The Long Good Boy

by Carol Lea Benjamin

  “Go home,” Chi Chi said. “Do whatever you have to with Clint so you can get him back to me.” She was shaking. I thought it might have had more to do with D-von’s failure to show than Clint’s departure, but I couldn’t be sure. I’d long ago ceased to be surprised by the way people loved their dogs.

  “I’m sorry I have to take him. I know you’ll miss him.”

  “I call Kenya tonight, have a talk with him.”

  “Kenya?”

  “She my animal communicator. She’s real good, honest. You want her number?”

  “How’s she going to communicate with him when he’s with me?”

  “She don’t need to be with him. I calls her up and tell her what I want to ask Clint, and she communicates with him telepathically. Then she tells me what his answer is. Simple. So you better be good to my little boy, Rachel, ’cause I’m going to be asking Kenya to contact him, ask him what he have for dinner, if he gets to sleep in the bed like he was your own dog, if you nice to him, nice as you is to him.” Pointing to Dashiell. Then peering both ways, looking for Devon.

  A block away, I put the dachshund down. If he was going to learn to work like a dog, he had to start to be treated like one, the sooner the better. After lifting his leg on the nearest upright object, the building we were passing, he balked, waiting for me to pick him up again.

  “Not tonight, little boy,” I said. “And don’t even think about ratting me out to Kenya.”

  He seemed to get that all right, because no sooner had I said it than he took off ahead of me, getting quickly to the end of the leash, then rushing around behind me, looping the leash around my legs and barking when there was no more slack and he was forced to stop. Whoever had helped Chi Chi housebreak him obviously hadn’t taught him how to walk on a leash. I let Clint get twisted up, pull, balk, do whatever he felt like, for two blocks, then brought him around to my left side, asked Dash to heel, and made sure Clint was between us. With his view to both sides blocked off, Clint began to keep pace.

  That’s when the car door opened down the block, a big black guy in a long fur coat, a big hat with a yellow feather in the band, spit-shined shoes, a classic, stepped out. He be-bopped our way, staring at Clint in his little red coat as he approached us but not saying a word. I kept right on going, giving Clint a pop on the leash when he began to growl.

  “Must be D-von,” I told the dogs when we were a block away and I was sure I couldn’t be heard, “unless someone’s making a film in the Village for a change.” Clint looked up at me and wagged his tail. “Maybe Woody Allen’s right behind us,” I told him. “Or Quentin Tarantino. Around here, anything can happen.”

  My sudden good mood must have been infectious. Dashiell sneezed first, Clint a moment later. I sneezed back. If I wanted the little boy to respond to me well enough to learn a complicated series of behaviors, execute them in order, and do them in a place he’d never been, I knew I had to respond to him, too. When I looked down at him, he was looking up and smiling. It was a look I’d seen in dogs a thousand times. Thank God, it said, someone’s finally addressing my brain.

  As we passed Da Andrea, it started to rain. I looked inside and thought of how much I’d like to be there, a glass of wine in my hand, some rigatoni with meat sauce in front of me, my sweetie across the table telling me about the borzoi who turned on the kitchen faucet when his owners left for work, or the Chihuahua he taught to pick up socks and underwear and drop them in front of the washing machine.

  I longed to be normal, to be trusting, to be entertained. But who was I to complain? Chi Chi was out in the rain, missing her dog, picking up strangers. I had work to do, too. At least I could do mine indoors where it was warm and safe. Or so I thought. The light was green. I scooped up Clint and ran across the street.

  Back at the cottage, I began Clint on the sit. Dashiell sat, too, his look full of meaning. You want to see training, it said, watch this.

  I told Clint he could break, moved to another spot, and once again held a ball over his head. In order to look at the ball, he had to sit. As soon as he did, I tossed the ball and let him retrieve it. He dropped it at my feet, eyes glowing. For the next ten minutes, we went back and forth, giving each other something each time, Clint having so much fun that he didn’t notice he was learning commands, me bypassing the natural stubbornness of the breed by making work a game. Once he was steady on the sit-stay, I called him to me, told him he was brilliant, and went upstairs to boot up the computer.

