THE NINTH DAY . . .
(Saturday, June 20, morning)
MACK:
When she laughs, she
snorts the tiniest bit. I like that. I couldn’t stop thinking about
it all week, her smile. Her. I double-checked the schedule. She’s
definitely on tonight.
“I shouldn’t mess
with this girl, Boo. Why start something that can’t
last?”
My girl Boo cocks her
head. She’s bouncing back good. Cuts look clean, closing up nice.
She’s eating. She’s strong enough to take with me on my dog walking
rounds.
“Boo.”
She cocks her head
twice. Brown eyes, big and pretty.
First dog I pick up
is another pit, big red-nose goofball. What happens next all
happens in about a second and a half.
Boo goes for Red’s
neck, just like I knew she would. I say “Ey” as I bump Boo’s shank
with the back of my sneaker. She spins to me. I snap the lead hard
to pull her behind me and put myself between her and the other dog.
Her eyes bug on me. Her ears go from high and forward to back and
soft. I’m standing tall and strong, my head up high and proud as I
lock eyes with her and say real quiet, slow and deep, “I got it.”
Meaning that I got the situation under control. I won’t let anybody
hurt her, dog or human. Dogs don’t know what you’re saying, but
they know what you mean. Now her tail goes soft too and into a nice
easy slope. Her hackles flatten. Her eyes are soft on me and only
me. Rest of the walk she’s an angel.
I wouldn’t trust her
alone with another dog yet or maybe ever, but as long as she’s with
a human who will take the lead, she’ll be peaceable. They only
fight because they’re scared the other dog is going to get them
first, and wouldn’t you be if your whole life was
fighting?
Before you know it,
six dogs are trotting along behind me, nice slack leashes, and it
occurs to me I wish I could play guitar. Never let a dog walk in
front of you, especially when you’re going through a door. There’s
leaders and followers, and I wish I didn’t have to be either one.
For my probation once they made me run rec center track. Winning
made me feel worse than losing. I felt good when I quit. But with
dogs, you have to force yourself to be a winner. Losers make them
nervous.
Thing about walking
dogs is it goes pretty good with thinking, and I can’t quit
dreaming of Céce. We’re holding each other, and I’m not afraid to
look her in the eye.
Tony keeps pushing
hints. Did I know that Céce loves movies, and wouldn’t it be sweet
for her to have somebody to go with after Tony heads south? I don’t
like movies too much because you can’t talk to her and you don’t
know if you should hold her hand or when to kiss her and how far
does she want you to go and stuff like that. I’d like to walk with
her again instead. Her, me, and Boo.
Me and the dogs climb
through the cheat weed hills to where the grass softens and gets
long in the swaying tree shade, and we lose ourselves in the
wildwood.
This is my secret
place, the graveyard. The people who owned this land before they
gave it to the city are buried here. Ten crypts, all worn by rain
and mossed over. Nobody comes to visit them except me, and they let
me sip the quiet. I lie back in the high grass and watch the hot
wind punch it, and the dogs settle in around me.
I see signs taped to
the light poles. Land, cheap. Six hundred bucks an acre. Have to
clear the trees yourself. Get me fifty acres, build a cabin of the
deadwood, have like twenty pits with me, nobody messes with us. I
wonder if Céce likes the woods.
She’s going to find
out about me any day now. Everybody does sooner or later. That I
got a record.
Me and Boo drop off
the other dogs. Up on the main drag the vendors are out with their
tables and signs that say EVERYTHING A DOLLAR. A buck picks up a
wrong-made soccer ball for Boo. Pits like to chew soccer balls, so
don’t take them to a tight match. I see real nice fake leather
wallets and stuff. I nod polite to the old lady behind the table,
just like my mom taught me. “Ma’am, you got any ideas about what a
girl would like in the way of a present?”
“What’s she like?”
lady says.
“Reckon she’s
fifteen, about so high.”
“Fifteen and so high,
you got to get her a phone case.” She points to a bin of a thousand
pink phone cases. They’re a little moldy, but other than that they
look pretty good. Thing is, I heard a rumor that girls don’t like
to wear phone cases. “What else you got?”
“How much money you
got to spend, chico?”
