"Yes, yesterday was the funeral."

"Yesterday was the funeral, and you 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 f.u.c.king good-looking. He was the kind of guy who knew he could get away with complete s.h.i.+t, and say and do completely s.h.i.+tty 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. If I did, there was no question I'd 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 said with a smirk.

"Well, listen, Pete Drinan," I said. "I'm not going anywhere tonight. Now that you know who I am? Maybe you should just p.i.s.s 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, so that does give me rights," I said.

"Really," he said back, like what I had said meant nothing. He took another hit of beer.

"Yeah, really. He left it to her, and she left it to us."

None of this seemed surprising to Pete Drinan, but it didn't seem totally familiar with the story either. He made that little come on, let's go wave with his hand again.

"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, going toward the back of the apartment. "Listen to this!" Then he yelled at me, without even turning around, "Come on, Tina Finn, I think you should explain this situation to my big brother. Come on."

What a jerk, I thought, and boy does he know how to order people around. I followed him back to television land to see what fresh h.e.l.l this great-looking a.s.shole was about to cook up for me.

His older brother was sitting on the sad little couch in front of the TV set, sort of slumped over, looking at the empty bowl of noodles and the half-empty gla.s.s of vodka and grapefruit juice. When he glanced up, I got a better look at him; he had the same tired, smart brown eyes as his brother, but they didn't scare me as much for some reason. It might have been the rest of his face; his mouth was thinner and kind of kept in one line, like it was so used to being disappointed it didn't even bother to find another shape anymore. His hair was thinning too; I could see the beginnings of a bald spot dead center on the top of his head, and his hairline had crept so far up the dude looked startled all the time. So Doug Drinan managed to look shrewd, old, startled, and disappointed.

"There's hardly any furniture left," he observed to no one in particular. "I wonder what he did with it all? You think he sold it? He must've sold it, but why?" It sounded like what it was: a very good question.

Pete was on his own track, though. He turned to me and tipped his head, like I was some kind of circus animal he could order around with these little gestures.

"Tell my brother your name," he said, all arrogant and smug.

"Why don't you do it for me, you seem to think it's so funny," I countered. He really was the kind of guy who instead of doing the simplest thing he asked, you'd really rather just irritate the s.h.i.+t out of him.

Pete grinned. "Oh, no, I don't think it's funny at all. Tina Finn. Her name is Tina Finn, and she has just shared with me a few truly remarkable facts," he said. Then, before he could get around to narrating these fascinating facts, he glanced into the next room, which was just as I had left it: an unmade bed, piles of clothes on the floor, underwear and books and empty boxes everywhere. The place looked absolutely ransacked, because in fact I had ransacked it. "What the f.u.c.k?" He looked back at me, all angry again. "What the f.u.c.k. You went through his stuff. You went through my father's s.h.i.+t?"

I blushed like a teenager. "I didn't, I was just-um ..."

"You were just what?" he asked, tossing underwear at me. "You were just casually going through my father's underwear drawer?"

"I'm sorry, I was looking-my mom had this old bottle of perfume, and I was-"

"You were looking for a bottle of perfume in my father's underwear drawer, and what you found was-his wallet." He unearthed it, looked through it swiftly. "And, oh look, there's nothing in there now, is there?" He closed the wallet and tossed it to Doug, on the couch.

"I didn't take anything from your dad's wallet," I said.

"That's a lie," he noted correctly.

"It's NOT a lie," I said, continuing to lie. "Yeah, I found it in there, but I mean there was nothing in it." It was clear that this guy was one h.e.l.l of a bully, but I was pretty sure he wouldn't actually frisk me, so he had no way to prove I had the cash, which by the way I was not about to give up. "I was looking-"

"You were looking and looking and you also found-the vodka!" he exclaimed, picking up the bottle off the coffee table, where I had left it.

"Knock it off, Pete." The other Drinan stood, shaking his head, like he was used to this nonsense from crazy Pete but wasn't in the mood. "I'm sorry for your loss," he said to me. "You must still be in shock."