  11

  I Thought I Was So Clever

  While my laptop clicked and chugged, I had another idea. I didn’t know if all families were microcosms of the world at large, but mine surely was. We had a rags-to-riches story, my grandfather Meyer who came here from Russia without a penny and did very well for himself in the clothing business until his death at fifty-eight of a heart attack. We had a stay-at-home mom in the suburbs, my sister Lillian. And a cheating husband, hers. We had a musician, my father’s mother, Gertrude, who played the flute, and a suicide, Gertrude’s father, Samuel. We had an ex-dog trainer, me, a private investigator, me, and a divorcée, me. And we had a transvestite, my cousin Richie.

  I checked the clock, not quite eleven. My aunt Ceil would still be up, getting ready to watch the late news. I dialed her number and waited.

  “Yes. Who is it?” Living proof the voice is the last thing to go.

  “Aunt Ceil, it’s me, Rachel.”

  “Ruchela, darling. Is something wrong?”

  “No, no. I’m sorry to call so late, but I knew you’d be up.”

  “You can call me anytime, sweetheart. I tell Richie the same thing. You’re like my child, too, darling. So, what is it, then? Good news, I hope.”

  “Actually, I need to talk to Richie, and I don’t have his number.”

  She repeated it twice. “Rachel, dear.”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t call him so early. Call around three. That’s when he gets home from work and he’s all revved up. He’ll be happy to have someone to talk to. Unless, of course, he has someone to talk to already, in which case he’ll blow you off and call you back tomorrow. It’s urgent?”

  I filled her in. “I thought he might be able to help me understand these women,” I said.

  “Rachel, my Richie’s a female impersonator, an entertainer. You should see him, darling, how clever he is with the lip-synching, you’d never know in a million years he wasn’t doing it himself, and the hair, the makeup, the costumes, he’s wonderful, so sensitive and funny. He’s an artist, darling. What would he know about streetwalkers? Nothing. Nothing. He’s a refined person. He—”

  “Oh, I know, I know. But it’s not his own experience, it’s—”

  “Hookers? He doesn’t know hookers. What are you thinking? He knows makeup, hair. Ma, he says to me, cucumbers. Lie down on the bed, place a slice over each eye. It’s like an eye job, he tells me. You’ll look five years younger. You’ll be able to pass for seventy-five again. So I said, what about tea bags? Last year, he told me tea bags, even what kind. Not Lipton, he said, green tea. And be sure it’s organic. Now he tells me cucumbers. Tea bags, he says. That’s so yesterday, Ma. He tells me when to color my hair, what shade to use. He sends me aloe for my skin. This is what he knows. Hookers? What would he know about hookers? Aren’t they all drug addicts?”

  She waited, but I didn’t answer.

  “This is necessary, Rachel, to talk to Richie, in order to solve the case?”

  “Well, no, it’s not necessary. The obvious thing I need to do is to get inside that meat market and see if the two murders are connected. And I plan to do that very soon.” I decided to skip those details, suddenly wishing I had call-waiting or that the doorbell would ring, anything to get out of what I’d just gotten myself into. “It’s just that it’s not possible for me to be around these women and not—”

  “But why upset Richie?” Ceil blew her nose. “He has a wonderful life, my Richie.”

  I thought I might skip talking
to her about gender dysphoria for the time being. “I know that their lives are a world apart from his, and I know how supportive and loving you are as a mom, and how close you two are. I understand all that. But I want to understand what it’s like when someone doesn’t have that. I thought he might have some friends who weren’t as lucky as he was.”

  “Well, there was a boy he brought home once, so shy he couldn’t look me in the eye. Richie said when his father found out he was gay, he tried to beat it out of him, to beat him into being a man, he told him.”

  I looked at the dogs, both up on the spare bed and sleeping.

  “I heard that some fathers had a difficult time accepting that a son was gay.” I coughed and cleared my throat. Twice. “You never said how Uncle Isaac reacted.”

  “Isaac?”

