Though I’d lived in New York for almost a year, I was still getting accustomed to the city’s unique rites of passage. Kevin, who had arrived only a couple of months before, was still in shock. We’d both moved from Boston, a place where people have cars and backyards and relatively few homicidal thoughts per capita. In New York, you must relearn all the simple, quotidian skills you’ve taken for granted since becoming an adult—grocery shopping, laundry, parking, sleeping. Daily life is a blur of small battles—squeezing up and down the stairs to the subway, bobbing and weaving around slow walkers on the sidewalk, and vying for park-bench space so you can eat your takeout lunch in relative peace. To some degree, these are all expected, reasonable challenges in a city of more than eight million. But every once in a while you’re faced with something unexpected, a question you can’t just ask the guy on the corner. A question like, “Where am I supposed to bury my cat?”

Kevin and I stood outside the vet’s office squinting in the sun. We had lied and told the vet we had a backyard where we could bury Jed. The other two options were to pay for his cremation with a credit card, or to give the vet’s office permission to “dispose of the body.” Kevin was more upset than I’d ever seen him. He had rescued Jed from an abusive owner more than a decade ago, and he wasn’t about to leave him now. A proper burial seemed the only fitting thing, but where? We started walking down 7th Avenue toward True Value Hardware, taking turns carrying the house-shaped cardboard carrier. It was heavy with a weight unlike any other I’d ever felt. It was a lifelike weight, but oddly quiet and still, somewhere between asleep and inanimate. When I tripped on a chunk of broken sidewalk, I worried that the shake had disturbed him. No, I had to remind myself. Jed was already gone.

I waited outside while Kevin went into the store and bought a red-handled metal shovel. By the time he came out, we had both arrived at the same idea: Prospect Park. We guessed we could get in some kind of trouble for it, but we decided it was worth the risk. The park was our mutual favorite place in New York. Its vast, sea-like lawn is Brooklyn’s backyard; its meandering woods the borough’s best hiding place. On a warm day you can see dozens of picnic tables decorated with crepe paper and balloons for kids’ birthdays, their parents sipping beers and manning grills nearby. People of all ages play catch and softball and soccer, and dogs chase tennis balls as far as their owners can chuck them. In the woods you can pretend you’re completely alone, with the chirping of birds and the swell of the breeze to keep you company. Though we doubted he’d ever gotten that far in his nocturnal wanderings, Kevin and I agreed: The park would’ve satisfied Jed’s wanderlust for an eternity.

We entered through a break in the stone wall along Prospect Park West and followed a path that ultimately dove off into the woods. We climbed a hill to what we hoped was the highest point in the park and chose a spot next to a thick oak tree with tangled, partially exposed roots. Kevin dug the hole while I stared down passersby who gave us condemning looks. What was the penalty for burying a pet in a public park? Would anyone actually go to the trouble of reporting us? For all they knew, we could be stashing a murder weapon or human remains, but we knew our cause was pure. When the hole was deep enough, Kevin lifted Jed’s body, wrapped in an old towel, out of the carrier. He held it for a moment before placing it in the hole and then immediately started filling it in. It had rained recently, and the dirt was heavy and dark like wet sand. Kevin tamped it down with his feet and then smoothed it out with the back of the shovel. We wanted to mark the grave without making it too conspicuous, so we pressed fist-sized rocks into the packed earth in the shape of a capital J. When it was done, we sat on the ground for a while, watching the sunlight move through the trees.

Burying Jed was one of the last things Kevin and I did together. Our relationship had always been a volatile one, and by the time Jed died, we were already in our decline. I don’t know if Kevin still lives in New York or if he’s moved back to Boston, a place he always loved and seemed reluctant to leave. Nor do I know if Jed’s grave is still on that hill in Prospect Park where we made it that bright spring day two years ago. I could probably find it if I looked; I remember that wonderful tree with its rippling roots, the way the sunlight split a thousand ways and dotted the spot we marked with a J. But I’d hate to find it ravaged somehow, dug up by a dog or eroded by rain. Instead I’ll just imagine Jed the way he might’ve looked if he’d gotten to enjoy Prospect Park during his life. His lean, gray body bounding through the woods, or curled up in a patch of sunlight, warm and dreaming.

Which may have been the feeling I’d had, set upon by a sick, sadistic high school administration, but let’s face it, I did escape with my ass, if not my sanity, entirely intact.

By the time I realized what had been going on in that tank—the smaller of two in the upstairs apartment of a fish-fancying friend—the paradise was a pathetic, stumpy remnant of its former self, unable to steer or swim with any speed. It could no longer even pretend to evade the increasingly vicious assaults on its ragged, bitten-raw body. It seemed definitively doomed, and my friend seemed, well, disinterested.

It’s a fish eat fish world, was his feeling. The main tank, up top, was filled with peaceful, sociable species; this tank down below was a somewhat experimental environment, in which a pair or trio of volatile fish might be put together, just to see what would happen. Most often, they reached a sort of standoff (as had the paradise and the cat.) But with the introduction of a tough new contender, the conclusion was foregone. Surely he didn’t need to let this scenario play out to its bitter end. I insisted he remove the battered, badly handicapped fish now.

He shrugged, then obliged me by scooping it up in a little net and dropping it into a plastic holding tank of its own, where it hung in the water, dazed and defeated. It constantly fell over and couldn’t easily right itself. Nor could it accurately navigate toward pellets or flakes at feeding time. Though paradise fish do get their oxygen underwater via gills, they also surface to breathe our air, which I, in my utter ignorance, found astonishing. Meanwhile, though, this one had trouble moving up or down at all, the six inch depth of the tank as challenging as any lake.

