by Harry Mazer
He was teaching her to shake hands when Jim, his landlord, drove up. Willis got tense right away. Jim didn’t come here that often. Don must have complained about Zola. “Give him a nice smile, Zola,” Willis whispered, as Jim got out of his truck.
Jim came up the stairs with a lock and some tools. He was a chunky guy in a plaid shirt and green work pants. Willis hadn’t exchanged a dozen words with him since he’d moved in. “Your dog?” Jim asked.
Zola backed under Willis’s legs.
“I don’t allow no dogs around here. Dogs can dig up a yard faster than a skunk.”
What yard? On one side of the house there was Jim’s trailer and on the other side an empty, weedy lot with an old car sitting in it. “She’s not digging up the yard. I don’t let her out by herself.”
“Dogs can wreck a place faster than a kid.”
“You want me to move? I’ll move.”
“Who said anything about moving? I was talking about dogs in general. I like dogs. What kind of dog is it?”
Willis stroked Zola’s sharp little ears. “Sort of a purebred.”
“Purebred! That’ll be the day. He’s a mutt. Craps all over, doesn’t he?”
“She,” Willis said. “No, she doesn’t.”
“You telling me he doesn’t crap?”
“Her name’s Zola. Shake hands, Zola.” Zola put out her paw. “She’s smart,” Willis said. “I just taught her that.”
Jim started installing a new lock on the door. “You think it’s easy being a landlord? People complain all the time. How am I going to satisfy everyone?” He squatted down and removed the old lock. “Today, it’s the dog. Yesterday, it was the door. Tomorrow, it’ll be the lot. Why do I let the weeds grow? What am I going to do about that car? Do you know how many complaints I’ve had on that car alone? How am I going to sell the lot with that wreck sitting there?”
“Why don’t you call the junkman?”
“What, and give away a good car? All it needs is brakes.”
“That’s no big deal.”
“And where am I going to get the time to fix it? Between this place and my job and my house, I’m going ten different ways.”
He went back to the lock, and Willis sat there, uncertain where he and Zola stood. Were they going to have to move? Was Jim going to make an issue of it?
“You want that old car?” Jim said.
“Me? You selling it?” He didn’t have any money for a car.
“I’ll give it to anybody who’ll get it out of the lot. I hate to just throw it away. It’d be good for a kid like you.”
They talked about the car. Willis would have to fix the brakes, get the car inspected, find someplace else to park it.
Willis didn’t say too much. He was thinking. He didn’t know if he wanted a car. But that wasn’t the point. It was a trade-off. His landlord hadn’t come out and said it, but Willis knew it was either take the car, or you and your dog move out. By the time Jim had changed the locks, the car was Willis’s.
Jim gave him the keys, and he and Zola went over to check it out. The car had originally been gold, but it had been sitting out in the weather so long it had faded down to a blotchy white. The rocker panels under the doors were chewed up and the tires were flat in back, but the rubber looked okay.
He unlocked the door. Zola sat in the passenger seat as if she knew all about rides. Willis turned on the ignition. Nothing. The car was dead. The gas gauge showed a quarter of a tank, but the engine wouldn’t turn over. “Maybe there is no engine,” he said to Zola.
He pried up the hood. The engine was all there, a big rusting lump. The battery probably had to be replaced. He hoped that was all there was wrong with it. He was having second thoughts, and third and fourth.
He brought Zola upstairs and went out running. It was raining again. That car was really a wreck. What do you expect—you got it for nothing. Yeah, but fixing it up was going to take a lot of time and money. Time he needed for running. Money he didn’t have. And what was he going to do with a car? Every time he drove someplace, instead of walking or running, he’d be going backward, losing muscle tone.
When he came back from running, Sophie was standing in his doorway. She had a red scarf thrown across her shoulders. “Hi, Willis.” She gave him a quick smile.
“Hi.”
“Sophie,” she said.
“I know. How did you figure out where I live?”
“I was on the block.”
