I looked at my watch; I had time to kill. My head ached with the cold, and I wanted to find a place to sit for a moment and drink a cup of coffee. I needed to recoup my thoughts, for my mind felt burdened by too many concerns. Chief among them was the strange and terrible McTeal, who seemed to be crouching in some darkened nook, biding his time, waiting to spring on me. There had to be a reasonable way to handle this threat, yet ever since I’d learned from Claudia Jones that I’d disturbed the pervert’s fantasy world, I sensed myself delaying to come to any conclusions. Whenever this dilemma entered my mind, my thoughts would scramble around frantically, like startled mice in a cage, and then I would suddenly resolve to run away. Now that the actual crisis had manifested itself on the sidewalk, in a corduroy jacket and a green cap, I still had no viable solution. Perhaps I was planning to wait until he got closer, until he was finally hiding in my bedroom closet and listening for me to drift off to sleep. Although I was heading toward the boy, I would eventually have to go home, where it no longer seemed safe.
I passed an apartment with its windows lined with Christmas lights that were already turned on, shining and blinking in vibrant colors. Not only was it too early in the day for lights but also everything seemed too drab and cold for such a giddy display. Yet it subtly evoked a fresh train of thought, for I went rapidly from thinking of the imminent holiday season and all its trappings to Christmas carols; and then Claudia Jones was sitting on the milkcrate in the alley outside my window, humming “What Child Is This?” In the next instant, my image of her fragmented, and she was divided into all her particular parts, which randomly drifted along the edges of my mind—yet, before I was fully aware of what I was thinking, a small, hysterical yapping dog bounded out of a narrow side street and continued its frenzy on the sidewalk. A larger dog lingered slowly behind it. An imperceptible string seemed to connect the lowered nose of the larger dog to the tail end of the small one.
Alarmed, I stopped walking and fixed my attention on the animals.
They were about ten paces in front of me.
The small dog, an indeterminable mixture of breeds, didn’t seem to be barking randomly into the air, but actually at certain objects. It looked at the tire of a parked car and barked at it. Then the dog wheeled around and barked down the side street from which it had just emerged. Then it barked at the curb a few times. It turned and barked at the tire again. Its every movement was followed by the larger dog, some kind of gray-coated Husky which, bent at the waist, made awkward side steps and even circled around, always keeping its nose close to the other dog’s tail. Both of them were without collars and seemingly disease-ridden, for the hair of the mutt was clumped and tangled, and its underbelly was especially dirty from apparently having trailed through slush; the Husky was missing patches of hair, and large black growths, shaped like cauliflower, blossomed from its joints.
At the curb was an old stone post with a metal hoop on top, to which older generations of men used to tether their horses. For some reason, the small dog focused on this post and unleashed a savagery of abrupt yaps. Because the dogs appeared absorbed for the moment, I thought I had the opportunity to slip away unobserved. I wondered for an instant if I should retreat to the next street over or simply try to pass the dogs by crossing the road. Either way, my instinct was to get immediately out of their line of sight by stepping off the sidewalk and putting the row of parked cars between us.
The instant I took my eyes off the dogs and moved between the bumpers of two parked cars, the incessant yapping stopped. I stood in the road, beside the back fender of a car, completely unnerved by the sudden silence. I crouched down and looked through the windows, trying to locate the dogs. The tethering post was visible, but the beasts were no longer by it. I had no idea if my movement had distracted them or if it was something else and they were right now chasing after it. Afraid to budge in the slightest bit, I continued to look through the windows, but not seeing the stray dogs, I huddled closer to the car and decided to wait until I was certain that danger had passed. I wanted to hear the furious yapping again—but at great distance. I was half-hoping that some unfortunate pedestrian might casually wander upon the scene and fall prey to the full fury of the animals—for at least long enough for me to run away.
I waited, but everything was still.
My head throbbed with the pulse of blood as the flesh around my wound seemed to be spastically twitching. The car was champagne colored, and the gray breath that I was exhaling upon its fender made a faint patch of steam.
After a moment, once I began to collect myself and feel reasonably certain that the threat was over, I felt a slight pressure, barely perceptible, dimpling the back hem of my overcoat. All my muscles tensed. Then came the sound of nostrils inhaling, sniffing. The pressure became more real and tangible when a dog’s nose pressed against me, as if the animal wanted to burrow its snout into the cleft between my thighs.
I shrieked like a ten-year-old girl.
Making a sudden dash to get away, I tumbled against the side of the car and landed on my back, on the wet, slushy pavement. For the brief instant I lay there, both dogs gathered around and continued to sniff me. I quickly scrambled to my feet and backed away from the dogs.
“Yah. Yah!” I screamed and made some kind of shooing gesture with my hands. “Yah. Yah!” I repeated, as if I were herding livestock, such as pigs.
The dogs were standing in the center of the road, with their heads slightly cocked, inspecting me with a strange befuddled gaze.
“Yah!” I screamed and retreated another step backward. I was cautious not to run or to show fear because I believed this would have brought them pouncing down upon me.
