“But if it takes so long, Ricky will be out of college already and working, and if we have two incomes, we’ll be making too much money.”
“Yolanda, you’ll still be eligible. Honest.”
“Okay, but I wish you could come.”
“I know. I do too. Listen, here’s what we’ll do. I’ll send the papers. You sit down and fill out all the questions you know how to answer. Then we’ll go over the rest on the phone, and you’ll send them back to me. Then, the first weekend after Labor Day, I promise, I’ll come over. Maybe not for dinner, but I will visit.”
“Okay, okay.”
“And in the meantime, you start putting the extra money Ricky’s giving you someplace safe, so when the city finds you that apartment, you’ll be able to buy some nice things for it. Okay?”
“Sí, sí, señorita.” Yolanda’s playful reply showed her enthusiasm about the future. “I guess I’m pretty lucky, huh? Having you to help me. And having a son like my Ricky. Ricardo Jr. Did you ever hear of a boy giving his mama almost his whole salary?”
“No, you have good children, Yolanda. Just like you. That’s why I’m downloading the application as we speak and putting it in the mail right away. Because I want to help you get out of there.”
Chapter 93
Laurie didn’t know what to do about the comments posted on her Wall. Some were stupid, asking why she would be spoiling someone’s appetite by saying what she had, but most were sympathetic. She’d been announcing one fact a day—not elaborating, just giving the basic, stomach-turning details. Now there were 143 “likes” on her page. Names she didn’t know; “friends” who were friends with a friend. What had she started here? More important, how would it end? Would it help the animals at all? It already helped Laurie because the sickening feeling that invaded her every time she read something about animal misery turned into a hint of excitement. Excitement that she could influence friends, even if they were just Facebook friends, to share her outrage about mistreated animals.
Laurie’s spirits were suddenly buoyed, even as she reported that 11.5 million unnecessary tests are performed by the cosmetic and personal-care industry every year in this country. Causing eleven-and-a-half million animals to suffer horribly, until they eventually die. That’s when she had a brainstorm. She typed a little heading for today’s fact: PET-ICULAR.
Chapter 94
Ken Hollis squirmed in the low couch, waiting for Rosa to come back. He stared at the little dog standing guard outside the bathroom door, trying to protect her mistress from the stranger in the house. As if the frail little thing with the balding back and glazed eyes could do anything. She probably doesn’t even have any teeth, Ken thought. He heard the toilet flush and then settled back, trying to look comfortable.
It was a funny thing about older people. They seemed to forget that everybody else was busy. That working people had to travel to and fro, had jobs to perform, with pressures and personal chores to take care of. They didn’t understand—or didn’t want to understand—that not everybody was retired and had nothing to do and unlimited time to do it. His grandparents had been like that, before his grandmother died. Now, his grandfather was bad enough for the two of them—he turned getting out of bed, washing, putting on clothes, making a cup of instant coffee and a slice of white toast into such a major production that by the time he got ready for the day, it was over.
As Rosa scooped up her pathetic Poodle and bounced onto the chair opposite him, Ken felt guilty. He was just antsy because he had a lot of things to tend to today and the last thing he needed was to sit here pretending to be relaxed.
Finding three messages on his cell phone—and running low on his battery listening to them—did not start his afternoon well. Rosa certainly didn’t look frantic now, at least not the way she had sounded when he’d called her back.
“So what’s the scoop?” Ken asked.
“It’s a whole ring of them. She wasn’t the only one. It’s like a serial-killer thing. They doing it all over. See? I told you it wasn’t anybody she knows and…” Her words tumbled out at the same speed as her excitement, amplifying the volume and her accent.
“Whoa, take it easy,” Ken interrupted.
Rosa, sitting on the edge of the cushion, held her hand flat over her breast, as if trying to slow down each deep breath. “Okay, okay, I tell you from the beginning. There’s this man, used to live around here, but he move away. He’s queer. That has nothing to do with the story, I just telling you. Gay, they call it now. I meet him in the park once, and he give me his card, for a camera store, on the West Side it is, and I wanted to buy one so I could help you—you know, in case I see something suspicious. I take a picture and show you. Okay?”
