Authors: Paul Griffin

Stay with Me (23 page)

BOOK: Stay with Me

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“How’s that?”

“Looking away like that. You know what I think of a man who can’t look another man in the eye? I think he’s either weak or a liar, or both. So which is it?”

“So which is it?” she says. “I’m too ugly to look at? Or are you hiding something from me?” Soft hands on my face. She turns my head so I have to look at her.

“You’re too pretty to look at.”

“Now that you’re looking me in the eye, I almost have to believe you.”

I force myself to look the man in the eye. “Sorry, sir.”

“Don’t be sorry. Be better.” He sighs, rubs the back of his head, glares at me like I’m the cause of his headache. “This is not like training a Seeing Eye dog, you understand?”

“That’s real good, because I only know how to train a dog to be a human dog.”

“What is that supposed to mean and why are you pinching the inside of your wrist like that?”

If Céce was here right now, she’d hold my hand to keep me from doing it.

“Basically you want to housebreak the animal. This is by far the most important thing. We can’t be passing out dogs who are not disciplined. You have to get the animal to eliminate on a regular schedule, in a certain area. You will teach him not to jump or beg. Sit, stay, give paw, leave it, heel, simple commands. I will give you a list and specific training manuals. Now, I’m told you have a learning disab—”

“I can read. Mostly. Just takes me some time, and I got plenty of that now. So you don’t have to sweat me about—”

“
Hey
. Do. Not. Interrupt me. I was going to say, before you so rudely cut me off, that the manuals are largely pictures anyway.” He eyes me hard. “The pay is forty-five cents an hour. Will that be a problem?”

Getting paid to play with a pit bull? “I think I could work with that, forty-five an hour.”

“Indeed. Mister
Morse,
all we want to do is make the animal a well-behaved friend. Good company to cheer up the sick person, okay? A dedicated, faithful companion. Do you think you can handle that and will you
stop
pinching your wrist? I find it very disturbing.” Bad eyes on me.

The hissing.

I swallow hard, stare a little past him to avoid his eyes. “I think I can do that, sir.”

“Mister Morse, look at me. Do you
want
to do the job? Or have I just wasted a lot of my time on an opportunist?”

“How’s that?”

“I know your type. You act all one way to get the gig, and then you slack off. Look at how you’re sitting, slumped over like that. Like you’re hiding something. Sit up straight—”

“Why you got to disrespect me? What I done to you? I’m calling you sir, and you treat me like I’m dirt? Why?”

“Stop. Pinching. Your wrist.”

“I’m trying to.”

“Don’t try. Do.”

“You yellin’ at me ain’t helping me.”

“Right here, right now, I’m not here to help you. You’re here to help me. And if I determine that you can’t help me, then we have nothing to talk about.”

The static. Electric snowstorm. I sit up and force myself to match his stare. Got to hold it. I need this gig. I need something good so bad.

Thompkins frowns. “If you last two days, it’ll be a miracle.” He pushes a pen and a paper filled with small print across the table at me. “Sign there.”

“What’s it say?”

“In the event of complications, no lawsuits will be filed.”

“Complications like?”

“Death.”

“I would never kill a dog.”

“I meant if the animal kills you.” He nods to his assistant, this skinny lady with pocks on her cheeks. She looks like she might have seen a day or two in the joint herself and done some street living to get there. “Let’s have him meet the animal,” Thompkins says.

The assistant leads us down the hall into an empty sickbay room. Trembling in the corner is the biggest, dopiestlooking blue-nose pit bull. His head is fairly the size of a basketball. He’s scarred, half an ear gone. His eyes, though. My God. His eyes are worlds, gold brown. He knocked over an apple juice carton left open on the table. Except where’s the carton? Wait, is that apple juice on the tabletop, or pee?

“What do you want to name him?” Thompkins says.

“Boo.”

“Speak up. And stand up straight.”

“Boo.”

“That’s what I thought you said.
Boo
. An auspicious beginning.”

“Boo, come.”

The dog runs to me all wiggly and dopey. He bumps his head into the table and knocks himself over on the way. To hell with my dog-greeting rules. I crouch and open my arms wide to the dog. He rolls right up and hides his head in my armpit. His tail stump whirls so fast it shakes his whole body and mine too.

This dog is a creampuff. This is gonna be cake.

The Old Dogs, New Tricks folks need a day to set up where me and Boo are going to be living, the top floor of this old jail they’re not using anymore because it needs revelations, or however you say it. It all starts tomorrow.

I can’t sleep. Wash, putting his neck out for me.

I bet Wash has a nice little house, aboveground pool in back, grandkids in water wings splashing at his dogs. I bet his wife is the kind of woman who holds your hand at night, the two of you falling asleep like that, fingers locked, like that night ...

. . . I tell her I love her. In the alley, the rain. Fingers locked. I tell her over and over, but she never says it back.

(The next morning, Thursday, August 13, the sixty-third day . . .)

We have six weeks. We’ll be together, 24-7. We get two hours a day out in the field next to the garbage dump to exercise. Boo has to wear a tracking collar. Me too, on my ankle.

Training center is made of cells with their walls knocked down. Table is made of safety plastic, the kind on playgrounds, won’t crack, no shanks. Same with the chairs. Supposed to pass for a kitchen. Shelf-bed for me and a plastic crate for Boo to bed in. Nothing else. Bad light in here. Place is a creepy old hole. Boo doesn’t seem to mind. He’s all eyes on me. Tail spins every time I look at him. The caged rooftop off the back doubles for the yard Boo will live in if he passes training. If he doesn’t pass he’s going back to Animal Control, where probably he will be put to sleep, because who wants a fierce-looking street mutt that failed training? If he goes, I do too, out of the program and back into the tent.

