Walking the Dog (16 page)

Then, I don't know how much later, I heard sirens. Good, I thought, they'll pay attention to that accident with the car and pickup and not even notice me until I'm off toward Buffalo with Miko and the jewels. Where the fuck was Miko?

Treasure. When I was five years old, I'd dreamed of being a pirate. I didn't care about a black patch over an eye or a hook. I imagined a ship the size of the Empire State Building with sails made of black
silk. I didn't fancy cannons. The image of shiny daggers and silver swords thrilled my love of color and shape. But most of all, there was a trunk located in the middle of the worn-down wooden bow. And the trunk was the size of a large cabinet. It had carved sides and gold and silver engraving on the edges, and the key that opened the brass lock was as big as the steering wheel of my father's car. The key was gold and carved with the names of the most famous, evil pirates of all time. On my pirate ship you opened the trunk and it overflowed with a bath of diamonds, rubies, gold nuggets, bracelets, necklaces, chains, and coins—so many coins from all over the world. It didn't matter to me what anything was worth. I was entranced by the color and the texture. Being the youngest and smallest pirate on the ship, I could crawl into the trunk and submerge myself in the cool metals and stones. I'd lift my arms through the trunk and swim through the pearls. I'd dive downward through the waves of shining emeralds.

A flashlight circled the interior of the Sunbeam. A spotlight blasted from the front through the broken window. Hollywood. Oscar night! The opening of a new Kmart! A circus—yes! A circus. I'd painted so many circuses. I could hear the ringmaster through his megaphone.

“I'm not saying this again, Ester Rosenthal. Toss the gun and then come out of the car an inch at a time.”

What was an inch at a time?

Who was saying my name?

An inch in what time?

Inch and time and Ester.

You take as long as you want to do an inch. It depended on how many brushes. What was the shape? Sideways light or was it ashen?

“We're coming in.”

The light blinded my eyes, but I grabbed Miko's gun and pointed it toward what blinded me.

“You're going to want to put that down, Miss. You're in a hell of a lot of trouble as is.”

“I've been in a bad car accident. I was driving my car when a vehicle from the lane across from me attempted to pass and went right into my lane,” I said calmly.

“Put down the gun.”

“My car is especially well insulated or I'd be dead.”

“What are you doing with that gun, ma'am? Just hand it over to me.”

“‘And who are you?' said the caterpillar. ‘I don't know,' said Alice, ‘for I'm not myself you see',” I replied.

A club hit my already burning scalp and a gloved hand grabbed the Magnum. Some arms or legs or an octopus lifted me out of the car and threw me on the ground.

“Don't move,” said a man's voice.

“I don't intend to,” I replied.

“You don't want to end up like your friends,” the voice threatened.

Now I saw red-and-blue lights flashing and white cars—perhaps eight of them in triangular positions. It was really quite pretty.

“I don't have any friends.” I shook my head. “I'm an artist. We're lonely and narcissistic by nature.”

“Well, I think it's more like this,” said another voice. It was also male. It was scratchy. I didn't like its almost arrogant tone.

“All your friends are dead. Your friend Miko is dead. Your friend Jess is dead. That's why you don't have any friends.”

My body went cold.

Many cartoon voices started screaming in my head.

They didn't match or rhyme.

“Jess was not my friend,” I shouted.

“Yeah, but Miko was your boy, right? And you and him were planning your cute little heist with the jewelry truck right? But we were waiting for him, and when he approached the Wolfmanns' van we told him to stop. They pulled out their firearms and killed two officers. We don't know about the third. Don't worry though, we gunned down your playmates, Ms. Jew-girl. They're dead as you're gonna be if you don't start realizing the godforsaken hell you're in.”

I started screaming.

“What? Guns? Asshole! I told him not to bring guns! What was he doing with guns? You ask him. I said no guns. We never use guns. What're guns for, to rob a bunch of shiny jewels? Ask Shakespeare. That was in iambic pentameter.”

“What about that gun you were waving around?”

“A water gun painted black,” I pointed out what I thought was obvious.

A boot kicked me in the ribs.

“What're you on, bitch? You're swimming in chemicals.”

The image of swimming in chemicals nauseated me. I threw up.

“You're in trouble, ma'am. You're an accessory to the murder of two police officers.”

I tried to pull myself together.

“All right, I'll be completely honest,” I replied. “I started the day with a joint. I've smoked maybe three pipes of crack cocaine. I've tooted I don't know how much coke on this run. I've had two hits of crystal and half a six-pack of beer. But I'm clear about what things I will and will not do in a moral sense. I'm always clear. Ask Miko. There's only so far I will go. And then he pushes me a little further. It's his eyes. I can't believe he finds me wild and attractive. He says I can take more shit in one day than anyone he knows and still stand upright.”

“Ma'am. I've told you. Your buddy Miko gunned down two cops and must have a gun's worth of bullets in him. He's dead.”

“This is Man Ray,” I laughed. “None of this is real. Call Leonard in Denmark and he'll tell you what an imagination I have! I could work in one of those S&M clubs, you know where they stage scenes like maids and butlers and children's tea parties. I stage scenes. I staged this scene. Go to my forest. It's a sculpture. Ask David Sessions.”