I fish my pocket. “’
Bout a sourbuck.”
“Gets you a gorgeous
little piece of magic.” She dumps a bucket onto the counter, and
all this real sparkly jewelry comes out, stickpins with diamonds on
them shaped out into letters. “Will you just look at these?” she
says. “Stunning, no?”
“Whoa.”
“What’s her
name?”
“Like
Céce.”
“ Chee-chee? You kidding?”
“I don’t believe I am
at all.”
“Lovely name.” She
hunts for a C, can’t find
one.
“Is that there a . .
. wait. That one. That a Q?”
“G,” she says.
“I’ll take it.” I
swap her the ten bucks for the G, pull
my army knife and clip the little thing off the G. It passes pretty good for a C now. Old lady’s nodding at me.
I walk away eleven
bucks lighter for two items, which is about the way it always goes
for me at the Everything A Dollar table. The lady chucks me a moldy
phone case. “On the house.”
I study the pin in a
slash of sunlight twice bent off the tenement windows. The diamonds
come alive. I look at Boo. She wags her tail. We head off. I’m
pretty sure I’m levitating. A hawk’s wings are lifting me. I have a
sparkly G-turned-C stickpin in my pocket.
I stop off in the
basement to grab a water jug before I head up to the roof to bed my
Boo for the night while I’m at work.
Pops is watching
afternoon TV. “Get that goddamn dog out of here.”
“I
will.”
“Y’all take that
goddamn mountain of trash to the curb like I ast you last
night?”
“I did.”
“Make sure you
double-check the door is shut on yer way out. Woke up this morning
and the goddamn thing was left wide open, mister.”
That’s because you left it open when you stumbled in
smashed this morning, I don’t say. “I will,” I say. I pull
my pay from my back pocket and fork him my share of the
rent.
Don’t he just count
it too, before he shoves it into his pocket. “Don’t be late for
work neither.”
“I
won’t.”
“I got no time for latecomers in my book. Be on time or be
gone.” He sips beer and burps and his phone rings, and he picks it
up, and he’s like “Oh, yeah, hey, how y’all doin’, missy? Sure, we
can forty-up right out back if you want,” and I ain’t even in his
world no more.
Boo’s going to sleep
good tonight after all that walking we did today. She’s curled up
in her pen and snoring. I put a street-found air conditioner in the
front window, but it’s cool enough out. I raise the side windows
and get the fans I found at the construction site pulling in a good
strong breeze. Found this CD player in the trash too. Had a disc of
soft piano music in it. I keep it on loop for Boo. I don’t use the
radio part of it, because when the wind changes, you get static
sometimes, and I don’t need that at all.
I’m heading out of
the hutch when this old stoop-back crank Larry comes up to the roof
to hang his wet sheets. Larry is the brand of idiot who catcalls at
the ladies when they’re getting off the train. I see him out on the
street, telling them what he would do to them if he got the chance.
He nods at the elevator housing. “You better not have another dog
in there. I’ll call the cops. When is it going to sink into that
bag of dirt renting space in your skull? No dogs allowed in this
building.”
“No cats either.”
Larry has cats, which I don’t mind. Cats are sly, but they’re all
right sometimes, especially the ones who act like
dogs.
“Filthy, dogs are.
The stink gets into my sheets.”
Why can’t folks just
leave folks alone? Serious, why do they always need to mess with
you? I force myself to head for the stairs.
“Look at him running
away now. Look at him go. Queer bait. If I kicked that dog in front
of you, you wouldn’t do anything but bawl like a baby hungry for
the tit.”
And that’s when it
comes, just a flicker of it, that low note of a hiss always hanging
deep in my mind. A sound that can’t decide if it wants to swell or
fade. I tell myself to keep walking, but I’m not me anymore. I’m a
rag puppet trying to get free of the strings. Getting jerked up
high and fast into a sky hot enough to char the blue from itself.
No air up here. Rib cage is caving in like these two fierce arms
are clawing me from behind. The invisible hands turn me around
real, real slow. I hear the hissing so loud that I can’t quite hear
myself, or whatever is making me say “I’m warning you, man, first
and last.” I sound like I’m underwater.
“Waste of life. You
warn me? I was in the navy. The only reason you’re standing here
free on this roof to disrespect me is because I fought for your
right to do it.”
