One Good Dog Read online

  What can he say to her? He feels a little like a voyeur face-to-face with his object. Up close, she’s older than he thought, not a girl, despite her youthful clothes, but a woman maybe in her late thirties, early forties.

  Adam hesitates too long and she disappears into the shop. Taking a sip of his coffee, Adam waits to take advantage of a lull in the increased morning traffic. A moment later, the woman reappears, her hair bundled back out of the way with an elastic, a bucket of water in hand.

  “Morning.” There, he’s established that he’s a human being.

  She gives him the wary look of a woman alone on a city sidewalk, and he becomes conscious of his scrappy attire. “Mornin’.” Nothing more. She turns to her window washing. “Hot again.” Points for having a conversation, points off for being platitudinal.

  “Sure is.” Her accent is tipped with some flavor not from here. Southern? Midwestern?

  “Keep cool.”

  “You, too.”

  Sure, a hot courtroom his destination, an unknown penalty. A life off the rails. He’s cool. Absolutely.

  Chapter Five

  They spotted the dead dog first. The rest of us, Mom, Dad, and two others, were shocked into a momentary silence before coming to our senses and barking invectives at the men, and the woman. She’s the one who knelt over the body of my late challenger, running her hand gently down his side as if he might enjoy the feeling. I stopped my noise to watch.

  Two uniformed men and one woman stood in our cellar and swore grandly at what they had come to see. It was a little stagy, their response, as if they were pleased to have been proven correct, that they had chosen well. I yarked. Mom and Dad shrank to the back of their cages. One of the others actually growled, catching the attention of the men, who stopped swearing and grimaced with some decision. I yarked some more, a little uncertain and more than curious. What did this visit really mean? The men carried poles with loops of line sticking out of their hollow cores. The woman seemed more confident and unlatched the cage containing my mother and my siblings. Mom shrank back but was silent, which the woman took for a good thing. “Come on, Mommy, I won’t hurt you.” I stopped my yarking, wanting to hear more of this voice. Fitty, my dad, sat down and did something that was extraordinary in my mind, something I had never seen him do, but I understood immediately the reason for it. He put one paw up against the mesh of his cage front. An imploring “Hey, I’m with you,” sort of gesture. The men visibly relaxed. The woman tentatively held out a hand to Mom. Mom wasn’t having any of it, and pressed herself even deeper into the cage. In her experience, someone wanting her out of her cage meant only two things, a fight or a fuck. The woman snapped her fingers softly and made a clucking noise with her mouth, a sweet little kissy noise. Mom sighed. Capitulation. Slowly, my mother made her way to the woman’s hand, sniffing it with wariness wanting to be trust. Once Mom was out of the cage, a collar around her neck and a man’s strong hand hanging on to her leash, the woman gently handed out the six pups into a big box.

  I yarked a question to the room: What’s going to happen? No one answered because no one knew. Mom cast a look in my direction, her tail swinging gently to and fro in a clear message: Whatever it is has got to be better than this minute.

  Dogs are existentialists. We think of now. But we do have a capacity for learning, which is predicated on our understanding of the past, not as some block of time, but as an action, a pain, a smell. Our idea of the future is limited to hunger pains, I will eat, and anticipation of a walk at a certain time every day. Those of us removed from that cellar that day lacked the imagination to picture a happy place; we knew only that things were going to be different.

  Eventually, they came to me. Mom and Dad and the kiddies were all boxed or muzzled, the growling dog had been silenced with a little happy juice, and the other dog was acting all goofy and “happy to see you.” I took a hint from him. I didn’t want one of those muzzles on me. I suffer a bit from claustrophobia. Aaah aah aaaah, I said, cranking the length of my tail into raptures. We gladiator types look amazingly happy when we loll our tongues and split our jaws into grins. The men and the woman bought my act. They slipped a loop around my neck and we all headed up the narrow stairs to the first floor. I’d never been up there. It reeked of boys’ sweat and a pungent smoke. Pizza boxes lay on the floor, tantalizingly out of reach from my nose, as I was constrained by the rigid pole one of the men had in his grip. Beer cans were neatly stacked in a pyramid beneath the cracked window in the otherwise-empty room.

