The Very Best of the Best

by Gardner Dozois

We stop on our way out of town and stock up on rice and beans, flour, sugar, coffee. We can get all this in Belen, but it’s cheaper at Sam’s Club. Sherie has a membership. I pay half the membership and she uses the card to buy all our groceries then I pay her back when we get to the car. The cashiers surely know that we’re sharing a membership, but they don’t care.

  It’s a long hot drive back home. The air conditioning doesn’t work in the truck. I am so grateful to see the trees that mark the valley.

  My front door is standing open.

  “Who’s here?” Sherie says.

  Abby is standing in the front yard and she has clearly recognized Sherie’s truck. She’s barking her fool head off and wagging her tail, desperate. She runs to the truck. I get out and head for the front door and she runs towards the door and then back towards me and then towards the door, unwilling to go in until I get there, then lunging through the door ahead of me.

  “Hudson?” I call the other dog, but I know if the door is open, he’s out roaming. Lost. My things are strewn everywhere, couch cushions on the floor, my kitchen drawers emptied on the floor, the back door open. I go through to the back, calling the missing dog, hoping against hope he is in the back yard. The back gate is open, too.

  Behind me I hear Sherie calling, “Don’t go in there by yourself!”

  “My dog is gone,” I say.

  “Hudson?” she says.

  I go out the back and call for him. There’s no sign of him. He’s a great boy, but some dogs, like Abby, tend to stay close to home. Hudson isn’t one of those dogs.

  Sherie and I walk through the house. No one is there. I go out to my workshop. My toolbox is gone, but evidently whoever did this didn’t see the computer closed and sitting on the shelf just above eye level.

  It had to be the guy I gave soup to. He probably went nearby to wait out the heat of the day and saw me leave.

  I close and lock the gate, and the workshop. Close and lock my back door. Abby clings to me. Dogs don’t like things to be different.

  “We’ll look for him,” Sherie says. Abby and I climb into the truck and for an hour we drive back roads, looking and calling, but there’s no sign of him. Her husband Ed calls us. He’s called the county and there’s a deputy at my place waiting to take a statement. We walk through the house and I identify what’s gone. As best I can tell, it isn’t much. Just the tools, mainly. The sheriff says they are usually looking for money, guns, jewelry. I had all my cards and my cell phone with me, and all my jewelry is inexpensive stuff. I don’t have a gun.

  I tell the deputy about the migrant this morning. He says it could have been him, or someone else. I get the feeling we’ll never know. He promises to put out the word about the dog.

  It is getting dark when they all leave and I put the couch cushions on the couch. I pick up silverware off the floor and run hot water in the sink to wash it all. Abby stands at the backdoor, whining, but doesn’t want to go out alone.

  It occurs to me suddenly that the doll I was working on is missing. He stole the doll. Why? He’s not going to be able to sell it. To send it home, I guess, to the baby in the photo. Or maybe to his wife, who has a real baby and is undoubtedly feeling a lot less sentimental about infants than most of my customers do. It’s a couple of weeks of work, not full time, but painting, waiting for the paint to cure, painting again.

  Abby whines again. Hudson is out there in the dark. Lost dogs don’t do well in the desert. There are rattlesnakes. I didn’t protect him. I sit down on the floor and wrap my arms around Abby’s neck and cry. I’m a stupid woman who is stupid about my dogs, I know. But they are what I have.

  * * *

  I don’t really sleep. I hear noises all night long. I worry about what I am going to do about money.

  Replacing the tools is going to be a problem. The next morning I put the first layer of paint on a new doll to replace the stolen one. Then I do something I have resisted doing. Plastic doll parts aren’t the only thing I can mold and sell on the internet. I start a clay model for a dildo. Over the last couple of years I’ve gotten queries from companies who have seen the dolls online and asked if I would consider doing dildos for them. Realistic penises aren’t really any more difficult to carve than realistic baby hands. Easier, actually. I can’t send it to Tony, he wouldn’t do dildos. But a few years ago they came out with room temperature, medical grade silicon. I can make my own molds, do small runs, hand finish them. Make them as perfectly lifelike as the dolls. I can hope people will pay for novelty when it comes to sex.

