I grabbed Numb and checked the batteries of my Dustbuster, then went downstairs for my usual cup of coffee. I bummed a cigarette off a teenager and headed over to Tompkins Square Park. A Salvation Army food truck was parked on Avenue A, giving cups of soup to a bedraggled line of scraggy homeless. I half considered getting a cup, but saw no other women in line. I headed over to the dogrun.
While pit bull and fox terrier owners sat inertly on the benches, I smoked my cigarette and paced around, mindlessly vacuuming up the earth. Over the black iron gate near the archway leading to the General Slocum Steamboat Disaster Memorial I spotted the peroxide teen, the convicted prostitute I met earlier. She was holding a broom, chatting with a large, older man. I operated my Dustbuster and watched as he spoke to her. He was growing more intimate with her by the minute. Now he placed a hand on her shoulder and caressed her.
“You know, everyone else picks it up with a plastic bag,” said some skinny kid who shook a baggie in my face.
“Not me,” I said, still siphoning up Primo.
“You must have a hell of a clean house.” The kid collected his Jack Russell and took off.
I vacuumed like a crazed housewife and watched as the teenage public worker set her broom down and walked off with the older man. Apparently her community service went beyond all standard calls to duty.
“What the hell are you doing?” It was none other than Tattoo Man.
“Oh, shit.” I stood up, turning off my little Dustbuster. “I’ve been hoping to find you. I wanted to apologize to you.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not,” I replied, dipped into my pocket, and extracted a crinkled ten-dollar bill. “This is yours.”
“I was never mugged by Ally McBeal before.” He smiled as he took it. “If you chicks get any more powerful, guys are going to shrivel up; our muscles are going to atrophy.” I chuckled politely. “So what is this, a sorority prank?” He was referring to my vacuuming of the earth.
“This is even more embarrassing than accidentally mugging you. On the same night as that little misfortune, I got loaded and chucked Primo around here.”
“You mean his ashes?” he asked. I nodded. “And now you feel guilty?”
“Yes,” I replied, “but worse. It turned out to be some other woman’s Primo, and she wants her was-band back.”
“You are kidding.”
“The freakin’ funeral director accidentally gave us the wrong remains, and now we have to do an ash swap.”
“That’s a lawsuit.”
“It’s easier just to sweep him up and get out of this loop.”
“How much did Primo weigh when you spread him?” Tattoo asked.
“He was heavy. With the jar he was about twelve to fifteen pounds.” I figured he couldn’t weigh much more than twice what he weighed when he entered the world. Tattoo Man popped open the back of my Dustbuster and looked inside. A few ounces of granulated dog shit had accumulated in the collection bag.
“This is going to take me all day, isn’t it?” I frowned.
Tattoo Man walked over to the garbage can and pulled out a large plastic soda cup, which he emptied. He scooped up a cupful of dirt, dog humus, and wood chippings and offered it. “There you go—Instant Primo.”
I took the full cup, which marked the end of my toil, and thanked him. His large dog came over and shoved his nose in my crotch.
“Hey!”
“Fedora!” he yelled and pulled his dog, sending him scurrying back toward the barking clique of canines. “I’ve trained him to do that to girls who rob me.”
“You know, I really am sorry about what happened the other night,” I said.
“You didn’t do anything. It was that other girl,” he murmured.
“I’m glad you remember that.”
“Hell, I even know why she did it,” he mused.
“Why?” I asked.
“Oh, nothing,” he said and smiled demurely.
“No, what did you mean?”
“I didn’t mean anything. Forget it.”
“What are you reading?” I asked, peering at the stack of pages tucked under his elbow.
“A manuscript,” he said tiredly.
“Friction?” I kidded.
“Only friction can be this bad.”
“Are you a writer?”
“No, a reader.”
“A reader for what?”
“I’ve been freelancing for a while. I got suckered into doing a bunch of reader reports for a small press.”
“Sounds cool.”
