Alternate Side(5)
“So, Miss Fleet Feet, how do you feel about the parking situation?” George said now, one hand on Charlie’s shoulder. “Nothing says you’ve arrived on the block like a space in the lot.” George had a space, the Fisks had a space, the Fentermachers had a space, the Lessmans had a space, and the Rizzolis had a space, although the Rizzolis’ had been handed down to their elder son and his wife, who lived in their triplex and rented out the bottom floors. The senior Rizzolis now lived in their house in Naples. Florida, not Italy. “I’m too old for the city now, Nora,” Mike Rizzoli said when he and his wife came by to visit. “It’s a young person’s game, all the nuttiness.”
One of the men who lived in the SRO that backed onto the parking lot came down the street with a battered wheeled suitcase. “We’re all dying we’re all dying we’re all dying inside,” he said as he went past, smelling of old sweat and fried food. Homer woofed slightly, at the suitcase, not the man. Nora had never figured out exactly why Homer distrusted things with wheels. He reacted suspiciously to both strollers and bicycles.
“I hear they’re going to convert the SRO to condos,” George said as the man disappeared down the block.
Nora felt forced into the conversation despite her better judgment. That’s how George got to her, by saying things she knew to be untrue: the mayor is not going to run for reelection, the Fenstermachers are selling their house, small dogs are more intelligent than large ones. “It’s never going to happen,” Nora said. “So many single-room-occupancy buildings were converted in the eighties and there were so few beds left for homeless men that the city put a moratorium on all conversions. All the SROs have to stay SROs.” And Nora preferred the SRO residents to George anyway. Before they had made an offer for the house, she had visited the precinct, worried by the presence of a building full of ramshackle men. “That place?” the desk sergeant said. “They’re basically down-on-their-luck guys working minimum wage and some old men on disability. There’s a few schizos, but they’re not dangerous. You know the type, the guys who talk to themselves about Jesus and the president and whatever. You’ll be fine.” Then he asked how much they were paying for the house. Even the police, who all lived on Long Island or in Orange County, were mesmerized by the absurdity of Manhattan real estate values.
George ignored her comment. “That’ll make a huge difference, if they get those guys out,” he said. “They really dirty up the lot.” Nora knew this was not the case, but she wasn’t going to engage with George again if she could help it. The men in the SRO did not so much throw trash into the lot as leave things on their windowsills that fell down into it. It was just like college, old-fashioned outdoor refrigeration. Nora herself had once had a string bag that she hung from a nail outside her dorm window, full of containers of yogurt and the odd banana. In winter the sills on the back side of the SRO, which looked down on the parked cars, were dotted with pints of milk, tubs of pudding, packages of hot dogs, just as her dorm sills had been. Sometimes a high wind ripped through all their yards and down to the river, and the food on the sills fell to the ground below. Nora had once seen an enormous rat run across the entrance to the lot with a plastic envelope of what appeared to be salami in its mouth. At least she thought the rat was enormous. They all seemed enormous to her, even when, after having been lured by the poison in the bait traps, they lay curled into stiff, furry commas on the sidewalk.
Nora looked down the street, which was no cleaner than the parking lot. The gutter was edged with leavings: the pointillistic wisps from a home paper shredder, the poop from someone who wouldn’t pick up after his dog, a tangle of some unidentifiable vegetable matter, brown and sad as a corsage three days after the prom. It was much grubbier on the West Side than the East Side. It was why Charlie had wanted to move to the East Side before they moved into their house. Now they got a lot of mileage out of living on a dead-end block, which had mollified Charlie somewhat.
“Let’s go to the park and get this dog some exercise,” said Nora, who wanted to get away from George. Rachel had said once that George reminded her of the kid who glommed on to you at a new school until you started making real friends and found out why the kid had been available for glomming. Nora had been amazed at her daughter’s powers of perception, although when she said that to Rachel, she replied dismissively, “Oh, duh, Mommy.” George was exactly that kid, circling the cafeteria of life, looking for the yet-unmoored, blind to his own unpopularity.
“I don’t know why you dislike him so much,” Charlie said when they got far enough away.
“Because he’s a self-important jerk,” Nora said. “Homer! Drop it!” Homer dropped the twist of waxed paper with a pizza crust inside and sighed. It was his cross to bear, obedience, and a diet of kibble.
Behind them they heard shouting, and turned to look as George sprinted from his front stoop to the entrance to the parking lot, where a white panel van was backing in.
“Ricky! Amigo! What did I tell you the last time?” he yelled.
“Amigo? Really? Every time he tries to speak Spanish to Ricky, I can see by the look on Ricky’s face that he can’t understand a word George says. That’s leaving aside the fact that Ricky’s English is as good as his. Amigo? Oh, my God.”
“Come on, smile, Bun,” Charlie said, putting his arm around her shoulder. “We got a space! Wait till I tell the kids!”