Her mother drops Cody off outside the orthodontist’s office. Skye will be at the Big Y grocery shopping, and she reminds Cody to text her when she gets done with the orthodontist.
“Can I go get a soda or something after?”
“Yes. But stay in touch. I’m not going to be that long.”
“I’ll walk to the Big Y; it’s only a couple of blocks.”
“Just text me.…”
Cody walks away from the micromanaging. She yanks open the heavy glass door of the office building, runs up the stairs to Frank Odell, Orthodontics. This should just be a brace tightening, and, with luck, she’ll be out in fifteen minutes and can wander the downtown area, poke into some stores. Skye always gets lost in the grocery store, especially now that she has to get creative with vegetarian meals.
It’s her lucky day and Dr. Odell makes quick work of her exam and tightening, and Cody is back on the street within minutes with a slightly achy mouth and a new supply of wax. She’s forgotten to give the lady behind the reception desk the check from her mother, but she’s not going back. She’ll “find” it later and Mom can mail it in.
Cody has ten bucks worth of tip money from cleaning rooms in her pocket and at least an hour to herself, so she makes her way across the street to a pizza place to get herself a slice and a root beer. The late March day has all the promise of spring, even though the remnants of crusty, dirt-garnished snow piles are everywhere; thin fans of meltwater trickle out from beneath the piles, making every step sloppy. Still, the air is mild, and that one empty park bench is a perfect place to people-watch and eat the double-cheese slice oozing luxurious grease into her hand.
Cody licks the grease from her fingers, balls up the waxed paper, and makes a fair shot at the nearby trash barrel. She misses and has to get up to retrieve her misfire. A young man comes in her direction, and she quickly goes back to her bench, claiming it as her territory. He’s Hispanic, she thinks. Below his canted trucker cap, his dark hair is beautifully clipped close to his head, leaving graceful neck tattoos exposed; his slender body is dressed in sagging homeboy jeans, Joe Boxers revealed; a chain slung from wallet to belt loop slaps against his skinny shank. As he gets closer, she has a sense that she knows him, but there are no Hispanic kids in her school. He looks like a lot of the boys in her old school, but that’s not what she associates him with. The sense is fleeting, a shadow of recognition quickly passing. Then it hits her.
“Hey!”
The boy doesn’t respond, just keeps trudging forward, and Cody wonders if she has actually said it out loud. “Hey, you! Yo!”
He stops, considers her, and keeps moving. His eyes are hooded, sleepy-eyed, like he’s just awakened.
“No. Wait.”
The boy stops at the curb but doesn’t turn around, and she can see in his posture that he thinks she’s teasing him, taunting him.
“I know where he is. Your dog.”
“What you say, girl?”
“You’re that kid, the one who overdosed.”
He does turn now, gives her a glare that should be intimidating. She should run, but Cody holds her ground. “I know where your dog is. I know who has him.”
“He fighting him?”
“No. He’s been, um, rescued.”
The boy steps toward Cody, the hooded, sleepy eyes now wide and sparking, not with curiosity or pleasure, but with anger, like he thinks she’s lying. “Who are you?”
“Cody. I was there. When you … In the house. You almost died.” She knows she’s allowing him to intimidate her, but he is intimidating. He’s tall, for one thing, and bears a gangsta swagger that isn’t put on. He’s the real deal. She takes one step backward, assesses the few people on the street, mostly Mass College of Liberal Arts students, wrapped up in their conversations and phones. She’s hoping that they are witness and deterrent enough if this kid gets physical.
“But I didn’t. Where my dog at?”
“In Boston. He’s great. He’s in good care.”
“I want him back.”
“I know you do. I would, too.”
“You got a phone?”
“Yes.”
“Call him. Call this guy and tell him get his ass back here and give me my dog. He has no right to him.”
“He won’t give him back. He thinks that you fought him.”
The boy scowls, mutters, “Ain’t true. I didn’t.”
“What’s your name? I can’t keep thinking of you as the guy in the house.”
The boy folds his arms across his hollow chest, sticks out his chin. “Mingo.”
“I’m Cody. And what’s his name? The dog.”
“He named Dawg.”
“Like ‘Hey, Dawg’?” A giggle bubbles in her throat, but she swallows it; this kid does not look amused.
“He’s my dog. I want him back.” He turns his face away from her. “He like my family. He’s all I got.” Mingo rubs a hand over the tattoo on his neck, lifts and resets his trucker hat at a cocky angle, regains his ’tude. “You gonna help me?”
