Stepdog

by Nicole Galland

  Got back to the hotel, had a shave and a shower. Barely recognized my face when it was shaved, it’d been so long. I took a long, long shower, maybe twenty minutes, and it made all the difference in the world, letting the warm water soak into my skin, relax my muscles. I breathed in the steam, scrubbed myself down with the washcloth. I had almost forgotten what it felt like to be clean and I was happily reinvigorated. Plus, it was great not to stink. I’d almost forgotten what it felt like not to stink. I balled up my bacon-ized clothes and shoved them into the plastic bag with the shirt that stank of moonshine. My laundry would be ten times more flammable by the time we reached Los Angeles. Maybe we could throw a housewarming party and use my clothes to send off fireworks.

  I took the dog for a walk around the narrow band of grass surrounding the hotel. She was almost hysterically in need of proper exercise, though, and there was no place to do that here. I led her back into the room, took off the leash, and then I leapt up onto the bed and bounced on it like a trampoline.

  “Up, Cody, up!” I ordered as I bounced, patting my thighs. She scrambled up onto the bed and tried to jump up on me. I grabbed her front legs, wrestled her down to the bed, threw the covers over her, and hopped off onto the floor, leaving her to fight her way out.

  Covered by the sheets and blankets, she circled blindly to the edge of the bed and tumbled off in a heap on the floor. She started fighting with the sheets, snarling—Cody, snarling! I’d never heard her snarl before!—although her tail, which was clear of the covers, was wagging wildly. She looked like a cheap science-fiction effect. I got such a fit of the giggles. Her head finally popped out from under the blanket—and it was as if she saw me laughing and got embarrassed, because she jumped up, ran to me, and literally slammed me, shedding dog hair all over me.

  “Cody! You’re getting aggressive!” I said, cracking up. “I needed that, thanks, Cody! Let’s do it again!” I got back on the bed and started bouncing. She fell for it a second time. And then a third! My stomach hurt from the laughing. We kept it up until somebody in the next room pounded on the walls.

  It was great crack. Most fun I’d ever had with her.

  SARA HAD ALREADY sent me the Oklahoma City hotel’s address for tonight, and I knew she’d check in once she was up. It was going to be an easy enough driving day, about eight hours with rest stops. And as long as the slog ahead of me was, I took comfort knowing that wanker was way off my trail.

  Feeling calmer and more in control of my life, I regretted having missed Nashville. Jamming with Alex had been a blast, actually, and gave me a new appreciation of American music—the original, homegrown stuff—and Tennessee seemed the perfect place to get immersed in a scene. Under other circumstances, I’d have stopped in every little hamlet along the way, sussed out the chance for a few tunes. Ah, well. Anyhow, it didn’t really work like that here (like it did in Ireland). Here people flocked to central points—Nashville, Memphis. And even though here I was in Memphis, I could not take time to make the pilgrimages I’d liked to have—Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson. Not my music, in fairness, but I’d pay homage to any really great musical legend, given the chance.

  In the car, I asked the GPS lady if she could take me to Oklahoma City without getting me lost. She didn’t answer, but I had no choice but trusting her. Somehow she got confused while trying to get on to Highway 55 going out of the city, so I found myself going south when I should have been going north. Bollocks! Please don’t start this shite again!

  I figured out how to solve the problem faster than the GPS did—which obviously wasn’t saying much, given what a shite piece of technology it was—and exited the freeway pronto and then back onto a surface street. The GPS lady finally caught up, chimed in at last, and told me to turn right on a Highway 51. We were in that industrial-urban sprawl you find outside any major city, where you go for car dealerships and self-storage units. Over to the left I saw . . . no way: the Elvis Presley Boulevard Shopping Center?

  “That’s . . . that’s awful,” I said to Cody. “What do you think, Cody?”

  She didn’t give a flying fuck, of course.

  Beyond the shopping center, bizarrely, I saw some grounded planes—their tail fins and dolphin-slick backs were visible over a high cement wall. I couldn’t make any sense of this, until a few hundred yards beyond that, set slightly back from the road and looking like an overwrought marquee for a Greek restaurant, the mother of all Memphis signs:

  “GRACELAND.”

