Stepdog (17 page)

Two hours later, we finally reconvened, but not at Bay State Caffeine.
James's Gate,
read Sara's text.
I need a drink
.

It was late afternoon, so it was quiet in the pub when I entered, and the only light was from the frosted windows. Sara sat at the bar with a half-finished glass of wine. I ordered a coffee. Somewhere in the frenzy of the day, she had lost her jacket.

“First I called his parents,” she began in a low voice, after a kiss of greeting. “They loved me, they didn't want to see me leave him, so that's good and bad. They're in Florida. I asked them about his plans to go to Peru and they didn't know of any, and I checked all flights from Boston to Peru and they're all morning flights, so I think that was a red herring, or at least, he hasn't left yet. They haven't heard from him lately. I told them I had something to give him, and created the impression we've started chatting a bit and are back on friendly terms, so they were happy to offer to let me know if they heard from him. I also called a few mutual friends we're both occasionally in touch with and explained to them what's happened, none of them had any leads, or at least, none of them was willing to confess to any. Two people commented on
how attached he was to Cody and how devastated he was to lose ‘both his girls in one fell swoop.'” This, with air quotations and rolled eyes.

“I can't believe he's your ex,” I said.

“I can't believe you
gave him Cody,
” she said. “We are going to have a very serious conversation about all of that, too, but first we get her back. So: no leads from his people. What about the police?”

I shrugged. “Filing a report is about as useful as throwing a match down a well. I know people who have been mugged and beaten up and gone to the cops, and the cops acted like they were filing a weather report.”

“But we
can
file one, right? And describe the car and all that.”

“I already did,” I said, reveling in the fact that I'd been useful.

“But she's not your dog.”

“She's my wife's dog,” I said. “That makes her my dog.”

Sara's face suddenly crumbled and she started crying. She grabbed me hard around the waist and started sobbing into my shoulder. I hope it doesn't make me a prick to say that pleased me. Finally I was doing something right. I put my arms around her, and rubbed her back slowly.

“It's going to be okay,” I said into her ear. “We'll find her. I'll find her. I screwed up but I'm going to make it right. And at least you know he's not going to hurt her.”

“I
don't
know that,” sobbed Sara. “Medea killed her own children to get back at Jason.”

I'd never done
Medea,
so I wasn't sure what she was talking about. So I didn't say anything, just hugged her tighter. In the midst of all the trauma and stress, it was one soft and peaceful moment.

Until she suddenly cried out, and jerked away from me, spastically pulling her light blue, long-sleeved T away from her skin because somehow in the course of our hug, she'd dumped the rest of her burgundy all over it. Her face screwed up as tight as a raisin. She growled between clenched teeth and then nearly exploded with
“Fuck it!”
to the ceiling of the Gate, startling the barman and the few patrons huddled at the other end of the bar. “Sorry,” she added quickly, head still upturned, eyes glancing down at worried faces. A few murmurs of sympathy and people returned to their own personal programming.

I was in such a ragged state that to be honest, the first thought that went through my mind was,
Thank God it wasn't me who spilled it
.

“Here,” I said, immediately unzipping my Manchester United hoodie and handing it to her. “Go to the restroom, take your shirt off and wear this.”

Pressing her eyes to make the tears stop, Sara took the sweatshirt, sniffled, and kissed me on the cheek. “Thanks,” she said, and jogged through the swing doors into the restaurant.

T
HE NEXT TWENTY-FOUR
hours, I have to tell you, were a blur of adrenaline, anxiety, waiting, bureaucracy, hope, and fear. Jay never called, and never answered when we tried calling him, no matter what number we called from. Alto's father, as it turned out, worked for EMS—Emergency Medical Services, those folks forever shredding the humming streets of Jamaica Plain with sirens. He was a terrific help, knew the people that we needed to speak with, helped Sara file even more reports than what I'd done—changing licensure of Cody back to her name, for example—and
talked to certain people in certain offices about tracking down Jay's car at tollbooths or stoplights. Alto played go-between once he was off his shift and he didn't smoke all evening. There was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing and no time for conversation. Sara and I went to Lena's that evening, where Danny, Steve, and Elliot joined us for a strategy session. I was firmly put through the third degree, having to confess the whole story of the chocolate cake. Sara simply buried her face in her hands, but Lena lit into me a bit, in the unflinchingly direct-but-matter-of-fact manner of a Filipino woman, and I snapped back at her in the hotheaded reactionary style of an Irish man.