  I didn’t get to look around for very long, as we were quickly hustled out of the place and into the street. A white van with its back doors wide open idled at the sidewalk. One by one, my parents and the other two dogs were hoisted into cages in the back. We were used to cages and didn’t protest. Before I was lifted in, another man, one I hadn’t seen before, came out bearing the weight of my last competitor, wrapped in a slippery blue tarp. The man’s face was grim, as if he was mourning the loss of a friend he’d only just been introduced to, or that he was sad to be right.

  There was a moment’s inattention as the body of the dead dog wrapped in its slippery shroud slipped out of the man’s grasp, thumping to the ground and leaving the empty blue plastic sheet in his arms. The people gasped in unison, and I noticed a lessening of the grip on the pole, a subtle inattention brought on by the clumsy dropping of the dead dog. I bolted.

  Chapter Six

  Adam sits beside his lawyer on a cold metal folding chair behind a rectangular table in the second-floor courtroom. The veneered surface of the table is lifted here and there, dried out by decades of overheating in winter and summertime humidity. On the floor beside him, faithful to the end, is his old briefcase. His Cartier fountain pen, a parting gift from his coworkers at his last corporation before being lured away to Dynamic, rests fully capped on the untouched lined yellow pad in front of him. Adam wants to cross his legs, to ease the unexplained pain in his ribs, but he knows that he must remain four-square, feet on the floor, forearms gently touching the tabletop, hands reverently clenched. The picture of a martyr.

  “All rise.”

  Adam stands as if a military man. Which is what he might have been had he followed the advice of his guidance counselor in high school, who was impressed enough with his top grades in an underachieving parochial school, but not enough to recommend anything better than a state college, or the military. His last set of foster parents—foster father, really—believed the military was the place to become a man. He’d been to Nam. “Make a man of ya.” Whack, then the shoulder jab. “Toughen you up, boy.” Jab, jab.

  Sophie stands at an identical table with a female lawyer who looks a lot like a college intern. They both wear subdued suits, Sophie’s in navy blue and the lawyer’s in gray; both have their long blond hair pulled into severe ponytails. They could be sisters.

  Sophie. If only she’d added those two critical, essential, defining, unalarming words on that “While You Were Out” slip. In. Fucking. Law. Sister-in-law. Sterling’s sister, who wanted to talk about a surprise party for Sterling’s birthday. Then they would be sitting pretty right now, both of them enjoying the fruits of his labors, he as CEO designee of Dynamic, she as the future CEO’s PA, which was tantamount to queen bee of the corporate hive.

  Instead, they stand side by side in a courtroom after all the words have been said, all the excuses his attorney can make—stress, responsibility, high-powered job—in an attempt to justify the unjustifiable. That the stress of his professional life and the excitement of the anticipated actions of that day had overwhelmed him makes him sound weak, unreliable. The court-ordered shrink has applied the psychobabble of his profession and subpoenaed managers to tout an exemplary work record. Exemplary except for this one egregious mistake. That uncharacteristic moment of loss of control has cost him everything.

  And in this corner, Sophie’s own militants have presented a compelling story of stress, responsibility, high-powered job, and an equally exempla
ry work record. Her shrink has rolled out the heavy guns of post-traumatic stress syndrome.

  Adam keeps Sophie in his peripheral vision, not turning his head to see her sitting there, her plump mouth pursed in righteousness. Victimhood worn like a mantle. Shoulders back, head held high. Judge Judy, of whom he’s seen a lot in the past few months, would send her on her way, telling her to suck it up, saying her inaccuracy was the cause of all this. A seasoned professional staffer, she had made a neophyte’s mistake. In-law. All the difference in the world.

  The judge enters the courtroom. After him there follows a scent of cooler air coming from an air conditioner placed somewhere a lot more pleasant than this chamber of horrors. He seats himself, and the dozen people in the room are allowed to resume their seats. Behind Sophie are her parents and her boyfriend, a burly fellow with a red-and-green tattoo running up his neck, as if some tropical plant is rooted beneath his black T-shirt. Behind them is a gathering of her friends and supporters. A short line of reporters, press credentials hanging around their necks, sit in the last row of chairs.