"Oh," I said, surprised. Doug Drinan expressing sorrow for my loss was strangely touching, under the circ.u.mstances. "Thanks. I mean, thanks."

"It was sudden, yes? I mean, she wasn't sick," he said.

"No, they, they said it was a heart attack. I don't know."

"That makes it hard."

"Don't make friends with her; she's not staying," Pete advised his sad big brother. He had pulled the cork out of the vodka bottle and started pouring it into a dusty gla.s.s, which he seemed to have located in one of those cabinets.

"You're going to regret that in the morning," said Doug.

"I'm going to regret everything in the morning; I regret everything now," Pete informed him. "But since you're so interested in making friends with our little intruder, maybe you should hear what she has to say about the apartment and why she's here." He took a hit of straight vodka. I was hardly listening. I was suddenly desperate for a drink myself and wondering if I could make one without losing any more ground with these guys. Doug looked at me with a kind of puzzled weariness, like he was sincerely curious about what I'd say in response to Pete's nasty prodding, but also like he didn't believe that anything really horrible was going to come out of my mouth. Seriously, he was such a tired and sad person, sort of like he'd already been through so much bad luck that he didn't think anything could get any worse.

"I ..."

"According to Tina Finn, who claims she is not a thief, evidence on hand notwithstanding, Dad left the apartment to her mother, you remember the oh so lovely Olivia-"

"Jesus, Pete." Doug looked away, disgusted and embarra.s.sed. "Knock it off, would you?" He stood and grabbed the bottle of vodka, then went over to the little freezer full of ice cubes. The drinking was apparently going to continue with both these fellows.

"I'm just getting to the good part. Dad left the apartment to Olivia-"

Doug turned at this, confused and concerned and about to interrupt, but Pete had more up his sleeve.

"And Olivia left it to her daughters."

This stopped Doug in his tracks. He turned and looked back at me, skeptical but wary. The whole idea was clearly so ridiculous that he couldn't take it in.

"She didn't actually leave it to us," I said, embarra.s.sed as h.e.l.l. "I mean, she did leave it to us. She didn't make a will, and there's this, you know, she died intestate. And that means-"

"I know what 'intestate' means," said Doug, going for the ice. "This would explain what you're doing here."

"Yeah," I said.

"Is your mother even in the ground yet?" he asked in a sort of edgy tone. No more friendly expressions, so sorry for your loss-now I had to tough it out with both of them. To h.e.l.l with it. If they were both drinking, then so would I.

"The funeral was yesterday morning," I said, grabbing my half-empty gla.s.s of vodka and grapefruit juice and following him into the kitchen, defiant. "So we went from the cemetery to the lawyers and then we came here."

"Very efficient." Doug nodded. He dumped some ice in my gla.s.s and handed me the vodka bottle.

"Well, we didn't, it's not like, I mean I had no idea about any of, any, you know, they didn't even tell me until after, I was standing there at the grave, you know, honestly, when they told me about it."

"'They' being ..."

"My sisters."

"Right, there are several of you," Doug reminded himself. "Four of you?"

"Three. Me and Alison and Lucy. And Daniel, he's Alison's husband. But no kids. None of us has managed to, I guess."

"Fascinating." Doug nodded. "And someone told you ..."

"This lawyer, he said he was my mom's lawyer."

"That idiot Long," stated Pete. He was lying on the couch now, spread out the whole length of it, so there was nowhere else for anyone to sit in this dreary little room. He had the cedar jewelry box open on his lap, the one that had Mom's perfume bottle in it. He was actually looking at it. "And he said you inherited our apartment. You inherit all my mom's stuff too?"

"That was my mom's." I wanted him to give it back.

"It was not your mother's," Doug informed me, cold. He was looking at me as if he was trying to decide what to do with me, like maybe he could just lock me in a closet and leave me there. I started to think he might not be the nice brother after all; maybe he was just a little less sparky than Pete.

