Man at Work

by Elaine Fox

  “Take what you want.”

  She smiled, making an effort to make it smug, as she stalked away. Good. He’d proven himself too ill-mannered to feel bad about. Plus she’d used her word for the day, she told herself, trying to calm down. That guy had done her a favor. She’d even used yesterday’s. Though she only used it to herself, she might be able to employ it again later, when she told Trish about what had happened.

  She liked improving her vocabulary, though the calendar she had this year was ridiculously tough. Most of the words were too bizarre for use. Today’s—folly—had been the easiest by far.

  She walked briskly back to her car. Now she’d have to get her brand-new shoes polished. She looked at her watch. She had about forty-five minutes before the meeting. Maybe the shoe-shine guy in Union Station could clean them up. He was such a nice man, and she enjoyed talking to him.

  Except when he asked about her love life. Not that she minded his asking, just the fact that she always had to admit that her love life consisted of exactly one date in the last year. Whenever she told him that, he just shook his head and murmured, “What a shame, what a shame.”

  With which she had to agree. She had to start getting out more, she told herself. When you start going gaga over shaggy guys in torn jeans it’s definitely time to start dating again.

  And she was sure he was out there, her perfect man. Every pot has a lid, as her mother said. Or every lid to a pot. Something like that.

  But when she found him, that perfect man, he would never, ever, call her anything but her name. Or maybe “darling.” She frowned. No, just her name. Marcy. She frowned again, wondering for the zillionth time in her life why in the world she couldn’t have been named after her aunt Arabella.

  Truman Fleming turned off his headlights and parked about ten storefronts away from the diner in which the spunky brunette had said she’d had coffee that morning. The street was deserted and nearly dark, as two of the three streetlamps on the block had either been busted or burned out. It was a downtrodden street, the building under construction just the beginning of an urban renewal project for that part of town.

  Ordinarily he would have liked cruising this seedy part of town in the middle of the night. With his tattered work clothes and his banged-up truck he might look as if he belonged here, as if he were meeting someone for some nefarious purpose.

  But tonight it just made him think about the girl, the doll from this morning, the dog defender, and how out of place she’d looked. Because she was a doll. Perfect skin, thick, dark, shiny hair that fell just past her shoulders, brown eyes rimmed with plush black lashes. He pictured her standing there in her mud-stained pricey shoes with Chuck’s grimy hand on her tailored coat and felt a contraction deep in his gut.

  Why hadn’t she just stayed in her K Street office—he’d bet money she worked somewhere along that money-laden corridor—and left this part of town alone? Why did she have to come here with that ramrod spine and those gusty dark eyes and butt heads with Chuck Lang, of all people? Lang was a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound keg of trouble just waiting to explode. Yet she’d stood up to him on behalf of a skinny little dog most people wouldn’t have even noticed.

  She’d impressed him, and that annoyed him. He didn’t want to be impressed by a fancy girl like that.

  He shook his head and got out of the truck. It didn’t matter. She was gone now and he didn’t even know her name. Probably something like Muffy. Or Honoria. Something either cute and dopey, or rich and pretentious like the world she came from, the world she belonged in. The world he wanted nothing to do with.

  He shut the door of the truck as quickly as he could and walked down the street, hands in his pockets, shoes scuffing the ground.

  Just as he’d known it would be, as it had been every morning when he’d arrived at work, the dog was locked in the run next to the trailer. It whined and pressed itself up against the chain link in an effort to get to him, licking the metal links in supplication. He scratched its soft black fur through the fence.

  On the latch was a padlock, a flimsy one. One good strike from a rock and that thing would pop right open.

  At least that’s what he’d thought. Twenty minutes and four generously scraped knuckles later the lock remained in place. The dog, on the other hand, was on the opposite side of the pen, eyeing him with an expression that said he’d turned out to be far more incompetent than even this little depressed dog had feared.

