I love hanging out with this guy. He’s one of those laid-back fellas that love to just laze around, maybe have a session with the chew toys, then catch a few z’s. He is shy enough that, so far, he takes my every suggestion without trying to modify the plan. For instance, if I say it’s time for a pee break, he’s right there, following me, respectfully covering my spots. He doesn’t forge out ahead, but waits for me to decide which quadrant of the backyard we should investigate first. I’m a good-enough host that I invite him to share my beds. The one in the living room is large enough for both of us to lie back-to-back, and it’s nice to have the comfort of a warm spine snuggled up to mine. The one in the bedroom is a little tighter, and after a bit I toss him out. He goes willingly, finding another bed to flop into. I don’t mind sharing Adam, either. Mostly because I know that I’m the chief dog. I’m the guy who accompanies him everywhere he goes, and my pal here is second chair. He’s good for an Adam sandwich, me on one side, him on the other of our man while he stares at that noisy, flickering space on the wall. Adam sometimes complains that we take up all the space, but he’s just joking.
My friend has no permanent name, so he’s called by a number of things: Buddy, Pal, Bub. I get a little confused sometimes because I’ve been called all of those endearments at one time or another, although Adam maintains Bud exclusively for me. A distinction, I know, but one that is important to me. I want to always be his Bud. We’ve seen a lot together. My new friend respects that, and that’s why he’s such a joy. This guy, Buddy-Pal-Bub, has breached my natural reserve. It’s like we were once littermates, now reunited. And, have I mentioned that he’s got this great sense of humor? Really funny guy. Loves the fake crush-your-paw-in-my-mouth trick. Hilarious with a stolen towel. Oh my. We do have fun!
* * *
The snow is forecast to begin in the afternoon, so school is dismissed early. It’s expected to be a considerable storm, as it’s already dumped a foot and a half in New York State and is grinding its way toward them at a slow, moisture-gathering pace. Cody, for once in concert with her otherwise-alienated fellows, is overjoyed and planning to get herself to North Adams before her mother finds out they’ve been dismissed. She’s promised to help out with the first Open Studio at the AC, and she doesn’t want her mother getting in the way of that.
The school bus will go right past the LakeView today without stopping to drop off the lone student living there. She’ll be on the Route 3 bus, get off at the last stop, and then hike in the last two miles. She just knows that she’ll beat the storm, at least as far as the AC. She’ll get out of there before it gets really bad—even she doesn’t want to be on the road at that hairpin turn in a snowstorm. She’ll ask Mosley to drive her home in his Subaru, which she thinks has four-wheel drive. Skye hasn’t met Mosley yet, mostly because Cody won’t let her into the AC when she drops her off, and Cody always makes sure that she’s standing outside when Skye comes to pick her up after her lessons. Air quote around that word: lessons. Sometimes the modeling takes up all the available time Mosley can give her.
Cody slips her sketchbook into her backpack, makes sure that she’s got her charcoals. Mosley has moved her away from pencil. She feels like she’s making progress. He’s using charcoal to sketch her, too. He didn’t have any chores for her on Saturday, instead setting her up in one of the little-used rooms in the basement of the building, down the hall from the bathrooms. He had a chair and a table, and first he had her sitting in the chair. Prim. Proper. Knees together like a Victorian. Then he started experimenting with her position; that’s what he called it, “experimenting.” Trying to find the inner Cody. “Show me your real self. Don’t be a prop.” He put a hand width between her jean-clad knees. Taking her glasses off, he tipped her head to the side, making her hold that position until she thought she’d never be able to straighten her neck again. He draped a handful of her hair across her left eye, calling it “à la Veronica Lake.” Cody had no idea what that meant, but she didn’t ask. Mosley prefers her to be quiet. She could hear the sounds of feet upstairs, the Saturday artists, those with full-time jobs who never came to the AC on weekdays, the sound of tables being moved, chairs scraping the floor. Because she wasn’t wearing her glasses, Mosley blurred into a blob of dark colors, only his pale white arms showing against the dark backdrop of the wall.
It’s started to snow by the time she gets off the bus. Usually, it’s only the two girls who get off here, discounting the boy who follows them at a distance of five paces, and who, she happens to have finally figured out, is little brother to one of them, an eighth grader. Some days they appear not to notice her, but other afternoons they take great delight in making sure she knows that they are paying attention. Today, one of them turns around as Cody descends the bus steps.
“What are you doing?”
“How’s that any of your business?”
“You spying on us?”
“Yeah. Right. Like you’re interesting.”
“Then why are you following us?”
Cody shifts her backpack up to her shoulders. “You wish.”
“You gay or something?”
“That’s original.”
“You have a boy’s name.”
“And you don’t?”
“Taylor is a girl’s name. You know, like Taylor Swift.”
“Right.” Cody has no interest in pursuing the subject of naming conventions in the twenty-first century. Everybody’s name is weird. “Gotta go.”
