Canine Christmas Page 16

  “I like the dog,” Carolanne said.

  “A dog for a dog,” Miguel said. “You could keep the dog. Give me the woman. In the dark. Where I can do what I want and nobody would give a shit if she screamed her goddamned head off.”

  “You shouldn't swear at Christmastime,” Carolanne said.

  Miguel laughed a little. He turned around and went back into the house. Carolanne watched the dog going down the hill, and the glint that the sun made on Lucy Blackthorne's rings. It would be Lucy Blackthorne Somebody Else now. She would have a married name. Carolanne didn't know why that seemed to be important.

  The first time Lucy came back it was a Saturday morning again, only a week later, and Carolanne wasn't even home. She had gone down the hill and across East Main to the new mall, which had been built right in the center of town, so that people could walk to it. She could walk to the place she worked, too—it was called the Quik Stop—but she never went there unless she had to be there. She liked the mall because there was a food court where she could get things like Burger King and Taco Bell, that didn't cost too much money. She liked it, too, because there were so many Christmas decorations up—tinsel and bells, crepe paper and Santa's elves made out of felt. Most of the rest of Waterbury seemed to be intent on pretending that Christmas wasn't happening at all.

  Coming home, with the dark just starting, Carolanne stopped at Sacred Heart church and went inside. She knelt down in a pew in the back and said the three prayers she knew by heart, the Lord's Prayer, the Hail Mary, and the Act of Contrition. She told herself she should go to Confession, because it had been months, but there was no priest in the confessional and she didn't want to go anyway. She prayed that somebody would give her a big, white dog, a beautiful dog, as a Christmas present, and then knew that it wouldn't happen. The Christmas presents the parish gave were always the same. Middle-aged men got gloves. Middle-aged women got soap scented to smell like peaches.

  Coming up the hill, it was the dog she saw first, again. Sammy was sitting on her own front porch, thumping his tail against the boards. He always looked as if he were smiling, this dog. Carolanne hadn't known that dogs could look as if they could smile.

  When she got closer, she saw Lucy, standing on the porch with her hands in the pockets of her camel's hair coat.

  “I'm just saying we should meet somewhere else,” Lucy was saying. “Somewhere I could bring the car. I hate walking up this hill.”

  “Bring the car here. We got space on the street to park the car,” Miguel told her.

  Lucy let out a long stream of white air. It was cold enough to see your breath. Carolanne was shivering.

  “I can't bring the car here,” Lucy said. “I can't leave a Mercedes parked on this street. It would get stolen. You know it would.”

  “I bet you have insurance. Why do you care if it gets stolen?”

  “I care about the report I'd have to make to the police. What do you think I would be able to tell my husband? That I came up here to shop?”

  “Tell him you came up here to see Carolanne,” Miguel said. “You and Carolanne are lifelong buddies.”

  Lucy turned on the step. She hadn't noticed that anybody was coming, although Sammy had. Sammy noticed everything and everyone. Lucy took her hands out of her coat.

  “Oh, thank God,” she said. “You're back. I knocked on your door and there wasn't any answer.”

  “I need two hundred fifty dollars,” Miguel said.

  Lucy reached into her bag and came out with an oversized wallet. It had a checkbook inside it as well as places for money and credit cards. There were a lot of credit cards. Carolanne couldn't imagine why anybody would need that many. Lucy handed the money over and took the clear plastic bag.

  “I can't bring the car onto this street,” she said again.

  Then she went through the front door and up the stairs, toward Carolanne's apartment, without waiting to see if she would be asked.

  “Stick her good,” Miguel said in a half whisper, his lips right at Carolanne's ear. And then he laughed.

  In Carolanne's apartment, the dog went straight to the couch and Lucy went straight to the kitchen table. This time she was angry more than she was jumpy. She was flying on hostility the way cokeheads sometimes got, and that meant she was already high. Carolanne got the mirror out and sat down on the couch next to the dog. The dog whimpered and nuzzled at her. It was insane how good that felt. She was an ugly woman, she knew that. She'd never had much in the way of physical contact of any kind, although she'd lost her virginity in high school, the way everybody did, because at that age you could always find somebody who wanted to do it. She remembered almost nothing about that incident, except that it had taken place under the bleachers on the football field in the chilly semi-frost of late fall, and the boy had been almost as fat as she was. That, and that his name was Jacky. Jacky had written her name up on the mirror in the boys' room when it was over, but nobody else had ever bothered to call.

