The Better to Hold You (5 page)

“We’re almost done,” said Lilliana, her tone almost hypnotically soothing. “Perfect, Abra.”

I pulled the sample out and the dog snapped his head around toward me, then licked his mouth quickly as if he’d never really intended to bite.

“I know, boy, I know you didn’t mean it.” I gave Brownie a last pat before walking around the operating table. I started to lay out glass slides on the instrument tray.

Lilliana shook her head admiringly. “You were in and out. He didn’t have time to complain.”

“I wish.”

Lilliana watched as I placed a drop of blood on each of the slides I’d set out. When we were done, she helped me get Brownie down on the floor. “You know,” she said, “Malachy really does respect you.”

“Are you joking? He just told me that he hired me because my husband is writing about werewolves. Excuse me,” I corrected myself, “Unwolves.”

Lilliana touched my hand. “I know what he said, but his face told a different story.”

“Mal said you’d studied some sort of face reading system?”

Lilliana nodded. “It’s called FACS—the Facial Action Coding System. It’s basically an index of microexpressions that transcend cultural differences and slip out beneath conscious control. For example, when Malachy was talking about Sam, I saw a flicker of contempt. When he mentioned Ofer’s background in neuroscience, his face remained neutral. But when he talked to you, he smiled—just for a fraction of a second, but it was a real smile.”

“Hmm,” I said as we reached the door to Ward B. “And what did his face reveal about you, I wonder.”

Lilliana’s eyes sparkled with amusement. “I intimidate him, actually. Hey, I forgot to tell you about the man who came in earlier with a baby owl.”

“You’re kidding!” I was just about to tell Lilliana about my encounter with the man and the owl on the subway when we opened the doors to Ward B and discovered that the day’s excitement wasn’t over.

Pia was gone.

Everyone else went to look for our missing patient. I went to the bathroom.

I’d started to bleed right after Hunter and I made love. Just a little spotting, but I knew I’d need to check on things in a little while. I suppose every veterinary and medical student goes through a hypochondriacal phase. Mine wasn’t too bad; I was only frightened of getting rabies from a bite, contracting a little flesh-eating bacteria on a wound, or dying of toxic shock after forgetting I had a tampon in for twenty-four hours.

That may sound disgusting, but let me tell you, after being on your feet for forty-eight sleep-deprived hours, you’re liable to forget a lot of things that aren’t written on a chart. Which is why I tend to use sanitary pads, messy as they are.

So I opened the door to the bathroom and walked back to the farthest stall—the big, disabled one.

There, crouched beside the toilet, was Pia, the dun triangles of her ears pressed flat to her head. The scruffy owl man from the subway was kneeling beside her.

I think I gave a quick little huff of surprise and squeaked, “This is the ladies’ room!”

Pia growled.

“Quiet, now.” The man glanced down at the dog, then back up at me with a rueful smile. “Bit of a sissy, this one.”

I said nothing, and the man stood up. “Well, now,” he said, “I admit this looks a bit peculiar, but I can explain.” He ran a nervous hand through his graying auburn hair, which was cut in the kind of close-crop that looks fashionable on a man in a good suit of clothes and vaguely institutional on a man in dirt-stained jeans and a cheap white T-shirt.

“So explain.”

Pia growled, low in her throat.

“Hush, girl. This place makes her nervous,” he said apologetically.

“Yes, I heard she started howling earlier this morning.” I tentatively held out my hand for Pia to sniff, still hesitant to meet the man’s eyes. A thought occurred to me. “My colleagues thought she was scared of what was happening to another dog, but I’m wondering if it had something to do with you.” Oh, smart thing to say, Abra. What if the man’s crazy? I’d forgotten the first rule of New York City: Don’t antagonize the crazy man.

“She sure did raise a fuss when she smelled me. Expect she wanted out of here.” The man ruffled the fur at the back of Pia’s neck. He had a gentle, sure touch and the dog seemed to accept it without too much hunching of the shoulders. “You work here?” He pointed to my white lab coat.

“Yes.” Without thinking, I crouched down to give Pia a pat and then realized I had just done something incredibly stupid. Now I had placed myself at this stranger’s feet. Worse still, I was crouching in a bathroom stall, and the floor’s cleanliness didn’t hold up under close inspection. The man was looking at me with an odd, slightly preoccupied expression, his head cocked a little to one side, his nostrils flaring.

