The Bone Parade (15 page)

No one is fearless, but she comes close, confirming my decision to save her, to keep her around for my amusement, though I worry that her defiance could become contagious. She’s exactly the kind of rebel who could rally the troops. While it’s highly unlikely that she could lead a successful rebellion down here, especially given her putative allies, it does give me pause. Already, Jolly Roger was joining her chorus. I wonder if I can get her out of the cage, but still keep her around. I’m not about to install her in the guest quarters, that’s much too risky, so I don’t have a lot of options. It’s not like I’m running a hotel here. But I realize that even if I had a place to put her, the moment she disappeared from the cellar, June and Jolly Roger would assume that I’d killed her, and that would snap the only reed of hope I’ve given them: get in shape and survive.

Even now, even after seeing the delightful demise of
#8
, they think there’s hope. They cling to my assurance that the girl died precisely because she didn’t work out hard enough, and that so many of the others who came before them are still among the living. The bone parade, I point out parenthetically, has arisen from the more recalcitrant residents of the cage.

June believes me. I can see this in her ongoing effort to cooperate. A mother like her can make a man as weak as Jolly Roger believe anything, even in her love, which in my opinion has been a vapor trail for years. So no, I will not deprive them of hope, never that, not till the final moments, that last breath when their bodies will betray them as surely as
#8
’s did to her; but I do want to keep them on edge, uneasy, the cascade of adrenaline alive, coursing through their shaky systems. They’d all be candidates for posttraumatic stress disorder, if there were a “post” to look forward to.

Then in one of those inspirations that can make you realize how good life can be, it occurs to me that what I need to do is as simple as divide and conquer, a prescription for ruling as old as the poverty it so richly enforces.

It will entail making fine use of Diamond Girl’s penchant for the bizarre, along with a gaudy display that I purchased from the same S&M folks who sold me the mouth plug. It’s a chain and collar arrangement for a master and his dog. And we all know who likes to wag her tail, now don’t we?

L
AUREN AND
B
AD
B
AD
L
EROY
Brown walked down Pasadena’s Colorado Boulevard, past the Gap and Banana Republic and all the other franchises that had set up shop along the route made famous by the Rose Bowl Parade.

Even behind her tinted glasses, the sunlight made her squint, and she recognized that she’d become acclimated to the fuzzy edges and softer skies of the Pacific Northwest, a recognition that nudged her closer to making a permanent move north. Her relationship with Chad had ended, and her studio, while wonderful, couldn’t compensate for his rude intrusions. He’d taken to coming home in the middle of the day to try to cajole her into the physical intimacy that had been missing from their relationship since New Year’s Eve, when she’d broken her very first resolution by making love to a man with whom there was no future.

She’d remained steadfast ever since, and knew that if Chad whispered one more salacious suggestion in her ear she’d scream, or turn a chisel on him.

Her first priority was finding a new place in Portland. The dainty Victorian wanted no part of Leroy—she’d called, they’d been clear—and her room was hardly suitable for him anyway; he’d look like King Kong in a Tonka toy world.

Maybe she could find a decent place with a garage that could serve as—“Walrus! Hey man, how they hangin’?”

Lauren had no idea that this rowdy greeting was intended for Leroy until he started straining on his leash, dragging her toward a biker in black leather chaps. The man lifted his heavy frame off a Harley, and raised his hand in a high five. Leroy offered an anemic response by swiping the air a few inches above the sidewalk.

“Nah, you’re forgettin’ already, Walrus. We gotta whip your ass back into shape. Sit!”

Leroy sat and dutifully executed the paw to palm greeting.

“Son of a bitch! Where you been, boy?”

Without even looking at Lauren, the biker grabbed the dog by both sides of his big thick muzzle and shook his head with brute familiarity. Leroy shuddered with pleasure. Or something.

The biker yanked off the leash and collar, and tossed them at Lauren’s feet.

“What do you think you’re doing with my dog?” she said.

Again, without so much as a glance in her direction, the biker snorted and said, “Walrus is not your dog. He’s mine. Went missing a while back when the old lady and me were going through a bad patch. But hey …” he looked up at Lauren for the first time, and she took in his beard, the mustache growing down into his mouth, the stringy vines of dark hair that he smacked away from his face, “… that’s all over now. You hear what I’m saying.”

