Other People's Pets

by R. L. Maizes

  “They’re right here.” La La glances at them, reassuring herself.

  “Then who did you find?” Full of concern, his voice calms her.

  “My mother, only she isn’t.”

  A car honks. “Start from the beginning.”

  While she tells him about Elissa, she scrolls through e-mails, looking for the ones she thought were from her mother, forgetting she deleted them. “She didn’t know my real name,” La La says, ashamed to have been duped.

  “I’m sorry.”

  La La swipes through photos until she comes to one of her and Clem, taken by the manager of the restaurant the night they got engaged. In it, she holds out her hand, showing off the ring, which she wears now, too. “I sent her money.”

  “I guess I shouldn’t ask where you got it, right?”

  “That’s all you care about.” Moonlight illuminates bird droppings on her window.

  “Not all.”

  Through the phone, La La hears a door open and a woman’s voice. “Everything okay?”

  “Be back in a minute,” Clem says.

  La La’s finger hovers over the trash can icon. “You’re with someone.” It hasn’t been even two months since they broke up. Had their engagement meant so little to him? She deletes the photo.

  “I can talk.”

  “I shouldn’t have called.”

  “I’m glad you did. We’re friends, aren’t we?”

  The last thing she wants is to be Clem’s friend.

  * * *

  Afraid she’s forgetting much of what she once knew, La La reviews one of her third-year textbooks. She heard from O’Bannon that there was no change in Claude Thomas’s condition, and that he didn’t know how long the family would wait before making some decisions. That was how he put it, as if they were deciding what to have for lunch or where to go on vacation, rather than to end the old man’s—and for all purposes Zev’s—life.

  “It’s immoral!” Zev had said when they talked about it. “Give the guy a chance to get better. What’s the big hurry? The son must want his inheritance, greedy bastard.”

  La La didn’t argue. If Zev were in a coma, she’d never make that kind of decision, not as long as there was a chance he’d recover.

  A knock startles her. Rising from the couch, she glances through a window and sees Dr. Bergman. Her car is in the driveway, and lights blaze in the house. There’s no use trying to pretend she’s not home.

  “You had me worried,” he says, after she opens the door. He looks around, his gaze lingering on the peeling paint and the stained carpet. His mouth hangs open for a moment before he speaks again. “I went to your old place when you didn’t return my calls. They gave me this address.” Taking off his scarf, he kneads it, his lips pursed, his face not the optimistic one she knows.

  “Things have been crazy. My father got arrested.”

  He doesn’t look surprised. “Sorry to hear that.”

  “I had to leave school to work and pay his attorney fees.” She stands at the door, reluctant to take his hat and coat or to offer him something warm to drink, actions that would prolong his stay and encourage questions she’d rather not answer.

  “So close to graduating. What a shame.” He shows himself in and stuffs his scarf in the pocket of his coat, which he throws over the back of the armchair.

  “I’ll go back when things get settled.” La La grabs a dirty plate and glass from the dining room table and carries them into the kitchen, setting them on the counter because the sink is full.

  “Of course you will,” he calls to her. “You should have contacted me,” he says, when she returns to the room. He lowers himself into the chair. “I can always use another vet tech, especially one who’s almost a veterinarian.”

  “I got a job.”

  “Good, good. Where are you working?”

  She hesitates before answering. “It’s kind of a mobile vet position.”

  “Oh yeah? I thought most of those were one-person outfits. Which one is it?”

  La La thinks back three months to the last time she talked to Dr. Bergman. Ronald, he told her to call him. They discussed a new heartworm prevention medicine. The conversation they’re having now would have been unimaginable then.

  “Is it Dr. Larsen?” he says. “I remember when he was just getting started. Good man.”

  “No one you know.”

  He looks around, taking in the decrepitude of her new place again. “Where are Clem and the dogs?”

  At the mention of Clem, her shoulders sink. She turns her engagement ring around, concealing the stone.

