Michael Rizza - Cartilage and Skin

I waited, but everything was still.

My head throbbed with the pulse of blood as the flesh around my wound seemed to be spastically twitching. The car was champagne colored, and the gray breath that I was exhaling upon its fender made a faint patch of steam.

After a moment, once I began to collect myself and feel reasonably certain that the threat was over, I felt a slight pressure, barely perceptible, dimpling the back hem of my overcoat. All my muscles tensed. Then came the sound of nostrils inhaling, sniffing. The pressure became more real and tangible when a dog’s nose pressed against me, as if the animal wanted to burrow its snout into the cleft between my thighs.

I shrieked like a ten-year-old girl.

Making a sudden dash to get away, I tumbled against the side of the car and landed on my back, on the wet, slushy pavement. For the brief instant I lay there, both dogs gathered around and continued to sniff me. I quickly scrambled to my feet and backed away from the dogs.

“Yah. Yah!” I screamed and made some kind of shooing gesture with my hands. “Yah. Yah!” I repeated, as if I were herding livestock, such as pigs.

The dogs were standing in the center of the road, with their heads slightly cocked, inspecting me with a strange befuddled gaze.

“Yah!” I screamed and retreated another step backward. I was cautious not to run or to show fear because I believed this would have brought them pouncing down upon me.

The scraggly mutt’s ears perked up, and its wide black eyes blinked several times but remained fixed on me.

Still taking its cue from the small dog, the Husky didn’t move until the mutt first advanced. Before I knew how to react, they both walked up and started sniffing me again. I stood frozen as their noses nuzzled and moved over my legs and feet. I feared that if I made any gesture, their interest would take a violent turn. While the large dog seemed particularly preoccupied with the back of my knee, the small one abandoned me, walked to where I had crouched beside the car, and peed on the spot with one quick, short burst. Then it started to bark at the champagne colored car. This aroused the Husky, which straightaway left me to commence sniffing the mutt’s tail end.

I took a few steps backward and then slowly started to turn, to walk away, though still glancing over my shoulder to keep my eyes on them. The more distance I put between us, the faster I walked. I was beginning to feel more comfortable, and just as I started to take stock of my situation — in particular, that I had sprawled out on the fouled street and now the back of me was wet and dirty — all at once, the yapping ceased. I turned around to see the dogs trotting toward me.

“Yah. Yah!” I shouted.

I started to run, trusting that the distance between us gave me the chance to get away.

Without looking back, I ran, my heart thumping in my chest, my wound inflamed and twitching, the flat bottoms of my shoes clapping on the blacktop. Just behind me sounded a deep, solitary bark from the Husky. The horrible knowledge that the dogs were chasing me drove me to run faster. Fleeing wildly down the street, I recalled the sensation of pursuing my urban nymph, Celeste Wilcox, which was the last time I’d exerted myself, and how all the while I’d run after her, I’d dimly sensed in the back of my mind some obligation of a silly appointment. Soon, the Husky was running beside me. It circled around the front of me, only to reappear on my side again. The mutt kept pace, its tiny legs flickering at an incredible speed beneath its body, its head turned toward me, and the tip of its tongue hanging out of the corner of its mouth. When I slowed down to a walk, the dogs followed suit. My breathing was hard and painful. My face burned flush, and my underclothes were damp with perspiration. The dogs didn’t appear to be affected at all.

I continued to walk, trying to ignore them, but they stayed with me. They occasionally moved in front of me, but always dropped back beside me again. I headed toward the curb, and then the three of us walked down the sidewalk together. When we passed people, they didn’t take any special notice of us. I suspected that pedestrians would have been cautious, if not fearful, of the dogs, if the animals weren’t walking so close to my heels. I briefly wished for my movie theatre flashlight again, not so much to signal my distress as to dazzle their vision, as if to say, “Can’t you see what is going on here? Can’t you see?” After a while, it seemed as though I were not so much leading the animals as I were a member of a motley pack.

Shortly, I came to the address that the social worker had given me, and it didn’t appear to be a clinic at all. It was a narrow building. Drab yellow stucco covered the walls of the ground floor, but brick, painted the same ugly color, went up the rest of the way for several stories. There was a single storefront window that displayed, on a series of carpeted plateaus, foam heads with long necks. All the heads lacked mouths, noses, and ears, and had slight impressions where eyes should have been. Most of them were a dark, rich color: green, purple, and black. One, however, was a disturbing pink. For some reason, it faced the wall, adorned with long, straight turquoise hair. In fact, all the heads had hair.

“A wig shop,” I said, looking down at the dogs, as if explaining to them.

Of course, this couldn’t have been the place.

But then, I saw where I had to go. There was a glass door. When I looked through it, I was able to read a list of names with room numbers posted on the wall. A staircase led upward, not only to the offices of family counselors but also to a law firm and a specialist who fitted people with hearing devices. Although I was uncertain how the system worked, I suspected that the tree-shaped woman must have given up working for the state and joined a private practice. If this were the case, then she’d somehow retained her treatment of the boy, who was supposed to be government property.

Without bothering to look at my watch, I knew I had time before my appointment. I abandoned the idea of sitting down and drinking a cup of coffee. I needed to find somewhere to dry myself off and clean up. Yet, despite the wound on my head, my sweaty underwear, and my soiled overcoat, I felt somewhat carefree, a bit indifferent to how my appearance might be assessed by the social worker. The problem of the boy was somewhere beneath me. The woman would ask me a few questions; I would nod, express my sympathy, but ultimately go home and slip myself back into my uneventful life. The world was going to continue to rotate, and the same stars were going to dot the same night sky. It didn’t matter if I lived the life that I’d thus far established or if I went out and started a new one. Of course, deep down, I knew all along that I was going to run away. The imminent threat of Claudia’s private pervert was my catalyst. I had no reason ever to meet the man, let alone to confront him in a final showdown. I had nothing to prove to anyone, no score to settle, no relationship to salvage. The prospect of running away put me at ease. Not only were all my burdens going to be lifted from me, but also my future appointment with the social worker now seemed drained of significance. I had no reason to feel intimidation, anger, or anything else.

And so, it was settled: For yet another time in my life, I was going to fix my problems by fleeing from them. Although I tried to convince myself that this was the best solution, part of me knew that I was simply rationalizing.

Suddenly, I realized that I was walking alone. My fleeting membership among the stray dogs had ended; our pack had disbanded as quickly as it had been formed, lasting no more than a few moments. I turned around to see that they were across the street from the wig shop, rooting and pawing for something beneath a squat, blue mailbox.