Like Grownups Do (6 page)

“Well, that’s not a bad looking dog, now that he’s clean,” Robbie said, entering the sun room fresh from a shower and toweling his hair.

He knelt down and scratched the pup behind the ear.

And you’re pretty handsome yourself, little fella.”

Babe grimaced, his hair also wet after a shower.

“Oh, you must stop, Mr. Babelton. Your humor is devastating,” Babe said.

”I’m going to bring in some wood and start a fire. It’s getting chilly already.”

“Excellenté,” Robbie said. “Hey, how about in the morning we pick up a pet door? If we put one in that back door, Joe can let himself in and out to the yard. I don’t know how else you can make this work unless you have plans for a heated dog mansion.”

“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” Babe said. “I’ll be sure to alert the emergency room that we’ll be using power tools. I need to pick up a bed, a collar, and a leash, and get him on some real dog food before he starts to think he lives at a deli.”

The fireplace crackled, sending the aroma of burning oak into the darkening sun room. Robbie had brought in an enormous pillow from his motor home and laid it on the floor in front of the fireplace. Joe snored softly, lying on his back on the pillow with his paws in the air.

Babe brought a pitcher of water from the kitchen and split it among the three house plants he was trying to keep alive. He returned from another trip to the kitchen and handed Robbie a cup of cocoa.

“This room is new. You must be doing really well at that ‘mystery’ business of yours,” Robbie said.

“This was Jack’s house warming gift,” Babe said.

“A week after we moved in he called and said he was coming over. He pulled up thirty minutes later followed by a Hummer and three gigantic pickup trucks. He introduced us to these four guys and they spent the next two hours walking around, talking, and pointing. A month later this room was finished, along with the gardening shed and the little greenhouse out back.”

“I never told you, Dad, but I really can’t afford this place. Jamaica Plain was always Jill’s favorite, and we were out here all the time. She bought bicycles one Christmas and the first time we left the condo I knew where we were going. She always had plants and flowers in our first apartment, and then the condo, but I used to find her looking around outside for more space. It always made me sad. So what was I going to wait for? She was getting sicker all the time.”

“Well, for what it’s worth,” Robbie said. “I think you did the right thing.”

He paused.

“Are you going to stay here?”

Babe exhaled slowly.

“I really want to. This is Jill’s home. It feels like…it feels like she’s still here—in this room, in the yard, and the garden. Does that sound stupid?”

“Of course not.”

“The HOA dues are going up, and last year my property taxes went up ten percent probably because of this room. The agent I used to buy the place has called a few times because she has buyers asking about it. She’s always telling me ‘Mr. Babelton, we can make you a nice profit on your property.’ But this is not ‘my property’. This is Jill’s home. And this is Jill’s room that opens into Jill’s garden. I don’t want to leave.”

“Don’t leave, Joshua. If you need any help you let me know, immediately. I mean that, son.”

“You do okay, then, right? With money, I mean,” Babe asked.

“Yeah. Full disability just turned over into full retirement, and I don’t have a lot of overhead. I was going to stay in the house but the winters were killing me. Some days I couldn’t get out of bed at all. I’ve gotten used to this gypsy living, now. I don’t think I could go back.”

Babe nodded. “Did you talk to mom while she was here?”

“Yeah, sure. We talk on the phone sometimes. Hell, sometimes we talk for a
long
time. More than we did when…well. Yeah, I even had lunch with them at their house last year when I was in Chicago.”

Babe shook his head. “I’ve never figured out how she could be married to you and then married to Rick Richmond. You two aren’t anything alike. What am I missing?”

Robbie turned to stare into the flames, the fire light accentuating the intensity on his face. “I don’t think this is the best day for that discussion.”

“Maybe it
is
the best day for this discussion. Mom never explained anything. She only said that ‘your father and I had a mutual agreement that our betrothal had been an unfortunate mistake’. I always knew that that was bullshit, but of course I was forbidden to use the term ‘bullshit’ because ‘bullshit’ is a term used by the ‘low-life common people that plague our society’. How the fuck do you get to be such a snob when you’re from St Louis fucking Missouri?”

“Easy, big guy. This is your mother we’re talking about,” Robbie said, “as well as the home of ‘YOUUUUURRRRE St. Louis Cardinals.’ You were taken care of quite well after we split up. And that was, jeez, nineteen years ago?”

“Yeah, taken care of,” Babe said, nodding.

“I was pissed off, picked on, and I hated that junior high school with a passion. My grades sucked and I couldn’t stand the way Mom and Rick were acting about that. That landed me in Boston at Faraday Prep School, alma mater of the famous Rick Richmond. I’m sure it looked like he was providing me with ‘opportunity’, while keeping me away from his precious career.

“Dad, do you realize that if Rick had been divorced instead of a widower he would never have married Mom? Because that’s the way politics works. Your wife dies in a car wreck, you can remarry. Wife dies from cancer, thumbs down. Not okay. A widower gets the voters’ sympathy but a divorcee is a skirt-chasing son-of-a-bitch. But a widower is allowed to marry a divorced woman as long as there is no scandal waiting to be discovered—because the polls say so.

“Jesus H. Christ. Who wrote these rules? I have no doubt that I ended up at Faraday’s because that’s where you send your unwashed step-children to have them whipped and scrubbed into respectable shape and worthy of a seat at the children’s table behind some Ken-doll asshole. Yes sir, I have been taken care of.”

Robbie rocked in his chair and stared into the fire.

“I’m sorry for not being around more, Josh. I was in a bad place for a long time after your mother left and took you away. But it looked like both of you were getting an upgrade. I’m sure not going to tell you what to say or what to feel. But I want you to know that I’m proud of you, and that I’ve missed you. It kills me to see you hurting and I wish I could take it away. I hope we can be friends.”

