Chihuahua Karma

by Rice, Debby

  Chihuahua Karma

  By Debby Rice

  Copyright 2011 Debby Rice

  Cover design by Jim Wisniewski

  Smashwords Edition

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be resold or given away.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  “All my previous selves have their voices, echoes, and promptings in me. Oh, incalculable times again shall I be born.” Jack London, The Star Rover

  I was young, beautiful and rich—just golden enough to imagine that I had the world by the balls. Death was the farthest thing from my mind. But even a morbid obsession with the afterlife could not have prepared me for what happened.

  I was murdered on a beautiful summer day. Technically it was an accident. Larry didn’t get his hands dirty. He drove me crazy, and I did the rest. That morning Zoya was slamming the vacuum cleaner around. I heard it bump and clank over the marble floor, then suck on the carpet and wheeze like an emphysema patient. As a Russian Orthodox, Zoya had only been a marginal housekeeper. When she hooked up with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, scouring our toilets became a substitute for cleansing our souls.

  Eyes closed, I slid my foot over to Larry’s side of the bed. I didn’t hear him snoring, so I knew it would be cold. The sheets and blankets were tucked in place. I buried my face in the pillows and pulled the duvet over my head, comforted by the feel of five star bedding.

  Larry was cheating on me, and my nightly partying with chardonnay and Jamaica Red was only providing limited consolation. Those fickle frenemies were good for a couple of hours, then they’d thumb their noses and drop me cold.

  Larry’s new girlfriend, Charmaine, was 25. She sold cosmetics at Barney’s. Although it was hard to consider someone whose name reminded me of toilet paper as a serious threat, my friends had been hinting for months. Finally, Miranda Harrison took me to her counter to buy lipstick. On our way out of the store, she squeezed my arm and whispered, “I think you and that girl have something in common.” There was no need to say, “I told you so.” She had warned me not to drop Richard for that “slimy gangster,” Larry.”

  I lay very still trying to ease the heavy metal in my head, hoping that Zoya would progress to dusting. I longed for her to succumb to her baser instincts and return to her slutty part-time job at Russian Brides Unlimited. But that was unlikely. A naughty picture and an indiscreet request for $1,000 sent to the wrong person had ended that career. Her new obsession with purity and order was a painful reminder of my own messy life. At best, I had three months before Charmaine would be hanging her clothes in the closet. Although I refused to sign a prenup, the thought of battling it out in court with Larry and Charmaine was a scary prospect.

  Zoya moved up the hall, and the droning got louder. Sleep was impossible. There was half a joint in the ashtray by the bed. It smelled better than coffee. I lit up, took a big hit and choked. Then I exhaled, and the world was lighter.

  When I first met Larry, drugs for breakfast were a novelty. Now, they were a necessary component of another scary day. Oh, there were plenty of more healthy addictions I could have pursued—yoga or shopping or a raw-food diet. But drugs and alcohol seemed more in keeping with my precarious marital and, by extension, financial status. They effectively blocked the intrusive vision of a return to my dismal career in real estate. Relocation makes people crazy. I couldn’t imagine enduring the daily humiliation of chauffeuring nut cases around the city ever again.

  I had grown accustomed to sleeping in, dressing up and never worrying about paying for anything. I didn’t want to know where the money came from. That question was the serpent’s apple, and I refused to make Eve’s mistake. It was best not to speculate about how much revenue an extermination franchise could generate, even if the vermin were infesting Chicago’s most expensive restaurants. I wanted certain things, so I took short cuts.

  The vacuum rattled and slammed against the door. “I’m sleeping!” I screamed over the noise.

  “Sound like you awake to me!” Zoya screamed back. She was rude and sneaky and resented having someone her own age boss her around. I really needed to fire her. But she was taking care of Lucille. So I was willing to cut her some slack. On the third bump, I tried again, “Hello, Zoya.”

  “Hallo, Mrs. Cherry.”

