by Toby Barlow
it doesn’t mean it won’t come to us.
Let’s just put the wheels in motion. Let’s kick it forward.
We’ve been sniffing for Lark for months now
and we’ve got nothing. So before we walk away
and leave him to his own dead-end path,
maybe we should take a look
at what I’m talking about here.”
Ray doesn’t say anything, he stares ahead.
It seems like he’s studying the cracks
in the wall, searching for some kind of a map.
But then he simply nods
and heads off to find Baron and Sasha.
Watching him go, Bone thinks of how
he hasn’t talked to Baron since the pack was overthrown.
He doesn’t care, water under the bridge and all that.
But if Baron was Judas to the last pack, thinks Bone,
Ray had better watch out.
´Cause who’s to think Baron’s going to be any different
now.
Word comes down, Bone is transferred off the pack search.
Word comes down, he’s supposed to look into the kennel.
Bone runs across the lot to the car,
moving out alone, hungry for credit, for merit,
for more of that dark, wet
Sasha.
He drives downtown,
death metal screams its radio love song to LA.
A maze of exits and municipal signage and then he pulls in
to the pound. Walking into the mason building
it seems to Bone like centuries have passed
since he came here that day with her, looking for a job.
He barely said a word then, says little more now.
At the front desk a tired soul tells him that Anthony is out
won’t be back for most likely a few hours.
Bone’s got a head full of nervous energy, can’t stop twitching.
He heads back out the parking lot and then, whoa,
what the hell, there she is,
Lark’s girl, the pack’s girl, but here now.
Bone tries to think through it, figuring it makes some sense.
The last time he spent any time with her
was when she brought him down to meet Anthony.
Now she’s standing with an impatient posture
like Bone’s late or something.
She’s leaning on his car a little pissed.
He approaches slowly, warily.
Her mouth is tight and angry.
“Where the fuck have you been?”
“I wasn’t expecting to see you here,” he manages.
“I been following you since you passed me way back on
Wilshire,
honking my horn the whole way,
you didn’t fucking hear it?” She rolls her eyes, exasperated.
“Sorry, I had the radio playing.”
At this she softens a bit. She looks great to him.
He thinks, “She was always so untouchable.”
His nerves still feel shaky, but whatever,
he wants it now, he’ll take it.
“Where’s Lark?” he asks.
“I dunno, Bone, he’s dead to me,” she says.
“Things sure change fast.”
She shrugs. “Look, we should get outta here, we should talk. Really,
I want to hear what’s going on with you.”
“Sure,” Bone says, wondering how to play this, “maybe we should go somewhere, you
want to follow me or—”
“Why don’t you drive us. One car’s simpler. Then you can bring me back, okay?”
“Sure,” Bone says.
She steps close to Bone, almost whispers.
“We could go out to the hills, we could go for a run tonight.”
Back in the pack, Lark kept her apart,
she was the dry match
and they were the fumes of gasoline.
Bone never got near her.
But now,
now she leans against Bone.
They drive east. Making small talk,
Bone is tense about the clock.
He digs a little for news.
“So, where are you living?”
“Chinatown,” she says. “I’ve hooked up with a guy
in the garment business.”
“Free clothes.”
“He prefers me without them.”
Ha, ha.
She puts her hand on his wrist, sending his pulse soaring.
“Lark would never let me be with you.”
Her fingers rest between Bone’s.
His pulse moving so fast, it’s breaking land speed records.
He aches from heart to gut to groin and looks for off-ramps.
“Lark had his rules,” Bone says.
Her hands keep roaming across his legs,
her lips move to his ear and she whispers,
“Lark’s not here.”
Bone accelerates.
She asks about the end of the old pack
he fills her in, he keeps his cool,
desperate now for an exit.
Her hands keep roaming
the old distance and
the old rules seem skies away to him now and—
—yes, there’s a West Covina exit.
“Gas,” Bone says.
“Uh-huh,” she says, moving her hand
to his crotch.
They roll into the Shell station. Pull in the back.
Then, faster than time,
she’s leapt over,
her tongue is down his throat.
She straddles his lap, grinds against his thigh.
There’s always the question, like man or dog?
Here and now, the pleasure of a dog’s love
is more intense, but the appreciation of a human’s
more delicate, more sublime. Bone decides they’ll stay human.
She unbuttons
his shirt, runs her hands on his chest.
Licks his neck.
A pause, deep breath.