“You followed me.”
“No … I just saw you.” But she couldn’t look him in the face.
He didn’t really care. After he ran, nothing bothered him. Lots of endorphins, cheerful chemicals. He was heated up and loose and feeling good. She looked appealing, too, her face wet, water caught in her hair and lashes. She looked better than he remembered.
He opened the downstairs door, held it for a moment. “You want to come in?”
“Oh!” As if that hadn’t been in her mind from the beginning. “I guess so.” She shook out her scarf. “Just for a minute. I can meet Zola.”
“I told her you might come.” He couldn’t resist a little teasing. He pulled off his sweatshirt and mopped his head with it.
As they were going up the stairs, snoopy bird Don came out to look. Came right out in the hall. “Is that you, Pierce?” he said, but he was looking at Sophie. “Well? What’d Jim say?”
“The dog stays.” Willis couldn’t help smiling. That moment alone made it worth taking Jim’s car.
Don went into his apartment and slammed his door.
Fifteen
“I brought you a present,” Sophie said.
“A present? What for?”
She brought out a plastic bag from under her jacket. “It’s for helping me. Cookies. I hope they didn’t get ruined by the rain.”
“Can’t you forget that? I don’t want anything for what I did.”
“You don’t want the cookies? Feel them, they’re still warm. They’re old-fashioned gingerbread cookies.”
He put the key in the lock. Zola was scratching on the other side of the door. “You made them?”
“Well … in a way. Is that your girlfriend I hear?”
That got a snort out of him. One for you, Sophie. The minute he opened the door, Zola came bursting out, barking and frisking around, so excited she fell down. “Hey, Zola, quiet down. We’ve got company. Give us five.” The pup held out her paw.
Sophie squatted down, got her face right next to Zola’s and kissed her.
“Careful,” he warned. “I don’t know how she is with strangers. I’m training her to be a guard dog.”
Zola licked Sophie’s hand, then rolled over on her back for Sophie to scratch her belly. “Some guard dog,” Sophie said. She looked around. “Do you sleep right in this room? What’s through that door? Your kitchen?” She sniffed McDonald’s hamburgers and went to look out the window. She noticed everything. She noticed the lot next door and the car. So he told her it was his and how he got it. “I’m going to get it running again.”
“I could help you fix it up,” she said.
“What are you, a mechanic?”
“I like to do things. I’ve been around machines all my life. You know, you could have a garden out there. Where I live, there’s no place for a garden. This is much nicer. I like it here.”
“Hey, you shouldn’t talk like that. You come here, you bring me cookies, you come right into my apartment. You don’t even know me.”
“That’s what you said last time. And do you remember what I said last time?” She held out the bag of cookies. “Just sniff them. And then tell me you don’t want any.”
“I stay away from sweets. If you wanted to bring me something, you should have brought me a pizza.”
“You’ve got enough pizzas.” She opened the freezer compartment. “Look at that! All you’ve got here is pizzas.”
He took a cookie and sniffed it. “It smells homemade. Is this a recipe you got from your mother?”
She shook her head.
“They sure smell good.”
“I know.”
“My mother used to make cookies sometimes,” he said. “Sugar cookies. Vanilla sugar cookies. What do you call these?”
“Old-fashioned gingerbread cookies. Willis, I’d better tell you. I didn’t make them. I bought them at Buttercup Bakery.”
“Wait a minute! You said you baked them.”
“No, I didn’t. I didn’t say it. I’m not that good a cookie baker.”
“I thought you farm girls all knew how to bake cookies.”
“I don’t know about that. I don’t like to bake that much.” She sat on the windowsill. “What I like to do is fly.”
“Fly?” he said. “Like an airplane or a bird?” And he flapped his arms. “What do you do, get up on the barn roof and flap your wings? Cock-a-doodle-dooo,” he crowed.
She crossed her arms. “I didn’t make fun of your running!”
