Dog Eat Dog (5 page)

“No, you wouldn’t,” she said, slowing down finally to force me to catch up. “And neither do I.”

We sat on her porch drinking Coke—me—and peach essence seltzer—her—without talking too much. The summer heat was just starting to pinch the city, and that was the thing that seemed to guide us. I sipped, she said something about the vacation to Miami she dreaded taking in July. Then we said nothing. She sipped and I talked about the Knights of Columbus Fourth of July picnic I was planning to miss for the first time since I was in diapers and my old man let me suck the sweaty foamy backwash out of brown Black Label bottles all day until we both puked. We have it on a sixteen-millimeter movie.

I told her this Fourth of July I was just going to stay home and watch the movie instead. She laughed. I smacked the first mosquito of the summer, but he had already stuck me, and he burst with a bellyful of my blood. We didn’t say anything for a long time, sitting there watching cars go by, but that was fine.

“You slept with Toy’s mother, huh?” she piped through the silence.

“Jesus
Christ
,” I said, hopping to my feet. “Where did you hear that? Huh?”

She giggled. “It’s in the girls’ bathroom at school.”

“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” I said. “Oh shit.” I paced maniacally, up and down the stairs like I was doing a Gene Kelly dance routine. “Well, it’s not true.”

“Come on, Mick,” she said, really laughing now. “You can’t tell me it’s not true. It’s in the girls’
bathroom
, I told you.”

“Oh my god,” I said, sitting down on the bottom step with my head in my hands.

Evelyn sat next to me on the step. “There’s a name for what you did, you know. I’m too much of a lady to say it, though.”

“Oh my god” was the best I could do now, and I was stuck there. “Oh my god.”

Evelyn patted my shoulder. “Don’t get so worked up.”

I raised my head, hopeful for a second. “Does he know? Do you think he knows? No, he doesn’t know. Does he?”

She laughed very loud now, louder than I thought a girl could laugh without being stoned.
“Yo no sé,”
she choked out. “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

“Hey,” Toy said, walking up behind me and leaning with his boot up on the third step.

“Hey,” Evelyn said.

“Hey,” I squealed. My voice was as high as a referee’s whistle.

“What’s up with you two?” Toy asked.

“Just sitting,” she said, “breaking in the summer. Exchanging some poetry. Want to hear?” she said, then started without his answer:

“There once was a trucker

and an-other trucker;

The first trucker turned out to be

a m—”

“Tell him the other one!” I blurted. “Um, the Shelley, um the one about Death trampling to fragments... no, don’t tell him that one... do ya have anything with flowers?”

Toy reached out and gripped my arm.

“It’s okay,” he said, in such a warm, deep hum that I felt I could believe it. Almost.

“What’s okay?” I asked nervously.

“Whatever. Whatever, it’s all okay. I’m just here because I wanted to tell you guys I’ll see you.”

Evelyn stopped laughing. “What do you mean, Toy, you’ll see us? You’re leaving? Now? The school year has been over for an hour and a half, and you’re leaving?”

“I’m anxious. More anxious than I knew,” he said.

“But right this
minute
?”

“Well what, I should hang around awhile? So you can throw me a going-away party, have a cake, gather up all my friends for a group hug?”

Evelyn tightened her lips, so that it was hard to tell how puffy and red they actually were. She stopped talking to him.

The other stuff didn’t matter to me much now. I stared up to Toy and felt like I was losing something great. And once again my mouth went to a place my brain had never dared go.

“I want to go with you,” I said.

He was reasonable and gracious about it, considering we both knew I was lapping over into an area I wasn’t allowed. “Nah, you wouldn’t enjoy it,” he said brightly, clapping me on the shoulder. “And besides, I don’t
want
you.”

I turned to look at Evelyn as Toy took his big foot off the step. She was shooting him angry eyes.

“I’ll be back,” he said without looking back at us. “I’m just going to look around right now. I’ll see you again.”

I turned once more to watch her watching him. The ice poet cried big hot June tears that fell in her lap. I put out my hand to catch one.

“You love him,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said.

J
UNE GOT HOT. SWEATY
relentless life-sucking August hot. It came and wouldn’t go. Things are different in the heat. There are no rules when it’s that hot out for that long. You can do anything, and it seems okay.

I went to the rematch. Bobo and the Doberman. Turns out Bobo missed the first one because he stepped on a broken bottle and even though he probably could have won walking on two legs, Augie would never expose him at less than his total awesome flesh-shredding self.