In the end, Sara took the guest bedroom, I took the couch. This was Lena's terse directive, but I got the feeling that it came from Sara, who by that point—following an impromptu dinner that she didn't touch—was so enervated she mostly just wanted to curl up into a ball. A ball that had no room for me.

Early in the morning we were at it again. We called every vet's office and shelter in eastern Massachusetts; every newspaper and radio station, e-mailing photos of Cody to the papers and offering a cash reward for assistance. Marie stalked Peters Hill with flyers, leaving a pile when she had to pick Nick up from preschool. Alto organized some friends (I'd no idea Alto had friends) to stake out Jay's flat, should he or anyone else return to it, and then he himself went to post flyers all over town. The MFA gang did useful stuff involving computers that I didn't really understand—I suppose when you make your living seeking out the provenance of obscure artwork, or (on the other extreme) reaching out to ask wealthy powerful people for assistance, you can transfer these skills into other arenas. Danny put the word out on the street to be looking
for a dog of Cody's description and anyone in a white Lexus SUV. So, the point being: it was heartening how seriously everybody took this, and turned out to help.

But nothing came of it.

Sara had her interview in Los Angeles (rescheduled) and I had my meeting in New York. It seemed callous to suggest that either of us pursue these things, and yet sitting around Lena's guest room hoping to get a lead seemed rather pointless, almost masochistic. Somehow—I don't know how I did this, because I'm pretty shoddy at staying calm in stressful circumstances—I convinced Sara she should go out to California in time for her interview, and then fly back. I promised her I'd go to the meeting in Manhattan but then turn around and come back to Boston, too, and we two would absolutely not leave again until we got the dog back. I had to be in L.A. by mid-May, but if need be, I'd just hop a JetBlue flight last minute. Sara, looking terribly haggard, with the buoyancy of a popped balloon, dully agreed to all this, and then immersed herself in seeking the most unattractively timed flight out of Logan.

She found one that left Boston at five
A.M.
and reached LAX at seven, on the day of her rescheduled interview, which was also the day of my morning meeting in Manhattan. It was some airline that I'd never heard of, which sounded a bit dodgy to me, but she pointed out that I was in no position to judge dodginess.

We were up late at Lena's the night before, or rather she was, scouring online stolen-pets sites. It would have seemed unfeeling of me to sleep while she was doing this, so together we stayed up until nearly one
A.M.
, and then (having slept, again, in different places) we woke up at three thirty so that I could get her to Logan Airport in time for her to get her flight.

The whole drive to Logan we didn't speak, and I kept playing out all possible farewells in my mind. Maybe we'd hug tightly and she'd let me know that everything would be all right in the end between us, no matter what happened to the dog—or maybe I'd even say that to her. Maybe she'd inform me with her efficient firmness that once we had settled all of this, we were to be sundered as a romantic couple but she would at least honor her promise to me to see it through for the green card. There were plenty of variations occupying my mind.

But when we got to Logan, none of them could be enacted, because as she was getting out of the crowded MINI Cooper, she suddenly realized she had been living in my Man United hoodie for the past thirty-six hours, with nothing under it except a sleeveless T-shirt, and she wanted to wear real clothes for the flight. She tore off the sweatshirt, threw it back into the car, and then right there on the pavement opened her small duffel bag to paw through it looking for a decent shirt. The state trooper at the curb (sound track: “Gee, Officer Krupke”) would not let me stay to help her—although there was barely any traffic so early in the morning—and so we had a very awkward, rushed good-bye, not so much as a hug, just her glancing up from her strewn clothing on the sidewalk saying, “Thank you, Rory, I love you, drive safely, I'll see you in L.A., let's talk soon,” all of it mechanical as she set about to find a shirt in the strange early-morning outdoor fluorescent airport light, shivering in forty-degree weather in a tank top.

I drove away, peering into the rearview mirror so frequently I almost drove into several taxis, and then nearly missed the exit that would take me to New York. It was 4:14
A.M
. My meeting in Manhattan was at ten. I was in desperate need of a shave and
fresh clothes. Having slept fewer than three hours that night, and no more than five the night before, I was going to be a walking zombie-troglodyte when I went in to meet the suits. I was very glad I'd signed that fifty-page contract, the mutual consent that they were stuck with me unless the show flopped. Of course, they could probably arrange for it to not be a success; Dougie had said it really was all about the backroom politics of the studio. Which meant they couldn't actually fire me for showing up as a troll, but they could pointedly turn their attention toward other projects.

