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Authors: Paul Griffin

BOOK: Stay with Me
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“
Right
.”
“Serious. Pits are bred not to bite their handlers, especially in the heat of battle. If you torture them and bring out the fight in them, they’ll be dog-aggressive, sure, but even so, most always they stay human-kind. You’ve got to go a long way into evil to turn a pit against people. They forgive easy as rain falls.”
“I heard they cry like people. Like they tear up.”
“No dogs cry tears. A pit bull’s jaw doesn’t lock either. Tell you what, though?”
“Tell me what.”
“I seen pitties so sad and soulful. You see this girl’s eyes, big and wondering? She feels real deep. You know what this girl wants, the only thing? To give and get love. Right, girl? Right Boo?”
“She’s cocking her head there, huh? She likes that name.”
“Best thing about pits is they take in the fun. They’re the clown of the dog world. They have a ton of energy, which is why you need to exercise them a bunch and train them strict, and I do too. I include training free when I walk them.”
“How much you charge?”
“Buck an hour.”
“We need to get you a business manager,” he says.
“That’s all folks around here can afford. You string six dogs at once, you do all right. Sometimes the walk lasts two hours too, because I’m having so much fun I lose track of time.”
Tony nods. “I’ve never seen you like this.”
“Like what?” I hate when I let my softness show. Soft gets you killed.
“I think you need to let me help you pay for this dog training class. Just let me finish. As an investment, I’m talking. You’ll rock the class, start your own business, and have a house-no-mortgage by the time you’re forty.”
“And what would be your end in all that?”
“The fun of seeing the good guy win one.”
“The good guy, huh?” I can’t figure out what he sees in me. He knows I been locked up. Being around him, I almost feel like what he’s saying is true. That maybe I could be somebody. “Tony, man, I’m sorry for taking up your night like this, jawing your ear off.”
“Stop saying sorry. I’m gonna run down to the bodega and grab us some sodas.”
“I have Sprites in that little cube fridge behind you there.”
Tony cracks us a pair.
“Yo Tone, I’d appreciate you not telling anybody about, like, what happened tonight.”
“What, that you almost got yourself killed running into a dogfight to save a chewed-up pit bull?”
“I just don’t like people knowing stuff about me, you know?”
He stares at me, and after a bit he nods. “All right, kid. I won’t say anything.” He’s looking out the window and laughing quiet.
“What’s funny?”
He shrugs, and we’re quiet for a while, and my mind drifts back to that doctor. The knife in my hand. Mercedes gunning out of there. So close, though. Rewind the night back a little more, to Céce. No. She’s too good to be in my dreams. Her, her mother, Tony: all too good. I can’t imagine Tony overseas. I won’t. They put a knife in
his
hand? He’s not made to use it. He’s made to lay knives down.
My Boo girl rests her big boxy head in my lap. She’s looking up at me, and I know what she’s saying. The language of dogs is quiet. Tell you what, if there weren’t any dogs on this planet, I would check out right now.
I follow Tony’s eyes out the hutch window. The sky is a mist with the stars trying to poke through, like a razor rash on God’s gray face.
THE THIRD DAY . . .
 
(Sunday, June 14, an hour before dawn)
 
CÉCE:
 
The nightmare wakes me up. Gunfight in the desert. Anthony gets hit. I was cruising YouTube with Ma for soldier’s-eye clips before I went to bed.
Why is he doing this? I know,
somebody
has to do it, but let it be somebody else. If anybody should go over there it’s me, except I would be the suckiest soldier ever. Violence flips me out. When I see it, I freeze.
I trip myself to the bathroom and splash water on my face. Down the block a dog yips. Two dogs, barking now. Fighting. My hands are shaking.
When I was nine, we were at this block party, crazy hot out, too many people, music way too loud. I had to get out of there. It was either walk all the way around the block on a hundred-plus-degree day or cut through the neighbor’s alley. I side-saddled the fence, right over the No Trespassing sign, picture of a guard dog, teeth barred. The homeowner wasn’t lying: He had this giant German shepherd mixed with a pit bull—I’m sure it was a pit bull—but it was a horrible guard dog. It had been around for as long as I could remember, and I never heard it bark. Besides, it was always tied to the fence behind the garbage pails on a short chain. As I walked by, it whimpered. It was filthy, matted, a choke collar embedded in its neck. It was panting. Its water bowl was empty. I cranked the spigot and filled it up. The dog drank the bowl dry and looked up at me. I went to kiss the top of its head. It jumped up and bit my face and didn’t let go.
I opened my mouth to scream, and the dog got in there. It knocked me to the cement and shook me. Its jaw locked—that’s how I know it was part pit bull.
How I survived that ... How I got away . . . I can’t . . . I can’t remember.
Twenty stitches. I still have the scars. Those pit bulls are the worst. Their eyes? Creepy. Like they want to eat you.
I go downstairs and make a sandwich in the dark. Not seeing it makes it easier to scarf down. I’m two bites in when I see a shadow bent over the kitchen table.
Carmella Vaccuccia slurps a beer. “Hey.”
“Ma, it’s four fifteen.”
“Cocktail hour.”
“In the morning.”
“Whacha eatin’ there, babe?”
“PBJ.”
She’s eating one too. “You are your mother’s daughter.”
“You’re absolutely
sure
? I’m doomed.” I grab her beer and dump it in the sink.
“Don’t turn on the light, Céce.” Her voice is soft, sweet. Headlights from a passing car briefly light up two shiny streaks of mascara slitting her cheeks. I practically have to carry her up to bed. I tuck her in. She winks at me and slurs, “Howya doin’, sister?”
“Carmella, the sister act is getting old. Could you be the mother for five minutes?”
She smiles. Those gold teeth. Anybody else would look four hundred percent retarded, but she’s beautiful. Sometimes I want to hug her till I break her. The woman is demented.
I wonder if that Mack boy is working today.
I pop my head into Anthony’s room. He’s out?
 
