Nina Wright - Whiskey Mattimoe 06 - Whiskey and Soda (18 page)

“I have a learning disability,” the kid muttered, sounding defensive.

“Oh. So you’re stupid, is that it? Or just lazy? I hear a lot of dumb asses go to your school.”

The night was dark, but I could feel Brady and Jeb staring at me. I wasn’t done.

“What’s a loser like you plan to do in high school? Let me guess. A lot of remedial work, right? And of course you’ll have truancy issues. Followed by a career in—oh, I don’t know—fast food? Or maybe drug dealing? Yeah, that one pays better. Until you land in jail, which is where you’re headin’ tonight, dude. Great job. You get to see your future.”

The kid was whimpering. Jeb cleared his throat and touched my arm.

“Uh, Whiskey, how about we let Brady finish up?”

“Oh. Sure.” But I had one more remark for the kid. “The dog in the sombrero should scare you. If you can’t do the time, don’t piss off the canine. We got lots of crazy dogs in this town, and they bring boys down.”

By now the kid was sobbing. Brady led him without resistance to the squad car, where Officer Roscoe had set up a howl for his beloved Frenchie.

“What the hell got into you?” Jeb asked. “You made that kid piss his pants.”

“I did?”

Jeb nodded. Sandra probably deserved a share of the credit although I had done my part. Back on the ground, the Frenchie trotted along on Jeb’s other side. We headed into the house, where lights were still working.

“Pregnancy brings out my ‘bad cop,’” I said. “When Jenx hears what happened, she’ll respect me as a volunteer deputy.”

“No she won’t,” Jeb said. “You still leave fingerprints. She called me about the note on your windshield.”

He started to kiss me, but I remembered the dog germs in time to duck. I promised he could have his way with me as soon as Sandra was in lockdown and he was sanitized for human contact.

“This has been a rough week for ya, babe,” Jeb said. “But you’re not alone anymore.”

I nodded. “You’re back, and so’s my mother. Unfortunately, you came with a dog, and my mom got a job at my office.”

The doorbell rang. It wasn’t late, but after the dog traumas, the anonymous note, and the vandalism, I didn’t feel like entertaining. Jeb promised to get rid of whoever was there. As Sandra padded after him toward the door, I counted on her to discourage company unless it was someone who fancied odd dogs.

I did know a few folks like that, and one of them was at the door, Chester. Prince Harry was at his side, cautiously sniffing Sandra’s sombrero. Chester held Velcro, the teacup shitzapoo, who trembled like a tuning fork. Velcro usually trembled, so it probably wasn’t about Sandra or her hat.

“Where’s Abra?” I said cautiously.

“That’s why I’m here, Whiskey. I am very, very sorry to inform you that she ran away. Again.”

It was only then that I realized Chester was crying. His cheeks were streaked with tears, which Velcro now licked.

“How’d she get away this time?” I said as calmly as possible.

“When I took Prince Harry and Velcro out to pee, she pushed past me and kept on going. I thought she was asleep on my bed.”

“Oldest trick in her book,” I mumbled. “Don’t beat yourself up, Chester.”

“I guess I’m not used to managing three dogs at a time.”

“You mean two dogs plus an Afghan hound,” I corrected him.

As I spoke, I glanced over Chester’s head into the night beyond, where Brady’s squad car had stopped in the street, flasher still flashing. I had assumed he’d be en route back to the station by now.

“What’s going on out there?” I wondered aloud.

“Look!”

Chester pointed, but we would have seen it anyway. In the headlights of the squad car, Abra leapt and pirouetted, no doubt for Officer Roscoe’s benefit. No way she would voluntarily turn herself in so soon after escaping The Castle.

I had a theory. “Chester, did you hear sirens just before Abra fled?”

“Yes,” he said, pushing his glasses back up on his nose. “I did hear them when I opened the door to let out the dogs. The next thing I knew, Abra knocked me down and zoomed away.”

As we three humans dashed toward the dog by the cop car, we were accompanied by three more canines. Brady stepped out of the vehicle when he saw us approach.

“Whiskey, can you contain Abra?”

“I think you know the answer to that question,” I replied.

At the very least I should have made the effort to grab a leash before leaving home, but I could rarely put my hands on one. Besides, we all knew how these things ended. Abra would bolt again, and we would wait for sightings, followed by criminal charges.

