Canine Christmas (20 page)

Lucy brushed hair off her face and blinked. “I know you,” she said. “Don't I know you? It's Carol Something.”

“Carolanne Tierney,” Carolanne said. Her voice came out in a high squeak, she didn't know why. She leaned over and stroked the dog on its head. He seemed to like it.

Lucy took the clear plastic bag Miguel was holding out to her and stuffed it into her big leather shoulder bag. Carolanne knew what they called those shoulder bags, because they sold them in the mall and she had gone to look at them: Coach. Lucy had a pair of gloves that were made of leather, too, stuffed into the pockets of her coat. Carolanne stroked the dog again.

“You can come upstairs if you want,” she said finally. “To lay out some lines, I mean. If you need to.”

“Upstairs?”

“My apartment is upstairs. You've been there. When we were children.”

Lucy swivelled around on the heels of her boots again. She took in the broken boards on the porch and the peeling paint on the porch ceiling and the people in the street. The men wore clothes that looked as if they had been dirty for years. The women wore bright colored Spandex everything, tight stretchy things in lemon yellow and lime green. Lucy rubbed the side of her face again and then started to bite her nails, viciously, as if she didn't care if she made herself bleed.

“You'd feel better if you did a few lines,” Carolanne said. “It's just up the stairs. You could bring the dog.”

“I don't understand how you can live like this,” Lucy said. “White people aren't supposed to live like this.”

Carolanne wanted to say that she knew a lot of white people who lived like this, but instead she stood back, and held open the door, and watched the dog. It was glad to be moving again, even if it was moving into a dark and claustrophobic house. Carolanne wondered why she had never noticed before how narrow the stairways were.

“Christ,” Lucy said. “Were these houses this cramped when we were all growing up?”

The dog found a place on the couch as soon as they got into Carolanne's apartment. Lucy tried to make him get off and sit on the floor, but Carolanne stopped her. She liked the look of the dog where it was, comfortable and happy, in a way she couldn't remember anyone ever being comfortable and happy inside the walls of this apartment. She sat Lucy down at the table and got her best hand mirror out from the high shelf in the bathroom. She offered coffee or tea or Coca-Cola and was refused.

She doesn't want to drink out of any of my glasses
, Carolanne thought, and then she sat down on the couch next to the dog to see what it would do. It pressed its nose into the palm of her hand and whimpered. It was even more beautiful close-up than it had been far away from her on the street. When she stroked it, it moved under her hand. When she put her face close to it, it felt as warm as the wall near the radiator when the heat was on.

Lucy had laid out her lines on the mirror. Her hands were shaking. Her whole body was tense. She looked through her big bag for a straw and came up with the stub of one. It was a good thing, because for cocaine you needed those thin cocktail straws, and Carolanne didn't have any.

“I can't believe I get like this,” Lucy said. “It's all Dan's fault. Dan and his vacations. If there's someplace to score a little coke on Aruba, I didn't find it.”

There was probably someplace to score a little coke on Aruba. Carolanne thought there was probably someplace to score a little coke in a convent, if you really wanted it badly enough. She wondered if Lucy's husband had been watching her, if everybody Lucy lived with knew she was like this. There was something about the idea that was very satisfying.

Lucy stuck the straw up her nose and inhaled. Then she stuck the straw up her other nostril and inhaled again. Almost instantly, she was both calmer and more hyper at the same time.

“Oh, thank God,” she said. “I couldn't think straight. I've been going nuts all morning.”

“I think you're supposed to watch it when it starts to make you nuts.”

“Probably.” Lucy had laid out one more line. She sucked half of it into each nostril and stood up. She now seemed not only alert but formidable, as if all her systems had suddenly switched on, as if she were a super robot in a late night science-fiction movie.

“Jesus,” she said, walking around the kitchen.

Carolanne rubbed her hand into the dog's fur. It turned and shimmied at her touch.

“Is it a girl dog or a boy dog?” she asked Lucy.

“It's a boy dog. It's a Samoyed. We call him Sammy.”

“Is Samoyed a breed?”

“Of course it's a breed.”

“I didn't know,” Carolanne said. “I don't know anything about dogs. I don't even know anybody who has a dog.”

