Stepdog (3 page)

“I wasn't going to kick her,” I said again. “Even
she
knows I wasn't going to kick her, that's just in your head. What kind of prick do you take me for?”

She gave me a wary look. “I'm going to go settle her in,” she said. She led the dog back to the living room, closing the door behind herself.

I threw myself supine onto the bed, shirtless, jeans half unzipped, boots still on, libido fading. “I can't
believe
this is how the evening ends,” I growled to the ceiling.

S
ara came back into the bedroom looking distressed, and I thought,
Bollocks.
The mood was probably ruined for good now.

“Look, I'm sorry,” I said. “I
really
wasn't going to kick—”

Her rushed nod silently interrupted me. I sat up. Without looking at me, she clutched her robe tighter at the throat, covered her face with her hand as if suddenly self-conscious, and said, “This was just all so unexpected—”

“I know,” I said in a conciliatory tone.

After a moment, she moved her hand away from her face to untie her robe, and let it slip down to the ground so that she stood there naked before me again.

That meant she really liked me. Thank God. Maybe the mood wasn't ruined. But just to make sure, before the mood got moody again, rather than just jumping up to grab her . . .

“The whole thing is a surprise to us both and there's no rule about what happens,” I went on. (I do go on.) “Twelve hours ago—six, even!—if you'd told me I'd be sitting on Sara Renault's bed right now, I'd have said bollocks, or at least I'd say, well, that must
be due to there's something wrong with her ceiling and I'm helping her fix it like a friend would do. If you
need
your dog sleeping on your bed—”

“Rory—”

“I mean, sure, I kissed you, and it was a gorgeous evening and I could so easily fall in love with you, but I wasn't
planning
on it—to be honest, if you hadn't sacked me, I'd be home in my own bed right now watching footy highlights, and the dog—”

“Rory—” She tried again.

“And I don't want to pressure you into anything and you don't owe me a thing 'cept my final pay—”

“Rory, shut up!” she said, almost laughing with frustration.

“It's not like we've got to work out a living arrangement here or anything. It's just a kiss that ran amok, it shouldn't cause any upset—”

She actually threw herself on top of me on the bed.

That felt
amazing
.

So at least we had an understanding. Enough that we could complete the removal of clothes with the kind of shy intensity that's full of mischief, not insecurity or worry.

She was gorgeous. I don't even mean physical beauty, although she had that, too . . . but she had a
glow
to her, it surrounded her, like an egg, like an aura, and I wanted to be inside of it with her. She let me in. I've never felt that with anyone before. When we made love I felt my entire body climax. She was luscious. And unselfconscious for a woman who had not been naked in front of anyone else lately.

And in the morning, everything was fine. Even with the dog,
who was sleeping on the floor right outside the bedroom, and was just as happy to see us as when we'd come home last night. No sulking, no timidity. As if sleeping outside the door was the most comfortable thing in the world, and greeting Rory in the morning was an established part of the routine of Being Sara's Dog.

Still, Sara bent over and spoke in a coddling, cooing way, which wasn't really necessary for anyone but Sara, because the dog was
fine
. But Cody was no idiot—her lot dines out on affection, so when it's offered, of course she's going to take it. Her tail whacked the wall steadily, she gave Sara an adoring look with those pretty dark eyes, and made a feint of licking Sara's cheek without actually touching it. There was something Little Match Girl–ish about the meekness of that incomplete kiss—it was absurdly endearing, so I made a mental note to try it myself sometime. Sara kissed the dog between the eyes and then straightened up.

Then Cody, suddenly more Tom Sawyer than Little Match Girl, approached me, her mouth a lolling grin, tail wagging; I patted her head and said, “Hey, pup,” and that was that. The interspecies equivalent of a casual high five. Sara looked mollified.

So it was all good. We moved into the kitchen, where Sara sat me down at the small table, and tied on an MFA apron with Japanese irises on it.

“Scrambled eggs okay?” she asked.

“Deadly,” I said approvingly.

After sitting there a few moments trying to ignore the dog's quizzical gaze, I caught another aroma, and for a brief shudder thought I was back in my family's dismal flat in Dublin.

“Are you . . . frying a tomato?” I asked, incredulous.

