Dogfight, A Love Story

by Matt Burgess

  Because the frustration never ends, the crumpled piano key in his fist turns out to have nothing at all to do with apartment rentals. It says,

  Meth Study

  Queens College

  Under that it asks him to call a 718 telephone number. Yeah right. He tears it up and chucks the bits of paper into the street.

  He knows exactly where he is—he’s escorted his mother to this Laundromat thousands of times; he used to live in that bodega right across the street—and yet he feels lost, as if he’s only been told about this place, as if all his memories belong to somebody else. Apparently he exudes this confusion. A homeless man hustles over, eager to pounce.

  Normally an expert at identifying the ethnicities of other men—credit Queens, credit prison—Tariq can’t tell if this guy is Indian or Pakistani or Bangladeshi or something else altogether. Despite the heat, the man wears a thick sweatshirt, as gray and dirty as his beard. Powerful drugs, or withdrawal from powerful drugs, cause his left leg to tremble. Head bowed, he asks for some spare change.

  “Haven’t you heard?” Tariq says. “Change is for customers only.”

  “What?”

  Tariq reminds himself, not for the first time, that he should leave the joke-telling to others. He rolls up all the rental magazines, and the man takes a step backward, as if he were a spider about to be swatted. Tariq shoves the magazines into his back pocket. Both pockets are embarrassingly full now, a pair of unsightly bulges stretching out his Rocawear jeans. He expects the homeless guy to make some sort of crack, call him a peckerwood or something, and when he doesn’t, Tariq gives him his last three dollars.

  “Good luck, my brother,” Tariq says happily, for as everyone knows the upper hand is better than the lower hand. “Peace be upon you.”

  Rather than dwell any further on his own benevolence, he walks away from the man and all of his thank-yous. It feels good to be moving. Up in the sky, the sun’s purple light still lingers. Things are as they should be. Having given that man the last of his money, Tariq feels as if he’s reclaimed his neighborhood. He could stroll through these streets indefinitely, humming a wordless tune, his hands in his pockets, but the Casio F-91W tells him he better hurry up. Let’s see a little urgency in that gait. You’re losing time you can never get back. Or as the Book says:

  The Hour has come and split is the moon.

  He breaks out into a jog. Keeps his head down, watches sidewalk panels disappear beneath his feet. Watch out, people! Get out the way! It felt good to be moving, but my oh my, it feels even better to run.

  Three deadbolts protect his parents’ door. He tries a square key, but it won’t fit in any of the locks. He tries a different square key. He tries squat keys and round keys and skinny keys, but none of them fit, no matter how hard he pushes. Desperate, he tries a mailbox key. His heart quickens when an extra-long key fits into the middle lock, but of course of course of course that key refuses to turn. He tries an eye-balled comparison between the teeth of the keys and the mouths of the locks, but it’s hopeless, he can’t see that well and the hallway lights are dim and there are just too many fucking keys, a massive jumble of keys, a janitor’s wet dream of keys, keys his brother probably found on the street and stuck in his pocket, keys to their old apartment behind Papi’s bodega, keys that lack any known function, unlocking doors that probably don’t even exist anymore. This is just like him, Tariq thinks. His brother keeps keys past their usefulness because he wants to seem like a romantic, a man who stays up all night blinking back nostalgia. A thick metal hoop spears the keys, and dangling off that hoop is a cheap plastic bottle opener. The engraving on that cheap plastic bottle opener reads World’s Greatest Dad.

  Halfway through, Tariq loses track of which keys he’s tried and which ones he hasn’t, and so he has to start over. Black spots of mildew blemish the walls. One more thing that up in Fishkill, dreaming of his return, he failed to imagine.

  The possibility occurs to him that no matter how badly he wants them to, none of these keys will open any of these locks. His brother may have intentionally given him a fake set as a joke, an attempt to humiliate him, to have him impotently scratching at locks, to make him ring the bell or knock on the door like an outsider, a Jehovah’s Witness or a traveling salesman, a man with his hat in his hand and his dick tucked between his legs.

