Stay (10 page)

In my mind, Peter says, “Van- Savannah, I-” but this time, I don’t cut him off. Peter says, “Savannah, I love you. I’ve always loved you and I can’t hide it anymore. I need to be with you.” Only it doesn’t sound like some bad movie, it sounds amazing, because Peter is saying it and he means it and he puts his arms around me and kisses me and we make love on my old bed in the carriage house. Later, when Janie finds out, she’s not upset, because she’s secretly in love with the heir to some great shipping fortune, who looks like a Greek god and has a name like Balthazar or Adonis, and the four of us end up being dear friends and we have these amazing dinners on Janie’s patio overlooking the Aegean Sea at sunset. We laugh about how we almost got everything so horribly wrong and toast to getting it right with globe-shaped glasses of red wine. We eat crusty bread dipped in olive oil, and Peter wraps his arm around my sun-kissed shoulder. “What was I thinking?” he says, gesturing to Janie, and we all laugh, because it’s so obvious that what Pete and I have is true love, and Janie’s happy too.

When I’d snap out of it, and my face didn’t feel flushed from getting too much sun, and all there was outside was cold and gray and I was still alone, and Peter was still off in Europe with Janie, I’d make another run to the pet store to buy Nylabones or treats, and think about cuddling up with my puppy and watching movies, or taking him for long walks, because that was a dream that could actually come true.

On Wednesday night, I set up everything. I put food bowls on the kitchen floor on a little bone-shaped place mat, but then I worried about my puppy dropping food out of his bowl and eating off the dirty floor. I didn’t even own a mop, so I got down on my hands and knees with a bottle of Windex and a roll of paper towels and scrubbed a floor that hadn’t been more than spot-cleaned in the two years since I moved in. I pulled out dried-up ziti from under the stove, and a baker’s dozen of dehydrated peas from under the refrigerator. The scary thing was that I hadn’t even eaten peas since I moved into the condo, so I’d actually pulled someone else’s dehydrated peas out from under my refrigerator. I scrubbed the toilet because dogs drink out of toilets, but I worried that he might drink some lingering cleaner, so I flushed fifty times. I hid candles and stashed shoes. I scooted around the house on my knees looking for sharp edges and objects that could obstruct airways. Before I knew it, it was two in the morning, and it was time to go get my puppy.

It’s weird to claim baggage when you haven’t flown anywhere. I didn’t quite know what to do with myself. I felt like I should be holding up a sign saying LEONE or GERMAN SHEPHERD or something.

When I got to the baggage claim section, there was an enormous green plastic crate on the floor in the corner.

I walked over and peeked in the crate. It was dark. There were shadows of a dog shape-sharp ears and a snout the length of my forearm-but I couldn’t see much until a pink tongue the size of a strip steak dropped out of nowhere. Geez, that’s weird, I thought. Someone else is picking up a dog too.

I backed away from the crate and walked over to the freight pickup window, slapping my driver’s license down on the counter.

“Ms. Leone, you’re here for the dog, aren’t you?” The clerk behind the counter was a nice-looking man with dark brown hair slicked back with copious amounts of hair grease. He had a brilliant white smile, orange-tanned skin, and dimples. The airport ID tag hanging around his neck read PETER MARINO and showed a picture of him giving the camera a sly smile, like he was posing for a magazine cover. He was a completely different kind of Peter. He wasn’t even a Pete. I bet his friends called him Petey.

“I’m here for the puppy,” I corrected.

“That is one big puppy, ma’am,” Petey said, pointing to the pink tongue in the gigantic crate. “Real sweet, though. Hasn’t barked once.” He shoved a paper across the counter at me. “Sign here,” he said, making a big sloppy X with his pen. My heart plunged into my toes.

“I’m sorry,” I said, taking the pen from him. My hand was shaking. “There’s got to be another crate. That big one, that’s someone else’s. I’m here for a puppy.” I held up my hands, about two feet apart, to show him how big I thought the puppy was supposed to be.

He laughed. “We’ve only got one dog, here, ma’am, and your name is on the crate.”

I could barely get my hand to work the pen. My signature was a long squiggly line. How was that beast in the big green crate my puppy?

Petey wasn’t paying attention to me, he was staring longingly at the crate. “Okay, he’s all yours.”

I wanted to tell him he could have the dog, and the closer I got to the crate, the more I wished I had. The crate came up to my hip bone, and the dog, from what I could see of him, took up most of it. The muscles of my heart were working hard and skipping beats. I had a tiny black puppy collar with little silver stars on it tucked in my purse along with a skinny black leash. It didn’t look like it would fit around this beast’s leg. I pictured myself leading a big black wolf through the airport with a collar on his leg.

Petey came out of a door labeled EMPLOYEESONLY. I tried to keep my eyes averted so he wouldn’t see the panic on my face.

“Miss?” He walked over to the crate and tapped on it. “Miss Leone? I’m on break. I can help you get him to your car if you want.”

“Oh. Uh.” I didn’t want to take up this poor man’s break, but there was no way I was getting the dog and the crate to my car alone. I looked up at him and nodded.

He snagged a big metal baggage cart and pulled the crate onto it, grunting loudly and straining himself until the veins in his neck popped out. I felt so guilty. I should have brought someone with me to help. But really, even if I’d been willing to openly admit that I gave my credit card number to a Slovakian website and prayed for a dog in return, I didn’t have anyone to help me.