  Lucy sucked a line into her nose and then closed her eyes and leaned her head back. “I can't believe he really did it. I can't believe it,” she said.

  “Who did what?” Carolanne said.

  “My husband. That's who. He took most of that bag I bought last week and put it down the garbage disposal. The garbage disposal, for Christ's sake.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he's a pain in the ass,” Lucy said. “Because he doesn't do anything and never did. Doesn't smoke. Doesn't drink. Doesn't snort. Doesn't do anything. Sometimes I want to burn down the house to see what he does when it's gone.”

  “Mostly I thought people like you didn't snort to begin with,” Carolanne said, although as soon as she said it she knew it was a lie. Everybody did everything. You saw it every day. She put her head down into Sammy's belly and rubbed her face against his fur. He smelled like shampoo and violets.

  “I can't focus when I don't have cocaine,” Lucy said. “I never could. It used to drive me crazy. I could never get anything done.”

  “I wish I had a dog like this,” Carolanne said.

  Lucy got up and started putting things back into her bag. “I'm better with cocaine,” she said. “I've always been better with cocaine. I'm even better in bed. You'd think he would appreciate it.”

  “You don't have to go right away,” Carolanne said.

  “Your friend downstairs is an asshole,” Lucy said. “I can't bring the car into this neighborhood. If it got stolen I'd be stuck. I'd never be able to explain what I was doing here. He'd know in a shot.”

  “Miguel wants to jump you,” Carolanne said. “Did you know that? Maybe you should bring the car. It could be a kind of insurance.”

  “I can't tell Dan I was coming here to see you,” Lucy said. “He'd know it was a lie. Or he'd think you were dealing.”

  Sammy got up off the couch and headed for Carol-anne's front door. Carolanne stayed on the couch this time, not wanting to see them both out. She could hear the edge of anger in Miguel's voice, even if Lucy couldn't. She knew what they were like down there, and what they wanted.

  “You ought to watch yourself,” she said to Lucy.

  “I ought to find someplace else to buy cocaine,” Lucy said. “I would find someplace else to buy cocaine if I got enough time to go looking. If Dan would stay the hell out of my things.”

  “You could come and visit and bring the dog,” Carolanne said.

  Lucy was already out the door and into the hall. Carolanne heard her steps on the stairs, and Sammy's steps, too. When Lucy got to the ground floor, the door to Miguel's apartment opened, and there was laughter. Carolanne could picture them there, watching Lucy in her coat and boots and rings, watching Lucy's dog.

  Years ago, back when they were all growing up together, Lucy Blackthorne had started a club that girls could only belong to if they lived on the bottom floor. They were all about five years old at the time, and the rule kept out nobody on the street but Carolanne herself.

  “I wish you wouldn't talk
to me in the hall,” Lucy had said, when they were in junior high school together. “People will think that you and I are friends.”

  It was three days later when Carolanne saw the story in the Waterbury Republican, a small story with a big picture tucked into a corner on the page where the wedding announcements were. Carolanne almost never read the paper, but she had it that day, because she had needed it for cover. She had gone to the magazine rack at the Quik Stop and bought every magazine they had that was about dogs. She hadn't had time to look through them to make sure, and so she had taken them just in case. Then she had picked up the newspaper and put it on the top of the pile, to make it look as if she were just picking up a few things to read, to make it not so obvious that she cared about a dog.

  It had been bad, really, since Lucy left this time. Carolanne hadn't been able to sleep for long, and when she did manage to knock off for a few minutes she dreamed too much. She dreamed of waking up and finding Sammy lying across her legs. She dreamed of Lucy dead on the sidewalk outside, her head smashed in, her body riddled with bullets, the trash left over when a drug deal went wrong. Then she would get up and go to the window and look out, willing the dog to come to her, willing him to want to be with her more than he wanted to be wherever Lucy was. He could come to work with her in the evenings and wait on the sidewalk outside until she was finished. She could take him farther up the hill to the little park where the policeman sat, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, to make sure nobody shot up.

