by Garth Stein
Consider that she had a tremendous advantage, being only sixty pounds to his one hundred fifty. That’s a huge weight differential in karting. Still. Consider that he was a thirty-year-old semiprofessional race car driver and she was a seven-year-old newbie. Consider the possibilities.
She won the race, God bless her little soul. She “took the checkered flag” and beat her old man. And I was so happy. I was so happy that I didn’t mind it when I had to wait in the car while they went into Andy’s Diner for french fries and milk shakes.
How did Denny sustain himself for the duration of this ordeal? Here’s how: He had a secret. His daughter was better and quicker and smarter than he was. And while the Evil Twins may have restricted his ability to see her, when he was allowed to see her, he received all the energy he needed to maintain his focus.
Chapter Forty-One
Spring, again. We were back at the Victrola.
I slept at my master’s feet on the sidewalk of Fifteenth Avenue, which had been warmed by the sun like a cooking stone. Slept and sprawled, barely lifting my head to acknowledge the occasional petting I received from the passersby. I looked like I hadn’t a care in the world. In fact, I was quite nervous, as I always was at our meetings with Mark.
“This is not a conversation I like to have,” Mark Fein said, leaning back on the iron chair until it groaned with fatigue. “It’s one I have too often.”
“I’m ready,” Denny said.
“Money,” said the lawyer.
Denny nodded to himself and sighed. “I’ve missed some invoices.”
“You owe me a ton, Dennis,” Mark clarified. “I’ve been giving you slack, but I have to cut you off.”
“Give me another thirty days of slack,” Denny said.
“Can’t do it, friend.”
“Yes, you can,” Denny said firmly. “Yes. You can.”
Mark sucked on his latte. “I have investigators. Paralegals. Support staff. I have to pay these people.”
“Mark,” Denny said. “I’m asking you for a favor. Give me thirty days.”
“You’ll be paid in full?” Mark asked.
“Thirty days,” said Denny.
Mark finished his coffee drink and stood. “Okay. Thirty days.”
“I’ll pay,” Denny said. “You keep working.”
Chapter Forty-Two
The solution had been put to Denny by Mark Fein: if Denny were to quit his claim to Zoë, the custody suit would vanish. That’s what Mark Fein said. As simple as that.
At one point Mark even counseled Denny that perhaps the best thing for Zoë would be to stay with her grandparents. They were better able to provide for the comforts of her childhood, as well as pay for her college education, when that became necessary. Further, he noted that a child needs a stable home environment. This, he said, could be best provided in a single housing location and with consistent schooling, preferably in the suburbs. Or at a private school in an urban neighborhood. Mark assured Denny he would settle for nothing short of a liberal visitation schedule. He spent quite a long time trying to convince Denny of these truths.
But Denny refused to yield to these ideas. He wanted his daughter and he wanted his racing career and he refused to give up one for the other.
“It’s never too late,” Denny said to Mark. “Things change.”
Very true. Things change quickly. And, as if to prove it, Denny sold our house.
We had no money left. They had sucked him dry. Mark had threatened to cease working for Denny’s defense. There was little else Denny could do. He rented a truck from U-Haul and called on his friends, and one weekend that summer, we moved all of our belongings from our house in the Central District to a one-bedroom apartment on Capitol Hill.
I loved our house. It was small, I know. But I had grown attached to my spot in the living room on the hardwood floor, which was very warm in the winter when the sun streamed in through the window. And I loved using my dog door, which Denny had installed for me so I could venture into the backyard at will. But that was no more. That was gone. From that point forward, my days were spent in an apartment with carpeting that smelled of chemicals and insulated windows that didn’t breathe properly. Plus a refrigerator that hummed too loudly and seemed to work too hard to keep the food cold. And no cable TV.
Still, I tried to make the best of it. If I squeezed myself into the corner between the arm of the sofa and the sliding glass door, I could see past the building across the street. Through a narrow gap, I could see the Space Needle with its little bronze elevators that tirelessly whisked visitors from the ground to the sky and back again.