“Jesus Christ,” she says, “not here. Not in the car. In there.”
She points to the station’s restroom.
Bone nods.
“I’ll get the key. Give me a minute.”
Bone watches as the Indian gives her the key. Nodding. Smiling.
She runs to the john door.
She holds up her hand, one sec. He smiles quick
bangs his hand on the steering wheel and waves back.
He suddenly feels he’s waited five years for this.
Yeah. He bangs the driving wheel again with his fist and then
gets out of the car. The light feels too bright,
the day is as raw as he is.
He heads to the restroom,
turns the greasy door handle, walks in.
Two stalls.
“Hey baby—” he says.
She comes out of the stall, a dog.
“Aw, hey, baby. Don’t cha think—”
She jumps for him. Angry. Teeth bared.
“Oh my god no.”
As a dog, he could take her, but she’s too far ahead
she’d kill him quick if he tried to change now.
“Fuck!” She gets his arm and doesn’t hold back. Bites through.
And the blood comes fast.
He shouts out in agony. Praying for the Indian attendant.
He kicks but she takes the kick without losing her bite
and dodges the next.
His arm is sopping red as he kicks again and
loses his balance, slipping on his own blood
to the wet concrete floor, landing hard on his side
holding his arms over his head.
She knows how to fight, she knows how to make this fast.
She bites his stomach from the side, cutting so deep
her teeth are scraping against his rib.
“Oh, oh Jes
us Christ.”
She tears into his calf—muscles, tendons.
His arms instinctively react, reaching down,
but then she goes for his face.
He tries to punch, but an artery in his leg
is open, he can see his stomach
slipping out of his gut,
and then the arm is useless.
Her teeth hit his neck.
The last thing he sees are her eyes.
The last thing he feels is the heat of her breath on his neck.
The only thing he hears
is the might of the surging blackness
as it softly growls
for him.
XXVII
Twenty minutes later
she quietly washes her hands
and pulls on her underwear.
She looks around, double-checking.
The bones are gone,
tucked beneath his shredded
clothes in the trash
and the floor is licked Ajax clean.
Maybe someone will notice later,
but probably not. Minimum wage
tends to elicit minimum attention.
She grabs Bone’s wallet and his cell and his keys.
As she runs across the parking lot,
she waves through the window
to the turbaned cashier.
Smiling, the Indian waves back.
The blood is warm in her belly.
On the car ride into the city
she wipes the red traces
stuck like ketchup to the corner
of her dark lips.
The song on the radio sings
Hey baby, hey baby, hey.
XXVIII
Anthony comes home
and she seems relaxed in a way
he hasn’t seen since early on.
She folds up in his arms.
Without many words
within minutes
they’re making love on the couch.
Her smile is wide,
her passion exhausting.
Afterward, she cooks dinner and listens
as he talks about the dogs
and the day’s long runs in the truck.
She comes up behind him while he washes the dishes
stroking his hair, her head resting on his back.
She sighs contentment
without making a sound.
He doesn’t know
what made her unwind
but as they make love again that night
her eyes locked with his, his with hers,
he only hopes it will last.
XXIX
Peabody pulls into the neighborhood.
He had run the number off
the plates from the mystery dog’s truck.
They belonged to an Emilio Ruiz,
age sixty-five, retired, living here in San Pedro.
Small bungalow blocks from the water.
If the neighborhood was nice
people would say it had character,
as it is, the place is just plain poor.
Peabody works these patrols alone,
explaining little back at the station.
After all, in order to describe the case
he’d have to understand it himself.
One dogcatcher disappears, looks like murder,
turns out two guys have gone missing.
A third eats a gun, maybe out of guilt, but maybe
out of fear,
either way, it’s ifs and maybes and too odd
to explain to anyone downtown.
It’s tough and lonely
working on your own,
at the last of your own straws,
where questions only breed more questions.
But here he is now
knocking on Emilio’s door.
A young guy with the looks of a surfer comes to the door.
“Hi,” says Peabody. “I’m looking to meet a Mr. Ruiz.”
“Oh, hi. No, he’s not here now.
He left this morning.”
The kid is confident, strong and so blond he’s almost albino.
A beach kid doesn’t add up here.
“Um, okay. When do you expect Mr. Ruiz back?”
The surfer pauses and then smiles.
“He’ll be back later, why don’t you give me your number.
We’ll have him call.”
“I’d rather see him, if that’s okay.”
“Sure, sure. We’ll let you know when he’s here.” The kid seems unfazed.
