The Hard Way (4 page)

I met the soldier,
Eddie Perkins, for the second time the day he tried to rob me at the ATM machine on the corner of West Twelfth Street and Eighth Avenue. I'd barely turned around, four twenties and the receipt still in my hand, when he grabbed the money and headed toward West Fourth Street, his khaki backpack banging against his right side with every step. I didn't scream, “Stop, thief!” the way they do in the movies. Instead, I whistled for Dashiell, who was a few feet away on the other side of a bank of pay phones, scratching at the snow to get to the scents underneath, pointed at the fleeing man and said, “Take him,” Dash whirling around so quickly he left gashes in the snow where you could see the bare sidewalk underneath.

Of course I didn't know it was Eddie. Why would I have paid attention when someone came up and stood a foot or so behind me? Someone waiting to use the ATM was the rule, not the exception.

Eddie didn't know it was me, either. I was wearing a duffle coat with a hood, not the torn, dirty coat I'd worn as Eunice.

And he apparently hadn't noticed Dashiell behind the bank of pay phones because who in his right mind would try to rob someone who had a pit bull with them?

Too late now. He was facedown in the snow, two of the twen
ties lying in front of the hand that had snatched them from me, one floating out toward the middle of the street, the fourth nowhere to be seen, the lumpy backpack lying next to him in the snow. Dashiell was standing over him, a rumbling noise like the sound of the subway that comes up through those grates in the sidewalk coming from deep in his chest. Eddie had his face buried in the crook of his arm. He wasn't moving.

“Out,” I told Dash. He backed up but not far. “Get up,” I told Eddie. I'm not sure, but I think I was shouting, the sounds of the city muted by the snow, my voice sounding too loud, me too pissed off to wonder if Eddie was hurt or not. If he was, it was his own damn fault.

He picked his head up, saw the blocky head of a pit bull paying close attention to his every move and tucked his head back into the crook of his arm.

“It's okay,” I told him. “You act like a gentleman and he will, too.”

But he didn't move. I reached down and pulled on the collar of his jacket. “You can get up,” I said.

I never saw anyone move so slowly. For a moment, I thought I'd been robbed by a mime. He moved one hand at a time, one leg and then the other, until he was on his hands and knees. Then he stopped and looked at Dashiell, but not at me. He reached out for the wet twenties and the strap of the backpack and then, finally, he stood, eyes down, handing me half the money he'd stolen from me minutes earlier. That's when I noticed one of the missing bills stuck to the roof of a nearby parked car. I was just about to tell him to get me that one, too, when he said my name.

Well, her name.

“Eunice?”

I tried to figure out something to say. Eddie beat me to it.

“You clean up nice,” he said.

Was that a smirk on his face?

“What happened,” he asked, “you win the lottery?”

A kid across the street bent down and picked something up
from the snow. I figured it was the fourth twenty. He was carrying a skateboard. Where was he going to use it in this weather?

I walked over and plucked the twenty off the roof of the car before that got loose and blew across the street, too, thinking things must have gone from bad to worse for Eddie, the place he'd been staying a burned-out shell now, the weather getting harsher every day. But I didn't think Eddie would be interested in my opinion, so I didn't say so. I didn't say anything. Whatever his particular sob story was, it was no excuse for what he'd done.

“Eddie Perkins,” he finally said. “We met at the fire last week, remember?” He put out his hand, as if he were applying for a loan inside the bank instead of trying to rob someone outside it.

“Rachel,” I told him, leaving out my last name and not taking his hand.

What next, I wondered. And why was I even still standing here? I put the money in my coat pocket. The snow kept falling. The wind was calm one minute, fierce the next. I didn't see where the receipt had gone. It would be hard to spot in all this snow. No matter. No way would I forget to record this withdrawal in my checkbook.

“I'm sorry about this.” He was pointing to the pocket where I'd put the three wet twenties.

“No one's perfect,” I told him.

I wondered what had happened to him, why he was living on the street. His legs worked. I'd seen him run. But something else didn't. Whatever it was that would have let him come home and resume some kind of normal life hadn't survived his time in the war. Sometimes the worst wounds are the ones that don't show.

“Okay, then,” I said, wanting to get the hell out of there before he started wondering things himself, like how come Eunice had an ATM card in the first place. I slipped Dashiell's leash out of my pocket and turned around to clip it to his collar. But then I had second thoughts.

“You hungry?” I asked, but Eddie didn't answer. I figured maybe
he'd taken off, that he was getting while the getting was good, before I took out my cell phone and called the cops. But when I turned around I saw he hadn't moved at all. He was still standing there, hands in his pockets, that sad, little-kid look on his face, his eyes down.

