Michael Christie - The Beggar's Garden

She pulled away, a string of spit briefly trapezing between them. “What’s wrong? You seem …”—she chose the word carefully—“uneasy.”

“No,” he said, needing to convince her he was enjoying himself, or was just starting to. “I’m good here,” he said, chuckling.

They kissed again. It was different. It felt like a re-enactment. She was tense, and it made him tense. He could feel her monitoring him. She wasn’t moving her hands. She somehow knew her lip had once repulsed him. He started focusing his kisses on her lip to prove to her it wasn’t disgusting. He licked it and gave it playful nibbles, his tongue flicking over its ridge. He let out a sigh to show her how pleased and relaxed he was by all of this.

Just as he was really getting back into it again, she pulled away a second time, as if it was so she could take a drink of wine. Then she went to the bathroom. When she came back she said she was tired. She smiled at a joke he made at the door but didn’t exactly laugh. She passed him the ball thrower on his way out and said she’d see them in the park. Buddy and Dan walked home across the street.

4

It was an upper-body day, and the weights were kindling dull smoulderings in his chest and arms. He grunted pathetically as he pushed, without embarrassment because there was no one there except for Buddy.

It’d rained for a week, and although dogs weren’t allowed in the fitness room, he’d decided to chance it. Buddy had sniffed the gym with the thoroughness of a bomb detector while Dan cycled through his routine. Leaving Buddy alone in the condo, even briefly, seemed too cruel at a time like this — with the days being so dismally grey and the dank bales of clothes and towels he’d let accumulate in every room.

Buddy was depressed. He slept most of the day. He’d been ignoring the kibble Dan rattled into his bowl, mustering only little bites of people-food every so often. They’d made it to the park only once the preceding week and found most of it flooded with six inches of murky water. The squeegee punks were its only patrons, smoking and shivering beneath a tree. As Dan hurled a sopping tennis ball that Buddy begrudgingly retrieved, he remembered what Ginnie had said about those kids, how sad it was that they were abandoned, or wanted to be abandoned. Even in the park Buddy quickly grew bored. When they were leaving, Dan noticed the kid with the green mohawk, which was now hanging down, eggless perhaps, the tips of the once proud spikes dripping rainwater. Dan wanted to tell the punks he’d opened for a couple of the bands sewn to their jackets, but he thought against it when he remembered how much pleasure he, as a punk, would have taken in telling a guy like him to fuck off. “For world domination,” he said, pouring a handful of change into their cup. They didn’t notice him enough to ignore him.

Dan switched to the treadmill and watched an educational program about witchcraft as he ran. “In Salem, witches were often identified by the presence of their familiars, animals like cats or owls who would perform the evil bidding of their master,” it said. “Many women were burned based on the evidence of a familiar alone.” Dan looked over to Buddy, who was regarding, suspiciously, his own reflection in the full-length mirror. “We’re getting pretty familiar, aren’t we, Bud?” he said, realizing he’d lately started conversing with the dog in a voice that was not his own. Then Dan amused himself with the thought of Buddy running on the treadmill. He briefly considered trying it, setting him up there and punching the button, but he decided against it. You had to have a big brain to get used to things like full-length mirrors and running without moving.

He brought a water bottle to his lips, suctioned a mouthful, then let it release with a gasping sound. The sensation sent his mind stumbling upon his night with Ginnie, now two weeks past, a night whose meaning he’d not yet examined even though he’d found himself mildly annoyed she hadn’t called. The kiss felt like a liability, a leak of information. He wished it hadn’t happened. Or that it had kept happening. Or perhaps something else entirely. In the end, he decided it was selfish of them to jeopardize Buddy and Jo’s relationship like that.

“There are no dogs down here,” a reedy-voiced security guard said from the entranceway. Dan recognized him, a boy who usually spent whole graveyard shifts scouring skateboard magazines behind the concierge desk.

“There’s a dog right there,” Dan said, gesturing smugly, his voice croaky from exertion.

“Okay, sir, there are no dogs allowed down here, it’s against strata regulations. You know, health issue.” He glanced around as if the room were potentially infested by dogs.

With only thirty seconds left, Dan dismounted the treadmill, scrubbed a towel over his face, set it about his shoulders.

“This just isn’t what I’d expected,” he said. “Something wrong with the equipment, sir?” “Do you ever see anyone down here?” He thought for a moment. “Umm … no, not really. You?” “This place, it hasn’t really worked out for me. I figured it’d be different.”

“I understand that, sir, but the dog has to go,” he said with his neck set and his slender hands folded over his crotch, gripping a walkie-talkie.

“Come on, Buddy,” Dan said.

Dan’s condo was much too hot. He checked the oven on the outside chance he’d accidentally turned it on, never once having actually used it. He cracked some windows, cursing the fact there was no thermostat, and noticed the rain had stopped. The sky was an elephant hide stretched over the whole city.

Then the phone rang. Dan whacked his shin on the glass top of his coffee table while he ran for it, crumpling him to the carpet. Buddy came to him. He didn’t lick Dan’s face, but Dan was happy to note a certain attitude of concern.

After a deep breath he set the phone to his ear.

“Where’ve you been?” Winston said. Dan could hear Jacob yelping nonsense in the background. He took the cordless out on the balcony where the air was refreshingly cool and sat, testing the swelling that was conglomerating on his shin.

Dan attempted to recollect what he’d been doing the past few weeks and came up with a mental summary as formless and without value as a handful of gravel. What had he been doing? Sleeping? Trying to cheer up Buddy, was all he could say with certainty. He told Winston he’d been working on something.

Winston then asked what happened with Ginnie that night and Dan told him the story, omitting the kiss.

“I liked her,” Winston said. “She stood up to Marta.”

“Well, she seems to be standing up to me as well, which is surprising because all I ever wanted to be was her friend, so there’s nothing to stand up to.”

Winston exhaled into the phone. It sounded like wind. “C’mon, you liked her, I could see it, you were unleashing facial expressions I haven’t seen in years.”

“I do really love her dog, Jo. I really miss her.”

“Her dog? That’s why people get dogs, isn’t it? To meet other people with dogs? Am I not right? Sort of like joining a club?”

“No, I wanted a companion.” “Come on.”

“Buddy and I understand each other. I don’t know what I’d do without him. People say dogs are loyal, but they really are actually loyal.”

“Speaking of loyal, I saw on the radio this thing about how if someone dies in their home and nobody drops by or smells the stench, and that person has animals — like so many lonely shut-in types do, may I add — then it only takes three days, three days, until the pet, doesn’t matter what kind, cat or dog, whatever, will actually eat their owner’s body to stay alive. How’s that loyalty for you?”