LATE MORNING OF THE LAST DAY...
CÉCE:
He looks terrible. He
looks beautiful. His hair is longer still. He sits at the table. He
keeps his hands on the tabletop, kind of toward me, to let me take
them in mine if I want, but I keep my hands under the table. I
can’t touch him. Not yet. I’ll crumble if I do. His eyes drop to my
chest, to where the stickpin used to be. “Guards made you take it
off, huh?”
“It was off before I
came.”
He nods and he’s
about to say something, but he doesn’t. And then he clears his
throat and fakes a smile and says, “I’m real happy to see you,
Céce,” as he puts his hands under the table.
“I knew he was
leaving you today,” I say. “The dog. Boo, I mean. I thought you
could use a little comforting.”
“Nah, I’m all right,”
he says. “I mean, I’m glad you came. Thank you for taking
him.”
“He’ll be delivered
to the house around dinnertime.”
“I
heard.”
“Anything special I
should keep in mind? About his food, I mean?”
“That dog’ll eat any
damned thing. Just no ch—”
“Chocolate or
raisins, I know, you told me how many times.”
“Or
grapes.”
“Mack?”
“Yup?”
“Thank you. For Boo,
I mean.”
He nods, and in a
blink his eyes are wet, and he has to look away, and I can’t kill
him like this anymore. I have to tell him what I need to tell him,
and then I have to force myself to go. I take his hand and pull him
close to me and hold him tight, and I whisper it: “I’ll love you
too, always.” And then I leave him, and I don’t look
back.
The night is weirdly
hot, summer’s last bang. With everybody going nuts with their air
conditioners, the power goes out, and a blackout shuts down the
west side. Vic has to close the Too. He loads up the new
Vic-mobile, a totally smashed-in tan van from like 1978, with the
perishables and brings them over to the house. We eat as much as we
can and play slap cards, but pretty soon it’s too hot to stay
inside, and we head out to the porch to wait for them to bring
Anthony’s dog. Our dog. With the traffic lights all messed up, Boo
arrives late, just after sunset. He runs up the porch steps to us
like he has known us forever.
We go up to the
reservoir with flashlights like we used to do when we were kids
whenever they had those rolling brownouts. The clouds are blowing
off and the breeze starts up. Ma pushes Anthony’s chair, and Boo
walks alongside perfectly, slightly behind the chair. My brother
hasn’t stopped grinning since they dropped off the dog. He says
“Boo,” and Boo swings around the wheelchair and leans into what’s
left of Anthony’s lap. His tail spins and his tongue sticks out of
his mouth. When Anthony bends to kiss him, Boo laps at Anthony’s
lips.
Vic walks alongside
Ma. “Pretty sure I’m gonna get a loan to open a new restaurant,” he
says.
“Vic’s Too Too?”
Anthony says.
“Tony’s,” Vic says.
“I’ll need somebody to manage it. Don’t argue with me about this. I
know what I know. You can bring the dog to work with you every day,
and we’ll feed him meatballs. We’ll have the fattest pit bull on
the west side.”
When they start
talking about Mack I fade back a little with Bobby.
Up ahead, they run
into two girls Anthony knows from school. The one looks away,
pretending to be on her phone, stealing peeks where Anthony’s legs
should be. But the other girl has her hand on his shoulder, and
they’re laughing, and I think she might be crushing on him. Boo
goes belly up for scratching and does his wiggle worm thing, and
this third girl comes over. “Oh my god,
he’s so cute. Can I pet him?”
“You’ll hurt his
feelings if you don’t,” Anthony says.
“Dog is a total chick
magnet,” Bobby says. “Céce, have you ever considered that there
weren’t any dogs in The Outsiders, at
least none featured prominently?”
“Actually, Bobby, I
have not.”
“This might be the
movie’s only flaw. If there had been a
dog, perhaps one owned by Dallas Winston, I wonder if the outcome
would have been less horrific, particularly for Matt
Dillon.”
“Hm,” I say to be
polite.
Far off, a section of
the city lights up. My phone beeps with a text from AT&T, one
they better not charge me for. Did I know I could pay my bill
anytime online by going to att.com?
I was hoping it was
Marcy. I reached out to her with a Facebook post last week and then
again yesterday. I haven’t heard back, but I’ll keep
trying.
This is a nice spot
here, this reservoir. This part of the city is still without power,
and the stars are insane.
They offer the G and
T next month. Maybe I’ll take it again. Maybe I won’t. I’m sure of
this though: My gift is that I can take a fair amount of crap and
keep going. What else am I gonna do? I’m thinking ESP isn’t real
after all, but I still have the strangest feeling. I guess you
could call it hope. I hold Bobby’s hand. He looks into my eyes.
“Look,” he says, pointing to the sky.
I look up, and I see
a satellite.