She pressed down the handle of the toaster. “Yep,” she said, pleased with herself. “I would have made you black pudding but I didn't have any congealed pig's blood handy.”

“You don't have rashers by any chance? Not that crap American bacon.”

“Sorry. Next time.”

It took all my self-control not to punch the air with a great cry of triumph: Yes!
Next time!
There would be a next time!

Instead I stood and moved around the counter to embrace her. “Actually I don't eat Irish breakfast,” I confided. “Fried tomato is like an acid flashback to my da making us breakfast after the nightshift at Cadbury's.”

“Your father was a chocolatier? I thought—”

“Factory job. After Ma died he had to do everything. He was a shite cook.”

She was still a moment. “No fried tomato, then.”

I kissed her forehead, and then hugging her tighter, nuzzled the nape of her neck. “You're a darling anyhow,” I said.

So we skipped the tomato, but Sara scrambled perfect eggs, and she had Lyons tea—
and
Kerrygold butter for the toast—what are the odds of
that
? So it was a gorgeous breakfast. “I think I'll keep her,” I said to the dog as I set down my fork.

“I think you'd better let me keep you,” Sara corrected. “You're the one without a job. Sorry about that,” she said again, as she'd said five times or more yesterday.

I shrugged. “You don't control the funding,” I said. “Anyhow, my visa is for acting, not music. I'm surprised no one from Immigration ever showed up to snap my fiddle strings. And my sponsor
went under, so I've no way to renew the visa. I'll be undocumented again, and you'd have to sack me anyhow. This tea is deadly.”

She frowned thoughtfully. “I bet the museum could renew your visa, if we could just find the money to keep you on.”

I laughed and set down my mug. “I'm not a bad fiddler but I'm a crap violinist, Sara, and you know it. If Jefferson heard
my
version of the Corelli, it would
never
be his favorite. Unless you were planning to have a special exhibit on the Folk Art of the Potato Famine or something, you'd do better going to Boston Conservatory for a guest musician. I'll go back to what I did before.”

“What, working under the table? In construction?” Sara said, mildly appalled. “What a waste of your talent!”

“If I'd a shilling for every time I've heard that,” I said with a rueful smile. “It's grand. I had a good run at the museum, and I learned loads of stuff I wouldn't have otherwise, and I met some cool people, and anyhow I was getting tired of looking at Washington's horse's arse.” I shrugged. “And I'm sure to get a play soon, something always comes along. Meanwhile, back I go under the table. Keeps my biceps manly. You're going to be late for work.”

She started slightly, then reached for my plate.

“I'll do that,” I said, in the hopes this gesture assured I would find myself breakfasting here at this fine establishment soon again.

She smiled. “What a lovely houseguest. Stay here for a while if you like, take a shower, watch TV. Cody always likes company, and you got canned yesterday, so I know you're free.”

I declined. But I enjoyed watching her go through her morning routine; the domesticity felt almost as intimate as helping her undress. She opened the dog door to the boxy little yard, changed
Cody's water, left little treats hidden round the flat, “to give her something to do, ” and turned on the radio to NPR, “so she feels less lonely.”

“So that's not to deter burglars,” I said.

“I have a fierce guard dog for that,” Sara said.

“Nuzzles them to death, does she?”

We left the house together, both saying good-bye to the dog, who looked at Sara with a bereft expression. Sara cheerily promised to return, but Cody turned away and heaved a disbelieving sigh as I pulled the door closed.

I walked Sara to her bus stop and promised to call later. We still had not really defined what this Thing was going on between us. But it was definitely a Thing, with a capital
T,
and that was
fantastic
. We almost ate each other's lips off saying good-bye to each other as the bus drove up, and I could see her waving through the back-end window for two whole blocks.

It was a gorgeous late-August morning, and being unemployed—so with plenty of time free—I decided to walk part of the way home to Somerville. I needed time to soak all of this in. So many changes in so little time.

I headed off along the Emerald Necklace toward Jamaica Pond, the warm moist air already curling my locks against the back of my neck. I hazarded jaywalking across the Jamaicaway when the lights were in my favor, reached the far sidewalk, and stepped onto the plush green grass that led down to the pond. I took off my boots and socks, then my shirt, and just lay under the trees for a while, pretending to be on holiday. It was heavenly, if I ignored how the grass tickled my back. Later on I'd have to call Danny's uncle about getting my old construction job back, but for now, I
drifted off into a lovely dreamscape full of Sara. That ended when my pocket buzzed.

