Canine Christmas (21 page)

“You ought to watch yourself,” she said to Lucy.

“I ought to find someplace else to buy cocaine,” Lucy said. “I would find someplace else to buy cocaine if I got enough time to go looking. If Dan would stay the hell out of my things.”

“You could come and visit and bring the dog,” Carolanne said.

Lucy was already out the door and into the hall. Carolanne heard her steps on the stairs, and Sammy's steps, too. When Lucy got to the ground floor, the door to Miguel's apartment opened, and there was laughter. Carolanne could picture them there, watching Lucy in her coat and boots and rings, watching Lucy's dog.

Years ago, back when they were all growing up together, Lucy Blackthorne had started a club that girls could only belong to if they lived on the bottom floor. They were all about five years old at the time, and the rule kept out nobody on the street but Carolanne herself.

“I wish you wouldn't talk to me in the hall,” Lucy had said, when they were in junior high school together. “People will think that you and I are friends.”

It was three days later when Carolanne saw the story in the
Waterbury Republican
, a small story with a big picture tucked into a corner on the page where the wedding announcements were. Carolanne almost never read the paper, but she had it that day, because she had needed it for cover. She had gone to the magazine rack at the Quik Stop and bought every magazine they had that was about dogs. She hadn't had time to look through them to make sure, and so she had taken them just in case. Then she had picked up the newspaper and put it on the top of the pile, to make it look as if she were just picking up a few things to read, to make it not so obvious that she cared about a dog.

It had been bad, really, since Lucy left this time. Carolanne hadn't been able to sleep for long, and when she did manage to knock off for a few minutes she dreamed too much. She dreamed of waking up and finding Sammy lying across her legs. She dreamed of Lucy dead on the sidewalk outside, her head smashed in, her body riddled with bullets, the trash left over when a drug deal went wrong. Then she would get up and go to the window and look out, willing the dog to come to her, willing him to want to be with her more than he wanted to be wherever Lucy was. He could come to work with her in the evenings and wait on the sidewalk outside until she was finished. She could take him farther up the hill to the little park where the policeman sat, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, to make sure nobody shot up.

The story in the
Waterbury Republican
was about a party given for a charity that Carolanne had never heard of. The picture showed Lucy with a tall, thin man in a tuxedo with a flower in his buttonhole.
Lucy Blackthorne Holt
, the caption read,
event cochair, with her husband, Dr. Daniel Holt.

Carolanne held the picture up to the light, but there was nothing else to see. The dog was not with them. The people in the background were no one she had ever seen. She put the paper down on the table again. When they had all been in high school, there had been pictures like this one, in the school newspaper, of the people who ran the Valentine's dance and the prom.

The telephone book was under a blue plastic vase on one of the kitchen counters. Carolanne got it and opened it on the kitchen table. The names were set out under each separate town, instead of being all blended in together. She tried Waterbury and got nothing. She tried Watertown and got nothing still. She thought about Sammy stretched out on her couch while Lucy did lines and wished she had him here, now, where she could touch him with her hands, where he could move under them.

She found the listing finally under Woodbury, which made sense. It was the most expensive town this phone book covered. She passed over the listing for Holt, Dr. Daniel, and concentrated on the one that said Holt, L. Dr. Daniel would be a doctor's office. She got a piece of paper and wrote down the information: the number, the address. The address would be no use to her. She couldn't drive, and even if she could have driven she couldn't have afforded to buy a car. She read the number over four or five times, until she had it memorized, and then she got her coat.

It was very late now, nearly midnight, and so cold on the street that once she got outside she had trouble catching her breath. There were lights on in all the houses around her. There were parties going on everywhere. She checked her pocketbook one more time, to make sure she had enough change, and then headed down the hill.

“Sammy,” she said, out loud, when she was far enough away from people so that nobody could hear her. The word echoed in the dark. The side streets seemed to buzz. Her coat was useless.

“I could keep him here with me,” she said, out loud again, but by then it didn't matter. She was at East Main. The street was deserted. She turned right and headed toward the center of town, where the bars would be open, where there would be telephones.