The scraggly mutt’s ears perked up, and its wide black eyes blinked several times but remained fixed on me.
Still taking its cue from the small dog, the Husky didn’t move until the mutt first advanced. Before I knew how to react, they both walked up and started sniffing me again. I stood frozen as their noses nuzzled and moved over my legs and feet. I feared that if I made any gesture, their interest would take a violent turn. While the large dog seemed particularly preoccupied with the back of my knee, the small one abandoned me, walked to where I had crouched beside the car, and peed on the spot with one quick, short burst. Then it started to bark at the champagne colored car. This aroused the Husky, which straightaway left me to commence sniffing the mutt’s tail end.
I took a few steps backward and then slowly started to turn, to walk away, though still glancing over my shoulder to keep my eyes on them. The more distance I put between us, the faster I walked. I was beginning to feel more comfortable, and just as I started to take stock of my situation—in particular, that I had sprawled out on the fouled street and now the back of me was wet and dirty—all at once, the yapping ceased. I turned around to see the dogs trotting toward me.
“Yah. Yah!” I shouted.
I started to run, trusting that the distance between us gave me the chance to get away.
Without looking back, I ran, my heart thumping in my chest, my wound inflamed and twitching, the flat bottoms of my shoes clapping on the blacktop. Just behind me sounded a deep, solitary bark from the Husky. The horrible knowledge that the dogs were chasing me drove me to run faster. Fleeing wildly down the street, I recalled the sensation of pursuing my urban nymph, Celeste Wilcox, which was the last time I’d exerted myself, and how all the while I’d run after her, I’d dimly sensed in the back of my mind some obligation of a silly appointment. Soon, the Husky was running beside me. It circled around the front of me, only to reappear on my side again. The mutt kept pace, its tiny legs flickering at an incredible speed beneath its body, its head turned toward me, and the tip of its tongue hanging out of the corner of its mouth. When I slowed down to a walk, the dogs followed suit. My breathing was hard and painful. My face burned flush, and my underclothes were damp with perspiration. The dogs didn’t appear to be affected at all.
I continued to walk, trying to ignore them
, but they stayed with me. They occasionally moved in front of me, but always dropped back beside me again. I headed toward the curb, and then the three of us walked down the sidewalk together. When we passed people, they didn’t take any special notice of us. I suspected that pedestrians would have been cautious, if not fearful, of the dogs, if the animals weren’t walking so close to my heels. I briefly wished for my movie theatre flashlight again, not so much to signal my distress as to dazzle their vision, as if to say, “Can’t you see what is going on here? Can’t you see?” After a while, it seemed as though I were not so much leading the animals as I were a member of a motley pack.
Shortly, I came to the address that the social worker had given me, and it didn’t appear to be a clinic at all. It was a narrow building. Drab yellow stucco covered the walls of the ground floor, but brick, painted the same ugly color, went up the rest of the way for several stories. There was a single storefront window that displayed, on a series of carpeted plateaus, foam heads with long necks. All the heads lacked mouths, noses, and ears, and had slight impressions where eyes should have been. Most of them were a dark, rich color: green, purple, and black. One, however, was a disturbing pink. For some reason, it faced the wall, adorned with long, straight turquoise hair. In fact, all the heads had hair.
“A wig shop,” I said, looking down at the dogs, as if explaining to them.
Of course, this couldn’t have been the place.
But then, I saw where I had to go. There was a glass door. When I looked through it, I was able to read a list of names with room numbers posted on the wall. A staircase led upward, not only to the offices of family counselors but also to a law firm and a specialist who fitted people with hearing devices. Although I was uncertain how the system worked, I suspected that the tree-shaped woman must have given up working for the state and joined a private practice. If this were the case, then she’d somehow retained her treatment of the boy, who was supposed to be government property.
Without bothering to look at my watch, I knew I had time before my appointment. I abandoned the idea of sitting down and drinking a cup of coffee. I needed to find somewhere to dry myself off and clean up. Yet, despite the wound on my head, my sweaty underwear, and my soiled overcoat, I felt somewhat carefree, a bit indifferent to how my appearance might be assessed by the social worker. The problem of the boy was somewhere beneath me. The woman would ask me a few questions; I would nod, express my sympathy, but ultimately go home and slip myself back into my uneventful life. The world was going to continue to rotate, and the same stars were going to dot the same night sky. It didn’t matter if I lived the life that I’d thus far established or if I went out and started a new one. Of course, deep down, I knew all along that I was going to run away. The imminent threat of Claudia’s private pervert was my catalyst. I had no reason ever to meet the man, let alone to confront him in a final showdown. I had nothing to prove to anyone, no score to settle, no relationship to salvage. The prospect of running away put me at ease. Not only were all my burdens going to be lifted from me, but also my future appointment with the social worker now seemed drained of significance. I had no reason to feel intimidation, anger, or anything else.
And so, it was settled: For yet another time in my life, I was going to fix my problems by fleeing from them. Although I tried to convince myself that this was the best solution, part of me knew that I was simply rationalizing.
