by T. C. Boyle
Joe was no more than twenty feet away and Royce could see him exchange a glance with the girl, as if he was going to pat down his pockets and pretend he’d left his credit card on the bar at the last place, but he kept on coming because he had no choice at this point. He wasn’t that big—just big in relation to Joey and Shana—but he carried himself with a swagger and he had one of those faces that managed to look hard even when he was smiling at you. Which he definitely wasn’t doing now. He just froze his features, tightened his grip on the girl, and made as if to ignore them. But Steve wouldn’t have it. Steve was over the railing in a bound, waving his arms like a game-show host. “Hey, man, good to see you,” he was crowing in his put-on voice. “What a coincidence, huh? And look, look who’s here”—and now the voice of wonder—“your brother-in-law!”
That moment? Nobody really liked it. Not the couple with the pita platter or the waitress or the other smokers, who only wanted to suck a little peace through a tube and dissolve the hassles of the day, and certainly not Joe. Or the girl he was with. She was involved now, giving him a look: brother-in-law?
“Ex,” Joe said, looking from her to Royce and shooting him a look of hate. He was stalled there, against his will, the girl about to say something like Aren’t you going to introduce me? and people beginning to turn their heads. Steve—he was amped up, clowning—kept saying, “Hey, come on, man, come on in and have a toke with us, like a peace pipe, you know?”
Joe ignored him. He just kept staring at Royce. Very slowly, in disgust, he began to shake his head, as if Royce were the one who’d walked out on his wife and kid and refused to pay child support or even leave a forwarding address, then he tightened his grip on the girl’s arm, sidestepped Steve, and made a show of strutting off down the street as if nothing had happened. And nothing had happened. What was he going to do, have Steve fight his battles for him? It wasn’t worth it. Though if he was Steve’s size, or even close, he would have gone over that rail himself, and he would have had a thing or two to say, and maybe more—maybe he would have gone for him right there on the sidewalk so people made way and the pretty girl let out a soft strangled cry.
By the time they settled in at the first bar up the street, he’d put it out of his head. Or mostly. He and Steve talked sports and spun out a couple of jokes and routines and he found himself drifting, but then Joe’s face loomed up in his consciousness and he was telling himself he should have followed him to see what he was driving, get a license plate number so Shana could clue the police or child services or whoever. Something. Anything. But he hadn’t, and the moment was gone. “Forget it,” Steve told him. “Don’t let that fucker spoil the night for you.”
They went to the next place and the next place after that, the music pounding and the lights flashing, and for a while there he felt loose enough to go up to women at random and introduce himself and when they asked him what he did for a living, he said, “I’m a dog man.” That got them interested, no doubt about it, but it was the rare woman who didn’t turn away or excuse herself to go to the ladies’ when he began to explain just what that meant. Still, he was out on the town and the alcohol began to sing in his blood and he didn’t feel tired or discouraged in the least. It was around eleven when Steve suggested they try this hotel he’d heard about, where they had a big outdoor pool area and a bar scene and you could sit out under the stars and watch girls jump in and out of the pool in their bikinis. “Sure,” he heard himself say, “why not?” And if he thought of Joey, he thought of him in bed, asleep, the video remote still clenched in his hand and the screen gone blank.
He was feeling no pain as he followed Steve up the steps of the hotel and into the darkened lobby. Two doormen—studiously hip, mid-thirties, with phone plugs in their ears and cords trailing away beneath their collars—swung back the doors on a big spreading space with low ceilings, concrete pillars and a cluster of aluminum and leather couches arranged in a grid against the wall on the right. People—various scenesters, mostly dressed in black—lounged on the couches, trying their best to look as if they belonged. Beyond them, the pool area opened up to the yellow night sky and the infinite lights of the city below. A minute later he and Steve were crowding in at the pool bar—glasses that weren’t glass but plastic, a rattle of ice cubes, scotch and soda—while the music infected them and the pool sucked and fell in an explosion of dancing blue light. Girls, as promised. And swimming like otters. “Pretty cool, huh?” Steve was saying.
