One Good Dog (11 page)

Adam yanks his catering jacket off and tosses it into the laundry bag. He crumples the paper hat, dropping it into the barrel. He goes out the back door. He’s not coming back. Fuck the judge. Later, Abramowicz points out that a contempt-of-court citation will lead to worse things than mopping up after street people. Once again, a judge is in charge of Adam. He is, as much as the men he serves daily, in the system.

Adam stares into the empty night street, waiting for the lights at the newsagent’s to come on. Waiting for his life to begin again.

The one thing about being on the street in the nice weather is that you feel smart. Too smart to depend on anyone, too smart to need anything but an open Dumpster and a leaky faucet. Then it gets cold. I and my kind began to scrap over good nests, the sort that have shelter from the biting wind and some sort of accommodation, a blanket or a dry newspaper. Too many nights, I found myself in the fetal position, with my back against the nominal protection of a wall, the dry culvert or the underpass not already occupied by someone unwilling to have a roommate. My beneath-the-stairs bolthole of the summer had been reclaimed by its former owner. My sublet was over.

My mentor showed me some of the better backyards. His man traveled in the early hours through sleeping neighborhoods, rifling through the heavy plastic trash cans with the kind of lids that defied those of us without thumbs. He’d toss my friend delicacies and take for himself objects, which he thrust into the pockets of his coat. I stayed well behind. My
mentor positively forbid me contact with his person, who was a one-dog man, and I wasn’t going to screw that up. Instead, he’d point me in the direction of a dryer vent or an air-conditioning unit sequestered behind sheltering bushes, a very comfortable and weather-tight nest.

Except for the remnants my mentor might leave me, food was getting harder to come by as people spent less time outdoors, and my loss of condition made it feel twice as cold to me. The restaurants offered fewer leftovers, as if the human population was bulking up for the cold weather and wasting less food. My water sources were turned off, and that was the hardest challenge, save for the occasional heated birdbath. The park’s little lake was sometimes the only water available, and that was frequently under a sheet of ice. My cage-bound upbringing had not educated me in the skill set necessary for carrying out ice breaking. I waited until the geese wore a hole in the ice with their foot action and then ventured out. Risky, I know, but thirst is a powerful motivator.

Cold, hungry, and mostly thirsty, I was still happier out on the street than in that cage in that cellar, waiting for a fight or for my hour on the treadmill, or that blessed ten minutes of backyard relief. Here I defecated and pissed wherever and whenever I wanted to. I’d even begun building up a little territory for myself. Despite my involuntary neutering, I still liked the girls and introduced myself to a number of them. Sweet. No one was in heat yet, so it was just dating.

All in all, it was okay. That is, until the blizzard.

It has been snowing since before dawn. Wind-whipped flakes so small, they look like needles slashing down in the streetlights. The snow comes sideways, reverses itself, and swirls in the opposite direction. The media have been prophesying this storm for days, and the gleeful look on the weather lady’s face this morning is positively the radiance of a woman who has been proven right. She reminds Adam of Sterling.

They are now officially divorced; the final decree was handed down three days before Christmas. Sterling had signed where she needed to an hour before he arrived. He’d stared at her showy signature, Sterling Madeleine Carruthers. Unwilling to stay married to him, she had abnegated his place in her life by reverting to her powerful maiden name. He no longer existed for her. Just his money. The power and reputation of her father, Herbert Carruthers, had made it easy for the courts to assign Sterling the majority of their joint assets: the houses, the cars, the portfolio. The court has also entailed a percentage of his future earnings in alimony and child support. His fledgling
consulting business hasn’t taken off—or, to be honest, is nonexistent—and he takes a certain satisfaction in the fact that he has so little income to offer them.