We got out to the parking lot. Petey huffed and puffed and his breath made a cloud that circled his head and trailed behind him. I worried he might explode. I wanted to help him, but I didn’t know what to do. I walked fast next to him and put my hand on top of the crate like I was helping to steady it.

“Where’s your car?” he asked, grunting.

“Over there.” I pointed to my little silver Corolla.

Petey stopped and looked at me, then he threw back his head and laughed up at the sky, “Ha! Ha! Ha!” He vibrated. His sides heaved in and out under his thin shirt. “You think you’re going to get this guy in there?” he said. Tears welled up in his eyes from laughing so hard.

“Well, I thought he’d be- ” Tears welled up in my eyes too. “I thought he’d be smaller,” I said. I was laughing and crying at the same time. Tears ran down my face and dripped off my chin.

“Well, then we’ll just have to see what we can do here, right?” Petey pulled a tape measure out of his pocket and measured the crate and then the car door and then the crate again.

“He’s gonna have to come out.” He pushed the button on his tape measure and the tape snapped back in.

The beast stirred in his crate.

“What do you mean, come out?”

A car drove by us and the headlights shone into the crate. Teeth gleamed.

“Well, you gotta take him out of there sometime, lady. If you want me to help you, we’re gonna have to take him out now.”

Petey had me back the car out into the aisle. After a lot of maneuvering, he got the crate lined up pretty closely with my car door. From the front seat, I reached around and unlatched the crate door. The dog jumped onto the backseat. I hopped out of the front seat and slammed the door.

The dog was huge. The size of a person. He took up the whole backseat. All I could see was black. His fur was long, and so black it looked blue at the tips, even in the orange parking lot light. I was terrified.

“Whoa,” Petey said. “What kind of dog is that?”

“German Shepherd,” I said, running around the crate.

“That’s not a German Shepherd. He’s black. He has long hair.”

“He’s supposed to be a German Shepherd,” I said.

The dog stared at us with his mouth open. His biggest teeth were the length of my little finger. A long string of drool dripped from his tongue, landing on the car seat.

Petey grabbed the crate.

“I’m gonna pull away. You shut the door.”

I nodded and took a deep breath.

Petey pulled the crate away, but I hesitated a split second and the dog’s head got in the way.

The dog pushed past us.

“Fuck!” I yelled. I didn’t know if I should run after him. I didn’t know if he’d bite me.

“Don’t panic!” Petey said. “You can’t panic.”

“What am I supposed to do?” I asked.

“Let’s just see what he’s going to do.”

The dog was about twenty feet away from us, sniffing around a lamppost.

“No! You don’t understand! He’s- I paid- He’s-”

The dog lifted his leg and started peeing.

Petey chuckled. “When you gotta go . . .”

“What are we going to do? How are we going to get him in the car?”

“Calm down,” Petey said, wagging his finger at me. “You’re forgetting something very important.”

“What?”

“Dogs like riding in cars.” He pulled his bottom lip up, and raised his eyebrows like he’d just told me the great secret of the ages.

“That’s it? That’s all you’ve-”

The dog stopped peeing and put his leg down.

Petey made a clicking sound in the side of his mouth. “Come ’ere. Come ’ere, boy.” He leaned in and smacked the backseat.

The dog ran over at full speed and jumped on the seat. Petey slammed the door shut behind him.

“See,” Petey said. “Dogs like riding in cars.”

I didn’t think of Slovakia as a place that had cars. I pictured a little gnome man taking the dog to the airport in a hay cart pulled by a donkey, but the dog looked comfortable in my car. He sat on the seat and stared at us through the window, his breath fogging up the glass.

“He’s a good-looking dog, whatever kind he is.” Petey hit his palm on the roof of the car. “Okay, next order of business. You know you’re not going to get this crate in your car without breaking it down, right?” He went over to the crate and turned the locks along the side to release them.

I walked around to the other side and did the same. My fingers were freezing, and it hurt to push the plastic dials to unlatch the top from the bottom. Petey got all the latches around the back of the crate before I’d finished two. We took the front grate off and nested the top of the crate in the bottom.

“Here,” he said, pulling a white envelope covered in packing tape out of his back pocket. “This was taped to the other side.”

I didn’t know what it was and I didn’t want to find out with Petey looking on, so I shoved it in my coat pocket.

“Do you have any rope in your car?” Petey asked, and I knew he doubted that I did.

“No.” I opened the trunk. There was a mass of old Tupperware containers and travel mugs that hadn’t made it back home and into the dishwasher after being used. In the mess was an old ripped pair of panty hose.

“We can use these,” I said, pulling the panty hose out of my trunk and wadding them up in my fist. Petey grabbed for them. I yanked them out of his reach. “I’ll do it.”

Petey lowered the crate pieces into my tiny trunk and shifted them around until he seemed assured that they were as stable as they were going to get. I tied the panty hose from the loop at the top of my trunk through the holes in the crate and into the loop at the bottom of the trunk. I pulled tight until the panty hose were out of stretch. I tried to tuck the crotch of the panty hose into the trunk, but it sprang back up.

“Well, there you go,” he said. “All set.”

“Here.” I tried to hand him a ten.

He put his hand up and shrugged away from me. “No. No. That’s fine.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and walked away, yelling over his shoulder, “Good luck to you, Miss Leone.”