Ruffly Speaking

the rodent crap.”
    I reached out and took the plastic bag. “Here, let me dispose of that for you. Phew! I’m afraid it’s already beginning to—”
    “Holly, when I am not home, you stay the hell out of my apartment, and, furthermore, if I want to hire someone to train my dog—”
    “It probably won’t be me. After all, I just might be effective.”
    “Do not shout at me,” Rita said with dignity.
    “Do not shout in my hallway. You’re not my only tenant, you know, and I will not have the Donovans disturbed by people squabbling in the hallway any more than I’ll have them driven out by a dog on the floor below that never shuts up. So come in!”
    The Donovans, who rent my third floor, have two Persian cats and no dog, but, in all other respects, they’re ideal tenants. They never complain about anything, even the washing-machine-rehydrated dog treats that kept clogging up the coin-op dryer in the basement, but it honestly wasn’t fair to inflict Willie’s barking on them. Lawrence, the husband, is an ordinary-looking, slightly plump Harvard M.B.A. with skin a few shades lighter than his wife’s cinnamon, and he’s less colorful than Ceci
    in most other respects, too. He dresses drably and is quite self-effacing, but Ceci wears dress-for-success clothes and has the air of authority that originally led me to believe that in renting to the Donovans, I’d scored a major dog-world coup. Much to my original disappointment, though, Ceci turned out not to be a real judge; all she does is sit on some circuit court of appeals. But, as I’ve said, they’re excellent tenants, anyway, and I didn’t want Willie driving them away.
    Once Rita had deigned to cross my threshold and I’d closed the door, we lowered our voices, but increased the intensity of the dispute. Rita hit me with two of the dirtiest epithets in the verbal cesspool that passes as the psychotherapeutic lexicon —intrusive and passive -aggressive—and I accused her of using her hearing loss to justify her selfish disregard for other people’s needs.
    That got to her. “Selfish! I don’t believe it! Holly, have you ever wondered why I am wearing these hearing aids? Is this really something I’m doing exclusively for me? Well, you know what? It damned well is not, because the fact is, I don’t really enjoy hearing. And you know why? Because the world is a screaming mess! I’m used to a nice, quiet world, and that’s how I like it, and the main so-called benefit I get from these things is that everything is clattering and banging all the time, and I hate it! Turn on the faucet, and instead of a nice, peaceful nothing, I get snap, crackle, and pop, like breakfast cereal, for God’s sake, and—”
    “Rita, why you are wearing the aids, if I might remind you, is so that you don’t keep going to the wrong funeral. Remember Morris Lamb?”
    Strangely enough, Rita and I had drifted toward our usual seats at my kitchen table, but instead of actually sitting down, we’d stationed ourselves behind the chairs almost as if we intended to use them as shields or as weapons against each other.
    “Well, let me remind you, Miss Know-It-All,” Rita said, tightening her grip on the chair, “that there happen to be a hell of a lot of people who don’t hear a damned thing, for all practical purposes, and who manage just fine, thank you, by signing instead of—”
    “Absolutely right,” I interrupted. “But you aren’t one of them, and why you aren’t one of them is that you don’t know a thing about deaf culture, and you’re probably not going to learn anything about it, either, because, for a start, not only do you not sign, but you aren’t actually deaf, either. All you are is—”
    “Don’t say it! Hard of hearing. Politically correct stance: Being deaf is not an illness, so it’s not something that needs to be cured. Hearing loss is no loss at all.” Rita spat out the words. “But just having a hard time hearing? Walking around with these hideous fake-flesh radios jammed in my ears so nobody has to bother to speak up? Well, that’s a whole other matter.”
    “Poor little Rita,” I said brusquely, “caught between two worlds, rejected by the truly deaf—”
    “Oh, shut up! You simply do not understand—”
    “What I understand perfectly is that my second-floor tenant has carefully trained her dog to become a nuisance barker, and I, for God’s sake, am a dog writer, but that much atmosphere I really don’t