Twelve Rooms with a View

The first place I checked was the dresser in the alcove. It seemed to me that that was probably the only place where Mom might have put anything of value to her; the rest of the room really was nothing but piles of clothes, a chair, a couple of books on the floor, and the unmade bed. Besides, the dresser really did look like she might have been using it as a vanity; there was an old gilt mirror glued to the wall above it, with the feet of half a cherub hanging down from the top. The top of the dresser had a few things on it—a hairbrush, a comb, a couple of empty glasses with some dry little well of alcohol stuck to the bottom. Then there was a completely tarnished little round silver boxlike thing, with curlicues and a big French fleur-de-lis right on top that when you opened it there were a whole bunch of keys and an old wedding ring and three little bitty medals inside. One of them said CHEMISTRY on it. In addition to the round silver box there were a couple of really old photographs in really old frames of no one I knew, and then there were a couple photographs unframed, behind them, with the edges curling toward the middle. One of them 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 seriously 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 can of keys, which I thought might be useful for future exploration, and then I looked in the drawers.

The top drawer had her underwear in it, lots of sad bras and panties, several old pairs of neutral-colored support hose, and a quart bottle of good vodka. Then in the other drawer, just beneath it, was Bill’s underwear, gigantic pairs of white and light blue cotton briefs. I so did not want to go pawing through that stuff—I mean, really, I wanted to find that little bottle of perfume because I wanted to have it and honestly I didn’t think anyone else would want it, but I was quickly losing my nerve. I had never even met this nutty alcoholic; who knew what lurked in his underwear? Rather than just 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 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. A serious wad of money, the bills smooth and neatly pressed together, like they give it to you at the bank, if you are the sort of person that a bank will actually give money to. So I thought, Oh thank God, and I took it out to count it and those crispy new bills were all fifties and hundreds; Bill had seven hundred dollars in that wallet, which would I think be a significant windfall to pretty much anybody, but was a virtual miracle to a person of my limited means. I pocketed the cash.

When I leaned over to sort of half-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 those boxes out of there 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, and an old cedar jewelry box filled with fake pearls and junky necklaces, another quart-sized bottle of vodka, nearly empty, 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. And then of course, as much as I wanted it, it suddenly just seemed unbearably awful to me. That perfume started with her at the beginning of her past, when she thought that lots of glamorous things were in store for her. I know that’s why she was so careful with it; she was waiting for her life to be as exciting as that bottle of perfume, and the closest she ever got was a couple of cocktail parties with my father, who hardly ever had a job, and whose temper was the bane of her existence. I tipped the bottle to one side, trying to figure out how much perfume was still in there, after thirty-seven years. It was impossible to say.

It was not, of course, until this very moment that it occurred to me that I had left a pan full of water boiling this whole time on the stove top. Which I have done several times in the past, in different apartments, to more or less disastrous results, so I jolted myself out of this mournful and useless reverie and ran back to that lousy kitchenette, where I put more water on to boil, then made another cocktail, cooked up some noodles, had another drink, watched the end of a documentary about Egypt, and had a good cry. Then I thought about just passing out on that couch in front of the television set, which seemed like a really poor idea, because that is the sort of thing that leads one to think one might actually be an alcoholic like one’s mother which was a thought I didn’t particularly want to entertain that night. So then I stood up, definitely wobbly, but 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 then I wandered back through that maze of rooms until I found the one with the stars and planets 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 kind of a kid’s coverlet that was dark blue with rocket ships all over it. And then I slid off my jeans and got under that cover and I cried a little more, and then I went to sleep.

“Who the fuck are you?”

That’s the next thing I remember. Two guys 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, the one standing inside the room with his hand on the light switch, was drunk. You 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.

“Who gives a fuck what time it is? Who the fuck are you?” the first guy said again.

“Shit,” I said. Which, it 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 it was 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 huge guy was reaching over to grab me. Honestly, I remember thinking, what a fucking drag. I’m in a total mess again and this time it isn’t even my fault; me staying here was Lucy’s dumb idea, I was just doing what Lucy wanted, and here I am now in a total fucking mess. I squeezed myself back against the wall, ducked my head down and threw my arm across my face because it was taking me so long 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, JESUS BACK OFF YOU JERK.” I smacked Pete’s hand away before he could touch me, and surprisingly he actually did back off. Feeling suddenly cocky I continued yelling. “Turn around, would you please TURN AROUND?”

Okay, why this worked I have no idea, but it did; both of these guys did as they were told. I mean I was freaked out because seriously these were two huge guys, both of them maybe six two or six four and I’m a little bit of a peewee so I totally did not expect them to do as I said. But they did so I grabbed my jeans off the floor and slid them on fast. Being half naked was not going to be an advantage in whatever this situation turned out to be, that much was certain.

“Who the fuck are you guys?” I said, trying to sound angry and sure of myself. I was totally scared out of my mind so I had to keep the upper hand as long as I could.

“We’re the ones asking questions here,” Pete started. “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 I noticed that he was taking a hit off a beer bottle. No question: 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 back toward the back of the apartment, like he knew what was back there and it made him sad. Pete looked like he wanted to argue about this, but then all of a sudden he was too tired to do it, so he looked back at me and reached out again, like he was going to grab me. I backed up. He didn’t get mad this time, though, he just moved his hand, like 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 by now, he was half following the other guy, who had already headed down the hall. He took a hit off his beer, looking totally wiped 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 that 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 his whole face look like a worried kid, even while he was being mean. Under the circumstances obviously I wasn’t falling for it, plus, I truly didn’t get what was supposedly 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 in the moment that they didn’t turn out to be rapists, but after the 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 turned and 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 that teeny 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 those bills I had stashed there. I was glad I had taken the precaution of pocketing that stuff right when I found it; it was starting to look like I might need it 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 just 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 still 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, none at all. If I did, there was no question I was going to 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 smirked.

“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. That doesn’t give me no rights,” I said.

“Really,” he said back, like what I said just meant nothing. He took another hit off that beer.

“Yeah, really,” I said. “He left it to her, and she left it to us.”

None of this seemed surprising to old Pete Drinan, but it didn’t seem like he was totally familiar with the story either. He made that little wave with his hand again, like, Let’s go.

“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, heading down the hallway toward the back of the apartment. “Listen to this!” Then he yelled back to me again, without even turning around. “Come on, Tina Finn, I think it would be really great for you to explain this situation to my big brother. Come on.”