Mark Costello - Big If

Peta said “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“In part because I’m selfish,” Noel said. “In part because — well, selfish covers it, I’d say.”

“You promised me boring. You’re a bastard, Noel.”

“I promised you a crashing bore. Just the phrase, don’t you agree?”

“Roofing nails in the parking lot are not boring.”

“Not the first ten times perhaps,” Noel admitted cheerily. “Everything is boring, Peta. You just have to give it time.”

“But Soteer’s gone.”

“What’s that, dear?”

“You said he left. They’re harassing the building pointlessly.”

“Do you mean it’s irrational ? What a blazing insight, Peta.”

“Maybe we could let them know that the guy they’re trying to harass is gone.”

“How does one do that? Erect a sign, Soteer: Not Here ? Or maybe a post to MossProp.com or a mass e-mail to everyone on Earth. Sorry to bother all of you, but we’re realtors proudly serving Rockingham County and the seacoast since 1917, and we’d like a dozen wackos to know that Soteer is not here. ”

“Did he leave a forwarding address? Maybe we could put them on his trail, get them off our backs.”

“Did I mention these were killers? Really, Peta, show a little spine.”

“But we’re realtors, Noel. We’re neutral in this thing. We just want to live in peace.”

“Your cowardice appals me, Peta Boyle. Besides, I thought of that already. No forwarding address.”

The clock ticked in the office. Noel milked his coffee.

“As a Moss,” he said, “I’m conservative, of course. I’m quite prominent in several organizations of New Hampshire gay and lesbian conservatives. These are not large organizations, which is nice in a way — we all get to be quite prominent. But it’s odd too, Peta. Because, you see, I love — really love —twenty people in the world. I made a list the other night. I couldn’t sleep, so I made a list. This is what they call middle age. Don’t glower at me, darling, I’m busy being wise. One set of the people on my list, Gramps and Dad, my uncles, find my quote-unquote lifestyle choice repugnant. The other set, my lover and our friends, find my Tory politics repugnant. And yet I love both sets, and they love me, and as I grow older I’m increasingly sure of the fact that I just can’t handle coffee in the afternoon. Burns the stomach tubes. God knows why I drink it.”

He burped lightly and went on: “It seems to me the central question is: when does life begin? I’ve given this question some thought lately. Strenuous, nonironic, pro bono thought — unusual for me, but then so are roofing nails in my parking lot. It comes down to a sub-question: what is life? In one sense, my life began the day I was born. In another sense, it began on the afternoon of July the tenth, 1970—my junior year abroad, his name was Jacques. I saw him on the channel ferry, Peta — I saw him and I knew a truth about myself. I’ll spare you the details of our week in Amsterdam, poignant though they are. Life, living, being human in your skin, is something one comes into over time — with effort or by accident, a meeting on a ferry — or never, as the case may be. But life, breath, pumping blood, is obviously something else. When does that life begin? The best answer I’ve come up with is: I don’t remember. One day I was here, conscious of myself, a Moss and son of Mosses in New Hampshire. Before that — well, all I have is rumor in the end.”

He put the coffee down. “I don’t think we’ll be posting any notices or sending any e-mails to the world. I don’t think we’ll be doing much of anything, Peta, except what we always do. Because, you see, it’s my goddamn building, my family’s goddamn ugly building, and that is why you are going to keep it open. That is why you will sweep the nails and de-Nerf the pipes and take whatever extraordinary steps are necessary to run an ordinary, boring, mid-market office block in Portsmouth.”

So the siege began. During Peta’s first week as the Dental’s manager, Frank Horan found epoxy in the locks when he came in. He drove up the street to call an all-night locksmith from the phonebook. After making the call, Frank discovered that two of his tires were flat from roofing nails. He changed the tires as the tenants were arriving, parking in the lot, ruining their tires, demanding to know why their keys weren’t working. There were seven tenants at that point, a lawyer, an accountant, another lawyer, a dentist, a psychiatrist, a speech pathologist, and a Web designer. Each tenant had customers arriving with their problems, a toothache or a lawsuit, a stutter or a lisp, a web to be designed, a delusion to be cured, and these clients didn’t need tire punctures too. That night, Noel authorized a nine-thousand-dollar anti-vandal fence. The gates were padlocked each night at dusk, unlocked at seven-thirty.

In Peta’s second week as manager, the padlock was sawed off, nails scattered, and the door locks glued again. She got a new lock for the gates, heavy-duty tempered steel (uncuttable, the locksmith said — you’d need a welder to get it off). Frank came in two days later, found the gates secure, the padlock uncut, and a second lock, behind the first, also tempered steel, equally uncuttable, and Peta had to call a welder to get the building open. The tenants were frantic, waiting for the welder as their customers arrived. A patient of the dentist, moaning from the pain, begged him to pull a molar on the sidewalk. A patient of the shrink, a struggling agoraphobe, had a good cry by the dumpsters.

In Peta’s third week as manager, the Web designer found a Nerf ball in the sewage line. Several people found the Nerf ball more or less together, flushing toilets on both floors, flushing again, as people do. The wastewater overflowed, soaking the carpets. The smell was pungent for a time, shit and wet acrylic. Peta had to call the plumber, a radio-dispatched carpet-cleaning crew, and the police. Noel was determined to fight on. They put cameras on the building, in the lobby and the hall. They put spotlights on the fences, codepads on the bathrooms, and new alarms on all the outside doors. The psychiatrist complained that his patients were unhappy and regressing. Noel responded by hiring a guard dog to stay overnight. The dog attacked the lobby palm and left scary paw marks on the glass of the front door. They got a different dog and a few nights after that, the lawyer on the first floor, working late on a brief, was mauled outside the bathroom. He hired the other lawyer to sue the building and the psychiatrist moved out.

Over Christmas, they lost power — someone cut the line. Over New Year’s, someone shot the floodlights with a pellet gun, put a new lock on the gates, and threw nails over the fence. Noel made the move to the armed guards. The guards sat around the lobby, pistols on their hips, reading fishing magazines. Peta dealt with the guards, the dog guy, the police, telephone security, the power company, and — most strangely — a man who answered his phone, “Threats.”

This man was Brian Ryan, U.S. Secret Service. Peta never fully understood why the Secret Service cared about the Dental Building. As near as she could figure, Brian Ryan was an anthropologist of threats, doing his fieldwork, building up some file in the sky. Peta reasoned that the agents needed to know the local terror scene, who was active, who was quiet, who was up to what. Even so, there seemed to be a big connection missing, two ends with no middle, misdirected Nerf attacks (her end) and a real threat to life and limb (Agent Ryan’s). Peta tried to ask Brian Ryan about the missing middle, but he kept saying it was all routine. Well, it wasn’t her routine, goddammit. Later, however, it became almost routine, roofing nails and sewage in the halls. It was as Noel had promised: even terror becomes boring if you give it time.