But it survived a few days of stunned relative stillness, and a few days more of tentative movement, retraining itself to swim without most of the external fishy anatomy swimming generally requires. When I saw it would most likely make it, I decided that since I was responsible for its life, it ought to be more properly mine, resident in my apartment. I brought it home one evening, setting the container on my desk where it would get the most sunlight during the day, and where I could easily observe its progress as it adjusted to its new surroundings (supposing it noticed such subtleties beyond the plastic walls), continued its rehabilitation.

In my mind and in my notebook his name was Blu, or sometimes Para (but that was too painful a pun, even for a fish.) Out loud, I mainly called him Fish and Fishy. I’d concluded he was a he because of his former ferocity with the catfish, and because, after another week or so of convalescence, he began to blow the kind of bubbles male paradises produce to support and hold the females’ eggs. Of course, Blu’s bubblings were a thin, inadequate version of the real thing, but still, it seemed a positive sign.

I didn’t actually notice I was calling Fish Fishy, or talking to him, for that matter, until almost a week after his homecoming. I mean, I suppose I’d been saying good morning when I opened the blinds and threw him a few “tropical crisps” or whatever. But it wasn’t until I found the paradise hovering motionless, patiently watching me as I sat back down to work one afternoon that I stopped too, took some time to study the deformed survivor, who neither flinched nor fled under my steady gaze. We stared at one another for minutes on end, and then I heard myself say, “Fishy, we make a fine pair.” No need to elaborate on that, we both knew what I meant. Interesting, too, that I’d lived as a lone Pisces all these years, never harboring so much as a childhood guppy, until this unexpected rescue of a poisson more traumatized, more thoroughly screwed over, than I’d ever be.

“ You’re gonna be all right,” I told him. I was, more or less. Mere all rightness didn’t seem too much to promise a fish. I wondered whether accidentally amputated fins and tails could ever be expected to regenerate. If that were to happen, Fish would doubtless need a larger habitat in which to enjoy doing real laps again. And maybe even a new tank mate? But that would surely demand careful, critical thinking (the kind the aficionado upstairs apparently hadn’t bothered exerting on Fish’s behalf.) Meanwhile, he had me, and I had him. And as even a tiny tank without a filter requires quite a bit of personal attention, we were more together each day than not. And then there were the nights.

My bedroom is never absolutely dark: streetlight filters in, and there are points of electro-green emanating from the laptop and various peripherals. I couldn’t see Fishy, precisely, but I could discern the tank’s outlines, sense a piscine presence on the far side of the space between my bed and his inches of desktop. It made me feel like a child in some picture-book fantasy. I can’t recall the last time I prayed, or even wished on a star, but suddenly, one night when I was having trouble sleeping, it struck me that I could wish on this Fishy. A simple wish, to start: I wished I’d fall asleep. And I did.

I didn’t often wish on Fishy in the darkness, but I did make a point of saying good-night, as I turned off the bedside lamp. And once in awhile, I’d go on, no more than a minute, outlining provisional plans for the following morning. If Fish was just a way to rationalize talking out loud to myself, what of it? People talk to their dogs and cats (and birds and rabbits) all the time. At least I wasn’t making a public spectacle of my special relationship out on the street, or irritating friends by insinuating Fishy into ordinary conversation at home.

In fact, it never occurred to me to discuss him, beyond the bare fact of his existence in a plastic box on my desk. Which itself didn’t much grab anybody: just a fish, and a fairly sick joke figure of one at that. Scarcely counted as a pet, much less a companion. Even his original owner didn’t seem moved by Fish’s miraculous recovery. Moreover, as someone who’d kept large aquaria since adolescence, he’d seldom experienced attachment to any individual specimen.

On the other hand, he did more than once remark, “Who would have ever thought that fish could become a victim?” Exactly! And the unpredictably of such vicissitudes was clearly not restricted to life in the tank.

Still, it’s possible I didn’t realize, myself, that I was bonding (as the psychobabblers say) with Fishy, forming actual feelings for the little freak, and yes, perhaps over identifying with him, as the weeks went by. Because it’s otherwise difficult to explain the shock, and the surprisingly sharp pang of sorrow, I felt the evening I found him dead—and not floating, either, but, rather, standing straight on end, a strange centerpiece to the teeny green plastic grove I’d planted to cozy up his cold cell. Perhaps his dearth of limbs accounts for this last lugubrious trick. However that may be, I stroked him, spoke to him, and my eyes stung with tears (!) as I wracked my brain about what I could possibly have done wrong, this particular day, to bring about his so-sudden demise.

Yet there was something more, beyond useless guilt, past simple animal sadness. Fishy had beaten such odds, I think he’d become, for me, the living proof that anyone could survive anything and keep on swimming…or at least floundering with full attention. Now he was gone, and I was once again a split-off, solo Pisces, facing the unknown future on my own. Oy. What if this were some kind of sign? My melancholy mood made me more than usually suggestible, I suppose. In the end, in my wordless grief, I gave him a decent burial (no toilet flushing for my Fish), rinsed out his tank, swore off rescuing strays and sad cases, for the time being.

As fate would have it, though, the very next week my friend asked me to foster a failing blue gourami. Seems he was more impressed with my fish-keeping skills than he’d let on, despite the eventual loss of Fishy. I’m feeling better about that myself; my love kept him alive as long as anything could. Meanwhile, the new guy not only came through the crisis, he began to actually thrive. I upgraded to a two-and-a-half gallon tank, with gravel, modest décor, a filtration system, and a pair of corys for company and bottom cleaning.