  Damn, Truman thought, walking around the pen, mentally measuring the stupid thing. About four feet by two and a half. He could pull the truck up and slide the whole works into the back, maybe. Then, when he got home, he could somehow snip the links of the fence and get the dog out that way. But it was a pretty big pen when one looked at it with the idea of picking it up. Why couldn’t it have been one of those fence things without a bottom? Why couldn’t the damn dog have just been tied to a backhoe?

  He sighed. There was nothing to do but try. One thing was certain, though. That damn lock wasn’t going anywhere. At least not with his limited resources here in the dark. He made a mental note to pick one up for his toolbox. Who knew they were so secure?

  Truman walked down the street and pulled his truck around to back into the gravel drive, lights off. He stopped the engine and listened for a minute, but the car he’d heard was apparently on another block and the sound disappeared.

  His mother would just love to hear he’d been nabbed for stealing. She’d probably have him committed to a hospital for the criminally insane. She already questioned his mental health whenever they happened to talk.

  He opened the tailgate of the truck, then turned and grabbed the kennel by the fence, pulling backward with more weight than he would have thought necessary. It rocked heavily over the gravel as the dog danced nervously from one side to the other.

  After an absurd amount of effort he got the thing close to the truck and tried to lift one end up onto the tailgate. But as soon as he did the dog let out a little yelp and scrambled toward him, its nails scratching furiously against the metal bottom. A rivulet of sweat dripped from Truman’s temple.

  He took off his denim jacket and threw it in the cab. After another ten minutes or so of trying to heft the kennel toward the truck bed with the dog running back and forth, he stopped and took a breather.

  His shirt was damp from exertion and the dog was terrified. In addition, the gravel around the scene had been scraped away so mud caked everything in sight, from Truman’s boots to his shins to the back of the kennel to the dog.

  He stood panting against the back of the truck, glaring at the wiry little dog in the ridiculously strong kennel. The front of the thing was propped against his thigh, and his arms were cramping with the effort of holding it there, when he heard the low hum of a well-tuned engine. He craned his neck around. No lights shone on the street but he could hear a car approaching. Tire tread on pavement. After a minute he saw a silver Lexus pull up in front of the diner. A second later a small, slim form emerged from the car and approached the gravel drive where he was parked.

  It was her. He could tell from the way she walked, with purpose and grace. Muffy.

  A second later, as she quietly rounded the front of his truck and caught him standing there with half the kennel practically in his lap, his guess was confirmed.

  She stopped when she saw him and crossed her arms over her chest, looking at him. After a second she tilted her head and asked conversationally, “Whatcha doin’?”

  He cursed himself for being caught in such an awkward position. Not stealing the dog; he didn’t care about that. The dog needed stealing, they’d established that much this morning. No, he was angry for being caught pinned to the back of his truck by an unwieldy kennel that—it was suddenly obvious—would not be going into the truck bed through any of his efforts.

  “I thought I’d take this dog to the SPCA,” he answered, more calmly than he felt. He wished he could have stood straighter. He wished he weren’t so sweaty. He wishe
d the damn dog would quit wiggling against the side of the kennel in an effort to get to the girl because the metal bottom was cutting into his thighs.

  “You can’t take her to the pound.” She moved her hands to her hips. Slim hips clad in jeans that fit, well, perfectly. Her thick shiny hair was pulled back tonight, but that only made her dark eyes more alluring.

  He cleared his throat and tried to look casual. “Why not?”

  “Because they’ll euthanize her.”

  He smirked. “So, you might say it would be folly for me to take it to the pound. Is that right?”

  Folly, he thought with a mental smile. Who used words like that anymore?

  He couldn’t tell in the dark, but he sensed Muffy’s expression was irked.

  “At best,” she said dryly, “it would be folly. Mostly I was thinking it would be stupid to go through this much trouble just to take a dog to its death.”

  He shifted under the weight of the kennel. “Maybe someone will adopt it. But in any case, it won’t be getting kicked anymore.” The kennel was beginning to cut off the circulation in his legs. “So you going to help me or what?”

