One Good Dog Page 5

  When Ariel was born, Sterling declared that one was enough. And that was okay; he didn’t need a big family. Dandling this tiny creature on his knee, Adam was as terrified as he’d ever been. He knew nothing about being a father. Thank God the nanny they hired had been a keeper and so much of his worry vanished as Mrs. Sanchez made sure that Ariel was happy.

  “Good lesson?”

  Ariel pulls away one ear bud and cocks an eyebrow at him.

  “Your lesson? Was it good?” A wisp of something slides across the field of his memory. There is a familiarity he hasn’t seen before in Ariel’s expression. She is growing up; her facial bones are becoming the structure of the woman she will be. She is adopting expressions that come only with disappointment in men.

  “Yeah. It was all right.” A flat, expressionless answer. Before his fall from grace, she’d chatter to him about her riding lessons all the way home, often the only conversation they had, and one that he only half-listened to. His shrink, Dr. Stein, tells him to be patient. Ariel’s sense of security has been damaged. Everything she ever thought about her father has been compromised by his actions.

  Adam tries again. “Oh, come on. What was good about it?” His peripheral view of his daughter’s profile reveals a firmly set jaw. She replaces the ear bud. Slowly, her head begins to nod in time with whatever questionable music is pouring into her ear. A sweat-darkened lock of hair falls across her cheek. She loops it back over her ear, and suddenly Adam knows what’s familiar to him. She looks like his sister. Ariel is exactly the age Adam remembers his sister best, fifteen, the year she ran away. The year when she was his only ally.

  “Hey, little bro, can I help you build your tower?” Adam’s sister grabs a handful of red and yellow Legos. He’s building a fort, but that’s okay. If Veronica wants to build a tower, then that’s what they’ll build. The idea of ten minutes of her attention warms him, a slight flush of pleasure Adam will never quite experience again in his lifetime. The pleasure of an adored sister spending time with him. Veronica loops a strand of dark blond hair behind her ear. The strand falls back across her cheek as she reaches for another block.

  Adam presses his hand against the place over his ribs where he has an inexplicable pain.

  Chapter Eight

  As usual, Adam is up before dawn. He stands at his one window, staring down onto the quiet street, waiting for the lights to go on in the newsagent’s shop. He’s in the Harvard sweatpants that he’s lived in for the weekend, yesterday’s stale T-shirt—an old team-building promotional shirt from his days as division leader for Dynamic’s cosmetics division, and is barefoot. He’ll slip on his boat shoes to run across the street once the shop opens. The fading streetlights reflect against the jolly little fish dancing across the rainbow of A to Z Tropical Fish, making them luminous in the gray light.

  As Adam stares with vacant disinterest at the quiet predawn street scene, his attention is caught by the shadow of something moving rapidly north to south on the sidewalk. It is a dog, its breed and color indistinguishable in the gray light, and it is dragging something behind it—a pole. It would be almost laughable to watch, the way the dog seems to be trying to dodge the object at the same time as move forward, its hind end cantilevering sideways while its front end moves ahead. The pole is relentless and doesn’t give up the chase. From this height, Adam cannot tell if it’s a big dog, male or female, black or brown. In a moment, it’s gone, vanishing beyond Adam’s sight line.

  At last, the lights go on in the newsagent’s shop. Adam collects the key to his apartment, slides bare feet into Top-Siders, and goes down to get his paper. The businessman walks by, as timely as ever, his eyes resolutely looking anywhere but at Adam. Adam thinks that there should be some sort of gang sign, some arrangement of fingers and fists that would be the sign between men of business, maybe fingers curved into a stylized dollar sign. He’d seen the boys in his former gated community practicing this signing for homies. Outfitted in gargantuan hooded sweatshirts, worn in all weathers, and droopy yet costly jeans, these teens, all boys from Sylvan Fields homes, where the mean income is in the seven figures, get down with their bad selves and do God knows what behind parental backs.

  A mere seven blocks from Adam’s middle-class bolt-hole, the real deal sailor-walk down the street, greeting one another with complicated hands.

