Connections (22 page)

“I’m going to send you all the papers to fill out for the Housing Authority,” Louise said. “And if you need help with any questions, just call me, and we’ll go over them on the phone.”

“Ah, but I wish you would come here,” Yolanda responded. “I’d love to make dinner for you. I make a mean paella.”

“Yolanda, I just can’t. I’ve been so busy, you wouldn’t believe.”

“But it’s been so long since you were here. And the kids would love to see you. Especially Elena. She’s always asking when you’re gonna come visit, when she can call you.”

Louise winced. “I know, I know. Listen, it’s just that…that I’ve been involved in all sorts of things, and I haven’t had a second. Personal things. In a few weeks, I’ll definitely make a date with you. But we don’t want to hold up the application. It would be silly. The waiting list is so long, the sooner you get on it, the sooner they might find something for you.”

Yolanda’s voice betrayed her disappointment. “When you think that will be? When I’m old and gray?”

“Not that long. Five years. Three, if you’re lucky.”

“Ay!”

“It won’t be so bad. Look, five years will come and go anyway. This way, you’ll have something to look forward to. And, who knows? They already broke the ground for a new project going up in the Bronx. It could even be ready by the time you’re at the top of the list. Just think: you might even be the first person to live in it—a brand-new kitchen and bathroom, clean hallways, fresh paint…and best of all, at least three bedrooms.”

“You really think so?”

“Yes.”

“But if it takes so long, Ricky will be out of college already and working, and if we have two incomes, we’ll be making too much money.”

“Yolanda, you’ll still be eligible. Honest.”

“Okay, but I wish you could come.”

“I know. I do too. Listen, here’s what we’ll do. I’ll send the papers. You sit down and fill out all the questions you know how to answer. Then we’ll go over the rest on the phone, and you’ll send them back to me. Then, the first weekend after Labor Day, I promise, I’ll come over. Maybe not for dinner, but I will visit.”

“Okay, okay.”

“And in the meantime, you start putting the extra money Ricky’s giving you someplace safe, so when the city finds you that apartment, you’ll be able to buy some nice things for it. Okay?”

“Sí, sí, señorita.” Yolanda’s playful reply showed her enthusiasm about the future. “I guess I’m pretty lucky, huh? Having you to help me. And having a son like my Ricky. Ricardo Jr. Did you ever hear of a boy giving his mama almost his whole salary?”

“No, you have good children, Yolanda. Just like you. That’s why I’m downloading the application as we speak and putting it in the mail right away. Because I want to help you get out of there.”

Laurie didn’t know what to do about the comments posted on her Wall. Some were stupid, asking why she would be spoiling someone’s appetite by saying what she had, but most were sympathetic. She’d been announcing one fact a day—not elaborating, just giving the basic, stomach-turning details. Now there were 143 “likes” on her page. Names she didn’t know; “friends” who were friends with a friend. What had she started here? More important, how would it end? Would it help the animals at all? It already helped Laurie because the sickening feeling that invaded her every time she read something about animal misery turned into a hint of excitement. Excitement that she could influence friends, even if they were just Facebook friends, to share her outrage about mistreated animals.

Laurie’s spirits were suddenly buoyed, even as she reported that 11.5 million unnecessary tests are performed by the cosmetic and personal-care industry every year in this country. Causing eleven-and-a-half million animals to suffer horribly, until they eventually die. That’s when she had a brainstorm. She typed a little heading for today’s fact: PET-ICULAR.

Ken Hollis squirmed in the low couch, waiting for Rosa to come back. He stared at the little dog standing guard outside the bathroom door, trying to protect her mistress from the stranger in the house. As if the frail little thing with the balding back and glazed eyes could do anything.
She probably doesn’t even have any teeth
, Ken thought. He heard the toilet flush and then settled back, trying to look comfortable.

It was a funny thing about older people. They seemed to forget that everybody else was busy. That working people had to travel to and fro, had jobs to perform, with pressures and personal chores to take care of. They didn’t understand—or didn’t want to understand—that not everybody was retired and had nothing to do and unlimited time to do it. His grandparents had been like that, before his grandmother died. Now, his grandfather was bad enough for the two of them—he turned getting out of bed, washing, putting on clothes, making a cup of instant coffee and a slice of white toast into such a major production that by the time he got ready for the day, it was over.

