Zigzagging Down a Wild Trail (8 page)

Andrew kept assuring her that the important thing was to keep an open mind. So she reported the times people were tardy; petty complaints and moods; the bartender's mournful commentaries about his wayward daughter. She had to be sharp. Every moment should be like this, she thought, surging inside with a sort of lust for something filling and indefinable—life. The feeling was a little goofy, she thought, so she didn't tell Andrew. And she didn't report Wes's jokes, or the way he smiled when he saw her coming toward him as if he were startled by a pleasant memory. She didn't mention the insect bites on his neck—he had been camping in Oconee National Forest and got drenched in a storm. Annie was struck by such a desire to go camping that she found herself digging into the lawyer's closets for a look at his camping gear.

Comments she overheard among the staff:

“She was water-skiing and her bladder fell out.”

“Chicken is on all the diets. It must be low in everything.”

“I'm going to get my hide tacked to the wall if I don't get home early.”

“Mom always puts my clothes in the destruct cycle of the dryer and they come out doll clothes.”

“Did you know you can make lip gloss in a microwave? Mix lipstick with petroleum jelly and zap it on high.”

Was there a clue? Something she was missing?

Her weekends were Mondays and Tuesdays. On Monday, she awoke with the five-o'clock boom somewhere in the building, then drifted back into a vague sunlit sleep. She dreamed about Scott, his image as clear as a long-distance voice on the telephone when one says in surprise, “You sound like you're in the next room.” Scott had long skinny arms and a face like a terrier, with brown-and-white mottled fur. In the dream it was called pinto fur. She began to wake up. He would have been waiting for her last night, she thought, working out her story about the weekend to tell Wes and the others. While she was out shopping he would catch up on some of his paperwork—on his little laptop in her living room—and then they would go see about getting her a dog. Scott didn't like dogs, though.

Now it was ten o'clock, and the radio was yammering away at her. The Rolling Stones update. “Only days away . . . Build a box . . . Your little home away from home . . . Bring it to our studio and be one of three lucky ones whose boxes are chosen . . . The only rule is you cannot get out for twenty-four hours, so you figure out what luxuries and conveniences you want in your little mini-condo there. Ha ha. Come on, you Georgia peaches out there! The Stones are rolling into Atlanta pretty real soon!” The song “Mixed Emotions” drove her fully awake. She felt something urgent calling her from deep within, like a creature who had fallen into a cistern.

The telephone was ringing.

“Annie? It's Wes. Did I wake you up?”

“That's O.K.” She turned down the radio.

“Hey, I've got an extra pair of Stones tickets for you. I promised them to my little cousins, Barb and Jan, but now their mama won't let them come all the way from Alabama. They're seventy-five apiece, and you can have them at cost. I wouldn't try to scalp you.”

“Oh, I don't know if Scott can go.” She felt how sharp she was to remember Scott so quickly, on the spot.

“When can you find out?”

“Oh, I want to go anyway. I'd love to go.”

“What about the other ticket?”

“I'll buy both of them,” Annie said quickly. “If he can't go, I have an old college friend in Chattanooga. I'm sure Tina would give anything to go.”

“The seats are up on the third tier but straight across from the stage. They should be great.”

“Thanks, Scott. This is wonderful.”

“Scott? You called me Scott,” Wes said.

“Oh, I'm sorry, Wes. I'm really sorry.”

“Annie, I know you don't know me very well, but I've got a feeling about you.”

“What's that?” She grabbed the edge of her pillow, rubbing the material together. The edges of the lawyer's pillowcase were embroidered with little blue chickens.

Wes said, “I guess you think I'm too forward, but when I moved to Atlanta, I met so many people who were wrapped up in themselves, they couldn't bother to be considerate, so I vowed I'd be friendly and helpful to others like myself who came here from out of town.”

“I really appreciate that, Wes. You've been real nice to me.”

“What are you and Scott doing today?”

“Oh, I have to look for an apartment.” Andrew had told her to say she was looking for an apartment, so she would sound permanent.

“Well, let me know if I can help you out. And I'll give you those tickets Wednesday at work.”

