Chaos, Desire & a Kick-Ass Cupcake

by Kyra Davis

The scratching at the door was getting frantic. What if the dog did bite?

  “That animal needs help,” Mary Ann said, sternly. “Open the door, Sophie.”

  Mary Ann could be a ditz at times but no one could say she wasn’t brave and efficient in the face of a crisis.

  The doorknob trembled slightly with the efforts of the animal inside. “Here goes nothing.” Slowly, carefully, I slipped the key in the lock and inched open the door.

  Immediately a black furry snout squeezed its way through the crack and forced the door all the way open.

  The snout was attached to a large, pink-collared dog, built like an unusually barrel chested lab with Richard Nixon jowls, wagging her stub of a tail as she sniffed my shoes and pant legs. There was not even a whisper of hostility in her manner. I leaned down and scratched her behind her ears as she stared up at me with big, black, puppy dog eyes. She was strong and gorgeous…and smelly. In fact, the stink was pretty intense.

  The dog moved on to Mary Ann, but the smell didn’t let up. That’s when I looked up and saw it. The majority of the stench was coming from the apartment. Although it looked a lot more like a toxic waste dump than anyone’s living quarters. There were dirty paper plates on the floor, a dog bowl inexplicably placed in the middle of the room that, even in the dim light, looked crusty. I spotted a cup on a pedestal table by the door, still partially filled with old, neglected coffee. Empty water bottles had been cast carelessly about.

  But mostly there were papers. Papers and papers and papers. Printed out articles crumpled up on the floor, newspaper articles pinned to the walls with certain passages circled or highlighted, torn out pages of magazines piled on chairs. A wastebasket overflowing with shreds of ripped up sentences. Pamphlets and business cards scattered across the coffee table. If someone set off a bomb in a Kinko’s you’d have less paper and more order than you had here.

  Dena stepped up next to me, peering into the space. “I think we have confirmation of Aaron London’s crazy.”

  I felt Mary Ann come up behind me, the dog now nudging against the back of my legs. “It’s like an episode of Hoarders,” Mary Ann observed, “except…worse.”

  “We can’t just leave this dog here,” I whispered.

  “It’s not our dog!” Dena snapped.

  I gestured to the junkyard London had made out of his apartment. “This is animal abuse.” I paused to think about how best to handle things before adding, “we have to go in there.”

  Dena balked. “I think I’d rather spend a week in prison than a second in that hole.”

  I squared my shoulders. “We have to take the dog out. So we need a leash. I’m sure there’s a leash in there.”

  “Oh for Christ’s sake.” Dena dug into her oversized-bag and pulled out a short, chain-link leash. “If we truly have to take her, we can use this.”

  Mary Ann did a quick double take. “You don’t have a dog.”

  “I have a boyfriend,” Dena replied.

  “Wait...” Mary Ann began, but I cut her off.

  “Please don’t ask her to explain that,” I requested.

  Dena leaned down to put the leash on the dog. As soon as she did, the dog managed to give her a lick on the nose. “Chill,” Dena said sternly to the mutt. “I don’t even let Jason do that.”

  “He definitely doesn’t live here with a woman,” I said quietly.

  “It does seem unlikely,” Mary Ann agreed.

  “Maybe they were separated,” I suggested. “Maybe he moved in here while they were taking a break and he sort of,” I glanced back at the apartment, “let the bachelor thing get out of control.”

  “That’s highly likely,” Dena straightened herself back up to standing, keeping the dog close to her side. “Can we go now?”

  I swallowed hard and bit my lip. I was so curious. But the smell was not getting better with continued exposure. And there might be bugs in there. I wasn’t sure if I could handle a lot of bugs. Still… “Let me just place the ring.”

  I took several steps away from the door, pulled out the ring, inhaled a deep breath and then, holding it, walked into the cesspool. I didn’t have the courage to turn on the light to see things more clearly. Instead, I made do with the lighting coming in from the hallway and skirted around shadows and shapes as I made my way to the coffee table. On the couch was a pile of clothes, each item too dark to be distinguishable from the others in the dim light with the exception of a red, checkered winter scarf that seemed to be slithering off the pile as if attempting a slow moving escape.

