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but would qualify as a tame village anywhere else in the country . Nice double entendre in the title to set the tone right away. I read with high hopes.
    Hopes which were quickly dashed. His writing was flat and meandering. Without irony or insight, he covered the various wildlife refuges around the island, where they were, their acreage, inhabitants, funding and so on and on and on that by the time I reached the end my brain felt anesthetized. Wildlife could be a most interesting subject and he had killed it. I wouldn’t be able to recommend him for an internship based on this sample.
    I wrote him back with what I thought was a fairly neutral email, thanking him for showing me his piece and saying that I’d enjoyed it but felt he should work on his writing some more before applying to the internship program because he’d probably only have one shot. I thought it was a sensitive note and that he would humbly accept my seasoned advice. Within moments I learned how wrong that assumption was.
    “I thought you cared about me,” he wrote in an email that arrived in my mailbox almost instantly.
    Cared about him? I hardly knew him. A loud bell went off in the back of my mind:
Do not answer this, shut down your computer, go to sleep
. But I ignored it.
    “I do care,” I wrote back, not adding how annoyed I was to be lying in bed at night having this email conversation when I had to be up at 5 a.m. “Every writer has a learning curve and all I’m suggesting is that you take some more time with it so you can really perfect your craft.” Which was bullshit. He was a terrible writer and if I were honest I’d tell him to find a new aspiration. “Please don’t take my comments personally, Joe. And don’t worry; you are going to be a great writer!”
    “I don’t think you mean it,” he wrote back right away, “but thanks for saying so. Lies can be a kind of grease that’s OK so long as it keeps the cogs and wheels spinning. Right?”
    “I don’t like lying,” I lied. I
didn’t
like it and yet I was doing it right now. “I think it’s time to sign off for the night. I’ll see you at the office.”
    “Maybe I should send you another writing sample, something you’d like better?”
    “No, it’s OK. See you at work.”
    “Here’s one I think you’ll like.” A very large attachment came along with that email. I didn’t answer. Shut down my laptop and turned off the light, hoping to get enough sleep before my alarm went off.
    Moments later the phone rang. Caller ID on my bedside table listed his name, Joe Coffin, and my heart leaped.
    I got up and opened my bedroom door. Nat’s door was still shut.
    “Don’t answer that,” I said across the dark hall.
    “Why would I?”
    It was true: Nat always answered his cell phone when it was one of his friends calling but rarely the home phone unless he saw that it was for him.
    “Goodnight, honey. Sweet dreams.”
    It rang ten times before voicemail picked up. And then the ringing started up again.

CHAPTER 2
    IT WAS STILL dark out when I arrived on foot at a grouping of empty lots on Pacific Street near Flatbush Avenue, about ten blocks from my house. The edge of this nineteenth-century neighborhood, with its tangle of brownstones and stores, had been diagnosed with “urban blight” by the city and defended by a hearty opposition to the wrecking balls of eminent domain as a thriving mixed-use district. I stood in front of an open space that wasn’t here last week, proof that the city had won the argument. Nine buildings had been demolished all at once, creating a toothless space that made you wish they could leave it empty as it had been hundreds of years ago before civilization came along to improve on nature. It always surprised me when I remembered that the islands of New York City had once been as pristine as Martha’s Vineyard, the protection of which had been one long civic battle.
    I stood there waiting in the darkness, hugging myself for warmth and