“Not so fast.” The other girl, Tyler, steps up to her. The bus has gone, leaving a black track against the new-fallen snow. It’s begun to snow in earnest and Cody wants to get walking before it’s too slippery. “So, you and Smelly Mellie are like BFFs now, right?”
“No.” Cody and Black Molly may sit at the same lunch table on occasion, but neither one speaks. Their conversations are held elsewhere.
“Yeah you are. So, she’s the bull dyke, you must be the fem.”
Cody is lost. These girls are nuts.
“You know.” She makes a kissy noise.
Cody actually laughs out loud. “That is so bent.”
“Maybe you are, too. Bent, I mean.”
Cody can see the younger brother out of the corner of her eye. He looks uncomfortable, but not enough to put a stop to his sister, whichever one she is. He sees her looking at him and skulks off down a driveway. The two girls take one step closer to Cody. She’s as tall as the other girls, but they look bigger, bulked up partly by the puffy down coats they wear, and partly because they stand on legs honed by miles of field hockey or soccer practices.
“I’m just going to ignore that.” Cody does a quick about-face and strides off down the road. Not unexpectedly, she gets clocked with two snowballs. It hurts enough that she’s pretty sure one of them has a rock in it. The blow brings tears to her eyes, but she doesn’t turn around, just doggedly continues down the road toward town. Another snowball hits her shoulder. She keeps walking. Then another rock-filled snowball gets her right between the shoulders and she starts to run. She hates that she’s crying. She hates that she’s already trying to figure out how to avoid being seen with Black Molly.
Cody scrambles to keep her balance as the roadside steepens. These are the wrong boots for this weather. She’s concentrating so hard on getting away as fast as she can without falling that she’s oblivious to the slowing down of a car, its quiet engine inaudible against the sound of her own crying. When the nose of a black car draws parallel to her, she jumps to the side of the road, heart pounding against the idea that this is his black car. That her father’s killer has found her.
“Cody?”
The hot tears that have gone from anger to fear don’t stop when she sees that it’s only Mr. March with his two dogs, and now they are infused with a sick relief. The relief squares itself against the earlier anger, and what Cody wants at this moment is to sic those two square-mouthed dogs sitting in the backseat on those girls. Show them she’s not without friends. Watch those dogs rip those puffy coats to shreds, the fake down floating into the air to mix with the snowflakes.
“Hop in.”
Cody takes off her glasses and wipes her eyes with the edge of her sleeve, hoping that Mr. March won’t detect that she’s been crying. But he’s a smart guy, notices right away the melting snow on her back.
“That didn’t look like playful fun.”
“It wasn’t.”
“You want me to go back and say something?”
Cody rubs the moisture off her glasses, puts them back on. “No.”
“Are you angry with them?”
“Yes.”
“Will petting one of these dogs help?”
Cody feels a little smile tweak the corner of her mouth. “Maybe.”
“Okay. Chance, head’s up.”
Chance pops his blocky head between their seats and gives Cody a smooch.
“Guaranteed to brighten your day.”
“So, are you taking the dog back to his owner?”
“Oh, Cody. No. That’s not an option.”
* * *
It’s really not an option. In Adam’s opinion, this dog’s been fought. That means, if he’s returned to his crack-addict owner, he’ll most likely be tossed into the ring again. He guesses that the boy funds his recreational habit with the dog. Adam isn’t unfamiliar with the phenomenon. Poor dog. As Adam likes to think, Not on my watch. He should try to explain it to Cody, who has gone all sullen on him, keeping her face to the window, ignoring Chance’s repeated efforts to jolly her, but he doesn’t have the strength.
The snow is that fine, sizzling kind, full of water and bound to become heavy. Adam is mentally kicking himself for having driven out here, for being foolish enough to believe that the snow would hold off until after the event and he can make it back to Boston tonight. He should just drop Cody off and turn around. Surely he won’t be welcome at the LakeView with two dogs in tow. Skye isn’t that hard up. Which is too bad, as he would love nothing more than to hang out here for a couple more days. His next-door neighbor, Beth, has been showing up at his place with a bottle of wine, just happening to want to try a new variety, shyly suggesting that she doesn’t want to drink alone. She has become a pest.
“Are you staying with us tonight?”
“I wasn’t planning on it. I was hoping to get home.” He bumps up the tempo of the intermittent wiper speed. “Besides, I don’t think your mother would allow two dogs again. She was kind to let me stay with both the first time, but I don’t want to push my luck.”
“Go ahead and push. She’s not about to turn away a customer.” Cody drags a finger along the breath mark she’s made on the inside of the window. “A good customer.”
“Thank you.”
He at least had the foresight to call Mosley to make sure that he hadn’t actually canceled the Open Studio. He’d called just before leaving the house, obviously waking Mosley from a deep sleep. The artist had taken a moment to come to himself, then said, “Oh, yeah.” He coughed, a hacker’s cough, “Yeah. Right. No. We don’t cancel. People out here don’t hyperventilate about a little snow.”