But I never spent nearly as much time watching, never mind communing with this one; I rarely spoke to or called him by name, and I never, ever wished on him in the night. Fish is fish, finally, neither metaphor nor talisman. Man, they just die on you too much to put your whole heart into their happiness and well-being. There’s a reason so many people keep these cozily alien creatures, and from what I can see, psychic connection ain’t it.

Still, there’s no shame in recalling how, for one brief moment, Fish flashed through my life as the image of a soul mate in absurd adversity. By the way—word to those bee-atches at Wadleigh Secondary School—his cichlid tormentor was soon killed outright by a bigger, badder bully. So Fishy, despite the cruel suffering he endured, had the last laugh there. And really, what more, or better, could I wish for myself?

Susan Volchok is a New York writer of fiction and essays whose work has been published widely in literary journals and anthologies, and in mainstream magazines and newspapers, including The New York Times. These days, she leaves the fish to that upstairs neighbor, who's since become a most Pisces-loving boyfriend.
 

One night, in 1926, Frances got out of work late. She threw on her coat and ran for the trolley, feeling totally in control of things as usual. It was a later car than she usually took, so she didn’t recognize any familiar faces – her work schedule usually brought her in contact with the same daily crowd between uptown and downtown. What’s more, this later car was standing room only, so she shifted her bags to her shoulder and grabbed a free hand-strap, bumping knees with a few other seated passengers. A strange man came along and took the hand strap next to her, leaning against her as the trolley sped and swayed between stops.

In fact, this guy standing behind her -- he seemed to be doing more than just leaning against her. At first she thought it was her imagination, but soon she realized she actually did feel something – his hand, it must be, for god’s sake – teasingly tickling the backs of her knees around the hem of her coat. Well, for the love of Pete. Wouldn’t you know!

She turned and gave that pervert a killing look, but he seemed blissfully ignorant, reading the paper. He was pretending as if nothing at all was happening. Was she dreaming? She scrutinized the passengers seated in front of her, but none of them looked like the sex fiend type. Maybe she had imagined it.

Two stops later, the tickling began again, and now it felt like someone was tapping their fingers lightly up the backs of her legs, temptingly reaching toward her ample, feminine derriere. Well for the love of Peter, Paul and Mary! She turned and gave the man behind her a good smack.

“You think I don’t know what you’re doing? What, you think I’m some ignorant dummy? Stop it right now or I’ll call a cop!” she said.

The man only looked surprised. And then, while she could see his hands still up in front of himself, holding his paper in a way to fend her off, she felt it again. This time, she felt the ticklish sensation start to skid and scamper from her tender backside down to her knees – to the hem of her coat – and then continue scrambling around toward the front pocket . . .

There was something – something alive -- inside the hem of her coat!

She tore the coat off and screamed, realizing the horrible truth about what must have happened.
The office girls all hung their coats in a dank anteroom with uninsulated walls, and she had hung hers against a rickety corner. She had left a few candies in her coat pocket. Her coat pocket had a hole. Most likely, a critter of some kind – a mouse, or, god forbid, a rat – must have crawled into her pocket after the candies at some point during the long workday, and it had fallen down the hole in her pocket, and into the hemmed lining of her coat. Now, it was trying desperately to scramble up and out to freedom.

“EEEEEEEEEEK!” she cried. “A mouse! There’s a mouse in my coat!”

The poor man she’d been beating a moment ago, sighed and launched into action. He grabbed the coat she’d just hurled into the air, methodically felt around until he cornered the poor beastie in a corner of the lining, and smacked the corner hard against the trolley car window – “Ker-THUNK! Ker-THUNK!” -- until the lump went motionless. Then, to the great amusement of their fellow passengers, he handed the coat back to my grandmother.

It was a lovely camel hair coat, belted, with a big rounded collar and horn buttons. Except for the dead, inert pulpy thing in the lining, it had been a perfectly serviceable coat, and still in fashion. However, our young fearless working girl was feeling suddenly charitable, and so she dropped it off at the Salvation Army that night. They were very happy to receive the donation. Ignorance is bliss.

Sally Pla is a San Diego-based writer with deep New York roots, currently at work on an illustrated collection of sartorial family vignettes titled "Life And What We Wore." This story about her grandmother is a part of the collection.
 

I read the Timeses, the Newses, the AM New Yorks. I watch the Ernie Anostoses, listen to the Brian Lehrers, check out the NY1s, peruse the Gothamists, and call the 311s, only to end up hearing the same message, the ongoing drumbeat pounding in my brain in 12-8 time.

THE-BED-BUGS-ARE-COM-ING! THE-BED-BUGS-ARE-COM-ING!

I can’t see them, but I know they’re everywhere. A WPIX headline screamed bed bugs have reached an “epidemic scale!” And that was based on a survey of pest control companies. Who knows the bed bug scourge better than those paid to remove bed bugs?

Uh-oh. Kevin. That guy I play basketball with on Sunday. He had marks all over his legs. Were those nocturnal nibbles? Were they embedded in his skin? Was it contagious when I brushed by him off a baseline pick? Is it too late? Has our mattress been infiltrated? My wife can’t sleep, has her blissful slumber shield been penetrated? Why am I so itchy? Won’t those little bastards be attracted to their own kind? Must the Moses be bed set on fire like the burning bush that MADE HIS VERY NAME!

I need to settle down. I sit on the couch and thumb through a newspaper.

Oh no.

THE-POS-SUMS-ARE-COM-ING! THE-POS-SUMS-ARE-COMING!

Wait, the possums aren’t coming. They’re already here. Years ago, the city let them loose in Coney Island to eat the vermin. And yet the rats still rule, so soon, possums will overrun Brooklyn.