He nodded, just taking in the scene, thinking nothing at this point, his mind sailing free the way it did when somebody else’s dogs were fighting and he had no betting interest in the outcome. Suddenly he felt a wave of exhaustion sweep over him—or was it boredom? After a moment he excused himself to find his way to the men’s, and that was when the whole world shifted on him.
Right in the lobby, set right there in the wall above the long curving sweep of the check-in desk, was a lit-up glass cubicle, maybe eight feet long, four high, with a mattress and pillow and a pale pink duvet turned back on itself—how could he have missed it on the way in? It was like the window of a furniture store, or no, a stage set, because there was a girl inside, propped up against the back wall as if she were in her own bedroom. She was wearing pajamas—nothing overt like a teddy or anything like that—just pajamas, button-up top and draw-string bottoms rolled up at the ankles. She had a cell phone stuck to one ear and a book open in her lap. Her hair was dark and long, brushed out as if for bed—a brunette, definitely a brunette—and her feet were bare and pressed to the glass so you could see the pale flesh of her soles. That was what got him, that was what had him standing there in the middle of the lobby as if he’d been nailed to the floor: the soles of her feet, so clean and white and intimate in that darkened arena with its scenesters and hustlers and everybody else doing their best to ignore her.
“Can I help you?” The man behind the desk—big-frame glasses, skinny tie—was addressing him.
“I was”—but this was genius, wasn’t it, the hotel advertising what you could do there, in private, in a room, if you had a girl like that?—“just looking for the men’s . . .”
“Down the hall to your right.”
He should have moved on, but he didn’t, he couldn’t. The guy behind the desk was studying him still—he could feel his eyes on him—probably a heartbeat away from informing him that he couldn’t stand there blocking traffic all night and another heartbeat away from calling security. “Does she have a name?” Royce murmured, his voice caught low in his throat.
“Chelsea.”
“Does she—?”
The man shook his head. “No.”
When Steve finally came looking for him, he was squeezed in at the end of one of the couches in the dark, just watching her. At first, she’d seemed static, almost like a mannequin, but that wasn’t the case at all—she blinked her eyes, flipped the hair out of her face, turned the pages of her book with a flick of enameled nails, each gesture magnified out of all proportion. And then, thrillingly, she shifted position, stretching like a cat, one muscle at a time, before flexing her arms and abdomen and pushing herself up into the lotus position, her feet tucked under her, the book in her lap and the cell cupped to one ear. He wondered if she was really talking to anybody—a boyfriend, a husband—or if it was just part of the act. Did she eat in there? Take bathroom breaks? Brush her teeth? Floss?
“Hey, man, I’ve been looking all over for you,” Steve said, emerging from the shadows with the dregs of a drink in one hand and all trace of his grin gone. “What are you doing? You know what time it is?”
He didn’t. He just shook his head in a slow absent way as if he were waking from a deep sleep, and then they were down the steps and out on the street, the cars crawling past in a continuous illuminated loop and a sliver moon caught like a hook in the jaws of the yellow sky. The cell in his left front pocket began to vibrate. It was Joey. “What’s up, big guy?” he said
without breaking stride. “Shouldn’t you be asleep? Like long asleep?”
The voice was soft, remote. “It’s the Lab.”
“What about her?”
“She’s crying. I can hear her all the way from my bedroom.”
“Yeah, okay, thanks for telling me—really—but don’t you worry about it. You just get to sleep, hear me?”
Even softer: “Okay.”
He wanted to add that they’d work the dogs in the morning, that they’d devote the whole morning to them because there was a match next weekend and if Joey was good he was going to bring him along, first time ever, because he was old enough now to see what it was all about and why they had to put so much time into training Zoltan and Zeus the way they did, baiting them and watching their diet and their weight and all the rest of it, but Joey had broken the connection.