“It's a pain in the ass,” Lucy said. “It's got to be brushed every day. And washed once a week. And it sheds everywhere. You have no idea.”

“It's beautiful.”

“It's useless as a guard dog. That's what I wanted him for. Today. Coming here. But they don't guard. They like people too much. Even bad people.”

“Right,” Carolanne said.

Lucy went back to the table and began to put away her cocaine things. She wet her finger and ran it over the surface of Carolanne's mirror, making sure to get the powder up. She checked twice that the clear plastic bag was securely closed, and then put it in her makeup bag just in case.

“I have to get out of here,” she said. “Thank you for letting me use your kitchen. It really helped.”

“You can use it any time. When you come back. You can bring the dog.”

“I won't be back,” Lucy said.

She heaved the big bag up on her shoulder and called to the dog. The dog leaped off the couch and ran to her, wagging its tail furiously, letting out little barks.
Sammy
, Carolanne thought, and then wondered why Lucy didn't seem to like him much. To Carolanne, he was a kind of miracle. She'd had no idea that animals like this existed in the real world.

Lucy went out into Carolanne's living room and to the front door. She went out the front door and into the hall. The hall was cramped and dark and smelled funny. The walls always seemed to be coated with some kind of grease.

“I wish I could buy enough to last me a year,” Lucy said, “but you can't do that anymore. You can't have a ton of it. If you get caught they think you're trying to sell.”

“Right,” Carolanne said.

Lucy made her way down the stairs, very carefully, holding onto the walls. When they got to the first floor foyer she looked around again, at the rickety table where the junk mail was, at the strips torn out of the wallpaper over the mailboxes, at the narrow stained glass windows on either side of the front door. The door to the first floor apartment opened and Miguel came out. Lucy didn't look at him. She went out into the cold and down the front porch steps.

“Thanks again,” she said, not quite over her shoulder, not quite looking back. She was headed down the hill toward East Main Street with the dog at her side, moving so fast she might have been running, except for the heels.

“I'd like to get that one at night,” Miguel said. “What do you think?”

“I like the dog,” Carolanne said.

“A dog for a dog,” Miguel said. “You could keep the dog. Give me the woman. In the dark. Where I can do what I want and nobody would give a shit if she screamed her goddamned head off.”

“You shouldn't swear at Christmastime,” Carolanne said.

Miguel laughed a little. He turned around and went back into the house. Carolanne watched the dog going down the hill, and the glint that the sun made on Lucy Blackthorne's rings. It would be Lucy Blackthorne Somebody Else now. She would have a married name. Carolanne didn't know why that seemed to be important.

The first time Lucy came back it was a Saturday morning again, only a week later, and Carolanne wasn't even home. She had gone down the hill and across East Main to the new mall, which had been built right in the center of town, so that people could walk to it. She could walk to the place she worked, too—it was called the Quik Stop—but she never went there unless she had to be there. She liked the mall because there was a food court where she could get things like Burger King and Taco Bell, that didn't cost too much money. She liked it, too, because there were so many Christmas decorations up—tinsel and bells, crepe paper and Santa's elves made out of felt. Most of the rest of Waterbury seemed to be intent on pretending that Christmas wasn't happening at all.

Coming home, with the dark just starting, Carolanne stopped at Sacred Heart church and went inside. She knelt down in a pew in the back and said the three prayers she knew by heart, the Lord's Prayer, the Hail Mary, and the Act of Contrition. She told herself she should go to Confession, because it had been months, but there was no priest in the confessional and she didn't want to go anyway. She prayed that somebody would give her a big, white dog, a beautiful dog, as a Christmas present, and then knew that it wouldn't happen. The Christmas presents the parish gave were always the same. Middle-aged men got gloves. Middle-aged women got soap scented to smell like peaches.

Coming up the hill, it was the dog she saw first, again. Sammy was sitting on her own front porch, thumping his tail against the boards. He always looked as if he were smiling, this dog. Carolanne hadn't known that dogs could look as if they could smile.

When she got closer, she saw Lucy, standing on the porch with her hands in the pockets of her camel's hair coat.

