Gingerbread Man (48 page)

Okay,
that
was not what I’d expected.
“Yeah?” I stretched out the word.

“Well, we got all the stuff, and then we
never got the dog. But we never got rid of the stuff.”

“The stuff,” I repeated.

She nodded, and now she was hopeful, opening
up a little more, I felt it, and heard it in her voice. I could see
it, too, in the lift of her dark, perfectly plucked eyebrows.
Are my eyebrows that perfect? I have to go check
.

“Yeah, the dog bed, and the leashes, and the
feeding bowls and dog toys, and—”

“But, Amy, I don’t need a service dog
now.”

“I know. But I wanted a dog anyway. I mean, I
got into the idea when we were thinking about one for you. And then
my friend Nikki told me about this one that really needed a home.
Not a service dog, just a…just a dog.”

I was starting to get a very worried
feeling.

“She’s kind of old, and her owner died, and
none of the family wanted her and she was going to get sent to the
shelter. I was gonna keep her myself, but my landlord won’t let me,
and—”

“But, Amy, I don’t need a dog.” Hadn’t I said
that already?

“Oh, come on, Rache. You’ve got all this
room. The place is already fenced in. You can afford to hire
someone to take care of her—hell,
I’ll
take care of her. For
free. And she’s just such a great dog, and she’s so quiet you don’t
even know she’s here.”

Not you
won’t
even know she’s here,
but you
don’t
even know….

“Just meet her, okay?”

I closed my eyes. “She’s in my house, isn’t
she?”

“Once I saw her, I just couldn’t say no.
She’s in the garage.”

Of course she was. It’s not like I had a
fleet of cars taking up space in the attached three-car garage.
Hey, there was a notion. I could buy a car now. Of course I’d need
a license first, which would mean learning to drive. Who the hell
would have the patience to teach me? Fuck them, I’d teach myself.
Practice in the driveway.

Amy took my hand. “Come on.”

Right. The dog. The invader in my domain. I
would nip this little scheme in the bud right now.

Amy all but dragged me across the huge
kitchen, enthusiastic now that she’d broken the news. It was
stainless steel and white. In fact most of the rooms on this floor
were white, and
that
was going to have to change. The place
needed color. Or maybe
I
needed it. Splashes of brightness
everywhere. Why waste eyesight on white? We stopped at the door
that led directly into the garage, Amy opened it up and said,
“Myrtle?”

Myrtle? Is she fucking serious?

Something moved in the shadows. There was a
snuffling, a snorting, and then, I’m pretty sure, a fart. Amy
reached around and snapped on a light switch I hadn’t even known
was there—
note to self, find and memorize locations of light
switches
. And then
it
came shuffling and snuffling
toward us, and my newborn eyes widened as this short, fat,
squish-nose creature that did not really look much like any dog I’d
ever seen waddled closer, not stopping until its head bumped my
shin. And then it sniffed and looked up.

“Playing tricks on the formerly blind girl,
are you, Amy? Thinking I don’t know a dog from a potbellied
pig?”

“She’s an English bulldog,” Amy said,
hunkering down to scratch its fat little head. “Aren’t you, Myrtle?
Yeah, you’re just a pretty little boodog, aren’t you?”

Myrtle closed her eyes, sucking up the
affection like a sponge.

“Did you just say ‘boodog’?” I asked.

“She needs us, Rache. She’s old.”

“She smells it.” The dog’s earlier emission
was wafting to my nose now, and I waved a hand in front of my face
and tried to blink back tears.

“And she’s blind.”

I looked down again. I didn’t notice the
smell anymore, and I was pretty sure that was because she’d sort of
skewered my heart with that last revelation. “That’s not even close
to fair, Amy.”

“Look, if you don’t want her, fine. Just let
her stay until I can find someone else to take her. Please? She
won’t last a day in the pound.”

The dog hit me in the shin with one
forepaw.

“I should fucking fire you for this,” I told
Amy, struggling to hold on to my bitchiness and not reveal that my
insides were melting like ice cream in the sun. “Fine. Fine, one
week. You find this dog a home in one week.”
No way in hell is
anyone else getting this dog in a week
. “Got it?”

She smiled at me, and I realized I hadn’t
been close to understanding what a “shit-eating grin” looked like
until right then. Bitch knew me too well.

Amy left. Myrtle did not. Amy had efficiently
left a royalty check’s worth of dog supplies in the garage. I had
no idea where they’d been before, but they were all over the place
now.

I decided not to let this momentary
digression distract me from doing exactly what I had planned to do.
I walked through my house, taking it in visually, loving it more
than I ever had before but making a mental list of things I wanted
to change. To brighten up. To decorate differently, or decorate at
all. My bedroom and office were all but barren.

I did all of this with the tired old dog
plodding along beside me. I’d tried doing it alone, but once
everyone was gone, and the house silent, and I shut the garage door
on the beast, she took to howling like a Halloween soundtrack. So
we wound up making the rounds together. She walked with her side
touching my leg, so she wouldn’t lose track of me.

I understood that. Being in a new place
without being able to see it, you liked some kind of touch. I
usually inspected new places by staying close to the walls to get
the layout, so I did that with her, circling each room, letting her
feel all the boundaries and locate all the doorways.

