Theresa Rebeck - Twelve Rooms with a View

“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 pantsuit—pants and a jacket made out of synthetic beige polyester—and then she also had on actual panty hose and a kind of boring-looking pair of low brown heels. I’m sure that everything she was wearing cost more than I made in a month of cleaning houses, but frankly I don’t fully understand why people dress like that.

“This place is fabulous ,” she informed me, striding over and holding out her hand for me to shake. “Hi, I’m Betsy Hastings. Did I hear you saying something about the moss, in the front kitchen?”

“We haven’t been able to get hold of the guy who owns the moss,” Lucy announced, “but it’s being handled.”

“No worries, no worries,” said Betsy Hastings. As opposed to my sister, she couldn’t have been nicer. “This whole place is amazing. It’s incredible when a place like this comes on the market. Just thrilling.”

“You’re the real estate person,” I guessed.

“A lot of people are already interested, Tina,” Lucy informed me. “And there are a lot of questions that need to be answered. Things are very preliminary at this point.”

“No question, no question,” Betsy agreed. “I would love it if you would let me handle this. I have a number of corporate clients who would pick it up immediately, as is. I mean, I don’t think you need to worry about anything, the moss, the carpets, the appliances, you’re in a situation where you can completely let the buyer take care of all of that. Even in this market, which obviously has cooled considerably in the past couple years. But you don’t have anything to worry about; this place is amazing. ”