Stepdog (12 page)

T
he relief was so huge I almost couldn't feel it, the way your brain can't feel sleep when you're actually asleep.

But I wasn't sure if we were still friends or not. Sara was angry about things that didn't change when my immigration status did. Whatever was roiling around in her kept her from looking at me, so we surged like a harnessed team of horses out to the lobby.

Still . . . this was a
huge
moment, and it was
so
much her doing, and I all wanted was for us to be happy together in it. So I turned to her, grabbed her shoulders, and twisted her suddenly toward me. She stumbled, one ankle tripping against the other, so I grabbed her as she literally fell into my arms. She tensed against the fall and I squeezed her like I hadn't done in nearly twenty-four hours, which is forever when you're newlyweds and madly in love and recently fighting. She was trembling.

She squeezed the bejesus out of me in return, her face buried against my neck. Thank God. Now I really was the happiest man on earth.

“We did it!” I cheered. “
You
did it.”

“
You're
the one who convinced him,” she said with a relieved laugh. “Congratulations.
Welcome to the United States, Mr. O'Connor.
Wow!”

“Well, thank you, Mrs. O'Connor,” I said, beaming. I pulled my head back enough to look her in the eye. “You are still Mrs. O'Connor, aren't you?” I asked carefully.

She gave me the Princess Diana look. “Do you still
want
me to be Mrs. O'Connor?”

I stopped myself from blurting out the obvious answer and pretended I had to muse upon it for a moment. “Oh, I suppose so.”

She nodded, pleased. I thought we were over it. But then, of course, she had to point out:

“But Mrs. O'Connor has a dog, okay?”

I took in a larger breath than I meant to, which must have made it seem like I was about to protest because she raised her voice slightly to pre-empt me:

“And your relationship with Mrs. O'Connor's dog is why you just got your green card.”

“That's bollocks,” I said breezily. “If there were no dog, we wouldn't've had a fight, and I wouldn't've gotten drunk, and there wouldn't've been a problem, and today would have gone totally smoothly.”

“There's no way to prove that,” she said, and the furrow between her brows was all business.

I desperately wanted this moment to be purely happy and triumphant. “All right,” I said, placating. “Cody gets extra treats today, then. But so do we. All right? Let's grab an espresso, 'cuz I fucking need one.” I squeezed her hard again, and she squeezed me
hard back again, and then we laughed with joy and with relief, and also appreciation at the madness of how it had happened.

She linked her arm with mine, which is always a great feeling with Sara, more than any other bird who's ever linked me. We rushed through the lobby, out the doors, and outside across the damp, raw, windy plaza and down the street to the nearest café, which happily was Bay State Caffeine, a hip Boston café chain of which the hippest was in Jamaica Plain.

It wasn't too crowded, but the elevenses crowd would soon be trickling in, so I gestured at Sara to grab a table by the windows and then I went to order for the both of us.

I'd been so casually confident of this happening (until twelve hours ago) that I really wasn't sure what I was feeling now. It was a shoo-in, and yet it was
huge
. Nothing would change, but everything would change. I heard the barista ask my order. “Double espresso, small chai,” I said distractedly. “And one of these.” I grabbed a little prewrapped chocolate biscuit and tossed it on the counter. What would change? What would I notice first? Sara would probably tell me it would be that I had to get health insurance, which was silly since I never got sick.

“Rory?” said the barista.

I hate it when people aren't
present
when you're serving them. I worked as a waiter for years when I first got here (under the table, with a fake Social Security number, like many of us). I'd been good enough at charming people to generally get and keep their attention, but it's humiliating to be treated like a robot. And here I was, my first act as a legal resident of the United States, doing it myself. I looked up, guiltily.

The person behind the counter was Alto, my young friend from the arboretum. We smiled tentatively at each other.

“Hey, Alto,” I said. “Funny seeing somebody out of their native habitat. What are you doing here? Peters Hill not good enough for you anymore? You getting too full of yourself, is it?”

Alto looked shy but pleased, like a kid called to the front of the class for unexpected praise. “Filling a shift for a friend. I usually work the Centre Street store. What brings you downtown?” And very deadpan: “Where's your wife's dog?”