She wanted to make sure he was following her but didn’t wait for an answer. “Okay, so he has a dog—that’s how I know him, I know everyone who has a dog. Right, bambina?” She automatically stroked the dog lying along the crevice between her thighs. “So I go there finally, and his dog, she’s there in the store. And I ask him how come he brings the dog to work. Okay, you got it so far? So he takes me in the back—he has a little room there—and we have a cup of tea, and I play with Sabrina—her name is Sabrina. That’s a pretty name, don’t you think? Especially for a Yorkie—and he tells me…”
Rosa gulped some air and moved back in the chair, pausing for suspense.
“So what did he tell you?” Ken asked. “Don’t leave me hanging now.”
“He got the same letter that Eileen Hargan got. Same thing. So it’s not just one time, one person, one dog. It’s a whole crime wave. I tell him what happen here. He say he’s going to send me a copy of the letter so I can show you. He has it at home. Well?”
“Well, well, well.” Ken crossed his arms and rocked slightly, digesting the implications of the story. “That really changes things.”
“Didn’t I tell you?”
“You sure did. This is very interesting…very.” Ken stood up and shook out the cramp in his right leg. Then he paced in front of the couch. “Now you’ll really have to help me think this out.”
“Sure. Let’s have some Chianti. We put our glasses together. Then we put our heads together.”
Chapter 95
The basement of the Presbyterian church was crowded and noisy with people greeting each other and scraping bridge chairs on the tile floor. Jason tapped his already neat notes into a neater pile on the podium and tried to avoid looking at the large crucifix staring down at him from high on the opposite wall. The only other time in his life he’d been in a church had been for the wedding of his previous boss’s daughter and somehow, because the church was filled with flowers and a bride and attendants in pastel dresses, it hadn’t seemed so religious. But now, in the stark room below the chapel, with the crosses and paintings of Christ as the only decorations, Jason felt like a foreigner. His mother would probably answer that he’d be a foreigner in a synagogue too, for as often as he’d been in one in the past thirty years. Even so, when he did attend something—a bar mitzvah or a funeral or a wedding—he felt comfortable, on familiar ground. He wished the school was still open and available for community meetings.
When he looked up, his eyes instantly fell on Christopher, finding each other in the mass of faces like emotional magnets. All the times that Chris had asked him to go with him to church and Jason had shrugged off the invitation without explanation now rushed to his thoughts. But Chris’s look was so tender and so understanding that Jason wanted to weep. He cleared his throat a few times and called the meeting to order.
After the guest speaker, Bertram Burroughs, the first of the tenants’ rights attorneys they would interview over the next two months, finished his lecture on procedures, rights, and options and explained the no-buy pledges that Jason handed out, a noisy question-and-answer period followed. When several arguments erupted, Mr. Burroughs suggested that the tenants settle their disagreements privately and prepare a list of specific topics requiring his legal advice. With a
final look at his watch, he snapped his attaché case shut, nodded to Jason, and left.
“Can I have the floor, please? I’d like the floor.” Nettie Pedersen’s voice reached over the commotion, and her request for permission to speak restored order to the room. “I want to know,” she said, enunciating slowly and waiting for the last of the talking to stop, “what we’re going to do about people with pets. I don’t think we should allow any pets at all in the building.” She had to talk louder to override the murmuring that was beginning to grow in volume. “They soil the elevator and the hallways, and pee on our canopy legs, and mess on the sidewalk in front, and we shouldn’t allow them at 407 West End Avenue.”
“Ah, quiet,” a disgusted voice shouted out. But it didn’t stop the barrage of comments from other tenants.
“Well, maybe we should have a rule about new people moving in, certainly not people already living here.”
“What’ve you got against animals, lady?”