Brooklyn.

Where I eat, and sleep, and wake up in a sweaty possum-induced panic attack where the wily beasts gnaw on all available wooden rails. These possums have a mouth full of 50 sharp teeth, tend to exude a foul odor, and can occasionally contract rabies. It’s true. It has to be true, it says so right there in the New York Post. Tiny creatures that prey on tiny creatures in the night. And since the rats are clearly onto the possums that can only mean we’re also breeding super-rats with a taste for blood and discarded Nathan’s wieners!

I throw down the Post and pick up New York magazine, sweet arch too-cool-for-school New York. You’ll calm my frayed nerves while pointing me to the hippest spot for fried risotto balls with oxtail… Wait, what!?! “A whole mess of COYOTES are already living in the city!” Coyotes are carnivorous and dine on small mammals, lock the door and holster the deadbolts!

Needing to clear the cobwebs, I go out to breathe fresh air. I take a walk downtown. Well, what do we have here? Police barricades, a handful of gawkers, a decrepit building. Sweet mother of mercy, it’s the jihad mosque! The crumbling shell of a cut-rate coat outfit soon to be home to an evil gang of super villains hell-bent on blowing up our very way of life! On a quiet street where I may soon want to enjoy a four-wheeled stroll no less!

Sure, the terror mosque doesn’t look scary right now. In fact, the only noise being raised is by an old man in a white linen suit with a sign that clearly states what we’re all thinking: Thank You New York Police Department. You protect and serve us and keep us safe and the NYPD is the real heroes and the police and the firefighters should never be forgotten on 9/11. God bless the NYPD for all of your dedicated service and for keeping us safe and we our honored that you protect and serve us—

The sign says it all, or it would if a bored-off-his-ass cop didn’t ask the dangerous septuagenarian to take his righteous cause to the designated city “protest pens” down the block. “I’m on your side,” rages the man. “That’s the rules. Whaddya gonna’ do?” says one of Gotham’s finest. Things are getting ugly, voices may or may not be raised, blood may or may not be shed, and what is that falling from the sky? Is that? Is THAT!?!

Oh. It’s a D’Agostinos bag.

Holing up in my apartment seems to be the only solution. Stay vigilant by staring out the window. My oh my, it’s getting dark awfully early. Why is the sky green? Is that tree blowing sideways?

MAYDAY! Water, water, water, everywhere. Batten down the hatches! Or at least shut the windows. All the sudden, I’m living inside a car wash. Is that an air raid siren? Tornado? Tornado! TORNADO! Mass hysteria. Human sacrifice. Dogs and cats living together! Tornados scoop up the young and transport them to far away lands populated with trolls, robots, man-eating beasts, scorceresses, and mad geniuses with oversized heads.

What’s next? A giant terrorist made of marshmallow? Raining down the sweet sticky soot-covered poison to be devoured by all the good little boys and girls. A Stay-Puft Pied Piper, driving children to their sugary demise like so many super-rats, uber-possums, and monster-coyotes escaping this mortal plane in the East River?

Exhale. Exhale. Exhale.

Focus on what’s important right here, right now. Ignore the theoretical demons. Get grounded, goddamnit. Don’t look at the downed trees, that’s just Mother Nature messing with you.

Ahh, yes. I will take the hospital tour. Perfect thing to get me out from underneath the covers. Beth Israel seems ideal. Lots of helpful information, clean facility, nice rooms, friendly staff, plenty of watchful eyes so nobody will come in and TAKE WHAT?!?

I never even thought of that. Does that actually happen? Oh my God, that Lindbergh snatcher. He was from the Bronx. Are his offspring still roaming streets and corridors, hidden in the shadows of our look-straight-ahead mind-your-own-business metropolis?

Pull yourself together, man. Funny…Is that the guy that was sleeping in the corner during the introduction? Maybe he got there early after a long day at work, but why is flying solo? Don’t let it get the best of you. It’s not unreasonable that a slovenly middle-age 300-lb. man with Coke bottle glasses in a dirty maintenance worker shirt who was snoozing in a chair not ten minutes ago is wandering around the happy floor without a female companion.

What’s that you say? It’s not normal? He had to be removed from outside the nursery when the host asked where his partner was and he loudly responded in his reedy voice, “Oh, my wife has to be with me to take this tour?”

SECURITY!!!

Our guide apologizes, explaining that she was thrown off. Yes, the mystery man was wearing a hospital employee shirt, but not for Beth Israel. He works at the V.A. Hospital in the Bronx.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

Scary scary scary things everywhere.

New York City, my home, our home, soon to be someone’s hometown can be a terrifying place.

Truth be told, I am afraid.

Pleasantly, excitedly, childishly, the-only-fear-is-fear-itselfedly, infantilely, deliriously, crazily, end-of-the-world-as-we-know-itedly, sublimely afraid.

But it’s got nothing to do with rodents, Muslims, funnel clouds, infant-filchers, or any other phantom menace lurking throughout our great city.

Hey, bedbugs! Listen up! You can all go get fucked.

I ain’t afraid of no ghosts.

Patrick J. Sauer is a freelance writer for Fast Company, ESPN, Popular Science, Smith, AOL and Huffington Post Humor. He is the author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to the American Presidents. Originally from Billings, Montana, he now lives in Brooklyn. For more, check out patrickjsauer.com.

