This Dog for Hire (17 page)

“Not to mention the museums.”

“I didn't.”

“What?”

“Mention the museums.”

“How true. Well, glad you're back, so to speak.”

“Me, too. Glad to
be
back. As it were.”

“So, tell me, is it true? What I heard?”

“Was it something negative?” I asked, unscrunching myself from the orange plastic seat. “Then it was probably true. More than likely true, I'd say. Well, definitely true.” I grabbed his shirt and pulled him into my face. “What did you hear?”

“That you're divorced.”

I let go of his shirt and slouched back down into the seat. “Oh, that,” I said, brushing away an imaginary insect with the back of my hand. “Who isn't?”

“Not me,” he said. He was sitting next to me, making the kind of direct eye contact only the most confident dogs make, only his eyes were green, not blue or brown.

I wanted to say something, to comment or respond in either a cheeky or compassionate way, but the thought came to me that I may have completely forgotten how to speak in English, and that if I dared open my mouth, I might find myself speaking in Chinese.

Chip didn't speak either.

Anyway, the screaming from the bichon ring was so loud we would have had trouble hearing each other if either of us
had
spoken.

I could smell his musky aftershave, or was that just him? I had the urge to sniff him, the way Dashiell would have, but I decided to hold off. At least for the time being.

“So, what are you up to? Still training?” he asked, reaching for my soda and taking a sip.

“I wouldn't want to lose my hand,” I said, putting my arms on top of the back of the seat in front of me, resting my chin on the back of the top hand, and looking down at the rotties being stacked.

“You mean, at
training
?”

“Among other things. A woman's got to know how to take care of herself these days. What with all the divorce going around.”

“I noticed your ad is no longer in the Yellow Pages.”

I sat back up and looked at him, but said nothing. He had those little flecks of reddish brown in the green of his eyes.

“Have you finally found an occupation more in keeping with the delicacy of your gender?” he asked, draining the drink and letting an ice cube fall into his mouth. “No. Don't tell me. Let me guess. You've opened a yarn shoppe.”

I smiled. Inscrutable as a chow chow.

“Did I ever tell you—” Then he began to laugh. “Same old Kaminsky.”

“It's a family thing,” I said. “It's genetic. None of us ever change. You might say I'm just a chip off the old block.”

I thought he was going to put an ice cube down my shirt or something equally immature, but he didn't. He just sat there looking down at the rings. The rottie people were going wild. One of the pillowcases had won.

“I woke up too late to save the marriage,” he said, still watching the dogs. “I hope to hell it's not too late to save fatherhood. You'd be surprised how difficult it is to accept the fact that you're not the kid anymore. You're the parent.”

I exhaled for the first time since Lincoln was shot and waited.

“We're doing joint custody. Ellen says I spend more time with the kids now than I ever did when we were married.”

I nodded.

He nodded back.

We both looked down at the rottie ring and watched the winning dog getting his picture taken.

“How'd you know I was here?”

“Saw you walking up the stands. I'd know your—walk anywhere.”

“Horse shit, Pressman.”

“No, it's true. You have one of the great walks. I've always thought so.”

“Be that as it may,” I said, but then I shut up. I could feel my face getting hot.

The thing is, if you've been attracted to someone when he wasn't available, that fact could have made him more attractive than he really was. And because you knew you wouldn't let anything happen, because who wants to always celebrate holidays on the wrong day and just sit by the telephone with nothing to keep you company but your low self-esteem, you never looked at him as a viable mate. So you just have this tantalizing impression. Which has zero to do with reality.

“Just when it's getting interesting, I have to meet a client,” he said. “But I—”

“Yeah. Yeah. I've got to get back to work myself.”

“I tried to call you, Rachel. You're not in the book anymore? Not even in the white pages?”

“Not listed.”

He raised his eyebrows in unison and waited.

“Jesus! What do you need to find an old friend, a fucking private detective?”

