Alice Fantastic

by Maggie Estep

  “I guess I’m fine,” I said reluctantly. “But you ought to secure your jugs.”

  He burst out laughing, clutched his maple syrup to his chest, and walked away.

  Neither Billy nor Turbo was paying attention to me. Billy was squatting down next to the dog, scratching her formidable chest. She was licking his ear and cheek.

  “What are you doing here anyway?” I asked, irritated.

  “It’s a bit illegal,” said Billy.

  “What is?”

  “My reason for coming here.”

  “Oh?” I said carefully. I instantly pictured the many illegal activities one could engage in at Central Park after dark, from putting tacks out along the roadway for giving cyclists flat tires, to anonymous gay sex, to mugging people. I pictured Billy mugging old women or blowing businessmen. It didn’t quite fit.

  “I’ll show you,” Billy said. He offered his hand and pulled me to my feet. “You okay?”

  “Fine.”

  He led me to the other side of the lake and pointed at a big flat stone partially buried in the earth. “There,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Dingo’s grave.”

  “Who?”

  “My dog. Dingo. I buried her there. This was her favorite place. But it’s not a pet cemetery. I could be fined or worse.”

  “You put her whole body in there? Didn’t varmints dig it up?”

  “I had her cremated first.”

  “Then it’s probably not illegal.”

  “I’m sure it is,” Billy insisted.

  He seemed to want his burying of Dingo’s ashes to be illegal so I tried to humor him. “I think you should take Turbo,” I said, after we’d been staring at Billy’s dead dog’s unmarked grave for several minutes.

  “What?”

  “You’re a man who needs a dog.”

  “What are you proposing? To give me your dog?”

  “She’s not my dog. I told you. My mom dropped her on my doorstep while she awaits a home.”

  “But she seems like your dog.”

  “I like her, but I’m going through some things. I might move.” I waited for him to protest this concept. He didn’t. “Turbo likes you. And you like her.”

  He stared at me. I felt transparent, flimsy, like he might take hold of me, fold me into pieces, and take me with him. And he couldn’t be trusted to transport me with care.

  So I gave him the dog.

  “This is it?” he asked when I handed him Turbo’s lead.

  “Yes.” I turned my back to them and started walking away. After going fifty feet, I turned to look. Turbo was staring up at Billy, declaring her love. Billy was staring down at Turbo. Neither man nor beast was watching me.

  I slept and woke up wondering where Turbo was. She wasn’t your dog, I told myself. I knew it was true. But I always miss what I’ve just given up.

  I made coffee. Fed Hammie. Looked out the window at a bright blue day. The phone and doorbell rang simultaneously. I vowed to move. Soon.

  I looked at the caller ID. Amy Ross. I let the machine pick up. I went to the front window and tried peering though the blinds without actually moving them. Mom was standing there with another giant beast at her side. This one bigger than Turbo. Caramel-colored with a black nose.

  “I can see you!” she shouted up from the street. “And I brought Turbo a friend.”

  I buzzed her in. I didn’t want to, but she’s my mother.

  “Where’s Turbo?” my mother asked after looking all around my small apartment.

  “She found a home.”

  “She what?” my mother’s head swiveled on her neck and her eyes popped out of her head.

  “It was the right thing to do, Mom, you have to trust me.”

  I told her about giving Turbo to Billy. About why I had given Turbo to Billy and how I was sure that dog and that man belonged together.

  “But he’s a creep who kicked you out of his apartment in the middle of the night.”

  “Actually, it was 6:45 in the morning and certain men who are unwilling to give their love to women give it freely to dogs.”

  My mother couldn’t be appeased that easily. Her voice went into a high register and she cursed me out. Though she has softened as she’s gotten older, my mother still has a foul mouth. It’s a generational thing. Her generation fucked indiscriminately, did lots of drugs, and cursed a lot. Mine carries huge handbags that give them neck pain.

  My mother wouldn’t calm down.

  “Mom, I’m going to have to sedate you,” I said.