“She's lost it,” an EMT said. “The drugs, the head injuries. She needs to go to a hospital. Now.”

I felt myself lifted and put in a sluggish vehicle with a motor that wasn't capable of going as fast as they were trying to go.

“Take the engine out of my Sunbeam. It'll get us there in half the time as this piece of shit. I designed the Sunbeam myself. Mechanics is sculpture with function. That's why factories are so fuckin' beautiful. Construction sites too.” My whole body was flashing stabbing pains and going numb. Stabbing pains. Ice-cold limbs.

“Help me,” I screamed. “I'm the Fourth of July. I'm the Macy's display. I'm going off all over the place.”

They cordoned off a section of a hospital somewhere in a chic town in New York. Police cars lined up across the front of it. Inside they began to examine too many parts of me at once and the pain was surprising. “Fuck you,” I screamed, and passed out.

Dear Elisheva,

This is the accounting of all the crimes that I remember. I left out anything sexual for obvious reasons, but I'm afraid my rendition of events isn't as clean cut as you and Pony Batya Shulamit might want. Please feel free to edit out any commentary that is redundant or too much of an elaboration on “just the facts, ma'am.” Also, any phrases or incidents that you think might traumatize an eleven-year-old girl—please, I beg you—cut, cut, cut. I will live with graphic details all my life—Pony doesn't have to. I swear I tried to be detailed and honest. I don't know how you'll choose to translate this into religious-looking Hebrew paragraphs but good luck. Maybe the whole thing is a scam. My
fear about you knowing all this stuff is that you're a carrier, like a pigeon with a secret paper on its talon. Where are you really going with this story, and in whose calloused hands will it land? Yet I trust you, with your Cleopatra eyes. I don't want you to tell Pony that I'm sorry for who I was or what I did, or that I was sick and didn't know what I was doing. No commentary on your part. Just lots of cuts, and pick the right font and an objective translation. I doubt I will ever hear from either of you again. I've already told several authorities that I'm a sociopath and didn't care how any of it turned out. Sister Jean said that's my biggest lie, and when I break through that window to the truth I might drown from walled-up emotions. I thank you for your intervention. There's the possibility that you may decide not to show any of this to Pony at all, but if you do, here are the statistics:

Two cops died. One is paralyzed. Miko and Jess are dead. The two drivers of the Wolfmanns' truck escaped with minor injuries. I guess they built those trucks better than I thought. The truck and car involved in the accident contained two drivers and one passenger. They all died, but I was found innocent for negligent homicide because the truck came forward in a no-passing lane.

I don't know where Miko is buried. I never knew if he had a family or other friends. I think he might've just been an urban lowlife mobster who loved the mountains of New Hampshire and jumping road bikes over wrecked trucks.

In this story, at this point let the facts stand. If we continue, others will reveal themselves as time goes on. But time is not my friend.

Thank you for your attempt at a positive intervention, Elisheva. I wish I had the maternal instincts to relay my
saga to my little girl so she might forgive me. But I am unforgivable. I am the monster under the bed.

Yours,

Carleen Kepper (Ester Rosenthal)

When I finished my Homer-like list for the red-haired tyrant who would be my daughter, the chemical dawn was spreading its transparent, thin red-and-gray fingers across the Manhattan skyline.

I was in my room at the halfway house. I'd considered my writing time on the fishing boat sacred, but I'd become a robot when it came to rules and, without hesitation, had returned to the house at curfew.

I was cold, and sleep tried to pull me under a heavy white cloud. My arms tingled as if I'd suddenly contracted a nerve disease. It was as if my body was disappearing into smoke. I knew I'd outlined those years in too much detail with too many characters. The memories of the landscape of my criminal life put me in a trance. A list of drug-induced oldies. I was lying on the ground of an unknown desert. Then I slowly walked through a city with buildings as thin as needles, cars in postmodern geometric shapes, and absolutely no human inhabitants whatsoever. I was switching in and out of visual realities. My muscles cramped. My throat seemed to close up the way they describe a fatal allergy to nuts. I tried to breath, but I was inside of a tornado. My body was buckling under itself.

“Carleen,” I screamed at myself. “Ester.”

I punched at my arms and tried to scream, but what came out was like a psychotic cry for help, as though I were hallucinating an attack by an invisible killer. I dragged myself to the sink and let the cold faucet release a stream of water onto my face and then into my ears, nose, and mouth. At last I returned,
and the weight of shame lay on my back like the rock of Sisyphus. I didn't think I'd stand straight again. I'd be condemned to be one of those old ladies who were bent parallel to the ground. The truth was, I had always been myself. I was this story. No other. No radical changes. No corruptors or predators or abusers. It was me. The legend of Carleen Kepper was her own doing. I was Yellowstone National Park. Bubbling gases. And devouring chemicals. I was poison. Why should an innocent little girl know that such chemical possibility could be mixed with her blood? I decided I'd never give the document to Elisheva. I thought about committing some new crime to put me behind bars for my remaining years. It was better to be an injured rabid animal than try to tame myself to coexist with others who had been born naturally decent. Leonard's genomes gave Pony a chance to live normally. Shit, I hope I hadn't wrecked that, too.

