Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
the first fall
adam
ST. LOUIS—The Present
RUNE THE IDENTITY-CRISIS GUY
the second fall
eve
ST. LOUIS—The Present
COLT THE NEWSPAPER GUY
the third fall
shirley -
ST. LOUIS—The Present
DUTTON CHILDREN’S BOOKS
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Dandi Daley Mackall
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Published in the United States by Dutton Children’s Books,
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eISBN : 978-1-101-19571-0
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FOR MY FAMILY:
How blessed with love we are!
thanks
I’m so grateful for my editor and friend, Maureen Sullivan, who has a way of seeing where I want to go and helping me get there. And thanks to Dutton/Penguin for believing in me again.
For my buddy Laurie Knowlton, what can I say? Thanks for encouraging me, for laughing in all the right places, and for praying us both through the process. Tess and Bird, you always come through for me. And Kelsey, thanks for your stories that can’t help but spark my imagination.
Special thanks to my wonderful family, headed by Joe, my delightfully crazy boyfriend, who is also my trusty friend and loving husband.
And last—but SO not least—three cheers to all our dogs!
ST. LOUIS—The Present
“MY MOTHER SAYS that falling in love and getting dumped is good for you because it prepares you for the real thing, like it gets you ready for true love and all, but I’m thinking it’s more like climbing up the St. Louis Arch and falling off twice. Does that first fall really get you ready for the second?” I shiver a little, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the idea of jumping off the “Gateway to the West.” I admit I’ve been pretty depressed for the past twenty-four hours, but not that depressed. I’m shivering because apparently rain in St. Louis is colder than rain in rural Missouri. Not to mention the fact that my soaking-wet prom dress—and this dress is a fact I’d rather not mention—is sticking to me like wet fur.
On either side of me sit my three dogs, still on leashes. Adam, the restless terrier, wags his tail and tries to break free to greet the three strangers I’ve joined in this dimly lit downtown café.
I glance toward the door, where the sign facing us says OPEN because it says CLOSED to the rest of the world. All three dogs shook themselves the second we stepped inside. Telltale puddles lead across the black-and-white linoleum floor straight to my table. “Sorry about the mess. I’ll clean it up before I go. I promise.”
The man who let us in, the old man who I think owns the place, pulls down one of the upside-down chairs from my tabletop and sits himself across from me. “Climbing up the Arch to fall off,” he repeats in a scratchy voice that sounds like he just woke up, but I’m guessing his voice always sounds like this. “Got to admit I never looked at falling in love in just that way.” He gazes out the rain-streaked window as if he’s mulling over how many steps there might be in the Gateway to the West. Maybe on a clear day, which this is not, you can see the Arch from here.
I glance at the other two people inside the café, but they don’t seem interested in me or my dogs. The big man behind the counter is scrubbing down the coffee machine, and the younger guy at the back table doesn’t look up from his newspaper. It’s pretty quiet in here, except for the humming of the fluorescent light overhead and the soft groans from the Dalmatian sleeping at my feet. Rain on the roof sounds like somebody’s throwing handfuls of pins at us.
When I turn back to the older man, he’s staring at my hair, which is still in its prom-night updo.
I reach for the arsenal of bobby pins holding on bravely. As soon as I touch my hair, I discover that massive hair spray plus rainwater equals sticky glue. Nice.
“Just so you know,” I offer apologetically, “this isn’t how I usually wear my hair.” I look over to the counter, but the big guy in a white apron is still cleaning the coffee machine.
I slip the dog leashes off my wrist and start to work un-bobby-pinning my sticky hair. My dogs don’t stir, not even Adam. They’re pretty worn out from our late-night walk that turned into a run when the downpour started. We must have banged on twelve doors before this one opened.
The rain picks up and batters the large front window, turning the world outside into a blur of light and motion. Wind makes the whole room creak.
The man across from me keeps studying me as if I’m under a microscope, the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen. He has an air of quiet kindness, so I’m thinking he’d be a golden retriever if he were a dog. He’s older than my grandfather, with skin darker than my coffee, which is thick and black and without a doubt the worst cup of coffee I’ve ever tasted. I’m not complaining. It’s cold outside, and the coffee shop was closed up tighter than a muzzled pit bull when the dogs and I showed up. This man didn’t have to let me in.
“Thanks again for opening up for me and pouring me your last dregs of coffee. I don’t even know your name.”
“Louie,” he supplies. “Just Louie.” He smiles, and it takes up half of his worn face.
I smile back. “Louie of St. Louie?”