We watched as Abra performed some kind of erotic doggie dance that involved flashing her ass at the same time she jumped straight into the air. I had never seen that one before.

“She’s trying too hard,” Chester commented. “She’s desperate to get her man.”

I could relate. Wincing, I watched Abra leap onto the hood of the car and press her best parts against the windshield. At least I’d never done that.

As if to prove that one bitch at this address knew how to get her man, Sandra strutted over to the squad car, and gently pawed the rear passenger door. In the window above her hatted head, Roscoe’s leering face appeared. His eyes goggled as his wet tongue slimed the glass.

“Wait!” Chester cried.

He wasn’t commanding a canine. He had just remembered that there was a leash in his pocket. Holding it out, he started toward Abra, who had paused her performance to see what Sandra was up to. Uh-oh. We were about to witness another girl-fight.

“Chester—” I began, foreseeing chaos. Both my hands jumped to cover my baby bump. “Abra’s going to—”

I was poised to say “go bonkers,” but I didn’t have to. Flaring out her full coat and tail, she flew at Sandra Bullock, biting the sombrero, and letting the momentum send them into a spinning roll along the road. Prince Harry ran alongside like a color commentator, punctuating the action with woofs and jumps. While he might have been cheering for his mom, I thought it more probable he just liked to bark and leap.

If I hadn’t been sure that my Affie would best the Frenchie, I would have screamed like a girl for people to pull them apart. Two people did pull them apart, the man in uniform and the man I loved. Meanwhile, I claimed whatever self-protection privileges came with pregnancy by moving quickly in the opposite direction. Brady and Jeb sorted it out fast; the snarls and snorts lasted only moments. Neither dog whimpered or howled in pain. Neither man did, either.

“You can turn around now, Whiskey,” Chester shouted.

He was holding Velcro in one hand and a leash attached to Abra in the other. Bedraggled but self-satisfied, Abra chomped on Sandra’s sombrero. I could only hope that the taste of victory was sweeter than the taste of whatever that hideous accessory was made of.

“Abra scored two hats today,” I announced. “I declare her the winner.”

Prince Harry panted and grinned as if his team had just won a national championship. Jeb was busy comforting Sandra Bullock. Again. Except for losing another hat, she seemed none the worse for wear. Any excuse to cuddle with her man was probably her definition of triumph.

Brady opened the squad car door, presumably to reassure his K9 partner. The vandal cowered in the backseat. Under the dome light, his face shone ghostly white, and his eyes were a dark shadow. Suddenly he cried out, sounding more like a frightened child than a delinquent teenager.

“You got crazy dogs in the car, on the car, and around the car. I want my mom! Somebody call my mom!”

When the kid collapsed in a wracking sob, Chester stepped forward for a better look.

He said, “Tate?”

I turned to Chester. “Please tell me that’s not Ms. McCoy’s son.”

“Well, I could tell you that,” Chester said. “But I’d be lying.”

The one and only person I liked at The Bentwood School—other than Chester, of course—was the mother of a juvenile delinquent, the very vandal who had damaged my property and been a royal pain during the morning assembly.

Where did Stevie think her son was tonight? Do kids that age still need a sitter, I wondered. I felt sick because I didn’t know. Would my child turn out to be a criminal, too, because I was clueless about parenting?

Fortunately, Chester interrupted that trainwreck of thought.

“Tate’s got issues, but he’s great at stand-up.”

“He ran like a rat,” I said.

“Stand-up comedy,” Chester clarified. “Tate loves the spotlight.”

I pictured the kid in a police helicopter searchlight. Where was Tate’s dad? If Stevie was the only parent, did she want it that way?

I swallowed hard, recalling that I had briefly thought Jeb didn’t deserve to know I was pregnant since he hadn’t seemed totally committed to me. After my anger receded and I did tell him, I still felt entitled to handle everything my own way. Now I shuddered at my selfishness and ignorance. Good parenting, I realized in a white-bright epiphany, wasn’t about being right; it was about trying to do right. Maybe that was what Noonan and my mother had been telling me for months. I asked Chester if he had a pen; I wanted to write it down in case I got confused again.

“There’s a pen in my shirt pocket,” he said. “But I don’t have a free hand to grab it.”