Hang on, did I smell? I looked down and continued stroking Pia as if this thought had never crossed my mind. When the stranger spoke, his voice was so low and soft it took me a moment to register what he’d said.

“I make you nervous.”

I straightened up, then realized that I was now standing too close to this man. “Well, a little.” I forced myself not to back up, because dogs and serial killers have an instinctive, aggressive reaction to retreat.

“You make me a little nervous, too.” I met his steady, amused regard and realized there was something pleasant about his looks. He had the kind of lean, high-cheekboned, weathered face I’d seen in pictures of the Depression.

“And why is that?”

“I’m kind of hoping to make my way on out of here without too much fuss, and you seem the kind of woman not to walk away from a fight.”

I brought up my hands reflexively. “I’m not looking for a fight …”

“But like I said, you’re not one to back down—even from a brick wall, I imagine.” As he said this, the man moved so that now he was standing between me and the door to the bathroom stall.

I felt a prickle of alarm at the back of my neck. “Did you follow me home from the subway?”

He cocked his head to one side. “Ma’am?”

I shook my head. He’d come to the clinic: There was no way he could know about my climbing adventure. “Never mind. Listen, I need to know what you’re doing here with this dog, Mr….”

“Red Mallin. Friend of Jackie Roberts, owner of this animal.” “Friend” meaning boyfriend, I assumed. He held out his hand and I took it without thinking. His skin felt unusually hot, and at the moment our palms made contact I felt an odd little jolt of awareness. I realized that we were staring at each other. I wondered if, on some animal level, it was because I’d had sex that morning. Unsatisfying sex, a little voice interpolated. There was something about the way we were standing there that seemed inappropriate. Why weren’t we talking? I wasn’t frightened of him any longer.

“So, ah, you’re Dr. Abra Barrow?” His finger indicated my name badge.

“Yes.” My throat was dry, and I cleared it.

“Yes.” He seemed discomfited. “Right. Now, I was just goin’ to explain—are you wearing something? Some scent?”

“No.”

“Ah.” He dropped his hand and inhaled deeply, as if trying to collect himself. Red seemed to be growing more nervous, not less, and that made no sense. I watched as a splotchy redhead’s blush climbed across his cheeks.

“Well,” he began again. I spoke at almost the same time.

“So Pia isn’t your dog?”

Red and the wolf hybrid exchanged a complicit glance. “Nope. Jackie asked me to spring her out before she got herself in some kind of trouble.”

I remembered Lilliana’s half-joking comment about Malachy’s wanting to experiment on Pia. Now that I thought about it, it had been a little strange that Malachy had wanted to keep Pia’s case, as it wasn’t clear that her owner could afford our ser vices. I found myself recalling Malachy’s statement that he’d hired me because of my connection with Hunter’s lycanthropy research and wondered: Does Malachy have some agenda with this animal?

On the other hand, what was this man’s hidden agenda? “So why didn’t Jackie Roberts come herself?”

Red had the ability to stand without shifting weight from foot to foot, which was something I liked. It seemed, I don’t know, forthright. “Well, she thought I might be able to make a case for Pia here not being more’n a tiny bit wolf. I’m kind of an expert. See? Here’s my business card.” He dug his wallet out of his back jeans pocket and extracted a cheap white card bearing a picture of a howling wolf or coyote in silhouette. I couldn’t help but notice that it matched the tattoo stretched over the swell of his right bicep.

“Red Mallin,” he said, as if I couldn’t read it for myself. “Wildlife Removal Operator.”

I looked at the card, then at him. “So why didn’t you go up to the front desk and assert your expertise, Mr. Mallin?”

Red smiled, a little crookedly. “Well, I don’t know. Sometimes big-city types don’t exactly seem to value my opinion as much as I do.”

“What’d you do with the owl?”

“She’s still here. Kind of a trade.”

I realized that it was mostly the graying hair that made him look older. That and the sunburn. I figured Red might still be in his late thirties. I found myself thinking that he looked like someone you might see on some reality TV shows, announcing that he was leaving his wife, the fat dyed blonde, for her sister, the emaciated dyed blonde without teeth.

“I probably don’t want to know, but—where’d you get the owl?”

