The Beggar's Garden (19 page)

It'd rained for a week, and although dogs weren't allowed in the fitness room, he'd decided to chance it. Buddy had sniffed the gym with the thoroughness of a bomb detector while Dan cycled through his routine. Leaving Buddy alone in the condo, even briefly, seemed too cruel at a time like this—with the days being so dismally grey and the dank bales of clothes and towels he'd let accumulate in every room.

Buddy was depressed. He slept most of the day. He'd been ignoring the kibble Dan rattled into his bowl, mustering only little bites of people-food every so often. They'd made it to the park only once the preceding week and found most of it flooded with six inches of murky water. The squeegee punks were its only patrons, smoking and shivering beneath a tree. As Dan hurled a sopping tennis ball that Buddy begrudgingly retrieved, he remembered what Ginnie had said about those kids, how sad it was that they were abandoned, or wanted to be abandoned. Even in the park Buddy quickly grew bored. When they were leaving, Dan noticed the kid with the green mohawk, which was now hanging down, eggless perhaps, the tips of the once proud spikes dripping rainwater. Dan wanted to tell the punks he'd opened for a couple of the bands sewn to their jackets, but he thought against it when he remembered how much pleasure he, as a punk, would have taken in telling a guy like him to fuck off. “For world domination,” he said, pouring a handful of change into their cup. They didn't notice him enough to ignore him.

Dan switched to the treadmill and watched an educational program about witchcraft as he ran. “In Salem, witches were often identified by the presence of their familiars, animals like cats or owls who would perform the evil bidding of their master,” it said. “Many women were burned based on the evidence of a familiar
alone.” Dan looked over to Buddy, who was regarding, suspiciously, his own reflection in the full-length mirror. “We're getting pretty familiar, aren't we, Bud?” he said, realizing he'd lately started conversing with the dog in a voice that was not his own. Then Dan amused himself with the thought of Buddy running on the treadmill. He briefly considered trying it, setting him up there and punching the button, but he decided against it. You had to have a big brain to get used to things like full-length mirrors and running without moving.

He brought a water bottle to his lips, suctioned a mouthful, then let it release with a gasping sound. The sensation sent his mind stumbling upon his night with Ginnie, now two weeks past, a night whose meaning he'd not yet examined even though he'd found himself mildly annoyed she hadn't called. The kiss felt like a liability, a leak of information. He wished it hadn't happened. Or that it had kept happening. Or perhaps something else entirely. In the end, he decided it was selfish of them to jeopardize Buddy and Jo's relationship like that.

“There are no dogs down here,” a reedy-voiced security guard said from the entranceway. Dan recognized him, a boy who usually spent whole graveyard shifts scouring skateboard magazines behind the concierge desk.

“There's a dog right there,” Dan said, gesturing smugly, his voice croaky from exertion.

“Okay, sir, there are no dogs
allowed
down here, it's against strata regulations. You know, health issue.” He glanced around as if the room were potentially infested by dogs.

With only thirty seconds left, Dan dismounted the treadmill, scrubbed a towel over his face, set it about his shoulders.

“This just isn't what I'd expected,” he said. “Something wrong with the equipment, sir?” “Do you ever see anyone down here?” He thought for a moment. “Umm … no, not really. You?” “This place, it hasn't really worked out for me. I figured it'd be different.”

“I understand that, sir, but the dog has to go,” he said with his neck set and his slender hands folded over his crotch, gripping a walkie-talkie.

“Come on, Buddy,” Dan said.

Dan's condo was much too hot. He checked the oven on the outside chance he'd accidentally turned it on, never once having actually used it. He cracked some windows, cursing the fact there was no thermostat, and noticed the rain had stopped. The sky was an elephant hide stretched over the whole city.

Then the phone rang. Dan whacked his shin on the glass top of his coffee table while he ran for it, crumpling him to the carpet. Buddy came to him. He didn't lick Dan's face, but Dan was happy to note a certain attitude of concern.

After a deep breath he set the phone to his ear.

“Where've you been?” Winston said. Dan could hear Jacob yelping nonsense in the background. He took the cordless out on the balcony where the air was refreshingly cool and sat, testing the swelling that was conglomerating on his shin.