Of course, he didn’t. In one hand, he was holding a quaking teacup dog, and in the other he was holding the leash of a recidivist-felon dog. Chester was a loving, caring kid, yet his father had been strictly a sperm donor and his messed-up celebrity mom had provided little more than a womb, followed by a large household staff. Hmm. Maybe there was hope for my kid.

As I extracted the pen from his pocket, Chester said, “I meant to tell you, Whiskey, you look lovely in that jumper.”

“I’m six months pregnant. I look fat.”

He shook his head. “You look nice. I’m glad Jeb went shopping for you.”

So my mother had been right. Jeb was dressing me. When had he found time to go shopping? And how did Chester know about it?

“We discussed your wardrobe on the phone last week,” Chester explained. Translation: Chester had told Jeb I looked horrible. “I recommended Curvy Mommy, an online clothing retailer for expectant mothers. You’re going to find more surprises in your closet.”

“Curvy Mommy?” My toes curled in revulsion. “How would you know about a fashion website for pregnant women?”

“I know how to do research, thanks to my tutors.”

Thanks to Tate’s crime, the only source of illumination in my yard was a sliver of moon, but I could see Chester beaming.

“We have a few good teachers at The Bentwood School,” he said. “I think Ms. McCoy is good at her job, too. It’s probably not her fault that Tate’s a criminal.”

I wanted to believe that for two reasons: to forgive myself in advance for not being a perfect parent and to excuse Stevie because I liked her.

After using Chester’s pen to scrawl “do the right thing” on my palm, I invited Abra back to her own bedroom. Chester agreed that the original bad dog shouldn’t be shipped off just because a new naughty girl had arrived on the scene. Sandra Bullock could spend tonight at The Castle with Velcro and Prince Harry. Jeb resisted at first, offering a series of increasingly lame excuses for why Sandra needed him close by. When he argued that she would pine for him, Chester chimed in.

“No worries, Jeb. Frenchies aren’t choosy about the human company they keep, just as long as they keep human company, and they like most other dogs although Frenchie females often fight other females.”

“As we have clearly seen,” I agreed. To Chester I whispered, “Did you read that somewhere? Or did you make it up?”

“My brain is so full I can’t always remember how I know what I know, but I know I know Frenchies.”

Jeb’s last objection to Sandra’s spending the night at The Castle was that she might unintentionally seduce the dog-boys. I pointed out that Velcro was too fragile to engage her, and Prince Harry was too young to stand still.

Chester handed me Abra’s leash. She gazed affectionately at him for a long moment before sighing and consenting to come with me. She came with me because I dragged her. When Chester summoned Sandra, she trotted toward him with Frenchie zest and nary a glance back at Jeb. Later my guy and I would admit to each other what we’d felt at that moment. I wished my dog would come when I called, and Jeb wished his dog would come only to him.

We watched the boy who loved dogs run off with three of them into the darkness separating Vestige from The Castle. Jeb had offered to drive them all, but Chester wanted to jog in honor of the dead headmaster.

Aware that she was getting her own bedroom back, Abra did a happy dance and swallowed more of Sandra’s hat. En route to the house, she found the Frenchie’s semi-chewed afternoon-fight hat, and added it to what was left in her jaws. She bounded up the stairs, sailed onto her bed, made the usual pointless doggie circle, flopped down on her pillows and promptly fell asleep. Gotta love a dog with no guilt.

In my house, all dogs get equal treatment at night. It’s called lockdown.

Jeb embraced me from behind as I secured Abra’s door.

“Amazing,” he whispered. “You can make a boy and three dogs disappear.”

“Four dogs, if you count the one who’s unconscious,” I whispered back.

He closed my mouth with a kiss before I could finish.

If only I could report that every part of my night with Jeb was as deliciously romantic as that first deep kiss. In the beginning everything was sweet and sexy. We stood in the hall kissing and molding our bodies to each other. Jeb led me to my bedroom—our bedroom—where he undressed me slowly, caressing every newly exposed inch of skin. He paused when he reached the palm of my left hand, where I had scrawled the Chester-inspired morality note to myself.

“What’s this?” Jeb strained to decipher my blurred script. “‘Do the right thing?’”

“Forget about it,” I whispered. “Let’s keep doing the other thing.”

“Why did you write this?”

The hormones flooding my brain wouldn’t let me remember. They were screaming, “Take me. Take me now.”

So I passed that message along to Jeb. He kissed me but without the desperate passion I craved.