  I glanced down at the coffee table. Pamphlets touting holistic medicine and homeopathy were scattered about along with a few business cards. I picked one up and narrowed my eyes to make out the words. It was for a blogger for a site called Corporate Evil. That sounded like London’s cup of tea. Another business card was for the Founder Of Citizens Against (Legal) Drugs.

  The legal part, in parenthesis no less, made me want to smile. But I resisted just in case moving my mouth inadvertently led to my accidentally inhaling.

  That breath I was holding was beginning to hurt. Still, I reached for one more business card.

  Gundrun Volz

  Nolan-Volz

  Co-Founder, CEO

  Seriously? I put my hand on my chest, partially out of shock and partially because I really was going to have to inhale soon. Was this truly the card of the Nolan-Volz CEO? Or was it a fake? It had to be a fake, right? I mean, no one would really name their kid Gundrun Volz.

  “Sophie!” Dena yelled from where she stood in the hall. “We can’t be hanging out here!”

  She was right. Plus, I really did have to breathe. I put the Gundrun Volz card in my back pocket and carefully placed the ring in the center of the table where it could be easily seen before quickly walking out of the apartment. As I closed the door behind me, I finally released my breath with a gasp, desperate for air that wasn’t weighted down by the stench of slovenly neglect.

  I looked over at Mary Ann, still holding her nose. “I think Dena’s right. Going would be good,” she said in a nasal voice.

  “You did everything you wanted to do,” Dena pointed out. “You returned the ring and we’re rescuing the dog. Plus I’m pretty sure we have just confirmed that he wasn’t living with his wife. There’s no reason to hang out.”

  “Oh, my God,” Mary Ann squealed. Dena and I both looked over to see Mary Ann, crouched down by the dog, studying her tags. “You won’t believe what her name is!”

  “Marley?” I guessed.

  “No!” She stood up with a big, bright smile. “Her name is Sophie!”

  “If you play tennis like a pro, it’s not fun to play with amateurs. By the same logic, I refuse to sleep with virgins. ”

  --Dying To Laugh

  By the time I got home, I was sober enough to drive but exhausted enough to pass out. Still, I had managed to retrieve my car, drive to a 24-hour CVS and load up on dog food, poop bags and the like. Ms. Dogz, as I was now calling her, was calm enough, but occasionally she would let out a whine and once, when I looked back at her while at a stoplight, I noticed she was shaking.

  When Ms. Dogz and I finally stumbled up my front steps and sort of fell through the door of my Victorian, Anatoly had already been home for hours. He was waiting for me in the living room, reading some WWII book on our leather couch, one foot propped up on the dark wood coffee table. “I thought you were going to call and have me come get you,” he said, not looking up quite yet as he marked his place in the book. Mr. Katz was snuggled up by his side but when my feline saw what I had brought with me, he was immediately on his feet, back arched.

  Anatoly noticed and followed Mr. Katz’s glare. “You got a dog?” he asked, incredulously.

  “Not exactly,” I hedged. “She needs a bath.”

  Ms. Dogz managed to pull away from me, but once her freedom was obtained, she didn’t exactly go wild. Instead, she carefully sniffed the area rug covering the recently re-polished hardwood floors, then the chair closest
to her. Finally, she approached Anatoly and Mr. Katz.

  “You’re beautiful,” Anatoly told her, appreciatively. “But she’s right about the bath.”

  Mr. Katz leaned forward and swapped his claws across Ms. Dogz’s nose.

  Ms. Dogz looked stunned and took several steps back as Anatoly swiftly picked up Mr. Katz, ignoring his flailing attempts to try to strike once more at his new adversary. “Looks like she needs a bath and a Band-Aid now. What’s her name?”

  “I’m calling her Ms. Dogz. We’re just fostering her until I can figure out if she belongs to someone,” I said, side-stepping the question. I went up and examined Ms. Dogz’s nose. Only a minor scratch. Still, it was ironic that I had thought Mr. Katz would be the one who would need protection.

  Anatoly nodded and walked back to our only downstairs bedroom, otherwise known as my office, and shut Mr. Katz in there.