Chapter Forty-Three
Denny paid his account with Mark Fein. Then Denny found a new lawyer named Mr. Lawrence. Mark had spark and fire. This one had very large ears.
This one asked for a continuance, which is what you can do in the legal world if you need time to read all the paperwork. And while I understood it was necessary, I was still concerned. While it had seemed like we were getting close to the end, suddenly the horizon shot away from us. We were waiting for the legal wheels to turn, which they did, but exceedingly slowly.
Shortly after Denny began working with our new lawyer, we received more bad news. The Evil Twins were suing Denny for child support. Dastardly, is how Mark Fein had described them. So now, in addition to taking his child from him, they demanded he pay for the food they fed her?
Mr. Lawrence defended their action as a legitimate tactic, ruthless as it might be. He posed to Denny a question: “Does the end always justify the means?” And then, he answered it: “Apparently, for them, it does.”
I have an imaginary friend. I call him King Karma. I know that karma is a force in this universe, and that people like the Evil Twins will receive karmic justice for their actions. I know that this justice will come when the universe deems it appropriate, and it may not be in this lifetime but in the next, or the one after that. The current consciousness of the Evil Twins may never feel the brunt of the karma they have incurred, though their souls absolutely will. I understand this concept.
But I don’t like it. And so my imaginary friend does things for me. If you are mean to someone, King Karma will swoop out of the sky and call you names. If you kick someone, King Karma will bound from an alley and kick you back. If you are cruel and vicious, King Karma will administer a fitting punishment.
At night, before I sleep, I talk to my imaginary friend and I send him to the Evil Twins, and he exacts his justice. It may not be much, but it’s what I can do. Every night, King Karma gives them very bad dreams in which they are chased mercilessly by a pack of wild dogs until they awaken with a start, and are unable to fall asleep again.
Chapter Forty-Four
It was an especially difficult winter for me. Perhaps it was the stairs in our apartment building. Or maybe it was my arthritis catching up to me. Or maybe I was just tired of being a dog.
I so longed to shed this body, to be free of it. And, looking back, I can tell you it was my state of mind, it was my outlook on life, that attracted me to that car and attracted that car to me. We make our own destiny.
We walked back from Volunteer Park late in the night. It was not too cold and not too warm, a gentle breeze blew, and snow fell from the sky. I was unsettled by the snow, I remember. Denny often allowed me to walk home from the park without my leash, and that night I strayed too far from him. I was watching the flakes fall and gather in a thin layer on the sidewalk and on the street, which was empty of both cars and people.
“Yo, Zo!” he called. He whistled for me, his sharp whistle.
I looked up. He was on the other side of Aloha. He must have crossed without my noticing.
“Come here, boy!”
He slapped his thigh, and I bounded toward him into the street.
Suddenly Denny spotted the car and cried out, “No! Wait!”
The tires did not scream, as tires do. The ground was covered with a thin layer of snow. The tires hushed. They shushed. A
nd then the car hit me.
So stupid, I thought. I am so stupid. I am the stupidest dog on the planet, and I have the nerve to dream of becoming a man? I am stupid.
“Settle down, boy.” Denny’s hands were on me. Warm.
“I didn’t see—” said the driver of the car.
“I know,” said Denny.
“He shot out—” continued the driver.
“I totally understand. I saw the whole thing,” replied Denny.
Denny lifted me. Denny held me. “I’m several blocks from home. He’s too heavy to carry. Will you drive me?”
“Sure, but—”
“You tried to stop. The street is snowy,” Denny said calmly.
“I’m totally freaking—I’ve never hit a dog before.”
“What just happened isn’t important,” Denny said. “Let’s think about what’s going to happen next. Get in your car.”
“Yeah,” the boy said. He was just a boy. A teenager. “Where should I go?”