I grinned. “At home. But my wife is here. Hey, Sara!” I called over to the table, but Sara was in the middle of pulling her scarf off and didn't hear me.

“I'm off in a couple minutes, I'll come over,” offered Alto.

I paid, and slipped back toward Sara.

“A friend from the arboretum's here,” I said. “He's coming over to say hi. Name's Alto.”

She smiled. “You seem to have a whole other secret life at the arboretum.”

“Do I?”

“Remember the woman and her kids at Halloween—”

“Oh, Marie, sure,” I said. “Her kids are Nick and Ryan.”

“See? You could be having an affair and I'd never know.”

“Yeah, I meant to tell you, those are actually my kids.”

“Ha.”

We were both sitting now. Sara adapted her best I-work-in-an-office-so-you-better-take-me-seriously pose, forearms on tabletop, hands clasped with knuckles forward, very schoolmarmish. “All right,” she said, “let's talk about it.”

“What, Marie's kids? Well, those were my wild days, she
claimed she had a little Irish in her, so I thought I'd take it literally—”

“Rory.” Pause. She looked down—generally an adorable gesture on her, but not at this moment—and then back up at me. “I don't ever want a repeat of last night.”

“Neither do I,” I said quickly. “I'm sorry I got drunk. I really don't get your treatment of the dog, I'm not backing off on that, but getting pissed off is no excuse for getting drunk.”

She was already shaking her head. “I trust you, this isn't about your drinking, it's about your temper. You can't blow your top whenever you disapprove of my behavior.”

“I almost
never
disapprove of your behavior, Sara. Your behavior is the best thing to happen to me in—”

“That's great, so on the few occasions that I irritate you, could you please try to stay reasonable?”

“Well, I need
you
to be reasonable,” I countered. “About the
dog
.”

She looked at me with the kind of look that let me know I would disagree with whatever came out of her mouth. “I've been treating the dog the same way for three years. In three years, nobody else has ever had an issue. It's behavior that you might be unfamiliar with but that doesn't make it, objectively, unreasonable.”

“Of course it's unreasonable. No dog in Ireland—”

“Rory, we're not in Ireland, we're in America.”

“You're all mental when it comes to your dogs.”

“We're just different from you. What I do is pretty normal for this culture.”

“I know normal,” I shot back. “It's not normal.”

“Hey there,” said a quiet voice over my shoulder. Sara, immediately honey and wildflowers, smiled and looked up.

“Hello,” she said, offering her hand to Alto. “Lovely to meet you. I'm Sara, Rory's wife.”

“And Cody's owner. It's great to meet you. You have a great dog!”

Sara beamed her satisfaction, like a laser, right into my face, rekindling my hangover headache. “Thank you.”

“I'm Alto,” said Alto. “Yeah, I know Rory from the arboretum, I'm there most days when he takes Cody for a walk. She's
such
a sweet dog.”

These were the most syllables I'd ever heard Alto string together at once without the aid of a cigarette. “How's things, Alto?” I asked. I had no idea what else to ask, since it felt like whatever we talked about at the arboretum should stay at the arboretum. Not that we talked about anything per se at the arboretum.

A slightly nervous nod from Alto. “Okay. They're good. Yeah. How are you?”

Sara and I glanced at each other. She nodded slightly; we both smiled, amnesty accorded. “We're great,” I said to Alto. “We're celebrating.”

“Rory,” called out a voice from the counter.

“I'll get it for you,” Alto offered. “Want anything in it?”

“Thanks, mate, no, just as it is.”

We watched as Alto retrieved and returned with our drinks, and set them on the tabletop before us. “So, what are you celebrating?”

“A rite of passage, Alto,” I said, with a grin. “I just got my green card!” I grabbed Sara's hand. “This beautiful woman made it possible.”

Alto looked confused. “You mean you've been, like, illegal?”

“He had a visa,” Sara said quickly. “An arts visa. But he couldn't join the Screen Actors Guild or anything, so we got married so he could do that.”

