by Linda Seed
It could all be bullshit, of course. But there was always a chance that it wasn’t.
There was always the chance that he had actually done okay.
When the tarp came down, Lacy wasn’t sure what to expect. She’d seen the Chihuly installation and had been moved by it. What if Daniel’s work suffered in comparison? What if it looked like a cheap copy? She was prepared to smile and congratulate him. She was prepared to say that it was brilliant, whether it was or not. She was ready to tell one of the kind white lies that one tells at such times.
As it happened, the lie wasn’t necessary.
She saw Daniel’s installation, drew in a breath, and her eyes filled with tears.
It didn’t suffer in comparison to the Chihuly, because it wasn’t like the Chihuly at all. It might have been conceived as a cheaper alternative to the Bellagio ceiling, but this was pure Daniel Reed.
The Bellagio piece and Daniel’s were both glass, and they both were attached to a ceiling. But that was where the similarity ended.
While the Bellagio installation was a field of colorful flowers, Daniel’s was all undulating blues and whites with light streaming through from above, creating the illusion that the viewer was on the ocean floor looking up through the water toward a sky filled with sunlight.
The feel of the work was so harmonious with the tropical theme of the hotel that it felt as though it had always been there, as though the hotel had been built for the artwork, and not the other way around.
Lacy wiped her eyes and saw Daniel watching her. She beamed at him across the crowd and mouthed, It’s beautiful. He lowered his eyes from hers and grinned, and she thought he might even be blushing.
Daniel and Lacy got on the road soon after the unveiling was over. They each went to their rooms, changed into comfortable clothes, and packed up, and then Daniel checked out. They were in Daniel’s SUV on the I-15 South while the sun was still high in the sky, shining brightly on the desert landscape.
An awkward tension filled the air between them, like cigarette smoke in a Glitter Gulch casino. Lacy didn’t break the heavy silence until the towering city was well behind them.
“Thank you for doing this.” She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye before returning her gaze to the road. “After … you know … the bar, Brandon checked out and left without even asking me how I was going to get home.”
Daniel grunted. “The guy’s an asshole.” He saw her stiffen. “I’m sorry, but he is. If you didn’t see that before, it should be pretty damned clear now. Who leaves his fiancée stranded in Las Vegas? An asshole. That’s who.”
Lacy crossed her arms over her chest. Her eyebrows nearly met, causing the space between them to furrow. “Well, I was there with seven other people. It’s not like I was going to have to hitchhike.”
Daniel grunted again. Okay, so Lacy was a little bit pissed. But at whom? At him? The fact that she was defending Brandon when she should have been trashing him suggested that her anger was a little bit displaced. She needed a target—someone other than Brandon—and Daniel was handy. He got that. And he knew he should just keep quiet to stay out of the firing line. But he couldn’t seem to manage it.
“Did he even give you a chance to explain about the Neanderthal in the bar, or did he just jump to conclusions?”
Her silence gave him his answer.
“Why was his immediate reaction not to trust you? Can you tell me that?” He was warming to his subject, so he just rolled with it as they passed the state line. “That kind of suspicion, that kind of … of emotional manipulation”—he shook his head in disgust—“that’s not what you deserve, Lacy. You deserve better. If he can’t even give you the benefit of the doubt—”
“I let him think we were sleeping together, okay?” Lacy threw her hands up in surrender. “I had the chance to tell him what happened, but instead, I told him you and I were a thing.”
Daniel, stunned, could only open his mouth and close it again like a ventriloquist’s dummy robbed of its partner.
“But … why?” he finally managed to ask.
“Because I wanted out.” She slumped down in her seat and blew out a puff of air. “I wanted out, and I made you the bad guy. Basically, I suck.”
Daniel took a few minutes to process what she’d told him. When he spoke again, his voice was tentative.
“But … if you wanted out, then why do you look like you want to rip off my right arm and hit me with it?”
