Twelve Rooms with a View (46 page)

In the car she threw her arms around me and hugged me with happiness. “Thank you thank you thank you,” she said.

“Thank you, Jennifer,” I said. “You did as much for me as anyone I’ve ever known in my whole life.”

“I have to tell you something,” she whispered, and her hand slipped into mine as she put her head on my shoulder. “My mom voted for you.”

“What?” I said, trying to remember what that meant.

“She voted for you. She didn’t want them to kick you out. She said you did a good thing, telling the cops about the phony will, that was the right thing to do. And she also said you were really nice and a good babysitter. And she voted for you.”

The next day Frank was fired when he told a representative from the co-op board that he would not hire a security firm to help remove me from the building. It didn’t matter. I was already out of there, and I had a lot of money in my pocket, which was about to come in very handy.

A month later Julianna Gideon bumped into Frank at a restaurant where she was having lunch with her roommate from Princeton. Frank
looked especially handsome; he was wearing an extremely well-cut Armani suit that cost three thousand easily. He explained that he had a new job with a small but well-regarded investment firm that was looking to expand their business in several South American capitals. Julianna’s roommate had done her sophomore year in Spain, so she and Frank carried on a quick and intelligent conversation in that most romantic of languages. Julianna was even more charmed than before, and without notifying her mother, she agreed to have dinner with Frank the following week. By their third date, Frank felt comfortable enough to invite her back to his apartment, which was small but beautifully furnished. He lived alone, he explained, because his father and brothers had recently come into money and returned to their family home in the Dominican Republic. She spent the night.

Gcina Motufe, an illegal immigrant from Somalia, presented her petition for amnesty to the INS later that week. Her extremely clever lawyer convinced the INS that because Gcina was underage, she should be in foster care until her case comes before the courts. She’s currently living with a nice, wealthy family out at the Delaware Water Gap.

Vince Masterson was angry that once again his father had dismissed his considered opinion and had voted with the board to have the Finns removed from the Livingston Mansion Apartment. He told his father so, rather more forcefully than usual, which his father took poorly, observing that if Vince didn’t like living rent-free in one of the most exclusive buildings in Manhattan, he was welcome to leave. A few months later, Vince did. He moved to Moscow, invested every penny of his trust fund in the Russian banking system, and managed to triple his fortune within four years. Every spring he goes golfing in Dubai.

Five months after I left the Edge, I showed up at the Surrogate’s Court in lower Manhattan. After a series of postponements, our probate, or at least the first of a series of hearings on our probate, was finally on the docket. It was a nice morning in mid-April; the warmth of the air seemed mysterious and lively, like something was truly about to be born if we just had the patience to wait for it. Who would go inside on a morning like that?

“Well, look who it is,” Lucy said, clipping up the courthouse steps
like a warrior, her hair pulled back, severe and businesslike as usual in her gray suit. “I guess I’m not surprised.”

“Hi, Lucy,” I said. “I’m glad to see you.”

“You know, Alison’s been worried sick,” she informed me crisply. “You could have called. We had no idea whatsoever where you were.”

“Neither of you guys really have room for me,” I told her. “I needed to take care of myself for a while.”

“And you couldn’t be
bothered
to make a
phone call
?”

“I had a lot of things to take care of, and I needed to think,” I told her. “And you know, could you tone this down? I came here to talk, and I don’t need you going at me before anybody’s even said anything, okay?”

“By all means, Tina, tell me how to behave, since you are such an ideal role model for us all.”

“Okay, fine, if that’s the way you want it, I guess that’s the way things are always going to be,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry we don’t understand each other.”

“And whose fault is that?” she said in a nasty tone. She didn’t even look at me; she was too busy checking her BlackBerry.

“Yours,” I said. “I think it’s yours.”

“Of course you do.” She nodded.

“Where’s Alison?” I asked, looking around.

“She’s not coming, she’s too upset. She and Daniel are probably splitting up. And since they were married for ten years, he still expects his share of the apartment, and he thinks Grossman is completely incompetent, so we have a whole extra set of lawyers to deal with now, which is an utter delight.”

“Alison and Daniel are splitting up?” I said.

“Yes, Tina, you might have known that if you had been anywhere reachable, which of course as usual you weren’t.”

“Well,” I said. “I’m sorry to hear it.”

“You never liked Daniel,” Lucy said, dismissing my regret like yesterday’s news.

“No, I didn’t like Daniel, but I do like Alison,” I told her. “So she’s not coming today?”

“No,” said Lucy. “There’s no need. I’m the administratrix. Neither of you needs to be here. As usual, I will do the work.” She turned, dismissing me, and headed inside.

“Hey, Lucy,” I said. “Count me out. I’m going to walk away from this. Okay? I want nothing to do with it. And you know, honestly—honestly, I think you should do that too.”

“What?” she said, like this was the most insane thing she had ever heard.

“There’s something wrong with that apartment,” I said. “It’s like, enchanted. Everything is so beautiful but you know, there’s poison in the walls. You should just walk away.”

“Well gee, Tina, thanks for the advice. As usual, you’re so sensible.”

“I’m not kidding, Lucy.”

“Good-bye, Tina.”

“I’m going to call Alison, okay?” I yelled after her. “Tell her I’m going to call.” She disappeared into the courthouse entryway and didn’t look back.

Pete didn’t have any luck with Doug either. Doug and Lucy, neither of them was built to walk away from a fight, or the past. As it turned out, however, Pete and I were. After six months of wrangling with co-op boards and landlords and mortgage brokers and buildings all over the Upper West Side, we got a place of our own, farther uptown. It’s a two-bedroom, with a tiny dining room, tiny living room, tiny kitchen, and a sliver of a view of the river, if you stand against one of the windows and lean over exactly right.

Jennifer White comes over to babysit for us now. And once in a while, Alison comes for dinner. She plays with the baby and then puts her to bed while I try to finish my homework so I can finally get through college. After we’re done sharing our lives, she fills us in on all the legal wranglings and what Doug is up to and what Lucy is doing and what clever trick Ira Grossman introduced last week and what new witnesses Doug found who are willing to state definitively that Mom and Bill were unhappy and crazy and why the one will is meaningless and why the other wills—the crazy fake one as well as the ones that never got written—are not. And then we laugh and kiss each other good night.

A year after I moved in and out of the Edgewood, the anthropological botanist Leonard Colbert was found dead in his penthouse. Apparently he had been regularly ingesting rare hallucinogens, which police suspected he was cultivating in his extensive greenhouse. Since it was clear that he had died by his own hand, a full investigation was never conducted. The penthouse apartment of the Edgewood was known to be worth fourteen million dollars easily. He did not leave a will.