  “Yes. When he found out that Richie was gay.”

  “Oh, he adored him. What difference would it make to him, straight or gay? He loved his son.”

  Hadn’t my mother told me, so many years ago, me only half listening because I was too wrapped up in myself to care, that Richie had run away from home when he was eleven or twelve? She’d found it funny, just something boys do if they don’t get their way. Better still, it gave her a reason to lord it over Ceil because she had girls, ignoring the fact that one of her girls was a constant disappointment. “So they were close, Isaac and Richie?”

  “Like peas in a pod. And Richie, he loved his father with all his heart. That’s how little boys are, they worship their daddies. When I called Richie to tell him his father had died, it was so sudden, like your papa, he sobbed. ‘Mom,’ he said, ‘it’s a good thing no one’s here. My mascara’s running down my face. I look like shit.’ He flew home the next day for the funeral, and when he went back to Florida, he took so many things that belonged to his father, even sweaters, socks, handkerchiefs. Take anything you want, darling, I told him. I knew he wanted his father with him, to feel his presence.”

  I glanced at the pad where I’d written Richie’s number. “It’s Rich Allen now, is that right?”

  “Yes. A stage name. Kaminsky is, well—”

  “Too long?” I suggested.

  “Yes. People can’t spell it. He wanted something more—”

  “Memorable?”

  “Exactly, darling.”

  “Well, I better get back to work now. Thanks so much for all your help.”

  When I hung up, I walked out into the garden. The rain had stopped. Standing under the black sky and looking up at the stars, I spoke out loud, both dogs looking up at me to see what I wanted. Like peas in a pod, I told them. I checked my watch. Still three hours before I could call.

  Back upstairs, I started to do a search on drugs, but stopped after an hour. It wouldn’t tell me what the girls were on, but I was pretty sure it was crack. The designer drugs, the ones my cousin Richie probably used, were too expensive, especially since most of the girls only got to keep a small percentage of what they earned, a much smaller portion than they would net if they were merely paying taxes. As for the effects of their drug use, some were visible, some weren’t. What you couldn’t see, that was the worst part. They might as well be playing Russian roulette. If the drugs didn’t kill them, they surely kept them broke and kept them hooking. With their habit, their profession, the risk of disease, and the mood of their pimp, survival was an iffy proposition. Shivering in the damp, cold yard, I thought I was so clever. I didn’t know the half of it.

  12

  His Nose Twitched

  I went down to the basement, both dogs following me, Clint, with his long body and short legs, tacking as if he were a sailboat running obliquely against the wind. I needed to fashion a flap, something to approximate the cat door at Keller’s, so that I could teach Clint to go through it. I needed to teach him to open a hook-and-eye lock, follow a path from the cat door up to the bathroom, and thanks to Chi Chi’s eye for details, put down the seat and lid on the toilet so that he could stand on it and reach the windowsill. And I had to do it fast, before anyone else got killed.

  I found a roll of felt I’d used years earlier to make hand puppets for my sister’s kids. I cut a rectangular piece, about six by six. Now I needed someplace to hang it that wouldn’t let Clint go around it. I had some boxes of books I’d never unpacked. I unpacked one, stacking the books along the wall, getting lost for a while rereading the beginning of My Dog Tulip. Then I cut a hole in the box the size of the felt flap, stapled the flap over the opening, and cut off the opposite side of the box so that when Clint pushed the felt with his nose and went through, he wouldn’t be stuck inside the box; he’d be able to go right through it, to the room behind it.

  While I worked, Dashiell stretched out near the stairs and slept. Clint ran around, stopping frequently to bark at me, unhappy that my attention was on something other than him. It was a good opportunity to deal with that, because once he knew the drill and was ready for Keller’s, his safety might depend on his ability to become a stealth dachshund. Barking could attract attention to something I didn’t want anyone to notice, and once I was in the building, too, our lives would depend on my speed and his silence.

