Connections (20 page)

That summer replacement show was stupid
, Laurie thought as she clicked the television off. She brought her laptop to the couch, folded her legs under her, and scrolled through her e-mails. After deleting the junk ones, there were just a few from e-pals. Funny how that worked. People from your past who you really wouldn’t want to talk to on the phone or see in person became important enough to trade niceties with and have a digital conversation with. At least it was more personal than Facebook and having the whole Eastern Seaboard know your business.

On an impulse, she went to the site. She wanted to scream,
“Hey, don’t you know the horrible things going on out there? Don’t you know how animals are suffering? Don’t you care about helping them? Can’t you try to do something about cruelty?”
That’s what she wanted to write, but instead, on an impulse, she typed in “Hey, guys, did you know 9,000 healthy dogs and cats are put to sleep every day?”

Elena’s toes touched the treetops. Her legs tapered to points as she stretched her feet straighter, reaching for the branches. They sliced through the air with a hum, engulfing her in the wind she created. Upside down, the sun, the leaves, the building spires streaked across the expanse of sky in a blur. Her legs thrust down, abruptly changing direction, like a rudder turning suddenly, skidding on the water. She was drowning in the dizzy froth. She screamed.

She relaxed her legs and as her speed slowed, the metal web of monkey bars, the silver chute, toddlers in the sandbox, and the slats of wooden benches converged on her, following her in reverse. Nausea surged in her chest. She came to a stop, slightly tilted in her seat. “Did you see how high I went? That was the highest I ever went…the highest anybody ever went,” Elena said excitedly.

“Yes, you were pretty high. Now start me.” Elena’s friend Diana held the chains of Elena’s swing steady.

“You can do it yourself. I did.”

“No, I need a good push. Come on, you promised.”

“I don’t feel like it,” Elena said. “Let’s go back.”

“That’s not fair. You went for a long time.”

“I did, didn’t I? Can you believe how high I got?”

“C’mon, please,” Diana whined, unimpressed.

“Okay, I’ll give you a push, but then let’s go back to my house. This is baby stuff.”

“There’s nothing to do,” Diana insisted. “You get any new clothes for Isabelle?”

“No.” Elena stood up and held the swing from behind. “Get on if you want me to push.” When Diana climbed on the swing, Elena walked backwards as far as she could, pulling the swing with her. “There’s things we could do. Like dress up, or we could play on the Xbox or something.”

“What’s Xbox?” Diana asked.

“It’s a TV game thing. I’ll show you. My brother got it.” Elena pushed and then let go, raising her hands higher, ready to push again when Diana swung back to her. “It’s fun.”

“Your brother lets you use it?” Diana’s voice trailed off as she gained momentum.

“No, not really. But it’s okay. He won’t know.”

“Harder, harder. What about your señora?”

“Oh, Señora Sanchez doesn’t pay attention. She does whatever I say.”

“What?” Diana shrieked.

“Never mind. When you come down, that’s what we’ll do.” Elena’s words rose and fell to the tempo of her friend’s swinging.

“Push me harder—harder!”

Their happy squeals filled the playground.

“Ready, little girl?” Sabrina’s tail was so short it was hardly noticeable under her long fur, but there was no mistaking her answer to Jason’s question as her backside swayed with its vigorous wagging.

“Don’t you think you’re overreacting a little?”

Jason followed the sound of Chris’s voice to the open bathroom door and told his reflection, “I’m not taking any chances. Better safe than sorry.”

“That sounds like one of your AIDS group’s slogans,” Chris said.

“As an editor, don’t you think it’s a bit trite?”

“To say the least.” Chris twisted his mouth to the side, stretching his skin taut. He made short, scratchy strokes down his cheek with the razor.

“I’d worry all day. This way, she’s right there, where I can see her. Besides, she’s not at all in the way. And since your stakeout didn’t work—”

“I wasn’t even thinking about that,” Chris insisted. He held the razor under the faucet, shook the water off, and spoke to Jason through the mirror. “You’re probably confusing her. She’s used to being home. After all, the store is a strange place to her.”

“Wrong. She knows it’s mine. Everything there must smell of me. She made herself right at home after the first day. She doesn’t even bother getting up anymore every time the door opens and someone comes in.”

“Probably because it’s too hard for her to get up with her arthritis.”

“Oh, come on, she’s still young. Everybody has a little arthritis. She’s only seven. In dog years, she’s even younger than I am.”

“All I’m saying is that you’re changing her whole routine. She’ll get used to it, having company all day long. Then, at some point, you’ll stop taking her every day, and she’ll be miserable staying alone in the apartment.”

“You’re making a big to-do. She’s safer with me. I feel safer.”

“Well, if it’s safety you’re thinking about”—Chris examined up close a nick he’d made with the razor—“it seems to me that nobody can actually get in here. But anybody can walk into the store and hold you up or threaten you.”