She found a phone in a place called Happy Acres. It was a place with only one small window, and that taken up by a blinking sign for Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. The telephones were in the back, near the rest rooms. The rest rooms smelled of urine and something worse. The bar had nothing but men in it. They all looked older than they should have. Carolanne put the money in the slot and dialed the number she had memorized. If she got an answering machine, she thought she would die. She had started to shake, the way cokeheads shook. She was so tense, she felt as if every muscle in her body was locked tight.

If Lucy came back to the street—what? Carolanne had her eyes closed. Visions were dancing on the backs of her eyelids. Sammy was lying on the couch in her apartment, on the bed, under the kitchen table. She never went out of the apartment at all anymore. She had too much to do.

“Lucy,” a man's voice said in her ear, making her jump. “You've got a breather. On your private line.”

“Hang the hell up,” Lucy said.

The phone went to dial tone in Carolanne's ear. She looked at it in her hand, feeling stupid. Then she put it back in its cradle and stood up.

If Lucy came back to the street, Miguel would jump her. If Lucy came back to the street, Sammy would bounce and bark on Carolanne's front porch. If Lucy came back to the street, the coke she bought would be too pure and too perfect and she would end up dead in Carolanne's kitchen, her body as stiff as the bodies of the victims in antidrug television commercials.

The Happy Acres was decorated to death for Christmas, with plastic Santa Claus heads hung in clusters of three and four on every wall, but Carolanne didn't see any of it.

After that, for a week, Carolanne called Lucy at home. She kept heavy knots of change in her purse and in the pockets of her coat. She stopped at pay phones all along her route to work and back. Sometimes the phone rang and rang and nobody picked it up. Sometimes there was an answering machine, with a man's voice on the tape that Carolanne didn't believe belonged to Daniel Holt. Sometimes Lucy picked up herself. When that happened, Carolanne would sit very still, holding her breath if she could, while Lucy sounded more and more annoyed. What Carolanne really wanted was the sound of Sammy barking, but she never got it. It was as if there was no dog on the other end of that line. It was as if Sammy had died.

By then, it was nearly Christmas Eve. Even Waterbury had begun to look crowded. Nights at the Quik Stop had begun to feel longer and longer. The Powerball jackpot was up and everybody wanted to buy tickets in time for the holiday, as if that would bring them luck. Carolanne worked through a thick fog of fear. What if Sammy really was dead? What if Lucy had finally gotten so tired of him that she had gotten rid of him, taken him to the pound, driven him out into the country and dumped him on a dirt road? There was so much that could happen to a dog, especially a dog like this one. If Daniel Holt liked Sammy as little as Lucy did, he might have had Sammy put to sleep.

On Christmas Eve, there was a van going around the city, blaring out Christmas carols through a loudspeaker on its roof. Going home, Carolanne heard “Deck the Halls” and “The First Noel.” The doors of Sacred Heart Church were propped open. People were coming for midnight Mass. Carolanne thought about going up there to say a prayer for Sammy, but she was due to go to Mass at ten the next morning, with the rest of the people who would be at the parish party, and she didn't want to go now. She thought she should have done something about her apartment. She could have put up a small tree, if she had wanted to. She could have stenciled her windows to look as if they were filled with snowflakes.

She was just turning up the hill when the car pulled up to the curb beside her. She felt it coming in behind her and froze. Men offered her dope from cars, sometimes. Men offered her money for sex, too, because some men liked to have sex with heavy women. It made them feel they were having sex with their mothers.

Carolanne made herself think about Sammy and stare straight ahead. She tried to move faster, although the hill was steep and she always had a hard time climbing it. Then the door of the car opened and Lucy's voice said, “Carolanne. Carolanne, for Christ's sake. Help me out.”

It was the Mercedes, the car that Miguel was so interested in. Sammy was inside it, in the backseat, sitting straight up, looking alert.

“Jesus Christ,” Lucy said. She looked like she had been sweating for hours, maybe days. She was drenched and dark.