Now two weeks later, Bobo was healed, and it was hot. The Jamaicans loved it hot. Their dog loved it hot. Augie and Terry and the rest of the fair-haired boys, they didn’t like it hot, no way. Bobo didn’t like it hot either, but that was okay because it just made him meaner. And very very thirsty.

I even invited my roommate, Sully, along.

“Hmmm, let me see now, go to Bloody Sundays, watch one frightening animal tear pieces out of another frightening animal, for the viewing pleasure of a whole group of
more
frightening animals, after which, in all probability, they will all turn their attention on skinny human prey such as, oh, say,
moi.
Jeez, Mick, it sounds damn tempting, but I think I’ll stay home and ask my dad to pistol-whip me instead. But you go and have a good time anyway.”

More and more it was clear that there would be no overlap. I could be here, in the safe Sully world, or there in the Bloody one if that was what I wanted, but when I crossed over, I went alone. It wasn’t that I wanted to go. I had to.

“Hey boys,” I said as I strolled up to the whole group of them gathered at the Bloody bar. Terry, Augie, Danny, the fat Cormacs, and Baba. Bobo and Bunky lay panting on the floor, lapping away every few seconds at a plastic washtub full of water.

“Hey boy,” Terry answered, pissy for all of them. It was clear to everyone now that even though I was back, I was no friend of the court. My disrespect at the passing of Mickey the dog had given me away. Clear to everyone but Baba, that is, fresh out of detox, with a sparkling clean slate and very spotty recall. We were old friends again, there deep in Baba’s head.

“Yo Bones,” Baba said, slapping me crisply and warmly on the side of the head. “Come for the party, huh? Gonna be a booger bloodbath, man.” He laughed.

“Ya,” I said, and elbowed my way to the bar. The traditional automatic beer was not there for me as it was for everyone else. And for everyone else it was there every ninety seconds or so. This was power drinking, even by Bloody Sundays standards. The room was broiling hot with ovens blasting in the open kitchen and hypertense, overstoked bodies radiating their own noxious heat around the overcrowded bar. The one open door and two lame staggering ceiling fans were not up to the challenge.

So of course they drank. Stouts. Lagers. Black-and-tans. Like lemonade at a sidewalk stand, the brew flowed, glasses accumulating to cover the bar top. Terry’s face got so red he achieved yet
another
type of scary, not scary like he’d kill you, but like if you touched his face with your finger it would burst like an overripe tomato, splattering red pulp all over the walls. Baba nodded, revived, nodded, slammed the bar. The bartender stopped serving him—a first in Bloody Sundays history. Whenever Baba asked for another beer, he received a Coke. He didn’t seem to notice.

“Your friend ain’t gonna make it,” Augie wheezed, leaning too close to my face while pointing over his shoulder at Baba. “We thought he was gonna. Thought he was gonna be great. But...” He smiled a long evil grin, showing that he’d lost another tooth lately. “But he’s fried. Two damn beers now and he don’t know his goddamn name no more.”

I shook my head solemnly. “That’s a cryin’ shame,” I said. “When you lose one of the great talents, and so young.”

Augie’s mouth was hanging open, something genius about to ooze out, when his and every other head turned to catch the Jamaicans filing in. Even more than the last time, they were sharp. All in berets this time, shirts pressed, spit-shine clean and looking cool as October, they were the opposite end of everything from Terry’s buddies. Like last time, they all silently sat at the bar, crisp and orderly, having their ceremonial shots. Opposite them, the Bloody’s boys slobbered, sweated, postured. And shrank.

There was not a bead of sweat on the Jamaican side. Someone, as a joke, had set an empty pint glass on the bar under one fat Cormac’s chin. It was now one-third full of gray perspiration.

The murmurs started, about how badly Bobo was going to mutilate the Doberman. But they were quiet murmurs. Followed by low, vicious chuckles. Terry and Augie stared lasers across the bar at the Jamaicans, who didn’t bother to look back.

“Can I get a Coke, finally?” I said to the bartender after he’d served everyone in the place at least once while ignoring me. Terry’s boys exploded in a long, moronic, fear-charged laugh at me and my drink order. They were thrilled to have someone or something defenseless to turn their hate on. The racket was so shocking, in the middle of their shrinking, that it drew stares even from the Jamaicans.

