Dogfight, A Love Story

by Matt Burgess

  Tariq holds the latch door open for Winston, who leads the way into the yard. Surprisingly calm, Winston walks right in without any apparent fear, and Tariq is impressed. More than impressed: Tariq is proud. He expected the kid to be shitting in his socks by now, but then—with unexpected and considerable disappointment—Tariq remembers that Winston’s on drugs. Anti-anxieties, probably. Xanax, or something like it. See, that’s the problem with these kids. Anxiety can be useful. Slowing down can be effective. Pay attention. Take your time.

  The yard is a couple hundred square feet, small for a backyard, but a good deal bigger than a prison cell. The grass—like the hair on Winston’s head—grows only in patches. Soil is exposed. Chipped clay pots line the perimeter of the yard. Nothing grows out of the pots except for the white plastic tags that indicate what should be growing out of them. Geraniums. Marigolds. Petunias. Rosemary. There’s no lounge chair, no squeezed-out bottle of sunscreen. In one corner slumps a barbecue grill, covered in a tarp. In another corner a kiddie pool, which doesn’t seem to be used for recreational purposes. Kids don’t jump in the water or splash one another’s faces. Instead, the pool seems to be for drinking. It serves as a big dish of water for the yard’s only tenant, the pit bull. A metal chain connects the dog’s collar to a steel rod buried deep in the ground, and this chain is just long enough to reach the lip of the pool. But the dog isn’t drinking any water. He’s sitting in the patchy grass, watching Tariq and Winston with his jaws clamped shut and with his ears pinned to the top of his head.

  Stone steps lead from the backyard into the house, where a door has been propped open to let in some air. TV noises spill out of the house. Tariq can hear it as easily as if he were in the living room with the Guyanese guy, sitting on his couch, their feet stretched out on the coffee table. It’s the Mets-Yankees pregame show, and the announcers debate only one thing: whether or not Clemens will get beaned when he comes up to bat.

  Next door, in the neighbor’s yard, four tires stand in a rubber column, stacked one on top of the other. A sign hangs on the fence that separates that yard from this yard. The sign reads Parking for Millionaires Only.

  The dog lifts his head to look over at Winston, who’s got his hand balled into a fist, his arm reared back, one eye closed to the sun. Before he can complete the windup, Tariq grabs his arm. He pries open Winston’s fingers and finds in his palm a tiny blue pill.

  “What’s this?”

  “Sleeping pill,” Winston whispers, as if afraid the man in the house—or maybe even the dog—will hear him.

  “You’re going to give the dog a sleeping pill?”

  “No, I’m going to throw the dog a sleeping pill. I wouldn’t give that dog the fucking time. I throw the pill, he licks it up. If he don’t, we go cop some burgers and put the pill—”

  “And then the dog falls asleep?” Tariq says, with his hand still gripped tight around Winston’s wrist. “Yeah? Have I got that right? The dog licks up the pill and then passes out?”

  “Correct,” Winston whispers.

  “Then what? We wait for it to fall asleep? To hit the hay? Then what? You gonna carry the dog back to my house? And after you’ve fed this sixty-pound dog a sleeping pill designed for adult human beings, who’s gonna bring it back to life? Once it falls asleep, how’s it ever going to wake up?”

  “So don’t throw the pill?” he says. Tariq stares at Winston, at his ashy skin, at the flecks of white spittle caught at the corners of his lips. “Tariq,” Winston says. “You’re hurting my wrist.”

  The Book says:

  O you who believe, do not enter other houses except yours without first taking permission and saluting the inmates. This is better for you.

  Which seems fairly clear-cut, sure. But Tariq knows a backyard ain’t a house. A backyard is a backyard. Religious loophole? No way, this is New York State law. A backyard equals trespassing; a house equals burglary. This is a significant distinction that operates on both sides of the law: a search warrant that provides access to a residence does not necessarily provide access to the property around that residence, e.g. a garage, an alleyway, a run-down backyard.