When we finished our tour of the house, which
seemed to meet with the dog’s approval, we went outside and walked
around the wrought-iron-fenced yard. Five acres of it, with woods,
a stream, lush green grass. I knew the dog must be tired, but she
never slowed, never complained, just plodded along beside me,
tongue lolling.

When the sun started to set over the
reservoir I sat down in the grass and just watched it. Myrtle
plopped down, too, and without even asking first, she lowered her
big head onto my lap, her sightless brown eyes falling closed.

The sun was a giant orange-yellow ball, and
as it sank, I saw a bald eagle soar right in front of it. “Wow,” I
whispered.

I realized I was stroking the dog’s head when
she released an enormous sigh. I think she was smiling. It was a
perfectly serene moment. It was my
last
serene moment, now
that I think back on it.

* * *

FIVE HOURS LATER, give or take, the first
nightmare came. I was standing in a dark room, and there was
something sticky all over my face, and I felt…
alive
. More
alive than I had
ever
felt. My pulse was pounding, and every
cell, every nerve ending, seemed to tingle with delicious
sensations of arousal and pleasure. Like a full body orgasm. I was
breathing fast and couldn’t seem to stop smiling.

But that stickiness…

I wiped at my cheek with one hand, pulled it
away to look. Red.
Blood.

The pleasure tingles started to change into
shivers of fear as I looked down at my body and saw more of it. I
was
covered
in it.

I staggered backwards, trying to wipe the
stuff off and realizing there was a hammer in my other hand. And
it, too, wore a sticky red coating. I dropped it, but it took its
time pulling free from my palm, then landing on the floor with a
clear, heavy thud.

Turning in a slow circle, I tried to figure
out where I was, what was happening to me. There was just enough
light in the room to let me see the dead man on the floor. His head
was broken like a melon dropped from a roof, his hair so matted
with blood and bone and brain that I couldn’t even tell what color
it was. His face was more hamburger than human.

I opened my mouth to scream, but instead of
screaming I spoke, and I don’t even know who I was talking to. “I
don’t want to see this, I don’t want to. Make it go away, make it
go, make it
go
! I’d rather be blind!”

And then I was awake.

I sat up in bed, blinking, but everything was
dark. For one horrifying moment I thought my terrified wish had
been granted and I’d gone blind again.

No. I didn’t mean it. With all my heart, I
didn’t mean it!

A sob got stuck in my throat, and I pressed a
hand to my chest to try to catch the panic that was trying to
gallop away with me.

And then a wet nose touched my cheek. It had
the same effect as when the hero slapped the hysterical heroine in
one those old movies from back when that was a good enough excuse
to hit a woman. I snapped out of it.

I wasn’t blind.

I could sort of see Myrtle, standing beside
the bed, hind legs on the floor, front ones on the mattress as she
stretched to reach me. The gleam of her eyes and the shape of her
head were clear in my darkened bedroom. I stroked her and leaned
over to fumble for the lamp, snapped it on and went limp with
relief when light filled the room and the room filled my eyes.

“Okay, good. Good. It’s all good. It was just
a dream.”

My bedroom was just the way I’d left it.
Soothing green walls—keep. Ivory curtains and woodwork—keep. Not a
single picture on a single wall—big change needed. The circular dog
bed lay on the plush green carpet to my left. One of Myrtle’s toys,
a yellow teddy bear with one arm missing and white fluff sticking
out of its shoulder socket, was lying in it.

But Myrtle was still standing with her paws
on my mattress.

“Yeah, okay. Why not?” I got up, moved around
behind her, linked my arms around her middle and picked her up,
grunting as I did. “Not a lightweight, are you, Myrt?”

Snarf
, said Myrtle.

I got her into the bed, then climbed back in
myself. She padded around until she found a spot she liked—as close
to me as possible—and dropped. Myrtle didn’t lay down. Myrtle
collapsed.

I sighed. “So what the hell was that about,
do you think?” I asked her.

She opened her sightless eyes and looked back
at me as if to say,
You’re asking me? I’m just a dog.

I’d never had a nightmare like that in my
life. It had been vivid. Real. And the feelings running through me
in that dream had been majorly fucked up. Way out of line with
anything I would ever have felt. I had never equated blood and sex.
Not even in fantasy. Sadism was not my thing. I didn’t have a
dominatrix bone in my body. So what the
hell
was up with the
sensations of sexual pleasure and all that blood?

“All right, well, I’ve been through a lot
this week. Hit by a car, got my eyesight back, and Tommy’s still
missing and-—”

I flashed back to the man on the floor in my
dream, the obvious question popping into my head. Could it have
been my brother? Was I having some kind of psychic vision about
what had happened to Tommy?

I sat up again, my eyes shifting rapidly side
to side as I searched my brain for the memory, for any clue. What
clothes was the guy wearing? What did he look like?

Blood and hamburger.

What the
hell
was wrong with me?

“Simple, stupid. Stress, a major physical
change, every sense in my body undergoing a radical new state of
being, and I’m still worried to hell and gone about Tommy. Maybe
even feeling guilty that we were celebrating tonight while he
was—”

Blood and hamburger.

“What do you say we leave the light on for
the rest of the night, huh, Myrt?”

She closed her eyes and sighed.

But even then, I didn’t go back to sleep.

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