As Rosa scooped up her pathetic Poodle and bounced onto the chair opposite him, Ken felt guilty. He was just antsy because he had a lot of things to tend to today and the last thing he needed was to sit here pretending to be relaxed.

Finding three messages on his cell phone—and running low on his battery listening to them—did not start his afternoon well. Rosa certainly didn’t look frantic now, at least not the way she had sounded when he’d called her back.

“So what’s the scoop?” Ken asked.

“It’s a whole ring of them. She wasn’t the only one. It’s like a serial-killer thing. They doing it all over. See? I told you it wasn’t anybody she knows and…” Her words tumbled out at the same speed as her excitement, amplifying the volume and her accent.

“Whoa, take it easy,” Ken interrupted.

Rosa, sitting on the edge of the cushion, held her hand flat over her breast, as if trying to slow down each deep breath. “Okay, okay, I tell you from the beginning. There’s this man, used to live around here, but he move away. He’s queer. That has nothing to do with the story, I just telling you. Gay, they call it now. I meet him in the park once, and he give me his card, for a camera store, on the West Side it is, and I wanted to buy one so I could help you—you know, in case I see something suspicious. I take a picture and show you. Okay?”

She wanted to make sure he was following her but didn’t wait for an answer. “Okay, so he has a dog—that’s how I know him, I know everyone who has a dog. Right, bambina?” She automatically stroked the dog lying along the crevice between her thighs. “So I go there finally, and his dog, she’s there in the store. And I ask him how come he brings the dog to work. Okay, you got it so far? So he takes me in the back—he has a little room there—and we have a cup of tea, and I play with Sabrina—her name is Sabrina. That’s a pretty name, don’t you think? Especially for a Yorkie—and he tells me…”

Rosa gulped some air and moved back in the chair, pausing for suspense.

“So what did he tell you?” Ken asked. “Don’t leave me hanging now.”

“He got the same letter that Eileen Hargan got. Same thing. So it’s not just one time, one person, one dog. It’s a whole crime wave. I tell him what happen here. He say he’s going to send me a copy of the letter so I can show you. He has it at home. Well?”

“Well, well, well.” Ken crossed his arms and rocked slightly, digesting the implications of the story. “That really changes things.”

“Didn’t I tell you?”

“You sure did. This is very interesting…very.” Ken stood up and shook out the cramp in his right leg. Then he paced in front of the couch. “Now you’ll really have to help me think this out.”

“Sure. Let’s have some Chianti. We put our glasses together. Then we put our heads together.”

The basement of the Presbyterian church was crowded and noisy with people greeting each other and scraping bridge chairs on the tile floor. Jason tapped his already neat notes into a neater pile on the podium and tried to avoid looking at the large crucifix staring down at him from high on the opposite wall. The only other time in his life he’d been in a church had been for the wedding of his previous boss’s daughter and somehow, because the church was filled with flowers and a bride and attendants in pastel dresses, it hadn’t seemed so religious. But now, in the stark room below the chapel, with the crosses and paintings of Christ as the only decorations, Jason felt like a foreigner. His mother would probably answer that he’d be a foreigner in a synagogue too, for as often as he’d been in one in the past thirty years. Even so, when he did attend something—a bar mitzvah or a funeral or a wedding—he felt comfortable, on familiar ground. He wished the school was still open and available for community meetings.

When he looked up, his eyes instantly fell on Christopher, finding each other in the mass of faces like emotional magnets. All the times that Chris had asked him to go with him to church and Jason had shrugged off the invitation without explanation now rushed to his thoughts. But Chris’s look was so tender and so understanding that Jason wanted to weep. He cleared his throat a few times and called the meeting to order.

After the guest speaker, Bertram Burroughs, the first of the tenants’ rights attorneys they would interview over the next two months, finished his lecture on procedures, rights, and options and explained the no-buy pledges that Jason handed out, a noisy question-and-answer period followed. When several arguments erupted, Mr. Burroughs suggested that the tenants settle their disagreements privately and prepare a list of specific topics requiring his legal advice. With a final look at his watch, he snapped his attaché case shut, nodded to Jason, and left.