  Behind Adam, there is no one.

  Ted Abramowitz, his lawyer, later shakes his hand and congratulates him. “It could have been worse, lots worse.” The pumping hand action of the happy lawyer threatens to turn into a backslap. Worse? Than what, a death sentence? The judge has sentenced Adam to two years probation and one year of community service, plus assigning him court costs, monetary damages, and counseling. Should this end here? Not likely. Sophie’s plump lips thin into a dissatisfied line. Her lawyer pats her on the shoulder and a look passes between them; a civil suit will follow.

  Abramowitz assures Adam that he should be ecstatic. How so, Adam wonders, with a smear like this on his pristine record? Because he’s been unable to defend the takeover plan, the whole thing looks like a colossal mistake. And Wannamaker looks even more godlike, having saved Dynamic’s reputation by calling a halt. To say nothing of the fact that he’s going to have to fight to get any severance from Dynamic. No golden parachute was offered, just the boot heel of his pension—don’t let the door slam on the way out. Seems as though even the most morally suspect of giant corporations have limits. Not only that: Who will hire a top exec with a criminal record, however lightly handled?

  To say nothing of his divorce.

  His esteemed lawyer licks his lips in anticipation of further business. He’s going to be living off the fatted calf for some time at this rate. Although Abramowitz comes from one of the city’s better-known legal firms, it is a firm Adam has never used. Quick on the draw, Sterling engaged their personal lawyers, and was rewarded with the services of the best of the best in attorneys, a golfing buddy, a man Adam once thought of as a friend.

  “Now we should figure out where you’ll do your service. We can get you someplace that won’t be too onerous. Maybe tutoring at the community college.” Ted Abramowitz stuffs his briefcase with the thick file folders of Adam’s case. Adam isn’t listening to the second-best lawyer money can buy. He is jobless, convicted of a stupid mistake that wasn’t his fault. His wife is poisoning his daughter’s mind against him, and his lawyer thinks he’s had good news?

  Once the verdict has been read, the press clamor for a sound bite. Abramowitz waves them away, fairly easily, as this case isn’t that interesting laid against the backdrop of the recent economic woes. Adam’s case, and the press’s interest in it, has been relegated to an inside page.

  “Are you sorry?” One female reporter, a thin, narrow notebook in hand, waits for an answer. She wears jeans, and her dangling credentials identify her as from the local weekly, the giveaway paper. She looks about fifteen years old. Has he gotten so middle-aged that all young women look like teenagers? That they all look like his last memory of Veronica?

  Adam’s lawyer bleats, “No comment,” but the girl catches Adam’s eye, holding it with the force of her own question. And for a confused moment, Adam thinks she means about his sister. That’s been the strangest thing, this regret that, in the end, it wasn’t Veronica after all.

  The girl reporter and the disgraced executive stare at each other, she wants an answer to fill out her story; he has no answer. The moment is broken when the bailiff beckons to Adam and his lawyer. The judge wants a word.

  As suggested by the breeze that had followed the judge into the courtroom, Judge Frank Johnson’s chambers are cool, and after the fuggy warmth of the old courtroom, Adam feels goose bumps rise on his arms. Without his robe, and on a level with them, the judge is whittled down to an ordinary-looking man. A tracery of blond-going-to-white fringe from ear to ear, and a pair of Buddy Holly glasses sliding down his nose. Not as old or as godlike as he had seemed behind the bench. Adam suppresses a cleansing breath of relief; maybe he’s going to be more lenient now that the case is out from under the scrutiny of the public eye, no longer subject to the outrage of Sophie and her lawyer.

  “I’ve asked you in here to talk about your community service.” The judge drops into his big swivel chair and points to the visitor chairs opposite his desk, two more cold metal folding chairs. Once again barricaded by his status, the judge lets his momentary benignity evaporate. “I’m placing you myself.”

  Adam’s lawyer bleats a little protest. “We’ve discussed tutoring.”

