Twelve Rooms with a View (6 page)

“The moss?” I asked.

“Yes, the moss.” He smiled. This elflike character had a fantastic smile, charming and self-involved and devilish. He also had the most alarming blue eyes I’d ever seen, with dark edges but sky blue around the middle. For a second I was grateful he was at least thirty years older than me, because even though he was so odd, I could see the appeal of eyes like those. “Bill and I had an arrangement. He rented me his kitchen. He let me—that is, both he and your mother—let me use it as a kind of greenhouse. My own greenhouse, up on the roof, is not tenable for a mossery,
not that I didn’t try, but to maintain the habitat, the hydration alone would be a fortune. Of course, it may be possible that we just didn’t solve the problems. But people were not enthusiastic overall, you can imagine. The terror of a few bryophytes! Anyway, it was finally impossible. I investigated the possibility of renovating the plumbing to provide the additional water to the roof, and I had no support from my fellow tenants. None whatsoever. One might even say there was open hostility. At least lawsuits were threatened. Anyway, you’ll have to come see it.”

“See …?”

“The greenhouse. It’s a rarity to find one in the city, but the light, as you can imagine, so far up, is utterly spectacular and alarming—even the views, not to mention what you can accomplish with that much light. I think I am not unduly proud, I’d love for you to come up; you should take me up on this. But it is absolutely useless for moss. Our solution—Bill’s and mine—to our mutual needs was as you see.” He made an elegant gesture toward the kitchen. “Actually it’s a bit of a secret. There’s a lot of misunderstanding in the building about moss. This confusion between moss and mold—it’s ridiculous. They’re not even the same order. Bill and Olivia were very understanding. And discreet.” He smiled at me and nodded, apparently finished with this unintelligible explanation.

“So you have a key?” I asked.

“Oh yes. They spent most of their time in the other half of the apartment. This part of the place hasn’t been in use for years.”

“Well, okay, but it looks like I’m going to be living here now,” I said.

“Reeeeallly?” Len asked, cocking his head as if it were the most extraordinary news. Actually, he made it sound like it was just the slightest bit too extraordinary to be believed.

“Yes, until the will is settled. I’m staying here.”

“And what do the boys have to say about that?” Len the elf asked, sort of half to himself.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?” I asked edgily. He smiled, clearly amused by my tone.

“The boys,” he repeated. “I ran into them last night in the lobby. They didn’t mention to me that you would be living here. So I’m surprised
to hear it. As I assume they were.” He folded his hands in front of his chest with an odd little gesture of delight and smiled at me again, as if I would find his clever piece of deduction charming.

“Look, you’re going to have to go,” I said. “I don’t know anything about this, and you know, you want me to be discreet and everything, but this is clearly some sort of illegal thing you have going here.”

“Moss is not a controlled substance,” he informed me, laughing.

“Oh sorry, I maybe misunderstood you before,” I said. “Because you said how people in the building got all mad when you were trying to grow it up there on the roof, so I was thinking maybe they wouldn’t like to find out that instead you decided to grow it on the eighth floor in the middle of the building, where it might actually
spread.”

“Ah,” said Len. “I understand why perhaps you thought I said that.”

“Yeah, it sounded a little like that, like people maybe wouldn’t be so thrilled to hear what you were doing here.”

“That’s not what I was saying,” he said.

“So I don’t actually need to keep my mouth shut about this?” Elfman laughed again, to himself this time.

“What’s so funny, Len?”

“Nothing, no, nothing.” He looked back at the kitchen, this time with real longing. “Do you like moss?” he asked me.

“Honestly, I’ve never thought about it that much.”

“It is a rare spirit that appreciates moss,” he said, as if this were news. “I have seventeen different species in this particular mossery. Some of them are exceedingly beautiful. The curators at the two public botanical gardens in the city would give their eyeteeth, frankly. It’s actually a bit of an achievement that I could do what I’ve done, and under these conditions? Please. Let me show you.”

“That’s not necessary, Len.”

“Please,” he said, holding out his elegant dirty hand, like a prince at some ball, waiting to sweep me into a dance.

“What the hell,” I said.

