"I'm Tanya." She slips a tanned arm around Rob, and Cory notes her chiseled biceps. "I'm stealing him away for a while, okay?"
Tanya praises the tequila jello shots she's been downing and she's pretty buzzed as she leads Rob away to 'catch up on things'.
Cory wonders how this would have played out if Dawn were here tonight. Looking at Rob now, laughing as Tanya hand-feeds him an iridescent-yellow jello shot, it seems that catching up might involve more than just conversation.
Cory eventually samples the jello shots for himself and starts flirting with a tall, blonde volleyball player named Gretchen who describes kite surfing at Pescadero Beach and wind surfing in Bonaire. It all sounds fun, and so is she. Except, he has his ex-girlfriend sleeping on his couch at the moment, and his dog is in the middle of an arduous and uncharted training program and probably needs to sleep with him on his bed right now to reinforce the bonding between them.
He exchanges contact information with Gretchen before he leaves the party, still in full swing at two in the morning. Maybe he'll call her sometime. In some alternate universe.
Becca is there, and awake, when he returns to his house. She's curled up on the couch with her laptop, updating her Facebook page. She's wearing black pajama bottoms and a thin black tee, her hair loose.
She looks up at him. "Hi. I was a little worried about you."
"I was at a party."
Snoots wanders into the living room and stretches. Cory lets him out briefly in the yard. Should he ask her about her day, the job-hunting, or will it seem too pushy?
He sits down in a chair across from her and leans his head back. He is suddenly really tired.
"How did your experiments go?" she asks him, putting down her laptop, focusing on him.
"Fine." He doesn't want to start discussing this. "Things go okay for you?"
"Muffy is going to help me move my stuff out of Derek's house," she informs him. "She can keep some of it for a while." She holds up a mug. "I hope you don't mind, I made myself some herbal tea."
"Help yourself to anything."
He reminds himself it's been over a week since he wrote a blog entry. The hours have been eaten up with retraining Snoots for the tasting. He's got to put something new on the blog before then, though. He closes his eyes, trying to put these stressful thoughts out of mind.
Becca gets up from the couch and comes over to him. She stands behind the chair and begins to gently rub his temples with her fingers.
They feel delicate and cool. He should make her stop. Instead, he leans his head back farther and she moves her hands down to caress his chin with its new beard, then his chest. He grasps her wrists in his hands and she bends her face over his, her long hair falling against him.
As they kiss, she moves around from the back of the chair and he pulls her into his lap, holding her against him, hungrily consuming the sweet poison she's offering.
Much later, lying in his bed and holding Becca’s sleeping form, Cory feels the exquisite jut of her hip bone, the silky tumble of her long hair, the smooth skin that he'd only experienced in restless, sorrowful dreams since the day she broke up with him. Until tonight.
But lying here now, their naked limbs entangled, he realizes that he does not feel happy.
Cory awakens to a cool snout poking his bare arm. It's morning, sunlight is coming through the slats of the wooden blinds.
Snoots presses his head on the bedcovers, signaling his desire to jump up.
"Not now, boy," he whispers.
The dog persists, eyeing Cory.
Cory shakes his head.
Snoots backs off and wanders out of the bedroom, tail down, defeated.
Cory feels a pang of guilt. The dog is moping, feeling he's being punished when he's done nothing. This is a terrible time to be disrupting their bond, and Snoots has shared his bed for months now, until last night.
Cory looks over at Becca, still asleep. He doesn't know why she's here, what she wants. They really need to talk about what this means.
She opens her eyes and sees him looking at her. She smiles and touches his arm with her hand. "Hi."
"Hi."
He sits up, sighing as he rubs his temples. "Becca, I'm not sure this was a good idea. Snoots is upset." Realizing how ridiculous that sounds, he adds, "He's used to sleeping on the bed now. Dogs like routines, especially shepherds. He thinks he's being punished and he hasn't done anything wrong."
