Dog Eat Dog (9 page)

“What? Nothing,” I said. “Let’s move on.”

It wasn’t my house. Those people inside, those nice people, were not my family. I had no business, and no right, bringing guests by. It would have occurred to me before, if I’d ever tried it before. Now that I had, it was official. Ruben did me a favor.

We just walked then, two guys with nothing to do. Past Sully’s house and on through the old neighborhood. As soon as I crossed the divider, Sycamore Street, I felt it. The foreignness. Maybe it was the beating of the sun that just would not go away. The emptiness of the streets, except for the McGinnesses’ eight filthy kids running madly through every yard with a sprinkler. Mrs. Healy said hello when I walked by her short stone wall, but she says hi to everybody. Except Ruben. Mrs. Gillooly looked up from where she crouched, hacking something out of her crappy little garden. She blocked the sun from her eyes with one gloved hand, squinted at us both, then went back to work without saying anything.

“I thought you was goin’ home?” Ruben said to me while staring at my old neighbors.

“Well, ya,” I said. “That back there was Sully’s house. I stay there now. But this is, was, my neighborhood. Where I lived. Before.” I did not miss a single house as I guided Ruben through the places I used to know.

“That red, white, and blue house, that was Harney. He paid me twenty bucks when I was his paperboy and I saw him beating off in his backyard at five thirty in the morning. Wasn’t a bad guy. The yellow house, with the three flagpoles, that was the Canadian couple who couldn’t have any kids, so they never got invited to the cook-outs, so they moved out after two years. The purple house, Mr. McCrea. He died there. He was really old. Me and Sully helped him in with his groceries—we used to always hover around because he paid big dough for help with his groceries. We brought in the bundles, left them on the table, took our money, and blasted off. He died. They went in and got him a week later, the bundles still there on the table where we left them. We tried to get a peek, Sully and me, standing on the trash barrels at the back window, but Mr. McCrea was in a bag already. We watched anyway, even though it was pretty nasty.

“The white house. The German lady with the retarded son. She remained the same age for all the time she lived there. When I collected every week for her newspaper she made me stay there for a long time. She wouldn’t talk to anybody but me. Because I played a game of checkers one time with the retarded kid, who also happened to be huge. She swore she was never going to die and leave her son alone. I heard her tell him that all the time, holding his catcher’s mitt of a hand while he cried like a baby. And then she would turn and tell it to me, like she was insisting, and forcing it on me would make it true. She was like a hundred when her son finally died and she died a week later. It was the greatest thing I ever saw anybody do, but nobody seemed to notice around here. My father said her husband was a big-time war criminal and they deserved ten retarded kids.”

I stopped talking when, for a second, I forgot who I had been talking to. Ruben’s face was expressionless as he looked at me, then away at the house nearest, where a black-and-tan mutt was barking and throwing himself at the chain-link fence to try and bite Ruben. The dog’s owners sat unconcerned on the porch, fanning themselves with magazines and pressing wet Coke cans to their necks.

“Those people used to be nice,” I said. “They moved in just a few years ago. Tried to get a block party going the first summer. ‘We don’t need no yuppie damn block party crap here,’ was what everybody said. So instead, the neighborhood got together and had a multifamily disgusting blowout drunko cookout that looked a lot like a block party only no one would dare to call it that. And the blue house—guinea blue is what my father always called it—is where Rourke the fireman lives. Whenever it was hot we would automatically show up on his curb and he would come out with his enormous wrench and open up the hydrant for an hour. There, that place with the big lawn, they put out a Christmas display every year, life-size lighted plastic reindeer, nativity scene, snowmen, a billion watts of colored lights, better than Edaville Railroad—”

“I freakin’
hate
this neighborhood,” Ruben interrupted.

“I don’t have a single bad memory of this place,” I said, momentarily comfortable with the lie.

We were almost there, at my parents’ house. I grabbed Ruben’s arm and reversed him down the street. “It’s time to go now,” I said, two houses short of the one. I gestured at it. “That was it, where I grew up, that one back there. It’s time to go now,” I repeated firmly.

