The Futility Experts

by Margaret Broucek

Oh, Christ, it’s the rich, he thought. The rich are buying up all of the slots in the shelters. “What kind of donation would get them in this week?”

  “Well”—he could hear dogs barking suddenly, like she’d just walked through a door into the kennel area—“our normal intake fee is two hundred dollars per dog, so it would have to be substantially higher than that. And then, still, not if they’re aggressive in any way. Kill shelters can usually take them sooner, and I think the fee is around twenty-five dollars.”

  He spoke more loudly. “If they decide they have to kill a dog, do they let you come get it?”

  “I don’t believe so, no. I think it’s in the contract that you surrender the dog no matter what the consequences.” Then she started talking to someone else about getting something cleaned up quickly.

  “One of these dogs is old,” he interrupted.

  “Sorry?”

  Louder: “One’s very old.”

  “Yeah, we can’t take that dog. I can tell you that right now. We have to give our limited spaces to dogs who stand a chance.”

  He put a hand on his desk and leaned over his shoes to ease some gas pain. “So what would you do if you were me and had to get rid of three little dogs?”

  “I get asked that a lot, sir, and as I always tell people, I would never be you. I would keep the dogs. Like, you know, a lot of people say they are moving to places that don’t allow dogs. I would never do that.”

  “You’re better than me. Good for you.” And he hung up. Then he stood and pounded down the hall to the mail room. “So you chatted with Blondie?” he asked Mike, red-faced.

  Mike swung his feet off the metal desk. “Sure, sure, you said I should. Remember?”

  “Okay, but we need to coordinate this. Suppose what you say we’re doing over there doesn’t jibe with what I say?”

  “I just say we drive around all day, looking for IEDs.”

  “Our mission is to train the Askars, Mike. You read the book. We’re not out escorting troops every day. How are the Askars going to learn to shoot?”

  “Whoa, man. She’s not writing a report on it. And I’m a driver, so what am I doing if we’re not going out?”

  “Why did you say she’s nice?” Tim moved to block Mike’s exit from the shipping desk, though he hadn’t made any indication of leaving.

  “She is nice. She asks how I’m feeling about things.”

  “You send her a picture?”

  “Sure. You told me to do this, remember?”

  “How do you send a photo when you don’t have a uniform?”

  Mike pretended to get back to work, stuffing an envelope for an order.

  “Lemme see the picture.”

  “It’s bare-chested”—Mike shrugged—“so no uniform.”

  Tim pictured it and hoped the nipple rings were offensive to her. “I sent her that necklace,” he said to show Mike he’d claimed her. “An engraved, silver-plated, nine-millimeter bullet.”

  Mike nodded, impressed. “What’s it say?”

  “‘Rusty’s GIB forever.’ Stands for ‘Girl in Back.’ Of the Humvee,” added Tim. “With the numeral four in forever.” He drew the numeral in the air.

  “Christ! What are you doing, Tim? You’re never going to be with her.”

  “Rusty’s with her.”

  “Shit, Tim. This is fucked up.”

  Then the ass buzz and a notification tone. “Blondie,” Tim explained after pulling his phone out and looking at it. “A video.” He held it up for Mike to see the Snapchat notification.

  “Touch it,” Mike said.

  And then there she was, making the sandwich in slow motion. Tim held the phone out so it came into clear focus for him. “Look at that.” They mooned at the screen together.

  “I don’t care if that’s dog shit on the bread,” Mike said, “I would eat that sandwich.” The lettuce exploded into droplets, the cheese slice peeled slowly from the stack like in some long-awaited final unveiling. When she finally cut the sandwich on the diagonal, they sighed together. And she held the plate out to them with a look of adoration.

  “She fucking made you a fucking sandwich,” Mike gave him.

  # # #

  That night around two a.m., still awake because of a testosterone-induced pounding in his ears, Tim heard a woman scream. He shoved the covers off but still lay there listening until he heard her cry, “Stop it! Stop it!”

  From the window, he saw only shadows behind the bar, underneath the back stairs.