I reached out and touched his arm. “How did it happen?” I asked. I pointed to my ears. “Roadside explosion?”

Eddie just shook his head. He didn't want to talk about it, and who could blame him?

He didn't look like a skell or a mope or a thug. He looked like the sweet kid he might have been before going to Iraq, before whatever happened to him there, before he was so down on his luck he tried robbing someone, me, at an ATM, and doing it like a beginner as well. What if this
were
his first time? Who tries to rob someone while wearing a jacket with his name over the pocket?

“You hungry?” I asked again.

Eddie stared at me, not as if he hadn't heard me this time, but as if I were speaking Swahili or doing bird calls, as if, for one reason or another, he was unable to understand what I was saying. Perhaps what he didn't understand was
why
I was saying it. He shook his head, then looked away. There were two restaurants across the street, but it wasn't that.

“Just go away,” he finally said. “Please. I've already cost you twenty bucks. I'm not going to let you buy me dinner.”

I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out one of the wet twenties, folding it in half and sticking it into the pocket under his name. Eddie looked down at his pocket, then back at me.

“Then you're not homeless?” he said.

“No, I'm not.”

“But…”

“I know. I know. I looked homeless.”

He nodded.

“And I sounded homeless.”

“You did,” he said, “but now you don't.”

I nodded. Eddie stared, confused.

“So you didn't need a place to sleep the first time I met you? You have one.”

“I do,” I told him.

“And your name's not Perkins?”

I shook my head. “No, it's not.”

Eddie's eyes welled up. “Neither is mine,” he said.

“But…”

“I might have taken the wrong jacket at some point.”

You could bite the air between us now and break a tooth, the thing he said sitting out there, even Dashiell paying attention, waiting for more.

“I don't know who I am,” Eddie said, and then he was looking down again, neither of us able to think of another thing to say.

If it had been an explosion, I wondered, where were the scars?

The streetlights came on, making the snow seem iridescent. That's when I did a really strange thing, not the first and not the last I would do that day. I took a step closer, and brushed some snow off his jacket.

“You know, Eddie, I think we might be able to help each other.”

“You do? How?”

I looked at his sad face, the snow accumulating on his watch cap, the slump of his shoulders. Then I reached out for his hand.

“Come on,” I said. “I'll tell you over dinner.”

We sat in the bar area
at Osteria del Sole, Dash hidden from view under the big round table, Eddie looking uncomfortable. How could he know how to behave when he didn't even know who he was?

A waiter gave us menus. I picked mine up but Eddie just left his where the waiter had put it.

“Do you want me to order for you?” I asked him.

Eddie came to life. “No. I mean, do you have to?”

I shook my head. Eddie picked up the menu and began to read. I knew what was coming. I'd seen dogs eat the way I was sure Eddie would, dogs who had survived living on the street, the way he did. Eating wasn't a pleasure for them. It was an obsession. I had the feeling we wouldn't be having much of a conversation until all the food was gone, and that was okay with me, as long as Eddie didn't growl at me while he ate.

But when the waiter came back, Eddie couldn't decide. He looked overwhelmed. First the army, then a hospital, then shelters and the street. I wondered how long it had been since Eddie had made a meaningful choice about what he wanted to eat. And when you're starving, isn't the real issue not
what
you eat but
that
you eat?

“Penne with tomato sauce and fresh basil,” I told the waiter,
“then the
rollatine di pollo
,” chicken rolls filled with prosciutto and mozzarella. I touched Eddie's arm and raised my eyebrows. Eddie nodded. “He'll have the same,” I said.

Eddie was trembling. I didn't think it was from the cold. It wasn't cold in the restaurant. It was warm and welcoming in every way, including the yellow walls, the sunburst hanging over the door and the way the waiter spoke to us, as if we were both dressed appropriately, as if we were old and favorite customers, as if we hadn't walked in with a pit bull and begged to let him stay under the table despite the fact that it was against the law. I thought Eddie might have been trembling because of the meal he was anticipating, the way Dashiell did when the delivery man came with a pizza and he had to wait for his slices to cool.

I asked Eddie if he wanted a glass of red wine and he looked stunned.

“You're not a wino, are you?” I asked him. “You don't smell like one.”

“Okay.”

“Okay to a glass of wine?”

“Why are you…?”

“Could be because I'm a kind-hearted person,” I told him, “and you volunteered to risk your life for your country. Could be because I'm hoping to exploit you. Could be a little of each.”

“Exploit me how?” he asked.

“Remember the first time we met?”

Eddie nodded. The waiter brought the wine. Eddie waited for me to pick up my glass first, and then he did the oddest thing. He picked up his glass and touched it to mine. “Yes,” he said.