Ruben must have found it interesting, the way I walked around and around to no place. To the baseball field where I had my only, tiny moments of stardom and where, in the left field trees, I spent my first ever all-nighter with a girl even though I never touched her. To the fruit store that was now a check-cashing place but I wanted to stand inside for a few minutes anyway. To the church where I lit every single devotional candle without donating a dime. There in that gargantuan crumbling red-rugged church I could tell by the way he stared up at the ceiling murals that Ruben and I had at least a little something in common. We didn’t say anything, but I could tell. We even had the same thought at the same time and dashed to the confessional. I jumped into the priest’s slot in the middle of the booth, and Ruben hopped into the confessor’s slot. I slid open the small screened window between us.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” he said solemnly. “I really
did
do things with that freakin’ blow-up doll. ...”

The big old church rang with our laughs, which only made us laugh harder. There was nobody in there but us, and whatever ghosts we were looking at when we each stared off for long stretches, and it was thrilling.

“Who is that?” a voice boomed from behind the altar. A door slammed with it.

“Holy shit, it’s God. Let’s beat it,” Ruben said as we bolted. “I was a freakin’ altar boy here, can you believe it?”

“So was I,” I said.

Still the motion didn’t stop, and we wandered. That wasn’t what I had intended to do; I kept feeling like I was en route to someplace, where I would stop, but I couldn’t find the place.

“Hey,” he finally said, his T-shirt dampening long after mine had soaked through. “Don’t you, like, own a restaurant or somethin’? Didn’t I hear that?”

“Ah, well, something like that,” I said. “My parents.”

“So, can’t we go there? You can eat for free, right? And your friends too, probably.”

Maybe it was the heat and the exhaustion. Maybe it was the fact that I wanted something from Ruben and I had very little to entice him, or anybody, with. Or maybe I just felt like, goddamnit, there must be
some
benefit,
some
small perk to being who I am, stuck with who I’ve got. Probably, it was all those things together, because the idea sounded good. And it was lunchtime.

The six shadowy people huddled at the little tables scattered around the O’Asis didn’t notice when Ruben and I walked in. The three others at the bar didn’t notice either. They were all stuck there, melted into position like one of those famous bar pictures—the
Boulevard of Broken Dreams
, or the poker-playing dogs. My father, though, he noticed. He stared wide-eyed as we strolled up to
his
bar.

“Ya?” he said to me, though he looked at Ruben. As if on cue, Ruben’s hair had gotten even curlier and kinkier in the heat.

“We’re looking for service,” I said pleasantly.

“Why?” he asked. “You never come here.”

“I figure I should maybe change that,” I said. “I figure this could all be mine someday, so... this could be my legacy.”

He was not amused. “What’ll you have?” he mumbled.

My mother came out of the bathroom. “I thought that was Mick I heard. How wonderful. Can I fix...?” She hitched when she saw Ruben. “Oh,” she said smoothly. He smiled at her.

“I’ll go fix you something,” she said, and went to the refrigerator.

“Drinking?” my father asked.

“Coke,” I said, matching his monotone.

“Tecate Cerveza,” Ruben said, requesting his favorite, obviously-not-on-the-menu beer.

My father just waited.

“Dos Equis?” Ruben chirped.

More waiting.

“Bud,” Ruben said in a voice much deeper than his real one. Bud he got.

My mother brought us two plates. Roast beef sandwiches with shoelaces of gristle running all through them. French fries soaked brown from yesterday’s oil. Big dry pickle spears. I ate what I could, which wasn’t much. Ruben buzzed through it all, ordered a second beer, then cleaned my plate. “Thank you,” he said to my father, “that was really great.” I looked for signs, but he appeared not to be joking. When he got nothing but a grunt out of my old man, he flagged down my mother, who was going around cleaning off tables. She tried to ignore him, but it was a pretty small place. “Thank you very much. You are a fantastic cook.” This time I was sure, but no, he looked for all the world like he meant it.

He’d melted her a bit. She stopped wiping around the elbows that remained stuck to the table. She fumbled. “Oh. My. Oh, well, thank you... young man.” She wasn’t used to compliments.

We got up to go, leaving the scene untouched, as we found it. My father slapped a piece of paper onto the bar. I picked it up. It was a bill: one roast beef plate at $3.95 and two drafts at $1.50 each. Ruben read it over my shoulder.

“And we don’t take food stamps,” my father said, grinning.

Ruben ignored him, embarrassed at the position he was in. “I don’t got no freakin’ money,” he said shyly to me.

“Oh, now
there’s
a goddamn surprise,” said my father.