She rolls over on her side, resting on one elbow. There is worry on her face. "I don't want to come between you and your dog, Cory. I guess I thought we were more important."
"I don't know what we are right now."
"I have feelings for you. It's why I'm here. Don't you see that?" There is hurt defiance in her eyes.
He sighs. "I'm not sure what I see. But, I've got a lot on my mind these days."
I told you I don't want to interfere."
"I'm not going to be around much, I'll be coming in late."
"Are you seeing someone?" There is shocked outrage in her voice.
"What if I am?" he retorts sharply.
Her question is preposterous under the circumstances.
She covers her face and starts to cry.
He heaves himself backward against his pillow in frustration. "Becca, Since the day you returned my key you've maintained complete radio silence with me. Except for one random encounter at Medicis. I mean, what are we doing in bed right now?"
"I wanted to call and explain things."
"Explain what? It's pretty simple isn't it? You left me for him."
"Derek is a shit!"
Hearing that name, he feels a rush of jealousy. He looks at her, her head is still bowed. He touches her hair with his hand. "Look, if it matters, I'm not seeing anyone right now. But I've got some research I'm in the middle of and I need to stay focused. And I just can't talk about it. That's all."
She looks up at him and puts her arms around him, then presses her head against his neck. "I won't disturb your work. And I won't ask you anything about your...experiments. You're so brilliant, Cory. I've missed the things you used to talk to me about, your ideas."
This remark strikes a note in his heart. He had come to believe she was bored by his geeky ways, his insatiable curiosity about the world. Was he wrong?
He looks at her, pushing her hair away from her face, letting his hand slide down through the long, soft tresses.
"Do you still love me at all?" she whispers tentatively, hopefully.
He answers her with a deep kiss, laying her back against the pillows.
Cory volunteers to drive Becca over to Derek's, ready for whatever might unfold, but she assures him that Muffy can help her and that Derek is away, so there won't be any awkwardness.
Cory takes Snoots up to Rob's for another training session.
Rob looks a little bleary-eyed as he wires a black sneaker. He laughs off Cory's inquiries about the party. "Tanya's an old friend from college. She was pretty wild then. Hasn't changed much."
As Cory begins working with Snoots, he realizes his reconnection with Becca has caused a setback for the dog. Today, Snoots has reverted to just touching, not pressing, and he doesn't eat his breakfast. Cory confides in Rob about the change in Snoots' bed status.
"Could he sleep at the end of the bed?"
Cory shakes his head. "He wants his spot, it's where she is now. It feels like a major demotion to him in the pack. Everything I shouldn't be doing just now."
"Can you explain to her why Snoots has, certain needs, right now?"
"If I explain about Snoots, I reveal everything."
Rob sets down the sneaker, now fully wired. "He could sleep here on my bed. Just until the tasting."
Cory ponders this idea amid feelings of jealousy. "That might work. It's me he needs to be bonding with, but maybe it would be better to have him here, being number two, and not always being number three with me."
"So Becca's really back in the picture?"
Cory sighs,
looking his friend in the eyes. "I don't know, Rob. I feel like I'm in the spin cycle in a centrifuge. I've just got to get through the next two weeks."
Chapter Twenty-Six
That night Cory and Rob lie on Rob's bed and pet Snoots, who is stretched out between them. They chat casually until the dog's eyes close, then Cory gets up quietly while Rob continues petting Snoots.
The dog immediately shoots his head up to see what Cory is up to. Observing his master's nonchalant behavior, Snoots lowers his head again, enjoying the bed and Rob's petting.
Cory, already missing his dog, descends the outside stairway over the garage, hoping this strategy will work.
The moping stops and, with persistence, Cory gets Snoots' nose-pressing behavior back on track. They scale up to ten wired samples on each sneaker and Snoots has no trouble working with more samples. Most importantly, the frequency with which he activates circuits for his matches continues to trend higher. Cory takes long walks with the dog, and praises him, playing catch-and-hold in the park.
