Nicotine (13 page)

The Tranquility residents help carry everything upstairs, and their work is soon done. She serves them cold sandwiches with cruelty-free pastrami and sauerkraut from the Seventh-day Adventist grocery next to Bryant Park. They eat on the porch as night falls, running their fingertips over each slice of bread front and back to be sure the caraway seeds are not bugs.

Upstairs, she turns on the bright overhead light fixture and sits on the rug to survey her new abode.

Despite the fatiguing day, she feels supercharged with nervous energy. Her very own room, a house full of strangers, the heart of the CHA community—home to the people who interest her most in the world, Rob and Jazz—and all this furniture she associates very strongly with her father. She could exhaust herself emotionally just sitting and looking at it.

Her phone buzzes. A text from Matt, written in the style of an NYU student he occasionally “dates”:
Sis where u at. Drove by JC house. Looking good but no sis. What's the deal. They paying you rent???

She does not reply. Several minutes later the phone rings. It is Amalia.

“I am angry,” Amalia begins. “Matt tells me you are renting Norm's house to
ocupas
! Why did you lie to me?”

“Nobody is renting out any house,” Penny says. “We have occupiers because the house was in ruins, just like you said. You and Dad never fucking fixed it after it burned. They saved the house, and now they're living in it. They're terrific. I love them.”

“Terrific,” Amalia repeats.

“They're activists. They're wonderful people. I bet you could take them off your taxes as a charitable donation.”

“Matt told me a very handsome man lives there. You want to tell me about it?”

“Tell you about what?”

“Are you in love again?” Momentarily cornered, Penny hesitates before replying. Her mother, sensing emotion, pounces. “Oh my god,” she says. “You are keeping a lover, how is it called? A
kept man,
like a mistress, in my house.”

“That is so not true!”

“You agreed as my agent to prepare that house for sale, and now you are defending a lover who won't pay rent. Buying yourself a boy toy for money. How much am I losing to your charitable donation? Three thousand dollars every month?”

“Don't be crude.”

“Oh my god, how you talk to your own mother. I will have your brother take care of this problem. Do not go into my house again. Stay away from my house!”

“How is it your house? It's Dad's house. It's part of the estate. You only married him, and I'm his daughter. His own blood. I'm closer to owning that house than you are!”

“You have no brains,” Amalia says.

Penny presses the red dot to end the call. She hyperventilates.

She calls the landline at Nicotine—a rotary phone on the wall in the kitchen—and Anka answers.

“I need to tell you something,” she says. “I heard the worst rumor. I was talking to someone who works at a bank, and I was telling them about the house, and they said the owner died last month and the heirs want to sell it. Because of the redevelopment district or something.”

Anka says, “You sound all excited and panicky, but what's the big deal? I thought Rob showed you the skeleton in our closet.”

“You mean the bucket monster?”

“This house will never sell. I'd love to see them try. Let's engage a Realtor and have an open house this Sunday.” She raises her voice. “There's something afoot in the real estate department, but we know the drill. Don't we?”

Tony's voice calls out from somewhere in the Nicotine kitchen: “
Ad nauseam!
”

“There's always somebody trying to collect rent from CHA squats. But you can't get blood from a proverbial stone, you know?”

“What if they just want to evict you and sell?”

“Two words. Bucket monster.”

Penny relaxes. She tucks her phone under her chin and chats with Anka about their day while she rearranges her clothes in Norm's old bureau and sorts office supplies into his desk drawers. Suddenly she says, “I would so totally love a cigarette. What's the Tranquility house rule on smoking again? I think I have to cross the Pennsylvania line and air out my clothes before I come back.”

“You forgot the part about washing your hair. Come on over! You can give us a hand with this beer Tony made.”

WHEN PENNY ARRIVES AT THE
house, Matt is there, seated at the kitchen table. The tea bag still rests in his steaming teacup, as though he has not been there long. “I see you crusty punks have met my little sister,” he says in amiable tones.

Rob, Anka, Sorry, Jazz, and Tony turn to face Penny.

“Half-sister,” she says.