He nods. “That’s the name of this place, Louie of St. Louie’s.” The way he says it lets me know this café belongs to him and he’s proud of it.
He should be proud. Now that I take the time to notice, I can see what a great place this is, old and full of atmosphere. Pockmarked paneled walls, great tables with silver chrome rims right out of the fifties—my mom would go nuts over them—and wooden-backed chairs with round s
tool seats like you’d see in a classic ice cream parlor.
The guy at the back corner table flips the page of his newspaper, but he doesn’t look our way.
I turn back to Louie. “This is a fantastic café, and I’d say that even if you hadn’t saved me from being washed away and flushed down the gutters of St. Louis in the middle of the night. What time is it anyway?” I spot a small round clock on the wall by the coatrack. “Wow. After eleven? I’ve got to bring my mom back here. During regular hours,” I add quickly.
I reach across the table and shake Louie’s hand. “I’m Bailey.” I thought my fingers were still numb, but when we shake, I can feel every bone in his hand. “I appreciate you letting my dogs come inside, too. If you can just give me a couple of minutes to warm up, and maybe for the rain to let up a little, we’ll all get out of your hair.”
“Louie!” The big guy behind the counter nods like he wants Louie to join him for a secret conference . . . about me.
But Louie isn’t going for it. He leans back in his chair and crosses his legs at the ankles. His worn black boots must be at least a size 14. “You got something to say?” Louie asks the counter guy.
Identity-Crisis Guy. That’s what I think when the man at the counter finally faces me. This guy has got to be smack in the middle of an identity crisis. The left side of his head is shaved and beardless. The right half has longish brown hair and a full beard, if you can call half a beard “full.” I can’t tell what dog he’d be if he were a dog. Some people are like that.
Louie raises his scratchy voice. “I asked if you got something to say to me, Rune?”
“Rune?” I repeat. Rune is a name I’ve never heard before, but somehow it fits this man, who’s keeping that counter between him and me, guarding his distance.
“Rune,” I say again, confirming the sound of it.
Louie gives me a tired nod, then shouts back to Rune the Identity-Crisis Guy. “You go ahead and have your say, Rune. My friend here won’t mind.”
“Your friend?” Rune shouts. “Your friend?” He scowls at my three dogs. They’re curled on top of each other, being as good as I’ve ever seen them be. Rune points at us, and the tattoos circling his gigantic arm bulge. He sputters, but no real words come out.
“My new friend,” Louie answers calmly, the tiniest grin tugging at the corners of his mouth.
Rune reaches around to untie his apron, then throws it to the floor. “Okay then. Your friend’s dogs are going to get this joint shut down. You got any idea the kind of fines that health inspector will slap on you for having three dogs—three wet dogs—in your restaurant?”
I hadn’t thought of that. “He’s right, Louie. I’m really sorry.” I shove back my chair to get up, but Louie reaches across the table and pats my hand.
“You stay put, young lady,” Louie says. “It would be worth a whole heap of fines to hear what such a pretty young woman as yourself, dressed in just about the finest gown I’ve ever seen, is doing in a café in St. Louis with her three dogs at this time of night.”
“Technically, they’re my boyfriends’ dogs,” I admit.
“You steal them dogs?” asks Identity-Crisis Guy. “From your boyfriend? ”
“Boyfriends. Plural,” I correct.
“She didn’t steal these dogs,” Louie insists, rushing to my defense. “Do these dogs look stolen to you, Rune?” He turns to me. “You tell him, Bailey.”
I glance at the back table, where the younger guy is still sitting alone, studying the Dispatch in the dim light of the closed café. When I don’t answer Louie and Rune right away, this guy looks over at us, and I think, Ha! You are so listening. I’ll bet he’s been listening all along.
“Well, it’s a long story, about the prom, and me being here with the dogs and everything.” I’m explaining all this to Louie. Only I’m still looking back at the corner guy, and he’s still looking back at me. It feels a little like the stare-down contests Amber and I used to get into in elementary school.
“Long story, you say?” Louie asks. “Well, we got time for long stories at Louie’s. Contemplating that storm outside, I’d say a long story might be the best thing on the menu right about now. Wouldn’t you say so, Colt?” He hollers this last part to Staring Corner Guy.
“Can’t argue with that, Louie,” replies Colt the Corner Guy. “But then I know better than to argue with you about anything.” He gets up and strolls across to the other side of the room, where he lifts a green sweater from the coatrack. He shakes it out and carries it over to our table. He’s almost as tall as Louie, fit as a Lab, but he moves like a greyhound, sleek and confident.
