That summer, the summer Hector finished high school and began working as a waiter at the Meadows Country Club, coyotes began appearing in Troy. The earliest sightings—sometimes packs of the animals, sometimes a lone coyote—were reported on the big estates in what people called “back country,” where some of the club members lived. Hector had been to a few of these places working for Salvador, a friend of his uncle’s, who added Hector to his landscaping crew when he had an especially big job. The houses were behind gates, and either you had to know the code to punch in, or someone who worked for the owners looked at you on a camera and buzzed you through. You drove down a long, winding driveway, and finally the house, with what seemed like a hundred windows and chimneys, would appear. The properties always had what Salvador called “amenities.” This meant swimming pools, polo fields, orchards, private beaches, formal gardens, tennis courts, helipads, guest cottages, barns, and stables. It also meant “follies,” such as the pair of towering lime-green rabbits standing alone in a field outside a house that looked to Hector like a castle. Or the giant spoon containing a cherry balanced at the end of the swimming pool. Crazy things.
Hector’s first day on the job for Salvador was at a place overlooking Long Island Sound. A beautiful white yacht like something from a dream was moored a distance from shore. The estate also had an equestrian facility with fenced pastures and an indoor riding ring. Horses with gleaming coats stood motionless in the fields as if posed, heads down, grazing.
Eight thousand square feet for the barn, Salvador told him.
“And, wait for it—” Salvador put both hands on Hector’s shoulders, turning him to look out across the glittering water, the seagulls tilting on the salt-smelling wind. He pointed. “The private island.”
The island was hazy, too far away to make out its features clearly, but Hector could see a thin lip of sharp gray rocks on one side. It had a desolate look to it.
Salvador lit a cigarette and offered the pack to Hector. They smoked quietly for a couple of minutes, gazing out across the water. When he was finished, Salvador stepped on the butt and then stooped to pick it up and pocket it. Hector did the same. Salvador was picky about his crews, even though a lot of them, like Hector, were what people called “illegals.” You couldn’t leave trash around any of these places, not even a cigarette butt.
Salvador clapped Hector on the back. “I guess someone’s got to own it,” Salvador said. “Right?”
Other than the quiet sound of ripples lapping at the seawall, the rustle of leaves moving high in the trees, the soft drone of a bumblebee veering close by, the whole place was silent that afternoon. Hector recognized that the silence—a cultivated, magisterial silence, a sun-struck, hot summer silence in which he felt both insignificant and also rudely conspicuous—was its own kind of privilege, something the owners possessed along with everything else. Silence, it turned out, was a thing you could buy.
