Extreme Elvin (17 page)

“Con-cen-trate,” she said, leaning close, leaning close.

Okay! I will! I will concentrate!

On what? On what, was I concentrating? Help.

I could not bear another second of this, stupid words and stupid acts coming to mind in a flood now as my self-destruct impulses started pumping extra juice. So I half dove at the garage door, and yanked it skyward so hard that the groaning old croaker shot up all the way, exerted maximum pressure on its springwork, then rebounded hard, zooming back and crashing right back down at our feet. The dogs yelped and squealed and ran away inside.

“Easy there, butch,” Barbara said.

“I’m really strong,” I babbled. What a dink.

Please, Elvin, I pleaded with myself. Shut up and get out of the way, for the love of god, get out of the way...

I gripped the handle of the garage door and raised it, easy this time. Worked out okay.

We went to the puppies, who were cowering as far from the door as possible. When they saw Barbara, they seemed to relax a bit, and Tag led the way to her: “This one is mine,” she said, scooping him up and cuddling him.

I was staring again, and my stomach was jumping. I started feeling like I was going to lose whatever food I had managed to put down at dinner, right here on the dogs. Not that anybody would notice.

“So which ones do we give away?” she asked, perusing the crowd.

“All of them?”

“Listen, I can only help you so much. I’m taking one. Two dinner guests. That’s three puppies, leaving you with four. That’s pretty good.”

“What about the mother?”

“Sorry, that one was your own mistake.”

Grog looked up at me now, head tilted, one eye closed as if he was trying to understand what was being said.

“It was
not
my mistake. It was an accident. It was a plot. It was my mother, and Mikie...”

And it all came rushing back to me, how Mikie had convinced my mother that I actually wanted this dog instead of the dirty-minded crap-throwing feces rhesus monkey that would have been by now like a new close friend, replacing Frankie, maybe, a lot of the same qualities only less complicated. And not a
lot
less complicated either...

“Elvin?”

“That one right there,” I said, with new determination. “That’s Mikie’s dog.” I pointed to Tortellini, the dog with the circular orange face fronting the olive head, eyes permanently rolled skyward, who ran into walls time after time, as if to hone his already precious look. “Frankie gets Canelloni,” the tubular one that looked like a dachshund with a sheepdog’s coat. Once we’d scooped them up, and slammed the garage door behind us, I started hurrying. Took three steps at a trot, then stopped short.

Wait a minute. Now I knew what I was supposed to be concentrating on earlier.

“What?” Barbara asked.

I leaned forward, squashing the three little beasties between us, though they were good and simple enough not to say anything about it. With the face part of me, I kind of lurched toward Barbara’s face.

“What?” she asked again, pulling back just enough, from the neck up. I thought the
what
part of it should have been pretty obvious. And she seemed willing before. But maybe my approach was sort of less than appetizing.

Barbara shook her head no. I was still close enough that when she did it the curlicues that fell around the sides and the front of her face just lightly swept my face. So that even though it was no, it might as well have been yes, the way it made me feel.

“Sorry,” I said, sorry and satisfied. Doing it all wrong and feelin’ all right.

I headed up the driveway, not toward the back door from where we came, but toward the front.

“What are you doing?” she asked, but followed.

“I know my buddies,” I said. “And they know me.”

“Whatever that means,” Barbara said.

But as soon as we turned the corner from the driveway to the sidewalk that ran past the front of my house, Barbara understood.

The two of them, Mikie and Frankie, were slithering out, whispering thank-yous to my mother and telling her not to bother disturbing me and Barbara.

So we crept along the five-foot chain-link fence that fronted my yard, and intercepted the slinksters just as they were backing out through the gate.

“Thank you,” I said to the first, Frankie, who jumped. “So nice you could come.” I stuck Canelloni in his hands.

“What am I supposed to with this thing?” Frank said, staring at it.

“Feed him seven times a day, and do not let him breed. SPCA made us promise.” I gave him a slap on the back.

Barbara, from her post on the opposite side of the exit, tapped Frank on the shoulder. “It was nice meeting you again,” she said. “Even if you did vote against me.”