  The judge sits forward, leaning on his desktop and peering at Adam over the top of his big glasses. The effect rucks up the skin of his plain, large forehead, making Adam think of Bozo the clown without whiteface. “March, you may think that you’ve gotten off lightly, I could have given you jail time. Probably should have. But I think that your biggest issue isn’t violence, but arrogance. I’ve seen the shrink’s report, know that you acted out of some sort of emotional self-defense, but the truth is, you’re one arrogant son of a bitch and you need to be taken down a peg.”

  Adam feels the sigh of relief contract into a choke. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “It’s not that you don’t have a moral compass; I suppose you do. Despite the opposing lawyer’s contention that you’re a psychopath, you’re not. But your moral compass is way off true north. You’re lost, man. You need to eat a little humble pie, and I’m about to serve you a big bite.”

  Adam looks at Abramowitz, noticing for the first time that the man has a weak chin.

  “You will report to Bob Carmondy at the Fort Street Center Monday morning. You will do whatever he requires of you.”

  Adam nods. He waits for his lawyer to say something, to protest or agree, but the man and his weak chin just sit there.

  “Report back to me in six months.” The judge pushes himself back, making the giant swivel chair rock. They are dismissed.

  Chapter Seven

  Ariel Carruthers March greets Adam in the riding school lounge still in tall boots, her helmet still on her head, her scowl reminding Adam of Sterling when she was young enough to permit herself facial expressions. “You don’t have to get here so early. You don’t have to watch.”

  The implication is that he never did before, that he always spent the time waiting for her on his laptop or his BlackBerry, so why does he have to stand and watch her now? This is more blatantly expressed by her posture; he is an embarrassment to her. Surely her riding friends know all about him, their parents discussing Adam March and his fall from grace at the dinner table. Adam knows this as certainly as if he were still invited to those dinner tables. Ariel is suffering from acute adolescent mortification. Here stands a father nobody else’s parents want to know.

  “I like to watch.” Neither one of them believes this.

  “I have to put Elegance away.”

  “Okay, hurry up, though.” Adam hates the cajoling tone in his voice, a tone he has only just started using with Ariel, as if he’s become afraid of her.

  Ariel wrenches open the door that leads to the stalls, letting it slam behind her.

  Adam leans against the wall, hesitant to sink down on the tumorous couch or the fur-covered matching chair that serve parents as wa
iting-area accommodation. The lounge smells of an animal-induced fug, cat pee and wet dog. It doesn’t matter how much he spends on Ariel’s various training facilities, because to him they always smell bad. Usually, Adam just waits for Ariel in the car, preferring that to sitting in this room with its seventies furniture and stink. But he only gets to see her every other weekend now, and he’s taken to watching her interminable lessons simply to be able to see her as much as time permits on these Saturdays foreshortened by scheduled commitments. The riding lesson, the tennis lesson, the important birthday parties. Foreshortened by stalling. Ariel is not happy about spending time with him and she makes sure he knows it.

  Adam tries not to think about how, not that long ago, Ariel was Daddy’s little girl. She played the part so well. “Take me, Daddy!” When she was little, Ariel wanted to go everywhere with him, cried and tugged at his pant leg as he headed out the door on yet another business trip. He remembers the chirp of her babyish voice on the phone, asking him to remember to bring her something special from Hong Kong or London. When had the pleas for his attention devolved into demands for possessions? At some point, she’d stopped asking him to stay home on weekday mornings until it was time for her to go to school, stopped warbling the kind of endearments to him that some of her friends did with their fathers. He stopped being Daddy and became the Nameless One. And this “situation” hasn’t helped. Now they are strangers forced into companionship by the courts. Twenty minutes later, Ariel finally reappears, tiny low-slung breeches pasted to her pipe-stem legs, her T-shirt with its slightly suggestive motto arced over her pubescent breasts, hiked well above her belly button. He says nothing and is still rebuffed when he reaches out to hug her, given the side of her face, her mouth screwed up as far away from his lips as it can get.

  Ariel and Adam get into his car without any conversation. His daughter slumps into the passenger seat and plugs herself into her iPod, an effective wall. Do not disturb.