The Miraculous Plot of Leiter & Lott (24 page)

“His mind was playing games with him.”
 

“Right. His one track mind. Are you gay, by the way?”

He looked back at her, finally. “No.”

“Amazing. Girlfriend? Sorry. Don't answer that.”

“Okay,” said David. But the way he said it was not exactly with relief, she noted. It was more in keeping with his belief that her ramblings weren't as important as she thought. Even her ones about her ex. So she switched back to her other tack.

“That other man with the dog. . . did you know him?”

“Yes,” he replied. “I got him the dog.”

“You--” Val hesitated in surprise, then became aware that she was blinking rapidly, as though trying to see through a sudden fog. “Forgive me. You got him the dog?”

“Yes, I did.”

She waited for elaboration. When none came, she asked, “What's his name?
 
The man, I mean.”

“That's not--”

“--important,” she finished his sentence. “I understand. But could you indulge me, anyway?
Please?”

“I don't know,” David told her.

She could see that it was the truth. She could see so much truth in him, she wondered if there was any other kind. “Then how,” she began, as though about to present a riddle, “could you get someone a dog without knowing their name?
 
Doesn't the dog have a name, either?”

David looked out at the ducks again. He pointed to the mother duck with the trailing chicks, and asked, "Do you think that mother duck knows the name of each of her hatchlings?"

Sighing, Val hung her head.
 
"Touché," she said.

“Are you feeling okay?” he inquired. Val shook her head, so he took pity on her and added, "I get dogs for homeless people sometimes. And other things, like clothes or food. And jobs, when they're ready. It's what I do, in my retirement.”

She looked up at him in amazement. “Oh.” Then, after a few more involuntary blinks and nods, she made one of her faces at him. A face from her bag of tricks that she usually reserved for a fourth or fifth date. “Why didn't you tell me this before?”

“I'm telling you now.”

“Yes, but--” She paused, feeling her exasperation surfacing again. “And the dog coming by plane is your own dog?”

“Not always.”

“Not
always?”
 
She said the word like an accusation.
 

“No,” he replied, “Picasso was not meant to be my companion, forever. I may find him another person, too. Perhaps you.”

“Me?”

“If that's what you need.”

“I'm sorry.
 
This is--” She searched for a word in her lexicon of adjectives, discarding both
bizarre
and
befitting
. “Well, I just mean I'm flustered, here. How can you get dogs for people by air freight? I mean, why not just go to the pound?”

“Because the animal shelter requires names, like you do. They also require someone to have a home address. My benefactor--”

“Who shall be nameless?”

“--works with me to provide animals as a stepping stone for homeless people to get off the streets. You cannot degenerate into mental illness if you have a companion to talk to and care for. You will not begin talking to yourself--or rather your own ego--to develop a split personality, if there is a dog with you, reacting to everything you do. Along with the dog comes a responsibility, too.
 
Your fate becomes the dog's fate. The dog is assured of medical care by calling my phone number and leaving a message.”

“What--you have an answering machine, too?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Where? And please, please don't say it's not important.”

“Where I sleep.”
 
He paused, then finally added, “A trailer nearby.”

“This is amazing. So you have a car?”

“A van. I sleep in it while on the road, sometimes. But right now I can't drive.”

Val shook her head, smiling in disbelief. “What more aren't you telling me?”

“What more do you need to know?”

They approached the rose garden, next to the lake. It was half an acre surrounded by a large round fence, with a gazebo in the middle, and three benches. A quaint spot. A circle within a circle. Beautiful, simple, serene.

"Let's check out the flowers, okay?" Val said, indicating the path. She walked ahead of David a few strides before realizing he had stayed behind.
 
Then she stopped and turned back to him. “Is there a problem?”

David stepped onto the path experimentally, then appeared to walk with some effort. He passed her, going toward the center gazebo as she followed, watching him. Once there, he looked around a bit, as if looking for something, overwhelmed by the garden for some reason. At last he sat on the center bench, and Val sat beside him.

“Something's wrong,” Val heard herself say aloud.

At that, David's expression changed. He looked around him again, as if for the first time.
 
Suddenly back in the moment. “It's beautiful, isn't it?” he noted.

Val nodded, thoughtfully.
 
“You've been here before, haven't you?”

“Yes, I was remembering. But I'm here now.”

Val sighed, seeing the renewed peace evident there, in his face. “You're right,” she admitted. “It is. . . lovely.”

She was dying to question him, but waited instead. He noticed that she waited, and he smiled. Finally, he said: “I was reborn here, actually.”

This time she couldn't help herself. “Reborn? You mean like a spiritual conversion?” She gazed up at the gazebo, trying to piece it together in her mind:
A gazebo. A rose garden. You were a different person when you came in. Then something happened, and you changed.
She asked, “A wedding?”

David looked away, his silence an answer in itself.

“That's it, isn't it?” she said. “Unlike me, you
were
married once, weren't you? And then she. . . died?”

He nodded. “It wasn't until after I came back here, though, that my life changed.”

Stunned by his simple confession, she stared at him, now. At his strangely serene face. Then she looked away. “I'm sorry,” she said at last, not knowing what else to say.

“Don't be. I accept it, now.”

“But you didn't then?”