  “Oh, no.” Standing, he pulls her into his arms, and she buries her face in his misbuttoned shirt. “What happened?”

  She extracts herself from his embrace. “We had a fight.”

  “About what?”

  “He didn’t want me to drop out of school. But I needed to earn money. A lot of money. My father’s lawyer charges a fortune.”

  “Please tell me you’re not—”

  “I don’t have a choice.” She turns away from him, noticing a brown stain on the wall, food or perhaps more sinister stuff.

  “I was afraid something was wrong when I couldn’t get ahold of you.”

  “I’m helping animals. In every house.”

  “That isn’t the way to help animals.” He takes out a handkerchief and wipes his neck. “My daughter’s apartment was burglarized last year. It was her first time living alone. She couldn’t sleep afterward even though we put in a security system. She can’t bear to touch the clothing that was ransacked. She broke the lease and moved back home but still thinks she hears someone prying open her window every night. I just don’t think you’re considering the pain you might be inflicting.”

  “I don’t rob apartments.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “If Zev goes to prison, I’ll have no one.”

  “That isn’t true, but even if it were…” He hesitates. “Humans are animals, too.”

  When he starts to put on his coat, she tries to help, but he shrugs her off.

  “I really am helping animals.”

  “I know you think so,” he says, and then he’s gone.

  10

  SPRING 2016

  “The family disconnected Claude Thomas’s life support yesterday morning,” O’Bannon says. “He died two hours later. The DA is charging Zev with felony murder.”

  In her mind, La La ticks off pharmacological and behavioral treatments for canine separation anxiety, until her pulse slows. O’Bannon warned her and Zev this was a possibility, but she never really let herself believe it. “What happens next?”

  “We talk to the DA. Argue the family’s action in terminating life support is what caused the death, not the burglary. Our experts will maintain that it’s unclear whether the fright during the burglary even triggered the stroke. It won’t be cheap. It’s a stretch to use the felony murder rule when someone dies months after the crime, but since the initial injury happened during the burglary, I can’t guarantee anything.” The lawyer taps the edge of a file, perhaps her father’s, but he doesn’t bother opening it.

  La La slides a wad of cash across the desk. “Don’t give up on him.”

  “I’m not, but I don’t want to give you false hope, either.” O’Bannon counts the money. “I hope you go back to school when this is over. I’d hate to see you as a client.”

  “Just keep Zev out of prison.”

  * * *

  La La finds Zev in bed, lying on top of the covers, the shades in the bedroom drawn. As she approaches, he opens his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  He closes his eyes again. “They’re really coming after me now. Just a small-time thief. You’d think they’d have worse criminals to worry about.”

  “O’Bannon’s a good lawyer.” Mo hops on a dresser and La La scratches behind her ears.

  “It won’t matter. When they’re out to get you, they get you. Especially if you’re a nobody. T
hey make an example out of you because who’s to stop them?”

  “O’Bannon has a strategy.”

  Zev rolls onto his side, facing the darkened window, his back to La La. “You’ll be glad to get rid of me. I was a lousy father when you were growing up, and now I’m a burden. You’ll be better off with me in prison.”

  “Don’t say that.” La La wonders if he’ll try to run. The ankle monitor would be an obstacle, but perhaps not an impossible one. Not for him. Because she might lose him, La La’s desire for her mother presses with renewed urgency. Elissa wasn’t the best mother, but she’s the only one La La has. She wishes Zev would get out of bed, dust or polish something. “Don’t you ever wonder where Elissa is?”

  Zev jerks his head back toward La La. “Why are we talking about her?” he shouts. “I’m the one who just got terrible news.”

  La La’s done everything she can, but it’s not enough.

  * * *

  When she leaves, La La calls Nat but gets voice mail. Though she knows she’ll regret it, she texts Clem about the developments in Zev’s case, her fingers heavy as she types.

  You can come over if you want, he replies.