  On the other side of the door, the TV plays loudly. Tariq thinks he hears laughter. And not the TV laughter of a simulated studio audience, but real laughter from real people inside the living room. Breathless, he presses his face to the door. His dog is whimpering, and yes, someone inside is definitely laughing. Truly right here, home and yet not home, he feels closing in upon him painful torment: fetters and fire and food that chokes. He bends one of the keys in half, which isn’t easy, which leaves a ridged imprint on the meat of his thumb. Hands shaking, he reaches inside of himself, grabs hold of the Book:

  Your Lord has neither left you, nor despises you. What is to come is better for you than what has gone before; for your Lord will certainly give you, and you will be content. Did He not find you an orphan and take care of you? Did He not find you perplexed, and show you the way? Did He not find you poor and enrich you?

  So of course there are locks. Of course there are obstacles. Tariq knows he’s been put on a straight path, but not necessarily an easy one. With the steady, guiding hand of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate, he tries again, one by one, and this time into the right locks he drives the right keys. Orphans, all of them, they slide into their chambers with the ripple of homecoming.

  When he walks into the apartment, Isabel and Papi turn their plastic, mock-innocent faces toward him. They sit close to each other: Isabel on the sofa with her feet tucked under her thighs, and Papi in his wheelchair with a blanket covering his lap. Between them, on the floor, sits an air mattress, shiny and inflated and looking as if it would be easily punctured. Get this: Papi turns away from Tariq and directs his attention back to the television. Apparently Tariq’s return to this apartment has become another boring, taken-for-granted, humdrum affair. Apparently he can’t compete with the TV screen, where a white woman, her voice unnaturally amplified, shills September 11 commemorative coins: We will never forget. Proud to be an American. A necessary addition to any patriotic collection.

  At least the dog welcomes him. Still chained to the leg of the sofa, he lunges to get at Tariq, and every time he lunges he gags on the spikes of his pinch collar. Determined, smart, quick to adapt, he abandons the lunging and instead takes small steps, one paw after another, with the history of his breed defined in the muscles of his neck. The sofa inches forward. He’s dragging it across the carpet, and Isabel, who had been sitting Indian-style on the cushions, sends her feet to the floor. The dog leans into his collar. If Isabel stood up, the sofa would surely shoot toward Tariq, but if she continues to sit, with her feet rooted to the ground—and no reason to think that she won’t—the dog will strangle himself. This is a train for which Isabel’s already paid her fare. This is a test between her and the dog, and Tariq watches impassively, not knowing whom to root for. The dog’s legs are shaking. His tongue falls out of his mouth.

  “Where’s Alfredo?” Isabel says. “Is he okay? Did something happen to him?”

  Despite his struggle, the dog doesn’t even bark. Of all the things Tariq admires about this animal, this is at the top of the list. He’s all bite. Tariq goes to him and unclips the leash from his collar. Thank you, thank you. The dog jumps on him, hugs on him, almost knocking him over, his paws scrambling across Tariq’s chest. Tariq plays their game where he blows into his marbled eyes, and the dog squirms away, pretending to be annoyed.

  “Your mother don’t want him off the leash,” Papi says.

  “Oh yeah?” Tariq says. He forces the dog’s mouth closed, so he can’t drool on his jeans or lick at his cheek. “And where is Mama?”

  “In bed. Comatose. She tried to stay up till you got home, to tell you something …” He snaps hi
s fingers. “What was she gonna tell him?” he asks Isabel.

  She shakes her head, as if she cannot recall. But there’s no way, Tariq thinks. There is no way she forgot.

  To help himself remember, Papi closes his eyes and tilts back his head. A loose purse of skin hangs from his neck. Something evil, Tariq thinks, has drawn his father’s gray cheeks into his face. It’s as if Papi’s been using one of those breathing machines, one of those clear plastic jockstraps that cover the nose and the lips. Except instead of providing oxygen, this cruel machine pulls it out. And now Papi looks like this, someone who’s given up, who’s already half gone, one paralyzed foot in the Cedar Grove Cemetery. The Book says:

  If one or both of them grow old in your company, do not say fie to them, nor reprove them, but say gentle words to them and look after them with kindness and love, and say: “O Lord, have mercy on them as they nourished me when I was small.”