  “I don’t want him to think he’s being replaced,” I said, urgently.

  “He can stay in the office until he calms down. Where did you find her?”

  “She was trapped,” I hedged. “Want to help me bathe her?”

  He gave me a quizzical look.

  “I don’t know if she has fleas,” I said quickly, not wanting to give him a chance to ask too many questions, “but I bought some Dawn dish soap because apparently, Dawn kills fleas. Did you know that? Isn’t that weird?”

  “Why don’t you want me to know where you found her?” Anatoly asked, flatly.

  “I told you, she was trapped…inside.” I shifted my weight back onto my heels. “I really think we should wash her.”

  “Inside where?”

  I bit my lip and looked over at the dog.

  “Inside where, Sophie?”

  Immediately Ms. Dogz’s ears perked up and she trotted over to Anatoly’s side. It brought a small smile to his lips. He was such a sucker for dogs. He leaned down to look at her tags and then burst out laughing.

  “I know what it says. We’re still calling her Ms. Dogz,” I said, irritably.

  “Have you called the number on the tag?” he asked.

  “I have, but the person at that number…isn’t available.”

  He shot me another look and then slowly straightened back to standing. “Why so cryptic? Where exactly was she trapped?”

  I swallowed hard, and then mumbled, “Inside an apartment.”

  There was at least five seconds of silence. “You want to try that again?”

  I held up my hands in a request for patience and understanding. “I didn’t do anything significantly illegal.”

  Anatoly’s eyebrows shot up and then he muttered some Russian curse.

  “Look, I can explain everything while we wash the dog.” I pulled out the Dawn and held it out for him as if the dish soap would clarify everything. “We have to get rid of the theoretical fleas.”

  In the upstairs hall bathroom, Anatoly and I were both on our knees, wet. This was the first time we had been in this position together when sex wasn’t involved. Although Anatoly did look like sex on a stick. He had removed his shoes, his socks, his shirt, so now it was just him in his jeans and a perfectly chiseled torso all wet from our efforts to clean this mutt. I was probably looking a little less enticing in bleach-stained yoga pants and a Race For A Cure 2012 T-shirt.

  Mr. Katz had been freed from my office and was now sulking in our bedroom. Ms. Dogz was before us in a tub full of soapy bubbles looking extremely unhappy. Almost as unhappy as Anatoly. I had told him the whole story. As stories go, it wasn’t his favorite.

  “This isn’t the big mystery you think it is,” Anatoly insisted as he massaged some of the soap into the dog’s fur. “Anita and Aaron London are probably separated. He might not have even been wearing the ring, just carrying it around while they figured things out.”

  “And he dropped it in the sink from his pocket?” I asked incredulously. Although by that point I was close to positive that the couple had been separated. At the hospital, Cat London had asked me why I hadn’t taken her father to the hospital sooner. I had assumed she meant sooner in the day, but now that I thought about it, I wasn’t sure she meant that at all. It was more than likely she meant I should have taken him earlier in the week, maybe even earlier in the month.

  I scrubbed some more soap into Ms. Dogz’s neck. She gave me a look similar to the one my sister gave me when I set the table using paper napkins. It was a why-are-you-doing-this-to-me look. “Maybe London died of natural causes and Anita’s on the up and up,” I said. “But it’s also possible you’re wrong, isn’t it? Shouldn’t we look into that?”

  “No.”

  “No?” I balked. “You don’t believe there’s even the slightest chance you’re wrong?”

  “It’s highly unlikely,” he amended. “But now, thanks to you, I have to track this woman down anyway and figure out how to explain to her why we have her husband’s dog. You could have saved us a lot of hassle and legal liability if you had simply called the SPCA.”

  “I didn’t need to call anyone. I had a key.” And it had been fun being reckless again.

  “You understand we’re going to have to return her, yes?” I might have been mistaken, but I thought I heard just a tinge of regret in Anatoly’s voice. He had been wanting a dog for a while but I had been hesitant to impose something like that on Mr. Katz. It wasn’t an unrealistic concern. I could tell by the look Mr. Katz gave Ms. Dogz as she came out of the office that a dogicide was being plotted.