“She’s right. I can hear meowing out in the back courtyard when some people’s cats get out. It’s very annoying.” A young woman stood up so her complaint could be heard over the others.
“Yes, and what about that horrible stain right in the middle of the rug in the lobby? Where some mutt had an accident.”
“You can’t ask people to get rid of a pet they’ve had for years.”
“Who says? If we’re going to plunk down a few hundred thousand dollars to buy our apartments, we’re entitled to live the way we want, make any rules we want.”
“Please, please, folks.” Jason used his pen as a gavel. “Let’s simmer down. Please, let’s be orderly.”
Nettie stood up to point at Jason. “And having a chairman who’s the biggest offender doesn’t help. How can he be objective when he has a dog? It’s not fair. I say let’s get rid of the chairman, and his dog!”
Jason silently appealed to Christopher for help. And he wondered just how vicious Ms. Pedersen’s self-righteousness was.
Chapter 96
The sun squeezed through the narrow cracks between the wooden planks of the benches, painting white stripes on the ground. The geometric precision was interrupted where they curved over the sleeping bodies in crooked bands. Iridescent bubbles of dew pulsed on the limbs of trees and blades of grass, poised in the glow of dawn in the park.
A scratching of leaves as a gray squirrel raked them with his paw alerted Kola to morning. She crawled flat on her belly from the cramped hideout under the bench. She stood and slowly stretched her shoulders and back and then squatted down and urinated in the dirt.
With the warmth of the dog’s body gone, the light chill from the night and the dampness woke Clifford. He struggled out after Kola and hugged himself warm. “Hey, girl,” he whispered, bending on his knees and holding out his arms to her. “Sleep good, huh?” They nuzzled. He slid his knapsack out, dented from where it had pillowed his head, and then the beach towel he’d used to cover himself. He packed it away and then walked over to a tree, looked around before opening his fly, and squirted against its corrugated trunk.
He found the dinner roll in the bottom of the bag, broke it in half, and shared it with Kola. “Might be a while before the hot-dog men come to work,” he explained. After splashing water from a stone fountain on his face, Clifford filled his cupped hand with water so Kola could drink. Then they walked eastward. He tried not to look at the lumpy hill behind the Hecksher playing fields, littered with bodies of people and their belongings, hanging from the tops of Duane Reade shopping bags and overflowing shopping carts. But they were all over, strewn on the terrace circling the game building, where later in the day, men would face each other over the chiseled checkerboard tables; wedged in the crevices between large boulders; lying on the old benches (even those mottled with pigeon droppings); and picking their breakfast out of the garbage pails.
The first night, Clifford had been scared of being too far away from people, but he was more scared of getting too close to the dirty, smelly vagrants. He understood they were homeless; news reports had talked about them on TV once. Not like him. He had a home; he just didn’t want to go there anymore. He would rather stay by himself. Besides, with Kola here, he wasn’t by himself. And wasn’t afraid. As soon as the army of orange-vested maintenance men would begin their day’s mission of trying to restore the park, the homeless would scatter, mingling with the strollers and sunbathers and joggers and bicyclists and athletes, as well as the sitters, just relaxing on a summer morning.
Clifford walked by the pond, landscaped with overgrown weeds, its water a dark khaki with sludge. A few brave ducks floated by. Clifford looked at the apartment buildings towering behind the trees. He liked to start the day here. The buildings reminded him of his own house. He longed to go home. Sleep in his bed. But he couldn’t, because he didn’t want to see his mother and father the way they had become. No, he wouldn’t go back. He took one more wistful look at the skyline, scalloped with leaves, and then turned into the vast interior of Central Park.
Chapter 97
Laurie was greeted by a soft breeze as she climbed up from the 77th Street station. The early morning air was a refreshing reminder that fall was only a few weeks away. But it was still early. By lunchtime, when she went out to pick up a sandwich or a yogurt to bring back to the office, it would be hazy, hot, and humid, just as the weather report threatened. Some things they got right.