  Yeah well, Tariq’s first objection is that the whole nourishment part of this sura may not apply in his particular case. Second of all, Papi did not grow old in Tariq’s presence. This happened during Tariq’s incarceration. This happened, he is sure, because of his incarceration.

  “I remember now,” Papi says.

  “Did you hear me outside the door?”

  “Your mother wanted me to remind—”

  “Did you hear me? Outside the door?”

  Jose looks over at Isabel, and Tariq is careful to notice if anything rises on his face—if his eyebrows arch, or if his flaky, dehydrated lips curl into a smirk. “What do you mean?” he asks.

  “Did you hear me when I was out in the hall? Struggling with the locks.”

  “I guess.”

  “You’re not sure?”

  “We figured you were maybe a little—you know.”

  “No, Papi. I don’t know. Can you please explain it to me?”

  “I don’t know, Junior. A little buzzed maybe? First day back, maybe you and Dito get a little drunk. Smoke a spliff or something.” He draws a hit from an invisible joint, his pinky raised in the air. “Come home a little stoned and maybe you have some trouble opening the door. I don’t know. We didn’t really think about it, tell you the truth.”

  “You didn’t really think about it? Don’t look at her. Look at me. You didn’t—”

  “What right do you have, talking to me like this?”

  “Please don’t interrupt me when I’m speaking.” Tariq forces the dog’s head down into the carpet. “You say you weren’t really thinking about me outside the door, fumbling with the locks like an idiot. But then what were you thinking about? What were you laughing about, Papi?”

  “Laughing?” he says. He smoothes out the wrinkles on his lap, a clear giveaway. “What’s the matter with you? You wanted me to get up? Unlock the door for you?”

  “Here’s the thing,” Tariq says. He tries not to smile when he sees how closely Isabel is watching him. She sits on her hands, as if perfectly composed, but he’s willing to bet dollars to donuts that if he put his ear to her breast he’d hear her heart wildly thumping. “Here’s the thing,” he says again, stepping closer to his father. “How would you feel if I laughed in the face of your pathetic moments? When you need help coming in and out of the bathtub. Or when you’ve pissed your pants in the middle of the day and don’t even know it?”

  “This subject is closed,” Jose says. He points the remote at the television and raises its volume. “Your mother wanted me to remind you to call your parole officer. Before it’s too late.”

  Tariq’s on him before he even has a chance. He forces his hands behind Jose’s knees and under his tailbone, and hoists him out of the wheelchair. The old man weightlessly floats into Tariq’s arms, as easily as cream rises in coffee. And then he starts fighting. He punches Tariq’s ear, his face, his back, the cluster of muscles between his shoulder blades. Put me down, he says. Put me down right now! Imagine that. Granting this old man’s request. How easily these thin legs would shatter. Tariq is laughing. He tosses him up in the air, as one might do with a baby. They are swirled together, father and son. Jose is still fighting and Tariq is still laughing. To protect the gash on his cheek, he sticks his face in Jose’s armpit, which smells like sofrito. He carries him toward the back of the apartment. Tariq can’t see where he’s going—his face stays buried in Jose’s armpit—but he doesn’t need to see where he’s going. This is his house. He knows where the parrots hang low and where sock-snagging nailheads stick out of the carpet. As they go through the kitchen, Tariq tilts his father’s helpless body and walks sideways like a crab, so that Jose’s dangling legs don’t get clipped on a doorway.

  Isabel says nothing. I’m the main event, Tariq thinks. I’m the chaos she needs. Like the perfect audience member, she sits still and silent in the dark.

  He throws his father onto the bed, and Jose lands as a pile of shirts might land—with a soft thud, in a twisted heap. Grease-stained pillows bounce to the floor. The mattress springs creak. Rising up onto his elbows, Jose shows his son the face of an old man, red and swollen and accusatory. This face demands to know what right Tariq has. What right? What right? Tariq could ask him to elaborate, but he’s too disgusted. He cuts straight to his father’s lies.