“My independently wealthy little sister,” Matt mocks. “So well-off, she'd never be tempted to fix up a rat-hole and put it on the market as a favor to her father's estate.”

“Don't bend the truth,” Penny says. “When I agreed to fix this place up, I thought it was empty. I changed my mind the minute I met you guys.”

“Somehow word didn't get back to the other heirs,” Matt says. “Your mother called me a few minutes ago, seeming dissatisfied, and I confess to having felt a certain disappointment myself, when I learned that you are spending all your time here casually fucking us over.”

Penny is unable to think of anything to say. She looks at Anka, recipient of her most recent lie, expecting open contempt.

Anka smiles and says, “We could introduce him to our monster.”

“Meeting this many parasites was enough for one day,” Matt says.

“Pardon me, smart-ass, but I have beaucoup sweat equity in this place,” Rob says.

“You've earned my undying gratitude. But now you all need to find loving homes.”

“Why do you even care?” Penny begs. “You don't need the money!”

“That's right. I'm not poor, or even broke. I don't
need
my share of this house. I
want
it. I
desire
it.” Seeming to have found her mute button, he adds, “You seem intent on exploiting it to serve aims of your own, or so I'm told by your mother. Sounds like the koala-face made a love connection. You want to tell me?”

Penny looks to the Nicotine inhabitants, expecting to see an anger that matches her shame. Instead they look expectantly from her to Matt. They seem intrigued.

Rob nods encouragement, and she asks meekly, “What if I somehow raised the money to buy out your share? Maybe CHA—”

“That won't be necessary,” Jazz says, glaring at Penny. She takes a cigarette from the pack on the table. She lights it, gazing at Matt
through a cloud of smoke, and explains, “He just said he's not in the game for the money.”

He waves his hand and coughs. “
Nicotine house,
” he says, his voice low, slow, and sarcastic, imitating a longtime smoker's vocal fry. Turning in his seat and looking fixedly at Jazz, he says, “Please explain your presence here. You seem overqualified.”

“These are my friends,” Jazz replies.

“You're a sexy woman. Killer body.”

“Interesting word choice. You don't look sixty-five.”

“Correction. You're uncommonly attractive.”

Jazz laughs at him.

Tony interrupts by asking Matt whether he is familiar with the legal doctrine of adverse possession.

“Fill me in,” Matt says.

“It's that if you take somebody's property without their permission and they know it, and you know they know it, after some period of years it's finders keepers. So every time you tell us you knew there were squatters in here and didn't do a thing about it, you're giving us the house.”

“In theory, that would be a real interesting theory,” Matt says.

“Would you mind very much if we ask him to leave?” Sorry asks Penny. “I can't stand him.”

Matt regards Sorry depreciatively. She is wearing a too-small striped tank top with
PONY SLAYSTATION
written on the front in glitter pen, crooked shorts, and her hair in pigtails. Her look: militantly antifashion.

All at once Penny feels stronger. She doesn't know whether she's in the right, but she knows it's right to defend people who don't know how to dress.

“I came over because I have plans with my friends,” she tells Matt firmly. “I'm sorry, but you should go now, and we'll talk later. Call me tomorrow.”

“She's asking you to leave,” Rob says. “And so am I.”

Anka, Jazz, Sorry, and Tony nod in agreement.

“I'd hate to undermine your social standing with these losers,” Matt says to Penny, rising from his seat. His tea is still untouched. “Think about what I said,” he adds, addressing Jazz.

“Nobody tells me what to think,” she replies.

AFTER MATT LEAVES, THEY BEGIN
decanting the home-brewed beer. It has a serious kick. Tony estimates thirty proof. “He's not my brother, I swear,” Penny insists. “Half-brother at the outside.”

“We can tell,” Jazz says. “You're an Asian sex dumpling, and he's an aging Greek god.”

“Ugh!” Penny cries out. “You don't know what you're saying!”

“That man has a hard-core Satanist vibe,” Sorry opines. “Like he swore on a goat's carcass to be a sociopath.”

“I think he wanted to kill Jazz and rape her dead body,” Rob says.

“I would do it as a scene,” Jazz says. “I thought he was hot.”