Becca doesn't spend much time at his house and she has only brought two small bags of clothing with her. She's somewhat vague about her activities with job hunting and iPhlox, but Cory is too tired and too distracted to dwell on these unresolved issues. She seems happy to see him when he returns late in the evening and he interprets that as an encouraging sign. They spend most of their time together in bed.
Thursday night Cory and Rob go over to Dawn's house for yet another new training venue for Snoots. Cory's confidence with the sneakers is growing; the dog is regularly and accurately indicating his wine matches via pressing behavior now. He's also adapted to receiving delayed rewards for his matches, because Cory won't be able to feed him treats during the blind tasting at Trella.
Cory is less certain that Snoots will behave convincingly as a seeing-eye dog.
As he works through a set of red wines in Dawn's kitchen, his cellphone rings. He asks Rob to answer it, because he doesn't want to interrupt the training session.
Rob fetches the phone off the kitchen table. "Cory's answering service."
"Rob, is that you?" Dawn laughs on the other end of the line.
"Yeah. We're over at your place right now. You coming home tonight?"
"I am. I actually need something though, if you wouldn't mind getting it?"
"No problem."
"I need a phone number, it's hand-written on the cover of a journal. I think it's in my bedroom. There's a stack of proceedings on the little table in there, if you could look through them. I think the number is on one of those."
Rob walks from the kitchen into Dawn's bedroom, cellphone in hand. The hardwood bed has an elaborate headboard and expensive white linens covering it and there is a matching vanity with several bottles of perfume, a contact lens case and a photograph of Dawn and an older man. She's smiling in the picture and the man's arm is around her.
Rob's heart sinks -- is this the doctor-boyfriend she mentioned at Cory's birthday party? Jealously, he inspects the photograph more closely and suddenly recognizes the family resemblance, the same dark hair and keenly intelligent blue eyes. That man must be her father!
Rob is surprised at his own reaction to this realization: relief and a strange, projected camaraderie infused with competitiveness toward the man in the photo.
He sees the stack of technical papers on the vanity. There's a hairbrush resting on top of them and there is a light-gray tee shirt tossed across the chair in front of the vanity.
He sets the hairbrush aside and picks up the stack of papers, holding the phone against his ear. "I found the papers and I'm going through them. Okay, here's a phone number written on the International Proceedings of Molecular and Cellular Biology."
"That's it."
He reads the number to her.
"Thanks, Rob."
"Anytime. Is it for a secret biological weapons facility?"
She laughs. "It's a number my colleague Pete gave me where he's staying at a conference. He's not answering his cell and I need to ask him something. I'll be home in half an hour, if you guys are still there."
"Core's deep into training right now. We'll probably still be around."
With the call ended, Rob lingers a moment in the room, experiencing the guilt of an intruder, even though she asked him to come here. He returns to the kitchen and orders a large pizza.
When Dawn arrives, they are taking a break from the training and Snoots bounds up to her.
She puts her face close to his for a dog kiss. She's wearing clean room garb and she looks tired. "God, what a day! Is there anything to drink?"
"I brought beer," Rob tells her.
She smiles, a little dazed. "And hot pizza. How's the finger ballet going?"
"How am I doing with the glasses, Rob?"
"Maybe get a little more into sniffing the wine, focus on the glass, while your other hand is down with Snoots. But it's pretty solid."
Rob gets a beer from the refrigerator, opens it and hands it to Dawn.
This earns him an angelic smile. He has seen other smiles that she bestows in various circumstances; they are often laced with traces of sarcasm or cynicism. The angelic smile is new and she is radiantly beautiful in its light.
It fades all too soon, and she replaces it with a more cynical expression directed at Cory. "How's everything going?"
"Okay." He sighs. "I'm thinking I should let Becca in on this. The blog, what we're up to."
"What can she possibly contribute at this point?" Dawn takes a long drink from her beer.
"What do I tell her next week when we head up to Napa?"