“I'm just saying we should meet somewhere else,” Lucy was saying. “Somewhere I could bring the car. I hate walking up this hill.”

“Bring the car here. We got space on the street to park the car,” Miguel told her.

Lucy let out a long stream of white air. It was cold enough to see your breath. Carolanne was shivering.

“I can't bring the car here,” Lucy said. “I can't leave a Mercedes parked on this street. It would get stolen. You know it would.”

“I bet you have insurance. Why do you care if it gets stolen?”

“I care about the report I'd have to make to the police. What do you think I would be able to tell my husband? That I came up here to shop?”

“Tell him you came up here to see Carolanne,” Miguel said. “You and Carolanne are lifelong buddies.”

Lucy turned on the step. She hadn't noticed that anybody was coming, although Sammy had. Sammy noticed everything and everyone. Lucy took her hands out of her coat.

“Oh, thank God,” she said. “You're back. I knocked on your door and there wasn't any answer.”

“I need two hundred fifty dollars,” Miguel said.

Lucy reached into her bag and came out with an oversized wallet. It had a checkbook inside it as well as places for money and credit cards. There were a lot of credit cards. Carolanne couldn't imagine why anybody would need that many. Lucy handed the money over and took the clear plastic bag.

“I can't bring the car onto this street,” she said again.

Then she went through the front door and up the stairs, toward Carolanne's apartment, without waiting to see if she would be asked.

“Stick her good,” Miguel said in a half whisper, his lips right at Carolanne's ear. And then he laughed.

In Carolanne's apartment, the dog went straight to the couch and Lucy went straight to the kitchen table. This time she was angry more than she was jumpy. She was flying on hostility the way cokeheads sometimes got, and that meant she was already high. Carolanne got the mirror out and sat down on the couch next to the dog. The dog whimpered and nuzzled at her. It was insane how good that felt. She was an ugly woman, she knew that. She'd never had much in the way of physical contact of any kind, although she'd lost her virginity in high school, the way everybody did, because at that age you could always find somebody who wanted to do it. She remembered almost nothing about that incident, except that it had taken place under the bleachers on the football field in the chilly semi-frost of late fall, and the boy had been almost as fat as she was. That, and that his name was Jacky. Jacky had written her name up on the mirror in the boys' room when it was over, but nobody else had ever bothered to call.

Lucy sucked a line into her nose and then closed her eyes and leaned her head back. “I can't believe he really did it. I can't believe it,” she said.

“Who did what?” Carolanne said.

“My husband. That's who. He took most of that bag I bought last week and put it down the garbage disposal. The garbage disposal, for Christ's sake.”

“Why?”

“Because he's a pain in the ass,” Lucy said. “Because he doesn't do anything and never did. Doesn't smoke. Doesn't drink. Doesn't snort. Doesn't do anything. Sometimes I want to burn down the house to see what he does when it's gone.”

“Mostly I thought people like you didn't snort to begin with,” Carolanne said, although as soon as she said it she knew it was a lie. Everybody did everything. You saw it every day. She put her head down into Sammy's belly and rubbed her face against his fur. He smelled like shampoo and violets.

“I can't focus when I don't have cocaine,” Lucy said. “I never could. It used to drive me crazy. I could never get anything done.”

“I wish I had a dog like this,” Carolanne said.

Lucy got up and started putting things back into her bag. “I'm better with cocaine,” she said. “I've always been better with cocaine. I'm even better in bed. You'd think he would appreciate it.”

“You don't have to go right away,” Carolanne said.

“Your friend downstairs is an asshole,” Lucy said. “I can't bring the car into this neighborhood. If it got stolen I'd be stuck. I'd never be able to explain what I was doing here. He'd know in a shot.”

“Miguel wants to jump you,” Carolanne said. “Did you know that? Maybe you should bring the car. It could be a kind of insurance.”

“I can't tell Dan I was coming here to see you,” Lucy said. “He'd know it was a lie. Or he'd think you were dealing.”

Sammy got up off the couch and headed for Carol-anne's front door. Carolanne stayed on the couch this time, not wanting to see them both out. She could hear the edge of anger in Miguel's voice, even if Lucy couldn't. She knew what they were like down there, and what they wanted.