  “No way,” I said. “Cody, look at that!”

  If you’ve ever so much as heard of the United States of America, you can’t drive past Graceland without at least rubbernecking. It may have been mega-tacky (let me clarify: it is mega-tacky) but he was the King.

  I was on the wrong side of the road, and anyhow I could see no trees in the parking lot and the day was far too warm to leave her in the car. “So once again, Cody,” I said. “You’re wrecking my buzz. I might as well get used to it, I s’pose. As long as you’re around, the story of my life will be that you’ll trump me with Sara every time. And it’s Graceland. Do you understand? Do you understand what you are depriving me of, you little—”

  Then I saw a white SUV about five cars behind me, and even though I knew it couldn’t be Jonny Bald-head, a feeling of dread shook me, came out the bottom of my foot as I accelerated right past Mecca.

  (By the way: Presley? Good ol’ Irish name.)

  THE GPS GOT me back on track. We crossed the Mississippi River—an iconic American Thing that was deeply underwhelming, since there was so much industrial hardware making up the bridge that I couldn’t see the water. Who built that thing? A bridge with a view is half the reason to have a bridge. In my mind, it should have looked like the Whitefield picture, the one I’d played waltzes in front of for the tours at the museum back in Boston. Maybe these days people liked to jump off it or something, but Jesus, all cars were inoculated against having even visual access to it. What a shame to block a view like that!

  On the other side of the Mississippi was the state of Arkansas, all of which I’d need to cross before getting to Oklahoma. After yesterday’s drive this would be a breeze. I should make plans to stop for lunch, though. Maybe Little Rock? One of Sara’s texts had said I’d be driving right by Little Rock. (I wondered how little. Would I see it?)

  The river basin spread out to the west, flat and a lush dark brown. There were lots of broad fields, mostly green, although some still grey-brown from last year’s stubble. I tuned the radio to a local station just in time to hear a paranoid anti-immigration rant from a bloke who sounded like he was trying to raise his own blood pressure. He was claiming that ranchers had discovered Islamic prayer rugs on their ranches, which meant obviously the guys calling themselves Juan Valdez were actually Akbar Shah Khomeini.

  “Arkansas,” I said to Cody. “My kind of state.”

  But Pink Floyd was on the next station.

  “Arkansas,” I said to Cody. “It’s cool.”

  She agreed, tongue lolling contentedly out the side of her mouth.

  Actually, there was something about Arkansas that reminded me of the West Midlands in England, which I knew from early childhood. Maybe it was just the spitting rain that was starting, but also we passed vast fields of soil that was a deep, strange color, almost orange-maroon, a color I’d only ever seen before in Herefordshire. It was much warmer here, though—the dashboard thermometer read seventy-nine.

  We passed a “XXX Adult World Open 24 Hours” drive-in, and moments later, a large religious billboard. “Look at that, Cody,” I snickered. “Which came first? The Christian or the slag?”

  Cody yawned and climbed in back to lie down.

  “Cody, you’ve no sense of humor. Did Jay ever complain about that?” Jay! Wanker! He was too far behind me to even eat my dust! At least, I hoped.

  As we approached Little Rock, the traffic got sluggish, and I’d no idea where to look for grub in the city, so although it was lunchtime, I decided to keep drivi
ng through to the next town. I pulled over at a station to let Cody out, and refueled. The rain was coming down pretty hard now, but I didn’t mind getting wet because it was so wonderfully warm.

  We skirted Little Rock amidst a riotous sea of purple clover covering the highway shoulders. When I had the city in my rearview mirror, the sky exploded with rain, and a fog welled up with amazing speed—the outside temperature had plummeted about twenty degrees, according to the dashboard. The landscape was rolling into the first swell of some new mountain range, barely visible in the heavy mist. There was a little bit of red rock cropping out of the rise of hills to the right, and in the distance, seen fleetingly, were almost flat-topped ridges. “I wonder where we are. What do you think, Cody?”

  “Aux Arc Park,” announced a road sign that I could barely read through the bucketing rain.