Whoa. Frankie blushed. Do I have to point out how hard it is to accomplish that? But at the same time he smiled. He looked at me, jerking a thumb at Barbara. “I suppose there are suckier girls you coulda picked,” he said graciously. I shoved him on his way.

Barbara paused to nuzzle her dog. “My dad’s gonna kill me,” she said. “I gotta practice crying on the way home.”

“Stare at the dog for a while,” I said to be helpful. “They’re like onions.”

Mikie. Mikie walked up to the plate with dignity. Sort of like a condemned man who knows he’s gonna get it anyway, so he’s damned well not going to be seen whining and kicking on his way out. But also like a good sport who know’s he’s been bagged.

He held out his hands and squinted. “Payback’s a bitch.”

“So is this,” I said, and gently placed his new best friend in his hands. “Her name is Tortellini.”

Mikie looked at Tortellini. Tortellini looked at the sky though, god love her, she seemed to be making every effort to look at Mike.

“Got me back good,” he said.

I waved and smiled as if I was on a parade float and he was in the crowd a hundred feet away. “Come again,” I said sweetly.

And before he moved on, something transpired. Big, in its way, but probably a lot of not-much to the untrained eye. Mikie turned to Barbara and just sort of stood there. Stared at her. Smiled. She smiled back. They looked for all the world like two people who had known each other for a long time, and were briefly passing each other by again.

“You’ll take good care of my boy?” Mike said in a goofy old-folks scold.

“Or you’ll scratch my eyes out,” Barbara shot back.

And that was it. Seemed to satisfy both of them. Mike turned to me before leaving. “I always knew you’d wind up dating your mother,” he said.

I was laughing as he walked, then I stopped. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I called. Got no answer.

After we’d killed some time in the front yard, playing with Tag, who seemed now like such a smashingly fine dog, fetching Popsicle sticks and chasing his tail and throwing himself on his back when I growled at him, it was time to go.

Barbara unleashed massive doses of home training on my mother, thanking her sweetly and inviting her to her house sometime and generally leaving Ma as weak and stupid as she’d left me. Then, when I was sure that the other guests had safely cleared the area, I told Ma that I’d be walking Barbara home as planned.

As hoped.

As dreamed.

Ma waved us on out of her yard and saw us to the gate. I looked back at her, and she was very very clearly happy and proud for me. And a little bit, she was something else.

I know, because I felt it for a second myself, whatever it was. But just for a second.

I
COMPETED WITH TAG
through the whole walk to Barbara’s house. The dog would get tangled up in her feet, making Barbara scold it playfully. So I would cross over in front of her, steering her off the curb into the gutter.

“What’s the matter with you? Cut that out,” she said to me, not as nicely as she’d spoken to Tag.

We got to the intersection where traffic was moderate for an early fall evening, just as the sun was finally gone and we could hear the streetlights humming to life above us. She scooped up Tag and nuzzled her, explaining to the dog, in a kind of modified baby talk, how dangerous traffic was and how no, no, no, she was never to run in the street.

I scootched up close, my upper arm touching hers, as we waited for the light to change.

I was looking straight ahead, steely and determined as if the only thing in the world that mattered to me was the changing of that traffic light and the safe passage of my little family. When all that
really
mattered to me was the contact I was making with Barbara’s arm.

But I could see out of the corner of my eye as she looked at me. At my arm, then up at my grinning, overheating mug. Tag took the opportunity to lick madly at Barbara’s jaw, as if she had on beef gravy perfume. Hey dog, that was going to be
my
move.

“You sure got a houseload of very friendly dogs,” she said to me.

I finally faced her head-on. “Oh, and we’re just getting started,” I said, “wait’ll you see.”

I cringed as soon as I said it, before Barbara even shoved off the curb toward the opposite sidewalk, leaving me staring into her vacated spot in my universe.

“Oh, I get it,” I said as I caught up to her. “You mean, like, I’m a friendly dog too, like, one of those mental, way too friendly dogs? I get it. Well you don’t have to worry about that. See... I’m not that kind of dog... I mean I’m not one of those...”