“Can I have the floor, please? I’d like the floor.” Nettie Pedersen’s voice reached over the commotion, and her request for permission to speak restored order to the room. “I want to know,” she said, enunciating slowly and waiting for the last of the talking to stop, “what we’re going to do about people with pets. I don’t think we should allow any pets at all in the building.” She had to talk louder to override the murmuring that was beginning to grow in volume. “They soil the elevator and the hallways, and pee on our canopy legs, and mess on the sidewalk in front, and we shouldn’t allow them at 407 West End Avenue.”

“Ah, quiet,” a disgusted voice shouted out. But it didn’t stop the barrage of comments from other tenants.

“Well, maybe we should have a rule about new people moving in, certainly not people already living here.”

“What’ve you got against animals, lady?”

“She’s right. I can hear meowing out in the back courtyard when some people’s cats get out. It’s very annoying.” A young woman stood up so her complaint could be heard over the others.

“Yes, and what about that horrible stain right in the middle of the rug in the lobby? Where some mutt had an accident.”

“You can’t ask people to get rid of a pet they’ve had for years.”

“Who says? If we’re going to plunk down a few hundred thousand dollars to buy our apartments, we’re entitled to live the way we want, make any rules we want.”

“Please, please, folks.” Jason used his pen as a gavel. “Let’s simmer down. Please, let’s be orderly.”

Nettie stood up to point at Jason. “And having a chairman who’s the biggest offender doesn’t help. How can he be objective when he has a dog? It’s not fair. I say let’s get rid of the chairman, and his dog!”

Jason silently appealed to Christopher for help. And he wondered just how vicious Ms. Pedersen’s self-righteousness was.

The sun squeezed through the narrow cracks between the wooden planks of the benches, painting white stripes on the ground. The geometric precision was interrupted where they curved over the sleeping bodies in crooked bands. Iridescent bubbles of dew pulsed on the limbs of trees and blades of grass, poised in the glow of dawn in the park.

A scratching of leaves as a gray squirrel raked them with his paw alerted Kola to morning. She crawled flat on her belly from the cramped hideout under the bench. She stood and slowly stretched her shoulders and back and then squatted down and urinated in the dirt.

With the warmth of the dog’s body gone, the light chill from the night and the dampness woke Clifford. He struggled out after Kola and hugged himself warm. “Hey, girl,” he whispered, bending on his knees and holding out his arms to her. “Sleep good, huh?” They nuzzled. He slid his knapsack out, dented from where it had pillowed his head, and then the beach towel he’d used to cover himself. He packed it away and then walked over to a tree, looked around before opening his fly, and squirted against its corrugated trunk.

He found the dinner roll in the bottom of the bag, broke it in half, and shared it with Kola. “Might be a while before the hot-dog men come to work,” he explained. After splashing water from a stone fountain on his face, Clifford filled his cupped hand with water so Kola could drink. Then they walked eastward. He tried not to look at the lumpy hill behind the Hecksher playing fields, littered with bodies of people and their belongings, hanging from the tops of Duane Reade shopping bags and overflowing shopping carts. But they were all over, strewn on the terrace circling the game building, where later in the day, men would face each other over the chiseled checkerboard tables; wedged in the crevices between large boulders; lying on the old benches (even those mottled with pigeon droppings); and picking their breakfast out of the garbage pails.

The first night, Clifford had been scared of being too far away from people, but he was more scared of getting too close to the dirty, smelly vagrants. He understood they were homeless; news reports had talked about them on TV once. Not like him. He had a home; he just didn’t want to go there anymore. He would rather stay by himself. Besides, with Kola here, he wasn’t by himself. And wasn’t afraid. As soon as the army of orange-vested maintenance men would begin their day’s mission of trying to restore the park, the homeless would scatter, mingling with the strollers and sunbathers and joggers and bicyclists and athletes, as well as the sitters, just relaxing on a summer morning.

Clifford walked by the pond, landscaped with overgrown weeds, its water a dark khaki with sludge. A few brave ducks floated by. Clifford looked at the apartment buildings towering behind the trees. He liked to start the day here. The buildings reminded him of his own house. He longed to go home. Sleep in his bed. But he couldn’t, because he didn’t want to see his mother and father the way they had become. No, he wouldn’t go back. He took one more wistful look at the skyline, scalloped with leaves, and then turned into the vast interior of Central Park.