You thought it would be better if I let you handle it,” she said, making this sound like a stupendously idiotic idea. I looked at the floor and acted like I was really sorry that I was such a stupid person, which worked, because that’s what she thinks I am anyway. Smart people are easy to fool about really stupid things. It’s all about the assumptions.
The door to the bathroom behind the little laundry room swung open and a woman appeared. I just about jumped out of my skin, but Lucy kept on typing.
“Fantastic,” the woman said, smiling at me like we were old friends. She had very tight hair, blonde and tight to her head, and she was exceptionally tanned. She also wore a tight beige microsuede