Read Online Twelve Rooms with a View by Theresa Rebeck - Free Book Online

kids, because occasionally she would yell, “Stop it, Gail! All of you, would you just wait until I see if your father’s package has arrived? Frank …” But Frank was dealing with whatever the two guys were saying, which I couldn’t hear because of all the other noise. Two ladies standing behind the one in the red jacket were waiting a little more patiently, but not much. Both of them were spectacularly thin and wearing the kind of clothes you only see in ads in the
New York Times
, everything tight and fitted and slightly strange. I couldn’t see their faces right away because their backs were to me. All I could see were those strange fashionable outfits, and one of the women had the most astonishing black curls tumbling down her back while the other one had short white hair flipped around her head. Then the one with black hair turned for a second, like she had heard something just behind her, and she was one of those people who are so idioticallybeautiful you think you’re on drugs when you see them up close. Her eyes flicked in my direction, but then the woman she was with yanked at her arm.
    “This is ludicrous,” the older woman said. “I’ll hail my own cab.”
    “That’s what I said ten minutes ago,” said the spectacular-looking woman. She turned around and headed right for the door. But the older lady didn’t follow.
    “We will get our OWN CAB, FRANK!” the old lady announced in quite a loud voice. “And I’m going to call the management company, do you understand? This chaos is NOT ACCEPTABLE.”
    “I want to talk to management as well, you get them on the phone,” said one of the guys who was arguing with Frank.
    “Maybe you could just take a second to look through the deliveries, then we’ll just get out of your hair, Frank,” said the lady in the red jacket, poking through the stuff piled on the console, trying to be nice but trying to get her own way too. The kids continued to scream as the furious white-haired lady turned away, muttering to herself about how nuts it all was.
    Poor Frank was apologizing to everyone at the same time. “I can do that, sure let me—sorry, Mrs. Gideon, I am so sorry, so sorry, Julianna,” Frank called after the ladies heading for the door. “If you give me just a second here—oh, she’s here!” he said suddenly, looking both harried and relieved. And then the lady in the red jacket knocked all the packages off the top of the podium.
    The whole scene was so complicated that it took me a second to realize that Frank was looking at me. He said to one of the guys he’d been talking to, “She says she’s living there now, and that you met last night and you spoke about it—I’m not sure, but that’s the young lady, she said that you know each other.” Then he turned to me. “Tina, there’s some kind of confusion here with Doug about the locks, he says he needs to change the locks, but you didn’t say anything about that, so can you come talk to him while I deal with this? Hang on there, Mrs. Gideon, let me get you a cab. You can go ahead and look through all this, Mrs. White, but I didn’t see anything.” Frank rushed by me, opening the door for the infuriated Mrs. Gideon and her fabulous daughter Julianna. Mrs. White continued to yellat her children while she poked through the packages on the floor. Doug Drinan turned and gave me a dirty look.
    Obviously this moment was a bit of a drag. The fabulous Upper West Side fashion plates were pushing by me while I tried to grab up my Gap bags, apologizing like a loser, “So sorry, sorry, sorry …” Frank practically shoved me aside while he raced after the women, trying to do his job. The loud, insane kids finally managed to get the elevator to arrive, but their mother was not yet ready to pile in with them; she was too busy giving me the once-over, like I was someone who was trying to break into their building. Which in fact I was.
    “The doorman seems to be under the impression that you’re