  I don’t particularly like making doll parts, but I don’t dislike it either. Dildos, on the other hand, just make me sad. I don’t think there is anything wrong with using them, it’s not that. It’s just … I don’t know. I’m not going to stop making dolls, I tell myself.

  I also email the Chicago couple back and accept the commission for the special, to make the same doll for the third time. Then I take a break and clean my kitchen some more. Sherie calls me to check how I’m doing and I tell her about the dildos. She laughs. “You should have done it years ago,” she says. “You’ll be rich.”

  I laugh, too. And I feel a little better when I finish the call.

  I try not to think about Hudson. It’s well over 100 today. I don’t want to think about him in trouble, without water. I try to concentrate on penile veins. On the stretch of skin underneath the head (I’m making a circumcised penis.) When my cell rings I jump.

  The guy on the phone says, “I’ve got a dog here, has got this number on his collar. You missing a dog?”

  “A golden retriever?” I say.

  “Yep.”

  “His name is Hudson,” I say. “Oh, thank you. Thank you. I’ll be right there.”

  I grab my purse. I’ve got fifty-five dollars in cash. Not much of a reward, but all I can do. “Abby!” I yell. “Come on girl! Let’s go get Hudson!”

  She bounces up from the floor, clueless, but excited by my voice.

  “Go for a ride?” I ask.

  We get in my ancient red Impreza. It’s not too reliable, but we aren’t going far. We bump across miles of bad road, most of it unpaved, following the GPS directions on my phone and end up at a trailer in the middle of nowhere. It’s bleached and surrounded by trash—an old easy chair, a kitchen chair lying on it’s side with one leg broken and the white unstained inside like a scar, an old picnic table. There’s a dirty green cooler and a bunch of empty 40 oz bottles. Frankly, if I saw the place my assumption would be that the owner made meth. But the old man who opens the door is just an old guy in a baseball cap. Probably living on social security.

  “I’m Nick,” he says. He’s wearing a long sleeved plaid shirt despite the heat. He’s deeply tanned and has a turkey wattle neck.

  I introduce myself. Point to the car and say, “That’s Abby, the smart one that stays home.”

  The trailer is dark and smells of old man inside. The couch cushions are covered in cheap throws, one of them decorated with a blue and white Christmas snowman. Outside, the scrub shimmers, flattened in the heat. Hudson is laying in front of the sink and scrabbles up when he sees us.

  “He was just ambling up the road,” Nick says. “He saw me and came right up.”

  “I live over by the river, off 109, between Belen and Jarales,” I say. “Someone broke into my place and left the doors open and he wandered off.”

  “You’re lucky they didn’t kill the dogs,” Nick says.

  I fumble with my purse. “There’s a reward,” I say.

  He waves that away. “No, don’t you go starting that.” He says he didn’t do anything but read the tag and give him a drink. “I had dogs all my life,” he says. “I’d want someone to call me.”

  I tell him it would mean a lot to me and press the money on him. Hudson leans against my legs to be petted, tongue lolling. He looks fine. No worse for wear.

  “Sit a minute. You came all the way out here. Pardon the mess. My sister’s grandson and his friends have been coming out he
re and they leave stuff like that,” he says, waving at the junk and the bottles.

  “I can’t leave the other dog in the heat,” I say, wanting to leave.

  “Bring her inside.”

  I don’t want to stay, but I’m grateful, so I bring Abby in out of the heat and he thumps her and tells me about how he’s lived here since he was in his twenties. He’s a Libertarian and he doesn’t trust government and he really doesn’t trust the New Mexico state government which is, in his estimation, a banana republic lacking only the fancy uniforms that third world dictators seem to love. Then he tells me about how lucky it was that Hudson didn’t get picked up to be a bait dog for the people who raise dogs for dog fights. Then he tells me about how the American economy was destroyed by operatives from Russia as revenge for the fall of the Soviet Union.

  Half of what he says is bullshit and the other half is wrong, but he’s just a lonely guy in the middle of the desert and he brought me back my dog. The least I can do is listen.

