by Geonn Cannon
“I’ll call him in the morning.” She patted the bottom of Ari’s foot. “Turn around.”
Ari tickled Dale’s foot. “You sure? It would be a shame to waste this arrangement.”
Dale grinned. “Sorry, puppy. Another night.”
Ari twisted around and got under the blankets. Dale turned off the lamp and let Ari pull her close. She was wearing a tank top, and Ari traced circles on the bare skin around one strap.
“How did you meet Joyce?”
“I thought you weren’t jealous,” Dale murmured.
“I’m not. I was just thinking about her interests. World traveling and spelunking in Bolivia. It kind of made me curious if that’s part of the appeal.”
Dale repositioned her head on Ari’s shoulder. “Sure. It means she was very athletic and liked adventure. But I’m too much of a homebody to travel all over the world. Not to mention the fact she can barely afford those trips. She had a huge amount of debt because of plane tickets, hotels, buying gear. It was the main thing that made me break up with her.”
Ari stroked her back. “So with me… you get adventure, but you also get to sleep in your own bed every night.”
“Our bed.”
“Right.” She kissed Dale’s hair. “Our bed. I’m sorry I tried to protect you. It won’t happen again. And I promise, I’m going to keep Bitches up and running for as long as you want to work there.”
Dale lifted her head and kissed Ari’s chin, then her lips. “Can’t beat that job security.”
Ari smiled and guided Dale’s head back down to her chest. She wasn’t going to shutter Bitches just to keep Dale safe, but she was going to do everything in her power to make sure Dale wasn’t touched by danger any more than necessary.
#
Sunday night, officially the last night of the vandalism case, Ari had Dale drive her to a park a few blocks east of the marina. Ari wasn’t sure it was a good idea for her to drive with her injured ankle, but Dale insisted she could handle a quick and easy drive. It was just before dusk and still light enough out that they took a second to make sure the park was empty before Ari climbed into the backseat. The sky was scarlet, gold, and banded with purple reflected in the lake’s water. Even with the hum of traffic on the interstate, it was easy to get lost in the beauty of nature.
Dale kept an eye out while Ari stripped in the backseat. “I used to dream about this, you know.” She met Ari’s eye in the rearview mirror. “Hot chick stripping down in the backseat. The difference is that usually I was stripping down, too.”
“We have some time before it gets dark. Want to neck a little?”
Dale chuckled. “This is work time, puppy. Focus.”
“Right. I’m going to spend the whole night out here, just in case they decide to hit before dawn. If they show up before then, I’ll get to the stash we hid and change back if it’s safe. If it’s not, I’ll just observe so I can confront them later on.”
Dale nodded. She knew all of this, but Ari knew that having the details laid out would help keep her calm. She was going to be safe at home while Ari was out in the elements, alone and without backup.
She settled against the back seat and tucked her arms in close to her chest. The wolf was there, as always, hiding at the back of her senses and waiting for her to give the go-ahead to take over. When she felt her body beginning to change she opened her eyes and lay down. It was easier to transform while lying down; it took the weight off her extremities and gave them a chance to reposition more naturally. She stretched her neck out as her shoulders collapsed and her ribs pushed out.
When it was over she flipped onto her forepaws and shook out her fur. Dale twisted in her seat and cupped Ari’s face, kissing the now sloped plane of her forehead.
“All good?”
Ari licked her face and Dale laughed. She opened the back door to let Ari out. “Be safe, puppy. Only change back if you’re absolutely certain it’s safe. Otherwise I’ll be back here at the crack of dawn to pick you up.”
Ari huffed her acknowledgement and headed through the park. Spending the night as the wolf would have the added bonus of settling her mind, giving her a chance to work through the details of the Totems case from a new angle. The wolf was steering the ship, all of her animal instincts pushed to the forefront, while her analytical mind could focus on minutiae and the finer details of everything she’d learned.