That was the moment Adam should have just said, Fine, but I’ll be staying home. But there is something in his makeup that always seems to have him challenging the weather, as if he’s got some Superman complex. Here he is, acting like he doesn’t care about personal safety for the sake of a bunch of artists. It’s not like they’re doing humanitarian aid. Adam pulls into the parking lot, which is devoid of cars except for the blue Subaru wagon that Mosley drives and an old-school black Volvo with a mosaic of bumper stickers holding it together—Kieran’s car. Someone has scraped the two inches of snow off the walkway, but the lot is smooth with the heavy, wet stuff. Adam’s L.L. Bean boots sink to the laces as he gets out of the car. He pops the back door open and lets the dogs out. He’s got a leash on the foster dog; he’s not about to trust him with canine good behavior. There’s nothing to say that he won’t bolt for that house the minute he’s back in his old neighborhood. In fact, the dog does pause, pointing his red nose across the river, his tail at the alert, his ears perked forward.
“Uh-uh. You’re with me now, Buddy.”
“Is that his name?”
“Probably not. It’s probably something more aggressive, like Butch or Apollo.”
“I like Apollo. That’s a good name. Butch is kind of, well, you know. It doesn’t mean what it used to in your day.” A shadow crosses her face. “It means a lesbian. A tough one.” She takes the leash out of Adam’s hand. “Shouldn’t we try to find him, the boy?”
“I think that we should leave well enough alone.”
“But we have his dog.” Cody is getting worked up; she’s stepped in front of him. The wet flakes dot her big glasses, obscuring her eyes.
“Cody, look, I’ve done a lot of this. These guys are bad with dogs. They aren’t pets. They—”
“I know. I’m not stupid. I’m just saying, if someone took Chance from you because you were, like, incapacitated, wouldn’t you die to know where he was?”
“I have been in that position.” All too clearly Adam remembers thinking that he would never see his dog again, the dog that had wormed his bulky heart into Adam’s transgressive life. Yeah, sure, he remembers how it feels to be bereft. But this is different. “He might be in jail, you know.”
“But what if he’s not? We should ask.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. His homeys?”
Adam can see how Skye is up against it with this kid. “Cody, promise me that you won’t do that?”
“I can’t promise. If I see some kids, I’m going to ask. Besides, around here, they’re just street kids.”
“With bad habits. What if they mugged you?”
“Mr. March. I lived in Holyoke. I think I know the difference between a gangbanger and a homey.”
“You’ve lost me.” Adam holds the door open. “After you.”
* * *
The school bus rumbles by, the snow making it look like a giant orange pointillist painting. I’ve been studying up on painting styles, so I’m pretty proud of myself for thinking of the word pointillist. Art is fun. Something that I certainly missed out on. So lost in thought am I that it takes me a couple of minutes to realize that Cody hasn’t gotten off the bus.
Cody, as usual, isn’t answering her phone, but I have another arrow in my quiver and I dial the landline number for the Artists Collaborative. It’s answered on the second ring by Cody, who sounds almost grown-up as she says, “Artists Collaborative, how may I help you?”
“You can help me by letting me know where you are.”
A beat goes by. “Well, you found me. So, you know where I am.”
“Lucky guess, and you know that I mean before you disappear.” I will myself to moderate my annoyance. It never does either of us any good to get Cody worked up. “How did you get there?”
“I walked. Well, actually, Mr. March saw me and gave me a ride in.”
“Adam? Oh. I don’t have him down—”
“He’s not staying, he says. Day trip.”
I push the curtain back from the picture window and stare out at the snow. “Well, you tell him he’s welcome to stay. It’s pretty nasty out there.” The serpentine curves and descents of Route 2 can be a challenge even for locals in weather like this. I’ve already got a guest who’s decided to stay put one more night. Snow is good business on a variety of levels. “I’m heading down to get you, Cody. No argument.”
“No, don’t. Mosley said he’s going to take me home. You don’t have to worry.”
“Then he’d better get a start. I don’t want you on the road.”
“It’s no big deal. The roads are plowed.”
“Put him on.”
“He’s not available.”
I can hear the escalating adolescent annoyance in my daughter’s voice. Mom’s being a stupid, dumb beeatch.
“I’m on my way.”
Cody is struggling to maintain a cool maturity even as her voice pitches into an adolescent whine. “No. Please. We have work to do. It’s not that bad out. You’re overreacting.”
“I’m sure that Mosley will understand.” And if he doesn’t, that’s the end of this arrangement. Overreacting. Cody has never experienced the heart-in-mouth sensation of a sideways skid. I’m not about to put her safety into the hands of an adult I’ve never even met. One with questionable decision-making skills if he thinks it’s fine to keep a fourteen-year-old girl working during a snowstorm that had the schools closing early.
The house phone rings. “Look, I’ve got to answer that. You tell Mosley I’ll be there in twenty.”
The sound of silence is supposed to inform me of how deeply aggrieved Cody is with me.
“LakeView, how may I help you?” I shudder at how exactly I mimic my daughter’s greeting.