Fin & Lady: A Novel by Cathleen Schine Page B

Lady’s voice: “What the hell are you doing here?” Heard a male voice: “Thought I’d stop by.” It was a drunk male voice.
    “That’s him ,” Fin said.
    “Who?”
    “Uncle Ty.”
    “I thought it was Uncle Jack.”
    “No, the other one.”
    “You broke my heart,” Uncle Ty was saying. Loudly. “Do you know that?”
    “Yes, of course I know.”
    “It’s still broken. I bet you didn’t know that.”
    “Of course I know that, Ty. Am I blind? Now, come on, let’s get you home.”
    “I hope someone breaks your heart, Lady,” Uncle Ty said.
    “I don’t have a heart.”
    “True, true…”
    “Jack!” Lady said, as Tyler collapsed against her. “Help me, for God’s sake.”
    “Who is he?” Jack said.
    “Just someone.”
    Jack put Ty’s arm around his neck and hauled him away from Lady.
    “Who are you ?” Tyler asked Jack.
    “He’s no one,” Lady said.
    “Hey!” said Jack.
    “Are you going to help me or not?”
    Uncle Jack pulled Uncle Ty toward Seventh Avenue.
    “Taxi,” Lady called, and a cab stopped at her feet. She unloaded Uncle Ty into the backseat and slammed the door.
    “Taxi!” she called again, and another cab pulled up, like magic. She opened the door and motioned Jack to get in.
    “Where’re we going?” he said.
    Lady closed the door on him, too.
    “ You’re going. Home.”
    “Hey!”
    “You said that already. Off you go.”
    Fin and Phoebe ran home to get there ahead of Lady, Phoebe peeling off to go up her steps, Fin bolting up his.
    “Lavender Jesus, what a night. What are you doing up, Fin?” Lady said when she came in.
    “Nothing.”
    She mixed herself a martini, and Fin got up to go to bed. His heart was still pounding from running.
    “Stick around,” Lady said. “Keep me company.”
    They sat beside each other on the couch.
    “Sometimes it gets to me,” she said.
    “What?”
    “It.”
    “Yeah,” Fin said. “Me, too.”
    “What if I really don’t have a heart?”
    “Like the Tin Man. But he really did.”
    She put an arm around him and drew him close.
    “I do love you , that’s for sure,” she said.
    “I guess you have a heart, then.”
    But how could you have a heart when everyone wanted to tear off pieces? And everyone did, until there was nothing left, that’s what she meant. Everyone tearing like wolves. Except him.
    “I’m still only twenty-four,” she said. “You know? So how am I going to do everything I want to do in one year? How?”
    Fin sleepily closed his eyes. He already had Lady’s heart. In his own heart.
    “We have half the same DNA,” he said.
    “Poor you,” she said.
    *   *   *
    It had gotten hot again, so hot that it seemed as though summer wouldn’t be able to end even if it tried. Fin was at Phoebe’s house, sitting as usual between her open window and a large, noisy fan. The binoculars rested on the windowsill. He and Phoebe took turns looking through them.
    “Maybe we should be out seeking clues. Instead of just sitting here,” she said.
    “We could go observe the uncles,” Fin said. “In their native habitats.”
    “Yeah, not your sister, who sleeps all day.”
    “Tyler came over again.”
    “Crap. She has a complex, I guess.”
    “She’s still seeing that dumbbell Jack, too, but she won’t even speak to Biffi.”
    Phoebe said, “Did you ever think that maybe Lady was just sowing her wild oats?”
    “That’s what guys do. Not girls.” Fin lay on the floor and stared at the ceiling, which Phoebe had painted with yellow stars. Jewish stars.
    “Those stars are sort of depressing, Phoebe. Like concentration-camp depressing.”
    “No kidding.”
    Fin went home and flipped through his sister’s address book, which she kept in the kitchen on the counter below the wall phone. Beneath the ballpoint doodles and pencil squiggles, he found Tyler Morrison; Morrison, Frost and Morrison, attorneys-at-law.
    “Do you know which bus to take?” he asked Phoebe.
    “I shall not dignify your inquiry