Walking the Dog (28 page)

WALKING THE DOG

I had dropped off my last dog and was taking my time as I headed back toward the halfway house. I was more and more uncomfortable there. It felt like kindergarten, with rules, crying, and cautious voices surrounding my nun's cell in uneven bursts and waves. I was trying to count in my head if I had enough plastic doggy bags for the morning rounds. Very deep. A sudden, sharp pain jammed into my lower back and then another. Prison experience taught me immediately that it was a knee and I was being jumped. Unfortunately, they didn't offer martial arts classes in Clayton, but I knew what to do. I sat down. I did it because I figured if there was an attacker behind me there'd also be one in front of me. Or, if not, it would at least give my mugger pause. But I was correct, and a fist shot up under my chin. Someone yanked me up and held me from behind as another fist slammed me in the face and stomach. The pain was excruciating, but my thoughts were strange. Either they're going to kill me—which wasn't complicated—or they'd leave me there, in which case someone would call 911. When the cops arrived and looked up my record, they wouldn't think for a second that I was a victim, and after some stitches or a night in the hospital, I'd be brought into the precinct or thrown in jail. My parole would be put into
question. The inner voices shouted, Not now. Not now when life was throwing some chances at me. These thoughts floated and zoomed at different weights and speeds like a dream, and I didn't fight back at all. I barely tried to protect myself. “Enough,” I kept saying. “Enough.” But the blows kept hitting me like a storm of rocks.

“Okay, I think we've made our point,” I heard Hubb say. “I told you to stay out of my business, Carleen.” He leaned down into my face.

“What is this—
The Godfather
?” I managed to say.

He spit in my face.

“You shut down your business this week, bitch. Or you won't have such a sense of humor. We'll go after your teenage lover.”

I froze. I'd long stopped caring about my life, but I hadn't considered Elisheva.

“Give me a couple days, Hubb,” I said. “Let me do it right. I'll shut it down. Completely. Just don't go near her.”

“Deal,” he smirked. And with one last, vicious kick, he and his friends took off.

I was badly beaten, but not worse than before, and I tried to get through the streets without stumbling. I found the doorbell I was looking for and practically fell on it. Finally, David came to his entrance and opened the door. He caught me and laid me down on one of his $10,000 couches.

“So you've finally come to visit,” he said.

“Watch the blood,” I mumbled. “It stains.”

“I'm calling an ambulance,” he said.

“No!” I shouted. “You can't. David, don't. That's why I came here. Don't you have some rich buyer who's secretly in love with you but also a doctor?”

“You're very chatty for someone who's at death's door,” he replied, but seemed less panicked.

The shock wore off and I writhed in pain.

“Those sons of bitches,” I moaned.

“Who? What sons of bitches?” David's voice sounded far away. They'd probably broken one of my eardrums.

“I'm calling the cops,” David said.

“No, no, no,” I yelled, or I thought I did. “Think. Think.”

David held my hand until I heard his doorbell ring, and then I blacked out.

When I woke, a woman with very black hair and thick, large black glasses was looking down at me. I felt bandaged, taped, stitched, and stoned from some painkiller. Her expression was kind, but a little shaken.

“So, this is the criminal genius you're always talking about,” she said. “She surely earned her reputation tonight.”

I looked at her. “Thank you.”

“I'm a gynecologist,” she explained, “but we always fondly remember our internships in the ER. Nothing's broken. But you're bruised like hell, and someone cut your head badly enough for fourteen extremely clumsy stitches. You might have a cracked rib.”

“Thank you,” I said again, and fell back asleep.

An hour or so later I woke up in a panic. I was conscious enough to tell David the story in its entirety.

“Things like this don't really happen,” he said in awe. “Why, darling, no wonder they're so many movies with the same plot lines. They're derived from actual reality. Essie, I've never seen tears. Those are actual tears.”

“Elisheva,” I remembered. “I can't screw another person in this lifetime. At least not a good one.”

David clapped his hands together joyfully. I wasn't sharing his fun.

“I can't believe I'm doing this,” he smiled. “But I actually have a solution. This is
so
Mario Puzo.”

“David, calm yourself.”

“No, seriously. Essie, listen—and shut up. I'm very famous in Russia these days. I think it's the new mixtures of browns in the backgrounds. But I have some major collectors.”

“Russian mafia,” I tried to laugh. “You're playing Clue. David, this is crazy serious.”

“I'm telling you. They're rich, these men. So don't they all know each other somehow? Listen, I've wanted to help you so badly since all that's gone down . . . Let me make a few phone calls.”