  He raised the sash and shouted, “Hey! Hey there!”

  “No!” a man grunted and leaned back into the light to glare up at him. It was one of the brothers. “Go back to bed!”

  “What is it?” Mona asked.

  “Call nine-one-one,” he told her, as he snatched up his pants and jerked them on. He hooked the long, silver Maglite from beside the television on his way out.

  The brother had a woman up against the dumpster. Tim heard grunts and gasps from her as soon as his boots hit the stoop, and he saw the guy’s jerky movements. He hid the flashlight behind him as he pounded down the sidewalk. He felt blown toward them. He back-swung the weapon while crossing the street, then stroked it up in a long swing and clubbed the back of the man’s head. It was like hitting a stone. The brother crumpled and the woman gaped around, looking to escape.

  “You’re okay,” Tim told her, patting the air. “You’re safe.”

  She knelt, tentatively, eyes on Tim, and placed a hand on the man’s bloody hair. “What did you do?” She kept touching him and then looking at her red fingers. Tim watched the man’s jacket rise with each breath. “I’m gonna call an ambulance,” the woman said slowly and calmly, as though Tim had a gun trained on her. She reached behind her for her purse.

  He rubbed at the blood on the flashlight with his thumb. “My wife’s called. How bad was he hurting you?” The woman looked much older than the bar owner. She pushed the phone into her hair, yellow as the sodium streetlamp. He heard the short squeal of his bedroom window sash.

  “What’s going on?” Mona yelled.

  “This man may have killed my boyfriend!” the woman said.

  “He’s breathing! He’s fine!” Tim shouted.

  “What did you do?” Mona worried.

  He stepped out into the circle of the streetlight and looked up at her small silhouette. “I saved her from him. She’s gonna be fine now.”

  DAVIS

  Davis had been delighted to hear about the big cookie, not that he was cheap, but it would be an unusual and memorable end to the evening. Nice of the reservations lady to ask about a special occasion and to then offer a festive big cookie on which they would write Happy Anniversary Jenny and Davis. All free.

  The restaurant was in a former mansion, one of the historic homes on High Street, which was now too heavily trafficked to appeal to any rich homeowner, so the funeral parlor, the big insurance agency, and Le Jardin had taken up residence along the road, installing their spotlighted signs behind the stone walls. The attractive, middle-aged hostess in a black wrap dress shared a secret smile with Davis as she looked up from the reservation sheet before leading them to the table in what had been the home’s formal dining room, clad all in walnut and with a view onto the restaurant’s garden, now showing gourds and vibrant lime and purple lettuces and a row of big blue-green leafy creatures that he supposed were kale.

  “Lovely,” Jenny said as she sat.

  “Yes, isn’t this nice?”

  After the hostess left them, Jenny put on her glasses to study the garden. “Look at those blue-bottle sculptures. We should ask where they get all the blue bottles.”

  “Isn’t there a wine called Blue Nun?” Davis asked.

  “They look very whimsical. We don’t have whimsical things.”

  “I guess we’re not whimsical, then.”

  “I think I am, though.”

  Then the waitress came and they ordered champagne—just two glasses, not an entire bottle, which would be ridiculou
sly priced, Davis had assured Jenny in the car as he was suggesting what they should order.

  “I’ll have the steak, at medium. And my wife would like the salmon, well cooked.”

  “No, pasta carbonara,” she corrected.

  “That’s highly unusual,” Davis said in order to let the waitress know that he hadn’t been ordering salmon for no reason.

  “Yes, that’s what I’d like,” she told the waitress.

  “Throwing caution to the wind,” he said loudly as the girl walked away.

  “Most people wait until the drinks have come to order dinner. Did you know that?” she asked him.

  “If you know what you want, it’s saving the girl a trip.”

  The champagne soon arrived, and Davis lifted his and waited for Jenny to snap her glasses back into their case before lifting hers to meet it. “To twenty-three years,” he said, and they clinked. He took a sip while she set her glass back down.