“No. I blotted it out, like an eclipse. But now I've let it go.”

“A clean break. I see.”

“It was either that or resist the truth of it forever. To go mad, or become friendly with the pain and fear. Like people you see in your rearview mirror, tailgating you to get to the future, never satisfied with what they have, no matter what it is. So afraid of any loss that they lose everything.”

Val followed his line of sight. Where David looked, a car roared by on the distant road, passing a slower vehicle. She indicated the traffic. “I guess everybody wants the same things, and you have to run really hard to get them before it's too late. That fabulous house in the burbs is on the market. . .the best school nearby for your kids. . .that big screen high def TV.” She chuckled half heartedly at the thought. “We're all programmed to be desperate housewives. So if a wrinkle comes along, our life is over.”
 

“Or so we think,” David agreed.

She considered asking him something specific about his wife, but thought better of it. “Easy to say it shouldn't matter,” she continued, “but it does. How you look, for instance. Like everybody's on camera, playing parts in some reality show. Like maybe that guy behind you is late for his big screen test at the Paris Hilton.”

He nodded. “Appearances.”

“Are deceiving. And beauty's only skin deep. Yeah. Who believes that anymore?” On impulse, Val reached over and brushed a strand of dark hair back from his cheek. “You know, you could use a makeover. How about it? Wanna cut this off and get fitted for an Italian suit? You could get a job working for some high powered PR firm. Become front man for Shaq or Tiger with the soft drink companies. Make some real bucks.” She put his hair back the way it was. “Sorry.”
 

“Your favorite word?”

“I heard it a lot growing up.” She smiled a little ruefully. A distant horn blared. They both looked over to where the children were being lined up for the waiting school bus. “You know, I've never told anyone this, but when I was a girl, I liked astronomy, like a few boys used to do. But I was told it wasn't an appropriate profession for ladies. I don't remember them using the word ‘appropriate,' but you know what I mean.”

He looked at her with what seemed surprise. "Yes."

She thought of mentioning Sarah Collins, and their brief encounter in the tunnel, under the bridge. The facts would take only take a few sentences, as they had with the police. Instead, though, she conceded, “I suppose they give those girls appropriate things to learn and recite, too. Thinking about their safety, their future. Maybe they don't even see them as kids, but as potentials. Future adults. Still, that's what parents and teachers do, though, right? Protect. It's hard-wired into them, like a computer virus. Or like men on the prowl in bars.”

David smiled at this. “One day, when your life is nearly over, you'll know that what you did was what you did. There'll be no more adding to it. All your fears of the future were only fears. This is what really happened. What we're doing right now. This is the only real truth. Everything else is imaginary.”

Val stared at him as he got up and began walking slowly back to the entrance. She stood, and as she passed one of the rose bushes, noted its small plaque, indicating the variety: NEW BEGINNINGS.

“Are you thinking now?” David asked, when she caught up to him.

“Don't you mean
what
am I thinking now?”

“No, I don't.”

During their walk around the circular path surrounding the Reid park golf course, Val pointed at three men standing on the green beyond the fence.
 
“Imagine being one of those guys out there," she said, half wondering if she could rattle him with the idea. "The one in the yellow shirt might be a doctor. Retired, though. Blue shirt is a lawyer. Not defense, but not pro bono either. Tax lawyer, I bet. The young guy? He's still in college, being mentored on investments.
 
Mutual funds, securities. They crack jokes about women and sex when they're not talking sports or money. At the end of the day that's all they care about, really. And of course those three subjects are really about the same thing--control, world domination, victory. Guy stuff you should know about, David.
 
You are a man, right?
 
I mean, you didn't used to be a woman?”

His smile returned, briefly. “In another life, perhaps.”

"I believe that."

"What else do you believe?"

“That nothing bothers you. Not even my talking too much?”

“I am not bothered.”

“Amused, then. So are you bothered by anything?”

“The violence people do to each other and themselves when they don't get what they think they want.”

“Right. Have you been mugged, then?”

“Yes. And you?”

“No, and I've never been assaulted, either. Unless you count date rape.”

“I do.”

“Good," she said.
 
"May I ask more about your mugging without reciprocating?”

“It doesn't bother me anymore. I meant violence due to blindness, like when it's done in the name of profit or religion. A conditioned response.”

“What about sports? They're often violent, pay well, and they're religions too, in a way.” He answered with only a nod, and so, during another one of their longer pauses, she pointed out at the golf course again. “Check out those two. Maybe their golden years have tarnished yellow for them, and so--”

“You have a habit of making up stories about people,” David observed, interrupting.

“But it doesn't bother you, though.”

“People are not their stories. They're hidden behind their stories.”

Ah ha.
“And that bothers you.”

“No.”

“You keep saying that! But what if you're in repression, in denial? Maybe you need to talk to a shrink.”

“Why is it we think people with different values than ours are insane?”

“Maybe because the pay is good."

David abruptly stopped and closed his eyes, then opened them and pointed up toward a bird in a tall cottonwood tree. Instead of watching the bird, though, Val walked to the tree, and stretched out her hand to feel the initials that had been carved there, like a wound. David stepped up behind her, and touched her shoulder. Again, the act momentarily startled her.