Fauna (22 page)

On the ground before him, Guy straightens and kills the torch. He stands back, giving the signal:
thumbs-up-and-away
.

Stephen brings the boom round with his left hand while extending the middle cylinder with his right. Opening the grapple wide, he rotates it a quarter turn, centres the magnet and floats it down onto the engine block. It rests there a moment until he wakes the charge with his trigger finger. The block gives a little jump, letting go of the mount with hardly a wiggle, a baby tooth loose at the root. He closes the grapple and raises the boom.

In the corner of his eye, Guy nods his approval. Stephen would love to flash him a grin but knows his attention should be cabled to the task at hand.

With a glance in the rear-view, he presses down with both heels, tilting the pedals to reverse. He tips the toes of his right boot forward to turn, then joins with the left to track straight for the engine pile. The block of the Lumina swings. It finds its own spot, like a fieldstone fitting into a wall. Stephen releases the magnet and opens the grapple in one. A place for everything and everything in its place.

Earlier this morning, they were faced with three unprocessed wrecks; now all three stand stripped to the axles and gutted, ready to be drained. He’ll lift the Lumina onto the crusher first, then check if Guy wants to drop into the pit and
chisel holes in the tank and oil pan, or if Stephen should take care of it himself.

Tracking back to the wreck, he spots Guy signing the
shut-’er-down
. He brakes, tucks in the boom and cuts the engine. Plucks out his earplugs and lets them hang around his collar on their string.

“Man,” Guy calls, “you’re getting to be a demon on that thing.”

Stephen lets himself have that grin. Working the Link-Belt is a gas, the loader too—even the crusher, now that he knows what kind of racket to expect. His heart raced uncontrollably the first time the rusty-toothed track hauled in a wreck; he had to squeeze his eyes shut to keep from hitting the dirt. Nowadays, though, the scream of the buckling steel delights him. He laughs out loud when the windows go—that sudden crystalline spray.

Only her second day on the job and already Lily has the dish pit well in hand. She never suffers a buildup, no matter how many grey bus pans the busboys bring. There’s a rhythm to it. Two trays on the slide at all times—a flat one for cups and cutlery, a pronged one for plates and bowls. Set the big items aside—pots and woks and stainless steel bowls—run them through whenever the pace drops off. When a tray’s fully loaded, reach up for the dangling shower hose and blast away the surface crud, then shoot the dishwasher door up on its runners and shunt the clean tray out with the next in line.

She’s been using the rubber spatula to scrape the plates since partway through yesterday’s shift, when Chin noticed her scooping scraps into the garbage with her hand.

“Tch, no-name-girl,” he said, grimacing, “you never hear of germ?”

He pulled the same disgusted face later on, when he caught her shovelling half a plate of black bean chicken into the to-go container by her feet.

“What this?”

She straightened. “It’s just going to waste.”

“You eat garbage again?”

Kenny, the youngest of the busboys, set a bus pan down and left grinning.

“No.” Lily drew down the hose and sprayed the standing ranks of side plates. “It’s for Billy, okay?”

“Billy? I told you, I give him lunch already.”

She let the hose spring from her grip. “For later. For tonight.”

“Tonight.” Chin shook his head. Then he turned and dragged the colander from beneath his chopping-block counter. Shouldering Lily away from the sink, he took up the scraps and dumped them into the colander. “Dog can’t eat black bean, barbecue. Too salty. Too much spice.”

She stood back, watching him spray the meat clean.

“Now he know what you give him. Chicken, pork, beef. See here, even crab.” His cheeks creased with a smile. “That one lucky dog.”

When he comes to stand beside her today, she carries on with her work, saying nothing.

“Your sleeve,” he says, pointing. “Why you no roll up your sleeve?”

She’s wearing the white kitchen jacket she changed into at the start of her shift. Both sleeves are wet past the elbow, the cuffs ringed with orange grease.

“No reason.”

She lifts the dishwasher door and slides in a tray of soup bowls, shoving a bleach-scented load of pans out the other end. Slamming the door back down, she hears the resulting rush.

“No reason, huh?”

She turns to find him regarding her steadily.

“You a junkie?”

“No.” She dumps the cutlery tub out over a tray, chopsticks skittering. “Why, are you?”

He plucks up a ladle from the pile, plays its cup against the cup of his palm. “Not for long time.” He sighs. “Not since Shanghai.”

For once, no one’s booked the after-lunch slot. Sandi’s gone for lattes; Kate sits with a stack of files in front of her on the desk. Days like today—when the dogs are all getting better, and the humans are getting along—she can’t believe how much she loves her job.

She wasn’t always so sure. The position at the clinic’s new rehabilitation centre came with a raise and regular hours, but it troubled her that the centre dealt solely with canine patients. Kate loved dogs, but no more than she loved cats and rabbits, parakeets and hedgehogs and snakes. There were days when
the main clinic came close to a kind of paradise, so infinite was the variety of cries.

Still, it could be hard. The first time she wrapped a cat in black plastic and carried it back to join the other bodies in the deep-freeze, she faced the wall in that chilly corridor and wept. Shifts in Emerg left her footsore and dazed; there was rarely time to dwell on any one case—always the bleeding creature before you, the burned one waiting in the next room. Chemo duty was quiet by comparison, though the last shift she pulled in that cramped, brightly lit room was undoubtedly one of her worst.

