Brad Felver - The Dogs of Detroit

So I go to the library one evening, tired of talking around the issue. I’ll make Karen tell me about Lopakhin, why I’m like him. But she’s not there. Must have changed her schedule to eat dinner with you.

I ask a different librarian about Lopakhin. She helps me find this book, The Cherry Orchard , and I read half that damn thing to find out about him. He seems like a superior-type dick who really isn’t. The kind of guy who drinks tea and would never cheer for the Mets because it wouldn’t be proper, even though he wants to. But I guess that’s the point. She likes the refined assholes who get offended by paper napkins and buy new furniture designed to look old. So when I write her a note back, I mention something about how Lopakhin cares about Lyuba, you can tell he does, and isn’t that worth something?

Then Linus’s daughter apparently has a problem with her passport, and so she has to stay in Madrid a bit longer. He wants to know, could I maybe do the same? Maybe an extra week? He could use the help before winter sets in. And he’d be willing to up it to two hundred dollars that extra week.

I tell him sure, I could use the time to set up another place. I don’t say anything about his daughter even though I want to. My role with Linus is pretty limited. I need the money, and he’s offering enough that I keep my mouth shut. I tell him I can stay even longer if he needs it. I look down at his arm, the nasty one with the boils. I don’t mean to, but I can’t help it because I’m sure me being here helps a load, what with that arm being so torn up.

“No,” he says. “Just a week.”

It’s getting colder now, thick frost in the mornings, but we still head out just after sunrise. Most mornings we spend out a ways from the house, splitting firewood. At first he insists on working the chainsaw himself while I drop the logs in the hydraulic splitter and stack them in the truck bed. But I can tell he’s struggling with it. And so I offer to switch spots.

“I can handle a chainsaw just fine,” I say. “Used to all the time. Why not let me take over, give your bad arm a rest.”

He glares at me then, like I just insulted him. “My what?” he says.

“It’s why I’m here, right?” I say.

“Your wife doesn’t like you too much,” he says. “That’s why.” Then he drops the chainsaw at his feet and motions for me to take over.

We go on like this for most of the morning, cutting up the better part of three maples without saying a word. Near noon, when the sun has peaked out just a bit, Linus rolls up his sleeves in a big, dramatic scene, as if to signal he can do whatever he likes now. And both arms are splotched with lesions and open sores and this white sort of mold-looking stuff all around them.

“Stare now,” Linus says. “Get it out of your system.”

And then I don’t know what to do. Do I stare or not? And so I just glance over real quick, as if I see but don’t really care too much one way or the other. I feel Linus staring at my back, but I just keep on cutting away, the sawdust blowing out the back end, clinging to my arm hair and every little crook in my body.

That night we’re eating pork chops and applesauce when Linus tells me he won’t be needing me that extra week after all. His daughter sorted out the passport problem. She’ll be back in a few days. I should pack my things.

I stare at him for a while. He doesn’t look at me, just keeps chomping away at his pork as if he doesn’t care one way or the other.

“I can still help out around here,” I say.

“Did you buy a turquoise rock yet?”

“Linus,” I say.

“I don’t run a boarding house, New York.”

Gus wanders into the kitchen and starts sniffing at my leg. Linus tears off a hunk of meat and holds it out for him. He scratches Gus’s ears, which just burns me up for some reason.

“To be clear,” I say, “you don’t have a daughter, right?”

He stops petting Gus. “To be clear,” he says, “you did drop the hammer on your wife’s cousin, right?”

And I don’t answer that just the way he won’t answer about his made-up daughter. I don’t owe him an explanation just the same as he doesn’t owe me one, I guess. I bet if you were sick the way he is and you needed help, you wouldn’t want anybody heaping their pity on you, either.

So I leave in the morning, and that’s the last I see of Linus Houghton. I go back to the city, but it feels different. Dirtier, more crowded. Without Karen, it feels like I don’t belong so much. Like a party I wasn’t exactly invited to. So I find a place way out by Yonkers. It’s a crummy room in a crummy house, but it works. When I scan the Post each week, I still see Linus’s ad, exactly the same as it was when I first saw it. No yappy dogs . He probably has another guy working with him now, somebody else who can split logs and won’t notice he’s sick for a while.

Eventually I run into you, don’t I, Vick the bald museum docent? Both of you. I’m walking my side streets, nowhere else I need to be. I’m looking for our little hatchback, a note tucked in my pocket apologizing for all the hanging sausages, and there you both are, sitting on a stoop, shoulders touching, smiling. A bottle of wine on the step below you. A log of crappy, pre-packaged salami at your feet. No frowns. Like a postcard you’d buy in a gift shop.

Karen stands when she sees me. “Marty,” she says.

And then you stand up, too, don’t you, Vick? You aren’t so bald as I thought you’d be. It’s mostly just your forehead, and your hair is dark still. You’re thin and have a strong jawline that I can even see through your trimmed beard. Younger than I expected, too. I’m not standing close enough, but I suspect you smell like Sean Connery would.

We stand there, awkward for a minute. Gus runs up the stoop and starts nuzzling on Karen. Then you say, “Martin. Would you care for a glass of Pinot?”

“No,” I say.

“Are you certain?”

“Err, okay. Sure.” Really, I just want him to stop with the talking.

You stand an extra beat, look at us both, then go inside, which seems like a classy move at the time, Vick.

I look at Karen. She seems thinner somehow. More fit. I think she dyed her hair too, some shade of brownish-black. Auburn, maybe.

“You said I was like Lopakhin,” I say, though I’m pretty sure I pronounce it wrong.

“Marty,” she says, “you can’t be here.”

“Relax,” I say. “I’m not going to pelt him with bratwursts.”

“You need to leave,” she says. “Right now.”

But I’m not going anywhere. I came to apologize for some things, get answers to some others. “Look,” I say, “about the meat smell. I’m awful sorry about that. I could get a new job.”

“That’s good,” she says.

“No more hanging sausages from the lamp shades. No more cold meat storage in our bedroom.”

“We don’t have a bedroom,” she says. “The place is already in escrow.”

I guess it’s at this point I realize there’s no getting her back. She sold our house, lives with you, doesn’t think too much about me. Maybe she didn’t squeeze Gus into her note after all.

We stand there quietly. Gus licks Karen’s hands like they’re made out of butter. She won’t look at me. “About your cousin,” I say. “That was inappropriate. I did the wrong thing there.”

Karen just nods, doesn’t look up, but just moves her head a little bit.

You come back out. You’re not holding a wine glass. You stand in the doorway, your arms crossed. You clear your throat. “You did what wrong thing there, Martin?”

I kneel down and reach out for Gus. I don’t look at you or Karen. “You know,” I say.

“I do, Martin. I know what there is to know.”