“Because!” Now she was yelling at him. “My life is in upheaval! I’m single, yet again, and my eggs are aging as we speak! I’m not going to have a dream wedding, and I’m not going to have kids, and … and my mother is going to kill me! And … and I can’t be mad at Brandon, because I was the idiot who chose him! And I can’t very well rip off my own right arm, now can I?!”
“Yeah, okay.” Daniel nodded. “That’s a lot to deal with.”
“Thank you!”
They drove a little more, and he said, “I think I know what might help.” He pulled off the highway and parked at a gas station with a mini-mart.
“What are we doing?” she demanded, her voice still steely with anger.
“Just … wait here.” He got out of the car and went into the mini-mart. A few minutes later he came out with the biggest red ICEE she’d ever seen, and a paper bag that was so full it was bulging. He got back into the car, handed her the drink cup, and plopped the bag into her lap.
“What’s all this?” She looked into the bag, which was packed with Oreos, potato chips, mini donuts, Cheetos, and Funyuns. She looked at him and arched one eyebrow. “Funyuns?”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t sure what you like to eat when you’re upset. I wanted to cover all the bases.”
She grinned at him and pulled the pack of mini donuts out of the bag as he drove the SUV back onto the highway.
“If you’re not going to eat those Funyuns, pass them over,” he said.
The junk food really did make Lacy feel better. What was it about sugar, salt, and fat that elevated a person’s mood? And her mood really did need elevating. Last night, when Kate, Gen, and Rose had made Lacy their project, taking her out on the town, she’d been able to forget her problems—at least, mostly. But once she and Daniel had gotten on the road, there’d been nothing to distract her from the state of her life. She hadn’t been angry at Daniel, not exactly. But he was wrapped up in all of this because of the hug, because of the lie she’d told Brandon to free herself from the bear trap of her engagement. Yelling at him had seemed like the natural thing to do. Therapeutic, even.
But the donuts and the ICEE were proving to be even more therapeutic. The only problem was that the large drink was making her want to pee.
“I need a gas station,” she told him. She held up the drink cup, which was now almost empty. “You should have bought a smaller drink.”
He pulled off the highway at a station just south of Baker. Lacy got out of the SUV, retrieved the bathroom key from a pimply teenage clerk who seemed half asleep, and peed. When she was done and had returned the key to the front counter, she came outside to find a scruffy, oversized rat sniffing at her feet.
Or, maybe it wasn’t a rat. It was possible that it was a dog.
The thing barked once, a light, happy yap, and that settled it: The thing was definitely a dog.
“Hey there,” Lacy said to the creature, who was studiously sniffing her ankles. “Where’s your person?”
She bent down intending to look for a collar, but the dog, either alarmed at her overture or under the mistaken impression that she was playing a game, dashed about thirty feet away and then stood there looking at her, wagging its little stump of a tail.
Daniel had seen the exchange between woman and dog, and got out of the SUV to join her.
“What the hell is that thing?” he asked, his hands on his hips.
“It’s possible that it’s a dog,” Lacy answered. The animal was about the size of an opossum, with triangular ears that stood
up at attention from its head. It was covered in white, wiry hair that stuck up from its body at a variety of angles, but the hair was so sparse that it left a clear view of the gray, wrinkled skin beneath. All in all, the thing put Lacy in mind of the creatures from the movie Gremlins—post-midnight-feeding, but with a better disposition.
The dog barked at them optimistically.
“I wonder where his owners are,” Lacy said, looking around to see if anyone was looking for the little dog.
“Huh,” Daniel said thoughtfully.
In a repeat of its earlier game, the dog approached and sniffed Daniel’s ankles, then darted away when he bent down toward it. Once it was more than arm’s length away, it crouched down on its forepaws, its butt in the air, and wagged its tail, its tongue lolling out of the side of its mouth.
“Friendly little guy,” Daniel observed.
After a couple more failed attempts to check for a collar, Daniel went to the SUV and retrieved the leftover Funyuns. He crouched down and held out a Funyun for the dog’s inspection.
“Hey. Those are my Funyuns,” Lacy protested.