“Yeah. I’ll help.” For the first time in a long time, something feels right.
They exchange phones, key in their respective phone numbers, and Mingo leaves her standing alone on the sidewalk. Her phone dings with a text message: Where are you? Mom. Probably frantic. Cody texts back: Meet u @ BY. Skye can cool her jets in the parking lot of the grocery store.
Back in the car, Cody’s text-message alert dings again. It’s a rare-enough occasion that she knows her mother is dying to know who’s texting her. Cody isn’t oblivious to the fact that her mother peeks at her phone. If she was the diary-keeping sort of teenager, she’d have to be totally devious about where to stash the diary; her mother’s sense of personal space is, like, nonexistent. Cody knows that if her mother ever broke her laptop password, she’d freak. Beyond Internet searches for various school projects, there’s a history of searches for a shooting that has become a cold case. Cody knows enough to delete her history cache, but sometimes she forgets.
Yo kid
Yo
Tx 4 telling me abt Dawg
Shd let guy no?
No. Lt me thnk
K
Cody slips her phone into her jacket pocket. Keeps the small smile on her face turned well away from her mother’s sideways glance.
* * *
Chance playfully grabs his buddy’s foot, then rolls onto his back. Play with me! The move is so like the crippling move of a fighter, yet so gentle and the submission so trusting. The other pit bull jumps to his feet and, in moments, the two dogs are play wrestling. Perfectly suited to each other.
It is one of his hard days, and the rambunctious behavior of two dogs who ought to know better does nothing to alleviate Adam’s gloom. He is fetching up on their April sixth wedding anniversary—what would have been their fifth—and though he’d known that this would be hard, he hadn’t known exactly how hard. Looming on the calendar like some kind of perverted red-letter day, the date pulsed its significance into his eye every time he glanced at the calendar hanging on the wall beside the phone. He took the calendar down, but the date struck him every time he opened his appointment book to jot in a new client, a dental appointment, a reminder to get the car serviced. It struck him when he looked at his phone, the calendar app’s bright blue square proclaiming the passage of time in its relentless pull. A pull that minute by minute took Adam from Gina, thrusting her deeper and deeper into his past.
“Hey, guys. Knock it off.” Adam straightens the coffee table, catches a lamp before it crashes. “Enough!”
The two dogs stop. Sit. Look at him as if he’s maligning their good natures. Chance immediately shakes off the puppy behavior and comes to bop Adam in the chin with his head. He then presses himself into Adam’s body, crouched as he is on the floor. Chance licks his man’s face, tastes the upset, mutters some comfort into Adam’s ear, and is rewarded with a hug.
“We need to get out of Dodge.” Adam has three days clear on that calendar of his. One on either side of the one he’d like to avoid. There is no place he needs to be, and one where he’d like to be. LakeView Hotel. Not as a door-to-door salesman of fund-raising techniques, but as a vacationer. A guest with no obligation other than to admire the Berkshires and sleep in a bed that he’s never shared, the dogs notwithstanding.
Kimberly called him again last night, all sweet concern and an invitation to some charity event for a cause he’s not particularly interested in. Apparently, he’s been forgiven, or else she’s adopted a new strategy. He said yes, only because saying no would take more work.
“LakeView Hotel, Skye Mitchell.”
“Skye, it’s Adam.” He realizes that it’s the first time he’s just called himself Adam when calling the LakeView, confident that he’s unique enough to Skye to need no last name. “I’m hoping I can have a room for the next couple of nights. I’d love to come up today.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Maybe this time I’ll get to the top of Mount Greylock.”
“You’re out of luck there. They don’t open the gate till May.”
“Oh. Okay.” Any further suggestion of what activities he might enjoy in the area seems silly right now. Especially because Adam mostly intends to lie in bed and watch old movies. Skye doesn’t need to know that. She can suppose that he’ll be doing the early spring tourist thing, not feeling sorry for himself with Humphrey Bogart.
“We’ll find something for you to do. Still with two dogs?”
“Guilty.”
“Then I guess room nine is all yours.”
“See you in a few.”
“Super.”
They sign off and Adam looks at the two dogs, Chance and the dog he’s ended up calling Lucky. “Want to go see Skye?”
Chance nods, shakes, and does his little two-step dance. Adam doesn’t fool himself into believing the dog understands the sentence, just the word go.