I was in deep despair by now. Scared for Elisheva. I had no hope. David had no sense of reality. Old suicidal images were blowing past me like dark dust storms. But what was far worse was the image of Elisheva's face. She deserved freedom. My life was a black train and every track led to a worse connection. Elisheva had done nothing but play a business game with me.

I must've been moaning and hallucinating for quite a while.

I was in bed. David sat at the edge of it. He seemed very serious and a little scared.

“I think I've taken care of it,” he said. “I'm frightened and just a bit titillated.”

“Don't have anyone killed, if this is really you, not just playing Sherlock Holmes. Please. Enough death.”

“No, it's not worth it,” he said. “I said exactly the same thing. We bartered. Yossi and I have been haggling over the commission for this massive canvas for his dining room wall. He said he'd find a way to scare them so badly you'd never see or hear of them ever again. And he said no violence, no revenge. Just
relocation. Your Hubb has been given the finances to start a new drug dealing and dog walking cover in Philadelphia where business is thriving. However, if he comes near you or your Elisheva—instant execution. I trust Yossi. You're safe. The word, shall we say, is
out
.”

“Shut up,” I groaned. “You're enjoying this way too much.”

“I lowered the commission,” David added, “but not by much. Some gangsters have a strange sense of honor. Yossi owns three Rhodesian ridgebacks and a miniature dachshund and makes borscht to die for.”

ANDROCLES

“Whatcha name him?” asked Phyllis Gelb. It was Phyllis's first visit since she'd given me the puppy.

“Androcles,” I answered immediately. I didn't know why, the name just came to me. But there he was. Phyllis Gelb was confused.

“Oh, that might make it difficult to make urgent commands. We usually recommend two syllables or less.”

He was Androcles to me and would be no other, but to please my earnest mentor I said, “Okay, how about Buff?”

She happily clapped her hands together and said, “Right on—absolutely right on. He'll be strong and quick like on those infomercials on the E! channel. They have all those machines. You pull, you twist, you straighten your legs out, you pull 'em in. You do some ab stuff and some butt stuff. And they always say, ‘You get buff!' Do you think the men shave their chests?”

“Wax them. Definitely wax them.”

“Ouch,” whined Phyllis Gelb. She breathed out a long sigh. “Now, Carleen, if I may call you so,” she spoke sternly. “Don't train Buff with too many snacks. It disconnects them, and they'll do their commands for the wrong reasons. Buff will be a working dog. He has to learn his job because that's what he does. Is that clear?”

“Absolutely,” I said. Meanwhile, Androcles had put his head in my armpit.

“He likes your smell,” she said proudly. “I just knew you were made for this, Carleen, and, believe me, I've trained over a hundred people for this over the years.”

I believed her.

Phyllis Gelb hefted her considerable weight onto thick, wobbly legs. I'd felt secure in her noisy presence. The space and silence she'd leave behind made me anxious.

“You're leaving?” I tried to sound buddy-buddy to disguise the nerves. “Don't you have more you want me to know?”

She smiled. I noticed she had beautiful teeth.

She tapped them.

“You just read my book page by page. Be as patient as Mother Teresa, and you'll be fine. I'll be back in a month.”

A whole month.

“I made Sister Jean and that mannish woman—”

“Sam,” I reminded her.

“Sam,” she said distastefully. “Anyway, I told them to give you special phone privileges so you can call me day or night.”

I prayed she wasn't going to hug me. What if she picked up right away on my resistance to being touched? Then she'd take Androcles away. But she held out her hand and tried to avert her eyes from the scars and bumps all over mine.

“It's going to be beyond fine,” she said.

Later that day I lifted Androcles out of the crate and carried him to the grass. He peed instantly. I was supposed to cheer him with glee to show what a good dog he was, but cheering wasn't exactly my style, so I leaned down next to him and whispered, “Righteous Androcles. Righteous hero.” He got the idea and licked my nose. We stayed outside another ten minutes or so, enough for me to have a cigarette and see if anything else
was coming. Phyllis Gelb's book said that, with guide dogs, it was important to teach them when they should go on a regular schedule and not wait for them to ask. But the bowel movement wasn't happening, so we went inside.

According to the book, if you bring a service dog up right, the first months are as exhausting as having an infant. When we got inside he shit on the floor. No punishment. I just said, “Wrongo, boy, not the behavior of a future service dog.” He tipped his head to one side, but didn't wag his tail.