  Adam resists the faint urge to call after the guy, throw some business-speak at him and identify himself as a fellow soldier of commerce, lately on the DL. Instead, he goes into the shop and picks up his papers.

  “Mornin’.” The fat man on the stool shifts his unlit cigar.

  And also with you. Adam nods a greeting and helps himself to the coffee.

  “How’s it goin’?”

  “Fine. Nice day.”

  “Coolin’ off.”

  “Fall’s finally here.”

  This will likely constitute the most pleasant conversation of his day.

  Back on the sidewalk Adam sees the tropical fish store lady unlocking her door. Same or similar outfit of jeans and T-shirt, but with a light fleece vest added. Her hair is already pulled back into a workaday ponytail, making her seem plain and unremarkable. She sees him standing there with his papers stuffed under one arm and the paper cup of coffee in the other. “Mornin’.”

  “Good morning.” He raises his plain paper cup to her in a little salute. “Fine day.” Adam hears himself repeat the same weatherish small talk he has with the news guy. He would like to say something more interesting.

  She smiles at him, erasing the impression that she is either plain or unremarkable. Adam so seldom sees women without the artful application of makeup that it takes him a moment to recognize actual skin, not flawless, but natural. A nice smile. A friendly greeting trumping beauty. The first smile he’s received from a woman in a very long time. And just as suddenly as it appears, it disappears.

  “Is that a Dynamic Cosmetics T-shirt?”

  “Why, yes, it is.”

  “They test all of their beauty products on rabbits. Did you know that?” Her voice is pitched low, as if she is letting him in on a secret she finds appalling. She presses on the word beauty as if it tastes bad. “Where did you get that shirt?”

  “I work … worked … for Dynamic.”

  “Really.” This is a dismissal.

  “Awhile ago.”

  “Did you know that’s what they do?”

  “Yes. It’s so that beautiful women don’t suffer damage.”

  “‘Vanity over humanity.’ That’s what we called it.”

  Adam suddenly remembers the campaign against Dynamic that PETA and several other animal rights organizations had lodged six years ago. No Animal Testing Ever—that was the local group who lodged such a successful campaign that Dynamic Industries decided it was important enough to pay lip service to. The one that, as cosmetics division head, Adam had paid lip service to. NATE—that was the acronym that had played over the papers for months, along with daily photographs of angry protesters. There were disruptions, editorials, eggs thrown at the offenders.

  Adam developed a plan where Dynamic claimed to have ceased all animal testing—well, all rabbit testing. It was a cleverly worded apologia, which satisfied NATE.

  “I take it that you are an animal rights person.”

  “Activist. Yes.”

  Adam knows when it’s a good time to retreat. There is a break in the traffic. “Take care.”

  “Have a nahss day.” A slight southern lilt to her words. Southern for “Fuck you.”

  Adam drinks his coffee while standing at the window, looking down on the street as it slowly becomes active. It’s like watching time-lapse photography, people appearing and disappearing along the sidewalk in clumps of two or three; children skipping alongside adults, doors being pulled open, a steady stream of cars rushing up to stoplights. The door of the tropical fish shop stays propped open, but the NATE woman does not reappear.

  Adam thinks of the NATE campaign and how proud he was to
have figured out a way to get them off Dynamic’s back. Tell ’em what they want to hear. Throw some money at an animal charity. Make “reparations.” He doesn’t remember this fish store woman from the sea of faces that appeared for almost a month beneath his window at the division headquarters in Westborough, their nonstop chanting becoming like a tune stuck in his head: “What do we want? No animal testing. When do we want it? Now.” He and his execs called them “the Free Roger Rabbit mob.”

  Adam and his team justified what they were doing by promoting a corporate belief that such testing was necessary so that the eyeliner wouldn’t damage nerves, so that the mascara wouldn’t blind the user. What were a few bunnies compared to that? The bottom line decreed that the products developed by Dynamic for its line called Fraîche Crème, with its inexpensive, oftentimes imported ingredients, be marketed to the high-end users with a 200 percent markup. That didn’t allow for lawsuits or unhappy socialites scarred by chemical peels at their luxury spas. The NATE people had to be appeased, but not allowed to be a roadblock to profits.

