by Ed Kurtz
“What’s wrong with you?” he grumbled.
Leon found a box of adhesive bandages in the medicine cabinet alongside his father’s innumerable medications and ointments, both needed and unneeded, in-date and expired. He slid one out and fumbled at the impossible packaging with his one uninjured hand, inwardly cursing the manufacturers for not figuring out how frequently people had to do this sort of thing. When he finally managed to unwrap the bandage and pull the backing from the sticky side, he freed his finger from the shirt and wrapped it so tightly that it throbbed.
Upon returning to the living room, Leon was unnerved by the patent anger on his father’s reddening face.
“I cut myself,” he said sheepishly.
“Did you have to put on a show about it? I’m watching the tube in here and you’re carrying on like a woman, for Christ’s sake. And don’t even think about saying you’re sorry again or by God I’ll get out of this chair and whup you raw.”
Leon did not say anything. He turned around and went to bed.
* * *
On the back side of his new terrarium, in the top right corner, Pablo struggled to keep moving up despite the immovability of the clasped lid. Over and over again his heart pumped blood into his appendages, expanding them so he could move ever on, but he got no further for the effort. Instead the Brazilian Wandering Spider merely wore itself out until at last it dropped from its corner to the hard-packed soil below. When it hit the dirt, the spider was dazed, and for a long while it just lay there on its back, its legs curled up as though it was dead. On either side of its enclosure, tarantulas—a Chilean Rose on the left and a Mexican Fire-Leg on the right—crouched inside small, hollow logs, perfectly oblivious to the extraordinary process taking place just inches away.
Pablo’s legs extended, unfurling from the faux death trance, and he dug at the soil with his claws until he was upright again. He was disoriented and muddy, his cluster of eyes failing to register proper images and his sense of balance wholly disrupted. Vaguely threatened, he rose up on his back legs and assumed a defensive stance, rocking side to side with his forelegs and fangs exposed to the unseen, unknown enemy. He lunged and pounced, struck out with his pedipalps and crept warily from one end of the terrarium to the other. No predator was to be found. The spider could not discern the fact that the enemy was within him.
Thus when the neurons inside Pablo’s head stopped firing and the rigid shell that encased them fractured from the mounting pressure beneath, he was none the wiser. Pablo was shutting down, dying, even as the dark green bud peeked through the crack in his head and bloomed outward.
5
The morning Leon spent mostly in a daze, staring blankly at his computer screen and occasionally bouncing his knees with unconscious anxiety. Every so often somebody came around his cubicle to drop off some packet of documents or another, or to painfully regale him with detailed recaps of whatever garbage they’d watched on television the night before. Lisa from accounts payable was typically the worst offender in this regard, and this morning was no exception—it took her nearly half an hour to describe every lame joke from her favorite sitcom to Leon, who politely smiled and nodded and chuckled when he felt he was prompted to do so. That she was so awkward and flirty did not particularly bother him, nor was Leon irked at the rampant rumors of Lisa’s alleged sexual permissiveness. It was none of his business if the woman was a wanton slut; he just didn’t want to listen to her ramble on.
He was thus greatly relieved when she finally left, though he knew in another day or two she’d be back with another impromptu abridgement of another awful program. Like most things in Leon’s life, it ebbed and flowed, an unending cycle. He took it in stride, or at least tried to. He found it helped to fantasize about screaming at the top of his lungs for her to shut up, go away and never bother him again. That was Leon’s only catharsis.
At eleven he got a call from Cheryl, who requested Leon take an early lunch so that she could forward her line to him from noon until the end of the day. Dentist appointment, she said. Leon agreed, though the choice she presented was only illusion. It was a demand.
