Alternate Side(60)

The boar made a noise like an old man clearing his throat and then disappeared into the undergrowth with a tremendous amount of thrashing that made her realize, a bit late, how large it really was. The people who owned the vineyard were horrified, although they had been serving boar in various guises at nearly every dinner. Pappardelle with cinghiale. Cinghiale ragù. They wanted Nora to stop running every morning. “Good luck with that,” Charlie had said to one of the owners.

“As long as it’s not rats,” Nora said.

“Rats?” said one of the owners with an accent that turned the word into something else, not as recognizable or somehow as terrible.

“Or snakes,” Charlie said.

She shivered again, standing at the entrance to the parking lot, although the sun was warm on her shoulders. Dino Forletti shook his head.

“I’ve done a lot of research,” George said. “One for every person living in New York City, correct?”

“She’s got a thing,” Dino repeated, putting a dot on Nora’s chest when he turned the laser pointer toward her. “Maybe not the best conversation for a person with a thing. Besides, no one’s done a census—you know what I mean? We’re just making assumptions.”

He put the pointer in his back pocket. “The bottom line is, there’s a lot you can do here. I’ll make sure we keep the bait boxes current. All of you be vigilant about the garbage cans. Bags, lids. Don’t offer them access to food, you know? Get whoever works on your house to go into the basement and make sure there’s no way to get in. I’m a big fan of the feral cat, but you can’t convince New Yorkers on that. Next thing you know, someone’s rounding them all up, taking them to the shelter, spaying, finding homes. I say let feral cats be feral. They’d take down all except the biggest ones.”

“What about dogs?” George asked.

“Oh, they won’t mess with a dog.”

“No, I mean what if a dog goes after them? Should we let them?”

Dino Forletti looked at the pug. “I wouldn’t,” he said. He’d turned back to Nora. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know anyone had a thing,” he added.

It had gotten to the point that Nora could scarcely bear to walk Homer at night, although she couldn’t say anything to Charlie because she didn’t want to add to his big-house-in-the-warm-south arguments. Even after Dino Forletti had had a pair of his men bait all the backyards, speak to the contractors on the building under construction about not leaving trash around and being sure to cap waste pipes, cite the landlords with too few or flimsy trash cans, she still responded to every stray ad flyer blowing along the curb, every shadowy break in the pavement, as though it were a bullet of a body, a thread of a tail. When she was running in Riverside Park one Saturday and saw an enormous hawk overhead, dappled and proud, one of the men picking up trash in the playground had ruined the sight by saying with a grin, “That guy eats his weight in rats every damn day.”

“It’s become like the plagues of Egypt,” Nora said on the phone to her sister, forgetting that Charity was in the kitchen wiping down the cabinets. “The dog-poop bags are back on the stoop, there are rats running rampant on the sidewalks, and two of the men in the SRO died in the last month. Not to mention what happened with Jack Fisk and Ricky.”

“New York is like the plagues, Nonnie, which is why lots of us won’t live there. But it’s your place. It’s always been your place.”

“There are times when I can’t imagine why,” Nora said. “My husband certainly can’t imagine why. His attempts to make me leave have reached critical mass.”

“Even if he wanted to move to Seattle I’d have to veto it. You belong there. It’s like chemistry. You either have it or you don’t. There’s no explanation.”

“Rachel asked me about that last year. ‘Mommy, can you develop chemistry with a guy if it’s not there in the beginning?’?”

Christine laughed. “Oh, that. The really nice guy who is like kissing the inside of your own arm. I hope you told her no, absolutely not, if it’s not there, it’s not there.”

“What else could I say?”

“So, okay, on this other thing. The guys in the SRO are old and are bound to die sometime, and the bags on the steps are just a nuisance even though you’re making them sound so sinister.”

“They feel sinister. They feel hostile, as though someone is out to get me.”

“Okay, whatever. But the other thing—”

“Which one?”

“I won’t even say it or you’ll freak,” said Christine. “I mean, it’s not like I don’t get this. We had a huge spider in one corner of the garage last summer, and I didn’t put the car inside for two months. The boys acted like I was a monster because I wanted them to go in there with a broom and knock its web down. ‘Maybe it had babies,’ Jake said. Reading Charlotte’s Web has been terrible.”

“Did you kill it?”

“I ran in there one day really fast and emptied an entire can of Raid onto it. They’re still mad at me. I thought I could get away with it but, boy, the smell of that stuff really lingers.”

“Plagues of Egypt numbered ten,” said Charity dismissively once Nora was off the phone, passing through on her way to the basement. “From God. Rats we take care of with poison. God takes care of Mr. Fisk.”