  And Adam March had made that happen and been awarded a rich promotion to corporate headquarters and the penultimate job in the company’s hierarchy. His glory days.

  As Adam turns away from the window, he sees the stray dog dashing back down the street, the pole still following.

  Chapter Nine

  I really wasn’t panicked. Despite the four feet of aluminum pole dangling like a misplaced tail, I knew I wasn’t attached to some demon, but had slipped the grip of the man, who then raced after me, yelling invectives guaranteed to emphasize his mistake rather than my escape. Woo hoo. I was free. Free at last.

  Thanks to our boys’ relentless training program, which involved a treadmill, I had a lot of stamina. The pole thwacked against immovable objects, ringing hollowly into the sensitive caverns of my ears, but other than that, I was whooping it up. Up the street and down, ducking into narrow alleys with the enticing scent of garbage emanating from Dumpsters soldiered behind restaurants, the ugly backside of sophistication. I knew that freedom was fragile, and that I’d better find a bolt-hole quickly. The men were hot on my trail, and the sight of a fifty-pound dog with a four-foot pole tagging along would certainly catch the attention of even the most oblivious of passersby.

  I had to ditch the pole. Unfortunately, my physical limitations being what they are, it was pretty near impossible to get the noose from around my thick neck without opposable thumbs. I tried shaking, ducking, twisting, clawing, and whining. Nothing helped. I needed a friend. Now, this being neither fairy tale nor Disney, no one of my own species was a likely candidate. What’s a dog to do?

  Being a dog, I sort of forgot about the problem as the amazing scents of the street wafted up to my nose. I began sniffing around, identifying others of my kind and following them on their travels. If females, I quivered. If males with balls, I growled and lifted my leg higher to cover their mark. As I made my way down one narrow alley, I inhaled the scents gathered between the buildings, snuffling in the olfactory stimuli. An experienced street dog would know that it’s madness to go down one of these easily blocked passages. But I was, at that time, not well schooled in the lessons of the street. But I was a lucky dog. At the far end of the alley, a form crouched against the wall. At its side, a dog. I meandered along, snuffling and marking, the pole dragging gently behind me on the rough pavement. The form, as I drew closer, smelled human, deliciously unflavored by the foul perfumed scents our boys splashed on themselves.

  Here was a human in all his primitive, animal glory. Funky. His true identity was not masked by frequent washing. His dog, a smallish long-haired bitch, growled at me but didn’t really mean it. She was just letting me know that he was there and that she wouldn’t take kindly to interference. She gave up growling and stood and shook herself, and I saw a flash of metal dangling from a collar. I remembered the leash dog mourning the loss of his disks, but I still couldn’t quite wrap my mind around their significance. Our kind don’t usually revere totems.

  I shook myself in reply. I mean no harm. We greeted, and I could scent that she was well fed, despite the appearance of her person.

  She sat and scratched behind her drooping ear, then stood and sniffed at my pole. So, they had you and you got away. I know how to get out of those.

  I sat and waited to hear how.

  The bitch nudged her person awake. He started; then his head sank back to his chest. He was as furry as a bearded collie. Matted, too. She yipped. He opened his eyes and saw me.

  “What have we got here?” His voice was like a load of kibble spilling onto the floor. Rough, interesting. “You bite?”

  I walked away, just out of reach of a sitting man.

  “I won’t hurt you.” He didn’t move from his crouched position against the warm brick wall.

  His companion stalked over to me and sniffed my nose, her tail addressing my doubts. Okay. I moved a little closer.

  “You want that thing off?”

  I danced a little on my front feet, his voice was so calm and kibbley. Maybe I do.

  He didn’t do any of the things I would have expected of a man. He neither lashed out to grab the pole nor stood up to intimidate me. He just kept crouching against his wall and waited for me to decide. I caught the fumes of alcohol when he spoke, his breath more humanized than his skin. I glanced up at his eyes, hooded and hollow. He had no fire in him; he had no fear and no opinions. I moved closer, close enough that he put out one hand for me to sniff, palm flat, no threat.