  She took a moment to answer. A long moment, it seemed to Truman, but that might have been because he was picturing his toes turning black from lack of blood.

  “Okay,” she said finally.

  “Good, take the back and help me—”

  “But is there a reason you’re taking the kennel too or are you just being greedy?”

  “There’s a reason,” he said, more sharply than he’d have liked. But damn it, he was in pain. And he didn’t want to look like a fool in front of this woman. “Maybe you didn’t notice the padlock on the gate. Makes it difficult to open.”

  She tilted her head to look at the kennel’s front gate. “You call that a lock?”

  Before he could answer she was motioning with her hand for him to put the kennel down.

  “Come on,” she said. “Slide that thing back and let me take a look. There’s an easier way to do this.”

  Picturing the many times he’d clobbered the lock with rocks, he shoved the kennel back, immediately regaining sensation in his legs. He leaned back against the tailgate and tried to ignore the feeling of pins and needles from his thighs to his toes.

  “Good luck,” he said. “It’s a pretty tough…lock.” His words slowed as she took what looked like a metal toothpick from the back pocket of her jeans.

  She knelt down before the kennel, taking a moment to scratch the dog behind one ear, then took the lock in one hand and pushed the pin into it with the other. In a matter of seconds, with a twist of the wrist one way then the other, the lock popped open. She took a minute to look at its battered face, then tossed it to him and pulled a piece of rope from her jacket pocket. With a smile she held it up to show him, then opened the kennel, tied the rope to the dog, and let it out of the pen.

  Truman didn’t want to look at his watch, but he was pretty sure no more than two minutes had elapsed. He was also pretty sure he’d been struggling with the stupid kennel close to half an hour.

  He exhaled slowly, looking from the tongue-lolling smile of the puppy to the smirk that so help him God actually looked cute on the girl.

  “Spend a lot of time trying to break into Daddy’s liquor cabinet, did you?” he asked finally.

  “Something like that.” She pushed a stray lock of hair back into her ponytail. “But don’t feel too bad. I wouldn’t have been able to drag that kennel all the way over here to the truck.”

  “Thank you for not dwelling on the fact you wouldn’t have needed to.” He stood and flipped the tailgate of the truck shut behind him. “So what’re you going to do with it, now that you’ve got it?” He gestured toward the dog, whose tail swooped an arc in the gravel where it sat.

  Her brows drew together and she looked down at the mutt. Truman took the opportunity to study the curve of neck her ponytail revealed.

  “I don’t know, exactly. My building doesn’t allow pets.”

  The words hung in the air a moment before she looked back up at him, a tentative smile on her lips.

  “I don’t suppose you considered anything other than the pound?”

  He shrugged. “Nope. But I’m sure someone will want it.”

  “She can’t go to the pound. They’ve got hundreds of dogs and there’s no guarantee someone will adopt her. Can’t you take her?”

  She looked so pretty asking, with her hands clasped around the dog’s rope and her eyes imploring, that Truman had a moment of insanity and started to nod.

  “Yeah. I guess. For a while,” he amended. “I can keep it till you find a home for it.”

  She exhaled with a smile and he felt good, having been able to offer some bit of relief.

  “But…” she paused. “Do you have a yard?”

  He laughed once, and shook his head. “Not much acreage to be had where I live, sugar.”

  Her eyebrows drew together. “Have you ever owned a dog before? Do you know what to feed one? You do realize, don’t you, that you’ll have to go home every night to let her out? You can’t just let her sit inside while you go drink beer and—”

  “Hey, slow down, honey,” he said, holding his hands out and enjoying her obvious ire at his language. Typical rich girl, he thought. Couldn’t solve the problem herself but was more than willing to tell someone else how to do it. “I said I’d keep the damn thing for a while. That’s all. I’m not an idiot. I’m not going to let it starve.”

  “Yes, but she needs to be let out, too, you know. She can’t just—”

  “If you’re so worried about it, take it yourself.” He turned away and started to walk toward the driver’s side door.

