Alix Ohlin - Babylon and Other Stories

The lobby was filled with prostitutes and petty criminals and drunk drivers in to pay their fines, still reeling and wasted from the look of it. Everybody's eyes were red and their clothing disheveled and too bright. It seemed natural that the three of us, being the only more or less normal people, would stick together. We sat together on a bench, and the girl looked at me and said evenly, “You are an ugly woman.”

“Mireille, parles pas comme ça,” Jean-Michel said. He picked her up and sat her in his lap, his long fingers at her hips. His shirtsleeves were rolled up to his elbows, revealing the fine dark hairs on his forearms, and I wanted to touch them, but didn't. “How is your leg?” he said.

“It's okay.”

“My sister-in-law, she is very angry.”

“Yeah, she looked pretty angry in there,” I said.

Jean-Michel shook his head. “She hires this lawyer. But he is not a trial lawyer. He is an immigrant lawyer who helped her and my brother come into this country. He does not know anything about dangerous dogs.”

“I see,” I said.

“She also hired an expert witness. She will be here shortly.”

“What kind of expert witness?”

“A dog psychologist.”

“You're kidding,” I said.

Jean-Michel laughed. “I wish, but no,” he said. “She is going to testify that Sweetpea is not really a dangerous dog, only bored, and that with more activities she will not bite anybody ever again. My sister-in-law is going to arrange these activities.”

“Activities?” I said. “Like Scrabble?”

He shrugged. “I don't know,” he said.

In his lap, Mireille squirmed in my direction and scrunched up her face. “Is your dog dead?” she asked me.

“Blister? No, he's doing fine.”

“Too bad,” she said.

Jean-Michel apologized for his niece's behavior, then scooped her up and walked over to the other side of the room. It looked like he was giving her a good talking-to, which she certainly deserved. The door to the trial room opened and his sister-in-law came out, looking as if she'd like to hang me upside down by my toenails. The bailiff called my name.

I was put under oath and the animal-control officer asked me to explain, as simply as I could, what happened, which I did; then he asked me to show my leg to the court, and I did that, too. The scar was red and raised. “Ouch,” the judge said. Then the immigration lawyer stood up. He was a mournful, thin man, wearing a pink shirt and an ugly tie. It made me feel sorry for the Chevaliers, that this was the best lawyer they could find to protect their dog.

“Ms. Grunwald, will you look at these two pictures for me?” he said. He held two color photographs in front of my face; one was of Sweetpea, the other of a dog I didn't know, around the same size and color. “Can you tell me which of these dogs attacked you?”

I pointed at Sweetpea.

“Is it possible you're confused? These dogs look quite alike, and one of them is Sweetpea, and the other dog lives two doors down.”

I shook my head, and he looked disappointed. I saw that he'd hoped to stymie me with this line of questioning.

“Give your responses out loud, please,” the judge said.

“That's Sweetpea on the left.”

The lawyer put his photographs back on the table, next to his fedora. He looked defeated. Was that his best hope, the trick with the dog photos? It was pathetic.

“Ms. Grunwald, have the Chevaliers paid all your medical expenses and those of your dog?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you really think they deserve further punishment?”

“Objection!” the animal-control officer said, and the judge rolled her eyes.

I leaned forward and looked into his mournful face. “No,” I said.

As I left the room I saw the dog psychologist, a portly middle-aged woman in a green dress. All her accessories were canine: dog-shaped earrings, dog-tag necklace, a brooch in the shape of a bone. She was consulting some notes in a nervous manner. I looked over at Jean-Michel and shrugged to indicate, I did the best I could. He smiled, and driving home I kept thinking about that smile.

That evening, at work, I turned my thoughts over in my mind and scrutinized them, the same way I checked the chips for defects. Ellen Grunwald, I asked myself, can you love a man you don't even know? Do you think you could live with yourself if you had an affair? Would you ever leave Phil and go live with Jean-Michel in the house with the brother and sister-in-law and the horrible niece and the dog with jaws like a dinosaur's? To each of these questions the answer was no. And yet.

At breakfast the next day, Phil asked how the trial had gone, and I said I didn't know because I'd left after giving my testimony. I told him about the dog psychologist, though, and he laughed, and for a second I forgot about Jean-Michel altogether and laughed with him. Then he stood up and took his cereal bowl to the sink and said, “Well, let's hope those people pay.”

“They aren't really all that bad,” I said. “I mean, they're just people.”

Phil just stared me for a second. “You're not serious,” he said, and straightened his tie. “Blister still has scabs.”

“They're almost gone. He doesn't even remember it ever happened.”

Phil put on his suit jacket and shook his head. “What are you talking about? Whose side are you on, anyway?”

“You're right,” I said quickly. “You're right.”

But that afternoon, walking Blister, I went by Jean-Michel's house and he came outside right away, as if we'd planned it. Without speaking, we headed off in the direction of the park, our faces harassed by the cold spring wind. Blister licked Jean-Michel's gloved hand and nosed around his pants pockets for treats. Jean-Michel was wearing that same red Gore-Tex jacket, but the hood was down. His lips were chapped.

At the park I took Blister off the leash, and he bounded off to say hello to Chekhov. “So, what happened at the trial?”

“The judge said that she would waive the insurance requirement, since we had done so much to rectify the situation,” he said. “But the dangerous-dog designation stays. She said, ‘the law is the law.’ ”

“Well, that's true, isn't it?” I said.

Jean-Michel just looked at me. “Let's talk about something else,” he suggested in his soft voice. “Tell me something about yourself that has nothing to do with dogs.”

We sat down on a bench, watching the dogs wag their tails and sniff each other's butts and bark, and I told Jean-Michel about my job in the clean room: how the pink and blue geometry on the surface of chips reminded me of Navajo weavings; and about the sound of the air-filtration system in the middle of the night, how its mechanism was like the hushed breath of the sleeping world, which only I was awake to hear; and about how slowly I had to walk, like a person on the moon. He watched my face and nodded, and I felt everything I knew turn upside down. I didn't want time to pass but I couldn't stop it, and eventually I had to go to work. I called Blister and put him back on the leash. As I was leaving the park, Jean-Michel called out. I turned.

“I said, thank you for being kind, Ellen,” he said. His voice made my name sound like two separate words.

I got off work at four a.m. and there he was in the parking lot, leaning against his car, still wearing the red Gore-Tex. It really was a stupid-looking jacket. I was overjoyed to see him, and scared, too. I thought, This is really going to happen. I was surrendering to the inevitable. I walked right up to him, and he looked as if he wanted to take me in his arms but couldn't. I'd seen that look before, on the Dutchman, when I told him I was engaged.

“You aren't wearing your suit,” he said, gesturing up and down.