The golden retriever had already lost one back leg; he lay down missing limb first, tucking the loss away. Tina was one of the best Animal Care Attendants on staff. She knelt down beside the dog, then sat with her legs folded to one side and gathered him into her lap. Like a woman in one of those painted scenes, Kate thought as she pulled on her paper gown—a woman in an elaborate hat cradling her lover on a grassy bank. Only the woman was a sturdy teenage girl in a mask and faded scrubs, and the golden-haired lover was a dying dog.

Tina knew the golden would require little more than a comforting embrace, just as she’d known to immobilize the miniature husky that had come before him with a nylon muzzle and full-body hold. It was the husky’s first treatment, and once Tina’d gotten the better of him, Kate had no trouble getting a good stick. Long needle, deep in the vein on the second try.

The golden, on the other hand, had already been in half a dozen times. Kate had been surprised to learn of the breed’s particular vulnerability; it seemed unlikely—almost cosmically wrong—that such sweet-tempered beauties should so often harbour tumours beneath their coats.

This one, Pickles by name, seemed fairly calm. A faster than normal pulse and the panting to match, but otherwise calm. Some patients got trickier with every treatment—became wrigglers or biters, backed into corners or broke for the door—but breeds that were docile to begin with generally chose to submit.

Kate knelt down beside Tina and the dog and pulled the cap off the needle with her teeth. Mask up, goggles down. She’d chosen a long needle to start, though she doubted whether she’d have any luck getting it to go in. The golden already had substantial scar tissue in both front legs. The left was played out, but she would try the right, lower down to begin with, though again, she knew her chances were slim.

The first attempt wasn’t promising; she had to jab harder than she liked to, and even then she only made it a few millimetres up the vein before she hit a valve. Tina looked up at her. Kate shook her head and felt a little farther up the shaved foreleg. The higher she went, the fewer viable vessels the golden would have left. On the other hand, if she kept on too long at the distal veins, she risked shutting down circulation in the entire limb. Which would mean the end for Pickles—if the owner could be made to see sense. More likely, given Eileen Brody’s teary track record, a second amputation. Dog in a basket. Dog pulled in a wagon around the park.

Discerning a potential vein with her forefinger, Kate took a breath and jabbed. A little deeper this time, but not much. Again, the valve closed against her. She withdrew, moved higher, tried another spot. Pickles lay unmoving, eyes at halfmast, resisting her on a vascular level alone. Over and over, that faint, collapsing
no
.

Tina smiled sadly down at the dog while Kate swallowed the thickness in her throat and made a fourth unsuccessful attempt. She was past the high crook of the ankle now, approaching the knee. She switched to a shorter needle, a final resort before giving up on this leg. The golden’s breath came fast, and Tina murmured, “Good boy, Pickles. Not long now.”

Kate steeled herself and spiked the vein. No good. The valves could see her coming a mile off; they were flinching shut like so many minuscule eyes. She didn’t want to move on to the left hind leg—the only untouched limb Pickles had left—but she hadn’t any choice. Her jaw ached. The floor beneath her was cold.

“She should have to watch this,” she said.

Tina glanced up.

“Mrs. Brody. She should have to watch me stick him over and over. Maybe then she’d let him go.”

“Yeah.”

Kate hooked a finger over her mask and dragged it down, bit the cap off a fresh needle and spat it aside. The hind leg still had that lovely elastic angle. She stroked it once before stretching it out long. Tina had shaved a section of fur just in case—a small comfort to know she’d seen it coming. Feeling for the lowest possible entry point, Kate slid the needle in without a fight. The relief was overwhelming. She felt like howling, burying her face in Pickles’s silken fur.

Edal’s starting to feel like the local stray—feed her once and you’ll never get rid of her.

She glances at her watch. Just after two, not a bad time for a drop-in. It would be easier if she didn’t have to buzz for permission to enter. If, like a stray, she could insinuate herself under the fence’s springy hem.

She watches the office window for signs of life. Presses her palm to the sign for a long moment before her finger finds the buzzer. This time it takes him a minute or so to appear. His walk is already familiar—she would know him a long way off.

“Hey,” he says, letting her in.

“Hi.” She can’t help crossing her arms. “I was just passing.

“ He nods.

“Is this a bad time?”

“No, in fact, I was just thinking about you.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. There’s something I forgot to show you on yesterday’s tour.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.” He smiles. “Come on.”

He leads her past the trucks, down to where a tall hedge runs at right angles to the bottom fence, connecting up to the office’s facade. Edal remembers the overgrown garden, sees now how it’s cut off from the yard. The hedge is healthy, thriving in a shapeless way. Guy approaches it without pause, as though he expects it to part and allow him passage. When he turns hard right and disappears, it takes her a moment to see the trick: not one hedge but two, staggered to form a narrow point of entry in what appears to be an impenetrable wall. She slips through the opening to find Guy on the other
side, holding back a switch that would otherwise have caught her in the face.