“Thanks, Wes. Talk to you later.”

She threw a chicken-trimmed pillow at the wall, wishing she had invented a different excuse for settling in Atlanta—an institutionalized mother would have been good. Was there a Betty Ford branch on the East Coast?

At the animal shelter that afternoon, Annie chose the first dog she saw, a young shepherd mix. When the dog's gaze caught her eyes, he seemed to recognize her, and she didn't know how she could reject a dog she had communicated with that way. When she offered him her hand, he sniffed it shyly. His black-tipped ruff was sensuous and thick, like a heavy rug. Out on the street, pulling on the leash she had brought, he carried his tail in a way that made her think of Mick Jagger prancing across the stage.

“Come on, Mick,” she said. “It's you and me now.”

The dog jumped into her car without hesitation. His trust overwhelmed her. She remembered her father telling her about the Judas goat—a goat kept at a slaughterhouse to trick sheep into entering the killing room.

“I won't betray you,” she said to the dog soothingly. She hadn't realized how much she had missed having a dog.

She thought Mick would be immense when he was fully grown. He smelled bad. He sat on his haunches in the back seat, drooling on the cushion. When large trucks passed, he jerked his head around and snapped at the window. Annie drove around the edges of the city, counting the times she saw the word “Peach.” She loved to drive. She realized she was talking excitedly to the dog about things the dog didn't understand. She actually said to him, “Atlanta is the home of
Gone with the Wind.
” And “Beware of religions that have water slides”—a bumper sticker she saw.

He behaved better in the car than in the condo. He explored restlessly, then hid for two hours under the bed. He ripped up an ancient copy of
Time
with the ayatollah on the cover. He wolfed down anything she offered him—kibble, canned turkey, bits of fish from a frozen diet dinner. She gave him a chocolate-chip cookie, then remembered something she had read about chocolate being fatal to dogs. She wasn't sure. Outside, Mick explored the small yard, digging under a bush and anointing the azaleas. He barked at all the cars entering and leaving the parking lot. Sometimes he seemed to be meditating, sitting upright and motionless with his eyes closed.

At midnight Annie shared a couple of boiled eggs with Mick, and they watched Bette Davis in
The Great Lie.
Annie wished Wes would call back. She imagined telling him Scott had drowned. Or joined the Air Force. Tumbleweeds of dog hair had drifted up against the baseboards in the hall. She wondered if Clayton Scoville was allergic to dogs. She tried to imagine the lawyer. A handsome, unattached guy rolling recklessly down the Zambezi in a bright yellow raft with a rollicking group of people—all pink-cheeked and footloose, flirting their way through the tentside gourmet meals prepared for them each evening. He was probably a jerk, she thought.

During the night she heard Mick's toenails on the parquet of the foyer, then heard him scratching at the carpet, probably at the spot he had sniffed persistently since his arrival. His senses were so different from hers, his perceptions total mysteries to her. She could look at the dog and the moisture dotting the sponge of his nose like fresh rain and then feel a kind of pleasure she hadn't felt since high school. In the morning she called her father with the news about the dog. “Now you're cooking,” he said.

At work on Wednesday, Annie paid Wes a hundred and fifty dollars for the Rolling Stones tickets, even though he protested that she didn't have to buy both of them. Actually, she intended to bill Andrew for Scott's ticket. It was only fair, she thought.

During the evening she observed Wes's calm efficiency while directing the waiters, checking on supplies, absently stroking the sticky ficus as he made friendly small talk with the clientele. She saw him standing by the dish station in deep conversation with Theresa, who always split for the bus stop as soon as she was off, anxious to get home to her kids. Theresa's teenage boy had to appear in juvenile court on a shoplifting charge, and Wes listened sympathetically. Sometimes Annie thought Wes was a slick operator, and sometimes she thought he was as innocently sincere as one of those religious fanatics waiting for the Rapture—except that in his case the Rapture was the Stones concert. Which made it O.K., she thought, her heart pounding.

As they were closing up later, she impulsively invited him over to meet her dog.

“What if Scott catches us at your place?”

“He won't,” she said.

