Dogfight (2 page)

The girl made a goofy, self-deprecating face, all eyebrows and lips, twirled her finger in the air beside her ear.

Officer Hildebran wandered over to the window. Without facing the room, he said, “I'll be completely honest with you, Miss Schnell—”

“Daphne,” the girl said and Cashdollar had the sense that her interjection was meant for him.

Officer Hildebran turned, smiled. “I'll be honest, Daphne, we sometimes recover some of the stolen property but—”

“He didn't take anything,” the girl said.

Officer Hildebran raised his eyebrows. “No?”

“He must have panicked,” Daphne said.

Cashdollar wondered what had become of his pillowcase, figured
it was still in the hall where the girl had ambushed him, hoped the police didn't decide to poke around back there. Officer Pruitt crouched at his knees to take a closer look at the duct tape.

“You all right?” she said.

He nodded, cleared his throat.

“Where'd the tape come from?”

“I don't know,” he said. “I was out cold.”

“Regardless,” Officer Hildebran was saying to Daphne, “unless there's a reliable eyewitness—”

Officer Pruitt sighed. “There is an eyewitness.” She raised her eyes, regarded Cashdollar's battered face.

“Oh,” Officer Hildebran said. “Right. You think you could pick him out of a lineup?”

“It all happened pretty fast,” Cashdollar said.

And so it went, as strange and vivid as a fever dream, their questions, his answers, their questions, Daphne's answers—he supposed that she was not the kind of girl likely to arouse suspicion, not the kind of girl people were inclined to disbelieve—until the police were satisfied, more or less. They seemed placated by the fact that Cash-dollar's injuries weren't severe and that nothing had actually been stolen. Officer Pruitt cut the tape with a utility knife and Cashdollar walked them to the door like he was welcome in this house. He invented contact information, assured them that he'd be down in the morning to look at mug shots. He didn't know what had changed Daphne's mind and, watching the police make their way down the sidewalk and out of his life, he didn't care. He shut the door and said, “Is Daphne your real name?” He was just turning to face her when she clubbed him with the toilet lid again.

Once more, Cashdollar woke in the ladder-back chair, wrists and ankles bound, but this time Daphne was seated cross-legged on the floor, leaned back, her weight on her hands. He saw her as if through a haze, as if looking through a smeary lens, noticed her long neck, the smooth skin on the insides of her thighs.

“Yes,” Daphne said.

“What?”

“Yes, my name is Daphne.”

“Oh,” he said.

His skull felt full of sand.

“I'm sorry for conking you again,” she said. “I don't know what happened. I mean, it was such a snap decision to lie to the police and then that woman cut the tape and I realized I don't know the first thing about you and I freaked.” She paused. “What's your name?” she said.

Cashdollar felt as if he was being lowered back into himself from a great height, gradually remembering how it was to live in his body. Before he was fully aware of what he was saying, he'd given her an honest answer.

“Leonard,” he said.

Daphne laughed. “I wasn't expecting that,” she said. “I didn't think anybody named anybody Leonard anymore.”

“I'm much older than you.”

“You're not so old. What are you, forty?”

“Thirty-six.”

Daphne said, “Oops.”

“I think I have a concussion,” Cashdollar said.

Daphne wrinkled her nose apologetically, pushed to her feet and brushed her hands together. “Be right back,” she said. She ducked into the kitchen, returned with a highball glass, which she held under his chin. He smelled scotch, let her bring it to his mouth. It tasted expensive.

“Better?” Daphne said.

Cashdollar didn't answer. He'd been inclined to feel grateful but hadn't the vaguest idea where this was going now. She sat on the floor and he watched her sip from the glass. She made a retching face, shuddered, regrouped.

“At school one time, I drank two entire bottles of Robitussin
cough syrup. I hallucinated that my Klimt poster was coming to life. It was very sexual. My roommate called the paramedics.”

“Is that right?” Cashdollar said.

“My father was in Aruba when it happened,” she said. “He was with an AMA rep named Farina Hoyle. I mean, what kind of a name is Farina Hoyle? He left her there and flew all the way back to make sure I was all right.”