  “Hey!” I said to Cody. “Aux Arc! I know the Ozarks!” There was a Thomas Hart Benton picture about the Ozarks at the Museum of Fine Arts, and I played “Cluck Ol’ Hen” in front of it. “Cody, do you know ‘Cluck Ol’ Hen’? Cluck ol’ hen, cluck and sing, you ain’t laid an egg since late last spring—well, the words are shite but it’s a great fiddle tune. Sounds just like a barnyard full of clucking hens.” I was oddly reassured by finding a familiar reference point in the middle of fucking nowhere. Back at the MFA, the Ozarks had seemed impossibly far away.

  Cody yawned.

  “Sorry to bore Your Ladyship,” I said. The rain was now so loud on the roof I had to shout. “I don’t understand what Jay sees in you, frankly, you’re dull. Speaking of that wanker, I wonder if he’s turned tail and gone home yet. I hope so.” No response. “Cody! Hey! Cody!” Instantly she was alert, scrambling eagerly onto the front seat, hopeful for attention, tail wagging cautiously. “You’re dull but you’re cute,” I amended. I reached down and got her a bully stick, chucked it in the back.

  The temperature had dropped to fifty.

  Before Cody had finished the bully stick, the temperature had dropped to forty-eight. The rain was falling like an enormous shower, impossible amounts of rain—and now it was cold rain.

  Suddenly a little musical alarm sounded and an icon blinked to life on the dash above the steering wheel. A tire, with an exclamation mark on top of it.

  “No!” I begged the car, smacking the dashboard. “No, don’t do this to me! Bollocks! Bollocks!” The rain was pelting the car so hard I did not even hear myself say this. I started kicking the floor of the driver’s side with the heel of my left foot, and banging on the console with my hand, scaring the dog again. I pulled over onto the shoulder and killed the engine—the sky was dark, the air was dark. It was midafternoon but it looked like twilight, that’s how fierce this deluge was. I riffled through the glove compartment for the owner’s guide, and checked the index to see what the icon meant.

  Flat tire.

  “Well, that’s wrong,” I informed Cody loudly. “It better be fucking wrong, at least.” The drop in temperature, combined with the higher altitude, must have meant lower air pressure, which confused the system into thinking the tires were going flat. Or something.

  I stared out the window at the cold rain. I didn’t want to go out in that. I just didn’t want to. Enough, already! But I’d feel like a right gobshite if there was a tire going flat and it did awful damage to the car. “Stay,” I told Cody. “Once I’m too wet to care, I’ll let you out to run around a bit.”

  Sara had preset an umbrella in the little holder on the side of my door. The rain was bucketing down. I was drenched in the microseconds between opening the door and opening the umbrella. Once outside, it was hard not to fumble—

  I pressed my hand against the front left tire. It was grand. Why did I even bother doing this? Now I would be saturated and drenched the rest of the way to Oklahoma! I didn’t want to put the heat on because that would fog up the inside of the windshield. I had never bothered to figure out the defogger on this stupid car.

  I started to get up. A gust of wind and rain slapped my hair into my eyes, the wind caught the umbrella and almost pried it loose; trying to hold on to it, I was pulled sideways and lost my balance. I grabbed for the car, and gripped my hand around the fender for balance.

  Inside the fender was something shaped like a small box.

  Another gust, and I let go of the umbrella, which went flying away into the squall. I dropped into a squat and grabbed the box. I was already guessing what it was, but I couldn’t believe it was really there. It really fucking was. Everything got dialed up a notch, because this sort of thing doesn’t happen in normal life:

  It was a tracker! It was a fucking tracking device. I ripped at it. It was stuck on like a magnet. With blood rising, I yanked it and it came away in my hand.

  Chapter 26

  What the fuck?!” I shouted into the rainy air. “This bloke is psycho! Am I in a fucking movie? Is this Breaking fucking Bad?” My face was drenched. Everything was drenched.

  I looked at the box in my hand. There were some lights, blinking, and other lights, not blinking. All mocking me. This was becoming just . . . surreal. It was mad enough that this bloke had turned out to be Sara’s dog-stealing ex, but this was going beyond the pale.

  With a rage I hadn’t felt since adolescence, I bounced it off the ground. I fucking danced on it, cursed at the top of my lungs. In my rage, I reduced it to shards.

  I stopped and stared at the ruins, completely spent and soaked to the skin.

