by R. L. Maizes
At four thirty, wearing a ball cap and sunglasses, he parks across the street from the Mesa Animal Shelter. He just wants to see her. Half an hour later, Elissa comes out of the building, leading a medium-size brindle mutt with the blocky head of a pit bull to her car. The auburn hair Zev loved has turned a harsh metallic gray. She walks with a stoop, as if looking for something she lost. “Come on, girl,” she says gently, when the animal sticks its nose in another dog’s pile. As Elissa focuses on her pet, the lines around her mouth relax. She opens a car door and buckles the dog into a canine seat belt. Observing the care she takes, the kindness she shows the animal, Zev has a desire to ram her with his car.
* * *
Three days go by before Zev gets another call. Taking garbage to the chute, a tenant locked himself out. The building is around the corner from Zev’s, the halls nicked and streaked from one too many moves, concrete exposed where floor tiles are missing.
The man sits cross-legged outside his door in wrinkled jeans, getting up when he sees Zev. “Thought I had the key in my pocket. Super said he couldn’t come by until tomorrow.”
Zev eyes the lock. He could pick it in less than a minute, but if he does, he can’t charge much. Though he feels bad for the guy, he has to feed himself. He goes through a series of metal picks, all the wrong ones. He works on it for twenty minutes before opening it. “You’re lucky I was able to do that without destroying the lock.”
“I appreciate it,” the tenant says, one foot in the apartment.
Zev taps a pick against his chin. “I could install a lock with a keypad. I have one in my vehicle. You’d never be locked out again.”
The guy regards Zev skeptically. “You sure my landlord would be okay with that?”
Zev isn’t sure. “You think he wants you bothering the super?”
“I might forget the combination.”
“It comes with a key, too.”
“I guess I’ll just stick with what I have.”
“I’ll take ten percent off the new lock,” Zev says.
The tenant looks back into his apartment. “What do I owe you?”
Zev struggles to think of a way to convince the guy. With business slow, he’s been eating toast for breakfast, macaroni for lunch, and skipping dinner altogether. He and Julia are supposed to go to a restaurant that night, but he can’t afford it. “This lock isn’t very secure.”
“Look, I appreciate you coming out so fast, but I’m not going to buy a new lock. And I have things to do. So—”
“Suit yourself.” He writes out a hefty bill.
The tenant disappears into the apartment and comes back with a checkbook.
Zev could call the bank to see if there’s enough money in the account to cover the check, but he doesn’t want to insult the guy. He knows where the tenant lives. He’ll get paid one way or another.
Back at his apartment, Zev clips a leash to Mo’s collar. La La always said the cat would live longer if she exercised. The trip to Phoenix aged Mo, who sleeps most of the day and misses the litter box half the time. Then Zev gets on his hands and knees to scrub the bathroom floor and the sides of the plastic box. She’s all he has left of his former life.
After years of keeping her in, it will be strange to take her out, and he worries how she’ll manage in the heat. The cat bites at the leash. She refuses to walk, and Zev drags her along the floor, but when she yowls, he stops. “You’ll like it,” he says. “Birds out there, other cats. Wouldn’t you like to meet another cat? Don’t you get lonely in here?” He tries to lead her out, but she won’t budge. Imagining what La La would do, he lays a trail of treats through the front door. Mo eats until she comes to the threshold and stops. Zev lifts her, intending to carry her out, but she claws his cheek and jumps from his hands. “Ow!”
In the end, they compromise. Zev leads her on a circuit of the small apartment: through the kitchen, across the living room, down the hall, to the window in the bedroom, and back to the kitchen, where she lies down. After he unclips the leash, she returns to the bed.
* * *
“I thought you don’t like to cook?” Julia says, when Zev calls to suggest they have dinner at his place.
“I’m turning over a new leaf.”
At the supermarket, he buys marked-down shoulder steaks, two Idaho potatoes, and premade salad. He can’t serve Julia a microwaved TV dinner, though he’d like to. He returns to the discount department store where he bought a single place setting and repeats the purchase, adding a plastic salad bowl and two steak knives.