“No, no, no, no!” Penny says, waving her hands in protest. “That is so wack. Didn't you hear him call you a parasite?”

“Who cares about that dickhead anyway,” Rob says, having chugged his first beer.

“Actually it was
you
he said was a parasite,” Anka says to Penny. “I wouldn't mind some kind of explanation.”

Rob turns toward Penny and adds, “She's right. He's nobody and he never will be. But you, girlfriend! You could have been a little more open with us.”

“I didn't think anybody from my family would just show up like that.”

“And what about maybe being open with us, and letting us know what to expect?”

“That's rich, coming from you to her,” Jazz says.

Anka says to Jazz, “Sexuality is private. But there needs to be openness on issues that affect the whole house.”

“Don't gang up on her,” Jazz says. “Look at her! She's as scared of him as you are. Don't worry, Penny. We don't blame you. He's old enough to be your dad.”

“He's three years older than my mom.”

Jazz asks how old Penny's dad was when he died, and she says, “About a million, but he got around.”

“Very interesting family!” is Tony's remark.

“It's true,” Penny says. “I never heard of any family more interesting than mine.”

“Ooh, now she's throwing down the gauntlet,” Sorry says. “Did I ever tell you about my mom's cousin from Jaffa who joined the SS but had to desert after this Nazi decided he was Jewish, and when he got back from Tashkent after the war my great-uncles got together and killed him?”

“Interesting Middle Eastern families don't count,” Jazz says, “and an interesting Palestinian family would be one with no double agents.”

“During the war my family left Long Island to work for Hughes Aircraft and saved enough money to buy a trailer in Santa Monica,” Tony volunteers.

“Typical runaway teenage swineherd cover story,” Jazz says. “You know they squatted that trailer because the Japanese owners were interned.”

“I come from a long line of parasites,” Tony says.

Rob says, “I get so tired of hearing we're parasites. It's capitalists are the parasites. Nobody cares if you're a rich asshole on a private island, but God forbid you should be poor with a decent house. Unless you inherit it. Then it's yours by divine right.”

“We're not poor,” Tony protests. “We're on strike! There's only one way to earn money in this economy, and that's scabbing. No offense,” he adds to Anka, the only person at the table with a regular job. While everyone laughs, he lines up nine beer bottles next to each other and says it's a picket line.

Anka offers to tell a story, apropos employment, about her first day as one of three senior assistant editors of
HIV Action News
. She gathers her hair, ties it in an overhand knot on the back of her head to expose her face so they can hear and see her, and begins, “Yeah, so it's ten in the morning on my first day.”

“Ten in the morning on the first day is not a story with a job,” Tony says. “Give it three months.”

“No, wait,” Anka says. “This one hit the ground running. They were like, Anka, Anka, hi, come in, we're so glad you made it, we urgently need audio for this slide show, you enunciate so clearly. Please go down to the basement where it's quiet and read this script aloud into this MP3 player. And they give me this two-page printout and a recording device, okay? And it's about these little girls in Ethiopia. Their mother and father die of AIDS, and their mother's sister lets them sleep in a shed. She gives them food and water, but she's afraid to touch them, because the older one has, like, lesions. So it's the four-year-old feeding and cleaning the baby, who's like two, but can't walk yet. And the kicker. Ready? Every night it's the same thing. The four-year-old has to stay awake to fight off these cats that come in the shed to eat their scabs.”

“No way,” Sorry says.

“Yes way. When he said ‘scabbing' it all came back to me. Every night these feral cats would come and bite off all their scabs, so their wounds never heal, because of course she's got KS and the baby's got herpes, like all over her body, so when they finally fall asleep from exhaustion the cats line up to lick their blood. This is like their primary source of nutrition.”

“Jesus Christ,” Rob says.

“And I seriously could
not
read this thing out loud without crying. I tried ten times! And I go upstairs and say, ‘Sorry, can't do it.' And my boss goes and gets this color brochure to cheer me up, and there's a picture of the two girls, who are now like ten and twelve,
wearing school uniforms because they're on free drugs from this organization we're publicizing, and they're looking all happy. And who are they posing with? Their same aunt, who's fostering them now for a hundred dollars a month!”