  “Sedate me how?”

  “I’ll get Valium from Jeff downstairs.”

  “Really?” My mother grew calm at just the mention of it.

  “No,” I said.

  Mom has been in Narcotics Anonymous for fifteen years. But she keeps hoping someone will accidentally stab her in the arm with a syringe full of heroin. Or force Valium down her gullet.

  By now I was examining Otis, the dog Mom had brought. He was beautiful. Even I had to admit that. A huge Rhodesian ridgeback. His shoulders were massive, his hind end muscular, the fur on his back stood up permanently along his ridge. His humans had been killed in a plane crash. It looked like he was keenly aware of this. His eyes were the saddest eyes ever.

  “If you give this dog to some one-night stand, I will disown you.”

  “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

  My mother finally calmed down and left, off to Queens to counsel Alice about Clayton’s murder problem.

  I got down on my haunches and looked Otis in the eyes, my face just inches from his. He stared back for a very long time, then gave my nose one solemn lick.

  3. ALICE

  Your sister gave a dog away without my approval.” My mother had shown up on my doorstep, unannounced, apparently not long after showing up on Eloise’s doorstep unannounced. My mother is an old hippie. She believes in spontaneity. I hate spontaneity.

  “Mom, Eloise wouldn’t give a dog to an unworthy human. And please sit.” I motioned at the kitchen table. She had been standing, hovering in the kitchen doorway, since arriving thirty minutes earlier. She seemed to think that if she didn’t actually sit down during one of these unscheduled visits, it wouldn’t count as an unscheduled visit.

  My mother screwed up her face and stared at me.

  “Sit and drink your coffee,” I told her.

  “Where is that nice boyfriend of yours?” she asked, finally sitting down.

  “I hope he’s looking for a job. And he’s really not my boyfriend. I have to end it.”

  “You’re always trying to end things. Why not start something for once?

  “Do you really want me to start something with an imbecile who accidentally murdered someone and was living in a parking lot until I let him move in with me?”

  “How can you talk that way about someone you make love with?” Mom said, stretching out the word love.

  “Mother,” I said, “your generation may have made love, but mine fucks.”

  My mother is a mass of contradictions. Though she curses and peppers regular conversations with profanity, she refers to sex as making love and probably did so even in her heyday, when she screwed indiscriminately and injected heroin into every vein of her body, shortly after giving birth to me at the age of seventeen.

  “I don’t know how I had such heartless bitches for daughters.” My mother tried to look stern but eventually cracked a smile and then laughed.

  “I do feel affection for the big oaf,” I admitted as my mother got up and opened the fridge door to stare in at the slim pickings. “For Clayton, I mean. I even refer to him by his actual name most of the time. I’m humanizing him. He’s not just a thing anymore.”

  My mother sighed and shook her head. Though she pretends to be appalled by my black heart, I know she is secretly pleased that I’m so hard on my paramours. She was easy on her men and it screwed up her life and forever turned her against that gender.

  “Can I eat t
hose?” she asked, motioning at two peeled hard-boiled eggs in a bowl.

  “Can I really stop you?”

  “No. But I swear, after this I’ll leave.”

  She put the bowl on the kitchen table, bit into one of the eggs, then gave a piece of it to Candy, who was diligently begging at her feet.

  I was about to yell at her for feeding the dog from the table when we heard a key in the door and Clayton came trundling in.

  “Clayton!” my mother shouted, jumping out of her chair, throwing her arms around him and hugging him fiercely.

  She’d only met him twice before, but since I rarely kept a man around long enough for her to inspect, she practically considered Clayton her son-in-law. It didn’t matter that he had accidentally murdered someone, that, for all we knew, this was the beginning of a life of crime. My mother didn’t care about any of that.

  “Kimberly,” Clayton said, with as much buoyancy as he ever musters.

