her fingers like a cat. “There’s no question they’ll fight it, but we could get at least a little bit of a jump on those Drinans. Potentially we could leave them in the dust.”
“They’re already in the dust. Their father just died,” I reminded her.
“Their father, who disinherited them,” she retorted.
“Precisely,” I said. “Precisely.”
“You’re not going to get all moralistic about this,” Lucy said, looking up from her docs finally. “Oh, no no. This is not a situation of our making.”
“You’re sitting here—plotting!” I said.
“Plotting to make you rich. Oh, a couple million dollars, that would suck. You might have to give up cleaning houses.”
“I wasn’t cleaning houses,” I told her, suddenly feeling peevish as hell. “I was managing properties.”
“Well, my way you can own the properties you manage, how’s that for a thought,” she said, starting to close up the Chinese food cartons. “And you can go back to college and finish your oh-so-useful degree in pottery, and you can start your own little pottery shop and throw clay around for the rest of your life and never worry ever ever ever about whether or not you make one red cent off any of it. That’s what can happen to your life, Tina, if you just sit still and let me make you rich.”
“That was mean,” I said.
“What?” she said, looking at me like I was nuts. “That was mean?”
“Yeah, mean. You’re being mean to me again, Lucy.”
“We’re all tired. It’s been a long couple of days,” Daniel chimed in, soothing. He was being Mr Good Brother-in-law now, asking quietly supportive questions and making sure Lucy knew that We Were In This Together. “Lucy’s worked hard to protect us all, and I for one appreciate it.” He smiled at her, oh so appreciative. I wanted to smack them both. Instead, I smiled wanly and nodded my sheepish little head.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m still shook up about Mom.”
“We all are,” Alison said, like she thought maybe I was being a bit too morally superior about this after all.
“I know I know, I mean, what I mean is I didn’t get much sleep last night.” I nodded, fully in retreat mode because what other option did I have? I rubbed my little eyes for effect. “I think I’d better go lie down.”
“Be my guest,” Lucy shrugged, continuing to clean. Which was her way of letting me know that this wasn’t my apartment, it was her apartment, and I wasn’t calling the shots. As if I ever called the shots with this crew. In any event, I went and hid in the bedroom with the futons on the floor, and I stared at the stars on the ceiling and waited for my so-called family to leave. Which they did not do for what seemed forever, or at least long enough for me to start worrying that maybe they were out there plotting about what they were going to do to cut me out of my share of the loot once we got our hands on it. And once it occurred to me that that was probably what they were doing, I got myself worked into a complete paranoid frenzy, and I almost went back out there to just hang out and make sure they knew that they weren’t pulling any fast ones on me, and I was a full member of this little tribe of pirates, and there would be no sneaking around and cheating anybody out of anything. Then I thought that I probably shouldn’t be so confrontational, that that would make them think I was paranoid and weak, and that the smartest move actually would be sneaking through the pink room and into the empty room next to the television room, where I could hide behind the door and find out about their diabolical maneuverings with a clever bit of eavesdropping.
I was actually about to put this idiotic plan in motion—I mean, I was literally sneaking to the door of the pink room, and easing it open as silently as I could—when I heard them coming down the hallway. So then I had to sneak back and slide into the futon against the far wall, so that when Lucy looked back through the crack in the door she could see me sleeping peacefully and tell herself that I was a mess, but not a problem. Her shadow hovered in the doorway for a moment, watching my back, curled against the light in the hallway. Then she thought whatever it was she needed to think, and she left.
I lay there for a good five minutes after I heard the door thump shut, and the three different tumblers turn in their locks. And then I waited another five minutes. I didn’t want anybody coming back and interrupting me, which was a complete possibility, given the devious mind of my older sister. But after fifteen minutes I was fairly sure that they had in fact driven away, so I turned the light on and I pulled out the sack I had hidden underneath all the clothes that I had bought that afternoon, and then I retrieved my afternoon’s purchases from where I had stuffed them in my backpack.
So this is what I had: one Philips-head screwdriver with exchangeable heads, one zinc-plated steel four-inch spring-bolt lock, and two brass chain door guards. Both the spring bolt and the chain guards came with their own set of screws, but screws are cheap so I bought an extra half dozen just in case.
And then I spent the next fifty minutes locking myself into that apartment.
I knew it would piss off absolutely everybody that I was doing this—Lucy, Alison, Daniel, those Drinans, maybe even Len the moss lover and Frank the doorman, both of whom had really been so nice to me. Nobody was going to be happy that I had figured out a way to be the one who said who could come in and who couldn’t. But honestly I didn’t see that I had much choice. In case you hadn’t noticed, in spite of the fact that I was totally invaded the night before, not one person all day actually had spent one second figuring out how I was supposed to protect myself, given that those Drinan brothers had keys and also that they clearly thought it was well within their rights to use them at any given moment, and that they actually had badly frightened me, twice. Lucy was spending all her time cooking up plans to pull a fast one and get one over on those guys; well, if you ask me it wouldn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out that they were doing the same thing to us. I needed protection. I needed a spring bolt, and two security chains.
I was right. I mean, I was like, immediately right. Like within ten minutes of finishing the installation process. I was back in the kitchen pouring myself a tumbler of vodka grapefruit surprise when the yelling started. You could hear the guy all the way back there, he was that mad.
“What the fuck? HEY. WHAT THE FUCK,” he yelled, starting to pound the shit out of the door. Then he started yanking and pulling at it, and pounding some more. It was enormously satisfying.
“GO AWAY!” I yelled in return, while I sauntered back up to the front of the apartment. “I’M CALLING THE COPS!”
“I AM THE COPS!” he yelled. “OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR.” By this I knew it was the other Drinan, the cop with the sexy eyes. Not that I was surprised.
“I’M SLEEPING IN HERE AND I’M NOT BOTHERING ANYBODY. GO AWAY,” I yelled.
“OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR,” he yelled back.
“What, you got like three sentences, is that all you know how to say?” I asked him, through the door. “Open the door, I’m a cop, what the fuck, is that all you know how to say?”
“I’d open the door, Tina Finn,” he warned me.
“Oh yeah, why?” I said to the door, kind of bold and cocky. It was weird; all of a sudden I felt like I was flirting with someone in a bar. “What are you going to do to me, officer?”
“I’m going to arrest you,” he announced.
“I’m not the one trying to break in and harass an innocent citizen in her home, dude,” I retorted. “If I put a call in to 911, you’re the one who’s in the shithouse.”
“There’s a stay on the apartment, Tina,” he informed me,