I began to pour sweat. I looked at the clock. It was time to pick up my first dog of the day. Should I call Hubb and wake him out of his drugged sleep and quit? Should I buy a Glock or a Magnum? Should I rip off my clothes and set myself on fire in front of Leonard's house? But I had no political passion, nor generosity. What good would I do? I was a Roy Orbison song—“Bad Boy.”

CHESTER

How meek I was. I pulled on blue jeans, a flannel shirt, a jacket, and clogs, and dug out the key to my first gig. He was an old man with an old dog, and neither had much time left. Marty Trimbal at 645 Whatever Street. I couldn't remember. Maybe I didn't have much time left either. I checked out with the front guard and didn't say good morning. I hit the street.

“Well, that was dramatic,” I said to myself. My panic attack (if that's what it was) felt exactly like detoxing, but I hadn't done those drugs for years. I switched my mind to Chester, Marty's dog. How strange that I could be so thoroughly nuked, and then set about my day. It was as if I were a child's ad for the postman. Maybe during a break I'd make a call to Sister Jean and tell her to go fuck herself. Maybe I'd throw myself in the East River like Spalding Gray. In the meantime, Chester was twelve and didn't hold his bladder well.

Marty was sixty-eight, not really old but he had emphysema. He was an insurance salesman and a low-stakes gambler, and he used to bet on dogs when he went to visit his mother in Florida. He told me that he'd lay down his bets and then cry when he watched the beautiful rail-thin dogs killing each other—for what? He knew that throwing greenbacks in the
name of the half-bird-half-mammals as they were starved and tortured for snorting, beer-bellied ticket holders was wretched. But he did it.

Then, according to him, he went to one of those “left-wing, liberal, save-the-dolphins” places, and he saw this emaciated miniature disaster cowering in the corner of a wire pen.

“Okay, Chester,” he said to the greyhound. And the dog got to its feet graceful as a stallion and limped over to him. He drove Chester back to New York in his Pontiac. The dog never made a sound or looked at him once. “Chester was worn out by life,” Marty told me. “Just like—yeah, you knew I was gonna say it—me.”

“But here's the thing,” Marty continued. “He was bred to run. So he sort of had to run, even if he was fakin' it for his own benefit. Up until last year I could take him around the Village, ya know. He didn't need a leash or nothing. I fed him three times a day, but the spic in the bodega on Barrow called the ASPCA. He reported that Chester was ‘thinner than he was supposed to be.' Some guy with greasy long hair and a mustache came by and checked my old dog out. Said I was doin' fine,” Marty laughed. “I could grow a goiter the size of a tomato on my head, and no one would call about me. But dog people. They're fascists. I don't gamble anymore. Instead, I became a fascist searching neighborhoods for fucked-up dog-a-saurs.”

Eventually Marty's breathing got bad enough that he could only go to the corner and back. He knew he had to hire a service. He called PetPals because he was living on social security and Medicare and we were the cheapest. Also, since I'd started at PetPals, they advertised, saying, “Also specializes in training and unique circumstances.”

Chester and I took a cab to Central Park to arrive there
early enough that dogs could still be off leash. I admired him. At first he walked arthritically on the grass in crooked lines. He was my Giacometti beauty. My gray bone of driftwood. As he worked his kinks out his gait became smoother and his walk surer. Then he lifted into a tight canter and, though he couldn't go very fast, you could tell he was dreaming of a sprint around a ring. “That's Chester,” I'd shout. “He's coming from behind. He's passing all the others. Watch him leap over the line! Yes, yes, it's Chester!” I opened my arms to him and he managed to place his front stick legs onto my shoulders. He panted and rubbed his prickly head against my cheek. He was old. I knew it, he knew it. But his dog dream created speed and victory. I felt less bombed-out myself, and I popped a dried-chicken treat into his gray mouth while I leashed him.

We walked a bit more through the park. I caught sight of a long line of mothers jogging and pushing strollers. Truthfully, at least to me, it looked ridiculous and a bit desperate. It was so pinkish and bouncy. Chester and I were like veterans from World War I compared to them. We had so many scars and fractures. He was gray. My hair was black, gray, and white. He had milky eyes. Mine were forever circled as if I'd lost round after round. And along came these pastel ice-cream pops in bright white sweaters pushing candy-cane vehicles. I preferred the broken-down, near-death version, and so did Chester. He refused to watch them and bumped up against my side with his bony rump.

Marty called Hubb every day to say, “She does real good by my greyhound. I don't want no one else. If I die you give him to her.”

“She can't keep doing so much time for such chump change,” Hubb would tell him. “She's got a tight schedule.”

“You wanna put him down?” Marty'd growl. “Old animals can't laugh?”

“How about I put you down?” I once heard Hubb retort.

“That's up to me,” he answered. “As long as Chester can make it, I'll keep wheezing away.”