  It’s his week with the dogs, and as she steps into his house, Blue hops to greet her. Black spins a single, slow circle before thumping down at her feet. She sits next to them and rubs Black’s chin and scratches Blue’s belly. She isn’t sure who she needed to see more, Clem or the dogs.

  “I’m sorry about your dad,” Clem says, standing over her. “Are you finished robbing houses now?”

  “Zev needs his lawyer even more now. He may go to prison, but I have to support him until he does.”

  As Clem turns away, he scoops a bone from the floor. Sitting in an armchair, he drums it against his knee. “People manage without stealing.”

  La La doesn’t want to get into an argument, especially not one they’ve already had. The engagement ring nestles in her pocket, and she rubs the band. It’s the first time she’s seeing his place. He never invites her inside when she delivers the dogs. A black leather armchair and matching couch are new, and so is a flat-screen TV that takes up half a wall. Images of Jonas Salk, Louis Pasteur, and Hippocrates stare grimly from hospital-blue walls. Dog beds checker two corners of the room. In a third corner, a rolled-up yoga mat leans against the wall. Alongside a pile of chiropractic texts on a shelf, a photograph shows Clem standing next to the dogs at a reservoir southwest of town. A larger reservoir than the one where she and Nat regularly walk. But who took the picture? Clenching her jaw, La La lowers her forehead to Black’s flank. “Place looks nice,” she says. Could the day get any worse?

  “I was depressed after we broke up. Decorating cheered me up. And when I bring someone here, I want it to look nice, you know?” He avoids La La’s eyes, looking around the room as if he, too, is seeing it for the first time.

  “Someone.”

  “Naomi, okay?” He smacks the bone against his palm, and the dogs regard him with concern.

  “I haven’t dated anyone.” Black taps La La’s hand. Well trained, she pets him.

  “You should. Find yourself a nice bank robber.”

  “I don’t remember you having a sense of humor,” La La says.

  “Pain will do that to you.”

  Blue snatches a plush skunk and carries it from the room.

  “What’s she like?” As soon as she asks the question, she realizes she doesn’t want to know the answer.

  “She’s a massage therapist. Volunteers at a women’s shelter on Saturdays, working on the residents. Pretty amazing, right? And she’s a real dog person. You’d like her.”

  La La pictures a woman with the head of a golden retriever, like in a YouTube video she once saw, the dog scarfing down food with a fork and knife. It’s spring. La La thought she and Clem would be back together by now. But instead he’s dating Naomi. “Great,” she says, yanking fibers from the wool carpet.

  “We like the same routines on the yoga channel.”

  “Since when do you do yoga?”

  “She’s teaching me. She says it’s about letting go. How perfect is it that we both make a living doing body work?”

  Perfect for Naomi. “Let’s take the dogs for a walk,” says La La, standing.

  “Why don’t you go? They’ll like that, and it will make you feel better.”

  “I guess your girlfriend wouldn’t like you hanging out with your ex-fiancée. Or maybe you haven’t told her about us.”

  La La means it as a joke, but Clem shrugs. “I told her we lived together. I didn’t get into the rest.”

  At the thought of their engagement being erased, she stiffens. “You can’t deny what we had.”

  Clem tosses the bone into the basket. “You need to return my grandmother’s ring.”

  “It’s at the house,” La La says, as she bends to leash Black.

  11

  Zev sits on a dining room chair and rests the ball of his foot on the edge of another. Knee bent, he can reach the ankle monitor easily. Earlier, he trapped Mo in her cage and lined up a #0 Phillips head screwdriver and his cell phone on the table. He’s investigated the monitor so thoroughly, he’s memorized it. The train waits on the track.

  Setting the timer on the phone to a minute, he lifts the screwdriver and looks toward the ceiling: “Help me out here. I’m one of your chosen people. We can’t all be heart surgeons, you know.”

  He pictures the order in which he’ll attack the monitor. While practicing, Zev never managed to take it apart and put it back together in less than sixty-two seconds. He’s counting on adrenaline and on knowing that if he fails he’ll go to prison to help him shave the last two seconds. A hearing on the DA’s request to raise his bail to $100,000 to reflect the murder charge is set for next week. When the bail bondsman won’t agree to cover the higher amount, they’ll lock Zev up. He can’t wait any longer.