  My mother hugged him for an unreasonable amount of time, probably getting some sort of sexual charge out of it because my mother is proudly oversexed. Clayton didn’t seem to mind her pressing up against him like that. I suppose most people wouldn’t. My mother is a very young fifty-three with masses of curly dark hair and a well-proportioned, compact body. Her eyes are wide-set and slanted making her look slightly Asian. By fifty-three, I will probably be hideous as I favor my dead father’s side of the family with my long limbs, sick-looking pale skin, and mouse-brown hair that gets limp and greasy within three hours of washing.

  “Goodbye, Mom,” I said, when she finally released her grip on my paramour and walked to the door. “Call next time, would you?”

  My mother laughed, like my wishing for advance notice of her next visit was a frivolous and ridiculous request.

  “Your mom is great,” said Clayton once my mother left.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Any luck with the job search?”

  “No.” He shrugged.

  He went to sprawl on the couch with a newspaper, ostensibly scouring the help wanted ads, though within a few minutes he was snoring.

  I went back into the kitchen where my notebooks were spread out next to my Daily Racing Form. It was a Tuesday, a dark day at Aqueduct, but there was a carryover in the Pick 6 for Wednesday’s card, meaning the pot was sweetened with forty-two thousand extra dollars. I had my work cut out for me.

  I was completely stumped by the first leg of the six-race sequence, a full field of maiden statebred fillies going a mile. I considered giving up and simply planning a long series of trifecta and Pick 4 bets. But it seemed wasteful to neglect that little 42K pot of gold.

  I dialed my friend Arthur’s number.

  I almost never actually call Arthur as we use text messaging, his preferred method of communication. Even if we’re both at the track, sitting just a few feet away from each other, he’ll text message me. Usually asking my opinion of an over-bet favorite, but sometimes, particularly at Saratoga, where the young girls are plentiful, what I think his odds are of scoring with some twenty-year-old honey in a strapless sundress.

  “What?” Arthur answered.

  “Arthur, it’s Alice.”

  “Who?”

  “Alice? Your friend?”

  “Alice? Alice Hunter? You’re calling me on the phone?”

  “I know. It’s a shock. I’m sorry. I need help.”

  “Tell me about it. The fourth at Aqueduct tomorrow, right?”

  “Oh. You too, huh?”

  “Impossible pieces of shit.”

  “Right,” I said.

  I don’t normally tolerate anyone calling horses pieces of shit, nags, or pigs. But Arthur gets away with it because he’s even more derogatory when speaking of human beings.

  “Don’t be sensitive,” said Arthur.

  “Sensitive?”

  “I could feel you recoiling over my slander of those horses’ good names.”

  “Don’t get perceptive on me, Arthur, I rely on you for complete cynicism and brutishness.”

  “That’s cute,” said Arthur, sounding slightly wounded.

  I wondered if I had actually offended him. The tough guys are the ones who melt when you least expect it.

  “So you don’t have any insights?” I asked Arthur.

  “Maybe the three horse.”

  “A five-year-old making her second start? That’s an unorthodox angle.”

  “If you’re going to shoot down any ideas I have then I’m hanging up.”

  “No, sorry, talk to me.”

  So he did. We went back and forth on a few less-than- stellar maidens. We decided to meet up at the Equestris Restaurant atop Aqueduct’s clubhouse the next day at noon. To make things more interesting, we decided to pool our resources and play the Pick 6 together.

  “Go do whatever it is you do with that flannelled bruiser of yours,” said Arthur before hanging up.

  “You talking to that Arthur idiot?” I spun around and found Clayton standing there, fully awake.

  “Yes.” I hated that Clayton hated Arthur.

  “You gonna leave me for him?”

  “For Arthur?” I asked, aghast.

  “I’m sure women find him attractive.”

  “I’d probably break him,” I said. Arthur is at least three inches shorter than I am and probably weighs less than I do. I don’t like men who make me feel large. “Anyway, Arthur considers women over the age of twenty past their prime.”

  “So if he wasn’t a short pedophile you’d fuck him?”