“Yes, you remember the first time we met?”

He nodded again. “And yes, you can exploit me. What do you need me to do?”

For a short while, I was speechless. How did this happen, this boy being sent a million miles from home, doing what he was told to, harmed in some awful, terrible way, a wound you couldn't ban
dage, medicate, touch or fix? How had he held on to his humanity? Because despite the clumsy attempt to grab some money at the ATM, he surely had.

“I'm a private investigator, Eddie. I've been working undercover to try to find a homeless man suspected of pushing another man off a subway platform into the path of an oncoming train.”

I took a sip of wine, watching to see if Eddie was following what I was telling him. Part of me thought I'd gone too far already, way too far for every reason. But there was something else happening, something that made me tremble the way Eddie had, the way Dashiell did while his pizza cooled. Looking at Eddie, I remembered the day I'd “liberated” Dash, the day when we locked eyes for the first time and I knew he was my dog, despite the fact that I had to steal him to make that so and, by doing that, rescue him from someone who would have fought him when he was old enough, rescue him from a short and violent life in the pit. Is that what I thought I could do for Eddie, that I might be his answer, the hand to hold to find out who he was, to find the person he'd lost somewhere in Iraq, that I might save him as I had Dashiell? And that Eddie might be the answer
I
needed to find the homeless man I was after, the one I'd so far failed to find, that Eddie might show me the way?

“Go on,” he said. “I'm listening.”

And he was, too. Not half listening, listening all the way.

“I'd been on the case for a few days when I heard that some homeless men and women were squatting at an old warehouse in Chelsea, at the place where you sometimes stayed.”

“The place that burned.”

I nodded. “Bad timing for me, that fire.”

Eddie looked down.

“I know. Worse for you.”

“But why the getup?”

“Because most homeless people have learned to be mistrustful of the rest of us, people who have homes and jobs and money
for food, people who go out of their way to avoid them, who go out of their way to ignore them. I didn't know how many people would talk to me if I appeared to be one of them, but I thought my chances would be remarkably better than if I appeared to be an outsider.”

“But they haven't been?”

“Uh-uh. Not so far.”

He thought a moment.

“Despite the old clothes,” he said, “you
are
an outsider.”

“Yes, but—”

“I'm not saying you didn't do good. You had me fooled, remember?”

“I do.”

“I thought you, well, Eunice, was really homeless.”

“You even offered to show me a place to sleep.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I did.” Frowning.

The waiter brought a basket of soft Italian bread and large, crisp, thin pieces of flatbread along with a small dish of olive oil with sun-dried tomato in it for dipping, reason enough to come to this restaurant. Eddie picked up a piece of bread, dipped it into the oil and took a bite, closing his eyes as the smell and feel and taste of it filled his senses.

I thought the conversation would be over for now, but it wasn't. Eddie looked up, waiting for me to continue. So I did.

“I must be doing something wrong,” I said, “because aside from you, very few people have talked to me,” wondering if telling me to fuck off counted, because a few of them had said that, but not much more.

“Someone told you about our house,” he said, dipping a second piece of bread in the oil, dripping it onto the paper table cover as he lifted it to his mouth.

“That's true,” I said. Then, “Actually, it was a cop friend who told me about it, not a homeless person.”

“How do you think I can help you? You want me to go around asking questions for you?”

“I want us to do that. You and me. Together. And I'll pay you for helping.”

Eddie looked over his shoulder, toward the large window in the small area where we were sitting, both of us on a pillow-covered banquette. I had my back to the window, to the snow that hadn't stopped falling all day. Eddie watched the snow for a long time. Or maybe he was watching himself in the dark glass, wondering who he really was.

I touched his arm. He turned to face me.

“I'll try to help you with that, too,” I said, as if he'd said aloud what I thought he was thinking.

“With what?”

“Your identity. With finding out what your real name is.”

I thought he'd perk up. I thought he'd be delighted. I thought he'd see, as I did, that it was good karma, our meeting the way we had, that we could help each other. But instead, he turned toward the street again, and when he blinked, his eyelashes became wet and his eyes shiny.

“Eddie?”

“You don't have to do that,” he said, not looking at me this time.

“It's okay,” I told him. “I don't mind. I'd like to help you.”

But Eddie shook his head.

Perhaps he could see me in the dark glass. Perhaps he'd read my lips. Or he simply knew what was coming. Maybe I wasn't even the first person to make the offer.

“You don't want me to?”