While she stood at the counter waiting for her muffin to be toasted, she looked through the window of the coffee shop at the Upper East Siders on their way downtown. From where she changed from the Flushing line at Grand Central, she sometimes took the express to 86th Street and then walked back to 741h. She was always early, so she didn’t have to rush, and she enjoyed the exercise. This morning, she was even half an hour earlier than usual, having gotten up long before her alarm went off.
“Where’s my English down?” the counterman shouted into the kitchen as he continued to fill containers of regular coffee.
Laurie could see two torsos through the cut-out in the wall. Two very hairy chests and four furry arms sticking out of white uniforms, already stained with blotches of oil and grease, moved in and out of view. She watched the frame like a marionette stage, amazed at the irony of places like this, keeping the counters looking clean, the bubble domes over the Danish looking spotless, the stainless steel looking polished…and keeping help that always looked greasy.
Laurie walked down Lexington, holding the white bag of breakfast in her left hand. Since she was going against the crowd headed to the subway station, she liked to pretend she lived here in the city and was just walking to her apartment, that she didn’t have to travel to it via two subway lines. She hated commuting. If she lived in a real suburb, she wouldn’t mind, but Queens was just as much city as Manhattan was, only without the excitement and sophistication. Or convenience. Someday, she dreamed, they’d get married and move to the country, raise a few large dogs, and have a menagerie of animals roaming around. They could keep his apartment in town for those times when they would come in for the theater or an affair or dinner in a special restaurant. Felix and Oscar would hate it, having other animals around. Well, she wouldn’t let them spoil her fantasy. She wouldn’t worry about them until she had to face the decision.
Laurie enjoyed being “Mrs. Pomalee” as she turned down 74th Street and continued to walk east toward York. She unlocked the door to the office and entered, setting her paper bag down on the corner table that held the magazines, and went in the back to turn on the air conditioner. She put all her things on the reception desk and then sat down, breathing hard, trying not to move too much until it cooled off a bit. She took her shoes out of her tote bag and exchanged them for the sneakers she’d been wearing. She unpacked her breakfast, threw away the skimpy, damp napkins, went to the sink in the nearest examining room and pulled two paper towels from the dispenser to use as a placemat.
Just as she crunched into the English muffin, she thought she he
ard a door upstairs click softly. She stopped in mid-bite, straining to listen. Since Dr. Pomalee’s apartment was high on the fourth floor and completely sound-proof, it was impossible to hear anything up there. It sounded almost like it came from her own office, two stories above where she sat now. She went to the foot of the staircase and yelled, “Hello? Anyone there?”
The dogs on the floor beneath her started howling and barking. She couldn’t hear anything more, so she shrugged to herself and went back to the desk, where she ate her muffin. She made a mental note to leave a memo for Stacy to straighten out the magazines in the waiting room.
The aluminum foil made a tinny squeak as she crumbled it up. At the same time she thought she felt, more than heard, a muffled creak, like a step on a wooden floorboard covered with carpet. Even though the air conditioner was droning steadily, the temperature hadn’t dropped enough to cool off the office. But goose pimples sprouted up and down Laurie’s arms.
Chapter 98
Rosa pushed the handle of the leash all the way up her arm to free her hand. She closed her left eye and screwed up her cheeks so tightly that she could hardly see out of the right eye. She took a step back, her mouth open, grimacing in concentration. Her finger finally pressed the camera’s button down, and her whole body jumped as the shutter sprang open. “Got it!”
“You better do it again,” Hector said, relaxing his smile.
“Why? You look-a great.”
“Yes, but I think you had your finger over the lens.”
“Oy!” Rosa stretched her hands out to look at them still holding the camera in the same position. “Ay-yi-yi, I did. Okay, again. Move the broom more. I can see the handle. That’s it.” Her face resumed its distorted expression as she dug the camera into the bridge of her nose and moved it a fraction in each direction. “Okay, ready? I’m gonna snap. Hold still now. Keep smiling.”
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