Turtleface and Beyond (20 page)

“Thank you.”

Back upstairs, in the clean, quiet din of the firm library, I pondered this conversation and Roberta's damning accusation. I phoned my home number and called out for Jim when the answering machine picked up. Boots was probably listening to me, lying confused amid a heap of my overturned furniture. Feeling uneasy, I looked up Jim's number in Connecticut and called it later that afternoon. A woman answered.

“Is Jim there?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “He's not.”

“Is this Sara?”

“Who is this?”

“My name is Georgie. I'm a friend of Jim's from work.”

“Georgie?”

“Well, we're not really friends…”

“Jim hasn't been home for a while,” said Sara.

“I know, that's why I called…”

I explained to Sara that Jim had been forced to leave his room at the Carlyle because of Boots and now he and Boots were staying with me in Brooklyn. Or Boots was, at least. I wasn't sure about Jim.

“I'm afraid I'm not a very good influence on your husband,” I said.

“Really?”

“That's what Roberta said.”

“Roberta said that?”

“Yes, and I was wondering if you might be able to help.”

“How could I do that?”

I gave her my address and asked if she would come take Boots off my hands, at least.

“I hate that dog,” she said.

“Well, Jim seems attached to her.”

“I'm aware of that.”

We talked a while longer and Sara said, “I'll see what I can do,” and hung up the phone. I felt a little better.

That night, when I arrived back at my place, I found things surprisingly in order. The apartment had been cleaned up and Jim was sitting in the kitchen with Lena and a small boy. There was food cooking on the stove and Lena was rubbing ointment on the red patch under Jim's eye. He had taken a shower and was wearing blue jeans.

“George!” said Jim. “You remember Lena? And this is Emanuel, her son.”

Emanuel nodded at me. He was feeding bits of bread to Boots, who was happily munching them underneath the table.

“I called Lena to pay her back for the other night,” said Jim. “And she came over and helped me clean up. Do you know that you have tomatoes in your backyard?”

“I knew that.”

“Boots dug them up.”

“Oh.”

The food smelled good and we all ate a big meal sitting crowded in my tiny kitchen. Emanuel fell asleep on the floor with his head resting on Boots's furry side and Lena remarked how funny that looked.

“Boots is like a lion,” she said.

“That's right, Lena,” said Jim. “She is like a lion.”

Lena turned to me and said, “My name is not Lena. It's Maribell.”

“But I still call her Lena,” said Jim. “It's a small joke between us.”

There was a knock on the door and Boots jumped up, spilling little Emanuel to the floor in the process. I went out to answer the door and was greeted by a taller, stretched-out version of young Wendell from the photographs in Jim's office. He looked at me nervously and said, “Is, um, Jim Tewilliger here?”

Before I could answer, Boots bounded by me and began licking Wendell on the face. She was very excited to see him.

“Good girl, Boots,” said Wendell. They stood there getting reacquainted for a while.

Finally Wendell said, “Is my dad here?”

“Come on inside,” I told him, and I led him down the stairs, through my little living room/bedroom, and into the kitchen. There was no one there. The dirty dishes from dinner were stacked neatly in the sink. I opened up the back door to the yard and peered out into the darkness. Jim, Maribell, and Emanuel were gone.

“They're not here,” I told Wendell.

“Who's ‘they'?” he asked me.

“Well, he's not here.”

“But he was.”

“Right,” I said, “he was just here.”

Wendell looked down at the floor and scratched Boots's enormous head. He had grown taller than her now, at least.

“How did you get here?” I asked him.

“I drove,” he said. “I came down from school and my mother let me take the car. I only have a learner's permit.”

I stuck my head back outside and gazed around the yard some more to see if maybe Jim was out there hiding. But he wasn't. They must have hopped the fence, all three of them.

“I don't know what to tell you,” I said.

“That's okay,” said Wendell. “I'll take Boots home anyway.”

We walked out to the street and I helped him load Boots into the back of his mother's fancy little car. It was one of those low-riding sportsters where the backseat is just an afterthought and Boots looked like a big rug stuffed back there. I told Wendell I'd ask Jim to give him a call right away.

“Sure, thanks,” said Wendell, and then he left.

I watched Boots's huge dumb face press against the curved glass of the rear windshield as they drove away.

*   *   *

Jim never did return to my home. He left his two suitcases full of thousand-dollar suits and shiny shoes behind, and months later a man in a van came by to haul the stuff away. He said he was shipping it all down to Mexico. Back at the firm the word was Jim Tewilliger had gone nuts. He'd checked out and left the country. Apparently this sort of thing happened at law firms from time to time. Roberta stayed on and shot me accusatory looks when we crossed paths in the cafeteria.

Several months after Jim's departure I received a worn-out letter, addressed to me at the law firm library. It was from Jim. It said:

Hola Georgie!

Greetings from San Miguel! Lena was crazy after all. But Emanuel is a nice boy and I took him home to see his father. I have holed up here for now. I miss my dog terribly and am hoping you can help me in this regard. Would you be so kind as to bring Boots down here to stay with me? I will cover all expenses, naturally, and more than compensate you for your time.

Your Friend,

Jim T.

I did not take him up on this offer.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you:

Sean MacDonald, Kassie Evashevski, Taylor Sperry, Peter Rock, Creston Lea, Denis Johnson, Kerry Glamsch, Dave Eggers, Eli Horowitz, Jesse Pearson, Rocco Castoro, Hana Tint, Chad Urmston, Adam Ogilvie, Jon Raymond, Lance Cleland, Matt Stone, Trey Parker, Sarah Law.

Taxidermy Writers: Frayn Masters, Kevin Sampsell, Matt Brown, Cheston Knapp, Pauls Toutonghi, Peyton Marshall, Emily Kendall Frey, Erin Ergenbright, and Sarah Bartlett.

Laura Bradford, Emily Bradford, Anna Friedman, Elsie and Theo, Peter and Susan Bradford, Katherine Bradford and Jane O'Wyatt.

Matt Sheehy, who wrote the song “Cold Feet,” which inspired the story of the same title, and Courtenay Hameister, who made that happen.

And the MacDowell Colony.

 

ALSO BY ARTHUR BRADFORD

Dogwalker

Benny's Brigade

 

A Note About the Author

Arthur Bradford is an O. Henry Prize–winning writer and Emmy-nominated filmmaker. He is the author of
Dogwalker
, and his writing has appeared in
Esquire
,
McSweeney's
,
Vice
, and
Men's Journal
. He lives in Portland, Oregon, and works at a juvenile detention center.

 

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

Copyright © 2015 by Arthur Bradford

All rights reserved

First edition, 2015

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the publications in which these stories first appeared, in slightly different form:

Cousin Corinne's Reminder
(“Resort Tik Tok”),
Five Dials
(“Travels with Paul”),
McSweeney's
(“Snakebite”),
Nerve.com
(“Orderly” and “Wendy, Mort, and I”),
One Story
(“217-Pound Dog”),
StoryQuarterly
(“Build It Up, Knock It Down”),
Tin House
(“Turtleface” and “The LSD and the Baby”), and
Vice
(“Lost Limbs”).

eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bradford, Arthur.

       [Short stories. Selections]

       Turtleface and beyond: stories / Arthur Bradford. — First edition.

           pages      cm

       ISBN 978-0-374-27806-9 (hardback) — ISBN 978-0-374-71284-6 (ebook)

       I.  Bradford, Arthur. Turtleface.   II.  Title.

    PS3602.R34 A6 2015

    813'.6—dc23

2014027441

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