“Well, I’m sorry. I want her with me.” Jason went into the foyer, picked up his keys, and bent to clip the leash onto Sabrina’s collar. “C’mon. Daddy’s gonna be late.”

“Je-sus,” Chris muttered.

“You’re forgetting one thing!” Jason yelled down the hallway before he stormed out. “She’s
my
dog.” On the other side of the door, he added quietly, “And it’s my life, goddammit.”

Ken blackened the rules on his yellow pad and used a ruler to draw vertical lines, making a chart. He inserted a few numbers and then doodled a stick flower in the margin, turning the petals into ears, adding a body and a tail. He still couldn’t believe the figures. There must be an error.

Bernie had agreed with him when Ken called him from the lobby of One Police Plaza. Now, Ken replayed the morning’s conversation in his head while he filled a crude ceramic mug with his potent brew.

“You musta read it wrong,” Bernie had said.

“No, I looked it up twice. In the stats. And then in the Crime Comparison Report.”

“It doesn’t seem possible.”

“That’s what it said. A seventy percent increase in animals stolen in the country every year. But nobody has the exact number. How come we don’t hear about them? They don’t even make the papers.”

“Eh.” Bernie had seemed to shrug through the phone. “Penny-ante stuff. They sell ’em for twenty, twenty-five bucks to laboratories, research centers. Sometimes the owners are lucky. They post little signs in the neighborhood and offer a reward. If the guy can make more returning the dog before he sells it, he does.”

“But Christ, what’s worse? They use ’em as bait to train fighting dogs. Or sell them to puppy mills to be breeders. If they look like pedigreeds—”

“I didn’t realize it was such a big business,” Bernie had said. “You sure?”

“Must be. The records don’t lie. Hell, the records don’t exist. They don’t even have a handle on the ones that are reported. What about all the ones that
weren’t
reported? You know what’s so terrible about it? It’s, like, the six million dead. The number is too big. You can’t fathom it. Or think of them as six million individual lives. It’s incomprehensible. We’re talking here about thousands of broken hearts. People looking for their pets, not knowing their fate. Little children crying for their dogs.”

“C’mon, in a city this size, with the crime rate we have, who you think’s gonna worry about some kid missing his dog?”

“That’s one thing. Stealing it to sell it, as if it’s a gold chain or a hubcap or a car radio. But the old lady thing, that’s different.”

“Why?”

“Taking it for ransom,” Ken had explained. “They play on a person’s grief. Especially an old one.”

“Aw, buddy, sure. But there’s not much you can do about it, so don’t get an ulcer over it.”

“I’ll only get an ulcer if I
don’t
do anything about it.”

It was 7:25 when Laurie got home. “Everybody alive?” She tentatively opened the bathroom door where she had locked up Megabyte to separate her new boarder from the other two. An orange flurry streaked past her. She went inside and sat on the edge of the bed, untied her sneakers, threw her socks into the corner, and stroked Oscar absentmindedly. She leaned back on her elbows, stretched her legs off the mattress, and flexed her ankles. She was exhausted and weak from the heat. Felix seemed to fall out of the ceiling, he pounced on her leg with such force. “And where have you been hiding, love?” She wiggled her toes, teasing him as he walked down her shin to swipe at them. He dug into her skin like a tiger clutching a tree limb. Then Megabyte came to the doorway and Felix hissed angrily at her—and at Laurie for bringing the intruder home. He crouched menacingly.

She took off her dress and then hurled her bra after her socks. “Ooh, that feels good.” She raised her breasts and patted the dampness where the stiff underwire had confined her. She changed into a long T-shirt. “Who’s hungry?” She walked into the kitchen, barefoot, and poured herself a glass of Malbec from the bottle she had left standing on the counter. Felix slithered against her, the caress thrusting his back to a peak. He meowed loudly. Laurie liked to believe he was showing his contentment and affection, but she knew better—he was whining his impatience because she was taking so long with his dinner. She mixed some canned food, disguised as tuna fish, into the healthy brand.

She made a face as she took a sip of the wine. She swished it around her mouth before forcing it down, the bitterness stinging her tongue and cheeks. “Yuck.” She shook her head. “Too hot to leave out in this weather.”

The three plastic bowls clattered on the linoleum when she put them down on the floor. Laurie went into the living room, relieved that there’d be no fighting for a while, at least until they finished dinner. She struggled with the window latch and then pushed the rough frame up, holding her hand in front of it to test for a breeze. She stretched out on the couch with the mail.
What a life. I must be doing something wrong,
she thought absently. She fell fast asleep.

🙧

The ripples of the East River vibrated with silver spangles where the sun touched the water. The background din of rubber chafing concrete and engines droning under hoods grew loud as the thin but steady stream of cars on the FDR Drive seemed to rush toward them as they jogged along the promenade.

“I gotta stop for a minute.” Ken dropped onto the bench and wiped his face with a handkerchief. Perspiration glued little commas of hair to his temples. “Whew, you’re gonna kill me.”

