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

He didn’t want to wear the dogs out so close to their next match, so he clocked half an hour on the treadmill, then put Zeus in the pit he’d erected in the back corner of the barn and had Joey bait him with one of the rabbits, after which it was Zoltan’s turn. Finally, he took the Lab out of her cage, taped her jaws shut and let both dogs have a go at her, nothing too severe, just enough for them to draw some blood and get the feel of another body and will, and whether it fought back or stood its ground or rolled over to show its belly didn’t matter. Baiting was just part of the regimen, that was all. After five minutes, he had to wade in and break Zeus’ hold on the animal. “That’s enough for today, Joey — we want to save the Lab for maybe two days before the match, okay?”

Joey was leaning against the plywood sides of the pit, his expression unreadable. There was something in his hair — a twig or a bit of straw the dogs had kicked up. He didn’t say anything in response.

The Lab was trembling — she had the shakes, the way dogs did when they’d had enough and wouldn’t come out of their corner — and one of her ears was pretty well gone, but she’d do for one more go around on Thursday, and then they’d have to answer another ad or two. He bent to the dog, which tried to look up at him out of its good eye but was trembling so hard it couldn’t quite manage to raise its head, clipped a leash to its collar, and led it out of the pit. “Put her back in her cage,” he told Joey, handing him the leash. “And you can feed and water her now. I’ll take care of Zeusy and Zoltan. And if you’re good, maybe later we’ll do a little Chicken McNuggets for lunch, how’s that sound? With that barbecue sauce you like?”

He turned away and started for the house. He hadn’t forgotten the note in his pocket — he was just waiting till a reasonable hour (ten, he was thinking) before he called her, figuring she’d been up even later than he and Steve. Call me, she’d written, and the words had lit him up right there on the street as if he’d been plugged into a socket — it was all he could do to keep himself from lurching back into the hotel to press his face to the glass and mouth his assent. But that would have been uncool, terminally uncool, and he’d just floated on down the street, Steve ribbing him, all the way to the car. The mystery was the reference to the cats and he’d been trying to put that together all morning — obviously he and Joey must have answered an ad from her at some point, but he couldn’t remember when or where, though maybe she did look familiar to him, maybe that was part of it.

He crossed the yard and went in the kitchen door, but Steve was sitting at the table in the breakfast nook, rubbing the bristle of his scalp with one hand and spooning up cornflakes with the other, so Royce stepped out back to make the call on his cell. And then, the way these things do, it all came back to him as he punched in the number: the kittens, a potted bird of paradise on the landing, the condo — or no, duplex — she was looking to buy.

She answered on the first ring. Her voice was cautious, tentative — even if she had caller I.D. and his name came up it wouldn’t have meant anything to her because she didn’t know him yet, did she?

“Hi,” he said, “it’s me, Royce, from last night? You said to call?”

—

She liked his voice on the phone — it was soft and musical, sure of itself but not cocky, not at all. And she liked the fact that he’d been wearing a nice-fitting sport coat the night before and not just a T-shirt or athletic jersey like all the rest of them. They made small talk, Missy brushing up against her leg, a hummingbird at the feeder outside the window like a finger of light. “So,” he said after a moment, “are you still interested in looking at property? No obligation, I mean, and even if you’re not ready to buy yet, it would be a pleasure, a privilege and a pleasure, to just show you what’s out there…” He paused. “And maybe buy you lunch. You up for lunch?”

He worked out of an office on a side street off Ventura, not ten minutes from her apartment. When she pulled up in the parking lot, he was there waiting for her at the door of a long dark bottom-heavy Suburban with tires almost as tall as her Mini. “I know, I know,” he said, “it’s a real gas hog and about as environmentally stupid as you can get, but you’d be surprised at the size of some of the family groups I have to show around… plus, I’m a dog man.”

They were already wheeling out of the lot, a book of listings spread open on the console between them. She saw that he’d circled a number of them in her price range and the neighborhood she was hoping for. “A dog man?”

“A breeder, I mean. And I keep this vehicle spotless, as you can see, right? But I do need the space in back for the dogs sometimes.”

“For shows?”

A wave of the hand. They were out in traffic now and she was seeing him in profile, the sun flaring in his hair. “Oh, no, nothing like that. I’m just a breeder, that’s all.”

“What kind of dogs?”

“The best breed there is,” he said, “the only breed, pit bull terriers,” and if she thought to ask him about that, which she should have, she didn’t get the chance because he was already talking up the first property he’d circled for her and before she knew it they were there and all she could see was possibility.

Over lunch — he took her to an upscale place with a flagstone courtyard where you could sit outside beneath a huge twisting sycamore that must have been a hundred years old and listen to the trickling of the fountain in the corner — they discussed the properties he’d showed her. He was polite and solicitous and he knew everything there was to know about real estate. They shared a bottle of wine, took their time over their food. She kept feeling a mounting excitement — she couldn’t wait to call her mother, though the whole thing was premature, of course, until she knew where she was going to law school, though if it was Pepperdine, the last place, the one in Woodland Hills, would have been perfect. And with the sun sifting through the leaves of the trees and the fountain murmuring and Royce sketching in the details of financing and what he’d bid and how much the attached apartment was bringing in — and more, how he knew a guy who could do maintenance, cheap, and a great painter too, and didn’t she think the living room would look a thousand percent better in maybe a deeper shade of yellow, gold, really, to contrast with the oak beams? — she knew she would get in, she knew it in that moment as certainly as she’d ever known anything in her life.

And when he asked if she wanted to stop by and see his place, she never hesitated. “It’s nothing like what you’re looking for,” he said, as they walked side by side out to the car, “but I just thought you’d like to see it out of curiosity, because it’s a real sweet deal. Detached house, an acre of property, right up in the hills. My roommate and I, we’re co-owners, and we’d be crazy to sell, especially in this market, but if we ever do, both of us could retire, it’s that sweet.”

The thing was — and he was the one to ask — did she want to stop back at the office for her car and follow him? Was she all right to drive? Or did she just want to come with him?

The little decisions, the little moments that can open up forever: she trusted him, liked him, and if she’d had any hesitation three hours ago he’d more than won her over. Still, when he put the question to her, she saw herself in her own car — and she wouldn’t have another glass of wine, though she was sure he was going to offer it when they got there — because in her own car she could say goodbye when she had to and make certain she got to work on time. Which on a Sunday was eight p.m. And it was what, three-thirty now?