I thought from there I could cleverly segue into the story of my life, but I didn't. Instead, I took out a pen, slid his catalog off his lap, and on the inside back cover wrote my name and my unlisted phone number. He leaned toward me just as I was looking down to put away my pen. His lips landed on my nose.

“Was that as good for you as it was for me?” He was grinning.

“I never knew it could be like this,” I told him. His eyes were the color of moss.

“Same old Kaminsky,” he said, pulling out his wallet, fiddling with its contents, and finally extracting his business card.

“We're not at the same number either.”

“We?”

He handed me a photo of a shepherd.

“Betty,” he said.

“Davis?”

“Boop.”

She had a dark saddle, a red chest, piercing, intelligent eyes.

Okay, so I only trust people who carry a picture of their dog in their wallet. But the photo alone wasn't enough reason to run out to Condomania and stock up. Was it?

The good part of sleeping with your dog is that he never, ever gets out of bed, looks back at you, and says, “You know, babe, you'd have a great body if only you'd lose ten pounds.”

And he never goes back to his wife.

I thought I should tell Chip that my new career required Zenlike concentration and that I couldn't afford the distraction of a sexual liaison at this time, or just make some childish, offputting, hostile remark to cover up how nervous he had made me, but before I got the chance to do either, he left.

I watched him making his way down the crowded stands, then crossing the Garden floor. His gait was strong and smooth, with no sideways movement or wasted effort, as if he were a beautifully made, well-oiled machine.

The river of dogs was still moving in circles in ring six. The crowd near ring two cheered. I watched, waiting for my heart to start beating at its normal pace again. When it did, I felt so drained I could have curled up among the empty soda containers on the sticky floor and taken a nap.

I've always had trouble dealing with more than one thing at a time. And right now, I reminded myself, my time was bought and paid for.

The day's breed judging was over, and they were starting to tear down the rings and sweep in preparation for the group judging that came in the evening: the working, terrier, nonsporting, and herding groups on Monday night, the sporting, hound, and toy groups, then Best in Show, on Tuesday night. People were clearing out now to go for dinner and many to change to formal clothes for the evening judging. I stayed. I loved the Garden when it was empty.

I had once come with Art Haggerty to interview the three families who had dog acts in Ringling Bros. Barnum and Bailey Circus. We had come in the morning, interviewed and watched the acts all day and all evening, and then were invited to stay late, after midnight, to watch a new dog act being trained for the next season. We waited in the stands, whispering to each other. It would have seemed disrespectful somehow to speak out loud. After a while a young boy, his hair wet and slicked neatly back, came out and walked to the center of the center ring. The only light in the whole place shone down on him as he played the trumpet, which in this cavernous, empty space sounded so mournful and moving we could barely breathe. When he finished and left, a very tall blond woman came out, bowed to the empty stands, and then blew a whistle. With that the dogs appeared, one by one, running into the ring and jumping onto small, high stools, then turning around to face her with rapt attention. These were the Daring Dobermans. As we watched her put the six male dogs through their paces, we figured out and whispered to each other the separate commands that, when seamed together, made up each routine.

The circus families trained dogs the same way they trained wild animals, not the way dog trainers trained, and so Letitia swung a kind of small fake whip over her head as she cued the dogs to work, a reminder of the fruits of disobedience.

We had watched the acts during the day and evening from the floor, but from close up we could see things we would not have been able to see even from the first row. We could see the size and strength of the flat metal collars used to contain the chimps, the pain and anger in their eyes too. We could see the sharp hooks on the rods that seemed to merely tap-tap at the elephants to keep them moving, and we could see the scars all over their bodies. Backstage, chained in a long line, they rocked and rocked, the way people in mental institutions sometimes do. We could see something so frightening in the eyes of the big cats, it defied description. We could see the scars they had left on their trainer, too.

From the floor, we had seen everything. I hadn't been to a circus since.

The Garden was quiet now. I opened my bag and took out the list I had made at the AKC library. Or at least that's what I thought I was taking out. Instead, it was the list of names Sabotini had given me. I began to read it. James T. McEllroy, Michael Smith, John W. Doe.