For what he’s planning, Adam doesn’t need much, and he is packed and ready to leave in half an hour. He calls Next Door Beth to ask her to pick up the paper off the stoop in the morning, relieved that he gets her answering machine so he doesn’t have to explain himself, sets the thermostat to fifty-five, makes sure he’s got the power cords for phone and tablet, grabs a bag of dog food out of the pantry, and off they go, the two pit bulls beside themselves with the idea of a car ride.
* * *
It’s what I love best in life, along with walks, television, and dinner: a ride in the car. Especially one that takes us away from the city into the countryside. Now, I’m a city dog, born and raised, and enjoy the feel of sidewalk under my feet as much as the next guy, but the countryside has all those potent scents. Whereas my usual route brings me the fresh smells of offal and other dogs, the occasional cat, and lots of lovely food molecules drifting out of pizza joints and delis, the countryside offers me the more organic living creature smells. My kind tend toward the home-protection occupations, with nary a hunter in the bloodline, but the deeper wolfish instinct in us all makes the idea of a hunt very compelling. So when we arrived at our home away from home, I leapt out of the car and grabbed a noseful of scent. Ah!
My pal emerged from the car more slowly, poking his head out, sniffing the air, debating whether or not he should jump down from the car and take a chance that it was safe. He’s still cautious, confused a lot of the time, uneasy yet in his new circumstances. I understand how he feels; I was that way myself when I went from the cellar where I was born and fought to the streets and then to the comforts of Adam’s little home. It was quite a shock for me to go from captive to independent to codependent. When your world changes so abruptly, you have to be a little guarded.
I barked, encouraging him, and was rewarded with his finally taking the leap. We ran side by side down the slope of the hill, the fresh scent of lake water and trees calling to our feral natures. That and the creature I knew was called rabbit. Having frequently snuffled up their scent in the snow and mud, I so wanted to see one.
* * *
The dogs are bursting with spring energy, and Adam doesn’t have the heart to call them back. He figures that they can’t get into much trouble in the woods, if you discount the chance of encountering a skunk. They’ll be back; it’s too close to dinnertime for Chance to wander too far from the bag of kibble.
Skye isn’t in the office when Adam arrives. He has his phone out to call her cell when Cody comes in. “Hey, Mr. March.”
“Hey yourself, Cody. Can you check me in?”
“Sure.” Cody goes behind the reception desk, clicks the computer’s mouse a few times. Looks at him over the top of her slipping horn-rimmed glasses. “You have both dogs with you?”
“I do.” He can see them out the picture window, noses firmly down to the ground.
Cody fiddles a little more with the computer, prints out his check-in form. Slides it to him along with a pen. Adam scrawls his signature, slides it back to her.
She slides the key to room 9 to him. “Can I say something?”
“Sure.” Adam pockets the key. “What?”
“That dog, the one from the crack house?”
“Yes?”
“I know his name.”
“Really?”
“It’s Dawg. You know, like ‘Hey, dawg.’” Cody’s voice is a pretty good imitation of street talk. She shoves her glasses up. “I found out.”
“And can I ask how you found out?”
“No. Well, I asked.”
“You’re making me nervous, Cody. You shouldn’t be—”
“It’s fine. He’s an okay kid. He’s just, well, he wants his dog back.”
“I can’t do that.”
“That’s what I told him. Mingo. That you wouldn’t.”
“Cody. Does your mother know about this?”
“Oh, jeez no. Please, Mr. March. Don’t tell her; she’ll freak. I saw him in town. We’ve texted a little. Can I tell him that Dawg is here?”
Street kid with a crack habit texting this little girl with artistic aspirations. Adam is suddenly very glad that Ariel is mostly all grown up. He doesn’t think he could do it again. It was hard enough as a part-time dad; he can’t imagine what it would be like to live with this attitude day after day. For one uncharacteristic moment, he thinks compassionately on Sterling, his ex-wife. “Think about it, Cody. Look at that dog.” He throws a hand toward the picture window. “Look at those scars. Those are from fighting.”
“He says he never fought him.”
“And you believe him?” He knows he’s being a hard-ass, but when it comes to dog fighting, Adam really doesn’t care how harsh he sounds. “Cody, I can’t take the chance.”
“He won’t. He’s in some kind of program, a group home. Not jail.” She’s got that adolescent scowl thing going on, and he gets an insight into Skye’s world.
“Hey, all checked in?” Skye appears in the doorway, the two dogs standing behind her.