  “No, no!” She followed him around the side of the truck. The dog scurried beside her and jumped up on his leg when they neared. “I’m sorry. I just want to be sure she doesn’t end up in the same situation she’s in here.”

  He started to protest but she interrupted.

  “Not that I think you’d abuse her or anything like that. You did, after all, come here to save her just like I did. I just need to be sure—”

  “I’ll take care of it fine. But here.” He opened the truck door and reached in for the knobby, tooth-dented pencil he kept in a rubber band on the visor. He plucked an old receipt from the floor of the cab and wrote down his address. “Here’s where I live. For when you find a taker.” He handed it to her.

  She handed him the dog’s rope and looked at the paper. He saw her expression as she noted the address was in Southeast, the poorest, most crime-ridden part of D.C.

  “Why don’t you give me your phone number too?” She started to hand the paper back.

  He shook his head. “Don’t have one.”

  She looked at him in surprise. “You don’t have a phone?”

  He laughed cynically. “I was saving up.” He pushed the pencil back into the visor.

  “All right.” She started to turn away, then stopped. “What’s your name, anyway?”

  He gazed at her, at her trim leather coat and her perfectly cut jeans. She even wore some kind of expensive little ankle boots and her ears shone with gold.

  “Folks around here call me Harley,” he said. “Harley Fleming. ’Cause I used to ride my bike to work.”

  One of her eyebrows rose. “You can afford a Harley but you can’t afford a phone?”

  “For your information, I had to sell it. For this.” He patted the steering wheel of the truck. “Besides, I’m not making any judgments about your designer jeans.”

  “They’re Levi’s. Nobody wears designer jeans anymore. Come on, what’s your real name?” she persisted. “I can’t call you Harley.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s stupid. Now please tell me. What is it? Tom? Dick? Harry?”

  He exhaled. “Tru. Short for Truman.”

  Her brows rose. “Like the president?”

  He got into the truck. “A lot like that, yeah.”

  Wh
y did he always have so much trouble getting people to call him by a nickname? All his life he’d wanted a nickname. So he could say he was called something—anything—other than Truman. But they never seemed to stick. So he was always Truman. Or, with occasional good fortune, Tru.

  “Well, okay, Truman,” she said, writing it down on the receipt he’d given her, “I’ll be in touch. Take good care of her.” She bent to tickle the puppy behind the ears.

  He arched a brow in her direction.

  “And here’s my card,” she said, standing and pulling one out of her jacket pocket. “In case you need to get hold of me for any reason.”

  He took the thick, embossed card and fingered it. Holding it up to the light he read out loud, “Marcy Pag—lin—ow—ski? Paglinowski?” He lowered his hand. “And you didn’t like my name?”

  “Yeah, well, at least I didn’t name myself after my car.”

  He started his engine and she stepped back.

  “Don’t forget her,” she called over the noise, pointing to the dog sitting at his feet.

  “You are a worrier,” he said. “Now get along, Lexus, before the police get here and arrest you for breaking and entering.”

  “Very cute. I’ll be in touch.” She backed toward her car. “Don’t do anything with her.”

  He frowned. “Like what? You accusing me of something deviant or just neglect?”

  “I mean don’t take her to the pound or give her to some irresponsible drug-dealing buddy or anything.”

  “I don’t have any irresponsible drug-dealing buddies,” he said, thinking of his empty, ugly little room in the working-class neighborhood in Southeast. He’d been there nearly seven months and made nary a friend. It was as if the locals sensed he didn’t belong there.

  “All right,” she said skeptically. “Well, I’ll be in touch, like I said.”

  “You do that, sugar,” he said, flashing her a grin. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

  She walked back to her car and started it up, a soft, well-oiled sound barely audible over the mechanical exertions of his truck. He looked down at the puppy, smiling up at him with that enormously long tongue still hanging out the side of its mouth. He reached over to the passenger seat and pulled a box with a couple of stale doughnuts onto his lap.