“Thank you for your
service, but if you mess with my dog, I will hurt you, man. That’s
no promise either. That’s a threat. I mean the other way around.”
I’m shaking bad.
Larry hangs his
sheets, laughing at me. I can’t hear him. Just the radio static
now. He mouths Punk as he heads
downstairs. I make my hands into fists to keep myself from reaching
into my back pocket and pulling my lock-blade. I’m liable to break
my fingers, I’m balling them so tight.
Takes a while for the
heat to float off me, and then I drop hard back into my body, and
I’m so heavy with the fear of what I almost did, I have to sit
down. My mind is so crunched up there’s room for only one thought:
I have to give Céce the pin. What’s the worst that could happen? I
scare her off?
That would
suck.
The minutes click by
a little faster, and time becomes real time, and I’m back in the
everydayness of things. I double-check the padlock on the elevator
housing door. Only the old man and me have the key for it. Good
solid door. Heavy metal to keep out the thieves, or at least
Larry.
(Saturday, June 20, afternoon)
CÉCE:
We take the bus for
the air-conditioning that isn’t working anyway, and it T-bones a
soda truck. A couple of people are faking whiplash for lawsuits,
but everybody’s okay.
“I had a vision I was
in a bus accident,” I say. “Couple of years ago. Swear to God.
Let’s just leave it at that.”
“Let’s,” Anthony says
as we hike toward the Too. “Look,” he says, “you’re perfect for
each other.”
“My brother wants to
set me up with a dropout drug addict convict. I rock.”
“Why do you have to
think the worst?” he says.
“Because that’s how
it usually turns out.”
“I know things about
him. Things I can’t tell you. Trust me. I’m not saying you have to
go out with him, but let him be a friend to you. He’ll help
you.”
“With what? And what
things can’t you tell me?”
“I can’t tell
you.”
“Trying to make him
mysterious to get me to go out with him isn’t
working.”
“Yeah it is. Cheech,
I’m out of here in a week. You need a friend. I trust
him.”
“We got all we can
handle with Vic watching out for us.”
“You need Mack.”
“I don’t need anybody. And by the way, I’m not going to the
airport with you to say good-bye.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m
pissed, Anthony.” I walk on ahead. Like
he has to tell me to hang out with the dude. I find myself very
attracted to sad people. I seriously hope this guy isn’t going home
and firing up a mothball after work.
Vic’s at the bar with
Ma. “Ameliorate,” he says.
“Relieve,” I say. “As
in, ‘Ma sank into our cheap, cruddy, scratchy brown couch and drank
a six-pack of Bud Light last night to try to ameliorate the stress
of my moron brother’s looming departure.’”
“Potent sentence,”
Vic says. “Image-laden. Well done.”
“Cheers,” Ma says,
sipping what I hope is a Virgin Mary.
Mack’s behind the
dishwashing machine. I play cool, or try to. “Lemme guess, Freddy’s
being an idiot again?”
“What?” he
says.
I do the lamest
Freddy impersonation, the way he calls in, “‘Uh, yeah, Céce,
wondering if you could talk to Vic for
me. Uh, see, thing is, I find myself under the weather today. Cough-cough! Can’t seem to get rid of this
cough-cough! Tell him it’s potent, this cough, Céce, you can’t envisage a more dire respiratory
condition.’”
Mack looks away, no
smile for me, no eyes either, gets to work. Dude thinks I’m a total
geek. Note to self: Don’t ask him to play Wii tennis.
I check the wall
clock. It’s getting to be that time: his daily drug deal. I grab
Marcy from the bathroom. “Can you stop looking at yourself for five
minutes?”
“Depends on what
you’re offering for an alternative. And don’t say wiping down the
silverware.”
“I need your
opinion.”
“Is it about the
felon? You ever notice how he pinches the inside of his wrist when
he’s nervous? It’s a shame, really. He’s got the nicest
ass.”
“You ever see him
with that dude out back? Do you think he’s—”
“Yes.”