I took him out every three hours with varying degrees of success. I was outside so much a woman named Flax walked past me and said, “You gonna get skin cancer, girl.” But she never said hello to the dog. Amanda, who had town shopping privileges, brought me back these special plastic bags in bright blue made especially for picking up dog shit. They were much better than toilet paper.

“Just wash your hands all the time,” she warned me. “You wash them so much you be like those crazy folks with that thing Jack Nicholson had in that movie with Helen Hunt. I don't want to get no tapeworm from your door handle.”

Phyllis Gelb's book said to play with the dog all the time. And when you played, you also taught obedience. I didn't like the idea of teaching anybody or anything obedience, so I faked it. He had this rubber ball that was his favorite toy. I'd roll it around on the floor and he'd swat at it with his enormous paws. I could watch him forever. Now and then he'd catch it in his mouth and I'd say, “Righteous Androcles, righteous hero.” He didn't quite get what he'd gotten right, but enjoyed what he'd come to recognize as my pleasure. I told him that he was going to have to learn some stuff so the big lady would let me keep him. I talked to him a lot, which soothed us both.

“I guess dogs have to learn all this shit,” I said, “because of
the A dog B dog principle. One of us is boss. I ask you to do things for me and vice versa, but neither of us has to make a power trip out of it because it's really stupid stuff—way below what the righteous Androcles can do.” So I taught him to sit, lie down, stay, come, fetch—the usual repertoire—and I tried to do the same for him. He didn't have the words I did, so when he wanted me to sit he'd tap his paw on the ground. I always told him, “Righteous Androcles, righteous hero,” when he did a command correctly. He'd lick my face when I obeyed him. We got home training down in about two weeks and basic institutional-type commands in a month. We were both sitting, lying down, staying, coming when called, and the rest of it so quickly it got a little boring.

The only obstacle was how to get him to do similar commands to two different names. Then I realized that when he was Androcles, he was mine and when he was Buff, he was the temporary property of others. So before I'd call him Buff, I'd just whisper “showtime” in his ear. He liked performing. His growing body would go into this alert, straight position, and I could see he was just ready for tap shoes and a top hat. It was a strict rule that he sleep in his crate, but he soon learned to open the contraption and get into bed with me. We had to negotiate this point, so I took the crate apart and made it more of a fence. When he was Androcles I let him sleep with me, but when he was Buff I crawled on the floor and slept next to him on the stinky linoleum. After a time I left him alone half the night, then three quarters, then the whole night. Neither of us found this situation terrifically comfortable, but I knew he'd have to do the crate trick sooner or later, and I didn't want him crying or barking when he was left alone.

He was more a physical dog than a noisy one. He didn't whine, cry, or bark much, and when he did I'd tell him he really
didn't have a very pleasant voice and to keep it down or my sisters would get me kicked out of the compound. I explained to him that they were animals like me that had bratty, gruff personalities.

Whenever we had these talks, we'd sit across from each other, and I'd teach him commands like “shush,” “keep it down,” and “lower the volume, please.” Over time he got the idea. In the beginning Flax would shout, “Shut that animal up!” and Androcles would bark back at her in the exact same rhythm and then shut up. He had a remarkable ear. One of his favorite pastimes was to go to Amanda's cottage and listen to her play the viola. He'd lay his head on her feet so he could feel the vibrations. Once in a while he'd grab the bow in his mouth and try to chew it. I lost considerable money buying new bows. Then we figured out we'd give him his own bow. We took out one of the ones he hadn't completely destroyed, I restrung it, and Amanda taught him to pull it across the strings. It produced a squeaky, cavity-hurting, nasal sound. The
squannch
scared him so much he stayed away after that.

He knew Flax and Midge hated him. Dog cops had sniffed Flax out at a crack house and she was cornered by three German shepherds. It was terror transformed into hostility. Androcles always let her pass and gave her lots of room, but one day she'd either done badly on a physics exam or maybe it was another visiting day and she, like me, had zero visitors. She was in a foul state of mind and deliberately kicked him in a hallway. I lunged at her and held her down and slapped her over and over again across her face until her nose began to bleed. Androcles sat up very straight and did his best to bare his teeth, though they hadn't fully grown in yet. Flax and I got pulled apart and I was sent to solitary. I told the guard that the rules were that Buff and I were not to be separated. So the growing
puppy and I spent a week in a small cell with a hole for a toilet and an iron cot.