—
Most of them were creeps, pure and simple—either that or old men who stood there gaping at her when they checked in with their shrink-wrapped wives—and she never had anything to do with any of them, no matter if they sent her ten-page letters and roses and fancy candy assortments, the latter of which she just gave to the maids in any case because sweets went straight to her hips and thighs. In fact, it was against the rules to make eye contact—Leonard, the manager, would jump down your throat if you even glanced up at somebody because that was like violating the fourth wall of the stage. This is theater, he kept telling her, and you’re an actress. Just keep that in mind. Right. The only thing was, she didn’t want to be an actress, unlike ninety-nine percent of the other girls clawing their way through the shops and bars and clubs seven days a week—she was two years out of college, waitressing mornings in a coffee shop and doing four nights a week here, representing some sort of adolescent wet dream while saving her money and studying for her LSATs.
Was it demeaning? Was it stupid? Yes, of course it was, but her mother had danced topless in a cage during hippie times—and that was in a bar where people could hoot and throw things and shout out every sleazy proposition known to humankind. She wasn’t an actress. Anybody could be an actress. She was going to go into immigration law, help give voice to people who didn’t have a say for themselves, do something with her life—and if using her looks to get her there, to get paid to study, was part of the deal, then that was fine with her.
So she was in her cubicle, embracing the concept of the fourth wall and trying to make sense of the logical reasoning questions TestMasters threw at her, good to go sometimes for an hour or more without even looking up, but she wasn’t blind. The scene drifted past her as if she were underwater, in a submarine, watching all the strange sea creatures interact, snatch at each other, pair up, stumble, glide, fade into the depths, and her expression never changed. She recognized people from time to time, of course she did, but she never let on. Matt Damon had been in one night, with a girl and another guy, and once, just after she clocked in, she thought she’d seen George Clooney—or the back of his head anyway—and then there were people she’d gone to college with, an older couple who were friends of her parents, even a guy she’d dated in high school. Basically, and it wasn’t that hard, she just ignored them all.
On this particular night though, a Saturday, when the throngs were out and the words began to blur on the page and nobody, not even her mother, would answer the phone, she stole a glance at the lobby and the guy who’d just stood there watching her for the last five minutes till Eduardo, the desk man, said something to him. In that instant, when he was distracted by whatever Eduardo was saying, she got a good look at him and realized, with a jolt, that she knew him from somewhere. Her eyes were back on the page but his image stayed with her: a lean short tensed-up guy with his hands in his pockets, blond hair piled up high on the crown of his head and a smooth detached expression, beautiful and dangerous at the same time, and where did she know him from?
It took her a while. She lost him when he drifted across the room in the direction of the lounge and she tried to refocus on her book but she couldn’t. It was driving her crazy: where had she met him? Was it at school? Or here? Had she served him at the coffee shop, was that it? Time passed. She was bored. And then she snatched a look again and there he was, with another guy, moving tentatively across the lobby as if it were ankle-deep in mud—drunk, both of them, or at least under the influence—and it came to her: he was the guy who’d adopted the kittens, the one with the little kid, the nephew. It must have been six weeks ago now. Missy had had her second—and last—litter, because it was irresponsible to bring more cats into the world when they were putting them down by the thousands in the shelters every day and she’d decided to have her spayed once the kittens were weaned, all nine of them, and he’d showed up in answer to her ad. And what was his name? Roy or something. Or no: Royce. She remembered because of the boy, how unusual it was to see that kind of relationship, uncle and nephew, and how close they seemed, and because Royce had been so obviously attracted to her—couldn’t keep his eyes off her, actually.
She’d just washed her hair and was combing out the snarls when the bell rang and there they were on the concrete landing of her apartment, smiling up at her. “Hi,” he said, “are you the one with the kittens?”
She looked from him to the boy and back again. She’d given one of the kittens away to a guy who worked in the hotel kitchen and another to one of her girlfriends, but there were seven left and nobody else had called. “Yeah,” she said, pushing the door open wide. “Come on in.”
The boy had made a real fuss over the kittens, telling her how cute they all were and how he couldn’t make up his mind. She was just about to ask him if she couldn’t get him something to drink, a glass of lemonade, a Coke, when he’d looked up at his uncle and said, “Could we take two?”