Dan attempted to recollect what he'd been doing the past few weeks and came up with a mental summary as formless and
without value as a handful of gravel. What had he been doing? Sleeping? Trying to cheer up Buddy, was all he could say with certainty. He told Winston he'd been working on something.

Winston then asked what happened with Ginnie that night and Dan told him the story, omitting the kiss.

“I liked her,” Winston said. “She stood up to Marta.”

“Well, she seems to be standing up to me as well, which is surprising because all I ever wanted to be was her friend, so there's nothing to stand up to.”

Winston exhaled into the phone. It sounded like wind. “C'mon, you liked her, I could see it, you were unleashing facial expressions I haven't seen in years.”

“I do really love her dog, Jo. I really miss her.”

“Her dog? That's why people get dogs, isn't it? To meet other
people
with dogs? Am I not right? Sort of like joining a club?”

“No, I wanted a companion.” “Come on.”

“Buddy and I understand each other. I don't know what I'd do without him. People say dogs are loyal, but they really are
actually
loyal.”

“Speaking of loyal, I saw on the radio this thing about how if someone dies in their home and nobody drops by or smells the stench, and that person has animals—like so many lonely shut-in types do, may I add—then it only takes three days,
three days,
until the pet, doesn't matter what kind, cat or dog, whatever, will actually
eat
their owner's body to stay alive. How's that loyalty for you?”

The thought of Buddy feasting upon his corpse filled Dan
with a curious pride. Buddy would do what he had to do to survive. This stood as another example of what non-dog-owners could never understand.

“I just don't want to see you miss out on an ideal opportunity is all,” Winston said.

“You know what the saddest part about this whole Ginnie situation is? Who the biggest losers are?” Dan said, excited like an oilman who'd struck it rich with a geyser of the unsaid. “Jo and Buddy, that's who. Those dogs love each other. You can tell. Buddy hasn't been himself all week. He's having trouble eating. And how cruel and immature is it for someone to deny these two innocent dogs their only pleasure.”

“You're aware of my theories on female friends, Dan. Nonexistent. Oxymoronic. And I don't want to tell you who the moron is in this situation. Believe me, there are plenty others out there, and to be honest, she wasn't exactly Best in Breed at Westminster, if you know what I mean.”

After they hung up, Dan realized his eyes had been tracing the geometry of Ginnie's building in the same way he'd doodled whenever on the phone as a kid. The drawings he'd found he'd done were always more interesting than anything he managed with conscious effort.

Sheets of light had punctured the clouds and were refracting in the facets of her condo. The structure seemed more in the way now than it ever had. Like it was a spaceship recently touched down and the crew, disguised as humans, were wreaking immeasurable havoc on the city. There should be insurance for something like this, Dan thought. There ought to be a guarantee on something as important as a view.

He saw movement in her window and realized this would look really bad. Him out there, it looked creepy. Great, he thought, now he couldn't even use his balcony.

That night, Dan and Buddy watched the special features on one of his DVDs, then Dan fixed himself a cosmopolitan and grilled some salmon.

“You know what the truth is?” he said to Buddy, because he seemed like he wanted to hear it. “The truth is there's probably—no, very probably—someone out there in the city, maybe someone even living in this building, my building, who's just like Ginnie in every way. She may even be a nurse for all I know, maybe she even has the same messy car and all the same opinions on things, only she doesn't … you know, without the, the affliction Ginnie has.” Buddy's smacking of the blackened salmon skin seemed to be an agreement.

Dan hand fed him some of the filet and scraped the rest into the dog's bowl. Better to give it to someone who'd enjoy it, and he was having trouble tasting because of the booze. After a while Dan ran out of Cointreau and cranberry juice, so he started drinking the vodka straight, calling them vodkapolitans to Buddy as a joke. It grew dark and he turned on the lights. Reflected images of his home leapt into the windows and he could no longer see Ginnie's building or anyone else's, and both Buddy and Dan liked it that way.

They played for what must have been hours with one of Buddy's favourite toys, a rope connected to a rubber ball. Buddy's jaws were strong enough for Dan to pick him up and swing him like an Olympic hammer-throw. They were doing exactly this when Buddy unlatched and went flailing across the living room,
his body glancing an end table and sandwiching a lamp against the wall, breaking its ceramic base in two.