That was the outside conversation. The inside conversation was going on at an even faster pace, and it sounded more like this:

Shut up, Elvin, shut up, for the love of god shut up. Don’t say anything more. Lick her face or her shoes or chase a stick or root through a garbage can but please find something else to do with your mouth other than talking anymore. No good, no good. Danger. Turn around. Run home. No explanation, no forwarding address, just get out while you can...

Barbara held her little dog up in front of her face, keeping it between herself and me like a shield. “Down boy,” she said. To me, not to Tag.

See, we did think alike. I knew it.

“See, we do think alike,” I said. “I was just kind of thinking of myself as a dog, and there you were thinking the same thing. Do you get that, that we both think kind of the same?”

Barbara put Tag down, and let her flop along ahead of us. My pulse immediately slowed, and I stopped talking. No, wait, it raced. Then I
resumed
talking.

“Shush,” Barbara said, in a friendly cautionary way.

I shushed.

The wind was picking up, making it feel and taste more like fall. Leaves were popping themselves off the trees and laying themselves down ahead of us as we turned the corner onto Barbara’s tree-busy street, and Tag was occupied enough chasing the small tornadoes of leaves that blew around from the swirling breezes that we didn’t have to control her very much. She really was a good dog after all, wasn’t she.

“This is my house,” Barbara said, picking Tag up and hugging her. She was, in fact, speaking to Tag more than to me. Fair enough, since this was the dog’s new address and not mine.

A light snapped on in the driveway as soon as Barbara pushed on her trellised wooden gate.

“Motion-sensor lights,” I said like one of those do-it-yourself doofuses, who love to show you they know every boring home improvement detail.

“Nope,” Barbara said. “Girl-Protector lights. Connected on the other end to my dad.”

I took a step back from the fence, started looking the house up and down the way you do when you hear a voice but you don’t know where it came from.

“That was one of the nicest nights of my life, Elvin,” Barbara said, from what seemed like a half mile away. It was probably more like six feet.

“Ya?” I said, then realized I should probably try to not sound surprised. “Uh, ya. My ma can cook, for sure. And it was pretty great to unload all those dogs. I thought we were going to have to...” I made the hanging-from-a-noose, tongue-dangling gesture.

Barbara was not impressed. She hummmphed at me before going on. “Your mom is the best. Tell her I said so.”

“I tell her all the time,” I said, and for once, Barbara and I really
were
saying the same thing at the same time.

As she backed away, toward the house, Barbara made a head gesture up toward wherever her father was hovering behind a curtain. “You understand,” she said.

I nodded, even though I didn’t entirely understand and didn’t much care to. I just watched her go. Sigh.

So disoriented I almost forgot.

The party. Hell. I was not home free yet. I had not done the dangerous part, the asking. The risking.

Quit, I said to myself, and really really meant it. You can’t go up from here, Elvin Bishop. You can only trash all the good you’ve had. Quit, while you’re ahead. Quit, while you’re crazy happy. Quit, while you can still walk. Just quit, and thereby win, for a change. Quit.

“Quit what?” Barbara asked, tilting her head in puzzlement.

Beautiful puzzlement. Sweet, playful puzzlement, letting her mouth hang a small bit open, hinting that one of us was kind of nuts. One of us
was,
and when he was unable to answer her, she waved and turned to go again.

“Barbara,” I said desperately, just as she’d turned the tumblers in the big dead-bolt on her big oak door. Fortunately I think desperation in my voice had become a kind of white noise to her.

She stopped. She waited.

“Okay, there’s a party, see... and usually frosh aren’t invited. In fact Frankie and me are like the first two in history, because we’re kind of—”

“Darth’s party, right?” she asked. “Sorry to cut you off there, Elvin, but the way you take the long way around things... it’ll be dawn before I get in the house and I won’t be going to any parties for a long time. Anyway, I was at the point where I was worried you were going to take some other girl.”

The old nausea of joy rose in my stomach again. Fortunately words failed me once more.

“Now that you know where I live, maybe you could come and pick me up if that’s all right. Unless you want me to meet you...”

Of course that was all right, and of course she knew it was all right.