14
M
rs. Moczydlowska called Patrick at five a.m., claiming that she heard a skittering sound behind the sink in her kitchen.
“
Chuh-chuh-chuh-chuh
all night long,” she said. “
Chuh-chuh-chuh-chuh
until I scream. It is rats!”
Patrick sat up.
Great. Mrs. Moczydlowska is being afflicted by the Norway rat “chuh-chuh,” and they’ve been dancing the “chuh-chuh” all night behind her walls. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer woman.
“Have you seen any?” Patrick asked as he wiped crust from his eyes.
“I hear them all night,” she said. “I do not have to see them to know they are there.
Chuh-chuh-chuh-chuh.
It is driving me crazy.”
“It’s that time of year,” Patrick said. “The cold weather pushes them inside, and—”
“You
do
something,” she interrupted. “No rats, or I call your boss.”
When Patrick arrived half an hour later, he looked around Mrs. Moczydlowska’s kitchen at the scattering of crumbs on the counter, the kitchen table, and the floor. He knew Mrs. Moczydlowska couldn’t reach her broom into every corner or reach every crumb on the counter with her stubby arms, but she had to have seen them.
If I didn’t know better,
he thought,
I’d think she was
leaving
crumbs so rats would come . . . so that I’d have to come visit her.
He knew that Norway rats were indestructible, and once they had warmth and a food source, they were hard to evict. Norway rats were able to drop fifty feet to the ground without dying, jump four feet into the air to avoid capture, and squeeze through half-inch openings. They could also defeat any barrier he set up, be it wood, aluminum, bricks, cinder blocks, or lead sheeting.
“We have had this conversation before,” Patrick said. “If you keep your kitchen spotless, no crumbs anywhere, that will keep them—”
“I do not want to
keep
them,” Mrs. Moczydlowska interrupted. “I want to
kill
them.”
“Yes, but if you don’t give them a reason—”
“I keep a clean kitchen!” she interrupted.
“You do. You really do,” Patrick said. “But it doesn’t take much to attract a—”
“You say I do not keep a clean kitchen?” she interrupted.
“No,” Patrick said. “You keep a clean kitchen, but rats don’t know that. They’re only looking for food and warmth, and your kitchen provides both.”
“I cook all day,” she said.
For whom?
Patrick thought.
She lives alone.
“There is no law against this,” she said. “There is law against the rats.”
“This is the warmest room in your apartment,” Patrick said. “They are naturally going to be drawn—”
“Kill them all, or I call your boss,” she interrupted.
I can’t win.
“I’ll set out some traps,” Patrick said.
“Use the poison,” Mrs. Moczydlowska said.
“I don’t want to poison them,” Patrick said. “They could die within your walls and really stink up the place.”
“I do not care,” she said. “I do not want to hear the
chuh-chuh-chuh-chuh
anymore, okay?”
Patrick spent the next two hours under and around Mrs. Moczydlowska’s kitchen sink, finding and filling the smaller gaps with caulk and wood putty and covering the larger holes with wire mesh.
“You are not killing them,” she said.
“I first have to make sure they can’t get in,” Patrick said. “You don’t want rats swarming around your legs, do you?”
“There is a swarm inside my walls?” she asked.
Wrong word choice.
“There isn’t a swarm, but there could be if I don’t seal every possible entry point.” He wiped sweat from his forehead and noticed the open oven. “Are you cooking anything now?”
“No,” she said.
“But your oven’s on,” Patrick said.
“It stays on,” she said. “The heater is no good. It does not work. It has never worked.”
I just “fixed” it two days ago, and there was nothing wrong with it then.
“I’ll check your thermostat again.”
He already knew what he would find. The thermostat was set for eighty degrees, and the sweat dripping down the back of his legs proved it. “The thermostat is working fine.”
“Then why is it so cold?” she asked. “I feel drafts all the time.”
Patrick checked her windows. “Your windows are sealed tight, Mrs. Moczydlowska. Look, if you want the rats to go away, you have to turn off your oven and turn down your thermostat to something like sixty-eight at night.”
“You want me to freeze to death,” she said.
“I don’t want that,” Patrick said.
“You will find me one day all stiff and blue,” she said.
He collected his tools. “Mrs. Moczydlowska, you will outlive us all.” He started for the door.
“Where are you going?” she asked, shuffling rapidly behind him.
And now
we
get to dance.
He turned and smiled. “I am going to set a few traps in the basement.”
“You must . . . you must check my bathroom before you go,” she said.
“What’s wrong in there?” Patrick asked.
“There are water bubbles on the handles,” she said.
No doubt from the condensation in this sauna of an apartment.
“And the lever gets stuck,” she said.
There’s nothing wrong with the lever.
“And the drain is slow, so slow,” she said. “It takes two minutes to go down.”
He nodded. “Could I come back and fix all that tomorrow ?”
Mrs. Moczydlowska almost smiled. “Yes. You must come back tomorrow. You must fix. Or I call your boss.”
“I will see you tomorrow, then.” He opened the door. “Turn off your oven tonight, okay?”
“This
once
I will do,” she said. “But if I freeze to death, it is on your head.”
“Use lots of blankets instead,” he said. “Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” she said. “Good-bye, Patrick.”
While he checked, emptied, and reset several traps in the basement, he heard Mrs. Moczydlowska’s creaking floorboards above him.
I wish she had someone else to check up on her, and I wish she wouldn’t feel she had to make up things for me to do. I’d visit her if she asked me to. She’s no worse than any other tenant. She just doesn’t want me to know she’s scared and lonely. In a way, this job only makes sense to me because of the Mrs. Moczydlowskas of the world. As much as she complains, in her own bitter way, she is happy to see me.
