Alternate Side(35)

“He seems good,” Nora said, because even in George’s case the travails of parenthood forced her into kindness.

“Betsy got him back here. He’s always too busy to visit, and he isn’t really a city boy. Mountain man, you know? Hiking, skiing, rappelling, the whole ten yards.” Nora looked at Jonathan, who was scrutinizing a cherry tomato as though it were a crystal ball. Somehow she doubted it.

“I wanted to ask you a question,” George said. “Exactly how much were you paying Ricky?”

“You mean how much am I paying Ricky?” Nora said. “How much will I be paying Ricky when he comes back to work?”

“Whatever you say,” George said. “I get it. I hear you. Your better half told me you were Team Ricky.”

“I’m Team Don’t-Bash-People-with-Golf-Clubs,” Nora retorted, then looked around the room.

“They’re not here,” said George. “Don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried,” Nora said, although she was—about upsetting Sherry, who, she figured, already had enough to put up with.

“You’re avoiding the question,” George said.

“Don’t we all pay Ricky the same?” Nora said. Actually, she knew that this was not exactly the case. Some people on the block, the Nolans included, paid Ricky in cash because that was what he preferred and there was no downside for them. Charlie said that even if he was asked to serve as deputy mayor for finance—“Really?” Nora had said once when they were bickering over expenses, but backed off when she saw the look on his face—he could say that Nora had handled paying Ricky and that he had assumed it was being done properly. Nora had asked Bebe about whether she needed to start paying Ricky on the books because of the job at the museum. “Are you going to be running for office anytime soon?” Bebe had said, one eyebrow arching above the rim of her bright-red reading glasses like an exotic punctuation mark.

But the Lessmans paid Ricky by check because Linda was a judge, and so did the Fenstermachers, when they used him, because their household expenses were paid out of some odd little family corporation. For those who insisted on what Charity called “that government nonsense,” Ricky levied a small surcharge.

“I think he’s been jacking some of you up,” George continued, shaking his head. “I’m trying to get a sense from everyone on the block of what they’re paying him so I can make sure we really want to take him back and that he hasn’t been abusing his position here.”

“What position? The man does chores for all of us for what seems like a fair wage. It’s not like we’re doing him a favor. Especially under the circumstances.”

George ignored her. “Now, I know what your housekeeper is making—”

“What?” said Nora, and apparently hearing this as a question and not an exclamation, George came out with a figure far in excess of what they paid Charity, leading Nora to think that Charity either was paid far below market rates or was ginning up her salary for public consumption to inflate her standing on the block.

Alma Fenstermacher, flawless as always, appeared at Nora’s elbow and led her away. “Thank you,” Nora breathed. “What a nice person you are, to tolerate him every year.”

Alma smiled. “Oh, I believe every party needs one crashing boor,” she said. “And Betsy is lovely.”

“She has a patient emergency.”

“She always has a patient emergency. I don’t believe I’ve actually spoken to her for almost two years. There was a period there during which I suspected he had killed her and buried her under the back patio.”

“Do they have a patio?” Nora said. George lived on the opposite side of the street from the Nolans, one house removed from the Fenstermachers.

“Some awful artificial flagstone. Unfortunately, I can see the yard from our bedroom.” No one had ever actually been inside George’s house, but it was widely understood to be a complete mess. George would hire contractors and then wind up trying to finish the job himself, badly. It was commonplace for New Yorkers to stiff the people who worked for them, but most of them were canny enough to wait until the job was completed and then offer fifty cents on the dollar. George was apparently dumb enough to argue with workmen before the job was completed, when they could see the stiffing coming. His house was half stripped to its original stone, half still covered in a layer of liverish red paint, because he’d so harangued the refinishers that the boss had just told them to pack up their scaffolding and leave. Jack Fisk had once said George’s name was on more legal papers than the U.S. Attorney’s.

The Fenstermachers’ house, on the other hand, was, predictably, lovely. All the original detail had been restored to quiet glory, and the decor was vaguely Victorian without being slavishly so. New Yorkers who owned old houses tended to go in one of two directions, museum or tabula rasa, in both cases perhaps intimidated by the weight of history. Nora remembered when the insurance adjustor had come to assess the replacement value of the Nolans’ new house soon after they’d closed on it. “You know that’s a joke, right?” he’d said, frowning down at his clipboard. Nora knew. You couldn’t replace this sort of house. People tried: old brick from a magical place somewhere in central Pennsylvania, oak flooring salvaged by the Amish, new cornices designed to look like old, mantels taken from other houses. Somehow you could always tell.