  Then I thought—and screamed aloud—“What an eejit! Why did I do that?” I should have left it on the roadside, or put it on some other car at a rest stop, some car going into a completely different direction! Instead I’d smashed it to smithereens. Fuck and double fuck! I started shouting again. It was no longer transmitting, so he’d figure out that I’d discovered it. Talk about failing better and better!

  But . . . how could that devious bastard have put the tracker on my car? He hadn’t been near my car—I retraced every moment of the time in North Carolina. He hadn’t had a chance.

  Maybe it wasn’t him at all. Could it have been Alex? When I was drunk? Why, though?

  Maybe Sara did it herself. Keep tabs on me since I was too irresponsible to be trusted without oversight. Oh, for fuck’s sake, Rory, ease up, I thought.

  Alto! It was Alto! He was a double agent, working for Jay while pretending to be helping us. That little wanker!

  And then I remembered: when I dropped Cody off. Back in Boston. Jay had wanted to check out the MINI because he was nostalgic for his father’s. I bet that was a lie. Bet his father only ever owned American cars or something. I howled with frustration. And then I got back in the car, bringing gallons of water with me, and called Sara. I expected her to be as hysterical as I was but she seemed relatively calm.

  “. . . It actually shouldn’t be surprising,” she said. I could hardly hear her thorough the din of the rain, so she might have been more hysterical than I was giving her credit for. “Like you said, he put it there before he knew you’d get her back. Meaning he was just trying to track you while you were following him—so he’d know if you were gaining on him. I have to say one thing for him, when he makes a plan, he commits, he’s thorough.”

  I brushed away an irrational impulse to see this as a critical comparison of the two of us. “Well, now he’s probably been using it to follow me, so what should I do about it?” I said. “I’m headed straight for Oklahoma City; don’t you think I should divert, and then I’ll have lost him?”

  She said something I couldn’t make out above the artillery effect of the rain. “What?”

  “I said good idea!” she shouted. “I’m checking the route! Where are you?”

  “There’s a sign ahead for a place called Alma.”

  A pause. “Okay. Tulsa! Tulsa’s about an hour or so northeast of Oklahoma City. You’re just about due south of it now. Set the GPS for Tulsa and I’ll text you an address for a hotel in a few minutes. Okay? Can you hear me?”

  “Okay, thanks,�
� I said.

  “Drive safe in that rain!” she said.

  I was overwhelmed for a moment with a sense of relief, gratitude, even elation. No matter how lost or freaked out I felt, there was Sara. She was a little rigid, but she was always there, she always had a solution, she always made everything better. And she asked little in return. Except that I embrace her dog. I really was working on that.

  The worst of the rain passed, and minutes later, it felt like a scenic drive in Ireland. With the combined help of Sara’s advice and the GPS, I changed direction to head north, but could see almost nothing in the mist. Just enough to truly feel as if I were back in the British Isles. Despite the stress of the circumstances, it was nearly comforting. I expected to see a little pub rise out of the fog, where I might duck in for a pot of tea, homemade soup with soda bread and butter.

  I kept driving as evening gathered. And then . . . I’m not sure how this happened, but instantly—instantly—there was a city. Tulsa. It came out of nowhere. From the dark wet night to sudden civilization, marked by a Hard Rock Cafe and a casino-resort hotel, brightly lit billboards, and streetlights. It was dazzling. Jarring, but dazzling. A final cloudburst made all the neon signs look like a riot of dancing jewels.

  I turned up the GPS volume and let it guide me, first to a petrol station, and then to the hotel. Ah, yes. Welcome to Beige-ville. I walked into the beige lobby with the beige clerk in the beige uniform to get a key to my beige room, which opened onto the car park, which was not, thankfully, beige. The rain had stopped completely but now the cooled wind was whipping around. I let Cody out on a grass swath along the side of the building, but she mostly wanted to keep her nose down to take in all the smells from the rain.

  Ten minutes later: moved the car right in front of my room, got Cody and her gear inside with my rucksack, fed her, and was headed into the shower. Turned it on really hot to try to work out the knots in my shoulders and arms and back. I was waterlogged by the time I got out, it was great. Two long showers in one day! Life was improving!