The past few days she’d rotated between various Totems players to see if any of them went back to the Newton Ice Rink or met up with anyone else suspicious. Oesterle seemed to have two girlfriends, something she put in the file for Wiseman as a potential strike against his character if the drug thing didn’t pan out. She followed Lindholm all the way to Anacortes and then rode the ferry with him to discover he had a boat which he kept docked on one of the small islands dotting the Georgia Strait.
Aulie barely left his apartment except to get food and go to the gym. She disguised herself as a janitor and checked out his locker while he was in the sauna. No drugs. And she spent a stunningly busy Saturday following Oborin and his girlfriend through boutiques, chic clothing stores, and fancy restaurants. He flashed his credit card so often that Ari practically had the number memorized.
But other than two-timing, sloth, and what had to be a staggering amount of debt, none of the Newton Five went anywhere near the ice rink and she never saw any drugs exchanged. She tried to surveil Muldoon’s home, but there were very few places on his street where she could be inconspicuous, and it seemed like the kind of neighborhood that would call the cops if anyone lingered for too long. Even the wolf wasn’t a good alternative, since she was sure the Homeowner’s Association would have Animal Control on her faster than lightning. She would have to find another way to tail him if she wanted to know where the drugs were coming from.
She arrived at the apartment building that faced the marina. A few sailors were still hanging around, mooring their boats and finishing conversations on the docks. Ari found a spot next to a minivan and hunkered down to wait until the parking lot was empty. Darkness crept across the sky and the security lights flickered on. People said their goodbyes, voices echoing off the water and bouncing back to Ari, and soon the parking lot was empty.
Why only Sunday? The vandals only struck on Sunday night, so what was the significance? They didn’t seem to be targeting anyone in particular, other than the marina itself, so why not on Wednesday night when it would be more likely deserted?
Her ears twitched at every passing car, and occasionally a jogger passed by, but none of them ever slowed. She had to fight to stay awake and eventually got up to pace the length of the apartment building. Something smelled delicious in the dumpster, but she forced herself to ignore it. She didn’t want to spend the morning nauseated when whatever the wolf considered gourmet left a rotten taste in her human mouth.
A few yards to the south, separated from the marina by a stretch of water, was a bank of houseboats. The majority of the windows were lit, though blocked by curtains. Occasionally someone would come out to look across the lake or to have a beer under the stars. Ari saw one pair of men engage in a quick and seemingly illicit tryst before sneaking back inside. The lights started extinguishing around ten o’clock, until around midnight when only a few outliers remained.
She didn’t know exactly what time it was when a guy came out onto his back deck and lit up a cigarette. She noticed him because he seemed to be focused on the marina. “C’mere,” he called over his shoulder, just loud enough to carry through the quiet of the night. Another man came out of the house and joined him. Smoker pointed at the marina. Smoker’s Friend leaned to one side and shook his head. After a long moment, Smoker tossed his cigarette into the water and they both went inside.
A few minutes later, the two men appeared on the road. Smoker had pulled a hoodie up over his curly hair, while Smoker’s Friend had on a baseball cap. Smoker was carrying a duffel bag tucked against his side. When they reached the marina they slowed and scanned the p
arking lot. Ari felt vindicated but also frustrated at herself. Every night she’d wasted sitting and staring while the guys she was waiting for watched from their houseboat.
Convinced there was no one watching, they crossed onto the property and quickly scaled the chain-link security fence. Ari got to her feet and moved forward in a crouch. The fence rattled when the vandals jumped off onto the other side. She listened to their footsteps on the dock and followed them, squeezing between the wall and the gate. The sound of spray paint cans being shaken led her straight to the two men.
She assumed an attack stance, lowered her head, and bellowed out her loudest bark. Smoker nearly jumped out of his sneakers. His friend spun around and hurled his spray can at her. She ducked to one side and it bounced uselessly off the dock, rolling until she heard the splash when it fell into the water. Ari barked again, trying to be as intimidating as possible, baring her teeth and thrashing her head from side to side.