If Lucy came back to the street, she might die of withdrawal convulsions. If Lucy came back to the street, somebody might lure her into an alley. If Lucy came back to the street …

Carolanne clenched her fists in the pockets of her coat. She couldn't leap at the car. She couldn't take Sammy out of there just because she wanted to.

“Lucy,” she said.

Lucy came up close. Her breathing was coming too fast and too hard. “He's been keeping me a goddamned prisoner, that's what he's been doing. He's insane. Did I tell you my husband was insane?”

“He took your stuff again,” Carolanne said.

“He took my
money
. I don't have any goddamned
money
. He threw away my ATM card.”

Sammy had started to move in the back of the car. He was up on his feet and pacing across the seat. He was wagging his tail.

“You ought to let the dog out,” Carolanne said. “You're making him crazy.”

Lucy rubbed her hands against her arms. Carolanne thought she hadn't heard, about the dog. Lucy didn't seem able to hear much of anything. The dog was nearly leaping now, moving as much as he could in that small space. Carolanne wanted to rescue him.

“Wait a minute,” Lucy said.

She went to the car and opened the back door. Sammy came barreling out, barking in high-pitched squeals. Carolanne reached out for him and he came to her.

“I've got to get some coke,” Lucy said. “I don't have any money and I've got to get some coke. Now. Right away.”

If Lucy came back to the street
, Carolanne thought again—and then it all seemed perfectly clear—what she had to do, what would have to happen. Sammy was nuzzling the palm of her hand with his nose. He was begging for her attention.

Far up on the hill, the parties were still going on. Miguel had had some friends in earlier in the evening. They would still be there, lying on the floor of his living room in the middle of ancient boxes from McDon-ald's and Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken. The Christmas lights were on on Carolanne's porch. She'd turned them on, hours ago, before she'd gone to work.

“All right,” she said, turning away from Lucy. “Come up the hill.”

“I've got to move the car,” Lucy said.

Lucy went back to the car and got inside. Sammy stayed with Carolanne on the pavement. Maybe the easiest thing would be to run, right now, while Lucy was putting the car out of the way on a side street, with all the other cars parked so that people could go to Mass. That would be easier than a knife or a push off the porch onto the pavement. The only problem was that Lucy knew where she lived. Lucy could come after her. People always wanted to keep what they owned, even if they didn't like it very much.

Carolanne bent down and stroked Sammy's long back, making him whimper. Lucy came back around the corner, on foot now, without the car. She looked impossibly tall in her long coat. She looked impossibly frightened. Carolanne imagined her dead, the way she had for so many nights now, the way she had when they were all back in high school. There had been times, back then, when she had wanted to take Lucy Black-thorne's head and smash it into a wall, into a gutter, into something hard and unyielding and final, so that it would stay smashed forever.

The dog pranced to Lucy and back to Carolanne again.

Lucy said, “We've got to hurry.”

In the end, they went to Carolanne's apartment, because she couldn't think of anyplace else for them to go. They went past Miguel's front door and listened to the noises coming from the living room. The stereo was turned up high and pumping out some sort of music that seemed to be all bass. Carolanne had fifty-five dollars in the back of her wallet, saved up so that she could buy a parka in the January sales, but she knew she wasn't going to use it buying cocaine from Miguel to cure Lucy's stress. The last thing she wanted was Lucy cooled out and straightened out, Lucy able to think. Sammy was prancing and pawing. He recognized this place. He wanted to lie on the couch. Lucy's hair was as thick with sweat as if she'd packed it with bacon fat.

“Sit here,” Carolanne said, putting Lucy in the living room.

“I'd rather walk,” Lucy said.

Carolanne shrugged and went into the bathroom. She was going to have to think of something to do with the body. She could push it over the porch, but that would be hard. It would be obvious, too. Everybody on the street would see it. The police would come. She got a small plastic bottle of Bufferin out of the medicine cabinet and took out six pills. She dumped out the contents of a Baggie full of cotton swabs and put the pills inside it. If you crushed Bufferin, it looked just like cocaine. Miguel and his friends did that sometimes to cut the stuff they had, or else they sold Bufferin straight, to idiots from the suburbs, when they were short of cash.