  Tariq walks toward the dog. He keeps his hand out in front of him, palm up, fingers spread apart. Under his feet, pavement gives way to patches of grass and dry soil. The dog sits up off the ground and leans forward on his two front legs. Both ears stand straight up in the air. Because the leash is tethered to the metal pole in the ground, there is a section of this yard in which the dog cannot reach Tariq. Keeping his back straight, Tariq walks out of that section. The dog watches him approach. Inside the house, the TV turns off, and the voices of the baseball announcers are replaced by the jingle of a Mister Softee truck a few blocks away. The dog’s back legs flex. He exposes the small black pupils of his eyes. He smells greasy, which reminds Tariq of his father’s hair gel, and the way it always stains both sides of the pillowcases. Tariq listens for footsteps padding toward the back door. He bends forward at the waist and the dog’s mouth swings open. A yellowish string of saliva connects a top fang to a sharp lower fang. The dog growls, deep and low in his throat. Eyes closed, Tariq slides his hand into the dog’s mouth. It feels dark and warm and moist. Teeth pinch his knuckles. A rough tongue slides across the meat of his palm. The dog jerks his head back and, eyes straining, greedily licks the tips of Tariq’s fingers. Laps at his wrist. Tariq puts his other hand in the dog’s mouth. If any chocolate remained in the spaces between his fingers, it’s gone. The dog gnaws on the rubber wristband of the Casio watch. Good boy, good boy. He shoves his head under Tariq’s hand, allows himself to be scratched behind the ears.

  The hook connecting the leash to the metal pole unlatches easily. When Tariq pulls on the leash, the metal spikes on the pinch collar insinuate themselves into the dog’s neck. So Tariq doesn’t pull on the leash.

  Winston is hugging himself. Watching Tariq and the pit bull approach, he massages his arms, squeezes himself so tightly that blood vessels rise in his knuckles. Tariq takes a quick peek back at the house. No one appears in the door. No one comes charging down the steps. When he turns back around, the dog—as if waiting for Tariq’s attention—lunges at Winston. The leash hums in Tariq’s hand. Winston backs into a corner, and the dog follows, pulling Tariq with him. Eyes bulging, ears pitched forward, he snaps at Winston’s waist.

  “Get it away from me,” Winston hisses. He goes up on his tiptoes. His eyes are white and moist.

  It occurs to Tariq that he needs to give this dog a name.

  In the lobby of the Batistas’ apartment building a sign on the elevator door says Out of Order—Fuera de Servicio. Underneath that, someone has written in pencil Then fucking fix it! Winston optimistically pushes the elevator button anyway. When it doesn’t work, he curses under his breath, betrayed. He clearly doesn’t want to be here, but Tariq made him come. He likes the idea of Winston entering the apartment before him, announcing his arrival.

  They take the stairs, with Winston, like a good herald, going up first. Tariq tries to think of a time when he had the privilege of following Isabel up a flight of stairs, but he comes up with nothing, not one single time. Her ass would’ve been eye level, swinging from right to left, stretching the cloth of some tight-fitting jeans. One more thing he missed out on. Following Winston, however, offers its own pleasures. Nonsexual pleasures of course. With his shoulders as tense and as high as his ears, Winston takes the steps two at a time until Tariq snaps at him to slow down. The pit bull lurks unseen behind him. The dog nips at air, inches from Winston’s meaty thighs. Winston’s shoulders rise even higher. But he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t complain. He knows—how could he not?—that at any time Tariq can let go of the leash.

  8

  Batista Bros., Inc.

  No, no, no, no, no,” Lizette says. “Please. It’s fine. I don’t need any help.”

  Cookware crowds her stovetop: a pot of her famous habichuelas guisadas simmers in the back; a frying pan waits for tostones, a slab of butter
islanded in its cast-iron center; and the signature dish—spicy chicken and rice—cooks in one large pot, a pot Lizette mysteriously found under the sink, when she damn well knows she left it in the cupboard. Evil spirits are rearranging her kitchen, up to no good, testing her sanity.

  Isabel lifts the lid off the chicken and rice. As an added layer of protection, heavy-duty aluminum foil covers the pot. Isabel goes to work on unwrapping it. When she peels back a corner of the foil, she allows heat to escape from the pot. Puffs of steam swirl around the bulb on the ceiling. “If you want,” she says, “I can stir the rice.”

  “No, no, no, no,” Lizette says. She snatches the spoon out of Isabel’s hand. “You stir the rice too much and it goes all amogollao. Yeah? It gets all sticky.”