So for the next hour, this strange guy walked me through the intricacies of moss, gametophores and microphylls and archegonia—that’s the female sex organ of moss, who knew—and how much water moss
needs for fertilization and how long it takes for sporophytes to mature. He talked about liverworts and hornworts; he had mosses in there that were native to the Yorkshire Dales and mosses that grew only in cracks in city streets and mosses that grew only in water. In Europe during World War II, he told me, sphagnum mosses were used to dress the wounds of soldiers, because they’re so absorbent and have mild antibacterial properties. Also some mosses have been used to put out fires. Don’t ask me how they would do that, but apparently it’s historically accurate. Old Len knew a ton about moss, and he made sure that I knew how great his mossery was and how no one builds them anymore and what a tragedy it would be if anything were to happen to his mossery.

“That would be awful,” I agreed. I looked around the transformed kitchen. Len had even hung an old woodcut of a medieval tree on one wall, I suppose to keep the moss company. “So how much did Bill charge you to rent his kitchen like this?”

“Oh,” he said, looking at me sideways for a second. “It was a very friendly arrangement.”

“He didn’t charge you rent for this? But they were broke, weren’t they?”

“What makes you say that?”

“I spent the night here. There’s nothing here. They were living on vodka and fish sticks and red wine,” I said. “Which he paid for in cash.”

“You
have
been busy, and you say you just arrived yesterday?”

“So he really gave you this room to grow moss in, for free?”

“I didn’t say that.” Len smiled. “I said we had a friendly arrangement.”

“Like under the table, friendly like that?” I asked.

“Bill liked to fly under the radar,” he admitted with a small shrug. “He did prefer cash.”

“How much did he charge you?” I asked directly. Len looked at me sideways and then went back to examining one of his moss beds, poking at it carefully with his middle finger.

“Seven hundred dollars a month,” he said, raising an eyebrow.

“You know what, Len?” I said. “I think this mossery is fantastic,
and I see no reason why you can’t keep it here for as long as you want. I’m gonna go make a phone call.”

“Lovely.” Len smiled. “I’ll just continue my work, then.”

I figured I might need to keep the cash coming, and it did seem reasonable to let this guy keep his mossery. So I went back to TV land and picked up the phone and started dialing, meaning I made it halfway through Lucy’s number before realizing that the phone was dead. There was nothing on the line—no clicks, no beeps, no dial tone, nothing. I hung up and tried again, and I did that about eight more times, and then I plugged and unplugged the phone about eight times and then I tried it eight more times. Then I tried it in three other jacks, in three of the little bedrooms, before returning to the great room.

“Something wrong?” Len asked me, leaning out of the kitchen. I mean, obviously there was something wrong; I was holding the phone out and staring at it like it was about to explode.

“The phone doesn’t work,” I told him. “I mean, it worked just an hour ago, and now it doesn’t.”

He held out his neat but dirty hand and I gave him the phone, which he plugged into yet another wall jack. He listened for less than one second, then nodded. “Well,” he said. “I need to introduce you to Frank.”

Frank was the doorman. Len took me downstairs to the front lobby, and there was Frank, a good-looking Hispanic guy in a beige uniform with little gold things on the shoulders.

“Hey, Len, what’s up?” Frank asked.

“This is Tina Finn, Olivia’s daughter.” Len made a little wave with his hand, like I might be some fancy dish that was being served up. I felt like bowing.

“Nice to meet you, Miss Finn,” said Frank, reaching out and shaking my hand politely. “I’m real sorry about your mom.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Tina is going to be staying in the apartment for now, while they settle things up with the estate,” Len informed Frank. It was genius, seriously; coming from Len, “she’s staying in the apartment” sounded pretty good. At least Frank the doorman had no problem with it.

“Well, welcome to the Edge,” he said. “If you need anything, you let me know.”

“There is something.” Len nodded. “It looks like her phone’s been cut off. Could you put a call in about it?”

“Sure, who’s your carrier?” asked Frank, reaching for the phone receiver on his desk.

“You know, I’m not sure who they had,” I said.

“Well, let’s see then, maybe I’ll put in a call to Doug—that’s Bill’s son,” he told me. “There’s probably been some mistake, maybe he cut the phone off. Did he know you were going to be staying up there?”