“Oh, sorry,” he said, but he couldn’t stop it. Sophie flying? He saw her flapping over a barn or perched in a tree. Did she do it in the morning when the sun came up? He couldn’t help himself. He did it again, flapped his wings and made like a rooster.
She sat there giving him a long, frowning, disappointed look. “What’s so funny, Willis? You love to run. I love to fly.”
It broke him up all over again. He went around the room like a jerk, flapping his wings. He was so bad she finally started to laugh, too.
“Some bird,” she said. “You’d never make it off the ground.”
He collapsed on the floor. “So tell me about this flying,” he said.
“Do you really want to hear? I took some flying lessons. And I loved it. I’m going to be a pilot someday.”
“You fly airplanes.” He looked at her, kept looking at her, kept trying to put her in the cockpit of an airplane. “What kind of planes do you fly?”
“A Cessna 172.”
“Why?”
“Why what?” She was getting mad again. “Why do I fly? Why do you run?”
“No, I mean, are you going to be something? A crop duster?”
“Are you going to be a messenger boy, Willis?”
Willis didn’t know what to say. “That’s great,” he finally said. “It is. I was a little surprised. I mean … you know … but that’s great. Why shouldn’t you fly?”
“Oh, thank you, sir.”
He was scrambling for position. Their relationship had suddenly changed. He was supposed to be the big knowledgeable city cat, and she was supposed to be the dumb little country mouse. He slid down on the floor and propped himself up on an elbow. “Flying! That’s great.”
“Someday maybe I’ll get my license.”
“Sure you will.”
“I don’t know. I’ve got to solo first, and you have to do a lot of solo hours—even go cross-country for about three hundred miles.”
“That much?”
“At sixty dollars an hour it’s going to take me forever to save up enough money.” She looked up at the poster of Aaron Hill. “Who’s that?”
“A great runner. He’s a champion.” He told her about Aaron Hill and then about how he tried to match everything Aaron Hill did. He was telling her something he’d never told anyone else. Was he trying to make up to her for laughing at her? “Aaron Hill’s my hero,” he said.
“Does it get boring sometimes, running so much?”
“Do you get bored flying?”
She shook her head and stroked Zola’s ears. A little silence fell between them. She looked out the window. “Well,” she said, “I ought to go.” She got up and arranged the cookies on a plate and then handed him one.
He took a bite, then gave Zola a bite. “What do you think, Zola?” Zola looked up for more.
“Zola likes the cookies,” Sophie said.
“I do, too.”
“You mean it?”
Under her jacket, she wore a flowered blouse open at the neck. Her neck was smooth and soft and invited his eyes to look.
“You like them?” she said.
He kept looking at her. He liked looking at her. He kept getting these little jolts in his stomach. “Listen,” he said, “thanks for the cookies.”
A few minutes later, she left.
He stood at the window and caught a glimpse of her on the other side of McDonald’s. She bounced as she walked and swung her arms like she owned the street. Nice. He stuck his head out the window and yelled, “Sophie. Hey, Sophie, look up here.” But a truck got in the way, and when it was past, she was gone.
Sixteen
“Doing anything this weekend?” Benny asked as they left work Friday afternoon. “Got something exciting on for the weekend?”
“I’m going to work on my car.” Nothing had been said about the night the four of them had gone out.
“Come on, man. Dore saw you at the market, shopping with a girl. So, what’s her name?”
“Who?”
“The girl you were with in the market.”
“Oh, her.”
“Who is she?”
Good question. Who was Sophie, anyway? A girl who worked in a newsstand, someone from the country who had stepped into his life. Or flown. Sophie, the flying bird. “Her name is Sophie,” he said.
“Sophie, that’s nice. Good-looking?”
“Not bad.” He thought of her, poking around in his apartment, looking into everything with that bright, loud way of hers.
“So, how tight are you two? Is that why you and Dore didn’t hit it off?”