  “Tomorrow’s a big day,” he said, having sufficiently acknowledged the current special day.

  “Oh?”

  “Test-results day. And Lindstrom’s asked to see me.”

  “What about?”

  Davis shrugged, “Tenure, I suppose.”

  He looked around to discover whom they were out among. A silver-haired man on the other side of the room slid his wineglass over to a young woman in impossible heels, who then peered into the large red bowl before lifting it for a drink. Davis knew by now that if you wondered whether the girl was a daughter or a date, then she was a date.

  “I don’t imagine he’ll cut me loose if my prediction comes true. Do you?” he asked his wife. “And then there’s also that Megan problem that he has. Did you have the call with Peggy yet?”

  Jenny nodded.

  Davis stopped unfolding his napkin. “What did Megan say? Anything about Lindstrom?”

  “No. She said he was the only person she could really talk to.”

  “Mmm. What does that sound like?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Ma-nip-u-lation, plain and simple. He’s going to be sorry he ever took on a class full of under-eighteens, because as a teacher, you see, he is guilty of sexual abuse of a minor.”

  “Do you enjoy talking about this? Envisioning this?” she hissed.

  “No.”

  “Well, stop it, then.”

  Davis rotated his champagne glass on the table and watched it. If she thought he was going to drop the matter completely, to let Lindstrom play his games without consequence, she was deeply mistaken. They didn’t say another word to each other until the waitress arrived with their meals. After forking a few bites, Davis resettled himself into his chair. “So one of my best memories of our twenty-three years is when we went to the Mount Washington Hotel and sat out on the back veranda and the fireworks went off up on the mountain.” He waited, eyebrows lifted, for her most-loved moment, but she only nodded and chewed, looking at the plate.

  “What’s one of your favorites?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Davis.”

  “Well, I’m very happy to have had all of these years with you.” If she would look up, she would find his soft, loving expression. “Are you happy, Jenny?”

  She released her fork loudly onto the side of her plate and pulled down her vest. “No. No, I’m not.”

  “Why not?” he bleated, astonished.

  “I want to feel loved!” she said, too loudly.

  “I do love you,” he whispered after grinning out at the room.

  “I have to feel it. And I don’t.”

  The young woman across the way pulled her hand up to cover her mouth, her wide eyes locked with the old lecher’s. Davis refocused on his steak, afraid to talk, because no one else in the place was talking. And hadn’t there been music before?

  When the waitress came by again, Jenny insisted she was through, and Davis nodded that she should remove his plate as well.

  “You know, all this time,” Davis began, quietly, after the girl had gone again, “I have devoted myself to correcting for your mistakes, to making our lives bearable with Megan. That wasn’t my idea of a good life, having such a child—and you knew there were going to be problems—but I studied up, I invented strategies, and I followed them, elaborate steps! All to make it work out for you, that impulsive, misguided choice.”

  “I’m sorry I made your life so rotten.” She was boring into him, riveted.

  “The thing is, we’re almost through, now, with the rotten part. We can almost touch the other side!”

  “Too much damage done, Davis.”

  “But not from each other, not damage from me or from you, but from Megan.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t imagine you again as the man I knew before.”

  “Why? What is it, the lists? Where are you going?” She’d stood and placed her napkin on the seat.

  “Home,” she said, and then walked out the door. Soon she passed on the other side of the dining room window, and he watched her march out to the roadside. It was a four-mile trek home, so he was certain she expected him to fetch her. He scanned for the waitress. While he waited to catch sight of her, he returned to the image of the necklace that had flashed at Jenny’s throat when she’d stood. Could it really have been a bullet? Finally, the girl appeared from the kitchen with a plate, which she brought directly and set before him. The big cookie. “Oh, shoot,” she said. “Is your wife in the little girls’?”

  Happy Anniversary Jenny and Davis inside a red-icing heart.

  “I’d like the check.” Davis lifted his pleasantest face to hers.

  # # #

  Lindstrom looked surprised and uneasy after Davis flew in and perched on the guest chair.