“Yeah, we talked, you know, we just talked yesterday about it,” I said. “Look, you don’t need to bother him, I’ll call him myself.”

“I got it right here,” Frank said, dialing. “It’s no bother.” He was dialing away when Len tapped him on the shoulder.

“It’s probably better just to give her the number,” Len said under his breath, like he was trying to keep me from hearing what he said. Frank looked at him, confused, and Len did that thing with his hands, opening them up, apologizing to the universe for the stupidity of the human race. “I think there’s a lot going on, Frank, you probably don’t want to put yourself in the middle of it.” It sounded so much like he was taking care of Frank that for a minute I forgot he was actually taking care of me.

However, it was starting to occur to old Frank that this story didn’t quite add up. “But you did see Doug last night?” he asked, a little worried, while he rooted around for a pen.

“We hadn’t figured out what we were doing last night when we talked, and everything was such a mess, with Mom’s funeral, I was kind of a wreck and we hadn’t actually thought about the practicalities. I mean, I was just like crying and crying, so I really didn’t get the details straight,” I fibbed.

“I know what that’s like.” Frank nodded. “I lost my mom fifteen years ago, I still miss her.” He looked at me, and I swear to god, in that split second you could see the sadness rise up in his face, just enough to make his cheeks flush a little and his eyes well up. He got embarrassed right away and looked down, like he was still searching for that pen even though it was in his hand, and because that uniform looked so
hideous on him, it made me feel kind of bad to be lying to him. I mean, he was significantly nicer than Len, who probably was just taking care of me so I wouldn’t mess with his moss. But this guy Frank was just a nice person who missed his mom. He had a kind of bad haircut, which was so sweet and stupid I thought my head was going to split.

“Well … thanks, Frank,” I finally said. “I’ll go call Doug right now and make sure he knows about me staying here and all that and, you know, make sure that he knows not to turn anything else off.” I turned away so Frank could have a moment of privacy to collect himself. And then old Len was at my elbow, showing me to the door, like a friendly undercover agent. “There’s a Verizon store two blocks up and one over, on Columbus,” he informed me cheerfully under his breath. “They sell those throwaway phones. You don’t need a credit card, you can just pay cash, isn’t that convenient?”

“Very,” I agreed. “Thanks for the tip, Len.”

A throwaway phone was exactly the thing, of course, because I had no cell phone and no credit card and now no landline. So Len was right to suggest it, and while I was out putting his sensible suggestion into action, I also poked around a couple of clothing stores so I’d have more than one skirt, one pair of jeans, and one sweater in my wardrobe. I could have called that bonehead Darren and asked him to put all my clothes in a box and send them, but I had no reason to believe he would actually do that, even if he said he would. So I ducked into a couple of really cute shops, where I learned that my seven hundred dollars, minus one throwaway phone, might buy me one pair of excruciatingly expensive blue jeans and half a tank top, which seriously annoyed me until I found a Gap, which had a whole lot of stuff on sale that fit fine and looked cool enough and cost quite a bit less. Then I was hungry, so I had a burger in a seedy deli, and then I needed underwear, and honestly I couldn’t find anyplace to buy it except one of those really cute little shops, and that cost a complete fortune but I had no choice. So the seven hundred dollars was more or less whittled down to two hundred by the time I decided to go back home.

That was the first time my head said “Let’s go home,” and I know it sounds kind of ridiculous that I thought of it that way? But no kidding,
I was already in love with that place. All that stuff about my mother drinking herself to death there, and my sisters being so uptight and bossy, and the crazy drunk guys showing up in the middle of the night—none of it seemed that serious when I picked up my eighteen packages and thought about going home. I half wondered, what are you going to do when you get home? And then I thought, well, maybe I’ll just make myself a cup of tea and read a book or something, there are at least a thousand used mysteries still shoved under the bed in Bill and Mom’s bedroom. So on the way home I stopped at a little shop and bought some fancy tea, and I was well on my way to becoming a totally different person, the kind who lives on the Upper West Side, and drinks tea in the afternoon while reading mystery novels. Then I got back to the lobby of my fabulous new apartment where I found out I was still the same old Tina I had been just a couple hours before.