I immediately think of The Thorn Birds, which I read when I was a kid. I know it was meant to be a sweeping epic love story, but the scene that made the greatest impression on me was the one in which the main character, as a little girl, catches lice from a classmate. She has bugs crawling all over her hair. Her mother chops it all off and douses her head with kerosene and lye soap while calling her names like “dirty little grub,” leaving the girl with oozing red bald patches all over her head. All the family members have to wash their hair with kerosene and lye soap, and the mother boils all the bedding and sprays everything with kerosene. The girl’s father and brothers run the family of the classmate out of town, and her father tells her she may not associate with any children other than her brothers ever again. But–The Thorn Birds takes place in rural New Zealand in 1917. This is Manhattan, early 21st century. How did lice get here? And where does one get kerosene?

I then make the mistake of looking up lice online. Never do this. It serves no purpose to look at enlarged photographs of lice. Looking at the close-up of a person with eyelash lice, in particular, serves no purpose. It does not provide useful information, and it makes you want to throw up.

While I am riding the bus to school to fetch Meredith I manage to calm down, which is good, because the thing I keep thinking is that I’m mad at my daughter for getting lice. How could you be so careless? Didn’t I tell you to wear your hair in a ponytail after we got the notice about head lice in the school? I listen to myself and decide I sound like the mother in The Thorn Birds, so I stop calling my daughter names in my head and remind myself that this is not actually, or not entirely, her fault.

By the time I get to school I am in the proper frame of mind, which is, concerned more for her than for myself. Even though I’m the one who will have to boil all the bedding. I’m afraid she will be upset, as I know I would be if someone found larvae stuck to my hair. But when she sees me come into the nurse’s office she runs up to me and says, do you want to see my nit? And holds up an orange card with a piece of her hair taped to it. There on the hair, under the tape, is a single, tiny dark speck of something. Printed on the card is the toll-free number for “Licenders,” a company that exists solely to treat cases of head lice.

I take the card from her between thumb and forefinger and I call the number on my cell phone. The woman who answers tells me we can come right down. She starts to say something about how much it costs and I can’t believe she would even think that I care. I collect Meredith’s things and we race out to the street to hail a cab.

Licenders is at 32nd and 5th Avenue, on the 5th floor. In the cab, I wonder whether Licenders, or its equivalent, exists in other places in the world. I wonder if it is only in New York that is it possible to both 1) get lice AND 2) not know how to deal with them. I wonder if it is only in New York that people want to hire professionals for everything.

We arrive. We take the elevator to 5 and follow the signs for “Head Lites” — Licenders’ prior appellation. The “salon” is quite small, one receptionist and three stations each consisting of a high chair and a bright white halo-like light with a magnifying glass in the middle. On the wall is affixed a plastic box with copies of a pamphlet entitled “Everything You Never Wanted To Know About Lice.” There are three folding chairs along one wall, in which sit three Lice Ladies eating take-out. The place smells like food, which seems like an odd and wrong thing for a place like that to smell like. The receptionist asks for information, address and credit card, where I have traveled lately. As I fill out the form I think about the fact that the Lice Ladies are eating their lunches in the same room where they comb microscopic bugs out of people’s hair. Then I decide that an excellent working definition of a “professional” is a person who is capable of eating on the job.

They tell me to sit on one of the stools so they can check me. Until that moment it has not fully dawned on me that I could have lice, too. I sit on a stool and one of the ladies puts her lunch aside. She shines the light on my head and lifts sections of my hair with a long pick. She looks me over thoroughly. Fortunately for everyone, I don’t have lice, although my head now feels very itchy.

Meredith is asked to take my place, and the Lice Lady pins all of her hair on top of her head. Meredith has a lot of hair, thick and auburn, and it takes some time to pin it up. Then the lady unpins a few strands. She combs a mixture of Licenders Conditioner and baking soda through the section, with the proverbial fine-toothed comb. I think about the interesting impact head lice have had on the English language. Fine-toothed comb. Lousy. Nit-pick. Then the lady wipes both sides of the fine-toothed comb on a white paper towel and peers at the towel. Then she takes down another few strands. She says this will take about two hours.

The doorbell rings and I answer it because I am sitting in the folding chair closest to the door. Outside are one of Meredith’s classmates and his father, J. I don’t know them well, but I am very glad to see them, because the saying misery loves company, like most sayings, is true.

J. is a former soap opera star. I have never watched soap operas, but everyone in school knows about him and his wife, who is a current soap opera star. My sister-in-law, a soap opera devotee, once showed me a video from 1994 called “Daytime’s Most Wanted Men of Passion” that features J’s face on the cover. In that photograph, J.’s hair is thick and dark. He has blue eyes that could charge your cell phone, and a wry smile. He and his wife are both very nice, friendly people. Very down to earth. Yet there is something about them. Once they both came to a pot-luck school-related function wearing white. Everyone else was wearing black, or else gray. Her sweater, in addition to being white, was fluffy angora, and little feathery bits of angora floated around her in a cloud and settled gently on the lapels and shoulders of everyone she spoke to.

The Lice Ladies are kind of excited to see J. The one who gets to check him for lice giggles a little while she brushes his hair to one side. J. doesn’t have lice, either. J. fills out his information form.

“Oh, you were in California recently?” the receptionist asks him, reading the sheet.

“You must have brought the lice from California!” the Lice Ladies tease.

“We don’t have lice in California,” he says. “We have ringworm in California.”

“Ha ha!” the Lice Ladies laugh.

“Do you know [name of soap opera character]?” one of them asks.

“Well, you know, that isn’t actually a person,” J. says. “But I have met the actress who plays her. She’s very nice.”

“What soap are you on now?”

“I’m retired.”

“You can’t be retired! You’re too young to be retired!”

J. shrugs. I feel bad that the Lice Ladies are interrogating him.

“Good thing I’m retired,” he says. “If I were working, I wouldn’t get to bring my son to Licenders.”