“Damn dog!” Smoker yelled.
“Let’s get the hell out of here before he attacks.” His friend ran off before seeing if Smoker was following.
Smoker bent his knees and swayed from side to side. Ari lunged at him, hoping to make him run as well. She could follow them straight back to their apartment and give the marina owner and police an exact address. He feinted with his right hand then juked to the left, bringing him closer to the lake than an exit. Ari pursued and snapped at his feet. He twisted at the waist and she heard a loud hiss right next to her ear. She recoiled as something wet rained down on her. Spray paint coated the top of her head and down the back of her neck. In the seconds she was distracted, Smoker smacked her on top of the head with the can, then stepped around her and made a break for the fence.
Ari gave chase, thoroughly pissed off now. Smoker cleared the fence in a single leap and fumbled over the other side, hitting the ground on all fours and scrambling to his feet. Ari pushed herself through the gap again. Smoker kicked at her and she closed her jaws around his ankle. He shrieked and kicked her off. She twisted away just before his sneaker connected with her snout. She remembered that he had to get away in order for her to get his address, so she backed off. He got up, grabbed his duffel bag, and fled. She let him get a good head-start and then ran after him.
It was difficult letting him stay ahead of her. He was slow and kept looking back to see if she was gaining. Fortunately, they didn’t have far to go. Smoker turned and ran along the wooden dock that connected all the houseboats. His friend was on the porch of their house and motioned for him to hurry.
“It’s right behind you, dude!”
“I know, asshole! Get the BB gun!”
That almost stopped Ari short, but she had to lock down the address. Smoker and his friend went inside and Ari put on a burst of speed. She looked at the house number, illuminated by their porchlight, and skidded to a stop as the men came back outside.
“Just wing it,” Smoker’s Friend said.
“Fuck that, thing tried to bite my foot off. I’m gonna blind the son of a bitch.”
Ari could possibly have outrun the gun, but she didn’t want to risk it. She hated the water, despised and feared the idea of going for a swim, but at the moment it was the lesser evil. Instead of fleeing back to land, she cut left. She heard the “pfft!” of the rifle as she was already airborne.
“Oh, shit!”
She hit the water smoothly, slipping under the surface like a dart. Panic rushed through her but she ignored it as she turned herself toward shore. Parts of her mind flashed with warnings that she was underwater, just in case it had slipped her notice, but she ignored them all. She paddled her feet, keeping her head below water just in case Smoker was still on his mission to blind her. When she reached the shore she chanced a look back. Smoker and his friend had already gone back inside.
Shivering and fighting a bit of shock at what she’d just done, she went directly to the stash she and Dale had left earlier. She picked it up with her teeth and went to a public restroom nearby. Homeless people sometimes used it to clean up, and she figured she could do the same thing. She made sure the women’s side was empty, went into a stall, and transformed.
The trauma of her swim hit her hard. She leaned against the partition and hugged herself, shuddering violently as she tried and failed to keep from crying. She’d thought her phobia was under control after her last unexpected submersion, but apparently it was still lingering.
Once the worst of the shaking passed, she took her clothes from the bag and dressed herself in jeans and a faded Sesame Street T-shirt. It had been ages since she’d woken Dale up in the middle of the night for a ride home. Dale might actually appreciate the nostalgia of it. All she knew for certain was that she didn’t want to transform again when her emotions were so fraught.
She left the stall and went to the sink to splash water on her face. She twisted the faucets, glanced at her reflection, and froze. The entire right side of her face was bright blue. The only part that had been spared was the lower right-hand quadrant of her jaw and cheekbone. She lifted her hair and saw that the spray paint was indeed still on the skin there as well. In all the excitement of the chase and her traumatizing escape, she’d forgotten all about Smoker spraying her. She rested her hands on the sink and hung her newly-blue head.
“Well, shit.”