  This was only the second time I’d heard Clayton say fuck.

  “Don’t joke about pedophilia. It’s not funny. Arthur doesn’t dip below legal.”

  Clayton grunted.

  “Where’s all this coming from?” I asked, moving to stand closer to him. I tried to be tender. I touched his face. Pushed a strand of hair off his wide forehead that shone greasy as an adolescent’s.

  We were gazing at each other and both jumped when someone knocked loudly on the door.

  “Who the hell is that?” Clayton asked, as if I’d have any idea.

  “Police,” was the answer.

  Clayton stared at me, like I’d called them.

  “Shit,” he said.

  “Shhh,” I cautioned since we were standing right near the door.

  “Can I help you?” I asked, opening the door, acting slightly irritated but curious the way I imagined garden- variety law-abiding citizens might act.

  “Clayton Marbler?” A plainclothes, mustachioed cop flashed his badge and looked past me toward Clayton. Be- hind him stood a tall brunette with a thin mouth.

  “That’s me,” Clayton said.

  I glanced over at his face. It was showing too much. He looked worried.

  “What’s this about?” I asked, playing the innocent girl- friend.

  “Just a couple of questions. Could we come in?” asked the lanky brunette.

  “Sure,” I ushered them in.

  The brunette sat at one end of the couch, the mustachioed partner at the other. Though the man was black and the woman white, there was a sameness about their small dark eyes and their tight, business-like mouths.

  The male cop asked Clayton about Vito.

  “Don’t know him,” Clayton shook his head.

  “I do,” I said, figuring they knew I knew him or, if they didn’t, would soon find out. “He’s an acquaintance from the racetrack.”

  “Right,” said the brunette. “And Mr. Marbler, you’ve never met him?”

  “You have met him, Clayton, remember? He came over to our table that day I brought you to the track?”

  Clayton gave me the most wounded look I’d ever seen a human being give. But I was trying to save his ass. They knew I knew Vito. It would come out that Clayton had met him.

  “Oh,” Clayton said.

  “The man is dead. You may have heard?” The male cop’s eyes were tiny little slits now.

  “No,” Clayton said, a little too quickly.

  “It was in
the papers awhile back. Maybe you forgot?” The brunette this time.

  “Oh. I don’t read the paper,” said Clayton.

  This was true. But it seemed to make them even more suspicious. And their questions went on. And on. They never told us what led them to Clayton at this stage, weeks after the incident, just when he and I had started breathing easier.

  “I’m going to call a lawyer,” I told Clayton after the cops had left and we were sitting at the kitchen table, stunned and, for a time, speechless.

  “How much does that cost?”

  “Nothing yet. I have a friend who’s a criminal defense lawyer.”

  “I’m not a criminal.”

  “You still need a criminal defense lawyer.”

  Clayton looked down toward his hands which were folded in his lap.

  “What am I going to do?” he asked very quietly.

  “It’ll be all right,” I lied. “I’ll call Abe, my lawyer friend, then let’s get out of the house. I’m almost done working for the day. Let’s go to Central Park. Candy can run around, we can get some air. It’s a pretty day,” I said, like the beauty of any given day would matter to Clayton anytime in the immediate future.

  “That’s okay,” he replied, barely a whisper. “You go on. I’ll be here.”

  I tried to cajole him. It got me nowhere. He went to the couch and plopped down, face first.

  I put in a call to Abe, told him the situation. Abe grunted.

  “Doesn’t look good after him not coming forward right away. Makes it look like it wasn’t an accident. What, he thought he’d just get away with it?”

  “It was an accident, Abe.”

  “Right. Well, if they pull him in for questioning, just tell him not to answer anything and call me.”

  “How much?”

  “How much what?”

  “What’s it gonna cost?”

  “It goes to trial, we’re talking some bucks.”

  “Trial?” I nearly screamed. “They just asked him some questions.”

  “I’m giving you a worst-case scenario, Alice. You know me. Glass-half-empty kinda guy.”