  He starts the timer and turns the first screw. Working fast, but not so fast that he’ll drop the tool or a part, he disassembles the device, laying the pieces out in the correct order for reassembly. He’s got it off in thirty-three seconds. Putting it back together should be faster because he isn’t sitting with his leg raised, and he has 360-degree access to the monitor. But knowing time is bleeding away causes his hands to shake. All the times he practiced, his motions were fluid. Now that a mistake could cost him his freedom, he lurches from one step to the next. With three seconds left, a single screw remains. When he presses it to the device with the screwdriver, it leans away. As it’s about to fall, his hands tingle in a rush of nerves, and he gets a glimpse of his future: shivering in a prison yard, packed earth beneath his feet, a quorum of ill-intentioned men surrounding him. The vision passes. He adjusts the angle of the screw and is still tightening it when the timer goes off, but perhaps he’s done enough to reconstitute the fiberoptic beam.

  After depositing the ankle monitor into the open freight car, he plugs the power cord into the monitor’s jack, the other end already in the wall. A scaffolding he built from wire hangers and secured to the table suspends the cord above the train, allowing the cars to circle unimpeded. He throws the switch for the train and watches the whole neat package travel round three, four times before he’s satisfied it’s working.

  Clutching the cat carrier, the green duffel he packed that morning slung over his shoulder, his phone—battery removed—tucked away, Zev shuts the front door behind him. Mo yowls. Traveling with her will be hard, and La La will miss the cat, maybe more than she’ll miss him. But if he leaves Mo behind, he can’t be sure when she’ll be found, because he hasn’t told La La his plans. He’s spent eighteen years with Mo. Since Tiny died, she’s been his only companion. He raises the carrier to his face. “I’m not hot about going either.”

  The rosebushes scratch his cheek one last time. He’s in too much of a hurry to consider how he feels about abandoning the place he and Elissa called home. That will come later. Earlier in the week, he sold his car and van on eBay Motors f
or four thousand dollars. Together with a few hundred dollars in savings, it’s all the money he has. The day before, on a college rideshare site, he found the phone number of a student named Brian who was headed to Albuquerque, the first leg of Zev’s trip. The kid was glad to take him, as long as they split the gas.

  * * *

  Brian picks Zev up in front of a local coffee shop in an old gray Camry, its right signal light flickering unsteadily. Zev knows a burglar who was caught with stolen property because of a broken taillight. But finding a new ride would take time he doesn’t have.

  Brian is handsome in the way some young people are, a glow to his skin and the confidence to overcome a flaw. The gulf between his eyes could accommodate a grapefruit, but he doesn’t seem to know it. A red cap with a political slogan is clamped to his head, crushing short black curls. “You didn’t mention an animal,” he says when the cat moans.

  “You didn’t ask.” Zev tosses his duffel in the back and attempts to stack the jumbled, coffee-stained papers on the passenger seat, before giving up and shoving them into the glove box. Climbing into the car, he settles the cat carrier on his lap.

  The kid grips the steering wheel. “Is it going to cry the whole time?”

  Zev buckles his seat belt.

  “You ought to give it something to knock it out,” Brian says. He raises the volume on the radio, presumably to drown out Mo’s unhappiness.

  “If I had something, I might.”

  Pulling away from the curb, Brian cuts off a driver, who leans on his horn. “That cat is annoying.”

  “You’re a real animal lover.”

  “I like animals, all right. Ducks, deer, an elk if I can get one. Never shot a cat, although right now I wouldn’t be opposed.”

  Zev wraps his arms around the carrier. The radio is tuned to conservative talk radio, and the host is interviewing a candidate. All politicians—liberal or conservative—are crooked, but this one is a bigger blowhard than most.

  “You voting for this guy?” Brian says.