Meantime, they are working away at Meredith, and pinning up J’s son’s hair.

“You’ll need clean t-shirts for the kids,” says the receptionist. “If you didn’t bring your own, you can go buy one somewhere around here.”

“Ok,” I say. J. and I get up off our folding chairs.

We walk a few blocks and see a souvenir and t-shirt shop. The sign outside the shop says “3 shirts for $10,” so we buy 3 shirts, one for each child and one for their teacher, who also has lice and is scheduled to arrive at Licenders any minute. We walk back to Licenders, passing by the Empire State Building. We briefly discuss the Empire State Building, and how we have not taken our children there, despite the fact that we live in New York City.

When we get back to Licenders, the teacher is there, and another classmate with her mother and nanny.

“I need this like a hole in the head,” says the mother. She and the nanny take turns having their heads checked.

The time passes. We all chat. J. is telling us about his first job.

“I had to learn to ride a horse,” he says. “I didn’t know how to ride a horse, but I had to learn. And I also had to learn gun tricks. In the show, I was playing a guy who goes around impressing people with his gun tricks.”

We all laugh.

“Gun tricks!” J. says, and dazzles us all with his smile. After a while, Meredith’s treatment is complete. Her hair is oiled, and neatly done in two braids. I learn that the oil prevents the lice from hanging on. They just slide right off. The receptionist gives me a small bag containing a vial of Licenders shampoo, Licenders oil, a metal Licenders comb, and instructions for Meredith’s hair care and also suggestions for cleaning the house. It isn’t so bad. I have to put things in the dryer.

We say goodbye to the others. Out on the street, I take Meredith’s hand. She is wearing her brand-new “I ♥ NY” t-shirt, and she smells, not unpleasantly, of citronella. We walk past the Empire State Building, past the dumpling restaurants of Koreatown.

“We’ll have to go to the top of the Empire State one day,” I say. “And we’ll have to eat at one of these restaurants.” I feel cheerful, and, amazingly, hungry. You know, if you’re going to get head lice, this is the place.

Carol Paik’s essays have appeared in Tin House, The Gettysburg Review, Fourth Genre, Brain Child, Literary Mama, Newsweek, and elsewhere.

Uncle Johnny, who lived next door (we called him uncle as a sign of respect though he wasn’t a relative) once told me that the tree had come from a cutting from Sicily. Lots of people on our block claimed to have gotten their fig tree cuttings from relatives in Italy, somehow managing to get them through customs when returning from visits there. As a kid I knew that the trees were a tie to the Old Country. Later I came to see that they also symbolized the sense of abundance and prosperity that these Italian-Americans associated with America. Many people of my parent’s generation had managed to scrimp and save enough money to buy their own houses and to have backyards of their own where they tended vegetable gardens and fruit trees. They had become property owners, just like the padroni back in Italy that their parents used to have to work for and basically genuflect to when they walked by.

My grandfather even told my father that back in the old country when the padrone belched in his presence, he had to say something to the effect of “God bless you padrone”. They didn’t have to do stuff like that in the States. And they had their own fig trees. Somehow those two facts were related.

I remembered that some of the neighbors had different sorts of trees from ours. Jack, who lived a few houses up the block, had three trees: one gave white figs, another green, and then he had a tree that gave black figs that were shaped differently from the ones on our tree. Jack kept a discerning, almost proprietal eye out for all the block’s fig trees. It was almost like they were all part of his grove. He’d make the rounds to neighbors’ houses, going straight into their backyards and looking over their trees. He’d tell people what sort they were and how best to care for them. If someone had gotten too old to care for a tree or if a neighbor was away traveling at summer’s end he’d come to his backyard and throw a net over the tree to keep the birds and squirrels away and of course he’d pick the trees.

Jack would also bring some of his figs for us to taste, and then we’d be expected to give him some of ours. Lots of people on the block would drop by once in a while with a small plate of figs. They’d stay and talk with my mother for a bit about the news on the block and what was happening in everybody’s families. My dad would put the coffee pot on and bring out some cake for them to have as they talked. Sometimes my mom would speak to them in Neapolitan dialect, a sing-songy form of Italian with seemingly no verb conjugations and a pronunciation style very different from the formal Italian I learned when I lived in Italy after college. I didn’t really notice it at the time but now years later in my memory, it sounds archaic and beautiful. And I very much miss my mother’s Neapolitan hand gestures. I never really learned that language either, a hand language used to punctuate dramatically the points of her speech. The figs were a catalyst for the spirit of neighborliness.

When my mother died and my father got too old and sick to tend to the garden and the fig tree, Dolly or Rose, two other neighbors, would drop by to help. Jack would also come over to put the mesh net over the tree. Sometimes the birds would tear the net and Jack would mend the torn section. Once I was visiting when Jack was doing that. I remember my dad looking out the backyard window, surveying the scene. I remember him sighing and saying to himself, but out loud, “Oh geez, I can’t do stuff like that anymore, everything’s just gonna go to pot from here on in.”

During the last year of his life I moved back in with Dad to keep on top of the household chores. I’d go shopping, shovel the snow off the sidewalks and shovel out the alleyway. That last summer I planted tomatoes, basil and some eggplant in the garden, and I tried to keep on top of the weeding and the fig tree situation. It struck me, living there, that I didn’t see many of the old neighbors anymore. Many had died or moved in with their kids out on the Island or in New Jersey. Jack came by once or twice that summer to exchange figs, Dolly helped me with weeding the garden if she thought I was dropping the ball a little bit with regard to my weeding duties. Everything seemed so quiet in the house; no more boisterous conversations in Neapolitan, no more neighborhood gossip fueled by coffee, cake and plates of figs. By the time my father died all that seemed like it belonged to another time and a different place.