He yawned editorially. “Believe me, there are few things more tedious you can do than read this crap.”
“You don’t work at Kinko’s five days a week,” I replied.
“Christ, you work in Kinko’s?” He looked at me with renewed disrespect.
“I got fired from my temp job about a week ago, and I just didn’t have the nerve to shlep back up to Midtown.”
“I kind of know what you mean. I have claustrophobic attacks just riding the damned subway.” Midtown is a terrifying place filled with pantyhose wearers and overblown department store windows.
“Well, I’ll get my courage back soon, because Kinkoing is even worse than temping.”
“A Kinkoer makes a thousand copies, a temp makes only one,” he lamented aloud, which led to an awkward pause.
“So what did you get your pointless degree in?” I asked.
“English. I was supposed to be an important young American writer.”
“I was supposed to be an important young female American writer.”
“If you want to do reader’s reports,” he offered out of nowhere, “I can get you fifty bucks a pop.”
“I’ll read your crappy manuscripts,” I said hungrily.
“Give me your phone number. I have to run.” I scribbled it down for him, thanked him for collecting the cup of Primo, fetched Numb, and returned to the apartment. Once there I poured the dogrun matrix back into the glass urn, then boxed and taped it up as best as I could.
Telephoning Primo’s mother, I informed her that I got about as much of Primo as I could and probably the remnants of a few other crematees as well. I recently read that half of Truman Capote was dusted in New York, and half in L.A.
“Who are you, please?” she asked, disoriented. Once again there was a television bleating in the background.
“His former girlfriend,” I replied.
“Sheila dear, is that you?” she asked.
“Yes,” I replied. What was the point? A person didn’t need to be senile to confuse the names of all the girls Primo had impaled.
She gave me the phone number of the family who possessed the granulated package of bona fide Primo. I dialed and listened to the phone ring. His damned mother couldn’t even remember my name. There was really only one reason I was going through this again; guilt for what I did the first time. I never should have accepted his ashes, nor should I have dumped him in the dogrun. In a strange way I was actually glad that I had a second chance.
“Hello.” I heard a rickety female voice.
“Hi, this is … I have ashes that I think belong to you.”
“Oh, you have my Edgar!” I heard her perk up. “We were so worried. I just heard that eighty percent of all ashes get cast to the winds, whereas only sixteen percent go into statuary receptacles.”
“What happens to the other four percent?” I asked.
“I don’t know—I suppose they get lost in the mail or something.” I wanted to say that at least one percent get drunkenly dumped in places like dogruns.
“So you’re going to put Edgar’s ashes on your mantelpiece?” I inquired.
“Actually, call us romantics, but we were married for sixty-one years, and we agreed that we wanted our ashes mixed together. Until I die, I suppose I’ll put him somewhere, but afterward we’ll be salt and pepper together again.” That sounded so sweet; unfortunately, it would never happen. “So, how shall we do this?” she questioned.
“Well, I’m kind of busy,” I said, trying to imply that I had no intention of hauling myself back out to the unwatered lawns of Brooklyn ever again.
“My son Lewis is about to drive into Manhattan. How about I have him pick his dad up?” she asked. For her age, she had a lucid grasp of proper nouns.
“Terrific.”
We agreed upon a time—ninety minutes from then. It was laundry day, and that gave me just enough time. I picked up Primo’s manuscript, Cuming Attractions, leashed the dog and dashed out with my bag of clothes. As the corner machines groaned and spurted, I gave his pages a closer read. Even though most of it was dreadfully generic, I really admired his industry in punching out an entire manuscript. Primo’s tragic flaw was that he squandered his energies in pursuit of petty goals. My greatest problem in writing was the day-to-day perspiration. I never had any shortage of inspiration, but I never liked to sweat. As I folded my clothes, I heard a thunderclap. I headed back home just as the first drops came down. Some Avenue A troglodyte, seeing me pulling my cart, started trailing after, singing that nitwit song, “Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think …”
“No, you’re moronic. You really don’t think,” I sang back to him.