“Uh-uh.” Louise faced him, jogging in place. “Just the opposite. I’m gonna save your life. It’s good for you.”

“What is? Getting thrown out of bed at the crack of dawn and then working up a sweat? Not to mention an appetite?”

“You’re lucky I let you sleep so late. It’s 6:30 already!” Louise laughed between pants. “By the way, I hope the noise didn’t keep you up last night.”

“That’s not what kept me up,” he said with a smirk. “What noise?”

“Just the sounds of the city. That sometimes happens. People who come in once in a while are not used to the traffic, talking on the street, sirens. It was like that when I first moved here.”

“You don’t say?” he teased.

“Took some getting used to. Then, the first time I went back home after that, I couldn’t sleep because of the quiet.”

“I didn’t mind it at all. It was nice staying in, nice not having to travel to get here this morning.” Ken reached for her hand. She hesitated because it was clammy with sweat. She wiped it on her spandex pants and then gave it to him. “And it was nice spending the night with you.” His voice turned gravelly as he put his arms around her waist to pull her closer to the bench. He let his head rest on her chest for an instant. The softness of her breast against his cheek jerked a nerve in his groin. He jumped up. “Now that I have my second wind, you’re in trouble, lady,” he said and sprinted down the walkway.

🙧

“Why you can’t take a ride? I pay the bus.” Rosa rested the broom on a parked car so she could use her hands to express her exasperation with Eileen.

“I told you. It’s not that I don’t want to keep you company. I hate leaving him. And if I did go, I’d pay my own way.”

“You can’t stay locked up with him forever.”

“No, no, I’m too afraid.”

“They not going to bother you again.”

“How do you know?”

“It wouldn’t make sense, getting you mad. Maybe you go to the police.”

Eileen looked around to make sure no one was listening and lowered her voice to a husky whisper. “But they know I paid once. They could think I’d pay again.”

“No, they probably think you have no more money. They try somebody else first. It would do you good. Then we could go out for lunch. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“Yes, it would. But I would be too nervous to eat. I’d be thinking all the time, suppose something happens to him because I went out? If I came home, and he was gone, or hurt, oh God, I’d kill myself. Honest, I would. I’d never forgive myself for going out. No, I’m too nervous.”

“Ah, I think, I plan how we make this a good day. We go to the West Side. We buy a camera. We coulda take a walk in the park, maybe. Then eat in a restaurant.” Rosa’s disappointment was obvious.

“Don’t be angry. I just don’t want to let him out of my sight.”

“What happen if you have to go someplace and you can’t take him?”

“Like where?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the doctor.”

“Why, then, I guess I’d just ask you to come over and babysit. Yes, that’s what I’d do. Would you?”

“Who knows? I may not even be alive next week.”

“Well, maybe I won’t be either. But if you were alive, would you?”

“Maybe.”

“See, you
are
angry that I won’t go.”

“No, no. I told you, I’m not angry. Maybe sorry that you so scared. It’s a disappointment, that’s all. And yes, I would do it.”

“I knew you would. You know what? I’d never ask anybody else. ’Cause I wouldn’t trust anybody else with him. Just you.”

“
Grazie
. I wouldn’t ask anyone else either. Only you.”

“Good. I tell you—let’s have lunch anyway. I’ll make a cool salad, maybe tuna or salmon, and you come up. Okay? You can go to the West Side another day.”

“Ah, but I need the camera.”

“Why do you need it today?”

“You know.”

“Come on. I’m going to make lunch. You can start being a detective tomorrow.”

🙧

Pets are a 58-billion-dollar industry
. Laurie shook her head at the staggering amounts spent yearly by those who love their pets:

$21.6 billion on food

$10,000,000 on dog apparel

$920,000,000 on animal-health products

$418,000,000 on grooming and boarding

$14.4 billion on veterinarians

$242,700,000 on medicine

It’s estimated that 100,000,000 animals die in laboratories every year worldwide, 20,000,000 in the United States. There are 1,200 registered research facilities—government and commercial ones—in hospitals and universities. Nobody knows the number of unregistered facilities. Three animals die every second, 900 every five minutes. Horribly. Dogs, cats, primates, rabbits, guinea pigs, fish, birds.

Laurie squeezed her eyes shut to block out the images of dogs being cut open without anesthesia, their vocal cords cut so they can’t bark or cry. But the pictures scrolled around her insides, icy fingers clenching her colon.

🙧

Kola rested her head on her two large front paws and without moving, she stretched her eyes to follow Clifford. She watched him roll his old jeans and stuff them into the shopping bag. Socks. His windbreaker. Without understanding what it was, she was saddened by his sadness. A sense of gloom hovered over them both, like the darkness of clouds heavy with rain. The anxiety of waiting for the thunderstorm to explode made her uneasy.

Kola lifted her head and stared at the bag as she saw her knotted rawhide bone disappear inside it.