“That's nice, I guess,” Cashdollar said.

Daphne nodded and smiled, half-sly, half-something else. Cash-dollar couldn't put his finger on what he was seeing in her face. “It isn't true,” she said. “Farina Hoyle's true. Aruba's true.”

“What are you going to do with me?” Cashdollar said.

Daphne peered into the glass.

“I don't know,” she said.

They were quiet for a minute. Daphne swirled the whiskey. Cash-dollar's back itched and he rubbed it on the chair. When Daphne saw what he was doing, she moved behind the chair to scratch it for him and he tipped forward to give her better access. Her touch raised goose bumps, made his skin jump like horseflesh.

“Are you married?” she said.

He told her, “No.”

“Divorced?”

He shook his head. Her hand went still between his shoulder blades. He heard her teeth click on the glass.

“You poor thing,” she said. “Haven't you ever been in love?”

“I think you should cut me loose,” Cashdollar said.

Daphne came around the chair and sat on his knee, draped her arm over his shoulder.

“How often do you do this? Rob houses, I mean.”

“I do it when I need the money,” he said.

“When was the last time?” Her face was close enough that he could smell the liquor on her breath.

“A while ago,” he said. “Could I have another sip of that?” She
helped him with the glass. He felt the scotch behind his eyes. The truth was he'd done an apartment house just last week, waited at the door for somebody to buzz him up, then broke the locks on the places where no one was home. Just now, however, he didn't see the percentage in the truth. He said, “I only ever do rich people and I give half my take to Jerry's Kids.”

Daphne socked him in the chest.

“Ha, ha,” she said.

“Isn't that what you want to hear?” he said. “Right? You're looking for a reason to let me go?”

“I don't know,” she said.

He shrugged. “Who's to say it isn't true?”

“Jerry's Kids,” she said.

She was smiling and he smiled back. He couldn't help liking this girl. He liked that she was smart and that she wasn't too afraid of him. He liked that she had the guts to bullshit the police.

“Ha, ha,” he said.

Daphne knocked back the last of the scotch, then skated her socks over the hardwood floor, headed for the window.

“Do you have a car?” she said, parting the curtains. “I don't see a car.”

“I'm around the block,” he said.

“What do you drive?”

“Honda Civic.”

Daphne raised her eyebrows.

“It's inconspicuous,” he said.

She skated back over to his chair and slipped her hand into his pocket and rooted for his keys. Cashdollar flinched. There were only two keys on the ring, his car and his apartment. For some reason, this embarrassed him.

“It really is a Honda,” Daphne said.

There was a grandfather clock in the corner but it had died at half past eight who knew how long ago and his watch was out of sight beneath
the duct tape and Cashdollar was beginning to worry about the time. He guessed Daphne had been gone for twenty minutes, figured he was safe till after midnight, figured her father and his lady friend would at least ring in the New Year before calling it a night. He put the hour around 11:00 but he couldn't be sure and for all he knew, Daphne was out there joyriding in his car and you couldn't tell what might happen at a party on New Year's Eve. Somebody might get angry. Somebody might have too much to drink. Somebody might be so crushed with love they couldn't wait another minute to get home. He went on thinking like this until he heard what sounded like a garage door rumbling open and his mind went blank and every ounce of his perception was funneled down into his ears. For a minute, he heard nothing—he wasn't going to mistake silence for safety a second time—then a door opened in the kitchen and Daphne breezed into the room.

“Took me a while to find your car,” she said.

She had changed clothes for her foray into the world. Now, she was wearing an electric blue parka with fur inside the hood, white leggings, and knee-high alpine boots.

“What time is it?” he said.

But she passed through without stopping, disappeared into the next room.

“You need to let me go,” he said.

When she reappeared, she was carrying a stereo speaker, her back arched under its weight. He watched her go into the kitchen. She returned a minute later, empty-handed, breathing hard.

“I should've started small,” she said.

He looked at her. “I don't understand.”

“It's a good thing you've got a hatchback.”