I say, “Sit.”

Boo jumps to kiss me. He knocks me flat.

Thompkins’s eyes say he has as much doubts about Boo as he has about me.

“He’s just saying hello,” I say.

“Tell that to the paralyzed vet he knocks out of a wheelchair,” Thompkins says. “Chain him to the ring in the wall. Sit.”

“Sit.” I lift Boo from under the snout and push down on his backside.

“Not him. You.”

I sit up straight in the chair, force myself to look Thompkins in the eye.

Thompkins eyes me a long time. Boo yips. He wants to play.

“Mister
Morse,
the guards see you on the surveillance monitors but they are told not to interfere with training, unless they think you might be injured.”

“Boo won’t bite.”

“You can know an animal for years and it might still turn on you. That is an ugly truth, but true nonetheless.”

“Most truth is ugly when you get all the way down to—”

“Don’t talk. Listen. I have five sites and fourteen dog trainers to mind. I won’t be here but once a week, twice max. Mister
Morse,
stop turning away your eyes.”

I look at him, and he’s shaking his head. I want to tell him that even though I’m a killer, I’m other things too. I don’t know what exactly.

He points to the manuals lined up on the counter. “Follow the protocols in order. Page one shows you how to teach the dog to sit. Even the slowest dog should be able to learn sit within the first day or so. Any other result is an indication that something is wrong not with the trainee but the trainer.”

I eye Boo. He spins his tail.

Thompkins stands up. Stern face. Slings his left arm behind his back to hide it and offers his right hand. He’s got a stronger handshake than I’d have thought.

“I won’t let you down, sir.”

He frowns. He leaves.

I let Boo off the leash. He jumps onto the table and sprays it with pee. Six weeks to train this dog? I eye the clock like I have six minutes.

“Morse?” guard calls. “You got a visitor.”

(Thursday, August 13, morning)

CÉCE:

You can’t give the prisoners anything directly. Any gift of food and the like goes to the guards before you even get close to the visitor center. They X-ray the package and deliver it later—if the person you’re visiting chooses to accept the gift. He’s got a lime cornbread coming his way, Carmella’s Citrus Surprise.

The guard says he’s coming. I lick my lips and check my hair, using the scratched metal on the front of the pay phone for a mirror. I decide my hair’s a mess and needs a ponytail when he marches up to me.

He seems taller. He’s definitely thinner. His hair is a little longer. Those dark eyes. He’s even more beautiful than I remembered.

The sudden heat in my stomach makes me woozy. I whisper his name as he reaches out to me to take my face in his hands and kiss me.

No, not kiss me. He grabs me by the shoulders. He grabs hard.

“Hold up there,” the guard says.

Mack doesn’t hear him. “First and last: I don’t ever want to see you again.”

I shake no. “What?”

“You deaf?”

I’m laughing and trembling. My teeth chatter. “I don’t get it. This isn’t funny, baby—”

“Who the fuck you callin’ baby?”

“Mack—”

“Don’t
touch
me, girl. Just get along now. Serious. Go.”

“But you love me. I know you do.”

“Don’t you get it? I told you that to get you to fuck me.”

“Shoulders to the wall, son.” The guard crosses toward us.

“We had us some fun, all right?” Mack says, ignoring the guard. “Let it go. Hey, I’m lookin’ you in the eye right now, right? I don’t love you.” He goes. I follow. “So you expect me to believe I was what, just—”

“What was around. You think I’m playin’ with you, girl? You’re gettin’ to know the
real
me now, all right?”

“Mack, don’t do this. Please. I never got to say it to you.”

“Fuck you talkin’ about?”

“I never got to tell you I—”

“Will you get on out? Goddamn, man. Just git!” He pushes me away.

Wait, he just
shoved
me. Oh my god.

The guard pulls his baton, but Mack’s done with me, turning and quick-stepping for the door.

I run toward him, but the guard holds me off. He rips me off my feet and swings me back toward the exit, and I’m screaming over my shoulder the whole time, “Go ahead and run then! You’re a coward, Mack Morse. Fucking
ass
hole! All I wanted to do was say ... I hate you! I
hate
you.”

Everybody’s staring at me. They’re looking at me the way I look at them, with pity. With
Thank God that’s not me.
Except it
is
me this time. It’s my turn to be torn in half.

Carmella’s at the bar, folding napkins and getting mascara on them as she uses them to dab her eyes. She’s watching Lifetime, the weekly mother-with-cancer tearjerker. Motherdaughter scene, mother on her deathbed.

I roll my eyes, tap myself a soda, realize it’s Sprite, gag, spit it out. Back to Pepsi.

“You’re not even gonna cry for me when I die,” Carmella says.

“Would that make you happy, Ma, if I cried?”

“Very.”

“Then I’ll cry, Ma. I’ll cry until my eyes fall out of my head and I have to walk around with a stick.”

“Thank you, babe.”

“You got it, babe.” I head into the walk-in for my cheesecake. Knocking. “Come in.”

Vic sits next to me on the cheese wheel. “Howya doin’?” “Any better would be illegal.”

“Lemme have a piece of that cake,” Vic says. “He didn’t come down again?”

“He did. Except it wasn’t him. He sent some punk who looked exactly like him.”

Vic nods slowly. “I think it’s time I go talk to him.” “Good luck.”

“Oh, he’ll talk to me.”