They were in a hurry—he apologized for that—and it was just a chance encounter, but it had stayed with her. (As had three of the kittens, which she hadn’t been able to find homes for.) Royce told her he was in real estate and they’d lingered a moment at the door while the boy cradled his kittens and she told him she was looking to buy a duplex, with her parents’ help, so the rent on the one apartment could cover her mortgage—like living for free—but she hadn’t pushed it and he hadn’t either.
Now, as she watched him square up his shoulders at the door, she wondered if he’d recognized her. For an instant her heart stood still—he was going, gone—and then, on an impulse, she broke her pose, set down the book and flicked off the light. In the next moment she was out of the cubicle, a page torn from her book in one hand and her pen in the other, rushing across the cold stone floor of the lobby in her bare feet. She scribbled out a note on the back of the page—How are the kittens? Call me. Chelsea—and handed it to Jason, the doorman.
“That guy,” she said, pointing down the street. “The one on his cell? Could you run and give this to him for me?” In her rush, she almost forgot to include her number, but at the last second she remembered, and by the time Jason put his fingers to his lips and whistled down the length of the block, she was hurrying back across the lobby to the sanctuary of her cubicle.
—
It took three cups of coffee to clear his head in the morning, but he was up early all the same and took time to make an omelet for Joey—“No onions, no tomatoes,” Joey told him, “just cheese”—before they went out to see to the dogs. The Lab was in her cage outside the door to the barn, still whining, and he didn’t even glance at her. He’d have Joey feed her some of the cheap kibble later, but first he had to work Zoltan and Zeus on the treadmills and make sure Zazzie, who’d thrown six pups out of Zeus’ sire, the original Zeus, got the feed and attention she needed while she was still nursing. Zeus the first had been a grand champion, ROM, Register of Merit, with five wins, and the money he’d brought in in bets alone had been enough to establish Z-Dogz Kennels—and a dozen or more of his pups were out there on the circuit, winning big in their own right.
Royce had never had a better pit dog, and it just about killed him when Zeus couldn’t scratch after going at it with Marvin Harlock’s Champion Kato for two and a quarter hours and had to be put down because of his injuries. Still, he’d been bred to some sixteen bitches and the stud fees alone had made up a pretty substantial part of Royce’s income—especially with the realty market dead in the water the last two years—and Zeus the second, not to mention his brother Zoltan, had won their first matches, and that boded well for stud fees down the road.
The dogs set up their usual racket when he and Joey came in—happy to see them, always happy—and Joey ran ahead to let them out of their cages. Aside from the new litter and Zoltan, Zeus and Zazzie, he and Steve had only three other dogs at the time, two bitches out of Zeus the first, for breeding purposes with the next champion that caught their eye, and a male—Zeno—that had lost the better part of his muzzle in his first match and would probably have to be let go, though he’d really showed heart. For now, though, they were one big happy family, and they all surged round Royce’s legs, even the puppies, their tongues going and their high excited yips rising up into the rafters where the pigeons settled and fluttered and settled again. “Feed them all except Zeus and Zoltan,” he shouted to Joey over the noise, “because we’re going to work them on the mills first, okay?”
And Joey, dressed in yesterday’s blue jeans with smears of something on both knees and a T-shirt that could have been cleaner, swung round from where he was bending to the latch on Zeno’s cage, his eyes shining. “And then can we bait them?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Then we’ll bait them.”
The first time he’d let Joey watch while they set the dogs on the bait animals, he’d been careful to explain the whole thing to him so he wouldn’t take it the wrong way. Most trainers—and he was one of them—felt that a fighting dog had to be blooded regularly to keep him keyed up between matches and if some of the excess and unwanted animals of the world happened to be lost in the process, well that was life. They were just going to be sent to the pound anyway, where some stoner working for minimum wage would stick a needle in them or shove them in a box and gas them, and this way was a lot more natural, wasn’t it? He no longer remembered whether it was rabbits or cats or a stray that first time, but Joey’s face had drained and he’d had to take him outside and tell him he couldn’t afford to be squeamish, couldn’t be a baby, if he wanted to be a dog man, and Joey—he was all of nine at the time—had just nodded his head, his mouth drawn tight, but there were no tears, and that was a good sign.