  So as I got the practice dog door ready, I got Clint to practice his newly acquired skills—sitting and paying attention. With my attention on him and with something new to do, he stopped barking and didn’t resume it again until I released him and he’d wound himself up again, doing circles around the basement. It was all a game to him, and he was having the time of his life. For my part, I was encouraging both the control and the wildness, getting him to slip back and forth between those two modes, getting the job done faster than I thought I would. Clint was a quick study, but had I merely pushed him to be quiet, I would have seen how stubborn a dachshund could be, how much determination per pound these little dogs had.

  I even sent Dashiell to find a ball. He disappeared up the stairs, Clint standing near me, his head cocked, waiting. When I heard Dashiell at the top of the stairs, I told him, “Out,” and watched Clint back up and bark as the ball bounced down the wooden steps and rolled onto the basement floor. When he got it, I sent Dash for another, so that both dogs could retrieve while I shuffled work and play for Clint, getting longer and longer periods where he’d sit quietly and watch me, waiting for the signal to cut loose again.

  When the box was ready I carried it upstairs, both dogs rushing on ahead of me, each with a ball in his mouth. I set the box in the doorway to my bedroom, blocking the space on either side of it with books so that Clint couldn’t simply go around it, piling more books on top so that it wouldn’t move and he couldn’t see over the top. Then I took his ball, put it on the other side of the box, in the bedroom, and held the flap up and out of the way so that he could see it and get to it unhindered. Nothing like easy success to build confidence. In minutes Clint was playing the new game, tearing through the tunnel into the bedroom, snagging the ball, and waiting to be called back, my little Einstein.

  I gave the dogs a yard break, grabbed a soda, and stood outside huddled in my jacket while I drank it and watched them play. Then I called them back upstairs. Putting Dashiell on a down, lowering the piece of felt, and dropping the ball with an audible thump on the far side of the box, I sent Clint through. His nose twitched. He lowered his head. He poked his nose under the felt, hesitated, and pushed through. This time, I didn’t call him back. I wanted him to figure it out for himself, that when the job was done, he needed to get his butt back to me as fast as possible. I closed my eyes and began to count silently. By the time I’d mouthed “two,” there he was. He dropped the ball in my lap, backed up, and barked. I sent it down the hall and listened to it thumping down the stairs, Clint after it as fast as he could go, wondering how much Chi Chi played with him, or if instead he just got to sit and watch her nod off on ketamine after a hard night’s work.

  I padded downstairs, coming in third in a field of three, filled the water bowl, and gave each dog a biscuit. Then I went back up to my office and calle
d my cousin Richie, trying hard to figure out, as I listened to the phone ring and then his outgoing message, Streisand singing “People,” why I had no recollection of his father’s funeral.

  “Richie, it’s Rachel Kaminsky,” I said, not sure he’d know the name I’d earned the old-fashioned way, by marrying and divorcing a Jewish dentist. “I got your number from your mom, and—”

  “Rachel fucking Kaminsky? Be still my heart.”

  I laughed. “I didn’t know if you’d know—”

  “My mother talks about you a lot, Rachel. She says you’re like the daughter she never had.”

  “Oh. Sorry about that.”

  “I know what you mean. I assumed I was the daughter she never had. At least, I’ve been trying to be. But what’s a girl to do? You know you can never please these Jewish women. Speaking of which—”

  “Yeah. A dentist,” I said. “I wasn’t able to score a doctor.”

  “Me, neither. Well, better luck next time. I lived with an accountant for eight months. I thought that would please the old bitch. After all, he did her taxes free.”

  “And?”

  “Saved her four hundred and thirty dollars.”

  I whistled. “Impressive.”

  “In more ways than one.”

  I waited for more. A remark like that, there’s bound to be more.

  “Your dentist fool around on you?”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Well?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “He smack you around?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, I’ve got it, he was a heavy drinker, am I right? Spent his time in bars, or in front of the TV with a scotch and soda in his hand, growing meaner by the minute?”

  “No. Not that either.”

  “How curious. But you dumped him anyway, an income like that? Shame, shame. Come on now, tell your cousin, what did he do?”

  “He wanted me to cook dinner.”

  “The filthy beast!”

  “It was a little more complicated than that.”