Lazily, without sitting up, I reached for my phone. I saw a California number that I recognized but (for superstitious reasons) had never saved into my contacts. It was Dougie Martin.

Dougie was an L.A. talent agent. He was not
my
agent; I didn't have an agent, since my arts visa didn't let me join the unions. But he was a friend. He'd actually started out years ago as an actor in Boston, where he was my understudy in the
H.M.S. Pinafore
(so, unsurprisingly, my sound track for him was “A British Tar,” although Dougie himself was a Vermonter). It had been a long run, and we all started to improvise a bit. I upgraded Ralph Rackstraw's brief lament about “misery” to a longish soliloquy on “Dostoyevskian darkness,” and Dougie, watching from the wings, was transported; he had been my biggest fan ever since. He wasn't half bad himself—we went on to be dead together as Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—and a year later, he'd gone to New York to give it a go there, but decided the competition and the crap money wasn't worth it. So he'd started working as an agent's assistant, and seeing there was money to be made, he got into
that
game. Then the agency opened offices in L.A., and voilà, now he was out there. He was always on me about getting a green card so I could move out to Hollywood and make us both a load of money. He was gas. He talked as boisterously while sober as I once did while drunk.

“Morning, Dougie,” I said into the phone, with the mellow cheer of somebody thoroughly and lovingly shagged after a long celibacy. “What's the crack?”

“Morning, Rory!” His voice was tight with excitement. “I just
learned about a project coming down the pike and I wanted to see where you were with your immigration status.”

I sat up abruptly.

“I've got a performance visa,” I said. “But it's up soon. Still no green card.”

“Weren't you talking with your cousin's widow or someone about getting married?”

“Sure, we're still talking about it, but everyone thinks it's so easy—it's a nightmare, and nowadays you need authenticity to prove it's a legit marriage, you know, they're all seasoned pros in the JFK Building . . . and why are you asking anyhow?”

“There's a cable pilot in development, a series about an Irish detective whose cover story is he's a rock musician and master of disguises.” (“Sounds ridiculous,” I said, plainly audible, but he didn't pause to hear me.) “They haven't cast it 'cuz it's still in development but they need someone Irish, sort of Colin Farrell Black Irish type, midthirties, who acts and sings and plays guitar and can do lots of accents. And it's shooting in the Boston area! It's like,
you,
man. Like they were creating it just for
you
.”

Jesus, yes! “Ah,” I said, feeling my pulse quicken. “But I'm not SAG, I don't—”

“I'll take care of all that once you're legal,” he said. “I know the producers. Just get yourself the green card, Rory, and I'll get you the audition.”

As I listened, eyes wide, he said he expected it to take a year before shooting began, and even auditions were probably still months away—assuming the whole thing didn't fall apart first anyhow. Cold lava progresses more swiftly than a project in devel
opment in the entertainment business. If I started the paperwork right off, I could probably get documented in time for an audition. Which was important, since before I was even allowed to audition for the studio, I'd have to sign something called a test-option contract, which from Dougie's description would require more paperwork than adopting a child from Kazakhstan.

My heart was fluttering, my palms were sweaty, my mouth was dry. I managed to thank him and promised I'd get married right away. We hung up.

I was so agitated and excited, I couldn't focus on the pond and the buzzing insects and the gentle heat and the lush trees and all that I thought would be the highlight of my morning. Now, with adrenaline coursing through me, all I could think about was . . . well, really I could hardly think at all, except I knew I had to call Laura, widow of my favorite cousin, Martin. When he got cancer I'd been there to help with the boys, so we were all close (in a Gordon Lightfoot sound-track sort of way), and she'd offered to give me a green-card marriage if I ever needed it. I'd deflected for a few years, because what a pain in the arse it is for someone to extend themselves that way, and I'd been managing with performance visas all right. But I'd recently been in a premiere that was supposed to transfer to New York—a great role, a drunken Dublin thief, supporting part but I stole the show . . . only the New York producers got nervous that I hadn't a green card, just a visa . . . so it had fallen through.