I glared at him. “Jesus Christ,” I said, crumpling his little bill. “Take it out of tomorrow’s pay.”

“I will,” he said as we walked away.

When we hit the white sidewalk, the two of us started rubbing our eyes from the shock of the sun. When they were clear, we found my brother and Augie almost on top of us, with Bobo and Bunky in tow.

We stood, they stood, nobody talked, as both Terry and Augie gave Ruben the up and down with their eyes. Terry smiled. Augie didn’t.

“So, how’s the lunch?” Terry asked.

“Chewy,” I snapped. “Couldn’t choke it down.”

“Shame,” Terry said. “That’s a shame. You got that dog yet? Boy? Ready for a date?” I squirmed, trying to slip the subject before Ruben caught it. For once, Augie helped me out.

“Hey,” Augie said, pointing at Ruben. “Hey.”

Nobody had any idea what Augie was getting at, but Ruben didn’t like it anyhow. “Hey,” he said back, pointing. “Hey.”

“Are you the punk...?” Augie continued.

Ruben couldn’t stifle a laugh, right in Augie’s face, at the stupidity. “Well, I’m
a
punk. I don’t know if I’m
the
punk. I’m flattered, though. I like to
think
of myself as
the
punk, but there are a lot of great punks out there, as you know. ...”

It flew right by Augie. “You the one with the dog? Sure you are. You’re the one that got the dog that’s supposed to be like the hottest shit there is. I been lookin’ ta meet you, boy.”

Already, Ruben was through playing. He would not even talk about it. “Mick, man, can we go? Let’s get the hell outta here.”

I nodded, but Augie pushed on. “What’s the matter? I just wanna talk a little deal. This dog a yours is supposed ta be so damn great. I say Bobo kicks the livin’ shit outta whatever you got.”

Bobo had plunked himself down on the sidewalk in the blinding sun, with Bunky beside him standing watch. Bobo was panting hard. He had some fresh cuts around his eyes, on his snout, on his front leg. He had old cuts scarring his ears, and the hair hadn’t yet grown back where he needed stitches near his hip. His eyes were glassy. Bobo was fast becoming a very old dog. He looked like an old boxer who should have quit already. Augie and Terry obviously could not see what they had, a soldier whose time had passed. There were a whole lot of fights behind that animal, and very few left in front of him. A fight with Duran would certainly be his last.

“My dog don’t fight,” Ruben said finally.

“Oh he don’t, do he?” Augie mocked. “Do he lick dick?”

Terry and Augie had a big laugh over that one, then Augie said to Ruben, “Hey, watch this. Wanna see what my other dog can do? He’s the smart one. Name’s Bunker Hill. Bunky,” he called, and the smug little Boston terrier strutted over.

“You don’t want to see this,” I said, and nudged Ruben to move on. He just held up a hand to me, determined not to look away.

“Bunky,” Augie asked, snapping his fingers, and the dog stood up on his hind legs. “What would you rather be, Bunky, Rican or dead? Rican or dead, Bunky, Rican or dead?” he repeated. Like he was shot, the little dog dropped to the pavement and lay still as a brick.

Again, Terry and Augie killed themselves laughing.

“I’m not Puerto Rican,” Ruben said calmly as he brushed past them and stepped over the dogs.

“Oh, wait then,” Augie called. “Bunky, up. Gook or dead, Bunky?” Bang, Bunky was down again. “Up, Bunky. Faggot or dead, Bunky?” Bang. Dead again.

I tried to leave. My brother grabbed my arm and pulled me to him. “So, that’s your dog? I want it. Can you do it? Loser boy?”

I turned to him, our pointy noses together again. “I can do it,” I said. “But money just isn’t enough. I want more than the money. If we win, I want you gone.”

He flinched.

“You understand? That’s the deal. Bobo loses, and you have to clear the hell out of the house. I know you’re not scheduled to move out for another ten or twelve years, but I can’t wait anymore. So that’s the deal. You lose, you’re out, I’m in.”

He actually stopped grinning for a moment. The thought of leaving the house before age thirty-five must have chilled him. But then the brainless confidence came roaring back.

“Sure,” he said, “and if Bobo wins—
when
Bobo wins—I don’t move out. But you do still move back in.”

How he could continue to come up with the most incredibly vile ideas, even with his barely functioning brain, amazed me more than ever.