“Everything’s fine,” Denny said, sliding into the backseat with me on his lap. “Take a deep breath and let’s drive.”
Chapter Forty-Five
Ayrton Senna did not have to die.
This came to me in a flash as I lay, whimpering in pain, in the backseat of Denny’s car on the way to the animal hospital that night. It came to me: on the Grand Prix circuit in the town of Imola, Senna did not have to die. He could have walked away.
Saturday, the day before the race, Senna’s friend Rubens Barrichello was seriously injured in an accident. Another driver, Roland Ratzenberger, was killed during a practice session. Senna was very upset about the safety conditions of the track.
People say that he was so ambivalent about that race, the San Marino Grand Prix, that he thought seriously of retiring as a driver on Sunday morning. He almost quit. He almost walked away.
But he did not walk away. He raced, that fateful first day of May in 1994. And when his car failed to turn in at the fabled Tamburello corner, his car left the track at nearly one hundred ninety miles per hour and struck a concrete barrier; he was killed instantly by a piece of metal that penetrated his helmet.
Or he died in the helicopter on the way to the hospital.
Or he died on the track, after they had pulled him out of the wreckage.
Mysterious is Ayrton Senna, in death as well as in life.
To this day, there is still great controversy over his death. The first man to reach Senna, Sidney Watkins, said: “We lifted him from the cockpit and laid him on the ground. As we did, he sighed and, although I am totally agnostic, I felt his soul departed at that moment.”
What is the real truth regarding the death of Ayrton Senna, who was only thirty-four years old? I know the truth, and I will tell you now:
He was admired, loved, cheered, honored, respected. In life as well as in death. A great man. He died that day because his body had served its purpose. His soul had done what it came to do. And I knew, as Denny sped me toward the doctor, that if I had already accomplished what I set out to accomplish here on earth, I would have been killed instantly by that car.
But I was not killed. Because I was not finished. I still had work to do.
Chapter Forty-Six
Separate entrances for cats and dogs. That’s what I remember most. I also remember the doctor painfully manipulating my hips. Then he gave me a shot and I was very much asleep.
When I awoke, I was still groggy, but no longer in pain. I heard snippets of conversation. Terms like “chronic arthritis,” and “fracture of the pelvic bone.” Others like “replacement surgery,” and “salvage operation,” “knitting,” and “pain threshold,” And my favorite, “old.”
Denny carried me to the lobby and laid me down on the brown carpeting, which was somehow comforting in the dim room. The assistant spoke to him and said more things that were confusing to me due to my drugged state. “X-ray.” “Sedative.” “Examination and diagnosis.” “Injection.” “Pain medications.” “Nighttime emergency fee.” And, of course, “Eight hundred and twelve dollars.”
Denny handed the assistant a credit card. He kneeled down and stroked my head. “You’ll be all right, Zo,” he said. “You cracked your pelvis, but it will heal. You’ll just take it easy for a while, and then you’ll be good as new.”
“Mr. Swift?” Denny stood and returned to the counter. “Your card has been declined.”
Denny stiffened. “That’s not possible.”
“Do you have another card?”
“Here.” Denny handed him another credit card. They both watched the blue machine that took the cards, and a few moments later, the assistant shook his head.
“You’ve exceeded your limit.”
Denny frowned and took out another card. “Here’s my ATM card. It will work.”
They waited again. Same result.
“That’s not right,” Denny said. I could hear his breath quicken, his heart beat faster. “I just deposited my paycheck. Maybe it hasn’t cleared yet.”
The doctor appeared from the back.
“A problem?” he asked.
“Look, I have three hundred dollars from when I deposited my check, I took some of it out in cash. Here.”
Denny fanned bills in front of the doctor.
“They must be holding the rest of the check or something, waiting for it to clear,” Denny said, his voice sounding panicky. “I know I have money in that account. Or I can transfer some into it tomorrow morning from my savings.”
“Relax, Denny,” the doctor said. “I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding.”