He grabbed the crumpled brown bag on the desk and made his way through the labyrinth of cubicles to the elevator, passing Ami’s cube along the way. She was hunched over an open file folder, studiously reviewing a spreadsheet with highlighter in hand. Leon paused for a moment, considered saying hello to her, but ultimately decided not to. She was busy. He did not want to disturb her. He continued to the elevator and rode down to the first floor. At the security desk in the lobby, Trey was flipping through a car magazine with a girl in a bikini on the front. When he spotted Leon, he made a loud and wet farting noise with his mouth. Leon sighed and went outside.
His usual lunch spot was behind the building, beyond the far end of the employee parking lot, where the city had installed a pair of metal benches facing the lake. Leon liked to sit there and eat while letting his brain go blank; to just stare at the rippling water and the birds that tended to congregate on the tiny, weedy island in the center of it. The interstate roared on the other side of the lake, behind the sparse tree line, but he had long since learned to blot it out of his mind. Most days, he could not even hear it. It was only Leon and the lake and whatever he happened to pack for lunch that day. Today it was Braunschweiger liverwurst and Swiss on white bread. He devoured it with relish.
When he finished the sandwich, he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and slumped on the bench with his gaze fixed on the opposite shore of the lake. There was an overturned rowboat on the rocks with a grackle perched atop of it. Smaller birds—sparrows, Leon thought—flitted and played in the higher branches and treetops. And stumbling through the tree trunks between the rocky shore and the busy road was a ragged yellow dog.
Leon had seen strays wander the periphery of the lake before, sometimes in frolicking pairs. There was nothing unusual in that alone. But this particular dog was clearly aggrieved, limping and staggering as though injured. Worse yet, Leon was almost certain that the animal’s spotty, matted fur was stained dark with blood in several places. He stood up from the bench and walked over to the rusty iron fence that separated the company’s property from the lake, and he leaned over it to get a better look at the dog. It slalomed several trees like a stumbling drunk before approaching the rowboat, sniffing at it, and then collapsing in a heap on the rocks. The grackle spread its great black wings and flew away.
Leon watched the dog for several minutes. It did not move. He wondered if it had died.
“Whatcha looking at?”
The voice gave Leon a start, and he spun around, snagging his shirt on the fence. He heard the fabric tear and softly uttered, “Shit.”
“Shit? Heavens, Leon—such language.”
He heard the femininely raspy Nigerian lilt before he looked up to see Ami smiling at him from the benches. He nearly dropped to his knees but he caught himself in time. His shirt was not so fortunate; the tear ran at least three inches up his right side.
“Hello, Ami.”
Leon was not a tall man—five-foot-five in his dress shoes—and Ami towered over him with her heels adding a few inches to her five-foot-eleven. Her hair was short and bobbed, her lean, muscular frame well outlined by the taut blouse and skirt that seemed to hug her everywhere. Leon seized the fence for support and risked a crooked smile. He knew his smile made him look like he was stroking. Hers was radiant.
“What’s so interesting down there?” Ami asked.
“Nothing,” Leon muttered. “A dog.”
“Oh, yeah?” She placed her hands on her hips and walked over to the fence, right beside Leon. “Where?”
“There. On the rocks. I think maybe it’s hurt or something.”
Ami narrowed her enormous brown eyes to slits and scanned the shore. When she spotted the dog, she gave a quiet gasp.
“Oh, jeez,” she said. “I think you’re right.”
She moved around Leon, brushing against his arm, and follow
ed the fence to its end, where a path opened up that wrapped around the lake.
“Come on,” she called back to him. “Let’s go have a look.”
* * *
Leon was right about the blood—the dog’s fur was practically painted with it. In several spots across the length of the dog’s emaciated body there was no fur at all, as though it fell out in clumps. Its skin was pink and scaly, its snout and ears covered in thick, dark scabs. When Leon and Ami approached, the dog started to shake with fear, but it was too exhausted, too afraid to try for escape. It neither growled nor snarled. Instead it only kept its milky eyes trained on the strangers and watched them warily.
Ami fell into a squat beside the trembling animal, her face a mask of sympathy. She shook her head and reached out to touch the dog’s head. At first the dog jerked away, but Ami persisted, reaching further and gently caressing the distressed creature’s filthy, bloody fur.
