Alternate Side(32)

“Charlie, do you think anyone cares whether he almost beat a man to death with a wood or an iron?” Nora said.

“He didn’t beat him almost to death. He was hitting the side of the van. He hit Ricky when Ricky stepped in front of the door.”

“That’s his story and he’s sticking to it,” Nora said, throwing the paper down so that it landed half on Charlie’s cereal bowl and spit milk onto his shirt.

“I was there, Nora. I saw it happen.”

“And he’ll have one of those sharpies from his firm represent him and he’ll wind up getting off.”

“If it was an accident he should get off.”

“As long as we don’t have to pretend we think that’s what happened.”

“It is what happened. I told the police that, and if I have to, I’ll say it in court.”

“Are you crazy? You know Jack Fisk. He’s got a temper so bad that he flies into a rage if a cab doesn’t see him at the corner. He was screaming about Ricky and his van for months before this ever happened. An accident? I took the party line on the phone with our daughter, and I was embarrassed afterward.”

“I know what I saw, Nora,” Charlie said, putting his suit jacket on. “Just because you have a different version doesn’t mean you’re right.”

“It’s not a different version,” Nora said as the front door slammed. “It’s the truth.”





The Fenstermacher holiday party had for many years been a grand tradition on the block. It was always held on the second Saturday of January, and featured the sort of food everyone loved and no one served anymore: baked ham, biscuits, macaroni and cheese that tasted of cheese, not as though it had been leached of all flavor by the roving band of punitive nutritionists and gluten purists who had taken New York by storm. The guest list was confined almost entirely to the residents of the block: a judge, a shrink, some finance guys, some lawyers, two doctors, a freelance writer, a freelance graphic designer, a freelance artist, and the director of a museum. There were no public school teachers or police officers, for the obvious reason that by any sensible non-Manhattan standard, everyone in the room was what had once been called rich. They were rich, but they had no money; it was all in their houses.

At the door Harold Lessman said to Nora, “I’m told you, too, are going to work for the legendary Bob Harris.”

“That’s what everyone says,” Charlie said.

“It’s not true,” said Nora, hoping the party hadn’t just been ruined for them both as her husband went in search of eggnog.

She was frankly a bit surprised that Alma had not canceled the party. It was a month since what had now come to be referred to on the block, if it was referred to at all, as “the parking lot incident,” and although the reporters had moved on, there was still an oddly uncomfortable feeling among them all, as though they were somehow complicit in what had happened. On the other hand, the cancellation of the Fenstermacher holiday party would have been an enormous concession, a dark turning point. Apparently the party had been going on for decades, long before the Nolans had moved onto the block. It was not exactly difficult to score an invitation, but the guest list was selective, composed of what Alma once called habitués. A renter would be hard-pressed to be included unless in residence for some time, usually with a family and a pleasant way of greeting people on the block, almost always with a dog. Even a new buyer of one of the brownstones might have to wait a year or two after taking title. Apparently there had been one couple who had lived on the block for five years and had never been invited because somehow Alma knew that the husband also owned a co-op on Riverside Drive in which his girlfriend and their young son lived, and she was not having any of that.

That first year the Nolans lived on the block, when she felt she was still auditioning to be a block habitué, Nora had asked Edward Fenstermacher if they had ever missed a year, but he said no, never; they had thought about canceling the party in 2002 but Alma had concluded that after the destruction of the World Trade Center and the pall it had cast over the city and its people, the party was needed more than ever. That year they had invited all the firefighters from the nearby firehouse, which had lost seven men when the Twin Towers collapsed, and nearly all of them had come. “I’ll be the first to admit it—I wept when I saw them,” Linda Lessman had said. Five years ago there had been a blizzard the night before, snow wafting down like enormous feathers for hours until the cars were nothing more than soft, curved contours up and down the block. The caterers canceled, but Ricky and two of his men showed up to clear the sidewalks, and Edward Fenstermacher sent them out for pizzas, and with all of the cookies and candy Alma had made for the holidays arrayed on the table amid the poinsettias, it had actually been very jolly. When Nora and Charlie had left that party the block was still impassable, quiet and lovely as a church, the tunnel of street trees leaning conspiratorially toward one another with their burden of snow, the plows a distant buzz on the busier thoroughfares, Oliver and Rachel and some of the other kids pulling one another down the center of the street on sleds, and they had all agreed that it was a special occasion, the perfect end to the season.

The Christmas holidays were, like so much else in the city, both wonderful and weird. Most New Yorkers complained incessantly about the traffic and the crowds that clogged Fifth Avenue looking at the holiday windows, and yet almost without knowing it, a Christmas spirit crept into their activities, tree-trimming parties, garlands and wreaths at the doors. The city exerted its customary fiscal hold on its residents and turned Christmas into a bonus round, with envelopes for the postman, the super, the housekeeper, the doorman. Every year Nora gave Ricky a fat envelope with instructions to dispense as he saw fit to his various men. “You’re na?ve,” Jack Fisk had said. “He’ll just keep it all himself.” Charity, who was given two extra weeks’ salary every year and her family sent a fruit basket—the closest Nora had ever come to visiting Charity at home was typing her address into the order form—snorted at Jack’s remark. “That man don’t know Ricky,” she had said.