Just after I hauled my laundry bag upstairs, the doorbell rang. It was Lewis, ready to pick up dog-poop Pop. I dashed downstairs. He was a middle-aged daddy longlegs in a funereal black suit.
“Why was he opened?” He asked as we did the handoff. He had noticed that the package was resealed.
“I just wanted to have one last look,” I replied and took the real Primo package.
“All ashes look alike,” he scoffed.
“But unhappy ashes are unalike in different ways,” I paraphrased Tolstoy. He shrugged and departed.
Back upstairs, I noticed with unparalleled joy that there was a message on my machine. Without thinking or knowing why, I put the package of granulated Primo in the fridge and played back my machine to hear the tattooed man: “Still interested in writing reader’s reports? If so, call me; if not, you can call me as well.”
I called him back, and he asked if I wanted to meet him with Numb in the dungrun in an hour.
“It was raining when I last went out.”
“It’s cleared up now,” he replied. My call-waiting beeped. I asked if he could excuse me a moment. He did. Zoë was on the other line. In a soulless tone, she asked what was up.
“Not much,” I responded. “Usual.”
“I’m sorry I haven’t seen you in a while,” she replied. “I’ve been busy.” It was always this way; Zoë was a classic slave to love. When she was single, I was constantly buffeted with phone calls from her. Now, in a fleeting relationship, she evaporated into her man.
“Everything’s just dandy,” I assured her, and explained I had someone on the other line. She sounded relieved at being able to exit quickly. I switched back to Tattoo Man.
“Still there?”
“Yeah,” I heard him say over his speaker phone. He snatched up his phone, and his voice came in more clearly. “Listen, would you have a writing sample?”
“You mean, like a college paper?”
“That would be fine.”
“I did a paper in philosophy on the relationship between technology and morality.”
“You don’t have any lit papers?”
“I did a forty-seven-page study on the Soviet satirist Yuri Olesha.”
“Bring that,” he concluded, but before we said good-bye the call-waiting beeped again. We agreed to meet in forty-five minutes at the dogrun, and I pushed to get the other call.
“Opaline tonight at eight?” It was Joey, proposing dinner.
“I have to read a novel, write a reader’s report, and go to band practice.”
“Band practice? What weird cult have you joined?”
“It’s not completely what you think.”
“Well, you can tell me what I think while you eat. You can be in and out in half an hour.”
Aside from my ongoing desire to fall asleep in his strong arms and hairy chest, the only time food was an art form was when Joey took me out for dinner. I accepted the offer and hung up.
I rummaged for nice clothes and decided on a Gap skirt and a black pullover. I spritzed on some of Primo’s sandalwood musk and pulled a comb through my ruin of hair. Although I was twenty-nine, I didn’t look a day older. With this renewed confidence, I went through my filing cabinet, miraculously located my old college paper on the great silenced Soviet writer Yuri Olesha, then grabbed the dog and headed to the park.
Several days a week the southeastern border of the park became a farmers’ market. Pickup trucks were filled with fruits and vegetables, peddled by rugged folks in overalls. Their display tables were abundant with greens and other vibrantly colored gifts from the fields, bits of soil still visible in their roots. It all served as a valuable reminder that not all food was cellophane wrapped, boxed, frozen, or cooked in invisible-kitchen restaurants by strangers. The fruits and vegetables looked delicious, but I was fairly certain that my digestive tract had so thoroughly evolved that it could only accept hyperprocessed crap; it would reject this raw prehistoric food.
At the dogrun, I waited and watched the dogs carousing in their customary circle, forever play-fighting. Occasionally a small dog would try to dominate a bigger older dog, or a nasty dog would assert its insecurity by going after a weaker dog just to have something to bully. It compelled me to wonder where I was on the social totem pole.
“Hey,” I heard behind me and looked beyond the gate to see the tattooed man, Howard, standing there with his Weimaraner in one hand and a large gray envelope in the other.