He followed her in his car. As she drove, she was aware of his lights in the rearview mirror, as if they were spotlights exposing her life. He whistled in admiration when they entered the condo. “I didn't know you were rich, Annie. Boy oh boy, will you marry me?”

“I couldn't afford this place even if I get to switch to cocktailing,” she said, laughing. “It's just temporary—a friend of a friend.”

Mick was barking. When she let him in through the kitchen, he leaped on her joyously, his nose cool against her cheek and his tail thumping the wall. But when Wes entered the kitchen, Mick backed into a corner, cowering.

“He shouldn't do that,” Wes said, with concern.

“He's kind of shy,” Annie explained. “He hides under the bed a lot.”

She gave Mick a scrap of steak she had brought from the restaurant, but she had to hold the molded-foam carry-out box of scraps high out of his reach. He leaped for it a couple of times. So she set it on top of the refrigerator. He circled the kitchen, his claws scraping the tile.

“He'll control you if you don't start training him,” Wes warned. “Giving him that scrap just encouraged his bad behavior.”

Annie bristled at Wes's schoolteacher tone. “Well, he likes me just fine,” she said, wrapping her arms around the dog. Mick nuzzled her hand and she stroked him gently.

“He could turn out to be a fear-biter,” said Wes.

“Do you want a Coke or something?” Annie said impatiently. “I don't have any beer and I don't drink anything hard.”

Mick was still jumping on her, so she fed him a bowl of dry food along with the remaining steak scraps. While eating, he growled and eyed Wes. Annie put Mick outside when he had finished.

“Do you want a boiled egg?' she asked Wes.

“No, thanks. A Coke's fine.” Wes was studying a bookshelf.

“I always have a Coke and a boiled egg after work. I don't know why. A habit, I guess.” She decided not to eat an egg in front of him. She scattered a bag of tortilla chips into a bowl and set it on the coffee table.

“I saw all these books about sports and thought there might be something about dogs,” Wes said.

“No. I already looked. The guy who owns this is real outdoorsy, but I don't think he's the type to tie himself down with a dog.”

To get Wes off the subject, Annie played a Stones tape and asked him about his family. They sat in the living room on the vast leather boomerang couch. He rotated his Coke glass on its coaster as he talked. He said, “I'm the middle child of five and the first one in my family ever to go to college. My brother's at Auburn now. We weren't poor, but we had to budget. Daddy works for the state, and Mama works at the J. C. Penney's at the new mall in my hometown? They're better off now than they ever were, but they don't know how to take it easy.” Wes settled comfortably into the leather and crunched a handful of chips. He continued, “Mama had a pretty hard time when she was growing up. She always said they were so poor they didn't pay attention.” He smiled and dug into the bowl again. “I never knew what she meant, but I guess it was her way of saying they didn't have time for anything but work. When she sent me off to college, there was this look on her face, like I was going to move into another world and turn my back on her. So now, even though I work in a fancy restaurant, I call her and Daddy twice a week. I always send birthday cards and Mother's Day and Father's Day cards. I'll never forget that look on her face.” He smiled. “It's funny what families go through, how involved it is.”

His voice was like cotton, clean and absorbent. Annie was aware of her dog barking, of the late hour, of the bump of the bass on the song that was playing. Wes kept talking. She didn't know what to say when he paused, signaling her turn at a confidence. She felt her way along slowly, talking vaguely about childhood feelings, her ambitions, her take on Atlanta (“like one of those World's Fairs”). She admired the way a slight curl on his hairline didn't want to conform to his precise, expensive-looking haircut. She heard a car pull in next door, then the storm of barking.

“Excuse me, I'd better do something.” Annie let Mick in carefully, holding his collar. Immediately, he hid behind the corner easy chair.

Wes stood up to go. “You know, Annie, they're saying at work that you're a spy from corporate,” he said, facing her.

“I don't know what to say,” she said, fumbling with the glasses and coasters. Heart in proverbial throat, she'd say to Andrew.

“I don't know if that's true, and I won't ask you, but generally speaking it's a pretty sad state of affairs when a company can't trust its own employees and has to send in outsiders to check up on them. It's like Russia.”