Suddenly, I realized that I was walking alone. My fleeting membership among the stray dogs had ended; our pack had disbanded as quickly as it had been formed, lasting no more than a few moments. I turned around to see that they were across the street from the wig shop, rooting and pawing for something beneath a squat, blue mailbox.
I continued forward. My body was growing cold as my overcoat began to stiffen and freeze and perspiration chilled my flesh. I quickened my pace. My imminent appointment didn’t unsettle me as much as before, yet I still remained curious about what to expect. It seemed like a silly place to set up a practice, for nobody who needed counseling would find comfort going up that dingy staircase, let alone passing all those heads.
“And if the family counseling doesn’t work, at least there’re lawyers—” I began to say, but abruptly stopped myself, conscious that I had spoken aloud, not even to a pair of dogs. I kept walking and finished the thought in my head: Well, at least, it’s pretty convenient to have lawyers nearby to handle the divorce.
IV
I rounded the corner and started down a more congested street. The wind felt stronger here, more bitter, and everyone was walking briskly, with faces lowered. I was looking for a store, thinking that I could buy a change of clothes. Thankfully, I had the money from my security deposit on me because I had been cautious about leaving it unprotected in my apartment.
On an awning across the street, I read that somebody named Crowley had two stores side-by-side. One sold new and used CDs. Its front window was plastered over with images of rock stars in seductive poses. The door was covered in a mess of decals, stickers, and scribbled insignias or perhaps messages in the jargon of some particular subculture. I didn’t spend any time trying to figure it out because I hurriedly entered Crowley’s other store, which sold used and vintage clothing. Warmth and the odor of burning incense permeated the room. Slow instrumental jazz was playing softly. Racks of clothes lined the walls on either side, and above these racks were more racks. The upper ones were apparently reached, not by a step stool, but by tiny wooden chairs that were made for children. Near the back wall sat a low couch. A young couple was lounging there in an attitude of listless indifference, which implicitly conveyed to me that they weren’t the salesclerks. The girl was dressed in worn corduroy pants, and reclined, spread-eagled, with one leg crossed over the young man’s thigh. Neither of them paid any attention to me as I began looking through the clothes. Strangely, nothing was organized, not by size, make, or style, not even by gender. There were plenty of long, flimsy dresses and button-down shirts from a previous generation. Between a quilted flannel shirt and a denim dress with brass buttons down the side, hung a white nurse’s outfit made of leather. At the exact moment I happened to have my hand on the garment, the girl muttered something to the boy and then giggled.
“Is there someone who could help me?” I asked. I felt cold and pressed for time.
“Customer,” the girl called, turning her head toward an arched doorway that was partially obstructed by a stereo cabinet.
“I like the hat,” the young man said as he straightened up and gently pushed the girl’s leg off of his.
She whispered something to him, and he responded, “I don’t think so.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Out of the backroom came a skinny woman in jeans and a hooded sweatshirt bearing the name Moravian. She smiled and walked up to me.
“Hi there,” she said. “Did you find something?”
“No.”
“Do you know what you’re looking for?” She continued to smile and look at me kindly from behind a pair of black-rimmed glasses.
“Anything dry,” I said.
“Oh no,” she said and actually started to help me remove my overcoat. “You must be freezing.”
“I have an important meeting to go to.”
“What happened?” She draped my overcoat over the counter and then came behind me and took my sports coat off me.
“I fell down.”
“Oh no,” she said again.
I could feel her hand on my back, touching my gray shirt, then moving down to my legs.
“The bottoms of your trousers are frozen stiff. Literally frozen.”
“I know.”
“Poor thing.”
“I didn’t see anything formal.”
“Don’t worry; I’ll set you up.”
She threw my sports coat on the counter too, stepped in front of me, and looked at me carefully, sizing me up.
I watched her as she moved about the store, assembling an outfit for me. She dra
gged behind her a little chair that was missing chips of blue paint. Most of the garments she selected came from the upper racks. She would place one foot on the small seat and quickly slide the hangers along the bar. Her animation was at a pace anomalous to the mellow mood of the room. When she stretched, I was able to see not only two dimples on her back, just above the waistline of her jeans, but also that she had very small, indiscernible breasts. Occasionally, she turned to me and smiled.
I didn’t notice that the music had stopped playing, until the young man got up from the couch, searched through the loose CDs on top of the stereo cabinet, and restarted the music.
The skinny woman came toward me with an armload of clothes.
“Try these,” she said. “I got you several things to choose from.”
“Don’t you like his hat?” the young man asked her.
“I love his hat.”
I noticed her eyes focus on my wound, but she didn’t say anything about it.
“Come on,” she said, and I followed her under the arched doorway, into the backroom.
I wasn’t quite certain what to make of the room at first. It appeared to be a separate store altogether, with glass counters like those in a jewelry shop and shelves on the back wall stacked with various knickknacks. I gave it a cursory glance and continued behind the woman, mainly focusing on her.
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