  “Where’s Mama?”

  Jose’s lost his voice. The words come out thin and black, barely even whispered: “What right do you have?”

  Oh please. Tariq gets down on the carpet and slides a hand under his father’s dresser. The wood feels bumpy, as if infected with disease. Something contagious. Years ago, when Tariq was just a kid, he’d root around inside the dresser drawers for whatever his little hands could find: loose change, cough drops, porno mags, airplane bottles of Bacardi, an inexplicable yarmulke, condoms that he’d blow up like balloons. This time, however, Tariq searches for something specific: a package he’d duct-taped to the bottom of the dresser. It should be right in the middle. A clear plastic baggie, it is full, or at least it should be full, with $930, his share of the Virgil’s money.

  When he can’t find it, he crawls across the floor and checks under his mother’s dresser. No money there either, and he isn’t surprised. Nothing’s safe around this family. He stands up slowly, brushes the dirt and dust off his hands. His father’s thin chest trembles.

  In the hallway outside his parents’ bedroom, Tariq bumps into Isabel. He thought she would’ve waited for him in the living room, but of course not. She had to follow him here. Had to see what he might do next. Smiling, he moves toward her, and she backs away into the wall.

  “What’s the matter with you?” she says.

  “I don’t know,” he says, still smiling. “What’s the matter with me?”

  “He’s your father.”

  “He’s a liar. Did you know that? He said my mother had gone to bed when—”

  “She sleeps in your old room.”

  “Please don’t interrupt me when I’m speaking,” he says. He looks down at her stomach, which presses against the zippered fly of his crotch. Oh, he wishes their positions were reversed, that it was him backed up against the wall, supported, unable to crumple to the ground. Isabel smells faintly sour, like milk on the day it expires. He’d like to wash the smell off of her. Shampoo her hair, lather her back. When he brings his face closer to hers, she turns her head and looks blankly out the kitchen window. The purple dusk that lingered throughout the early evening has been swallowed, devoured by darkness. Wise of him to have waited, to have delayed, for as the Book says:

  Surely in the watches of the night the soul is most receptive and words more telling.

  Twenty-nine months of imagined scenarios, and not a single one took place here, in this darkened hallway, with these familial pictures on the walls, with Isabel wearing his little brother’s Fatima T-shirt. Can’t complain, though. You tussle with what is, and you do the very best that you can.

  “I got these for you,” he says as he digs into his pockets. “I went down to the corner. And to the Laundromat, too.”<
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  He pushes the magazines into her hands, giving them to her one at a time, so as to prolong this moment for as long as he can. He watches her face. The book, Apartment Finder, he saves for last, sliding it over the top. He pats his pockets. That’s it. That’s everything. If not for that fat Ecuadorian bitch, he would’ve had more, dozens more, flyers and piano keys, a thick catalog of choices that would overflow Isabel’s arms and cascade to the floor.

  “If you look right here you’ll see that the magazine’s pages are color coded according to neighborhood. If I was you, Izzy, that’s where I’d start. Choose a place to live first, and then go on from there. There’s no place that’s off-limits, okay? Don’t worry about prices.” He doesn’t tell her that he didn’t find the Virgil’s money, or that he failed to get the grams of coke from Baka—those are his problems, not hers. “I like Astoria,” he says. “And I’d recommend a two-bedroom apartment. It’d be nice, that extra room. But all the final decisions are entirely up to you.”

  He can tell by her face that he’s not explaining himself very well.

  “Here’s the thing about that second bedroom,” he says. “We could put a sewing machine in there for you. And I’d like to use it as an office. I’d like to learn Arabic, you know? So I can read the Qur’an the way it’s meant to be read. I bet that’s something you never thought I’d want to do. Am I right? Never in a million years, right? But that’s what I’m telling you. I’m different now. It’s like I’ve got words overflowing my head.” He looks away, suddenly embarrassed. “I’m going to need that office,” he says. “There are things I’ve got planned. Impressive things.”