  I hear a spitting little engine off in the distance. Then a couple of them. It’s the little motorbikes the kids ride. Nick’s eyes narrow as he looks out.

  “It’s my sister’s grandson,” he says. “Goddamn.”

  He gets up and Abby whines. He stands, looking out the slatted blinds.

  “Goddamn. He’s got a couple of friends,” Nick says. “Look you just get your dogs and don’t say nothing to them, okay? You just go on.”

  “Hudson,” I say and clip a lead on him.

  Outside, four boys pull into the yard, kicking up dust. They have seen my car and are obviously curious. They wear jumpsuits like prison jumpsuits, only with the sleeves ripped off and the legs cut off just above the knees. Khaki and orange and olive green. One of them has tattoos swirling up his arms.

  “Hey Nick,” the tattooed one says, “new girlfriend?”

  “None of your business, Ethan.”

  The boy is dark but his eyes are light blue. Like a Siberian Husky. “You a social worker?” the boy says.

  “I told you it was none of your business,” Nick says. “The lady is just going.”

  “If you’re a social worker, you should know that old Nick is crazy and you can’t believe nothing he says.”

  One of the other boys says, “She isn’t a social worker. Social workers don’t have dogs.”

  I step down the steps and walk to my car. The boys sit on their bikes and I have to walk around them to get to the Impreza. Hudson wants to see them, pulling against his leash, but I hold him in tight.

  “You look nervous, lady,” the tattooed boy says.

  “Leave her alone, Ethan,” Nick says.

  “You shut up, Uncle Nick, or I’ll kick your ass,” the boy says absently, never taking his eyes off me.

  Nick says nothing.

  I say nothing. I just get my dogs in my car and drive away.

  * * *

  Our life settles into a new normal. I get a response from my dildo email. Nick in Montana is willing to let me sell on his sex site on commission. I make a couple of different models, including one that I paint just as realistically as I would one of the reborn dolls. This means a base coat, then I paint the veins in. Then I bake it. Then I paint an almost translucent layer of color and bake it again. Six layers. And then a clear over layer of silicon because I don’t think the paint is approved for use this way. I put a pretty hefty price on it and call it a special. At the same time I am making my other special. The doll for the Chicago couple. I sent the mold to Tony and had him do a third head from it. It, too, requires layers of paint, and sometimes the parts bake side by side.

  Because my business is rather slow, I take more time than usual. I am always careful, especially with specials. I think if someone is going to spend the kind of money one of these costs, the doll should be made to the best of my ability. And maybe it is because I have done this doll before, it comes easily and well. I think of the doll that the man who broke into my house stole. I don’t know if he sent it to his wife and daughter in Mexico, or if he even has a wife and daughter in Mexico. I rather suspect he sold it on eBay or some equivalent—although I have watched doll sales and never seen it come up.

  This doll is my orphan doll. She is full of sadness. She is inhabited by the loss of so much. I remember my fear when Hudson was wandering the roads of the desert. I imagine Rachel Mazar, so haunted by the loss of her own child. The curves of the doll’s tiny fists are porcelain pale. The blue veins at her temples are traceries of the palest of bruises.

  When I am finished with her, I package her as carefully as I have ever packaged a doll and send her off.

  My dildos go up on the website.

  The realistic dildo sits in my workshop, upright, tumescent, a beautiful rosy plum color. It sits on a shelf like a prize, glistening in its topcoat as if it were wet. It was surprisingly fun to make, after years and years of doll parts. It sits there both as an object to admire and as an affront. But to be frank, I don’t think it is any more immoral than the dolls. There is something straightforward about a dildo. Something much more clear than a doll made to look like a dead child. Something significantly less entangled.

  There are no orders for dildos. I lie awake at night thinking about real estate taxes. My father is dead. My mother lives in subsidized housing for the elderly in Columbus. I haven’t been to see her in years and years, not with the cost of a trip like that. My car wouldn’t make it, and nobody I know can afford to fly anymore. I certainly couldn’t live with her. She would lose her housing if I moved in.