An hour later we’re
slammed. Me and Ma are running food to our tables and Marcy’s
because my girl doesn’t do too well when we get busy. Vic’s
whomping garlic and tossing it into Anthony’s pans, ten going at
once. Half hour later the customers are pouring in, and we’re in
the weeds. Me and Ma are starting to confuse the orders. Marcy is
catatonic. Even Vic is a little edgy, mumbling his crossword
vocabulary list, “overwhelmed, overcome, inundated.” Mack washes and reracks and
double-times it out to the floor to help us bus our tables without
being asked, but even he’s falling behind.
We’re at the point
where we’ll lose it, and the customers will walk out.
Then there’s Anthony.
He turns up the radio, classic rock station, perfectly clear
reception because Vic has the satellite subscription working. Ant
makes the pepper grinder his microphone and sings with Bruce
Springsteen, “Tramps like us, baby we were
born to run.” He’s got this incredible voice. Ma flashes
back to her slutty youth and joins in totally offkey. She’s working
the broom, air guitar, totally cheesy but at the same time
endearingly cute in only the absolutely saddest
Carmella-Vaccuccia-trying-to-be-cool sort of way. Vic whomps garlic
to the drumbeat. Me and Marcy are singing backup with our atrocious
voices. We go back out to the floor to serve, and we’re beaming,
and the customers love it. Who doesn’t like a happy
waitress?
I’ll always remember
this. My big brother making everybody feel good, his arms caked
with sweaty flour, his apron filthy with deep-fry grease and tomato
sauce. Doesn’t sound like much of a moment, but I have a feeling
this might be the last time we’re all together like
this.
Mack has the smallest
smile working behind those dish racks. Wait, a second ago, was he
looking at me?
We close out the
register with lots of money in our pockets. Ma and Vic are playing
slap cards at the bar. Anthony says he’s got to say good-bye to
some friends. “Mack buddy, you walk my sis home?”
“That all right with
you?” Mack says.
“Sure, whatever.” My
heart makes a clicking sound. I wonder if he can hear it. I try to
cover by nonchalantly swigging a soda, and I spill Pepsi on my
boobs. Loo. Ser.
We’re slow-walking
the main drag. Kids on Harleys rip up and down the street. Mack
clears his throat, says to his worn-out sneakers, “I been to jail.
I expect you already know, but I thought I should tell you, just in
case. I, some folks are scared to be with folks who been locked
up.”
“No. I mean, no, I’m
not scared. This is nice, you walking me home. I appreciate it.”
I’m scared to ask, but I have to know. “What
happened?”
He tells me what he
did.
I nod for a long
time, and now I clear my throat. “So you never killed
anybody.”
“No.
No.”
“I’m glad. I mean,
for you I’m glad. I didn’t
mean—”
“No no, I know.” He
nods, still won’t look at me. “I, you, like the other night. The
dog. The one that jogged up on us. You was—you were
scared.”
“I was bitten
once.”
His eyes flick to my
scars, then away. “Did you try to kiss the dog?”
“Well I, how did you
know?”
He
shrugs.
We’re in front of CVS
now. “Mack?”
He’s startled,
hearing me say his name. “Yep?”
“I gotta grab a
couple of things, okay? Wait here. I’ll be back in five.” I head
in. Ma told me to pick up a roll of toilet paper on the way home,
because when we wrecked Vic’s car, the four hundred rolls in the
trunk got skunked with beer and ketchup. But I don’t want Mack to
see me buying a loser item like toilet paper. Figure I’ll pick up
the smallest roll Charmin offers, just to get us through Sunday,
and hide it under a cool item, perhaps a giant bag of Skittles, for
instance.
CVS is having a huge
toilet paper sale. All they have left are
sixteen-packs.
Problem: We’re down
to using travel-pack tissues at home. Now I have to walk around
with sixteen rolls of Charmin.
When I come out of
the store, two bikers are stopped at a red light. One has his radio
blasting some faraway station, more static than music.
Mack looks weird all
of a sudden. Mad. He’s staring at the biker.
The biker’s friend
doesn’t like that. “You got a problem, bitch?”
“Let’s go,” I
say.
But Mack is someplace
else, his eyes locked on the biker.
The light changes,
and the biker’s friend waves off Mack with “Pf, you ain’t nothin’.”
The two Harleys jerk away, busting up the night with their
sawed-off mufflers. Car alarms go blant-blant-blant.