Buddy lay there, his husky breathing laced with whines, and he flinched at Dan's touch. It seemed so sad to Dan that Buddy could never grasp the concept of intent. “I'm so sorry, Buddy,” he repeated over and over as he ground his face into the carpet, level with the dog, whose breath was hot and meaty, his gums slick black. Dan found himself weeping. The dog squeezed out one final whimper and began licking Dan's hand, then his face.

In the same instant, Dan realized both that he'd been lonely and that he wasn't anymore, like a person waking up after routine surgery and being told in the same breath that they'd found a tumour and that it had been successfully removed.

Late that night, the vodka long gone, Dan flicked the lights vigorously, making a giant strobe light of his place,
like a fucking disco in here,
he said before he lost consciousness on the couch.

She called early the next day.

“Dan,” she said, “I'm sorry to ask you this.”

“It's okay,” Dan said, “just say it.” His hangover was just getting going and he felt benevolent.

“My brother”—Ginnie's voice veered toward a sob but she recovered—“he isn't well, and I need to go to Toronto for a week to drive him to appointments. I need you to dog sit.”

Dan told her he was sorry to hear that. “Have you known for a while?” he asked, with a selfish desire to be sure this was what had kept her from calling.

“I just found out. Look, Dan, I don't know who else to ask. You're so good with her. And Buddy is too. I would take her to a kennel, but you know how those places are.”

“You could take her to a dog spa?” he said, wanting to stretch this moment out as long as possible, her needing something and him about to provide it.

She laughed, sniffed. “Yeah, not likely.”

He met Ginnie and Jo in the lobby of his building. There was a flurry of phone numbers and intricate instructions for Jo's feeding and general care. Ginnie's hair was up but she'd left pieces to hang like spider legs at her temples. Ginnie was someone who still believed in dressing up to fly and he couldn't help but find this charming. Her voice was strong with tragedy and necessity.

“I think I might have made some kind of mistake …,” he said at the last possible minute, the beginning of a speech he hadn't known he'd been preparing.

She looked relieved. “Dan, I agree, it was a mistake, and I got weird the other night. Can we just be friends again and act like it never happened? Sort of block it out? I've thought about it and that's what I want. I just think it's really important for the dogs to stay friends.”

“That's basically what I was thinking,” he replied.

She kissed his cheek and they hugged and she got in a cab.

“Look who's here,” Dan said, and Buddy leapt almost as high as the fridge.

He took the reunited friends to the park, ran them for hours
and later grilled the last of the salmon, which was now officially Buddy's favourite. Buddy had more energy than Dan had seen in weeks, and as for himself, Dan found that another animal in the house simply doubled the amount of joy.

His life felt full, he thought that night in bed, populated. This business with Ginnie had convinced him once again of the irrationality of others. How awful it was that Buddy was the one who'd had to endure the worst of it. Dan decided then that he would get another dog, as a companion for Buddy. This way Buddy could never again have his best friend taken from him on a whim, and Dan could watch the dogs grow together. He knew another Andalucian would look a little obsessive, but he didn't care. The ‘Lucian was the finest breed he'd ever known. He settled on emailing Sandy and Ihor the next day.

In the morning he woke to an odd, two-tone sound, like a faint police siren with inadequate power. He padded to his living room and discovered that the sound originated from a furry heap. It was Jo and Buddy. They were next to the couch, by his DVD rack, fucking. Buddy had mounted her, with something that resembled lipstick passing between them.

He wondered if he should stop them but did nothing. He watched. It wasn't a bestiality thing, nothing like that, he wasn't close to aroused, it was something else—a kind of vicarious admiration he'd seen on Winston's face that day in his backyard when he watched Jacob hit a ball with a green plastic bat. Buddy perked up and regarded Dan with a sort of smile, mostly on account of
his mouth being just shaped that way, but Dan knew there was real joy there, the little guy probably felt like he was back in Spain, releasing some tension after a long day of vigilant herding. Dan wondered how he would explain things to Ginnie if Jo became pregnant. But even if Buddy wasn't fixed, he believed Jo almost definitely was, so he put it out of his mind. Dan watched as Buddy, in a workmanlike way, devoid of all the absurd facial expressions and ridiculous moanings of humans, pushed Jo around in a little circle.