T. Boyle - T.C. Boyle Stories II - Volume II

On this particular night though, a Saturday, when the throngs were out and the words began to blur on the page and nobody, not even her mother, would answer the phone, she stole a glance at the lobby and the guy who’d just stood there watching her for the last five minutes till Eduardo, the desk man, said something to him. In that instant, when he was distracted by whatever Eduardo was saying, she got a good look at him and realized, with a jolt, that she knew him from somewhere. Her eyes were back on the page but his image stayed with her: a lean short tensed-up guy with his hands in his pockets, blond hair piled up high on the crown of his head and a smooth detached expression, beautiful and dangerous at the same time, and where did she know him from?

It took her a while. She lost him when he drifted across the room in the direction of the lounge and she tried to refocus on her book but she couldn’t. It was driving her crazy: where had she met him? Was it at school? Or here? Had she served him at the coffee shop, was that it? Time passed. She was bored. And then she snatched a look again and there he was, with another guy, moving tentatively across the lobby as if it were ankle-deep in mud — drunk, both of them, or at least under the influence — and it came to her: he was the guy who’d adopted the kittens, the one with the little kid, the nephew. It must have been six weeks ago now. Missy had had her second — and last — litter, because it was irresponsible to bring more cats into the world when they were putting them down by the thousands in the shelters every day and she’d decided to have her spayed once the kittens were weaned, all nine of them, and he’d showed up in answer to her ad. And what was his name? Roy or something. Or no: Royce. She remembered because of the boy, how unusual it was to see that kind of relationship, uncle and nephew, and how close they seemed, and because Royce had been so obviously attracted to her — couldn’t keep his eyes off her, actually.

She’d just washed her hair and was combing out the snarls when the bell rang and there they were on the concrete landing of her apartment, smiling up at her. “Hi,” he said, “are you the one with the kittens?”

She looked from him to the boy and back again. She’d given one of the kittens away to a guy who worked in the hotel kitchen and another to one of her girlfriends, but there were seven left and nobody else had called. “Yeah,” she said, pushing the door open wide. “Come on in.”

The boy had made a real fuss over the kittens, telling her how cute they all were and how he couldn’t make up his mind. She was just about to ask him if she couldn’t get him something to drink, a glass of lemonade, a Coke, when he’d looked up at his uncle and said, “Could we take two?”

They were in a hurry — he apologized for that — and it was just a chance encounter, but it had stayed with her. (As had three of the kittens, which she hadn’t been able to find homes for.) Royce told her he was in real estate and they’d lingered a moment at the door while the boy cradled his kittens and she told him she was looking to buy a duplex, with her parents’ help, so the rent on the one apartment could cover her mortgage — like living for free — but she hadn’t pushed it and he hadn’t either.

Now, as she watched him square up his shoulders at the door, she wondered if he’d recognized her. For an instant her heart stood still — he was going, gone — and then, on an impulse, she broke her pose, set down the book and flicked off the light. In the next moment she was out of the cubicle, a page torn from her book in one hand and her pen in the other, rushing across the cold stone floor of the lobby in her bare feet. She scribbled out a note on the back of the page— How are the kittens? Call me. Chelsea —and handed it to Jason, the doorman.

“That guy,” she said, pointing down the street. “The one on his cell? Could you run and give this to him for me?” In her rush, she almost forgot to include her number, but at the last second she remembered, and by the time Jason put his fingers to his lips and whistled down the length of the block, she was hurrying back across the lobby to the sanctuary of her cubicle.

—

It took three cups of coffee to clear his head in the morning, but he was up early all the same and took time to make an omelet for Joey—“No onions, no tomatoes,” Joey told him, “just cheese”—before they went out to see to the dogs. The Lab was in her cage outside the door to the barn, still whining, and he didn’t even glance at her. He’d have Joey feed her some of the cheap kibble later, but first he had to work Zoltan and Zeus on the treadmills and make sure Zazzie, who’d thrown six pups out of Zeus’ sire, the original Zeus, got the feed and attention she needed while she was still nursing. Zeus the first had been a grand champion, ROM, Register of Merit, with five wins, and the money he’d brought in in bets alone had been enough to establish Z-Dogz Kennels — and a dozen or more of his pups were out there on the circuit, winning big in their own right. Royce had never had a better pit dog, and it just about killed him when Zeus couldn’t scratch after going at it with Marvin Harlock’s Champion Kato for two and a quarter hours and had to be put down because of his injuries. Still, he’d been bred to some sixteen bitches and the stud fees alone had made up a pretty substantial part of Royce’s income — especially with the realty market dead in the water the last two years — and Zeus the second, not to mention his brother Zoltan, had won their first matches, and that boded well for stud fees down the road.

The dogs set up their usual racket when he and Joey came in — happy to see them, always happy — and Joey ran ahead to let them out of their cages. Aside from the new litter and Zoltan, Zeus and Zazzie, he and Steve had only three other dogs at the time, two bitches out of Zeus the first, for breeding purposes with the next champion that caught their eye, and a male — Zeno — that had lost the better part of his muzzle in his first match and would probably have to be let go, though he’d really showed heart. For now, though, they were one big happy family, and they all surged round Royce’s legs, even the puppies, their tongues going and their high excited yips rising up into the rafters where the pigeons settled and fluttered and settled again. “Feed them all except Zeus and Zoltan,” he shouted to Joey over the noise, “because we’re going to work them on the mills first, okay?”

And Joey, dressed in yesterday’s blue jeans with smears of something on both knees and a T-shirt that could have been cleaner, swung round from where he was bending to the latch on Zeno’s cage, his eyes shining. “And then can we bait them?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Then we’ll bait them.”

The first time he’d let Joey watch while they set the dogs on the bait animals, he’d been careful to explain the whole thing to him so he wouldn’t take it the wrong way. Most trainers — and he was one of them — felt that a fighting dog had to be blooded regularly to keep him keyed up between matches and if some of the excess and unwanted animals of the world happened to be lost in the process, well that was life. They were just going to be sent to the pound anyway, where some stoner working for minimum wage would stick a needle in them or shove them in a box and gas them, and this way was a lot more natural, wasn’t it? He no longer remembered whether it was rabbits or cats or a stray that first time, but Joey’s face had drained and he’d had to take him outside and tell him he couldn’t afford to be squeamish, couldn’t be a baby, if he wanted to be a dog man, and Joey — he was all of nine at the time — had just nodded his head, his mouth drawn tight, but there were no tears, and that was a good sign.