When my father died there were a lot of feelings about what to do with the house. In the end we decided to sell it. My brother told me that he wanted to uproot the fig tree and take it to his place in Long Island. But he never got around to doing that. I think we were all too saddened by dad’s death, and too exhausted from working out the details of inheritance to take on such a big task. So, we left the tree; we didn’t even take a root cutting. For years after at every family gathering we’d talk about the old house and the old neighborhood. Inevitably someone would bring up the subject of the old fig tree and then my brother would recount how he had once planned to take the tree to his place out on the Island.

After my surreptitious visit to the back yard that day I decided to take a drive around the old neighborhood. I especially wanted to see if there were any fig trees left. I saw one in the front yard of a house on 21st Avenue, past 65th street. I remembered that had been there for years and years. And I remembered that the owner would always rap the tree up in canvas in the winter. My father did that to our tree just a couple of times. But he thought it hurt the tree, or at any rate wasn’t worth the trouble. But one year the tree almost died. That was the year New York had all those ice storms. After that winter it took a year for the tree to come back and start sending out branches again. I was really happy that it did.

Anyway, I didn’t see any more trees. Most would have been in people’s backyards so I really don’t know why I was looking in people’s front yards, but I was. I drove back to my old block and stopped the car by Jack’s alleyway. I could see that his fig trees were still in his yard. He had also built some trellises for his grape vines, and I could see that the vines were heavy with fruit. I’ll bet he’s going to make home made wine, I said to myself, something my own family used to do at a little cottage they had out on Long Island. I wondered if Jack had managed to find some new fig trading partners with whom to share his fruit and to exchange news about the neighborhood. I hoped very much that he had.

It wasn’t a New York bird, black and greasy and fat off of restaurant waste and dropped hot dog buns. It looked more like a bird you would see out in the country, in the hills of New Hampshire or Vermont, with brown wings, soft-looking tan feathers on its belly, and a tiny patch of red right on top of its head. It seemed like a bird that would sing. It made me realize that pigeons don’t sing.

I only saw the dead bird for a second as I walked by, my heels clipping fast against the pavement. I didn’t stop because I wanted to get a cup of coffee before heading into the office. At the corner, I waited at a light and wondered how the bird had died. It looked so perfect I thought maybe it had just dropped, like a stone or a tear, out of the sky, but most likely it had flown into a window.

I thought about ducking into a store and asking for a shoebox. I could pick up the bird, using a tissue as a shroud, and put it inside—a cardboard casket. Then I could walk to the park and bury it at the base of a tree or under a leafy bush. I could use a stick to dig the hole, scraping and scratching into the earth until it was deep enough. I could leave something behind as a marker, an earring or a shiny silver coin.

I imaged going to work, my stockings shredded and my nails caked with dirt, and telling my boss that I was late because I had to conduct a bird funeral. But then the light changed, and I crossed the street.

The Earth Room’s title pretty much sums up its contents: it is a large loft space filled to about knee level with earth. Some people might call it dirt, but it seems healthier than that. A set of windows overlooking Wooster Street lends the space a kind a domestic feel, with patches of sunlight and a view of a sign that says, “Park.” One surveys the Earth Room from a kind of vestibule in much the same way one might survey a party just after arriving, but before plunging in. Except in this case there is no plunging in, and it’s much quieter. There is something plush about the moist, fragrant earth, like someone’s idea of shag carpeting gone amok.

Mr. Dilworth sits in a separate room, in sight of the front door but with a wall separating him from the viewing area. He is not a proprietary guard.

“Guard isn’t really the word for what I do,” he says, “there’s nothing to guard.” Then he cheerfully producing a document issued by another museum titled, Why Not Touch Works of Art. “This is an art work that can’t be hurt. And besides, I can’t see the visitors.”

He feels it’s to the viewer’s advantage that they are alone when they see the work. “I think it’s nice that people can come here and have their own quiet private time. In fact a lot of the people who come aren’t particularly interested in art. Their interested in it is as a sanctuary. It’s not one thing or another, it’s just a big flat area of earth. People can project themselves onto that.”

The piece is, on the whole, low maintenance. Once a week Mr. Dilworth waters the earth and rakes it. Occasionally there is some weeding to be done because, as he put it, “things grow in it.” An occasional sprout here and there can be taken care of during the weekly raking, but a nascent mushroom population requires a particular vigilance. “If a mushroom were to pop out it would become the focus of the room,” he said.

Most visitors to the Earth Room, which is open from noon to six p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, come alone. Mr. Dilworth estimates that on weekdays there are between twenty and forty visitors. On Saturday it gets up to one hundred and twenty. Though there are a few people who seem offended or confused by the work, most people’s reaction to it is quite favorable, even edifying. “Usually things that seem crazy are frightening, but this isn’t,” Mr. Dilworth says. “It is entirely inappropriate to laugh at most art, but not in this case.”

In fact, laughter is apparently a common reaction. The Earth Room has a number of regulars, among them a woman whose visits follow a similar pattern each time. “Soon after she arrives she begins to giggle lightly, and then it slowly builds to a full fledged laugh. She has a very infectious laugh so sometimes I find myself laughing along with her. Then she gets very quiet and stands for a few more minutes before leaving. There’s a good vibe here at the earth room.”