Alto gave me a startled expression. “You're an
actor
? I mean, I know you did, like,
Christmas Carol,
but I mean—an
actor
-actor.”

“Among other things,” I said with a dismissive gesture. “Mostly I walk my wife's dog.”

Alto nodded, putting the pieces together, and turned admiringly to Sara. “So, wow, you married him just so he could get a green card?”

“And because she was blown away by how wildly in love with her I was,” I said, pulling Sara's wrist to my lips and kissing it. She blushed and grinned, which was, as always, adorable.

“We'd been dating a week when we got married,” Sara said in a confessional tone.

“That's so romantic,” Alto said, suddenly almost choked up. “And now you're legal or documented or whatever's the correct term?”

“Yep,” I grinned.

“Almost,” Sara corrected. “It's a conditional card. In two years we have to prove that we're still a couple, and
then
he gets the permanent card. As long as he hasn't broken the law or anything. So—” She grinned at me, teasing. “He's still got plenty of time to get in trouble.”

“Wow,” said Alto, nodding a little. “Well, congratulations. Funny how we all see each other in the park and never think about, you know, our lives outside the park.”

“Tell me about it! You have a secret identity as a barista,” I said. “You've been holding out on me, don't you know I need my espressos?”

Alto looked flustered.

“He's joking,” Sara said reassuringly. Alto looked reassured. Sara's good that way.

“I'm joking,” I said heartily. “Bay State Caffeine is no place to get a decent espresso.”

There was a brief moment of silence. I impulsively kissed Sara on the cheek. She kissed me back. The world was my oyster!

“So . . . Are you taking the T back to JP?” asked Alto, and added, when I looked confused, “Jamaica Plain.”

“Maybe. What time is it?” Sara asked. In my hungover fog, I'd left my watch at home, so I reached into my raincoat pocket for my phone to check the time. It was turned off. I powered it back up. And remembered:

“. . . Dougie's voice mail,” I said. I glanced up at Alto. “My agent left me a message,” I said, loving the sound of that, because now it was true. The phone beeped to alert me of the message. I bit my lip excitedly, looking back and forth between them. Sara tensed, with a nervous smile.

“Is it important?” asked Alto.

“Could be,” I said, trying to sound breezy, as if I got important voice mails all the time. “Could be life-changing.” I winked at Alto as if life-changing voice mails were a matter of course. Alto looked stupefied. Then I tapped in my password, the four-note tune chiming like a TV network jingle.

“You have one new message,” my phone told me in an excru
ciatingly slow female voice. “First message, received at ten fifty-eight
A.M
.” Impulsively, I pressed the speaker button and held the phone out between the three of us. Alto leaned in, thrilled to be part of the crew. He never smiled like this back at the park. I'd have to work on that, I decided.

“Rory!” cheered Dougie's voice. “Call me! Make sure you're sitting down. With a big bottle of champagne.”

Sara and I looked at each other, eyes wide, mouths O-ing. I felt shivers all over my body. I could see in my peripheral vision Alto glancing back and forth excitedly between us.

“Good news, then?” Alto asked.

“. . . I think so,” I said, nearly hyperventilating. I burst into nervous laughter.

“Rory!” Sara said quietly, eyes shining. It was almost a whine or a whimper—actually, she reminded me a bit of Cody. Maybe Sara was about to slide off the chair into tarty-dog pose. “Oh my
God,
Rory!” And then she was laughing nervously, too.

“Congrats,” Alto said. “Whatever it is.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Not sure, but I think I maybe might have got a television series. Pilot, anyhow.” And then I just kept grinning stupidly because I was in Bay State Caffeine and there was no room to dance properly.

Alto's jaw dropped. “Wow! Wow. Rory, that's awesome,
wow,
congratulations!”

“Thanks, man,” I said. I suddenly stood up and hugged Alto, which would have been inconceivable in the arboretum. Alto hugged me back—equally inconceivable.

“You've been on a roll,” said Alto, admiringly. “When I first
met you, remember? You'd just gotten married, and now already you have a green card, and an amazing job. Like, it's all just magically coming together for you.”