  “I like sticky rice,” Isabel says. Actually she doesn’t like sticky rice, but she’s willing to start. She’s willing to rejigger all her grain-related preferences, just to be contrarian. “I think it tastes better that way.”

  “No you don’t,” Lizette says. “Nobody likes sticky rice. The Chinese maybe. But even them, I’m not so sure.”

  She rewraps the foil around the lid, traps the steam in the pot so the rice grains will pop evenly. Normally Lizette wouldn’t bother with the foil—Trade Fair is selling it for $2.99 apiece—but the arroz has gotta slide right off the fork tines. The chicken, the tostones, the red bean stew, the sofrito, the meal, the seating, the day—it all has to be perfect. Earlier this morning, she ran down to the Indian girls on Thirty-seventh Avenue and got her eyebrows threaded. Then she jaywalked across the street to the Korean nail salon for a ten-dollar pedicure. While they worked on her feet, she read the Post, the ink coming off on her fingers. Rescue workers finally stopped searching for bodies at Ground Zero. Iraq might have links to the 9/11 attacks. Pakistan and India are staring at each other over the tips of nuclear warheads, a Utah teenager got herself kidnapped, some rapper named Nas called Jay-Z “Gay-Z.” An editorial made the argument that because of 9/11, intracity race relations are better than ever. Okay, Lizette thought. She read all the articles on the Catholic Church scandal, saw something about repressed memories, and wondered if her altar-boy sons ever got … oh Lord, don’t even go there. In culture: MOMA’s Queens opening was just two weeks away, and modern art lovers are griping about the temporary outer-borough location—even Picasso, it seems, can’t drag the snooty into Queens. In sports: the Mets lost to the Yankees (4–2), but they’ll go at it again today, game two of their three-game series. And in the Irrelevancy Department: the stock market took a hit. Lizette read these articles and others—or if she didn’t read a particular article, she at least scanned the punny headline—but nowhere in the paper’s hundred-plus pages did she see anything about the day’s real story. Not that she expected tabloid coverage, of course. But the omission cast a pall over the paper’s other, supposedly more important news items. Who cares about Enron? Who cares about the possible smoking ban? The Post—and every other paper in this city—failed to report what was in Lizette’s personal edition the extra-extra, read-all-about-it, front-page splash: the return of her son, her eldest baby boy, Jose Batista Jr.

  If he ever got here. The clock on the kitchen wall reads a couple of minutes past one. Lizette started cooking early because Junior’s letter said he’d be released in the morning. Plus, she’s got to go to work soon. She works full-time—thank you very much—at an eyeglass shop, and while Dr. Remmelts, the optometrist, gave her the morning off, he needs her to come in for the afternoon. His wife is nine months pregnant or some such thing, and because apparently for pregnant people the whole world and everyone in it has to come to a goddamn screeching halt … forgive her! Forgive her the blasphemy! The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Lizette mutters under her breath. She’s stressed, that’s all. He should’ve been here hours ago, and now, who knows? Forget the expense, forget the inconvenience—Lizette should’ve taken a train up to Fishkill and picked him up. And now, because she didn’t, Junior has probably kicked a hack guard in the ear and gotten himself tossed right back behind bars. Lizette knows the rate of recidivism. She reads the paper. She knows the ex in ex-con is only temporary, Indian-given; she knows the prisons have cells on the inside and revolving doors on the outside. The only thing that will keep her baby out of that spinning vortex is good old-fashioned Family Values: unified parents, Junior’s favorite foods, a clean kitchen, fresh towels, cloth napkins that smell like fabric softener. Given its importance, she wishes this first meal was a Batistas-only affair. Not to be mean or anything, but Lizette wishes Isabel would suck it up and move back in with her mother. For a little while. At least till the baby is born. Is that so horrible? Does that make her a bad person? Maybe, but Lizette is more concerned with being a good mother. With Junior’s personality, with the state of incarceration, well, it’s going to be hard enough keeping this family together, repairing the boys’ relationship, without Isabel coming in and out of the shower, walking all pregnant through the hallways.

  Lizette turns down the heat on the habichuelas guisadas. In five minutes—oh why did she start cooking so early?—the chicken will be done. Lizette will take it off the burner, of course, but if she lets it sit too long the rice will get mushy, or worse: cold.