I stopped somewhere on the road to get coffee, which was pure muck, and then barreled my way in the predawn gloom toward New York City, faster than a choirboy running from a priest. If the meeting ran an hour, I'd be back in Boston before sundown. Maybe I'd crash at Danny's. If Lena and I were in the same building alone together, the static electricity between us might set it aflame.

I
MADE IT
to Manhattan in less than four hours.

Then I was stuck in traffic on the West Side Highway for nearly ninety minutes.

I looked like shite, it's true. I'd been wearing the same clothes for three days running now, I had a beard that was in that dreadful state of more-than-stubble but not yet clearly-beardlike. I probably smelled terrible, that piquant skunklike smell of anxiety-sweat mixed with the corn-chip odor of haven't-managed-to-bathe sweat—but I was too in it, too immersed in my own body ming, to know for certain how badly I reeked. My hair was a moppish disaster, and in the rearview mirror the skin around my eyes looked twenty years older than the rest of me. Most of all, my brain was
fried. I rubbed my face, slapped my cheeks a few times, and got out of the car.

As soon as I was standing, my calves and inner thighs immediately went into muscle spasm and I nearly hit the tarmac. I lifted myself up, tried some stretches, leaning against the cold roof of the car. I rested my head briefly on the warm bonnet and wished I had a blanket so I could curl up on it and take a little power nap. But no. I had to go. This meeting was very important although I could not remember why. After a few more stretches reminding me of my questionable balance, I left my key with the handsome, cheerful Jamaican car-park attendant (sound track: no, not Bob Marley, haven't you any imagination? More like a Motown ballad) and began to walk as fast as I could make myself toward midtown. As I walked, I tried to drag my attention away from the calamitous and stressful past few days, and remember who I was becoming and why I was even here: I was a legal resident of the United States of America, the lead in a new television series, a rising star. Right?

I
t was mad that here I was, about to walk into a meeting that was the beginning of my new life—and all I wanted was to take a nap and then wake up somewhere else. Dream come true, one in a million, better than
American Idol
without even having to deal with those snarky judges. This was it, I was
it,
the man of the hour. I was embodying every aspect of the American Dream: Immigrant from the gutters makes good! Aspiring actor plucked from obscurity hits the big time!
This
was my life, this was what I had been striving toward—with practice, talent, and experience—for so many years. This was the payoff.

All I could think about was the fucking dog.

I realize that it was about far more than the dog. Here I was, on top of the world, and yet I had also proven myself, beyond all doubt, a proper eejit—irresponsible, duplicitous, gullible, unreliable, and impotent to fix things. And right now I wasn't even good-looking.

So telling myself,
It's just a dog,
or even,
I'm heading right back to Boston to take care of this
didn't help at all, because neither of those changed the fact I'd fucked up. I'd never felt like such a
winner and such a loser at the same time. Somehow being a loser diminished the glory of being a winner, but being a winner didn't at all diminish the humiliation of being a loser. Maybe because I was desperately craving a shower.

And so I didn't strut the way I'd imagined I would, charming the bejaysus out of all I passed, oozing confidence and cockiness. Rather I almost
snuck
through the crowded, harried streets of Manhattan, aware how easily, how effortlessly, something could go wrong and turn my whole world even more topsy-turvy. To be honest, I felt a little paranoid. At least the exhaustion meant I didn't have a lot of energy with which to feed that paranoia.

The auditions and callbacks had been in a sound stage. I'd felt right at home there and had continued to imagine all-things-pilot-related as happening in that space. But this meeting was in midtown, just east of Times Square, near the library, in an ugly glass-and-steel skyscraper the cable network owned. The vibe had about as much in common with a rehearsal room as a proctologist's office. It didn't even have the charming scruff of an old hotel or anything—it was all modern, gratuitously expensive-looking, almost clinical. It made my scruffiness immediately ten times scruffier.

Inside, the air was sterile. One wall had half a dozen TV monitors on it, all playing muted programs—a classic movie on one, starring an adorable dog; nonstop news on another, including something about a dog; a couple of DIY shows (cooking, dog training, carpentry); some dramatic original programming on the sixth and largest, which didn't seem to be about a dog. Across from this, up a couple of stairs, was the reception desk, which looked like the Ritz-Carlton version of a carnival barker's stand.
There were two dolled-up birds with lacquered hair and perfectly made-up faces, wearing sleek headsets strapped to their ears with gizmos that rested on their collarbones and looked, in all honesty, a little bit like dog collars; from the bust down they were hidden behind the stand, but you could tell from the industrious movement of their shoulders that they were busily answering a bank of phones and asking people to hold. They looked like they were having the time of their lives. And why not? They worked for a cable network! It left them plenty of time for personal grooming. I envied them.