When Julia comes to the door in a sleeveless blue dress and a silver necklace, Zev admires the way the dress falls without a single crease. In khaki shorts and a T-shirt, he’s the one who’s opted for casual this time. If there’s a proper way to dress around her, he hasn’t figured it out. Hugging him, she presses a bakery box and a chilled bottle of wine into his back. She’s warm from the brief walk over, and her mild, clean sweat mingles with the scent of her herbal shampoo. There’s something miraculously solid about her. When she isn’t around, Zev sometimes wonders if he’s imagined her. Afraid he’s becoming aroused, he extracts himself.
He takes the bakery box into the kitchen and opens it. Inside is a fruit torte. How did she know he would forget dessert? Compared to her tastefully decorated home, his apartment must look like a dump. The cheap furniture and clichéd posters, the sofa whose springs collapsed long ago and that smells like dirty socks no matter how much fabric freshener he sprays on it. Discovering his poverty, she’s bound to lose interest.
“I have extra throw pillows that would look great on your couch and a lamp I’m not using that would brighten up the room,” she says, joining him in the kitchen. “You’d be doing me a favor if you took them. They’re just taking up space in my storage unit.”
He isn’t a charity case. Or at least he wasn’t until he attempted to make an honest living. “Sorry if my place doesn’t live up to your standards.”
“That’s not what I said.” She turns away, and Zev knows it’s what she meant. “Corkscrew?” she asks, rummaging through the mostly empty kitchen drawers.
“Let me get that.” Zev opens the wine with a penknife, expertly he thinks, until Julia picks cork from the mouth of the bottle before pouring the wine into two water glasses he sets out.
Mo massages her face against Julia’s calf. Julia looks from the cat to Zev’s cheek. “Looks like she won that round.” Crouching, she runs her hand along Mo’s back. “You must be the assailant.”
“She was my daughter’s cat. I made her leave Mo with me when she went to college. That way, I knew my daughter would always come home. If not for me, then for Mo.” He spreads oil in a frying pan as the butcher at the market instructed.
“Funny name for a female cat.”
“Her name is Mother. My daughter named her right after my ex disappeared.”
“Sorry.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“Some losses you never get over,” Julia says.
“Me or my daughter?”
“You tell me.”
Another line she would have used with clients. After salting the steaks, Zev lays them in the pan. He shakes the salad into the plastic bowl. “Let’s talk about something else,” he says, plunking a bottle of store-brand dressing on the table.
“Next time I’ll bring some of my homemade Thousand Island.”
He should focus on the promise of “next time,” but he can’t. “What’s wrong with this?”
“When you have all day to cook, it’s easy to be a snob. I didn’t mean anything by it.” Julia sits at the table. “How’s locksmithing?”
“Slow.” Zev flips the steaks.
“It’s hard to start over in a new place.” When Mo hops into Julia’s lap, Julia gets the cat’s motor going, rubbing her chin.
“She likes you.”
“It’s mutual. How old is she?”
“Around eighteen. I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose her.”
/> “When you lose her.”
She’s right, but there’s no need to remind him. He refills their glasses. “We might as well eat.” As Julia lowers the cat to the floor, Zev serves them in silence.
Her jaw works overtime on the tough meat, and she slides a piece of wilted lettuce to the edge of her plate. He remembers their first meal, at the steak house. The tender porterhouse, the perfectly cooked vegetables. He’d like to take her there again. Erase the memory of this night.
“Paige said to thank you for the cards,” Julia says. “She’s been giving them out, so don’t be surprised if a bunch of divorcées call you. I think you already helped one of her husband’s clients, a woman named Sheila.”
“That was a good job. Nice woman. Tell your friends thank you.”
“They’re happy to have an honest person to send over.”
Grease congeals into gray blobs on his plate. “How about some of that torte you brought?” he says. “Just give me a minute to wash these plates.”
“You have only two plates?”