“We are. Cody took good care of me.” Adam winks at Cody, a tacit promise to keep their conversation to themselves, and he is rewarded by a slight smile, nothing broad enough to reveal her braces, but a smile nonetheless.
Adam swings the door to room 9 open and is met by the fresh scent of vanilla. There is something a little different about the room this time, and it takes him a moment to realize that it’s finally been painted. The vanilla room freshener is barely masking the odor of latex paint. The room is brighter, and the eggshell white color instead of the formerly beige shade makes it look bigger. The carpeting is gone, replaced with something he assumes is laminate, but it looks quite like actual strip oak buffed to a shine. Two area rugs in swirls of lavender, deep purple, and pink break up the expanse of wood. Adam pushes the new, lighter drapes back, revealing the view. It feels good to be here. Unlike his home, where it is all too easy to encounter a ghost, this comfortable room on the top of a hill is simply a place to lay his head. A place to rest.
Chance butts him, grumbles. Lucky, aka Dawg, cocks his head. Rest will wait. It’s time to dish out doggy dinners. And, for the record, the dog will remain Lucky.
* * *
Dawg here cn u gt here? Cody keeps her phone in her hand, but there is no reply.
* * *
It is a strangely mild evening for early spring in these hills. Not a breath of a breeze to chill the back of the neck, and I’ve only recently dared to go scarfless. My down jacket is left hanging on a hook, close enough at hand for when the untrustworthy New England spring flirts with turning back into winter. I finish up in the office, shutting off all the lights except for the lamp in the window, giving the office the look of a warm and welcoming place. At a local craft fair, I’ve had a hand-painted sign made with my cell number on it, surrounded by a wreath of pink and white primroses, and it looks sweetly professional hanging on the hook beside the door. So much nicer than the cardboard stuck to the storm door with a piece of tape. As is my habit, I climb the outside stairs to the second floor, walk along the gallery, making sure that things are in order, then down the other set of stairs to the first floor, where I will do the same thing before retiring to our cabin for the night. I pause to lean over the railing. The moon has risen and appears caught between the tops of the two tallest pine trees. Nearly full, it casts enough light to illuminate the last of the snow still lingering in the frost hollows.
Coming from below me, there is the sound of a door opening, the scrabble of dog nails on the concrete. A thump, another. Adam’s dogs appear in the moonlight, their tails pointing like darning needles straight out from boxy bodies, weaving a path down the slope. I lean farther over the rail and can see Adam standing there. If I had a water balloon, he’d be a perfect target. He sips from a plastic cup. I head down the outer stairs.
“Good evening.”
“And a lovely one it is.” Adam gestures toward the moon with the hand that holds the cup. “Could I interest you in a glass of wine?”
This is where I’m supposed to say “Oh, gosh, no thank you.” But I don’t. A glass of wine in a plastic cup sounds kind of good. Kind of adult. Preferable to the whiskey he usually offers.
“Why, yes. Thank you.” I pull another chair next to his.
“I can only offer a mediocre red.”
“Anything else would be wasted on me.”
Adam goes in, comes out quickly with another cup and a bottle. “If you’d prefer, I’ve also got a pretty good scotch. Twelve-year-old.”
“Tempting as that sounds, a little red wine is probably a better choice for me.”
Adam hands me the cup, pours himself a little more. We tip our cups in salute. No one says anything for a moment, both of us just enjoying the quiet and the fresh night air. In the distance, a bark. Adam whistles.
“So you’re just here on a little vacation this time?”
“Something like that.” He rests the edge of the cup against his lips. “Tomorrow is, would have been, our fifth anniversary.”
“Anniversaries are hard.”
“I’m functioning, but some days are just harder.” He shakes his head. “Sorry, didn’t mean to spoil the evening with my pity party.”
“Oh, Adam, you can hardly be accused of that. It’s hard, I know, really hard to lose someone you love.” I feel a companionable tear rise, a tear that has yet to be shed for Randy. I’m still angry with him, angry that he died the way he did. The uselessness of his life. I have to collect myself. “I might have some cheese and crackers in the office. What do you say?”
“Sounds good.” Adam whistles again, and the dogs finally reappear on the porch. They are panting, clearly pleased with their exertions. They take turns pushing their way between his knees, almost causing him to spill red wine on himself. “Hey, hey, boys. That’s enough.” He’s grinning, and I see why he keeps these animals; they are sixty pounds of distraction each.