  The story in the Waterbury Republican was about a party given for a charity that Carolanne had never heard of. The picture showed Lucy with a tall, thin man in a tuxedo with a flower in his buttonhole. Lucy Blackthorne Holt, the caption read, event cochair, with her husband, Dr. Daniel Holt.

  Carolanne held the picture up to the light, but there was nothing else to see. The dog was not with them. The people in the background were no one she had ever seen. She put the paper down on the table again. When they had all been in high school, there had been pictures like this one, in the school newspaper, of the people who ran the Valentine's dance and the prom.

  The telephone book was under a blue plastic vase on one of the kitchen counters. Carolanne got it and opened it on the kitchen table. The names were set out under each separate town, instead of being all blended in together. She tried Waterbury and got nothing. She tried Watertown and got nothing still. She thought about Sammy stretched out on her couch while Lucy did lines and wished she had him here, now, where she could touch him with her hands, where he could move under them.

  She found the listing finally under Woodbury, which made sense. It was the most expensive town this phone book covered. She passed over the listing for Holt, Dr. Daniel, and concentrated on the one that said Holt, L. Dr. Daniel would be a doctor's office. She got a piece of paper and wrote down the information: the number, the address. The address would be no use to her. She couldn't drive, and even if she could have driven she couldn't have afforded to buy a car. She read the number over four or five times, until she had it memorized, and then she got her coat.

  It was very late now, nearly midnight, and so cold on the street that once she got outside she had trouble catching her breath. There were lights on in all the houses around her. There were parties going on everywhere. She checked her pocketbook one more time, to make sure she had enough change, and then headed down the hill.

  “Sammy,” she said, out loud, when she was far enough away from people so that nobody could hear her. The word echoed in the dark. The side streets seemed to buzz. Her coat was useless.

  “I could keep him here with me,” she said, out loud again, but by then it didn't matter. She was at East Main. The street was deserted. She turned right and headed toward the center of town, where the bars would be open, where there would be telephones.

  She found a phone in a place called Happy Acres. It was a place with only one small window, and that taken up by a blinking sign for Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. The telephones were in the back, near the rest rooms. The rest rooms smelled of urine and something worse. The bar had nothing but men in it. They all looked older than they should have. Carolanne put the money in the slot and dialed the number she had memorized. If she got an answering machine, she thought she would die. She had started to shake, the way cokeheads shook. She was so tense, she felt as if every muscle in her body was locked tight.

  If Lucy came back to the street—what? Carolanne had her eyes closed. Visions were dancing on the backs of her eyelids. Sammy was lying on the couch in her apartment, on the bed, under the kitchen table. She never went out of the apartment at all anymore. She had too much to do.

  “Lucy,” a man's voice said in her ear, making her jump. “You've got a breather. On your private line.”

  “Hang the hell up,” Lucy said.

  The phone went to dial tone in Carolanne's ear. She looked at it in her hand, feeling stupid. Then she put it back in its cradle and stood up.

  If Lucy came back to the street, Miguel would jump her. If Lucy came back to the street, Sammy would bounce and bark on Carolanne's front porch. If Lucy came back to the street, the coke she bought would be too pure and too perfect and she would end up dead in Carolanne's kitchen, her body as stiff as the bodies of the victims in antidrug television commercials.

  The Happy Acres was decorated to death for Christmas, with plastic Santa Claus heads hung in clusters of three and four on every wall, but Carolanne didn't see any of it.

  After that, for a week, Carolanne called Lucy at home. She kept heavy knots of change in her purse and in the pockets of her coat. She stopped at pay phones all along her route to work and back. Sometimes the phone rang and rang and nobody picked it up. Sometimes there was an answering machine, with a man's voice on the tape that Carolanne didn't believe belonged to Daniel Holt. Sometimes Lucy picked up herself. When that happened, Carolanne would sit very still, holding her breath if she could, while Lucy sounded more and more annoyed. What Carolanne really wanted was the sound of Sammy barking, but she never got it. It was as if there was no dog on the other end of that line. It was as if Sammy had died.