"Why tell her anything?"
"Because she's sort of living with me now."
Dawn puts her beer down, and looks straight at him. "Living with you? She shows up, what, six days ago? Cory, has it never occurred to you that she's just using you?"
Cory looks down, shaking his head. "Okay, just forget it."
"No! You brought it up. She blows you off with no warning, poof! Until her philandering boyfriend replaces her with his latest bimbo de jour. Now she needs an extreme makeover for her self-esteem and comes around to jerk your chain again."
Cory presses his forehead into his hands. "Dawn, will you just stop it? Please? You don't know how it's been. How she's been."
She shakes her head vehemently. "I'm sorry, but she's a complete narcissist. She's really, really bad news. Wake up, Cory!"
Cory slams the kitchen table with the side of his fist.
"God!" Dawn emits the word as a semi-scream and storms out of her kitchen, throwing herself on the couch.
Snoots curls up in the corner with his tail tucked under his back legs, miserably watching his pack embroiled in conflict.
Cory leans back forcefully in his chair, looking up at the ceiling. "Maybe we should forget the tasting, the blog, this whole fucking thing."
"Fine with me," Dawn rejoins in a lower, still angry, tone.
Rob squats down by Snoots and strokes him, trying to reassure him. "What would you do, boy?" he asks the dog, hoping this will lighten up the current mood in Dawn's house.
The dog looks at him with large, concerned eyes.
Rob continues. "Look how hard this guy's been working, he's done everything you asked of him, Core. Pretty amazing."
"Yeah, it really is," Cory replies softly.
Rob ventures farther. "Maybe tell Becca after the tasting. We need to focus right now. If she's curious about next Saturday, I can come up with a good story."
He sounds so reasonable. Dawn is suddenly exhausted and she doesn't want to fight with Cory, of all people. She gets up from the couch and walks back to the kitchen.
Standing behind Cory's chair, she bends forward and wraps her arms around him in a hug, pressing her cheek against his. "Peace?"
He gives a long, deep sigh and puts an arm up around her head. "I know you're just looking out for me.”
"You've got that right."
Rob feels a shot of happiness
tinged with envy because he's not the one in the chair.
They finish the pizza and Cory conducts one more training session.
Dawn lies back down on her couch with the intention of observing Cory's 'finger ballet' from a distance. Within two minutes she's sound asleep.
After completing the session, which Rob judges a success, he and Cory decide to head home with Snoots, who is continuing to spend his nights with Rob.
Before they go, Rob fetches a white crocheted afghan he noticed on Dawn's bed and drapes it protectively over her on the couch. Asleep, the light bone structure of her body suggests delicacy, vulnerability. Awake, it is animated by a forceful intelligence that is commanding, sometimes intimidating.
He thinks she is the most incredible and daunting woman he's ever known.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Los Altos. Saturday morning, two days after their brief fight, Cory and Dawn are walking Snoots in a park. Cory, wearing his wired sunglasses for practice, has Snoots in a seeing-eye harness. Dawn is along for moral support on this first public outing of Cory as a blind man. They chose this park, away from his regular dog-walking routes, to avoid encounters with familiar dog walkers and neighbors.
Snoots pulls abruptly on his harness to sniff under a tree and Cory stumbles, barely catching himself. "Bad dog! Sit!"
Snoots crouches tentatively, not quite resting his behind on the ground. He gives Cory a mildly defiant look.
Cory shakes his head unhappily. "He hates wearing this thing. It's a form of submission. I can't get him to stop pulling me and approaching people. He's not convincing."
"It makes him more nervous when you get excited." Dawn smiles at him. "Remember, your story is he's new. You gave up your cane and got a dog for the companionship. And it's more sporty. You're a sporty kind of blind guy."
He grimaces. "I'm not sporty. I'm not blind. I feel like a con man. A grifter."
"You can do this! You've done the hardest part. You've got Snoots working those sneakers. My god. And the improvised wiring? You're a wizard."
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