Adam puts the dogs in his room and follows me down the length of the porch. I unlock the office door but don’t flip on any other light; the lamp on the small round table in the window is enough. I duck into the back office and get the block of cheddar cheese that I nibble on during the day, grab the box of crackers and a cheese knife.
“The weather should be good for a hike tomorrow. If that’s what you were thinking about doing.” It’s a nice topic, weather. So neutral. No wonder so many people fall back on it as a useful tool. I dated a weatherman one time. It was all he talked about, weather trivia. All I talked about was Cody and her cute little three-year-old antics. Maybe he was nervous, too. I know that I was. I sip the mediocre red. Offer the cheese knife to Adam.
“I may. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.” He slices off a piece of cheese, sandwiches it in between crackers.
The house phone begins to ring. I jump up to answer it, as if I’ve been caught malingering. It’s a call from downstate; they’ve seen my Web site proclaiming our dog-friendly status. I book them a room for the weekend, premium rate. When I get back to the little table, Adam has poured me more wine. I almost decline, but then don’t.
“Don’t you ever close up shop for the night?”
“Not really. I can’t afford not to be a real voice on the end of the line when there are other places staffed all night.”
“Then when do you sleep?”
“I don’t. Sleep is for losers.”
“I bet that if you added a pet-sitting or pet-spa component, something beyond just letting people with dogs stay here, the LakeView would become a destination instead of a way station.”
“Is that how you see it? A way station?”
“Not anymore.” He finishes his wine.
“I should get back, Cody will be wondering where I am.” That is such a stretch.
“Yeah, me, too. Those dogs will have picked out what movie we’re watching, and they always choose Turner and Hooch.”
“That’s like trying to pick out a movie with Cody. She likes the dark and disturbed and I like the romcom.”
“By the way, the room looks great.”
“Thanks. It was way overdue. Glad you like it.” I don’t mention that my credit card is pulsing with the exercise of making those rooms, his included, fresh and pet-friendly. And look at that, two nights booked for that dog couple, a little inroad in the debt. I won’t charge Adam what I’m charging them. He’s grandfathered in. I’ve even stopped charging him the “cleaning surcharge” on his dogs.
“Very homey.”
“That’s what I was aiming for.” I am unduly pleased with the compliment.
* * *
Adam walks along the porch toward his room. The moon is high enough now to have escaped the grasp of the tall pines. The porch lights are extraneous, and he wishes that he could shut them off, but of course he can’t. Safety first. His dogs are ensconced on the bed and greet him only with tail thumps. He has come without treats, without promise of adventure, and he hasn’t been too long, so they don’t put any energy into his welcome back. “Hey, Dawg,” he whispers, and he sees that Cody is right, that is this animal’s name. The dog lifts his head and cocks his ears forward at the word. “Yeah, well as long as you’re with me, you’re Lucky.” He smiles at the unintended pun.
Adam extracts the fifth of scotch from his bag. Cracks the cap open and then realizes that he doesn’t have another plastic cup. He’s used up his LakeView allotment. At that moment, there’s a tap at his door. The dogs sit up but don’t react. A friend.
“Thought you might need another one of these.” Skye hands him a short stack of clear plastic cups, neatly secured in their sanitary wrappings. “Good night, then.”
* * *
Cody hears the front door open and quickly closes the lid to her laptop. She’s been surfing the Holyoke newspaper, looking for mention of her father’s murder. Buried deep within the local news, a glancing mention of the case, a possible tie-in with another. No proof, no leads. Cody doesn’t know if this means she’s safer, or less safe. She’d love to ask her mother. Hey, Mom, do you think if the shooter hasn’t been identified by this time that maybe he’s gone? In Cody’s imagination, her mother nods, and says, Yes. There’s nothing left to worry about. Everything’s going to be all right. We’re safe. Forever.
“Cody?”
“Doing homework!”
The pressure of worry is knotted in her chest. Cody presses her hand against her sternum, feels the beating of her own heart, the hectic rise of panic. This has happened before. She takes a deep breath, consciously tries to slow her heartbeat down.
“Cody, dinner.” Skye stands in the bedroom doorway. “Honey, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
Skye sits on the bed, throwing an arm around Cody, squeezing her close. “Tell me.”
“Don’t.” Cody wrenches herself away from her mother’s touch, afraid that to feel it for one more second will cause her to combust. “Don’t touch me.” She runs to the bathroom, avoiding the hurt on her mother’s face. It has to be this way.