I took an uncertain step toward them. Suddenly I couldn't remember the name of my own series.
Private Irish
was the only phrase that came to mind because it was some kind of stupid pun like that, but I really hoped it was not
that
stupid, only I couldn't remember now because I couldn't get the image of the dog out of my mind, and that just choked everything else out. Every moment I was here was a moment I wasn't hunting for the dog. This meeting better damn well be worth it.

There were people crossing efficiently through the lobby, waving identification cards against scanners before entering elevators. Some of these were women who truly looked like they were made of metal with a thick covering of silicon and makeup. Others were men, all in very expensive clothes, even if casual, and all with (it seemed) professional manicures. I did not belong with any of these people. These people all belonged with each other, but I was an outsider, so much so it seemed impossible I was about to be embraced by them.

“Rory!” It was a familiar voice and something inside me almost relaxed. There was Dougie, all the way from Los Angeles—good
ol' Dougie, near the bank of elevators, on the other side of the ID scanners.

But same as that, I hardly recognized him. He was wearing an expensive suit, and his hair looked almost as shellacked as the receptionistas'. Was this going to happen to me, too? Would I walk out of here today smelling of Dolce & Gabbana, my mop-top firm as a helmet? “Rory, man, good to see you!” Dougie came past the scanners to me. I hadn't actually seen him in person for a couple of years; he looked a little plumper and yet also a little more toned, as if somebody had airbrushed him. “Dude!” He hugged me—a warm, real hug, which I hadn't been expecting but which I realized I needed. “These guys are so hot for you,” he whispered enthusiastically, before releasing the hug. “This is going to be awesome.” But then he looked me over, seeing my actual state of havoc. “Hey, guy. Everything all right?”

I'd no clue how to answer that. A simple no was not what he wanted to hear, but to try to give it context seemed absurd: “No, my wife's dog has been kidnapped” would sound awfully bizarre and require further conversation, and I did not want the first conversation here, in the lobby of my brilliant new life, to be about (a) the dog or (b) what a fuckup I was.

So I just stared at him.

“Rory? You okay?” He sounded worried now. “You need a glass of water?”

“I'm just a bit dizzy,” I said defensively.

“You want to lie down before the meeting?” A pause. “Do you maybe need . . . a shower? Some freshening up?”

Oh God, so I really did look that bad. There was a shower in an office building? The thought of it almost made my knees buckle
with desire. But if I said yes, that would appear to be weakness. Couldn't do that. God, I wish I could remember why we were having this meeting.

Suddenly I wished Cody was there to lean against me. I had grown quite fond of how she leaned against me, even though I never admitted it, and it was really endearing how she leaned against Sara.

If she never again got to lean against Sara, that would be one hundred percent my fault.

“I'm grand,” I said, shaking my head a little. I'd be fine. I'd think of something clever to do or say and I'd shake myself out of this, I'd have them all eating out of my hands, I just had to get in front of an audience and I'd be grand.

“Okay,” said Dougie, not sounding convinced. “Let's get you signed in, then.”

One of the receptionistas printed out a white tag with a very blurry image of me that had been taken by some camera I hadn't noticed, clipped it to a lanyard, and handed it to me. “Have a nice day,” she said, to either me or whoever she was simultaneously on the phone with.

The tag let me past the scanners. We took the elevators up about thirty floors, enough for my ears to pop. The farther away we moved from Planet Earth the less comfortable I was. I needed to be on Planet Earth to look for Cody.

The elevators doors opened into a broad, largely empty reception area, flooded with natural light but inorganic in its modern-meets-postmodern look. Despite the casual sprinkling of Emmy Awards along the counter (real-life Emmy Awards!), the message here was definitely “We're really wealthy,” not “We make good
art.” Not that there's anything wrong with that—I'm grand with being adopted by the wealthy. But I would have been so comforted by the presence of a fellow actor, and there didn't seem to be any of those around. What did all these people do? Would it be my responsibility to make sure the show was good enough that they continued to be paid their salaries? God, the pressure. More than I could handle today. I wished I could just call this off and go right back to Boston, but it was an important meeting—although I couldn't remember why it was important. That added to the dreamlike (slightly nightmarish) feeling of being here.

Dougie strode up to the desk, said something to these new receptionistas, and then signaled me to come. I followed him through a glass door into a glass corridor, with glass offices lining either side.