He’s back now, sort
of. He’s wobbly. He puts his hand on the mailbox to keep his feet.
“You know like when you’re crouching, and you stand up too fast?”
he says.
“Except you
weren’t.”
He’s looking at my
hand on his arm. He doesn’t pull away this time. He catches his
breath. “I can show you how to greet a dog, if you
want.”
“Greet a dog? I’m
worried about you. Are you hypoglycemic?” That or he totally
dropped a Seconal while I was in CVS. “Here, have some Skittles.”
Of course when I pop the bag I spray three trillion Skittles all
over the street.
“My dog,” he says,
bending to clean up the Skittles. “I want you to meet
her.”
“Yeah, no, I don’t
think so.”
“She’s the sweetest
little pit.” This guy. His eyes. That dark sparkle.
“Anybody ever tell
you that you look like Matt Dillon from The
Outsiders?”
“That good or
bad?”
“Hello, it’s only one
of the best movies ever in the YA genre.”
“I don’t know a whole
lot about movies or . . . whatever that French-soundin’ word you
said was. Come drop a hi on my dog.”
An hour ago, I
thought my night would be inventing lies for that stupid Gifted and
Talented essay, and now this boy with the dangerous eyes is asking
me over to his place to meet his pit bull. I push my bottom lip
over my top to shave my sweat ’stache. I swallow hard. I nod.
“Okay. Do you need any toilet paper?”
We go straight up to
the roof of his building: scary. He unlocks the door to the
elevator engine housing: scarier. He calls it “the hutch.” I see a sleeping bag. I see myself in
tomorrow’s news, Girl Who Should Have Known
Better, 15, Murdered While Resisting Advances of Ex-Convict Meth
Addict.
“You live here?” I
say.
“Sometimes.”
“And what about the
other times?”
“Cellar.” He holds
the door for me. “Go on now,” he says.
The entire
Saw franchise flashes before my eyes as
I step into the dark of the elevator housing. He follows me in. One
thing keeps me here: Anthony’s word. If Ant says Mack is good, then
Mack is good.
The hutch roof has
one of those old glass box window vents, with the wire woven
through the glass and the moonlight weaving through that. I wait by
the door while he unlatches the hellhound’s pen.
The dog: fawn with a
vanilla bib, huge brown eyes, huge
head, jaw that could crumble cinderblock. She yawns shark teeth and
shakes herself awake, wagging her tail faster when Mack turns on
the light. “Easy,” Mack says to the dog, his voice deep, firm. He
stands next to me. “Don’t look at her.”
“Don’t worry,” I say,
my eyes clamped.
“Don’t talk to her.
Don’t touch her. Not yet. For now, just ignore her. Let her smell
you when I call her over.”
“Can’t we just go
mess around on your computer?”
“I don’t have a
computer.”
“What? How do you Hulu?”
“Boo,
come.”
I tremble as his wolf
demon sniffs me. She nudges my hand with her snout.
“Don’t pet her,” Mack
says. “Just keep looking at me.”
Except that
he’s not looking at me. “I have DVR back at my house. Please. The
season finale of The Biggest Loser—oh,
my, god. What is she
doing?”
“That’s how they say
hi.”
“She’s sniffing my
butt.”
“Exactly.”
“I have two gift
certificates to Cheesecake Factory, but they expire in nine
minutes. If we leave right now—”
“Okay, now look at
her. Open your eyes.”
The dog is sitting at
my feet, wagging her tail, her eyes on me.
“Okay, that’s
enough,” he says. “Look at me again, like she’s not even there.
Now, real easy—don’t bend over her. Keep standing tall. Good. Let
the back of your hand rest soft at the side of her
snout.”
“No
way.”
“Don’t come from up
top. They have bad eyes and don’t like stuff coming at them from
above. Come from the side, where she can see your hand, nice and
slow, and then you let her sniff it, and then you brush down the
side of her neck with the back of your fingers, real easy. Go
ahead.”
“Nuh-uh.”
“Yep.”
“Nep.”
“I promise, she may
drench you with licking, but she won’t bite.”
“And what about
you?”
“Trust me,” he
says.
“Ha!”