Towering over me, he looks older than I thought, definitely a college guy. He has nice eyes, beagle eyes, round and dark. There’s something familiar about him, but maybe it’s just those eyes. I love beagles.
He puts the ghastly green sweater around my shoulders. It’s ugly, but warm. I stick my arms into the sleeves and sniff my elbow. Faint tobacco and cheap perfume. I start to make a comment about the similarities between this color and pond scum, but I think better of it.
“Whose sweater is it?” I ask, rolling up the sleeves and wrapping the sweater over my gown’s glittery bodice, covering hundreds of tiny hand-sewn pearls.
“This sweater has been hanging on that same hook, ruining the atmosphere, ever since I started coming here,” Colt explains. “I don’t think your customer will mind if your new friend borrows it, do you, Louie?”
“I’d say you’re right, Colt,” Louie answers with an ease that lets me know they’re good friends. He motions for Colt to sit down with us.
Colt grabs a chair off the next table and slides it to ours. Before he sits down, though, he grabs another chair and sets it on the other side of the table. If this other chair is for Identity-Crisis Guy Rune, he doesn’t take Colt up on the offer.
Colt eases into the chair next to mine, and I try to ignore how boyishly cute he is. Or how he smells fresh like the rain, in a good way. Or how his eyes shine, even in dim light.
This is so not the time. I’m still in my prom dress, for crying out loud.
“Go ahead now, Miss Bailey,” Louie says, nodding to me. “We’re listening.”
“Are you sure you want to hear—?” I begin.
But Colt stops me with a raised, just-a-minute finger. “I was hoping we could exchange names first.” He reaches down to Adam, my terrier, and scratches the dog right under his chin, the exact spot Adam loves to have scratched. “I’m Colt.” He looks over at me, his mouth barely giving in to a smile as he raises an eyebrow like he’s asking my name in exchange.
I give it. “Bailey. Bailey Daley.”
Identity-Crisis Guy snorts a laugh from behind the counter. His back is to us, and he’s wiping the same spot he was five minutes ago.
“I was actually asking for the dogs’ names,” Colt says, shooting me that dimpled grin again.
I’m pretty sure my face is turning red, but the light’s so dim in here, it probably doesn’t show. “The dogs’ names? Adam and Eve and Shirley.”
“Adam and Eve and Shirley?” Colt asks, like I’m making this up.
Rune, still safely behind the counter, groans.
“Which is which?” Louie asks, without a hint of doubting or joking in his voice.
I point to the appropriate canine as I list off the names. “Shirley the Shih Tzu, Eve the Dalmatian. And Adam.” Poor Adam has put on so much weight. He used to be skinny. “Hard to believe I’ve had Adam since I was a sophomore,” I say to myself more than anybody else. “Adam was my first.”
Adam thumps his rat tail and turns his broad head to me. The dog has no neck, just a bunch of wrinkles around his collar. I stare into the plump white terrier’s eyes and see the eyes of his master. Green eyes.
“I had a dog just like this when I was a boy,” Louie says, reaching over to pet Adam. “Pure mutt. He loved everybody he met. And everybody sure loved him.”
“Tell me about it,” I mutter, thinking, r
emembering.
Louie leans back in his chair and folds his arms across his chest. “No, you tell me about it. How’d that be?”
LOUIE OF ST. LOUIE
LOUIE TRIES TO GET COMFORTABLE as he studies the nice-looking girl in the fancy gown and waits for her to tell them her story. He should have known the second he heard the tap on the door that this was going to be a long night at Louie of St. Louie’s.
Truth is, he nearly went on up to bed right before closing time. Rune isn’t the best cook Louie ever had, not by a long shot, but the big guy can handle cleanup and closing. They only had one customer after dinner hours, and that was just Colt. The kid has been stopping by almost every night for a couple of months, always for a tall glass of apple juice and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. But he never stayed past closing.
Louie’s been living above the café for almost ten years, ever since his Lily passed. He hasn’t missed the old house either, not without Lily in it. It wasn’t the same house. That’s all. And with the boys grown, with grown boys of their own living clear across the country, he doesn’t need but the three rooms upstairs.
But he didn’t go up to bed tonight. Since the cancer first reached his bones, sleep hasn’t been something Louie looks forward to. He feels it in his bones that it won’t be too long now before he’ll be with his Lily again. That’ll be all right.
Then he heard that knocking and opened the door. Finding a wet gal dressed like a princess standing on the threshold was just about the last thing he expected. But there she was. And here she is.
My Boyfriends' Dogs Page 1