  “Pretend this is the Four Seasons and I just put up the Do Not Disturb sign!” I yelled.

  “What? I no hear you.”

  It was hopeless. I took a swig of stale wine from the glass on my nightstand. The pounding in my head had subsided, so I hauled myself up. I walked into the bathroom. My feet got tangled in something, and I stubbed my toe. Larry’s tie was twisted around my ankle. His clothes were strewn across the floor. I had passed out and not heard him come home to change. I picked up his white silk shirt. It reeked—perfume, cigarettes, alcohol, a potpourri of infidelity. Just as I was about to throw it in the hamper, I noticed a smudge of magenta lipstick on the front.

  That stain was a bigger dose of reality than Charmaine herself. I sat down on the cold marble floor and cried until my eyes burned. Eventually, I realized that crying was pointless. There was no one to impress with my despair. The tears were about fear, not love.

  When I married Larry, I traded love for a black American Express card. Larry’s greatest passion will always be himself. Richard would have thanked me for the chance to push my wheelchair. He was a veterinarian who cared for animals as if they were his children and loved me like a soul mate. I convinced myself that he was boring. In truth, I craved that incredible kindness, but it frightened me. I knew that I could never measure up. The strings that came with money seemed looser than the knots that bind hearts.

  I turned on the water in the Jacuzzi and got in. The tub was about half full when I noticed the bottle of Vicodin on the ledge. I was so excited that I didn’t even wonder how it got there. In hindsight it was obvious. Larry knew me pretty well. I poured out three tablets and washed them down with the rest of the wine. I lay in the tub waiting for a buzz, but nothing happened. So I decided another joint might help. I got out of the bath, dried off and went back into the bedroom. The curtains were closed and the A/C was on high enough to freeze a side of beef. The room was pitch-black. It smelled like a bar at last call. But in the crack where the curtains met there was a shaft of light. That gave me an idea. I rummaged through Gordian knots of underwear (Zoya refused to straighten drawers) until I found my new bikini. It was lime-green and covered with little pink flamingos, the last purchase I would ever make. I got the weed, a fresh bottle of white wine from the mini-fridge, a glass, the corkscrew, a beach towel and some suntan lotion.

  I opened the sliding glass doors to the terrace and stepped into a morning that felt lush as a greenho
use. Maybe it was the drugs or the splendor of my last ten minutes on earth: From the 40th floor the world was my kingdom. I gazed down at all the little people below, scurrying off to mind-numbing jobs, slaves to paychecks and belligerent bosses. This was my personal Eden. I belonged here, wrapped in flowers and fragrance. Larry could wish me gone till he was blue in the face, but I was determined to stay.

  The cars on Lake Shore Drive flashed like a rap star’s bling against the shadowy velvet of Lincoln Park. Larry’s gardener had filled the planters with masses of hydrangeas that looked too blue and bosomy to be real. I opened the wine and poured a glass. All those snobby epigrams were on the money: The wine was a breath of peaches, apricots and vanilla.

  I spread my towel on the terrace ledge and climbed up. There was nothing between me and the ground 40 stories below. I was staring into the blue, imagining myself as an astronaut floating in zero gravity when the pills closed my eyes. The sun dissolved into a burst of tiny stars on the back of my eyelids. Heat soaked my skin. Far away, Zoya’s vacuum buzzed as she swooshed up sinful dust bunnies. I kept my eyes shut and rolled over on my hip, intending to turn onto my stomach. I had done this a hundred times before but perhaps not in such an altered state of consciousness. I pushed up on my hand, flipped over and entered eternity. I was cartwheeling through space. The sky turned black. There was no pain, no white light. My fall was a dizzying kaleidoscope of confusion and regret.

  In the moments it took to reach the pavement, I relived hours of mistakes and foolish choices. I heard my mother dispense the worst advice of my adult life: “Trust me,” she said, squeezing my hand till I winced. “You don’t want to waste all that time in law school. Take the modeling job. That underwear catalogue is a stepping-stone. You’re going to be on the cover of Vogue!”