In a moment he was through the double-gated pen and then in the dogrun. As our dogs sniffed each other, the painted man sat next to me.
“You’ve never written a reader’s report, have you?”
“No.”
“Here.” He gave me a sampling. It was one page long, starting with a brief synopsis of a crime novel called The Heist:
This is a thriller about two ex-cons, Scrawny Ronnie and Bug-eyed Bob. When the novel opens, they are in Attica together where they share cells and quickly learn that they have a great deal in common. While passing the time by discussing certain crimes they had performed, they realize that they had both contemplated breaking into a big ganglord’s house. He’s a violent man named Tuna who is filthy rich and ruthless. They each realized different aspects of the score that the other did not know. Ronnie has access to logistical details such as when the ganglord and his crew go out. Bob knows the layout of the compound, and that the upper floors are more vulnerable. Since they are both scheduled to go up for parole toward the end of the year, they agree to join forces and attempt to pull off this one last big heist… .
I skimmed through the remainder of the report to the commentary. “Although the prison scenes are slightly clichéd, they aren’t bad. The passages outside of the big house, however, read like a badly rehashed mix of Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen. While at times amusing, and even touching, the two central characters are indistinguishable and unsympathetic….”
“Indistinguishable and unsympathetic, that’s always been my problem,” I said, reaching for the packed envelope containing the manuscript while handing him my graduate school term paper.
For a few minutes, we each flipped through the other’s work. The novel I was to report on was called The Manstrument, by Tech Web. The title sounded German; the author’s name sounded like a computer. Toward the middle of the 250-page manuscript, I started seeing references to the eponymous instrument.
“Is this a horror tale?” I inquired.
“Who knows?” Howard commented, but holding up my report, he said, “This looks excellent.”
“It got an A in a Soviet satire class.”
“You might be overqualified.”
“Don’t worry, I’ve grown stupid since I left school.”
“Well, this should put some cash in your bra,” he
kidded. He asked how long I thought it would take. I optimistically told him that to read it and type out a one-page report should take a day.
“Hey, lady! You think that just ’cause you’re young and sexy, you don’t have to clean up your dog’s crap?” I heard a familiar male voice behind me.
“All I have to do is click my fingers”—which I did—“and I’ll have every male in this cage competing to fetch it.”
It was Joey standing outside the black gate surrounding the dogrun; a very large, very thick Italianesque man was standing alongside him. Joey leaned over, and we gave each other a peck on the cheek.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Just passing through the park,” he replied.
“Who’s your little friend?” I asked of his towering associate, who looked like he’d stepped off the set of The Sopranos. He had deep ruts and scars in his cheek; and black hair greased back.
“This is Sammy.” Sammy nodded demurely and looked away.
“Joey, this is Howard,” I introduced the two of them. They shook hands with a smile.
“Joey’s my old upstairs neighbor,” I said to Howard, and to Joey I explained, “Howard is my latest employer.”
“It’s a pleasure,” said Joey. “I’ll see you later.” He was off.
“Well, I think we just concluded our business day,” Howard the tattooed man said.
“I’ll have the report ready by tomorrow,” I assured him as I got Numb back on his leash.
“If you finish it, I’ll give you another novel.”
“Great.”
“You know, I don’t want to pigeonhole anyone,” Howard said just as I was about to walk off, “but your former neighbor, who by the way seems like a very nice man, is in the mob.”
“If you judge people by the company they keep, you’ll understand why I have to dash abruptly.” He chuckled as I walked away.
chapter 11
I took doggie home, sat in my most comfortable chair, and started reading. After four pages, though, I fell fast asleep. This was not entirely the fault of the book. I was addicted to prickly, mile-a-minute audiovisuals. If sexy hulk courtroom lawyers weren’t prosecuting the only women they ever wanted, or hot ER doctors weren’t using internal paddles on the heart of the only lover who ever jilted them, I quickly got bored.
Dogrun Page 12