  “Maybe not. I mean, yes, if London had the dog before their supposed split, Anita will want her back,” I reasoned as I moved on to Ms. Dogz’s back. There were soapsuds clinging to Anatoly’s bicep and I was trying really, really hard not to stare. “On the other hand, if Ms. Dogz was Anita’s replacement…” I let my voice trail off, allowing Anatoly to fill in the blanks.

  Anatoly reached for the hand shower, his arm brushing up against mine as he did although he didn’t even glance my way. Ms. Dogz treated Anatoly to a baleful stare. I wondered how much she understood. If she was waiting for London to come knocking on the door and rescue her from this water torture.

  “Anyway, you can’t say there isn’t any reason to at least consider the possibility that London sorta, kinda knew what he was talking about,” I pressed. “That maybe someone was out to get him. That he was being poisoned. He is dead, after all.”

  “It wasn’t that long ago that you tried to convince me that Alex Kinsky sorta, kinda knew what he was talking about.” He turned on the stream and started rinsing the suds off Ms. Dogz. “But he was conning you. He almost ended up killing both of us.”

  “First off, that has absolutely nothing to do with this,” I snapped. “Alex is a man with mafia-ties who offered to help me through criminal means. London was an individual who asked us for help through legal means. Secondly, Alex didn’t exactly con me. It’s just that he only gave me part of the story. Maybe that’s what London did.”

  “London didn’t give us any story,” Anatoly corrected as he rinsed off the last of the soap. I leaned over and drained the tub. My shirt was drenched and clinging to me in all sorts of inconvenient places. It might have been construed as an invitation if Anatoly bothered to take his eyes off the dog for one flippin’ second. “Ranting and raving is very different from story telling.”

  I angrily swiped at a wet curl that was sticking to my cheek. “Why are you so resistant to even considering the possible veracity of the facts of this case?”

  “What case?” Anatoly put the hand shower back with much more force than necessary. “For it to be a case, there has to be a client. London didn’t hire me--”

  “Because you wouldn’t let him!” I jumped to my feet and grabbed a towel throwing it over a now confused-looking-but-fresh-smelling Ms. Dogz. She was probably wondering what new kind of madhouse she had wandered into.

  “I think we can both agree he won’t be paying me,” Anatoly continued as he vigorously dried her. “This isn’t our business. No one wants us in
volved and there’s no upside in forcing the issue. There most likely isn’t an issue to force.” He carefully helped Ms. Dogz out of the tub. She immediately shook herself off, splattering us both and making a mockery out of our attempts at drying. “We have no solid reason to believe that anyone poisoned or even stalked London. This is over. At least it would be if you hadn’t broken into his apartment and stolen his dog!”

  “Saved. I saved his dog!” I turned on my heel and stomped out of the bathroom. Ms. Dogz was right behind me, then in front of me, then behind me again as she sprinted up and down the hall in a burst of energy, shaking herself every two or three seconds, making sure the whole second floor shared in her bathing experience. I threw open our bedroom door with the energy of unbridled frustration. Ms. Dogz rushed into the room, startling Mr. Katz who had been curled up on the bed. He looked at the expression on my face, then at the wet dog and jumped to the floor, storming out of the room just as Anatoly stormed in.

  “We have an obligation,” I said in a voice that wasn’t quite a yell, but loud enough to let the world know I wasn’t messing around.

  “To whom?” Anatoly asked, coolly.

  “To London.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “So what?” Ms. Dogz had stopped running around, undoubtedly captivated by the strength of my argument. “That doesn’t change the fact that he asked us for help! It doesn’t mean we didn’t screw up when we blew him off! And it doesn’t mean we get to turn our backs on his dog!”

  “Again, all you had to do was call the SPCA! Or you could have called the police and told them there’s a dog stuck in a dead man’s apartment! That’s what you do. What you don’t do is break into a man’s house! If you had been caught, you could have ended up in jail or worse!”

  “But I wasn’t caught!” I took a step closer, glaring up into his eyes. “An animal was in trouble and so I did what needed to be done. It’s called being responsible.”

  “Are you suggesting that I’m being irresponsible?”