  I saw myself standing before the judge on the day I married Larry, twisting the enormous rock on my finger and congratulating myself on a smart decision. Minutes earlier I had held my own private ceremony in the bathroom of the Bellagio’s Presidential Suite. I had removed Richard’s picture from my wallet, torn it into tiny pieces and flushed it down the toilet, consigning my heart to the Las Vegas sewer system. It felt like a bikini wax: excruciatingly painful—but only for a moment.

  In the very last second of my life as Cherry Paget, I saw Lucille. And there was something strange about this vision. Her mother, Veronica, was standing beside her, holding her hand. Now Lucille would be completely alone, with only Zoya to look after her. These images faded into white noise and static.

  Then the universe shifted. Like a skydiver whose parachute snaps open, I was yanked back to the worst hangover of my life. My head felt like it had been split with a machete. I opened my eyes slowly, expecting to see my body spread-eagle on the pavement.

  Instead, I saw a tiny white Chihuahua—a dog small enough to sit in a teacup or a shirt pocket. She was dressed in a pink sweater. A pink plastic collar studded with rhinestones circled her neck. I felt a hand stroke my back. Could Larry have had a change of heart? My gaze traveled up an enormous cellulite-riddled leg to the smiling, yellow-toothed grin of a middle-aged giant. She was wearing a tweed wool coat with a fox fur collar over a pair of Bermuda shorts. Kneeling beside her was Ruby Lin. She had a tomato-shaped pincushion strapped to one wrist. In her other hand was a ruler. She had also become a giant. The two of them and the dog were reflected in a mirror, but I was not there.

  I recognized my surroundings immediately. As Mrs. Lins’ Number 1 Valued Dry Cleaning Customer, I had spent many hours before this mirror, watching her hem my pants or alter a skirt. She was intimately acquainted with every item of my wardrobe. And I had listened to endless commentary about her dog, Sugar, a mini Chihuahua—the diminutive result of urban America’s increasing passion for smaller and smaller dogs.

  The sight of this dog filled me with irrational dread. It was the bottomless terror of staring into my own coffin. I thought I was going to vomit. I began to shake and could not stop. Sugar seemed to share my fear; her little limbs were trembling violently. Everything about this situation was disjointed, wrong and sickening. What was I doing at the Lucky Dream Dry Cleaners? Had I lost my memory, my mind or both? I tried to scream, but I had no voice. As if reflecting my distress, Sugar began barking furiously.

  “Sugar, what’s wrong, baby doggie?” said the shorts lady.

  The stroking on my back got more vigorous. I snarled and snapped. My teeth grazed skin, and I experienced a frightening sense of satisfaction. How had I done something so bizarre? Was I brain-damaged? Mrs. Lin’s customer jumped back.

  “Sugar, you bad dog. What the matter with you? Why you do act up to Missy?” Mrs. Lin’s hand closed around what seemed to be my face. She shook my head back and forth. But in the mirror I saw that she was actually holding Sugar’s muzzle. It took quite a while to understand exactly what had happened.

  Chapter 2

  “I adopted the theory of reincarnation when I was 26. Genius is experience. Some seem to think that it is a gift or talent, but it is the fruit of long experience in many lives.”

  Henry Ford

  This is what I discovered. Reincarnation is real, and it is very, very scary. Having your consciousness downloaded into four legs and a tail is a horror show. At the time of the accident, I was 33. But you would not have guessed. I had legs that were made for Jimmy Choo, breasts that were perfect enough to look fake and a hank of blond hair that was better than Barbie’s. Okay, credit where credit is due. There were extensions. There was color. Without Stewart, my stylist, the hair would have been a big zero.

  Now when I remember that body, I want to weep—great chest-heaving sobs of rage and frustration. It is the grief reserved for bereaved parents and star-crossed lovers. Of course there are no tears. Alive, I was a cliché. Dead, I am an anomaly: Cherry Paget’s soul trapped in the body of a dog.