It wasn’t a question.

He kneeled in front of Leroy, and his meaty hands once more gripped the dog’s muzzle, greatly abusing—from Lauren’s point of view—his head, though Leroy hardly protested. As she witnessed this rough play, a sad sinking feeling spread through her body.

“What happened?” she managed.

“None of your goddamned business, what happened.”

“No, it is my business. I’ve been taking care of Leroy.”

“Leroy? What the fuck kind of name is that?” The biker shook his head. “But hey,” he said again as he turned toward her, sending his vines of dark hair swinging over his shoulder, “you did okay taking care of him.” He eyed the dog. “Still got his balls. Good thing you didn’t go cutting them off. I wouldn’t be liking that.”

He stood to leave, his hand wrapped around the back of Leroy’s neck.

“He would’ve died out there. Did you know that? He didn’t have anything to drink. What did you do, drop him off in the middle of the night?”

She heard a small group gathering behind her, lured by her anger, his arrogance, the dog in dispute.

The biker wheeled around. “Don’t be giving me any bullshit about Walrus. He’s
my
goddamned dog. Now fuck off before you piss me off.”

Leroy’s response was
grrrrr
.

“Shut the fuck up, Walrus.”

“He doesn’t like it when people yell at me.”

“What?” The biker thrust his face forward like a curious tomcat.

“I said he doesn’t like it when people yell at me.”

“Him?” He shook Leroy by the neck. “He’s a pussycat.” Then he looked back at her and shouted, putting on a show for the assembled, “He wouldn’t give me any shit, not for you, not for anybody. He knows better.”

But Leroy’s growl grew louder, ungodly loud, and Lauren thought she’d never heard a sound quite so good. She fully expected that it would put an end to this repossession, if that’s what it was. But the biker, arms like hams, dragged Leroy up by his front legs and shook him by the neck. The rottweiler bared his teeth. Lauren thought her dog was about to bite, but he didn’t. Maybe the biker knew he wouldn’t. Maybe that explained why he started clobbering Leroy with his fist.

“Asshole,” a woman shouted.

Lauren leaped forward, tears in her eyes, and tried to pull Leroy away. She was yelling, “Stop it! Stop it! Get your hands off him!” when the biker spun her around and shoved her back into the growing number of gawkers. Lauren tripped, cried out her dog’s name, and he lunged for the biker’s leg. Caught it too.

“You son of a bitch.” The term was no longer an endearment. The biker looked at the slash in his chaps, and then at the animal growling ferociously, hair up along the length of his back.

Someone in the crowd—the same woman?—shouted, “Kick his ass, doggie!”

Lauren climbed to her feet and yelled Leroy’s name, then “Come. Come!” fearful that he’d be quarantined—or worse—for biting. They were cracking down on dangerous dogs.

Leroy, as if begruding every bite now denied him, backed up slowly.

The biker, head shaking, hair vines jiggling, stared at the dog, then jammed a thick finger at the creature’s new master.

“You just made the biggest mistake of your life, bitch. You don’t go ripping off one of my dogs.”

“Yeah, he really loves your ass.” The same woman again, no doubt about it this time.

But the biker’s eyes never strayed from Lauren. “Big fucking mistake.”

He climbed on a bike with more chrome than a Detroit warehouse, kick started the engine with a massive black boot, and roared off.

Lauren’s legs jellied as she watched him race down the boulevard. A hand rested on her back, which made her jump.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Lauren knew from the voice that it was same woman who’d been shouting. But she didn’t look like a woman, she looked like a girl, mid-teens with nose and lip rings, black hair, pale skin. Surprisingly young for all the grit she’d shown. Lauren caught her breath.

“That’s okay. I’m just a little shaky right now.” She reached down and leashed Leroy.

“I wanted to see if you were okay.”

“I think so.”

“Does he know where you live? You think?”

Lauren shook her head. “I don’t see how. Why, do you know him?”

“Not him, but I know the type, if you know what I mean.”

Lauren found herself nodding, not that she’d ever known a biker, not this kind anyway.