“Could be.” He remembered Dore and her pink fingernails, and then he thought of Sophie again, and of how easy she was to talk to, easy to be around. Even when she got mad about the flying thing, it blew over fast.
Benny studied Willis. “You seeing a lot of her?”
“She was up at the apartment the other day.”
“Your apartment?” Benny looked at Willis like that was the ultimate.
“She brought me a bag of cookies.”
“Oh, sure, cookies.” Benny tapped Willis on the shoulder. “You’re a close number.”
At home that night, Willis threw a frozen pizza into the oven and flipped on the TV. When the pizza was hot, he grabbed a can of soda and sat on the floor. Zola came sniffing around, and he gave her a bite of the pizza.
He heard somebody on the stairs. What if it was Sophie? He got up and put on a shirt. He checked himself in the mirror and went to the door. The landing was empty.
He shut off the TV and fell facedown on the mattress. He was disappointed. It was true. He wished Sophie was here. Sophie? He thought of all the girls he’d looked at and never spoken to. What did you say, anyway? Go up to a girl and say, You’re cute, you want to come home with me? There were guys who did that, but he never could. It was too crude, too obvious.
Then he thought of the way Sophie had come to him. No invitation. He didn’t have to do anything. She just walked in.
Yes, he said to himself, you had her right here and you let her get away.
He hadn’t been nice enough to her. She had had to beg him to take the cookies, and then he’d laughed when she told him she was a flier. What a fool he was. She was probably never going to come back.
The thing was, after she left, the apartment felt really empty. It had always been empty, but now the emptiness bothered him. He went to the window and looked out, imagining that she was out there on the street. The feeling got so strong that he went downstairs and took a walk around the block, looking for her.
In the morning, he and Zola went out. She was maneuvering around on three legs. Every couple of steps, she stopped to sniff or scratch herself or lick her bad leg. The idea was to give Zola some exercise, get strength back in her legs, but she dawdled so much he finally scooped her up. “Doesn’t it make you ashamed, being carried, a big girl like you?” She licked his face. “You horse.”
In the park, Zola went crazy. She dove into the grass, then headed straight for the pond, where a
girl with a red scarf over her shoulders was feeding the ducks. It was Sophie. When she saw Zola, she turned and looked for Willis, then waved. He waved back. It was like magic. He’d been thinking about her and here she was.
He wanted to go down to her, but he held himself back and started running, instead. He didn’t want her to think he was that eager. He hated looking foolish. It was a mile around the pond. When he had circled five times, he went down to her. She was sitting on the grass. “Hello, Sophie.”
“Willis.” She shielded her eyes from the sun. “You ran a long time.”
“Just five miles.”
“Just! I can’t do that.”
“You could if you worked at it.”
She laughed a little. “We seem to go to all the same places. I just discovered this park.”
“I run here all the time,” he said.
Nearby, a couple of skinheads in studded denim jackets were throwing stones into the water and looking over their way. “Those guys bothering you?” he said. “They keep looking over here.”
“They like Zola. They wanted to know what happened to her leg.”
“What business is it of theirs? You shouldn’t have said anything to them. I wouldn’t give those two the time of day.”
Sophie reknotted her scarf. “You know, you keep telling me things. Just like my brother, Floyd.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“It’s a waste of breath.”
He felt as if she was laughing at him. “Zola,” he yelled. The dog was in the water, barking at the ducks. “Come on!” Zola looked around and went back to playing. He clapped his hands together. If the dog had any consideration, she’d come just to make him look good. “Zola!”
“She’s still a puppy,” Sophie said.
“She has to learn to follow commands. Zola! Come!”
“We never trained our dogs, and they never gave us any trouble.”
“This is the city. You don’t talk to strangers and you don’t let your dogs run wild.”
She got red in the face. “You’re telling me things again.”
“Forget it,” he said. “I’m not telling you anything. Come on, Zola!” He’d come bouncing down from the path and now he felt like he’d landed flat on his face. She was mad and he was mad. Then Zola came running back and started shaking water all over them.