  Perhaps this does not happen to everyone. I didn’t know the rules. I was waiting for an emissary. It was not unreasonable to imagine that an angel or a ghost or even God himself might tell me what to do. But there are no more explanations in death than there are in life.

  I wondered whether others had inhabited Sugar before me. At first I thought she might be a way station on the road to higher consciousness. But I had not moved on. Sugar did not have a dog personality. Or, if she did, it ran on a frequency I was unable to access. I was completely alone in this tiny prison. Every time I closed my eyes, I yearned to believe that such a horrible and unnatural thing could not happen. Dreams became my refuge. They were the fragile tether that connected me to humanity. Sleeping was normal. Waking was the horror. I’m not sure how long I lived in a limbo of denial. It could have been weeks. I was disoriented, like a time traveler who has landed in an unexpected century.

  A combination of rage and fear jolted me out of my stupor. The day began like any other at the Lucky Dream. Mrs. Lin and her husband, Tong, were sorting laundry and lamenting their children. Suzie and Edmund excel at turning their parents’ dreams to dust and little else. Suzie, a stocky young woman with the body language of someone torn between a desire for invisibility and stardom, had recently packed her gym bag and moved out. To Mrs. Lin’s horror, Suzie’s new roommate was Tong’s gambling buddy, CJ.

  “What she see in that old goat?” said Mrs. Lin. “So many accountants and pharmacists on KoreanCupid.com. They even got a few stockbrokers—she not interested. End up with ugly, blue-collar loser. I don’t get it.”

  “Young people. What can you do?” Tong shrugged his skinny shoulders. These conversations were usually one-sided, with Tong grunting or nodding at the appropriate moment.

  “I think CJ run with bad crowd. You got to lay down law. Make Suzie come home.” Wire hangers clattered as Mrs. Lin threw them into a storage container.

  “You know I can’t make her do anything. Besides, it would upset CJ.”

  “Why I care if CJ get upset?” said Mrs. Lin.

  “You don’t want to know,” Tong whispered under his breath. “
You worry too much about Suzie. She can take care of herself. Edmund’s the one we gotta do something about. When are you gonna put that kid on a diet?”

  There was a pause in the conversation. Then Mrs. Lin said, “I pretty good seamstress. You want me to sew his mouth shut.”

  Tong burst out laughing, “Ha, you got me. Sometimes you’re a funny lady.”

  Unlike Suzie, Edmund will probably never leave the nest. In addition to weighing at least 250 pounds, he has asthma and other respiratory problems. Mrs. Lin says that the chemicals in the air at the Lucky Dream aggravate these conditions. This is undoubtedly an excuse to keep him out of the shop. Much as the Lins could use the extra pair of hands, Edmund’s Darth Vader wheezing is off-putting to customers.

  I was lying in the basket designated for “colors” on top of s, underpants and blue jeans covered in every stain imaginable. The dirty garments slowly collecting on top of me were my sheep. Hoping to be lulled to sleep, I counted—one a sock, two a shirt, three another sock. Soon the Lins’ conversation faded, and I was back to where I wanted to be, lost in a dream…

  Someone was playing the piano. Candles flickered in the dark. On a cocktail table, a crystal glass shone like a sparkler. I picked it up, holding the stem between my thumb and index finger. And, yes, I dreamed I had hands and fingers and nails manicured to the buff and shine of a newborn Porsche. Vodka trembled around the edges of the glass, heavy and silver like mercury. A jumbo olive the color of a parrot’s wing nestled in the V at the bottom. I raised my cocktail to Richard. He raised his, and we toasted. There was something I desperately needed to say, but when I tried to speak, my mouth turned to cotton, and I couldn’t get the words out. I reached out to touch Richard; I needed to feel the weight of his hand and the texture of his skin, to run my finger over the little scar on his wrist, but it was already too late…