For the next half hour, she shuttled between the house and the garage, bearing valuables each trip, first the rest of the stereo, then the TV and the VCR, then his pillowcase of silverware, then an armload of expensive-looking suits, and on and on until Cashdollar was certain that his car would hold no more. Still she kept it up. Barbells,
golf clubs, a calfskin luggage set. A pair of antique pistols. A dusty classical guitar. A baseball signed by someone dead and famous. With each passing minute, Cashdollar could feel his stomach tightening and it was all he could do to keep his mouth shut but he had the sense that he should leave her be, that this didn't have anything to do with him. He pictured his little Honda bulging with the accumulated property of another man's life, flashed to his apartment in his mind: unmade bed, lawn chairs in the living room, coffee mug in the sink. He made a point of never holding on to anything anybody else might want to steal. There was not a single thing in his apartment that it would hurt to lose, nothing he couldn't live without. Daphne swung back into the room, looking frazzled and exhausted, her face glazed with perspiration.

“There.” She huffed at a wisp of hair that had fallen across her eyes.

“You're crazy,” Cashdollar said.

Daphne dismissed him with a wave.

“You're out of touch,” she said. “I'm your average sophomore.”

“What'll you tell the cops?”

“I like Stockholm Syndrome but I think they're more likely to believe you made me lie under threat of death.” She took the parka off, draped it on a chair, lifted the hem of her sweatshirt to wipe her face—exposing her belly, the curve of her ribs—pressed it first against her right eye, then her left, as if dabbing tears.

“I'll get the scissors,” Daphne said.

She went out again, came back again. The tape fell away like something dead. Cashdollar rubbed his wrists a second, pushed to his feet and they stood there looking at each other. Her eyes, he decided, were the color of a jade pendant he had stolen years ago. That pendant pawned for $700. It flicked through his mind that he should kiss her and that she would let him but he restrained himself. He had no business kissing teenage girls. Then, as if she could read his thoughts, Daphne slapped him across the face. Cashdollar palmed his cheek, blinked the sting away, watched her doing a girlish bob and weave, her thumbs tucked inside her fists.

“Let me have it,” she said.

“Quit,” he said.

“Wimp,” she said. “I dropped you twice.”

“I'm gone,” he said.

Right then, she poked him in the nose. It wouldn't have hurt so much if she hadn't already hit him with the toilet lid but as it was, his eyes watered up, his vision filled with tiny sparkles. Without thinking, he balled his hand and punched her in the mouth, not too hard, a reflex, just enough to sit her down, but right away he felt sick at what he'd done. He held his palms out, like he was trying to stop traffic.

“I didn't mean that,” he said. “That was an accident. I've never hit a girl. I've never hurt anyone in my life.”

Daphne touched her bottom lip, smudging her fingertip with blood.

“This will break his heart,” she said.

She smiled at Cashdollar and he could see blood in the spaces between her teeth. The sight of her dizzied him with sadness. He thought how closely linked were love and pain. Daphne extended a hand, limp-wristed, ladylike. Her nails were perfect.

“Now tape me to the chair,” she said.

Xavier tells me he is upstairs doing his homework, but I know that he is watching our new neighbor. Grace Poole lives in the town house just across a narrow alley from our own. I was taking trash to the alley on Monday when I noticed my son at our second-story window, his face close enough to the glass to breathe mist onto it. I followed his eyes across the way, and there was Grace Poole, standing naked in her kitchen, sipping from a coffee mug. She gave no indication that she saw me or that she saw my son, perfectly still, entranced, huffing brief ghosts of longing against the pane. Today is Friday, and I've been watching her myself ever since. I have the benefit of binoculars.

I believe that I should be angry at him, should sneak up the stairs, right now, kick his door open, and demand to know what he thinks he's doing. But I'm not angry. X—he has started calling himself X— is thirteen. I remember thirteen and being full of that strange water, drawn and released by the sight of a woman, tides and moon. X was in such a hurry to get to his window after school that he didn't even stop to wonder why his old man is home this early in the day. How can I be mad at him? Grace is, at this moment, swimming closer to me through the binocular lenses.