  I inhaled the smell of the city, all the scents that I had been snuffling down as I made my way clear of the men and their van; as I put distance between myself and the cellar where I had spent my life, all of these beautiful, evocative scents were on his hand, as if he’d scooped up whole handfuls of the air and brick and pavement and garbage that made up the world beyond my eyesight. That, plus the very interesting odor of fish chowder. I knew what the guy had had for lunch. Which made me realize I was inordinately hungry and thirsty.

  Okay. Take it off.

  The man carefully slid the noose from around my neck. Patted my head and slid the pole under a Dumpster without getting out of his crouch. He put his head down again and instantly went back to whatever state it was he’d been in before his companion woke him.

  Thanks. I lolled my tongue in gratitude.

  No problem. The bitch snuggled back down beside the man and curled her fluffy tail over her nose.

  I sloped off in search of sustenance.

  All I had to do was follow my nose. I found pizza crusts and an empty ice-cream cone, the dregs of melted ice cream within the cone adhering to my long tongue as I slid it into the conical wafer. Mmmm. Wandering along neighborhood streets, I came across improperly fitted trash can lids, flipped them off with barely a nudge. Within these cylindrical buffets, a host of treats, including, but not limited to, steak tips, french fries, an actual half chicken. And, best of all, a ham bone the likes of which my kind will commit murder to get.

  Needless to say, I chucked it all up an hour later, but then I consumed that. Waste not, want not when you’re a dog on the street.

  Water was a little harder to come by. There was the fountain in the park, but that meant getting too close to people. It hadn’t rained in a long time, so puddles were out of the question. A backyard hose with a drip helped. I lapped at it like a gerbil, then went off to find a safe place to bunk down. I wasn’t yet streetwise, but I had pretty good instincts. If my objective was to stay out of the hands of people, then I needed to stay out of sight. On the other paw, as it were, I needed what the people had to offer in the way of food and water. Although strong-jawed, I knew hunting wasn’t ever going to be my strong suit and that a life beyond the city, in the less populated hills, was out of the question. I needed a little advice.

  That there were others loose on the streets was evident on every street corner and against every brick building. I just needed to track a likely mentor down. It wouldn’t be h
ard. The trace left by one male in particular suggested that he’d been on the streets for some time, which meant he knew the ropes, which meant, if I could catch up to him, he might be susceptible to obsequiousness and help me out.

  By this time, and it had been since before dawn, I was wrung out. Instead of taking the time to try to find my hoped-for guide, I found a fairly protected niche in the low-growing bushes of the city park. It bore no sign of previous habitation, no circled-down foliage, no nesting, no scent of any other creature within those underslung branches. Like I say, I was a neophyte. I thought that if I couldn’t see out, they couldn’t see in. It wasn’t more than fifteen minutes, just as I was entering that dream sleep we all need, when the sound of soft yelps startled me awake. There was a moment of confusion, when I thought I was back in my cage and my siblings were begging for lunch. The yelps turned into a low, oddly compelling howling.

  Apparently, I’d chosen a bush situated behind a very popular human mating area, and suddenly, I was eye-to-eye with a humping human, both of us openmouthed with surprise. I dashed out of my imperfect hidey-hole; he stood up, genitals dangling, and grabbed his pants. I do believe he thought I was going to attack him, the way he yanked his mate up and fled almost as fast in the opposite direction from that of my own flight. Okay, bushes in the park, no good. Another lesson.

  Only slightly refreshed, I trotted a zigzag out of the city park and back onto the streets. I had to keep up a steady quickstep, although the pavement was beginning to wear on my pads. I’d never spent much time on pavement. People were everywhere, and I dodged them like a video-game master. No one was going to get a hand on me. I wasn’t going back to that cage.

  Mostly, I kept to the alleys, having already figured out that my kind kept to those canyons like wolves in the wild. Miraculously, I found a nook ready-made for sleeping, about the size of my cage, which was oddly comforting, beneath a set of back stairs. Yes, it bore the scent of my kind, but the scent was very old, and I had to take a chance that this place was up for lease. There was even a ragged cloth, which I nosed into shape. It felt like a good place, and I was instantly asleep. I’d rest awhile and then go see what else I could find to eat. Maybe see if there were any females around looking for some company.