Babe nodded and reached to take hold of his father’s hand.

Robbie retired to his RV. Babe put out the fire and then followed Joe into the back yard while the puppy relieved himself for the night. Babe thought that Joe would go back to his pillow but he went to the door leading to the rest of the house. He sat down and waited. Babe picked up the pillow and carried it to his bedroom. He laid it down beside his bed. Joe curled up on the pillow and was asleep immediately.

Babe lay down and as soon as his body come to rest, the grief that had been at bay for most of the day flooded his mind. But he had expected that.

He rolled onto his side and stared at Joe, who was snoring softly in the moonlight after rolling onto his back. Babe felt some of the sadness pull way, as if the sleeping puppy was leeching it from him. He began to drift toward sleep.

I don’t believe in coincidence, Josh; might be a good thing for you, right now.

Babe woke to the sound of whimpering. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was three-thirty in the morning. Joe was whimpering—still lying on his back with his eyes closed, the apparent victim of a bad dream. Babe sat up and placed a hand on Joe’s chest. Joe woke up, rolled over and shook his head, creating a ‘wap, wap, wap’ with his ears.

“Just a bad dream, buddy. You’re safe here.”

Babe picked Joe up and put him on his bed, where he fell asleep with his head across Babe’s arm.

Babe dreamed that he had fallen asleep on the beach and woke to waves lapping at his face. A moment later he woke for real, being licked across the eyes and nose. The sun peeked into the room. Joe had jumped down from the bed—his front paws now on the edge of the mattress apparently asking to go outside. Babe was happy to find that he wouldn’t have to start from scratch with housebreaking. He swung his feet around to the floor and noticed a small puddle by the door.

Oh well,
he thought,
so what did I expect?
Babe reached for his slippers but they were not there. He found them a minute later under his desk— chewed to pieces.

Babe picked up the shoes and pointed them at Joe.

“
No, no, no
.”

Joe tried to turn and run at the same time. His over-sized feet slipped on the wood floor. At one point all four feet splayed out and his chin hit the floor, hard. He regained his footing and ran from the room as fast as he could move.

Babe started after him and then stopped. He opened his mouth to call after Joe and once again, he stopped. He didn’t know what to do.

“Jesus, Babe. You fucking dumbass,” he muttered out loud.

He sat down hard on the edge of the bed.

What the hell are you thinking? He’s a puppy for Christ’s sake. Twenty four hours ago he was a homeless BABY, probably because he chewed up some other fucker’s fourteen dollar slippers, and you bring him home and SCOLD him. Ignorant asshole.

Ok, ok, ok, ok
.

Babe had always been very hard on himself. And his inner-self used a lot of foul language.

“Joe. I’m sorry, Joe. Where did you go, boy. Come on, boy, I’m sorry,” Babe said, as he crept from room to room. “I’m sorry, buddy. It’s going to be okay. Where did you go?”

He found Joe in the laundry room between the washer and dryer, trembling. Babe got down on one knee.

“Jesus, Joe, I’m sorry. Come on out,” Babe said, holding out a hand.

Joe began to crawl out.

“That’s a good boy. I’m sorry, Joe.”

As soon as Babe said the name ‘Joe’, the dog turned and scrambled back to his hiding place.

What the
…

Babe smirked and then shook his head.

‘Joe’ sounds like ‘no’, which is probably what the puppy had heard screamed at him before he had been abandoned.

Isn’t this just great? Excellent job there, Babelton. Babe the Great—Rescuer of Abandoned Animals; Feed the homeless puppy and then bring him home and terrorize him. While you’re at it, why don’t you give him a name that makes him piss himself?

“I’m sorry, boy. I’m not going to yell at you and I’m not going to hurt you. Can I have another chance? Come on out, boy. Come on, Mr. Pendleton. “

The puppy crawled out, and licked Babe on the toe. Babe scratched him behind the ear and then took his head in both hands and kissed him on the bridge of his nose.

“Let’s see if Dad is up yet.”

Seven

G
raham Stemple groaned as he rolled from his side onto his back in the middle of the king-sized four-poster bed. The house phone rang into his left ear. His wife left the bed for the sanctuary of the den hours ago. She would be of no help, since she was forbidden to answer the phone when Graham was home. He winced slightly as he reached toward the phone on the bedside table. As usual, the number showed up as “anonymous”.

“Stemple,” he growled into the receiver.

“It sounds like we’ve had a rough night, Mr. Stemple,” Dante Vlada said.

Just who I didn’t want to hear from this morning,
Graham Stemple thought, though it wasn’t as if he
ever
looked forward to hearing from Dante Vlada. He preferred the means of communication they had used for years which involved him decrypting Vlada’s messages, destroying them, and then carrying out whatever mission Vlada had given him. This was followed by his receipt of large sums of laundered cash, which he promptly wired to the offshore accounts that held his off-the-record and virtually untouched fortune.

That “fortune” he planned to tap into early next year after he arranged the elimination of the stupid bitch that was now piddling around in the kitchen. He had narrowed his search to a few South American or Latin American countries where he would relocate and retire, but his body was trying to sabotage his plans. He had ignored the pain in his gut and the blood in the toilet longer than he should have on the grounds that it was simply not fair. He was
so
close to his ultimate goal, which was to live independently wealthy and free in a tropical paradise without a care in the world.

“What do you want, Vlada? Don’t tell me that you’ve forgotten that I’m no longer with the Bureau?” Stemple asked, his temper simmering along with the sweat that poured from his forehead. He was in enough pain that it was overriding the fear that he had of Vlada and his organization.

“No, no, no, Mr. Stemple. I do, however, need to speak with you concerning a matter of some importance— tomorrow night, if you please. Do you remember the picnic area at Lake Cochituate, where we met before?”