Chapter Thirteen
Dale’s first instinct was to laugh until she saw the look in Ari’s eyes. Ari explained what happened on the drive home and Dale comforted her as best she could while driving. When they got home, Dale managed to support Ari while also limping along with her crutch. She turned on the lights and guided Ari into the bathroom. She didn’t question why she was so shaken by what happened; she had a thing about heights and knew she would’ve felt the same way if someone dangled her off the top of the Space Needle. She shuddered just thinking about it.
Dale folded a towel on the sink and patted it. Ari hopped up and Dale went back to the kitchen. She came back with a bottle of olive oil, took a bag of cotton balls from behind the mirror, and wet one of them down.
“You look like you’ve done this before.”
“Well, never off anyone’s face.” She began to dab the cotton ball to Ari’s cheek. “I had a few run-ins with spray paint during high school.”
Ari smiled. “You were a vandal?”
“Oh, no. No, not a vandal. Just a bored kid in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania. There were a lot of boarded-up buildings that needed the Dale Frye touch. I usually wore gloves, but some of the people I ran with didn’t have the same foresight.”
“Any girls?”
The corners of Dale’s mouth twitched. “Maybe…”
“Little baby-gay Dale, tenderly cleaning the paint off the homecoming queen’s hands…”
Dale laughed. “The homecoming queen had no idea I existed.”
Ari said, “Her loss.”
Dale exchanged the cotton ball for a fresh one. “Do you want to talk about what happened?”
“Not really.”
“Okay.”
Ari let herself be cleaned for a full minute, eyes closed so Dale could wipe around them. “I thought I was over it. When I got tossed off the boat a last year, I thought… okay, my phobia has been realized, so I can get past it now.”
Dale said, “Maybe you did get a little past it. I mean, you were thrown into the water and survived. That was enough to give you the courage to jump when your life depended on it. It just means you can’t turn off fear like flipping a switch.”
“Maybe not. Tell me more about washing girl’s hands when you were a teenager.”
“It never went beyond rubbing baby oil on their fingers.”
Ari coughed.
“You know what I mean. But that was probably the first time I ever touched anyone that way. Holding their hands, cleaning their nails for them… it was very intimate.” She dragged the cotton ball over the curve of Ari’s cheek, sweeping away a bit of blue shade. “It’s a wonder I didn’t become a ma
nicurist.”
“I wish I had blocked my face with my hands, then.”
“You should have. This could’ve been toxic. It could have choked you, blinded you, done any number of horrible things to you far worse than the BB gun.”
Ari said, “I know.”
Dale pressed her lips together in a firm line. “I get it. Wanting to protect me by taking the GG&M job. I feel the same way on nights like this. So I’m not mad at you for considering the offer. I would have considered it, too.”
“Good.” She took a cotton ball of her own and began wiping another section of her face.
“Do you think when you transform back into the wolf, you’ll still have paint in your fur?”
“I doubt it. The paint transferred to my skin when I transformed, so taking it off… I mean, it would be like the paint spontaneously reappearing when I wolf out.”
Dale wrinkled her brow. “So… where does it go? The fur. Does it retract into your body or… I know some of it is your hair. Right? It’s… the same follicles…”
“I don’t know.”
“How could you not know?”
Ari shrugged. “Point at your gallbladder.”
“I… what?” She looked down at her torso. “It’s… here? Right?”
Ari said, “I don’t have a clue. Just because I can transform into a wolf doesn’t mean I know absolutely everything about the process. Is there another layer of skin just under this where the pelt comes from? Or does the hair actually grow and then retract? Dunno. Why do I weigh less when I’m the wolf? That shouldn’t be possible. Where does the extra mass go? What the hell is my dental situation?” She shrugged again. “It’s just who I am and what I can do. There are canidae like Dr. Frost who have a better grasp on the hows and whys of it, but I personally don’t know.”
“I would be so curious about it.”
“Maybe I’ll try to learn more.” She opened one eye. “How’s it looking?”