I smiled back at them all. “My drink order’s pretty funny, huh?” I asked as my Coke arrived with no ice. “Tell ya what, then. So youse don’t think a me as totally limp, I’m gonna buy.”

“Whooo,” they said as a group, pretending to back away from all my power.

I turned, still smiling, to the bartender. “Shots, Stoli, all up and down,” I said. This torqued it up. They barked, cheered, laughed wildly as the bartender set them all up. They went out of their minds when I added, “Screw it, sell me the bottle, man.”

He dead fished me, bubble eyed and more stupid than he had to be. “Pay me for the goddamn round.”

Both Terry and Augie spoke up at once. In their perverse way, they were impressive and overwhelming. “Sell him the fucking bottle,” they growled, even if that bartender was their father, protector, god, long into almost every night. Like dogs lying in the midday sun, it didn’t matter to them who got in between them and what refreshment they needed. They’d shred him.

“Twenty-five bucks, you little underage shit,” the bartender sneered.

I pulled out the money. “And give me a bag a them chips. No, not them, the salt-and-vinegar ones. The big bag.”

More noise, more wild woofing. The bartender refilled their glasses and gave me the bottle. I laughed with them as they tossed the drinks back and slammed the glasses on the bar. I tore open the bag of chips, and dropped it to the floor under the bar where Bobo devoured it.

Terry and Augie laughed harder as the Jamaicans calmly stood and filed out the back into the bullring. The others—Danny, the Cormacs—drank their last shots more slowly. Double gulping, not really shooting. They held their lips tight against the backflow. They wouldn’t be asking for more. I looked down. Bobo had wolfed all the salt-and-vinegars, and was licking the ripped bag. Bunky got too close and took a giant paw thump on the head for it. The water bowl was three-quarters empty.

“What’re you gonna do, sit there and jerk that bottle neck all night?” Terry said.

I filled his glass and Augie’s. They laughed, clinked glasses, and turned away. No more use for me. The bartender stood there. “Get me another Coke,” I said.

As soon as the bartender turned, I did it. I took the bottle down and dumped it, more than half the bottle of crystal clear, smooth as ice Stolichnaya Russian vodka, into Bobo’s bowl. Seasoned brass-balled drinker that he was, champion stud mauler, Bobo didn’t even blink as he lapped it dry. When he was finished, he looked up longingly at me. Pathetically, desperately, he kept on licking, that fat brown tongue sweeping over his glistening teeth, over his bristly whiskers, over his blunt stupid snout again and again as if he had peanut butter smeared all over him. He smelled mostly of vinegar.

I thought it was funny. Then I looked into his innocent, ignorant black eyes, and I was pricked with pity for him.

“Hey, Augie,” I said, “your dog’s really thirsty, give him a drink quick.”

“Ya, well, so am I. You give me one.”

“Can’t,” I said, holding up the bottle. “You boys killed it.”

Terry and Augie shrieked and head-butted each other, as if they’d just reached the top of Everest. Bobo kept licking, whimpering now.

I gave Bobo my Coke, told the bartender to fill the water bucket. Bobo drank the Coke, and the bucket, and another bucket.

“It’s time, goddamnit,” Terry said.

They all got up and toddled toward the back, Augie yanking on Bobo’s chain. Bobo followed, in line, took a few sideways steps, banged off the corner of the bar, got back in line, and went out to meet the Doberman.

I wasn’t going to go. I was above that. I felt sorry for Bobo. Bobo wasn’t my concern. Screw Bobo. I was going to leave. I sat on my stool, drank my Coke to the sounds of the growling and snarling and the dogs. I found myself leaning in that direction anyway, hanging on every bit of it, piecing it together the way kids must have in the radio days. I got lost in it.

“Here, kid. They’re gone now. You got nothing ta prove. It’s on me.”

The bartender leaned in to me, slid a hopping popping cold pint of draft under my nose. He stood back smirking and watched me. The bubbles jumped up at me, tickling my nose. I did not pull my nose away. It smelled delicious. Hoppy. It was Bass ale. Nothing else smells like that. But Bass doesn’t have those bubbles. It was Bass and Rolling Rock together. I stuck my nose practically into the drink, got the tiniest bit of foam on the tip of my pointer nose.

I heard a bark, huge, like a gong. Dogs don’t bark when they fight. It was Bobo. I pushed the glass over, watched it spread out across the bar before I walked back to the bullring.