“Someone’s attic. Listen, I swear I’m not some animal broker who goes around selling wild things to stupid people. I just want to bring this little girl back to her momma, is all. Jackie knows how to take care of her right.” Red fished a crumpled piece of paper from the pocket of his jeans. “You can call her right now if you want to check me out.”

“I don’t have a cell phone.”

Red looked at me, surprised. “Well, shoot.” He appeared to have reached the end of his arguments. “I don’t have one, either.”

“It’s all right. I believe you.” The moment I said it, my stomach did a little flip. But I did believe him. He was scruffy, but he inspired trust, somehow. Pia got to her feet and actually wagged her tail twice, as if sensing the accord between us.

“You hear that, Pia? You’re goin’ home.” Red bent down to scratch behind the dog’s ears while flashing me a conspirator’s grin.

“Let me check whether the hallway’s clear.” I left the stall and opened the bathroom door a crack. “It’s okay,” I said. “You’re good to go.”

Red paused by the door. “Now listen, Doc, you ever have some critter getting into your basement, go on and give me a call.”

I glanced down at the card in my hand. There was an e-mail address and a toll-free phone number. “I live in an apartment.”

Red whistled for Pia and she came to heel by his side. The dog—if that’s what she was—seemed calmer than I’d ever seen her. She even wagged her tail again as she looked back at me. “See?” Red pointed with his thumb. “She’s thanking you, too.”

“Go on,” I said with a smile.

His hand on the handle, Red turned around. “Sorry about your purse, Doc. I was just about to say something when you turned and froze me out.”

“Excuse me?”

“You know, on the train. You gave me one of those ‘Don’t even think about talking to me’ looks and then cold-shouldered me. So I didn’t warn you.”

I thought about how it might have seemed from his point of view. “I’m always reading people wrong,” I said. “If you’d been a dog, I would have known you were all right the moment I met you.”

Red’s eyes lit with amusement. “Smart about animals and stupid about people. That’s what my grandfather always said about me.”

“Sounds like my mother talking about me.”

“Well.”

“Well.” We stood there, uncomfortable with the moment. And then Red lifted my hand to his mouth, kissed my knuckles, and left.

I stood there, stunned at the very physical reaction I’d had to his touch. That was a flirtation. I had committed flirtation.

And then I realized that the slight dampness between my legs might not all be arousal. I darted into a stall to check whether I needed a sanitary pad just as I heard someone come into the bathroom.

As I emerged to wash my hands, I saw that Lilliana was tucking her silky blouse into her gray wool slacks. “Hey, Abra. Any luck finding Pia?”

My mouth felt dry. “None.”

“Damn. Well, I hope it was her real owner breaking her out, and not some animal control hotshot.” She looked at me in the mirror. “Hey, are you okay?”

“Sure,” I said, not completely sure why I was lying to my friend, but doing it all the same. “It’s just that time of the month.”

I have always been the kind of person who wonders what things mean. You would think, as a writer, that Hunter would also tend to analyze life, but the truth is, Hunter reports on things. The moral ambiguity of his stories, which allows readers to draw their own conclusions, is what reviewers love about him. Perhaps the readers of Outside are tired of the old “hubris in the face of nature” chestnut, which is the point of most of the magazine’s articles. With Hunter, you get an art school ending—the pattern of blood on the windshield as the deer limps away, the intricate whorls of the tribal tattoo on the face of a young Maori prostitute.

So there was no point in my asking Hunter what had precipitated the sudden change in our sex life. For several weeks after Hunter’s return, we made love every day, and this unexpected second honeymoon chased every other thought from my mind. I didn’t spare another thought for my strange encounter with the scruffy, auburn-haired wildlife operator. I went to work on autopilot, not even noticing that Malachy had become paler and weaker until Lilliana pointed it out. There was no more talk of Unwolves and no mention of Hunter’s research. Like me, Malachy seemed to be sleepwalking through his days, and Ofer was openly lobbying for a transfer.

But while Malachy was in the grip of some nameless illness, I was drifting in a fugue state of reciprocal lust. Literally and figuratively, I was Hunter’s slave girl, in thrall to his attention and his touch. As for my husband, he was autocratic and imaginative and more passionate than I recalled him ever being before, even in the beginning.