  “I have the results,” Davis said, wanting to be proactive, slapping the envelope repeatedly against his open palm. “And you were dead wrong.” They could hear men shouting and pounding on Davis’s office door—the angry news crew missing their exclusive, which was supposed to have happened an hour ago.

  Lindstrom screwed his lips and lifted his pen from the notebook. “We’re not meeting for half an hour.”

  Squirming out of his suit coat, Davis continued. “I’m not going to reveal your misidentification, however. And I’m tearing up the evidence.” Davis then ripped the envelope into four strips and let them float onto his lap.

  “It wasn’t a hyena, either, I take it.”

  “Two elite scientists, equally wrong.” Davis nodded.

  “Well, I didn’t study the thing, for gosh sakes; I just went off the cuff.”

  “Likewise.”

  “Okay, so what was it?”

  “Part chow, part beagle.”

  “I was righter than you.” Lindstrom tossed his pen onto the desk and sat back.

  “I know about Megan.” Davis played his last card.

  Lindstrom’s eyes ponged side to side while he considered what to say. “Okay. What do you mean?”

  “Your attentions toward her.”

  “Don’t give me this bull, Davis. You’ve been at that girl since she was thirteen!” He slung himself back up, toward Davis. “In twenty minutes the police will be here. It’s what I had planned for the meeting. I thought it’d be better if you were not arrested in front of your wife.”

  Davis slowly smiled. “Oh, this is—”

  “Megan has an audio recording of you saying over and over that you were going to touch her and to get ready. I was skeptical until she played that. You’re one big pervert, you know that?”

  Loud cursing came from out in the hall, the video crew in full fury.

  “You’ve been had. That audio is completely explainable,” Davis said, surrendering fully to the wingback chair.

  “Don’t bother explaining to me. She’s been bawling her eyes out in here, week after week, man.”

  “It was something she asked me to do when we were on an expedition.” Davis looked up and to the right, trying to remember precisely what he’d said to her out in the woods.

&nb
sp; “You’re sitting there until the police arrive.” Lindstrom strode to the door, opened it, and looked both ways into the hall.

  “This meeting was never about tenure?”

  “No! God, no! That was decided over a week ago. We put a letter in your box.”

  “You told me in a letter?”

  “I wondered why you hadn’t said anything.” He returned and dropped onto his sofa, spreading his arms to rest along the back. “Don’t you check your box?”

  “I never check my box. What did it say?”

  Lindstrom snorted. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t—”

  Davis recognized the cameraman’s voice passing by the door. “Fucking jerkoff! What a fucking jerkoff!”

  “Fifteen more minutes,” Lindstrom said after the quiet resumed. Then he had one more thought before the police came: “So it wasn’t a hyena, though. What a surprise.”

  # # #

  The courtroom was much less grand than Davis had imagined it would be, with a drop ceiling and fluorescent lights. It resembled a conference room at a midpriced hotel. And the judge also diminished the dignity of the court, with wadded-up tissues adrift on her desk and the slack posture of a sleepy drunk. This might be all for the better, given that Davis’s lawyer had worn duck boots with his suit. Perhaps the man had forgotten to change them in the car, but then again, hadn’t he gone on about his low pay just the day before? He was a man about Davis’s age. He had come recommended by one of Davis’s jailers. While they waited for their case to be called, the man kept patting Davis on the back, wafting up more cigarette smell from his jacket.

  When they had first met face-to-face in the jail conference room the day before, Davis thought the guy looked limited—the thick eyeglasses and oily bangs and the way he walked in with his mouth open. They’d spoken briefly on the phone, and he’d sounded fine, but his appearance was expectations lowering. After the introductions, he’d set a briefcase and a well-worn paper bag on the table and pulled out the other chair. Then the open mouth turned up at the edges. “So you say she’s done this before?” he’d asked, he eyes bulging behind the massive lenses.

  “Once, yes. It was an art teacher a couple of years ago.”

  “And how’d that case come out?”