“I’m not so sure I’d touch it if I were you,” Leon said.
“She won’t hurt me,” Ami assured him. “I’m pretty good with dogs.”
Good with dogs, Leon noted. That raised his total knowledge of her to beautiful, friendly, and good with dogs.
“Maybe it’s sick, though,” he offered. “Or rabid.”
“No,” she countered. “Just abused. She’s got a collar, and these aren’t the sort of injuries a dog gets from fighting other animals. Somebody’s been beating the hell out of this poor girl.”
“God,” Leon responded lamely.
“I know. Assholes, right? World’s full of them.”
“I guess so,” Leon said.
“That’s a nice girl,” Ami cooed to the dog. “That’s a very good girl.”
The dog raised its head slightly from its forepaws and whimpered. Leon looked at the paws and gaped. On one of them, a jagged bit of bone was jutting out of a blood-encrusted wound at the joint. Leon suddenly felt faint and a bit nauseous.
“A-Ami,” he stammered, pointing at the dog’s shattered foot. “Th-the paw…”
“Oh, no,” she said sadly. “This is awful.”
She rested a hand between the dog’s shoulder blades and directed her gaze to Leon.
“Look, we’ve got to get this dog to a vet.”
“Okay…,” he said without giving it a thought.
“Will you help me carry her?”
“Sure,” he said. “I’ll help.”
“That’s really nice of you, Leon.”
Leon’s face flushed hot, his cheeks blossoming red.
“It’s no problem,” he managed to say.
Leon crouched behind the dog and took hold of her backend while Ami lifted her from the front. They fumbled and danced until they had a decent hold of her, and then began their walk back around the lake to the parking lot.
“Your car or mine?” Ami asked as they neared the perimeter of the lot.
“I ride the bus,” Leon said apologetically.
“Mine it is,” she said.
* * *
Little was said between them in the waiting room at the veterinary clinic. Everybody there seemed to know Ami on a first-name basis, which vaguely impressed Leon, though he wasn’t sure why. Clearly she was an animal lover, maybe bordering on animal freak. He wondered if she lived alone with a dozen or more cats in a cramped duplex that smelled strongly of ammonia and cat shit. A Crazy Cat Lady. That, he decided, would be a bit weird. He also decided he could overlook it.
While they waited, Ami flipped through a mangled and outdated issue of National Geographic with a cougar on the cover. Leon honed in on the soft adult contemporary music quietly seeping out of the speakers in the ceiling tiles. Presently they were playing Seals and Crofts, which he realized was beginning to give him a headache. He pressed his index fingers against his temples, closed his eyes and made small circular motions. It did not help.
“What’d you do to your finger?”
Leon kept his eyes shut but ceased rubbing his temples.
“I cut myself last night.”
“Not seriously, I hope.”
“No, I don’t think so. Broken glass. Doesn’t even hurt now.”
Ami nodded and forced an awkward smile. Seals crooned on about how fine the summer breeze made him feel. Leon’s headache persisted.
“Listen,” Ami said after a minute, “I really don’t think I can take her home with me. The dog, I mean.”
Leon opened his eyes and looked at her, unsure of where this was going.
“It’s just that I’ve got three dogs as it is, and there’s no telling if they’d get along, or if I’d have a dogfight on my hands, or what.”
Three dogs, Leon thought. Not a crazy cat lady after all. Was there such a thing as a Crazy Dog Lady? Probably, he figured, but not with only three. She’d need at least five or six to reach that plane of lunacy. Though even that would be more or less acceptable to him, since he fostered a peculiar brand of lunacy himself. He was, after all, a Crazy Bug Guy.
“That makes sense,” he said.
“But I don’t want to just take her back to the lake, either. She’s hurt pretty bad, you know, and whoever did that to her is bound to do it again if he finds her.”
Leon shook his head and muttered, “Awful.”