Maybe it’s all nothing.
Maybe Peabody’s just trying to build a story
where there’s really nothing.
“Okay, thanks, see you later.”
The screen door slams.
Peabody walks away from the stoop, watching
out of the corner of his eye as the kid recedes
into the house.
He runs through all the answers, something
didn’t sound right.
He walks around the block, mulling it over while
looking for a human face,
for instance over there,
on the corner, an older woman tearing all the plants
out of her tangled garden.
“Morning.”
She looks up and grimaces, not too happy
about giving up the time.
“Do you, by any chance, know a Mr. Ruiz?”
She doesn’t react, she’s either thinking of a response
or waiting for him to move on, or maybe she just doesn’t
comprende and
Peabody isn’t in the mood to test his rusty Spanglish
so he nods
and begins to walk away.
“Ruiz is a son of a bitch,” she says.
Peabody swivels around and she looks at him.
She’s got a southwestern rhythm to her speech,
a high Hispanic accent that hints at the desert.
“I haven’t seen him for months though.
Don’t think he’s around, just the two guys and a girl
living at his house and
driving his truck.”
“Months? Really? Do you have any idea who these guys are?” he says.
She shrugs. “No se, I don’t know, but they only seem to leave the house at night.”
“Really?” says Peabody again.
“Listen,” she says. “Ruiz used to fight dogs, he was a puta dehijo,
seriously, ask anyone on this street and they’ll tell you,
he was a bastard. Crazy and mean. He might still be around,
but I haven’t seen him. And I don’t know who those kids are
living there in his place. But I’ll tell you what,
they’re not family.”
“When did you first notice them?” Peabody asks,
admiring this tough old girl.
“I don’t know,” she winds down,
returning her attention to the torn-up yard.
“You’d have to let me think about that…”
then she hits the weeds again,
pulling up their root systems, fist after fist,
oblivious to Peabody waiting there.
A minute or two passes.
Peabody waits.
When she finally looks up, all shades
of pleasantry are gone.
“Aw, hell, just mind your own damn business,” she says.
He goes back to his car, still parked across
from Ruiz’s little house,
where he adds up what little he knows.
She said Ruiz had been gone awhile,
the kid said he left that morning,
but she also said Ruiz might still be around,
so nothing solid to go on there.
Though the kid had said one thing,
“We’ll have him call.”
and something is funny in that phrase,
something he can’t put his finger
on.
He pulls out of the spot, drives to the Ralph’s
gets a large coffee and a bag of carrots
drives back to Ruiz’s neighborhood
parks a block down behind the house.
And waits.
A call home.
Peabody listens to his son make noises into the phone,
tells his wife a little about his day,
all the while he studies
a light in Ruiz’s bungalow.
Finally, out of the alley,
a small figure emerges.
“Honey, I got to go.”
The shadow comes closer and he sees it’s
a girl, blonde too.
She walks right to the car and taps the window.
Some cover.
Peabody rolls down the window,
“Yeah?”
“Hi, I’m Annie.”
“Hi.”
“Are you the guy looking for Mr. Ruiz?”
She is cute, sixteen going on twenty-two,
Her style is sweet and a little
spacey, no surprise in these longitudes.
“Yes, I was hoping to talk to Mr. Ruiz.”
She eyes the inside of the car. “Are you like a cop or something?”
Peabody smiles. Yeah, some cover.
“I’m a cop, sure, and I have some questions.”
“Mmmn,” she says, studying a split end for a few seconds.
“He’s not coming back tonight,
he got stuck making a delivery down in San Diego.”
It’s not that she’s a bad liar,
she just doesn’t care enough to try.
“Well,” says Peabody. “I guess
I’d better come back another time.”
Annie nods, grins sweet, almost like she’s
being patient with him.
Being patient with the whole world too
while she’s at it.
“Okay,” she says. “’Cause if you’re going to wait
I could get you a sandwich.”
He chuckles at the funny, awkward path
this case is taking.
“No thanks.” He smiles. “Anyway, how did you
know I was here?”
“Oh, we smelled you,” Annie says,
then walks away.
XXX
She sits in the car and pulls a bag
from under the passenger seat,
a ziplock bag holding a bloody cell phone
and a bloody wallet.
A universe of information can be held
in two fists.
The wallet has some receipts: gas, takeout, etc.
All located around Long Beach,
so she figures
that’s where they’re based.
Before she took him under