"Yeah, it was too," I said. "She had it her whole life. So I just, that's why I was looking through their stuff. I knew it was in there and I wanted to have it." I set my drink down and walked over to the couch, reaching out my hand to take it from a.s.shole Pete. He closed his fingers over it and dropped it back into the jewelry box and shut it.

"Everything's up for grabs, though, isn't it? Isn't that what Long told you?" Pete sat up, putting the jewelry box next to him, so close he was almost sitting on it.

"No, that's not what he told me. What he told me was everything was ours."

"Everything of ours is yours, that's what he told you?"

"He told me, he told everybody-"

"Oh look at this!" Pete found the tarnished silver box with all the keys in it; he had been lying on it on the couch. "You take a fancy to this too?"

"I wasn't stealing anything!" I said.

"Except our home," said Doug. He leaned up against the wall, looked out the window.

"Oh look, my mom's wedding ring," Pete observed, picking it out of the silver box. "Glad to know you weren't stealing that."

"Look, you guys are mad. Okay, I get it," I said.

"Like her mother, a regular rocket scientist," Pete murmured.

"My point being I'm not the one who f.u.c.ked up this situation. That would be your dad, right? Didn't he tell you he was leaving the apartment to my mom? Didn't he even tell you that?"

"Who are you again?" said Pete, really p.i.s.sed now. "Have we met? Do I know you? Then what the f.u.c.k are you doing here in my apartment! I grew up here with my family and my mother-my father was happily married to my mother for twenty years, not two years, twenty years. This is our apartment! What the f.u.c.k are you doing here, sleeping in my bed? What the f.u.c.k gives you rights?"

"Well, apparently some doc.u.ment that your father signed gives me rights."

"He was a f.u.c.king drunk!"

"Yes, that's real news, I was here for fifteen minutes I figured that out."

"Because booze was the first thing you went looking for-"

"No-"

"Just like your mother."

"Go tell the judge. Go tell Stuart Long. What are you yelling at me for? You think I'm making this up? You think I'd be here if they hadn't given me the keys?" I snapped. "Go yell at your father. Oh, sorry. Guess you missed that chance."

That shut old Pete up. He glanced at Doug, who looked at him for a second, then out the window. It happened pretty fast, but there was no question.

"Holy s.h.i.+t, he did tell you, didn't he?" I said. "You knew. That he was leaving her the apartment. He told you. That's why you're so mad. Because you knew." They both looked at me real surprised for a second, like it hadn't occurred to either of them that I might actually put that together.

"You don't know anything," said Pete, deflated as h.e.l.l all of a sudden.

"Well, I don't know a ton, but I'm learning as we go," I retorted. "What'd you do, p.i.s.s him off? That's just a wild guess."

"Don't push your luck," he said, but he was tired now.

"I don't think we should be talking about this," Doug observed, cool as a cat. Seriously, these two were a mixed set, like salt and pepper shakers. They maybe fit together, but they weren't alike. They both knocked back their vodka at the same time, but I could see it wasn't going to bring them any peace. Like vodka brings anybody peace, ever.

"Let's get out of here," said Doug.

"What, we're just going to let her stay?" Pete asked, offended by my very existence now.

"Unless you want to take her home with you, I don't know what to do with her," Doug said, shrugging.

"You know, you guys don't actually get to decide what to do with me," I said, all snarky and defiant again.

"Don't count on that," said Doug, rapidly moving into first place in the a.s.shole compet.i.tion that we all had going by this point. "And don't get too comfortable." He set his empty drink down on the kitchen counter and headed for the back hallway. Pete slammed back the rest of his drink and picked up the jewelry box as he stood.

"Listen," I said.

"What?" He looked at me. There would be no listening tonight.

"Nothing," I said.

He nodded and turned, following his brother down the hallway, taking my mother's little black bottle of perfume with him.

3.

I CALLED LUCY FIRST THING IN THE MORNING. SHE WAS NOT THE least bit impressed with my story about Tina and the night visitors.