Zev squeezes soap onto a sponge. “I left everything back in Missouri. I wanted a fresh start. I picked up this cheap stuff while I look for a set I like.” Keeping his eyes on the dishes, he doesn’t see how his explanation is received. He half expects Julia to offer him a set of old plates.
After dessert, Zev gets out the broom. Julia and Mo bat the cork between them on the floor, while Zev sweeps around them and straightens the chairs.
When he’s finished cleaning up, they stroll through the neighborhood. It’s finally cooled down for the evening. She takes his hand, her fingers as soft as the polishing cloths he left behind in Colorado. Unlike his hands, which are calloused from working with metal and raw from cleaning. Blue-collar hands, unpleasant to hold. He waits for her to pull away, but she doesn’t.
Reaching a park, she tells him she sometimes spends hours on a bench just to hear the kids shriek, nostalgic for an earlier time in her life.
“I miss my daughter, too,” he says, careful, as always, not to mention La La’s name or to give away anything from his prior life that could tie Roger Cohen to Zev Fine.
In front of her house, Julia invites him in for a drink. He wonders if she means sex. More likely she’s just being polite. In either case, he doesn’t trust his body not to betray him, failing to perform, if sex is what she wants, or getting aroused, if a drink is all she has in mind. It’s been so long. “Maybe another time.”
“Of course,” she says, spots coloring her cheeks.
It wasn’t his intention to embarrass her. “Why not?” he says. “It’s early.”
As soon as she opens the door, the dog straddles his tennis shoe. “Dee-Dee!” Julia snatches the Chihuahua, but not before a stream of urine hits his sneaker. “I’m so sorry! She’ll get used to you eventually.”
He takes off the sneaker, runs water over it in the kitchen sink, then sets it outside to dry. When he returns, Julia pours two glasses of port. Standing in his socks, Zev wishes for a stronger drink. They sit on the couch, and Julia slips off her shoes and tucks her legs beneath her. She leans over and presses her mouth to his, and he tastes lipstick, burnt meat, and the floury torte. To discourage his erection, he thinks of the javelina and of jail. He wonders when she’ll realize she can do better.
She seems content to kiss. Zev is relieved, unsure whether he would know what to do anymore in the bedroom. How to satisfy her. Surely things have changed over the years.
It’s past eleven when he gets home. Sitting on his bed, he searches the Internet on his phone for Louise Fine in Colorado and is relieved not to find any recent burglaries linked to La La.
* * *
Over the next few weeks, Zev’s phone begins to ring. There’s poetic justice in lawyers, on whom he spent a fortune, helping him get back on his feet. New customers learn about him through word of mouth, too. They schedule daytime appointments, in advance, hiring him to rekey entire houses, to install window locks and security cameras. He hooks up electronic home safety devices that can be monitored on smartphones.
Mindful of the professionals who refer him, Zev is prompt and begins to bill fairly. There’s still the matter of the extra keys. He cuts one at each job, hoping never to have to use them, and he hasn’t yet. So what’s the harm?
When he worked as a burglar, he ground his teeth while he slept, and the slightest noise woke him. Now, he sleeps soundly. If he’d made this change decades before, would he still be with Elissa? Though it doesn’t answer his question, he parks outside the shelter regularly to watch her come and go. Maybe he hopes she’ll recognize him, despite his aged appearance, the cap, and the glasses.
He and Julia visit the Phoenix Art Museum. As they stand before a Picasso, Zev scoffs.
“Cubists look at a subject from a variety of perspectives,” Julia says.
It makes so much sense, Zev feels as if he’s been hit on the head with one of the compositional blocks. “That’s what I do when I pick locks.”
Julia nods, but he doesn’t know if she’s humoring him.
Whenever they go to the movies, Zev has Julia select the film. “What did you think?” he says, as soon as the credits roll. He waits to share his view, which is always remarkably close to hers.
At restaurants, they try different cocktails—the Snowball, the Basilico, the Red Velvet Shortcake—taking a taxi home if both drink too much to drive. It isn’t unusual for them to end up in Julia’s bed.