Sterling and her parents took Ariel to Greece for the holidays, citing her distress as a reason to take her out of reach of Adam for even his court-agreed-upon holiday visitation. Somehow the court didn’t mind, his rights clearly of a lesser importance than hers. Immediately after they returned, Ariel was kept out of his reach by other obligations. Adam wonders if Sterling lies awake at night making up reasons for him not to see his only daughter. Even when he does manage his Saturday-afternoon visits, Ariel is sullen and uncommunicative, as if he is a stranger to her, someone she’s forced to share space with. He excuses her behavior as symptomatic of adolescence, but he’s hurt. Like all divorced fathers, he knows that he is trying too hard, making her visits to his small apartment all about fun and nothing about reality, sushi instead of dining in, video games instead of conversation. Ariel stoically resists having fun with him. She comes to visit but refuses to stay overnight; she doesn’t want to sleep on the futon and won’t swap with him.

It is like hosting a foreign exchange student who speaks no English. The pantomime of good father, devoted child is lost in translation.

Adam stares out, hoping that the newsagent will open despite the weather. Hoping, childishly, that Big Bob will call and tell him to stay home—yippee, a snow day. Ever since the first below-freezing day, the center has hosted twice as many homeless as Adam had seen in the warm weather. Men flock
in to grab a little food and a lot of warmth. Many won’t stay, but a group of ten or so use the bunks in the dormitory upstairs, mainly guys fairly new to the street, who haven’t toughened up yet. Big Bob welcomes them, hands them bedding and a pillow, and points out the rec and dining rooms. He takes their names, offers to receive mail for them, their monthly Social Security checks, their army pension checks. A place to call home.

The light goes on across the street. Adam shrugs on his parka, finds his ski hat tucked into the pocket of his coat and puts it on. He shoves his feet into his boots, laces them loosely, grabs a clean travel mug from the collection he has acquired. The carless street is filled with unsullied snow; the stoplight waves in the wind like a demented flag, threatening to rip loose from its wires and plunge into the intersection. Adam pushes against the wind, the blinding snow making it a dreamlike quest, his objective coming no closer. When he finally makes it across the street, his cheeks are tingling, his eyes watering, and he’s breathing like a long-distance runner. Adam has to fight to get the door open, the wind pressing it closed against his pull, a zephyr’s game of tug-of-war. As the wind takes a breath, Adam gets the door open. “Mornin’, Artie.” Adam scoops up his crackers and drains fresh coffee into the travel mug with
CUMBERLAND FARMS
printed on it. He looks for the papers, but they haven’t been delivered.

“Hell of a day.” The newsagent shifts the unlit cigar to the other side of his mouth. “Fit for neither man nor beast.”

“Or papers, evidently.” Adam digs into his pocket for change.

“They’ll get here. Don’t you worry. Come on back in an hour.”

“If I can. Getting worse out there.”

“You be careful out there, Adam.”

“You, too.”

Now it’s hard to push the door open, but once he does, Adam stands in the shelter of the doorway, pulling up the hood of his parka, taking what might be the last hot slug of coffee out of his plastic mug. As he’s about to step into the storm, a figure appears, another soul out in the storm.

It’s the businessman. He trudges along, head down, full-length dress coat buttoned to his throat. Tears are streaming down his cheeks from the wind and cold. Adam feels like he should grab the guy and send him home. Why is he walking? Why is he even trying to go to work? Even Adam would have called it off today. Either this guy is an idiot or his boss is.

“Hey, Buddy …” Adam sticks out a hand, the one holding the plastic travel mug, to stop the guy.

“Get away from me, you freak.” He thrusts an arm out to fend Adam off, knocking the Cumberland Farms cup out of Adam’s hand. “Go get a job.”

“Well, fuck you, too.” Adam darts to pick up the mug before too much leaks out of the drinking hole. What the fuck? Pulling the strings of his hood tighter, Adam catches sight of his own grainy reflection in the newsagent’s plate glass. He starts to laugh. He looks like a Fort Street Center client in this getup. No wonder the guy freaked.
Buddy?
Did he really call the guy “buddy”? He must have picked it up from the men. They all use it, a generic “buddy” directed toward the people they solicit—“Buddy, can you spare some change?” They use it with one another, a dining room filled with buddies.