“Trust me.” He takes my hand and brings it to the
side of the dog’s face. His hand is rough with calluses. Together
we stroke her neck and under her snout. The dog leans into my leg
and licks my hand. But I’m not looking at her. I’m looking at Mack.
He feels my eyes on him, and he stops moving my hand through the
dog’s fur.
“You did real good,”
he says, taking away his hand.
I won’t let him go. I
squeeze his hand. Why won’t he look at me? I can see it in his
neck, his pulse, as fast as mine. I want to bite the beautiful
vampire’s neck.
He slips his hand
from mine. “We better get her down to the street,” he says. “She’s
been holding it in all night.”
They walk me home,
Mack and Boo. When he hands me the leash, the dog pulls ahead of
me. “Pull back hard on the lead,” Mack says.
“She’ll bite
me.”
He takes the leash
and swings the dog behind me. She stays there all the way to my
house.
“You want her?” he
says.
“Uh, no.”
“She likes you a ton.
She’ll cuddle you all night.”
“I
can’t.”
“Your
moms?”
“My mother loves
dogs.”
“I
figured.”
“Why?”
“She’s the
type.”
“And what type am
I?”
He looks away. “I’ll
be holding her for you. Give her to you trained perfect
too.”
I scan Palazzo
Vaccuccia. The windows are dark. I step so I’m facing him and a
half step closer. “We could crank the air conditioner, and you, me,
and Miss Boo can watch Polar Express
with the director’s commentary. My mother made peppermint
cornbread. It tastes gross, but on the upside it’s filling and not
completely stale, baked fresh four days ago.”
“In all that
heat?”
“I
know.”
He scratches the back
of his head as he checks the sky.
“Satellites?” I
say.
“None up there
tonight. None I can see.”
“Come on in with me.
Just for a little bit. For like a Pepsi or something.”
“I’m a Sprite man.”
He strands me there, not even a walk the girl to her
door.
It’s definite now: I
am the fattest, ugliest girl in the city.
He gets a few steps
away when he stops. “I wanted to give you something.” He digs his
hand into his pocket, and for a second I’m seeing him pull that
knife, the one he used to cut the kid who rolled him down the
stairs. He takes his hand out of his pocket, and it’s empty.
“Wanted to, to give you a little bit of advice.”
“Ad vice. Okay?”
“When you walk a dog,
if you choke up on the leash a little, you have more control over
her.”
“I see.”
“You did real great
though, Céce. With Boo, I mean. You don’t know it, but you’re a dog
person.” He goes with his dog. She watches and studies and worships
him.
Four o’clock in the
morning. I’m doing a droolly face plant in my notebook when a crash
downstairs wakes me up. My stupid practice essay is sticking to my
face, some crap I wrote about wanting to be in politics, because I
thought it would make me seem community-minded.
Anthony is down there
before I am. Ma slumps against the wall at the bottom of the
stairs. The leave-your-crap-here table is on its side. Grumpy’s
dusty glass figurines are all over the floor.
“Ma, did you fall
coming up or going down?” Ant says.
“Uhhh. Pp.”
Plastered. Her nose is bleeding, a
splinter of glass in the bridge.
Ant pulls it out.
“Cheech, you gotta watch her while I’m gone.”
I want to rip off my
skin and crawl through salt. I’m screaming, “Why, Ant? Why’re you
going over there?” Then I start in on my mother when Ant calms me
down with a gentle hand to my shoulder.
“Hey, kid?” he says,
his voice soft, easy. “Breathe. It’s gonna be okay. Cheech, look
here. I swear. Let’s get her upstairs.”
We get her into bed.
The overhead fluorescent is on its way out. “Are the lights
flickering, or am I losing it?” she says.
“Both,” I
say.
“Where’s
Anthony?”
“Getting towels and
ice.”
“Towels and ice?”
“For your nose, Ma.
You’re bleeding all over yourself.”
“I can’t even feel
it.”
“Fantastic.”
“Céce
Vaccuccia?”
“What?”
“I love you like a
crazy person.”
“You are a crazy person, Carmella.”
Anthony comes back
with the ice. Ma won’t let go of his hand. “Anthony, don’t go,
honey. Please, babe. Stay.”