“They’ll hurt you,” the girl said as she turned away. She wiped her eyes with the inside of her wrist.

“Are you okay?” Lauren said. Now it was she who rested a hand on the girl.

“I’m fine.” Her eyes drifted back to Lauren. “Just don’t let them catch you alone.”

That’s it, we’re out of here. Lauren started packing the minute she walked in the door of her minuscule apartment. You need an omen? A sign? You just got a billboard.

After her clothes, she organized her portfolio. She’d have to return during the summer break to close down the studio, a far more complicated affair than moving her spare possessions. But as long as she kept paying the rent, she could probably keep it forever. Chad had started charging after she’d refused to have sex with him, which had put a price, and a revolting taint, on all the years they’d spent together. She had to pay him three hundred forty dollars a month for what was essentially a room (or, as she once calculated, she’d earned about forty-two dollars and fifty cents per sex act, figuring their average of eight per month. By the minute, she did much better. By the inch, she was a millionaire).

She rued having to toss the bouquet of flowers, but they’d wilted and looked too sad to save. She did pocket Ry’s “I miss you” note, and reveled in the memory of last night’s call when they’d exchanged stories of childhood, traded secrets of adolescence (in all its gangly awkwardness), and shared the intense intimacy of their first loves. She wished she could rendezvous with him in Moab, but told herself to quit pining after the impossible. This had been her break, and she regretted only that she hadn’t been able to work on her sculpture
and
see him. That should certainly get easier with a move north.

Before unplugging her laptop, she checked her email to see if he’d written. She planned to be on the road all day with Leroy in her classic sky-blue ’65 VW Bug. That’s if she could somehow contrive to cram the beast into the back seat.

No email from Ry, but another message from Kerry. The girl reported that she and Stassler had continued the repairs on
Family Planning #8
, which had been more extensive than he’d first realized.

All of Kerry’s emails had started to sound like a dry recitation of routine, which concerned Lauren. Yet it wasn’t so much what Kerry said, but what she didn’t say. The omissions—any sense of joy, wonder, or even much in the way of comment on her hero—might be telling.

Early the next morning Kerry stared at her computer screen, feeling her shoulders collapse to somewhere south of her hips. What was she supposed to say to Lauren? That the jerk hadn’t even looked at her stuff? Hadn’t even
peeked
at it? She’d been telling Lauren everything was going “just great,” but everything wasn’t going just great. Stassler was a real irritating asshole jerk. There had been lots of work, but not much talk. She’d tried, she’d really, really tried to get him to open up, but it was like talking to
Family Planning #8
, which she was still helping him fix. Did he thank her? Say anything? No! What the hell was she there for, if he wasn’t willing to talk to her, help her learn about casting? But she knew the answer. She was there to be his foundry slave, because that’s sure as hell what she had become:

“Here, hold this.”

“Here, hand me the clamps.”

“Here, take this, and this time squeeze it shut
carefully
.” Like she was an idiot.

Here-here-here. She wouldn’t have taken this shit from anyone, and she wasn’t going to take it from him much longer. The emperor has no clothes, that’s what she’d concluded. None. Zip. Butt naked.

She wrote Lauren a short reply. No hint of disappointment. She’d told everyone at school, Oh, I’m going to work with Ashley Stassler, and now she burned with embarrassment at the thought of going back there with her tail tucked between her legs. But staying here meant walking around on eggshells. The only time she felt comfortable was in the house with the door shut and the shades drawn. Not even on the veranda. Even out there she felt like he was watching her. It was creepy. The only really completely totally neat thing about this whole trip was Jared. And the mountain biking.

They’d go out almost every afternoon. He was a pretty strong rider, not as strong as she, but good. She thought it was cool when she learned that they’d both grown up on BMX bikes, doing front and rear wheelies, and tricks like hopping around on the rear tire. Both of them had even spent long afternoons in neighborhood parks jumping their bikes up onto picnic tables, and then back to the ground. She’d even learned to knock off a really gnarly spin by getting her bike up to a good speed and then pulling a rear wheelie that let her whirl all the way through a three-sixty. Kind of like a ballerina on a bike.