  If I lose my house to unpaid taxes, do I live in my car? It seems like the beginning of the long slide. Maybe Sherie and Ed would take the dogs.

  I do get a reprieve when the money comes in for the special. Thank God for the Mazars in Chicago. However crazy their motives, they pay promptly and by internet, which allows me to put money against the equity line for the new tools.

  I still can’t sleep at night and instead of putting all of the money against my debt, I put the minimum and I buy a 9-millimeter handgun. Actually, Ed buys it for me. I don’t even know where to get a gun.

  Sherie picks me up in the truck and brings me over to the goat farm. Ed has several guns. He has an old gun safe that belonged to his father. When we get to their place, he is in back, putting creosote on new fence posts, but he is happy to come up to the house.

  “So you’ve given in,” he says, grinning. “You’ve joined the dark side.”

  “I have,” I agree.

  “Well, this is a decent defensive weapon,” Ed says. Ed does not fit my pre-conceived notions of a gun owner. Ed fits my preconceived notions of the guy who sells you a cell phone at the local strip mall. His hair is short and graying. He doesn’t look at all like the kind of guy who would either marry Sherie or raise goats. He told me one time that his degree is in anthropology. Which, he said, was a difficult field to get a job in.

  “Offer her a cold drink!” Sherie yells from the bathroom. In her pregnant state, Sherie can’t ride twenty minutes in the sprung-shocked truck without having to pee.

  He offers me iced tea and then gets the gun, checks to see that it isn’t loaded, and hands it to me. He explains to me that the first thing I should do is check to see if the gun is loaded.

  “You just did,” I say.

  “Yeah,” he says, “but I might be an idiot. It’s a good thing to do.”

  He shows me how to check the gun.

  It is not nearly so heavy in my hand as I thought it would be. But truthfully, I have found that the thing you thought would be life changing so rarely is.

  Later he takes me around to the side yard and shows me how to load and shoot it. I am not even remotely surprised that it is kind of fun. That is exactly what I expected.

  * * *

  Out of the blue, an email from Rachel Mazar of Chicago.

  I am writing you to ask you if you have had any personal or business dealings with my husband, Ellam Mazar. If I do not get a response from you, your
next correspondence will be from my attorney.

  I don’t quite know what to do. I dither. I make vegetarian chili. Oddly enough, I check my gun which I keep in the bedside drawer. I am not sure what I am going to do about the gun when Sherie has her baby. I have offered to babysit, and I’ll have to lock it up, I think. But that seems to defeat the purpose of having it.

  While I am dithering, my cell rings. It is, of course, Rachel Mazar.

  “I need you to explain your relationship with my husband, Ellam Mazar,” she says. She sounds educated, with that eradication of regional accent that signifies a decent college.

  “My relationship?” I say.

  “Your email was on his phone,” she says, frostily.

  I wonder if he is dead. The way she says it sounds so final. “I didn’t know your husband,” I say. “He just bought the dolls.”

  “Bought what?” she says.

  “The dolls,” I say.

  “Dolls?” she says.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Like … sex dolls?”

  “No,” I say. “Dolls. Reborns. Handmade dolls.”

  She obviously has no idea what I am talking about, which opens a world of strange possibilities in my mind. The dolls don’t have orifices. Fetish objects? I tell her my website and she looks it up.

  “He ordered specials,” I say.

  “But these cost a couple of thousand dollars,” she says.

  A weeks’ salary for someone like Ellam Mazar, I suspect. I envision him as a professional, although frankly, for all I know he works in a dry-cleaning shop or something.

  “I thought they were for you,” I say. “I assumed you had lost a child. Sometimes people who have lost a child order one.”

  “We don’t have children,” she says. “We never wanted them.” I can hear how stunned she is in the silence. Then she says, “Oh my God.”

  Satanic rituals? Some weird abuse thing?

  “That woman said he told her he had lost a child,” she says.

  I don’t know what to say so I just wait.

  “My husband … my soon to be ex-husband,” she says. “He has apparently been having affairs. One of the women contacted me. She told me that he told her we had a child that died and that now we were married in name only.”