“I’ll get you more,” Daniel said.
The dog inched closer, sniffed the oniony treat, and then finally took the crispy ring gingerly into its mouth. As it ate, Daniel scooped the dog up into his arms.
“No collar,” he observed. Daniel looked around, as Lacy had, to see if the dog had any prospective human parents. There was no one around; Daniel and Lacy were the only customers at the moment, and the gas station’s employees were all inside.
Lacy caught a whiff of the dog’s smell—a combination of intestinal gas and whatever he’d been rolling in—and wrinkled her nose. “What are we supposed to do with him? Should we call Animal Control?”
“What? Nah.” Daniel shook his head. “He’d end up in a shelter, and they’d probably put him down.”
“I can’t imagine there’d be a lot of people clamoring to adopt something that looks like … well, like this,” Lacy agreed.
The dog had finished its Funyun and stretched its head up to lick at the underside of Daniel’s chin.
“We can’t leave him here,” Lacy said after a while. “It’s the desert. He’ll die of dehydration or get eaten by a coyote or a hawk or something.”
Daniel scratched at a spot behind the dog’s ears, and the dog whined happily in response.
Lacy went into the mini-mart to ask the pimply clerk if he knew anything about the dog. The clerk, barely roused from his state of tired indifference, shrugged. “He’s been out here the last couple of days.”
She thought for a moment, then filled a drink cup with water from the soda fountain and bought a small plastic container of dog food that she found on a dusty bottom shelf near the windshield wipers and the car air fresheners. She carried her purchase outside and knelt down near the dog.
“Here you go,” she said, offering him the cup of water. The dog lunged at the water, lapping it up as though he hadn’t had a decent drink in days. Which he probably hadn’t.
She peeled open the top of the dog food and set the container on the ground next to the water. The dog whined in delight and gobbled up the food. When it was gone, the dog held the container in place between his paws and licked the plastic until all remains of the food and its juices were obliterated.
Daniel sighed and nodded. “All right then.” He picked up the dog, held it in his arms, and started walking back to the SUV.
“What are you doing?” Lacy demanded.
“We’re bringing him with us.”
“What?!” Lacy didn’t know what they were supposed to do with a strange-looking, foul-smelling dog on the long ride back to Cambria.
“You said it yourself, nobody’s going to adopt him. And if we leave him out here, he doesn’t have a chance.” He shrugged. “We’ll bring him. We can find him a good home in Cambria.”
Lacy squinted at the dog skeptically. “You think?”
“He’ll have a better shot there than he will here. Come on.” With no further discussion, he got into the SUV with the dog.
Lacy sighed heavily and followed him.
“Zzyzx? You’re naming the dog Zzyzx?” Lacy said. The dog, which had been squirming, wiggling, and thrashing about on her lap for the last ten minutes, was finally starting to settle down. She stroked his back to calm him.
“Why not?” Daniel gave a half grin. “That’s where we found him.”
It was true that the gas station where they’d discovered him was not far from Zzyzx Road, an exit off of the I-15 just south of Baker. But it never would have occurred to Lacy to name a living creature that.
“Seems like he’s got enough challenges in his life without being saddled with a name like that,” Lacy said sympathetically.
“He looks like a Zzyzx,” Daniel said.
Lacy wanted to argue with that, but she couldn’t. If ever there were a dog that looked like a Zzyzx, it was this one.
“I’m going to call him Z for short,” she said. “It’s easier to spell, for one thing. And anyway, it’s only temporary. I’m sure whoever ends up adopting him will name him something else.”
If Zzyzx had an opinion on his name, he didn’t share it with her. Instead, he curled up on her lap and whined softly as they continued down Interstate 15 toward Barstow.
They were just on the outskirts of town when Zzyzx rose up in her lap and began convulsing slightly, making the horrendous retching noise that every dog owner dreaded.
“Oh, God,” Lacy said. “He’s going to throw up. Pull over, pull over!”