As if to support this claim, a recent visit to Mr. Dilworth was peppered by visitor’s popping their heads in to register their appreciation. Mr. Dilworth clearly enjoyed the exchange. “One of the good parts of the job is that people often come up to me and say thanks. I did free-lance carpentry for a while and no one ever said thanks. They talked to you when things went wrong.”

That, essentially, is what the Earth Room is–a place where things don’t go wrong. “The Earth Room is always here, people can return to it again and again. In this city where everything is constantly changing, particularly in Soho, and where everything has a price tag, the Earth Room always remains he same. And nothing is for sale.”

Walking on 78th Street between First and York, heading to the subway station after spending the weekend at my girlfriend’s place, I saw a torn piece of paper on a telephone pole. I leaned in to read the piece of paper. A queasy feeling came over me.

Missing: Green Parakeet! The sign described this person’s particular green pet parakeet. The joy that the parakeet brings to that person’s life. How the parakeet likes music. How it was a wonderful and loyal companion.

I kept reading the sign over and over again. Finally, when my shock began to subside, I sat down on a stoop and pulled out my cell phone. I dialed Michele’s number. “You won’t believe what I just saw,” I said when she picked up the phone. Earlier that day, when we finally made it outside after our usual Sunday sleep-in, Michele and I decided to take a walk. A burst of bright sunshine greeted us when we went outside. We took a moment to let our sleepy eyes adjust, and then headed East toward the FDR highway. There was a slight tension in the air. In recent weeks I had contemplated a job change. Finally after four and half years at the same company, and recent difficulties, I was beginning to go on interviews. It was a new experience for me and I was incredibly anxious. Michele was extremely pragmatic. She sympathized with my situation, but insisted I was doing the right thing and that with confidence and a determined outlook, I would escape a bad situation and discover a positive one.

So I was very pensive, gathering my thoughts and contemplating my next move. We got to the 78th Street overpass along the East River. Joggers, rollerbladers, and sunbathers were out en masse along the narrow path by the FDR. As we made our way down the stairs toward the path, I began to feel dizzy from the heat. My recent anxiety had eaten away at my appetite. I leaned against the rail for a moment and Michele asked if I was all right.

I said I was fine and suggested we lay out on the grass along the highway. We found a spot next to a small tree. Despite the proximity of the FDR, and the frantic sounds of cars speeding by, I was able to nap away my troubles. When I woke up, it seemed I had been asleep the entire afternoon. But it had only been a half-hour. I sat up and actually felt refreshed. For the moment, my troubles took a backseat to the gloriously sunny afternoon. We decided to move on and head toward the park. As Michele packed up her things, a flurry of green caught my eye.

I turned to look and was shocked to see it was a green bird (I was used to only seeing pidgeons along the highway.) It flew clumsily above my head and for an instant I lost it. It came around again and landed on the tree. “Check that out,” I said to Michele.

“Wow,” she said. “What is that, a bird?”

“I guess,” I said, sounding unsure even though I was quite positive it was a bird. Our conversation was stilted; we were mesmerized by this stranger in our neighborhood. Other than the fact that it was green, it was difficult to make out any more details. All we knew was that it looked exotic.

Suddenly the bird flew out of the tree, took a nose dive and flew back up again. We were silent as our eyes followed the bird’s meandering path. It took another nosedive, but this time it didn’t fly up again. This time it landed. In the middle of the FDR. “Oh shit,” we shouted. Before we could say another word, the bird started to take off, but was caught by the fender of a speeding car. The bird was tossed over the car and landed on the road again when another car hit it. And another.

We stood by helpless. By this point, there was little left of the bird and little that we could do. We paused for a moment, shocked at what we had seen. We looked around. Should we tell someone? But who would we tell? We walked toward the park in silence. I’m sure we were both thinking the same thing. What are the chances of seeing something like that occur? If it had been something more familiar, like a pigeon, perhaps we wouldn’t have been shocked. For the rest of the day, other than the occasional “I still can’t believe we saw that,” we didn’t discuss what happened.

That is, until that evening when I saw the flier on the telephone pole. We debated what to do, whether we should call the number on the flier or not. Maybe this wasn’t his bird, we said. But we realized that was probably impossible. How many green parakeets go missing on the Upper East Side? In the end, we decided to spare the owner the agony of knowing his pet’s fate. Our reasoning, whether wrong or right, was that maybe that person will hold onto a glimmer of hope that his green friend would fly through his window one day. Better that than sharing the gory details of its demise. I turned off my cell phone and continued toward the subway. Soon thoughts of that poor green bird were replaced by fears of an impending job search, joy of a serious relationship and satisfaction for living in such a unique city. But even now, almost a year later, I occasionally think of that bird’s last moments, and hope it cherished its brief brush with freedom in New York.

(The initial feeling, here on MBN’s Panel for the Ethical Treatments of Civilians, was that calling the Parakeet owner is the right thing to do. Generally speaking, people want to know what happened to the person/thing/pet they have lost.

What would you do? Call or not? Click here to answer.

I kept them all winter in a paper bag from the A.&.P.–
At first where I was living then, on the West Side,
Until the next-door tribe of Murphys drove me out with rock’n’ roll,
Then at Thompson Street in the Village, where, overhead,
A girl and her lover tromped around all night on each other.

And that wasn’t the end of it. I shlepped those bulbs around
For two months from place to place, looking for a home,
All winter, moving, oy–although this was nothing new to me,
Coming as I do from a wandering race,
And life with its twelve plagues making me even more Jewish.

Now I am living on Abingdon Square–not the Ritz exactly, but a place,
And I have planted the tulips in my windowbox.
Please God make them come up, so that everyone who passes by
Will know I am there, at least long enough to catch my breath,
When they see the bright, red, beautiful flowers in my window.