As they linger naked one evening, king-size sheets at their feet, Dee-Dee hops onto the bed. Zev expects to be showered, but the dog licks his toes, instead.
“I told you. She just needed time.” Julia carries Dee-Dee out of the room. “We could use a little privacy,” she says to the dog, closing the door.
Zev circles Julia’s navel with a finger he scrubbed and anointed with lotion earlier that day. He traces a triangle connecting her belly and hipbones. Goose bumps rise on her flesh, which is a mix of suppleness and stretch marks. He’s still astonished she will have him. He doesn’t discount the role loneliness plays. He understands it as only another aging, single person can. But there are other men she could choose, wealthier, more attractive men who can cook a steak without turning it to leather. The knowledge makes him tender and attentive, sacrificing his own pleasure to hers.
On a Sunday, Julia drives them to Mount Lemmon, where it’s twenty degrees cooler. They walk on trails surrounded by ever-greens that remind Zev of Colorado, pine needles under their feet. “I never liked nature much,” Zev says. “Too messy.” They’re out of range of his cell phone, but Zev doesn’t worry about missing a job, confident there will be others in its place.
“There are worse things than messy,” Julia says, brushing a needle from his hair.
It depends what you mean by messy, Zev thinks.
On the way home, they stop at a restaurant that has fondue. Though the fad is over, Zev has never tried it. He’s enjoying it, until cheese drips onto his shirt. With his napkin, he wipes furiously at the stain, until Julia grabs his hand. She orders a glass of sparkling water and dips her napkin in, then dabs at his shirt.
“You’re amazing!” Zev says, as the oil comes out.
“That’s what makes me amazing? Getting a stain out of your shirt? Not the sex or managing to teach you salsa? If I didn’t know what a freak you are about cleaning, I’d think you were a real chauvinist.”
“But you do know.” Zev laughs, never so happy to be understood, and soon Julia is laughing, too, until tears roll down their cheeks.
“You’re going to make me pee,” she says, her chest quaking.
Later in the week, they attend a classical concert. Zev worked the night before and falls asleep as soon as the lights dim.
When Julia nudges his arm, he wakes. “You’re snoring,” she whispers.
It takes a minute to figure out where he is and with whom, but when he does, he clutches her hand and kisses each finger. How strange that just when he thought he’d lost e
verything—La La and the hope that Elissa would return to him—just when he resigned himself to a life of seclusion in Arizona, he met Julia and discovered there was love in front of him, not only behind. Even Elissa is back in his life, though she doesn’t know it.
After the concert, they go out for a drink, and Zev confides he’s worried about Mo. She’s sleeping more and losing weight.
“Animals slow down as they age,” says Julia. “But why don’t you take her to the vet?”
Zev makes an appointment with the doctor Mo sees for her arthritis, and the next week he brings the cat in. The clinic always reminds Zev of La La. In the waiting room, a young veterinarian returns a rabbit to its owners, the doctor’s eyes fixed on the animal even as he addresses the humans.
The vet does a geriatric cat exam, but doesn’t find anything new. She draws blood and tells Zev she’ll call with the results in a few days.
In his apartment, Zev releases Mo from the carrier. Later, when Julia knocks, he invites her in and offers to make tea. He’s bought a full set of dishes and a kettle since she was over for dinner. As they wait for the water to boil, Zev gets a call and takes it in the bedroom.
It’s a developer wanting him to install locks in an entire building. He’s still on the phone when the kettle whistles, but he lets Julia get it. With the money from the job, he can hire another locksmith to handle emergency calls at night. After he hangs up, he looks out the window and imagines a fleet of Safety Lock and Key vans. He pictures himself living in a house like Julia’s or one that’s nicer, with her. He’s been given a second chance, one more than most people get.
20
It’s a Friday night in early June, and another endless weekend stretches before La La. She has no plans. As she sets a plate on the kitchen table, it clatters, echoing through the house. She longs for the dogs’ company but won’t see them until Monday.