Middle of lunch shift, Marcy sticks her head into the walk-in. “Céce Vaccuccia, why you hanging out in the refrigerator?”
I hide my third slice of cheesecake. “Cooling off,
duh
.”
“God swapped June for August on us. Probably be like this till winter, and then overnight it’ll be five billion below zero, freeze nail polish right in the bottle. You can’t win, Cheech. You
can’t
. They got it stacked against us.”
“Who’s they?”
“
Them,
chica. The system.”
I pat the cheese wheel for her to sit with me. “Hang out.”
“Ohmigod.”
“What?”
“Ew!”
“What!”
“You totally made out with that loser delivery guy dude last night.”
“
What?
No.”
“I can see it in your eyes, you lovesick bitch.”
“You need to pop another Lexapro.”
“Tell me later. You got a tray of manicotti up and your tables are howling for their checks. And Céce, the manicotti? Vic totally went heavy with the ricotta this morning. Gonna feel like you got a Honda Element on that tray. I can’t believe you swapped spit with that dropout moron.”
“I. Did not. Kiss. The de
liv
ery boy.”
“Ick.”
She leaves.
I’m totally bloated. Skirt zipper is gonna rip any old shift now. It’s like I ate a ten-pound box of chalk and then somebody pumped hot gasoline into my stomach. Make out with Mack? Is she out of her half a mind? Dude won’t even look at me.
 
End of lunch shift I’m at the bar, refilling the salts and peppers, thrill-a-rill. The salt is all clumps in the heat. While I’m spilling the condiments I’m checking my G and T practice test grid against the answer key.
I aced it?
Maybe not so remarkable, because Vic keeps quizzing me words all the time. Like last night, I was picking up an order, and he handed me my linguine red sauce and said, “Frenetic.” And I replied, “Crazed, as in ‘Marcy is running around in a frenetic state, trying to catch up on her orders, because Vic’s Too, currently the one and only Vic’s eating establishment, is slamming.’”
Of course, this is only the multiple-choice part. I still don’t have any idea what I’ll write for the essay, but I have a few weeks to cook up a really good lie.
Marcy flies into the bar and drags me to the bathroom. “Your psycho boyfriend?” she says.
“He’s
not
my—”
“
Yah
. He’s a felon.”
“What?”
“Your mother was asking Vic about him because she, like everybody else who isn’t you, can tell you’re crushing on him.”
“I’m crushing on a felon?”
“Vic’s like, ‘Well, I suppose you should know he’s had some problems in the past.’ And then your mother’s like, ‘What kind of problems?’ And then Vic goes, ‘Well, he has a bit of a record.’”
“What’d he do?”
“I don’t know. I snuck out from where I just happened to be behind the trash compactor to run here to tell you, but it was probably something
wretched
.”
Ma comes into the bathroom. “You know what they have to say about those who gossip?”
Marcy hides behind me. “What do they have to say, Mama Vaccuccia?”
“Not a lot. Go fill those pepper shakers, girls. And Marcy, you keep sneaking around like that, we’re gonna have to make you wear a bell.”
Wow. A felon. It had to be something not
too
bad. A boy that quiet would never do something violent.
I head upstairs to get the linens for dinner. Vic lives up here in a little bedroom stacked with vinyl records and books flagged with pink stickies that say POTENT and bright red ones that say VP! I can’t help but peek into the room as I walk past, because Vic never remembers to close doors when he leaves. He leaves his car door open half the time. He has one picture on the wall over his desk, this crappy printout Ma gave him. He framed it. Me, Ma, Anthony, and Vic a few Christmases back. It’s a blurry picture. Ma set the timer and put the camera on the stairs and ran to be in the shot without bothering to check the auto focus, which was on a sweaty beer can she left on top of the TV.
Down the hall is another bedroom, the supply room. Anthony is at the window with a stack of pizza boxes that need folding under his arm. He waves me over. “Quick, check this out,” he whispers. The exhaust fan blocks the window, but I can see through the grate: Mack is down in the alley. He pulls his broken plastic watch from his pocket, checks the time, frowns.
“So?” I say.
“Hang out,” Ant whispers. “They used to meet like this back at the other Vic’s.”
“Who?”
A few seconds later this guy comes into the alley, older, slash scars from the corners of his mouth up to his ears, shabby-looking army coat in all this heat.
Mack checks the alley, all clear. He gives the guy money, they palm grip, the other dude says, “Dog Man, whatever you need, you let me know,” and goes.
This Mack kid is not only a dropout felon but also a junkie? I’m crushed, until I remember I don’t even know him. “Awesome, a meth transaction behind Vic’s Too. Great crowd draw. We gotta tell Vic.”
“No meth involved,” Ant says. “It’s a one-way. Mack’s just giving him money.”
“Anthony, wake up. There’s a mothball being transferred in the palm grip.”
“Cheech, I
know
this kid. I’d bet my life on it: It’s charity, pure. He makes fifty bucks a shift and gives away ten of it. I feel like I’m a firewalker when I see stuff like this. Puts me on a totally different plane, faith restored.”
“You’re retarded.”
“I swear, I ever get rich? Just to see what he’d do with it, I’m giving Mack all my money.”
“What about me?”
“You can give him all your money too.” He sighs as he leaves the window. “Feel bad for the dude with the smiley. He would’ve had to been held down to be cut twice.”
“Ant, you’re trying to find magic in the bottom of a mud puddle again. Can you please stop feeling bad for everybody?”

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