“Yeah,” Ami agreed. “So what’s your situation? Can you take her?”
“Take her?” he asked, stunned. “You mean home? With me?”
“Yes. That poor pooch needs a home, Leon. She needs somebody to look after her.”
“Sure, but what about the pound? Isn’t that what they’re for?”
Ami knitted her brow and gave him a dark, disappointed look.
“The pound? Nobody’s going to adopt a middle aged dog with bald spots and a broken foot. They’ll euthanize her!”
“They’ll youth…?” he mumbled, puzzled.
“Euthanize.”
“I don’t…” Leon trailed off, embarrassed.
“It means they’ll put her down. Kill her. They’d kill her, Leon.”
“Oh,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said. “Oh.”
Thereafter, Ami raised the magazine back to eye level and continued reading. Leon screwed his face up to one side, confused and agonizing over whether or not she was upset with him. He was thrilled to be spending actual outside-of-work time with her, an exciting if mildly terrifying experience, but now he faced a rather serious quandary. There was little doubt in his mind that Ami would be impressed if he consented to taking the dog in, and he considered the lingering possibility of a friendship growing out of such an act of charity. From the foundation of friendship, who was to say what might develop?
But then there was his father. He was bound to hate the mongrel. He would hate Ami, too, should Leon manage any kind of connection with her. Unkind words would be said. Things would probably be broken. The old man would do everything within his limited power to make Leon’s life as miserable as possible. That was his modus operandi, as it always had been. He was wretched and angry and brimming with hate, and he was determined to crush anyone who did anything to exacerbate his abject antipathy toward the world. And nothing would do that better than a mangy dog and a black girlfriend.
Leon expelled a noisy breath and folded his arms over his chest.
“All right,” he said firmly.
Ami lowered the magazine and arched an eyebrow.
“All right?”
“I’ll do it. I’ll take the dog.”
“You will?”
“Sure I will. Always wanted a dog.”
Ami’s face brightened and she smiled wide.
“That’s great, Leon. I mean, that’s really great.”
Leon blushed. He could feel his heartbeat quicken behind his ribs.
“She’ll be wonderful,” Ami said. “You’ll see. You two will be best friends in no time.”
“Of course we will,” he hesitantly agreed.
At that moment a folksy guitar twanged out of the speaker, leading into Pure Prairie Lea
gue’s “Amie.”
Still grinning, she said, “I hate this fucking song.”
6
The dog remained at the clinic until five o’clock, at which point Ami drove Leon back to collect her and take them both home. When she pulled up in front of the house, Leon hurried to goad the dog out of the backseat and say goodbye to Ami—the last thing he needed was for his father to see her. The dog was going to cause enough trouble as it was.
“Need help getting her inside?” Ami asked, leaning over the passenger seat.
“No, I think I’ve got her.”
With her broken foot bandaged and splinted, the dog lumbered and limped up to the sidewalk, careful to keep her injured extremity from touching the ground. Every so often she stared and sniffed at the bandage as if she’d just then noticed it was there. Every time she did this, she would raise her sad, wet eyes to Leon as if to ask, “Why?”
And Leon would think, Because there are more bad people than good ones, pup.
“Well, I’ll tell you what,” Ami said. “One of these days, after she’s feeling better, we ought to meet up at the dog park. See what my boys think of her, you know?”
“Yeah?”
“Sure. Keep me abreast of her condition. As soon as she’s walking on that foot again, we’ll make it happen, okay?”
Leon’s heart swelled. He grinned stupidly and nodded rapidly. The dog whined low beside him.
“Okie doke, Mister Weissmann,” Ami said with a limp salute. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” he mimicked.
She straightened up in the driver’s seat and rolled on down the street. Leon watched her car shrink as it sped away, and ultimately vanish behind the dip in the road. The sun hid behind the hills to the west and the sky was beginning to go from burnt orange to gray. It was time to go inside.
Leon shivered.
* * *
“The hell is that?”