At the end of the corridor was an actual solid wooden door, and we went through this . . . into a room whose opposite wall was glass, and looked out over midtown Manhattan from hundreds of feet up, and I have to tell you, it was breathtaking. Even though half the buildings were ugly as sin, it was
impressive
.

So. Here we were in the room with The Suits—although actually, none of The Suits was wearing a suit (except Dougie). I suppose that's an outdated expression now. Everyone—one woman, the rest men—was dressed in civvies and generally looked like expensive versions of normal people, and much better groomed versions of me. I think I'd expected them all to match, like a Secret Security detail or something, but they were quite the hodgepodge. A few were in blue jeans and turtlenecks, several (including the bloke who had flirted with me back in the sound stage last winter) were dressed all in black, a few were in suit
coat and khakis. The Suits were dressing down. But Jesus, not as much as I was.

I was wearing jeans (now very baggy and stained) and a collarless shirt (ditto) and a pair of Docs. And a hobo beard and hobo hair and bleary red eyes and a general air of eau-de-Rory. I looked like a strung-out PBS host contemplating converting to Rastafarianism. I saw every pair of eyes scan me. Each time, there was the briefest hesitation, followed by an indulgent smile. I didn't know if I should trust the indulgent smiles. As I said, I was feeling a bit paranoid.

They were all so fresh, so perky, so positive. They also looked, in some ineffable way, terrifyingly competent. Especially compared to
me
. I couldn't even summon a sound track for them and I
never
had that problem. I was
such
a fish out of water. I bet none of these people had ever trod the boards a day in their life, except Dougie. Dougie now made introductions, including the people I'd met before.

One of them was a production executive who worked for the network, and another was an executive producer who worked for the studio. Then there was an executive producer who was going to be the music supervisor—he looked like someone I could probably have a decent chat with, another time, though. Two others were executive producers because they had come up with the idea for the show and sold it to the network. These two—one was the geekiest bloke in the room, so probably the writer—
almost
felt like theatre people, but not quite. Someone else seemed to be a producer because he was dating the show-runner, the woman, who was the
chief
executive producer, and two others were mere
producers, but nobody explained how that was different from the executive producers.

And then two other blokes were co-executive producers.

None of this made any sense to me. I just wanted to accomplish whatever this important meeting was supposed to accomplish, just do my job and then reunite with Sara and Cody. First I had to rescue Cody, though. Did any of these people have a dog? Did they coddle it as much as Sara coddled Cody? Did they argue with their spouses about how the dog was treated? Would any of them have been stupid enough to hand the dog over to the
enemy
?

These were not the thoughts I wanted to be thinking at this should-be moment of triumph. This was enormous, what was happening right here, right now, and in some parallel universe, I was doing it right, and Rory O'Connor was on top of his game and on top of the world and handling it all
brilliantly
.

But meanwhile in this reality, I felt so wan and haggard, and I could feel Dougie's worried gaze on me, but I managed to put up a false front for a bit, smiling and shaking hands and nodding appreciatively, accepting the gushing compliments of all these people who had seen the videos of my audition and callback. I had gleefully ad-libbed my way through half the material and I'm sure they were expecting me to be the same virtuoso of improv now, the prince of charm, but it was almost all I could do to sit up straight and smile placidly. I wished to God I could remember what this meeting was about. No other actors were here, and I saw no signs of a script.

Almost immediately the energy in the room drained to zero, because the guest of honor—me—was a nearly mute black hole.
There was nothing I could do about it. Sometimes your brain just switches to EconoMode, and that was happening now, and the button was stuck. If my getting the gig were even one percent dependent on this moment, I would have lost it. I was the least interesting I have ever been since birth, including all periods of REM sleep. The thought of REM sleep was so seductive now.

I could see them all sneaking glances at one another. They were disappointed. No. It was worse than that. They thought I was on heroin or something!

I had to let them know I was not on heroin. I could not take that rap. Unfortunately, the worst way to convince somebody you're not on drugs is to say, “In case you're wondering, I'm not on drugs.” On the few occasions in the past when I'd needed to convince somebody I was not on drugs, it was because I
was
on drugs. I'd no idea how to convince someone of my innocence when I was actually innocent.

“Do you want a drink of water, Rory?” Dougie was asking me for the third time.

“. . . Yes,” I said this time.

“Are you all right, Rory?” asked one of the executive producers. There was an almost audible sigh of relief amongst the others, gratitude that somebody had just come on out and called it.