  “You need the sofrito?” Isabel asks. The girl opens the freezer and pulls out an ice cube tray. Lizette makes all the sofrito herself in a food processor—nothing comes out of a jar in this kitchen—and she keeps the green peppery sauce in ice cube trays. Sure it makes the freezer stink of onion and garlic, but what are you gonna do? Lizette needs easy access to her sofrito. She doesn’t cook anything without it.

  Isabel turns the ice cube tray over onto the counter, so that its blocky plastic asses stick straight up in the air. She’s about to bang out all the little green cubes when Lizette seizes her by the wrist.

  “Someone cleans these counters, you know.” Lizette turns the tray over, right side up. “Just flex it, see? Just a little pressure and the cubes slide right out. No mess, see?”

  “How many cubes you want?”

  “Oh, I already did the sofrito, sweetie. I used two cubes to sauté the jamón. Twenty minutes ago.” Lizette inhales deeply. “You smell it?”

  Because Isabel—of course—left the freezer door open, the cranky, ill-tempered refrigerator begins to hum, announcing its neglect.

  “Put this away,” Lizette says as she hands her the ice cube tray. “You know, dear, this kitchen’s awfully small for two people.”

  Isabel pulls her shirt down over her belly. The poor thing’s got no maternity clothes. She wears one of Dito’s old Our Lady of Fatima T-shirts, and the bottom keeps riding up on her stomach, exposing a small sliver of skin. A pair of dirt-stained sweatpants have been cinched tightly around her waist. She wears no makeup or jewelry. Her hair is pulled back into a severe, face-tightening ponytail.

  “You don’t like what I’m wearing?” Isabel says.

  Lizette smiles, upset that her thoughts have been so easily penetrated. “You look fine,” she says brightly.

  “I woulda wore my Versace,” Isabel says, “but it’s still at the cleaners.”

  “I think you look perfectly fine.”

  Alfredo comes into the kitchen from the living room, where he’d been watching the Mets-Yankees pregame show with his father. Alfredo didn’t even know he was walking toward the kitchen until he got here. His legs and nose had apparently brokered some kind of side deal, arranged all by themselves to carry the rest of his body into Mama’s kitchen, where red beans stew in a thick, fragrant paste of olive oil, garlic, and cilantro, where chicken falls off the bone. And now that Alfredo’s here, he sees he’s got some work to do.

  The two women lean slightly forward at the waist, moving toward each other by millimeters, like a pair of tectonic plates. Got here just in time, Alfredo thinks. In his mother’s smile and in his girlfriend’s clenching hands, Alfredo reads—quickly, accurately—that Isabel’s trying to help and Mama’s having none of it. So
Alfredo will give Isabel something to do. So that she feels useful, wanted. So that she may keep herself momentarily busy. So that her hands will unclench, he will ask her to do something for him. Give to her what his mother has denied.

  “Hey, baby? Can you pour me a glass of water?”

  “Your legs broken?” Isabel says.

  “I’m just trying to—”

  “You want water,” Lizette says, “get it yourself.”

  “Wow,” Alfredo says. “Forget it. I’m not even thirsty.”

  Isabel tilts her head, thinking that if she changes her angle on Alfredo, he might change as well. She could murder him. In the movie version of her life, Isabel’s not in this kitchen. She’s on a Greyhound bus, a balled-up sweatshirt between her head and the window. Come on, Christian Louis says. Has it come to this? That even in your fantasies, you can’t afford a pillow? Fuck that noise! In the movie version of her life—and we’re talking Hollywood now, no Sundance independent camcorder bullshit—in the big budget, wide release movie version of Isabel’s life she’s not in this garlic-reeked kitchen because she’s on an airplane to Paris, up in first class, sipping on a fountain Coke, and while Alfredo is with her—he’s gotta be—he’s all the way back in coach, in a middle seat, between the two fattest air travelers of all time. These wide-bottomed men eat blue cheese sandwiches and sneeze into their armpits.

  If only. She and Alfredo had their chance to leave last night. But Alfredo rolled over on the sofa bed and explained that he could leave Jackson Heights like Captain Britain can leave the UK. Which is to say not at all. Alfredo grew up here, he’s never left here, his family’s here, his friends are here, his business is here, he’s written his name in the wet cement of these sidewalks. Isabel asked who the fuck Captain Britain’s supposed to be. A comic book character, Alfredo said, and Isabel stopped listening.