Before going home, he looked for
Feel the Love,
Lauren’s first movie, at Video Free Brooklyn on Smith Street. He had rented it a long time ago, and he was surprised to find it wedged tightly between
Fast & Furious 6
and
Feel the Noise.
At the counter, he showed the owner an ancient rental card.
“You haven’t been in here in a while,” he said. “The previous owners used this card. Let me get you a new one. I’ll need to see a credit card.”
“I, um, no longer have one,” Patrick said.
I haven’t had a credit card since Natalia, and I only got one to impress her. I didn’t tell Natalia it only had a five-hundred-dollar limit.
“A debit card will do,” the man said.
“I’m old school,” Patrick said. “I write checks.”
“I don’t take checks,” the man said.
“I’d actually like to buy this if I can.” Patrick handed him the DVD.
The owner looked at the case. “This is a classic. Surprised we still have it.” He opened the case. “It’s got a few scratches. I’ll let you have it for ten even.”
“Done,” Patrick said. He handed the man a ten.
“It’s a shame about her and Chazz Jackson, huh?” the owner said.
“Yeah.”
No it isn’t! I want so badly to tell this guy, this stranger, that I am talking to Lauren Short and that I’m about to go home to talk to her all night . . . sort of.
“Funny how life sometimes happens,” the owner said. “One second you have it all, and the next second you don’t.”
“Right.”
And because Lauren lost it all, she found me.
That doesn’t sound right.
“She’ll land on her feet, though,” the owner said. “She’s an old pro. I can’t wait to see her in what she does next. That woman is a true actress.”
“You may have to wait a long time,” Patrick said. “She just dropped out of a pilot for a sitcom.”
“She did?” the owner said. “I didn’t hear or read about that. How do you know?”
I’m “talking” to her.
“I must have read it somewhere,” Patrick said.
Which is true.
“Stuff happens, you know?” Patrick said.
And I’ve been waiting a long time for my life to happen, and it’s all happening because I wrote an e-mail to an angel who wrote back.
“If you get a copy of
I Got This,
hold on to it for me, okay?”
“She was really sexy in that one,” the owner said. “I may keep that one for myself.”
After a quick shower and after watching a few minutes of Lauren performing in
Feel the Love
with the sound turned down, he read Lauren’s most recent e-mail. After rejoicing over her test results, he tried to imagine her voice reading the e-mail to him.
I know she’s relieved, but why am I so relieved? I mean, aside from knowing she doesn’t have an incurable disease. It isn’t as if she and I are ever going to—
He paused the DVD when the screen filled with a closeup of Lauren laughing.
I would love to see her laugh like that in person. My God, she is so beautiful. I may leave her like that all night. I don’t care if the image gets burned into my TV screen.
He started his reply.
Lauren:
You said I sounded 45. I still don’t know how I feel about that. I feel 65 some days. Today, though, I feel younger because of your great news. I’ve always believed that bad things happened to good people for a reason and that good things eventually happened to good people. You’re the proof.
I’m watching you right now in Feel the Love. You are really fun to watch. I have you paused on my TV while you’re laughing in the second scene. You have a lot of teeth. I’ve counted at least 48 so far.
I hope you’re laughing now.
I wish I had your grace. I know that sounds weird, but I’m not the smoothest person in the world. I bang into things. I don’t mean to. I just do. I’ve gone through three tool bags from banging them around so much, and I find bruises on my legs and arms nearly every morning. You’re fluid, smooth, and natural. There’s something poetic in your every gesture. Even your hands speak. You may have a little Italian in you.
I was engaged once, too. Her name was Natalia, an Italian girl from Carroll Gardens. Natalia was a nice girl, quiet, kind of shy. After she returned the ring (she didn’t throw it into the East River or the Hudson, and it’s probably still at the pawnshop), I had trouble speaking her name, too. At first. I can write her name now.
I guess you could say that Natalia and I were high school sweethearts. She was my first real girlfriend. She worked at Casa Rosa and then at Fragole, first as a waitress and then as a cook. Natalia could really cook. In fact, she cooked so well, she left this part of Brooklyn and me entirely.
She told me I wasn’t part of her “plan,” but she never told me her plan while we were together. Her plan was to marry a rich guy and start her own restaurant, and she did both, and in that order. She has a thriving restaurant in Bensonhurst, a rich husband, and two kids. She probably doesn’t even have to work.
I run into her every now and then during mass at St. Agnes. We speak, but it’s still awkward. There’s more, but I don’t want to depress you, and she broke it off nearly twenty years ago. Life must go on, right?
Guess what? We have something else in common. We’re both not looking. If you’re up to it, maybe we can “not look” together. I may be pushing 45, but my eyes are still young and strong. Maybe we can find what we’re looking for together.
I think the love you described in your e-mail only exists in movies and romance novels, not that I have ever read any. I never felt that kind of love with Natalia. We weren’t all that romantic, though I wanted to be. I didn’t really know how to be romantic. I guess you could say we were kind of cool and calm. Maybe that’s how I got to be so patient. Remember Talia Shire in the first Rocky? Make her taller and give her longer hair, and that’s Natalia. I used to call her Adrian. She never called me Rocky.
You thanked me for some reason, and I don’t know what for. I should be thanking you for giving me someone to come home to. You are definitely keeping me warm these cold November nights. Thank you.
I’ve now frozen Feel the Love at the face you made after your character’s first kiss. You couldn’t be acting. You have such an angelic look of wonder on your face. That had to be real.
Thank you for these “real” conversations.
Patrick
PS: Is freezing your face on my TV while I’m writing to you creepy? I hope not. If it is, please tell me.