Alternate Side(14)

“You are a complete fraud,” Nora said the following week when Phil appeared in his usual spot.

Phil laughed. “You, too,” he said. His sign now read A SANDWICH IS ONLY THREE BUCKS. Two women stopped and dropped a dollar bill into his big red cup. Phil put his finger to his lips as the women moved away. “If you don’t tell on me, I won’t tell on you,” he said. “How’s the jewelry biz?”

“It’s a museum,” Nora said.

“Tomato, tomahto,” Phil said. “I hope you’re happy now. My poor dog is cooped up in the house all day instead of getting fresh air.”

“Where can you get a sandwich for only three bucks?” Nora said.

“You need to relax more,” said Phil. “You’re too literal-minded.”

“That’s what my daughter says,” Nora said.

“Smart girl,” said Phil.





It is necessary to raise the monthly charge for parking from $325 to $350. Please remit on November 1 accordingly.

          Sincerely,

     Sidney Stoller





As the weather grew colder and the days shorter, as Nora moved the sweaters from basement closets to bedroom bureaus, the atmosphere on the block seemed to darken. One evening, taking Homer out for the last walk, she had stumbled on something on her front steps, and, as she righted herself, Homer stepped forward gingerly to sniff at a small bag with a knot at the top. Someone had left discarded dog poop on her stoop. With two fingers Nora put it in the trash can. She looked up and down the street, but there was no one in sight. “Yuck,” she said aloud, and Homer looked up solemnly.

It had also begun to feel as though the parking lot was more of a curse than a blessing, as though the men on the block had sold their souls to some devil of convenience. “We let Nolan in and everything went to hell,” George said jovially one morning. It was another reason Nora couldn’t bear him; there was no one like George for saying something lacerating in a hail-fellow voice.

First the Lessmans had come out to find the windshield of their car shattered. There was a good deal of speculation about what had happened, although George had immediately said, “Let’s not fool ourselves, folks,” and gestured toward the windows of the SRO. Linda Lessman said that their insurance company had refused to pay until the adjuster had determined whether it was a “spontaneous event.”

“Like spontaneous combustion?” Linda said, her fists on her narrow hips. “Are there numerous instances of windshields just shattering into a thousand pieces?”

After that, there was the junker of a car with stickers for Carlsbad Caverns, the Sierra Club, and Ralph Nader that had been abandoned in front of the curb cut leading into the lot, so that all the cars within were trapped and effectively held hostage. That was bad enough, but Jack Fisk, who had once had what he habitually called “juice” with city government, now no longer seemed to wield the same power. When the junker had first appeared Jack had snapped his fingers at the others as he stood in his blue chalk-striped suit on the sidewalk: gone, like that, he’d promised. But it wasn’t until three days later that a tow truck had snagged the car’s dinged front bumper with the hook. “I hate working this block,” the tow operator said to Nora as Homer sniffed at his front tire and then lifted his leg in a casual arabesque. “It’s a nightmare getting in and out of here.”

“It’s about goddamn time,” Jack Fisk had shouted when he saw that the junker was gone.

Sherry had told Nora that Jack’s firm had a mandatory retirement age of sixty-five; after that, your name moved from the equity-partner column on the left of the letterhead to a column on the right for what were called “senior counselors” but were understood to be the over-the-hill guys. “They call it the obituary column,” Sherry said.

“Yikes,” Nora said. It was early on a Sunday, just past nine, and Nora was still in her running clothes. Sherry was carrying a bag of bagels.

“Oh, it gets worse. Guess who dreamed up the idea for mandatory retirement when he was a Young Turk?” Sherry nodded down the block toward her husband’s back.

“Yikes,” Nora repeated.

There wasn’t even anyone to complain to about the problems with the parking lot. It was owned by a ghost, a man none of them had ever actually met. Sidney Stoller: that was how they made out their checks, sent to a post office box and due the first of the month. Every time she ran into an old man on the block, Nora imagined it might be Sidney Stoller, finally come to call, but as far as she knew, it never was.

“Please can we go back to the old garage?” Nora had said the week before as she and Charlie read the inside sections of the Sunday New York Times, the ones that were printed early.

“Why? Because the lot is twenty-five dollars more now? I know you weren’t a math major, but even you can figure out that that’s still a net savings.”

Nora lowered the book review. “There’s no need to get nasty,” she said. “The parking situation on the block is causing a lot of bad feeling. Not to mention that now all of you are being ordered around by that idiot George.”

“What is it Rachel always says about you? You’re so judgy. All I know is I’ve got a lunch in two hours in Stamford,” said Charlie, pushing back his chair and not looking at her, “and if Ricky has me blocked in, there’s going to be more than bad feeling.”