  By then, it was nearly Christmas Eve. Even Waterbury had begun to look crowded. Nights at the Quik Stop had begun to feel longer and longer. The Powerball jackpot was up and everybody wanted to buy tickets in time for the holiday, as if that would bring them luck. Carolanne worked through a thick fog of fear. What if Sammy really was dead? What if Lucy had finally gotten so tired of him that she had gotten rid of him, taken him to the pound, driven him out into the country and dumped him on a dirt road? There was so much that could happen to a dog, especially a dog like this one. If Daniel Holt liked Sammy as little as Lucy did, he might have had Sammy put to sleep.

  On Christmas Eve, there was a van going around the city, blaring out Christmas carols through a loudspeaker on its roof. Going home, Carolanne heard “Deck the Halls” and “The First Noel.” The doors of Sacred Heart Church were propped open. People were coming for midnight Mass. Carolanne thought about going up there to say a prayer for Sammy, but she was due to go to Mass at ten the next morning, with the rest of the people who would be at the parish party, and she didn't want to go now. She thought she should have done something about her apartment. She could have put up a small tree, if she had wanted to. She could have stenciled her windows to look as if they were filled with snowflakes.

  She was just turning up the hill when the car pulled up to the curb beside her. She felt it coming in behind her and froze. Men offered her dope from cars, sometimes. Men offered her money for sex, too, because some men liked to have sex with heavy women. It made them feel they were having sex with their mothers.

  Carolanne made herself think about Sammy and stare straight ahead. She tried to move faster, although the hill was steep and she always had a hard time climbing it. Then the door of the car opened and Lucy's voice said, “Carolanne. Carolanne, for Christ's sake. Help me out.”

  It was the Mercedes, the car that Miguel w
as so interested in. Sammy was inside it, in the backseat, sitting straight up, looking alert.

  “Jesus Christ,” Lucy said. She looked like she had been sweating for hours, maybe days. She was drenched and dark.

  If Lucy came back to the street, she might die of withdrawal convulsions. If Lucy came back to the street, somebody might lure her into an alley. If Lucy came back to the street …

  Carolanne clenched her fists in the pockets of her coat. She couldn't leap at the car. She couldn't take Sammy out of there just because she wanted to.

  “Lucy,” she said.

  Lucy came up close. Her breathing was coming too fast and too hard. “He's been keeping me a goddamned prisoner, that's what he's been doing. He's insane. Did I tell you my husband was insane?”

  “He took your stuff again,” Carolanne said.

  “He took my money. I don't have any goddamned money. He threw away my ATM card.”

  Sammy had started to move in the back of the car. He was up on his feet and pacing across the seat. He was wagging his tail.

  “You ought to let the dog out,” Carolanne said. “You're making him crazy.”

  Lucy rubbed her hands against her arms. Carolanne thought she hadn't heard, about the dog. Lucy didn't seem able to hear much of anything. The dog was nearly leaping now, moving as much as he could in that small space. Carolanne wanted to rescue him.

  “Wait a minute,” Lucy said.

  She went to the car and opened the back door. Sammy came barreling out, barking in high-pitched squeals. Carolanne reached out for him and he came to her.

  “I've got to get some coke,” Lucy said. “I don't have any money and I've got to get some coke. Now. Right away.”

  If Lucy came back to the street, Carolanne thought again—and then it all seemed perfectly clear—what she had to do, what would have to happen. Sammy was nuzzling the palm of her hand with his nose. He was begging for her attention.

  Far up on the hill, the parties were still going on. Miguel had had some friends in earlier in the evening. They would still be there, lying on the floor of his living room in the middle of ancient boxes from McDon-ald's and Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken. The Christmas lights were on on Carolanne's porch. She'd turned them on, hours ago, before she'd gone to work.