If the center is closed, where will they go?

Unbelievably, another figure struggles out of the storm. The aquarium woman. She’s bundled in a gigantic parka that makes her look like she’s been swallowed by a polar bear. The wind is forcing her back, so that every step taken is a battle won. Adam feels the wind beat against his back as he runs to her. With his ballast, she is finally able to get to her storefront. Adam takes the keys from her hand and unlocks the door, then stands back to let her in.

“Come in. Come in.” Inside, she disarms the alarm, stamps her feet to rid them of the snow. Her cheeks are bright pink; a lock of dark hair not captured by her scrunchy is dripping with fast-melting snow. “Thanks for the help. It’s windier than I realized.”

She shrugs off her parka, revealing a thick fisherman’s sweater, corduroys tucked into Uggs. “I’m Gina DeMarco.”
Ah’m.
There it is again, that faint coloration of accent. “Welcome to A to Z Tropical Fish and Pet Supply.”

Adam pushes his own hood off. “I’m Adam March.”

Gina stops smiling. “Adam March. You didn’t just work for Dynamic Cosmetics; you were the boss.” She says
boss
like it tastes bad.

“Yeah, I was.” He’s not going to deny it. He ran that division well, even if NATE disagreed with some of its policies.

Adam steps away from the door, looks around at the rows of glowing aquariums full of colorful fish, racks with collars and leashes, shelves with squeaky toys and treats, baskets with tartan pillows, displays with all manner of canine and feline likenesses on coasters, mugs, figurines, place mats. There is a freestanding cage containing the brilliant colors and racket of a pair of parrots, which are happy to see her arrive. A handprinted sign says
NOT FOR SALE.

A gust of supercharged wind bangs against the shop door, rattling the pane of plate glass. “Gina, you can’t think that anyone is going to come out on a day like this and buy a fish? This is a ‘stay at home, where it’s safe’ storm. The National Guard is posting warnings against driving. The state—”

She cuts him off. “Electricity goes out and I’m out of business. I’ve got to be here to get the generator working. Besides, big fish have to eat, or some of them will eat each other.”

The center won’t be closed. Adam pulls his hood up over his watch cap. “I’ve got to go.”

Gina runs the back of her hand along her forehead to wipe away the moisture from that lock of wet hair and picks up her dripping coat. “Have a nice day.”
Nahss.
He is dismissed.

Adam lets go of the door handle, turns back to her. “How will you get home?”

“I won’t. Not till the storm ends. I can’t take a chance.”

Adam debates for a moment whether he should offer to stay, but he can’t come up with a reason for doing so. She is obviously capable, and, after all, they are strangers, nodding acquaintances, onetime adversaries, maybe still adversaries in her mind, and not responsible for each other. “Okay. Good luck, then.” He pushes hard against the door, putting the force of his shoulder against it, against the wind.

Adam March goes back into the storm, trudging toward Fort Street, hoping he’s made the right decision.

It was a bitch of a storm. I huddled under the culvert with several others, a nominal truce in place. My mentor was there, alone. A little wiry-haired bitch went up to him in submission, obsequiously licking at his muzzle, begging for kindness. I’d scented her before in the neighborhood, a tough little cookie with an underbite.

Two fat Labradors made up the rest of our party. They’d gotten out of their yard; surprised to find the electric fencing neutralized and unable to handle the temptation, they had fled down the street and immediately gotten lost. Nice pets, kinda naïve. We all knew that their people were going to be frantic. Because of that, we knew they posed a real threat. Being leash dogs, not street dogs, the pair of them had left a trail a mile wide and a fathom deep. It would only be a matter of the storm ending before the authorities and a host of volunteers would be rushed out to seek the lost. Signs would be posted. Cunning photos plastered on every telephone pole, smiling, panting
yellow Labs, Buffy and Muffy, or whatever their human-given appellations were. Reward!