He said to the assistant, “Write Mr. Swift a receipt for the three hundred, and leave a note for Susan to run the card in the morning for the balance.”
The assistant reached out and took Denny’s cash. Denny watched closely as the young man wrote up the receipt.
“Could I keep twenty of it?” Denny asked hesitantly. I could see his lip quivering. He was exhausted and shaken and embarrassed. “I need to put some gas in my car.”
The assistant looked to the doctor, who lowered his eyes and nodded silently and turned away, calling good night over his shoulder. The assistant handed Denny a twenty-dollar bill and a receipt, and Denny carried me to the car.
When we got home and Denny placed me on my bed, he sat in the dark room, lit only by the streetlamps outside, and he held his head in his hands for a long time.
“I can’t keep going,” he said to me. “They won. Do you see? I can’t even afford to take care of you. I can’t even afford gas for my car. I’ve got nothing left, Enzo. There’s nothing left.”
Oh, how I wished I could speak. How I wished for thumbs. I could have grabbed his shirt collar. I could have pulled him close to me and I could have said to him, “This is just a crisis. A flash! You are the one who taught me to never give up. You taught me that new possibilities emerge for those who are prepared, for those who are ready. You have to believe!” But I couldn’t say that. I could only look at him.
“I tried,” he said. “You are my witness. I tried.”
If I could have stood on my hind legs. If I could have raised my hands and held him. If I could have spoken to him. But he could not hear me. Because I am what I am. I am a dog.
And so he returned his head to his hands and he sat. I provided nothing. He was alone.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Days later. A week. Two. I don’t know. After Denny’s crisis, time meant little to me; he looked sickly, he had no energy, no life force, and so neither did I. At a point when my hips still bothered me, we went to visit Mike and Tony. We sat in their kitchen, Denny with a cup of tea and a manila folder before him. Tony wasn’t present. Mike paced nervously.
“It’s the right decision, Den,” Mike said. “I totally support you. Mr. Lawrence got you everything you asked for: the same visitation schedule but with two weeks in the summer and one week over Christmas break, and the February school break; you don’t have to pay support anymore; they
’ll put her in a private school on Mercer Island and they’ll pay for her college education.”
Denny nodded.
“And they’ll withdraw the charge,” Mike said.
Denny stared dully at the folder on the table.
“Denny,” Mike said seriously, “you’re a smart guy. One of the smartest guys I’ve ever met. Let me tell you, this is a smart decision. You know that, right?”
Denny looked confused for a moment, scanned the tabletop, checked his own hands.
“I need a pen,” he said.
Mike reached behind him to the telephone table and picked up a pen. He handed it to Denny.
Denny hesitated, his hand poised over the documents in the folder. He looked up at Mike.
“I feel like they’ve sliced open my guts, Mike. Like they’ve sliced me open and cut out my intestines. For the rest of my life I’ll have to think about how they cut me open and gutted me and I just lay there with a dead smile on my face and said, ‘Well, at least I’m not broke.’”
Mike seemed at a loss. “It’s rough,” he said.
“Yeah,” Denny agreed. “It’s rough. Nice pen.”
Denny held up the pen. It was one of those souvenir pens with the sliding thing in the plastic top with the liquid.
“Woodland Park Zoo,” Mike said.
I looked closer. The top of the pen. A little plastic savannah. The sliding thing? A zebra. When Denny tipped the pen, the zebra slid across the plastic savannah. The zebra is everywhere.
I suddenly realized. The zebra. It is not something outside of us. The zebra is something inside of us. Our fears. Our own self-destructive nature. The zebra is the worst part of us when we are face-to-face with our worst times. The demon is us!
Denny brought the tip of the pen to the paper and I could see the zebra sliding forward, inching toward the signature line. Then I knew it wasn’t Denny who was signing. It was the zebra! Denny would never give up his daughter for a few weeks of summer vacation and to be free from child support payments!