I shoved everything back into my bag and ran like hell for the pay phones.

20

You Can't Play This

Herbie Sussman and two of his cousins were lined up at the curb on the other side of the street with their penises out. One at a time, they urinated into the street to see whose stream could reach the farthest.

Lili and I wanted to play, too.

You can't play this, Herbie said. You're girls.

Can, too, my sister Lillian sang, chin up, eyes defiant.

She pushed me up to the curb, told me not to move, and came back a minute later pulling the garden hose behind her. She put the nozzle between my legs.

Hold tight, she ordered. Then she turned the nozzle.

The hose sputtered. Then the arc of water sprayed far into the street, almost to where the boys were standing.

We win, Lili shouted, head cocked, hands on her hips.

The cold water dripped into my sandals.

No fair, Herbie yelled.

He stood alone now, his pinkie of a penis pale and flaccid at the opening in his pants. His cousins had already turned around, shaken their members back into their pants, and were running for home.

I was only six at the time, but I learned two valuable lessons. First, if you really want to do something, don't waste your time waiting for someone else's permission. Boys always say “You can't play this.” If you believe them, you'll end up a teacher or a nurse when what you really want to be is a dog trainer or a detective.

Second, sometimes you have the edge. Sometimes you don't. Either way, life's unfair.

It was the second lesson I was reminded of when I heard the voice on the other end of the phone say, “Bailey House. Can I help you?”

I had gone to the bank of pay phones on the higher tier, the ones hardly anyone used, and listening to the phone ringing on the other end, I had wondered who I'd ask for, but the moment someone answered I knew. I asked for Ronald.

Patients didn't have bedside phones, but Ronald was ambulatory and had no trouble coming to the phone.

“Ronald, it's Rachel. Listen, the list Sabotini gave me of patients to visit, it had John down as John W. Doe.”

“Yeah. They do that when guys come in all drugged out from the street. He was, you know, a user. He couldn'ta said his name if he knew it. So they give him one.”

“Does he know his name now? Does he at least remember his street name?”

“Now? Yeah, sure. But they ain't going to change the record. I mean, it's not like he's getting family or anyone visiting him, you know. And like we all got used to calling him John before he got cleaned up, so, you know, it's hard to change, Rachel. How's Petey?”

“He's fine, Ronald. I'll bring him by again soon if you like, to see you and John. But tell me now”—I closed my eyes and inhaled—“Ronald, what name does John remember?”

“His name that he had when he was a little kid. You know, when he was growing up. But he don't care if you call him John. He don't get upset or nothing.”

“So, Ronald, when John was a little kid, what was his name?”

“Oh, I thought I said. It was William. Willy was what his mama called him. That's what he told me, Rachel. You know, when he could.”

“Did he say
where
he grew up, Ronald? Do you know where he lived when he was little?”

“Yeah. Sure. He likes me, John. He tells me everything.”

“So, where was it?”

“Oh, right. Pittsburgh.”

My heart flopped.

“You know,” Ronald added. “In P.A.”

I was hyperventilating. He hadn't parroted me, saying “Will he?” He was telling me his name! And he had seen Magritte. That was why he wanted to hear Dashiell bark. Magritte couldn't, so he thought that meant he'd bite.

“Ronald, you're the best. I'll be there in the morning. What can I bring you?”

“A milk shake. Chocolate, Rachel. If you would.”

“I would.” Then I fairly shouted into the phone, “I will.”

I
Will
. I had found Billy fucking Pittsburgh.

I made one more call, to my friend Marty Shapiro, at the Sixth. The Sixth is home to the bomb squad, and Marty handles Elwood, the yellow Lab whom Dash adores, which is how we met. Billy had been in such bad shape when he had come in, the guys had gotten him a bed at Bailey House. No way they were going to let him back onto the street like that, Marty told me, no fucking way.