Lawrence Block - Hit Man

“Chakra,” he said.

“I stand corrected. What’s it mean, anyway?”

“I have no idea.”

“You will soon enough, now that you’re centered there. Keller, you’re turning human. Getting that dog was just the start of it. Next thing you know you’ll be saving the whales. You’ll be taking in strays, Keller. You watch.”

“That’s ridiculous,” he said. But on the train back to the city he found himself thinking about what she had said. Was there any truth to it?

He didn’t think so, but he wasn’t absolutely sure. He’d have to talk it over with Nelson.

I n White Plains,Keller sat in the kitchen with Dot for twenty minutes. The TV was on, tuned to one of the home shopping channels. “I watch all the time,” Dot said. “I never buy anything. What do I want with cubic zirconium?”

“Why do you watch?”

“That’s what I ask myself, Keller. I haven’t come up with the answer yet, but I think I know one of the things I like most about it. It’s continuous.”

“Continuous?”

“Uninterrupted. They never break the flow and go to a commercial.”

“But the whole thing’s a commercial,” Keller said.

“That’s different,” she said.

A buzzer sounded. Dot picked up the intercom, listened a moment, then nodded significantly at Keller.

He went upstairs, and he was with the old man for ten or fifteen minutes. On his way out he stopped in the kitchen and got himself a glass of water. He stood at the sink and took his time drinking it. Dot was shaking her head at the television set. “It’s all jewelry,” she said. “Who buys all this jewelry? What do they want with it?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Can I ask you something?”

“Ask away.”

“Is he all right?”

“Why?”

“I just wondered.”

“Did you hear something?”

“No, nothing like that. He seems tired, that’s all.”

“Everybody’s tired,” she said. “Life’s a lot of work and it tires people out. But he’s fine.”

Keller took a train to Grand Central, a cab to his apartment. Nelson met him at the door with the leash in his mouth. Keller laughed, fastened the leash to the dog’s collar. He had calls to make, a trip to schedule, but that could wait. Right now he was going to take his dog for a walk.

He headed over to the river. Nelson liked it there, but then Nelson seemed to like it everywhere. He certainly had a boundless enthusiasm for long walks. He never ran out of gas. You could exhaust yourself walking him, and he’d be ready to go again ten minutes later.

Of course you had to keep in mind that he had twice as many legs as a human being. Keller figured that had to make a difference.

“I’m going to have to take a trip,” he told Nelson. “Not too long, I don’t think, but that’s the thing, you never really know. Sometimes I’ll fly out in the morning and be back the same night, and other times it’ll stretch to a week. But you don’t have to worry. As soon as we get back to the house I’ll call Andria.”

The dog’s ears pricked up at the girl’s name. Keller had seen charts ranking the various breeds in intelligence, but not lately. He wasn’t sure where the Australian cattle dog stood, but he figured it had to be pretty close to the top. Nelson didn’t miss much.

“She’s due to walk you tomorrow anyway,” Keller said. “I could probably just stick a letter of instructions next to your leash, but why leave anything to chance? As soon as we get home I’ll beep her.”

Because Andria ’s living situation was still as tenuous as her career, the only number Keller had for her was that of the beeper she carried on her rounds. He called it as soon as he got home and punched in his number, and the girl called him back fifteen minutes later. “Hi,” she said. “How’s my favorite Australian cattle dog?”

“He’s fine,” Keller said, “but he’s going to need company. I have to go out of town tomorrow morning.”

“For how long, do you happen to know?”

“Hard to say. It might be a day, it might be a week. Is that a problem?”

She was quick to assure him that it wasn’t. “In fact,” she said, “the timing’s perfect. I’ve been staying with these friends of mine, and it’s not working out. I told them I’d be out of there tomorrow and I was wondering where I’d go next. Isn’t it amazing the way we’re always given guidance as to what to do next?”

“Amazing,” he agreed.

“But that’s assuming it’s all right with you if I stay there while you’re gone. I’ve done it before, but maybe you’d rather I don’t this time.”

“No, that’s fine,” Keller said. “It’s more company for Nelson, so why should I object? You’re not messy, you keep the place neat.”

“I’m housebroken, all right. Same as Nelson.” She laughed, then broke it off and said, “I really appreciate this, Mr. Keller. These friends I’ve been staying with, they’re not getting along too well, and I’m kind of stuck in the middle. She’s turned into this jealous monster, and he figures maybe he ought to give her something to be jealous about, and last night I just about walked the legs off a longhaired dachshund because I didn’t want to be in their space. So it’ll be a pleasure to get out of there tomorrow morning.”

“Listen,” he said, impulsively. “Why wait? Come over here tonight.”

“But you’re not leaving until tomorrow.”

“So what? I’ve got a late evening tonight and I’ll be out first thing in the morning, so we won’t get in each other’s way. And you’ll be out of your friends’ place that much sooner.”

“Gee,” she said, “that would be great.”

When he got off the phone Keller went into the kitchen and made himself a cup of coffee. Why, he wondered, had he made the offer? It was certainly uncharacteristic behavior on his part. What did he care if she had to spend one more night suffering the dirty looks of the wife and the wandering hands of the husband?

And he’d even improvised to justify her acceptance of the offer, inventing a late evening and claiming an early flight. He hadn’t booked the flight yet, and he had no plans for the evening.

Time to book the flight. Time to make plans for the evening.

The flight was booked with a single phone call, the evening planned almost as easily. Keller was dressing for it when Andria arrived, wearing striped bib overalls and bearing a forest-green backpack. Nelson made a fuss over her, and she shucked the backpack and knelt down to reciprocate.

“Well,” Keller said. “You’ll probably be asleep when I get home, and I’ll probably leave before you wake up, so I’ll say goodbye now. You know Nelson’s routine, of course, and you know where everything is.”

“I really appreciate this,” Andria said.

Keller took a cab to the restaurant where he’d arranged to meet a woman named Yvonne, whom he’d dated three or four times since making her acquaintance at a Learning Annex class, “Deciphering the Mysteries of Baltic Cuisine.” The true mystery, they’d both decided, was how anyone had the temerity to call it a cuisine. He’d since taken her to several restaurants, none of them Baltic. Tonight’s choice was Italian, and they spent a good deal of time telling each other how happy they were to be eating in an Italian restaurant rather than, say, a Latvian one.

Afterward they went to a movie, and after that they took a cab to Yvonne’s apartment, some eighteen blocks north of Keller’s. As she fitted her key in the lock, she turned toward him. They had already reached the goodnight kiss stage, and Keller saw that Yvonne was ready to be kissed, but at the same time he sensed that she didn’t really want to be kissed, nor did he really want to kiss her. They’d both had garlic, so it wasn’t a reluctance to offend or be offended. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he decided to honor it.