“I can’t pull over.” Daniel had a big rig in the lane to his right and a pickup truck in front of him that prevented him from speeding up to pass.
“Oh, shit. Oh, shit,” Lacy said. She picked the dog up off of her lap and put him on the floor, thinking she could at least spare her clothing if the worst-case scenario happened.
It did.
Zzyzx made another grand, wrenching noise from the bowels of his stomach, and the entire contents of the dog food container, plus one chewed-up Funyun, emerged, steaming, onto the floor mat of Daniel’s SUV.
“Jesus …” Daniel said.
Zzyzx, much relieved, stepped through the mess, jumped onto Lacy’s lap, and then darted between the two front seats to dash around the back of the SUV.
Lacy looked at the puddle of vomit at her feet, and at the pukey paw marks that dotted her clothes.
She turned to Daniel wryly. “Think you can pull over now?”
They spent the next half hour at a gas station, cleaning Zzyzx off with a water hose, then doing what they could to remedy the situation inside the car. Daniel pulled the passenger side floor mat out of the SUV gingerly, to avoid spillage, and peered at it with distaste.
He considered the option of hosing it off and then giving it a good cleaning when he got home, then calculated the price of a new floor mat. Taking all things into consideration, including effort, the grossness factor, and the likely aroma inside the car, he made his decision. He walked the mat to a nearby Dumpster and threw it in.
That done, he and Lacy, using paper towels and water, worked together to clean the areas where Zzyzx’s feet had left little vomity paw prints on the upholstery.
Finally, Lacy dug some clean clothes out of her bag and went into the restroom to change. She came out carrying the dog-puke clothes in a plastic bag she’d gotten from the gas station clerk.
“Do you suppose he has a problem with carsickness?” Lacy peered skeptically at Zzyzx, who was nestled happily in Daniel’s arms. “Or did the food just disagree with him?”
Daniel shrugged, worried about the same question. If the dog had an issue with motion sickness, this would likely happen again—maybe more than once—before they reached Cambria. “I guess we’ll find out.”
“Maybe I should drive while you hold him,” Lacy suggested.
“Like hell,” Daniel said, and then grinned slightly. “I don’t want to be in the firing line any more than yo
u do. And it’s my car.”
“But you’re the one who wanted to bring him along,” Lacy pointed out. “If it were me, we’d have called the Animal Control people.”
“Who would have gassed him!” Daniel waved his free arm in indignation. “Or given him a lethal injection, or … or whatever they do!”
Lacy didn’t argue the point, but she didn’t give up her ground, either.
“Fine. We’ll flip a coin,” Daniel said.
Lacy dug around in her purse, pulled out a quarter, and got ready to flip it. “Call it.”
“Heads. No, tails. Tails seems appropriate, given the circumstances.”
Lacy flipped the coin into the air, and caught it in her open hand. She smacked it onto the back of her other hand, and they both leaned in to read the results.
“Heads,” Lacy said. There might have been a hint of smugness in her voice.
“Well, shit,” Daniel said. But in truth, he wasn’t too upset about his assignment to dogsit for the next leg of the drive. Lacy did nearly get puked on, after all. And it really had been his idea to bring the little guy along.
They took Zzyzx around the back of the gas station to give him a chance to pee, or to throw up again if he needed to. Once he was done—pee, but no puke—they got back into the car with Lacy in the driver’s seat.
She pulled the car back onto the I-15, and it became apparent within just a few miles that their cleaning efforts had been substandard.
“Oh my God,” Lacy said, holding her nose against not only the smell of the residue of dog puke, but also against the smell of Zzyzx himself. If the dog had ever had a bath, it was now so far in the past as to be only a fond and vague memory.
“Holy hell,” Daniel said, grimacing against the stench. “That’s just … I think I’m gonna have to burn this car.”
In Daniel’s lap, Zzyzx whined hopefully.
It seemed like the thing to do was to open the window. No sooner had Daniel done it than Zzyzx shoved his face into the rush of air, sticking his head out the window and squinting his eyes happily against the gush of the wind.