Androcles's height preceded his coordination. When we were reinstalled in our room, it was too small for a tall, big-boned woman and a growing Labrador-poodle-setter mix with long legs and huge feet. I knew Phyllis would be disappointed, but I got rid of the crate. Instead, I dug though the trash and found an ugly but usable square of rug. I washed and vacuumed it thoroughly and laid it out in the corner of my room. When Androcles curled up on it to sleep, he fit perfectly, but he didn't like it because I wouldn't join him. Buff had to sleep there when I said so, and Androcles could sleep on the bed as a treat after an especially vigorous day.

When Phyllis arrived for my evaluation I was nervous. I wanted to please her, and resented it. Androcles was as casual as he could be. I was certain that all Phyllis lived for was the dogs, and she was not going to be lenient if I fucked up.

Phyllis wobbled toward me, and this time she did hug me. A wave of blackness went through me like I was going to faint. I didn't get the urge to throw up again at least. Maybe it was a sign I was getting used to Phyllis. Androcles sat obediently beside me during the greeting. I'd whispered “showtime” just as she was heading over.

“Well, look at Buff. What a gentleman he is already. I'm telling you, Carleen—he's going to be
hu-mon-gous
.”

He sat like a soldier as she squatted down and went over his body with her hands. It reminded me of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Shows you'd catch on TV before immediately turning them off. I always wondered what those judges were feeling for anyway. What did it have to do with winning or losing?

“He's filling out terrific,” she said. “I think he's definitely
one of those chic breeding experiments. Everything for a buck, right? But sure makes him a stud. He is a beautiful creature.” I looked down at Androcles, and he was sitting as straight as a china doll. He liked the compliments. And he liked Phyllis, too.

Phyllis became businesslike, yanked herself up, and said, “May I see you do your commands now, Carleen—as far as you've gone? But first, is he house trained?”

“Completely.”

“Fine,” she said. “Now proceed.”

“Showtime,” I whispered again. I hoped she didn't hear. Buff lay prone as I told him to. He sat. He offered a paw. We walked a complete circle together. He came as called. Walked toward me with civility. Ran with athleticism. Stopped dead on command. Rolled over on his back. Walked gently toward Phyllis and sat beside her staring straight ahead. Phyllis was checking boxes on a form and watching straight-faced and studiously. I called him back and he lay at my feet.

“You may release him,” Phyllis said.

“Righteous Androcles, righteous hero,” I mumbled under my breath, and he leaped up as if he were a dolphin careening out of a pool. He darted around the space and raced through my legs. I took out his ball, and he did his best to retrieve it, though for some reason he'd gotten it into his head that he could catch it with his paws. He missed and rolled over. Panting, he zoomed over to me, and I scratched him behind his ears and on his neck as objectively as I possibly could. I let him drink from his water bowl, and had a notion of what was coming next.

“Now, if I may take him through his commands,” Phyllis said.

“Showtime,” I whispered again, pretending to fix his collar.

Phyllis worked with him for quite a while, calling him Buff
the whole time. I could see her skill and ease, and she was very strict in a sweet way. She did commands in changing orders and held him longer in positions. She praised him after every correct action and corrected certain positions when he sat and lay down. I watched and realized he was a handsome dog. He might even grow to be uniquely stunning. He had his own stripes of reds and browns. He'd have great posture, but not at all elegant and prissy.

“Go to Carleen,” I heard Phyllis say, and obliging, but a little too eagerly, he headed in my direction. “You can release him,” she said.

I knelt down as if to pat and scratch him and whispered, “Righteous Androcles, righteous hero—but chill.” He licked my face, stood up, shook himself out, and his tail went batshit. He pranced up to Phyllis and rubbed against her, and the woman plopped herself down and sat with him, put her arms around his neck, tickled his ears, rolled with him, laughed, and pulled a strip of something that looked like beef jerky from her pocket and fed it to him bit by bit. Androcles was stoned. I'd never given him a treat before.

“Now you sit, Buff, and let your Aunt Phyllis get herself up.”

I held my breath, but Androcles sat attentively, still in wonder from the treat.

“I might need a crane,” she joked to me.

I took her arms and, like a Russian Olympic weight lifter, I pulled her to her feet. We both almost lost our balance, and Androcles, who'd been watching this Three Stooges event, let out two barks praising us both for our hard work. I knew I should quit anthropomorphizing him, but he often surprised me with his instincts.

I led Phyllis to a bench nearby, worried about what was next. Androcles followed behind, carefree.

“No, sweetie,” Phyllis started. “He must always lead.” She
snapped her fingers a certain way and made some clicking sounds, and Androcles immediately picked up his speed and walked just about two paces ahead of us. I was impressed with this woman. I had cheated her as I cheated everyone else, but she was still the boss.