That's when the waiter brought the pasta and set it down in front of us. He asked Eddie if he wanted fresh parmesan cheese sprinkled on it, and he said he did, only he didn't know you were supposed to tell the waiter when to stop, the cheese coming down like the snow outside, covering Eddie's pasta until you could hardly see it underneath. I touched the waiter's arm and told him that it was enough, Eddie still watching the growing mound of cheese, mesmerized by the sight of food raining down on his plate.

Whatever it was Eddie had been thinking, he never did answer my question. He bent his head toward the bowl of steaming pasta and ate with more pleasure than I would have thought possible, considering the way he'd been living. And when the pasta was gone, he mopped up the remainder of the sauce with the last piece of bread. The waiter was back with the chicken, and when he put that down in front of us, Eddie looked at me, for the moment his eyes round and innocent as a child's. Then he dug in and I might have been at home dining alone with Dashiell for all the conversation we had.

I knew to hold my questions, that Eddie would want his full attention on the food. He ate more slowly than I thought he would, savoring every bite. I watched him eat, feeling Dashiell's head resting on my right foot, his gentle way of letting me know that if there was too much on my plate, he was ready and willing to do his part.

“How do you work it?” Eddie asked when the chicken and spinach and rosemary potatoes were gone, not a trace of anything left on his plate, as if Dashiell had had the chance to lick it clean.

“How do you, you know, become Eunice?”

“The outside's easy.”

“You mean the costume?”

“I guess you could call it that, but I don't think of it that way. It's all part of a whole. It's part of getting into character, the old coat, the torn gloves, the shoes I wore when I painted my office. The important part, that's the inside, what you think while you're wearing what you'd wear if you were really the person you're trying to be.”

“But why bother? Nobody can see the inside.”

“I think they can. I think if the inside's not right, you can really screw up badly.”

Eddie just waited.

“A long time ago,” I began, as if I were telling a bedtime story
to a beloved child, “I used to train dogs for a living.” Eddie blinked, and I wondered if he knew what
he
had been doing before the war. But I went on with my story instead of asking because in dog training, going slowly is the fastest way to achieve success, and I thought that might be true with Eddie as well. “I was teaching a dog-obedience class at the local high school, in their gym, after school was out for the day, and one of the students was a little brown dog named Zooey.”

“Zooey,” Eddie repeated, making me wonder if the name meant anything to him.

“He was a scrappy little dog, the kind who'd happily mix it up with another dog who gave him half the chance. He led his mistress into the gym, pulling hard on the leash. I could see why she'd brought him. He was clearly the one in charge, but also curious, interested and ready for anything. Or so it seemed.”

“But he wasn't?”

“He looked around, got the lay of the land and made a plan. No way was he getting trained. No way was he giving up his control of his owner. As soon as class started, he held up his right paw and began to limp. Of course, I stopped the class and examined his paw and his leg. I articulated the leg, felt for heat—that would signal infection. I checked the paw for glass, stones, even the tiniest pebble could make a dog limp. But there was nothing wrong. Not a thing.”

Eddie's eyes were shining now, this time because he was enthralled. “What happened next?” he asked.

“I told the lady he was okay, that sometimes dogs would fake an injury because they didn't want to get trained, but that trained, Zooey would have a better life. He could go more places. And bottom line, he could keep his home, which might not be so if his problems got bigger as he did. But she wouldn't believe me. She insisted the injury was real and sat out the class with Zooey perched on her lap looking mighty pleased with himself.”

The waiter came by to see if we wanted dessert. I asked Eddie if he liked cheesecake and he said, yes, he did, very much, so I ordered two pieces with tea for me and coffee for Eddie.

“Go on,” he said.

“Well, the next week, Zooey pulled her into the gym again and as soon as class started…”

“He held up his right paw and began to limp.”

I nodded and Eddie grinned.

“And once again, he got to sit on his mistress's lap and watch those other foolish dogs obeying command after command. The third week, full of optimism and hope, his owner gamely tried again. And once again, Zooey began to limp. Only this time, I pointed at him and said, “You are so busted.”

“What happened?” Eddie asked.

“He forgot which paw to hold up. He switched legs.”

Eddie smiled and nodded.

“Zooey learned the hard way,” I told him, “the way most of us learn all the important lessons of our lives; when you're working undercover, you've got to stay in character. If you want to get away with limping in class, you've got to limp all week, otherwise…”

“You might limp on the wrong foot,” Eddie said.

“I learned the hard way, too,” I told him.

“What happened?”

“A broken arm. It could have been worse, but Dashiell was there.”

We heard his tail thump on the floor right after I said his name.

“So when we're working together, you have to call me Eunice, not Rachel. But more important, Eddie, you have to
think
of me as Eunice. We're looking for someone who committed murder. He might do it again, to save himself, if he knew the truth.”