Stepdog (29 page)

“Fair enough. So surely by now you have some understanding of how much this means to me.”

The weird thing is, I did. If I'd heard somebody else describe this ludicrous scenario, I'd have laughed it off, but I saw his eyes and I heard his voice, and he was hurting terribly. It wasn't just his ego, or his pride, it really was his heart. Fuck me if I could make sense of it, but even without making sense of it, I could still tell that it was real.

“What do you gain by denying me this?” he asked.

“I avoid breaking my wife's heart.”

“Get another dog,” he said, taking a step closer to me.

“You
get another dog,” I retorted.

“I could do that,” he said. “But then everything I've said about Los Angeles will happen. That's bad for Cody
and
bad for your marriage.”

“Sara will just try to get her back,” I argued. Jesus, I was
debating
him . . . that meant some part of me was taking the bastard seriously. “It will be a repeat of what's just happened.”

“No, it won't,” he said immediately. “Because I'll be as plainspoken and direct with her as I'm being with you now. I'll explain how it's for Cody's benefit, and after she gets over her hysteria, she'll hear me. She'll take it on board. Not if it comes from you, but if it comes from me.”

“Why you?” I scoffed.

“Because I know how to make her feel guilty,” he said simply. “I'm something of an expert at it.”

I was so shocked by this admission that I couldn't speak, just gaped at him a moment. But he was right about Sara. She would make Cody's happiness a priority over her own because as smart and savvy a woman as she was, Sara was utterly mental when it came to the dog.

But I wasn't.

“Tell you what,” I said. “Let's ring Sara right now and talk about this. You seem to be good at convincing her of things. If you can convince her now, the dog's all yours.”

His face fell. Not the response he'd wanted from me. “That's not the way to make this work.”

“It's the only way to make it work,” I said, “Because even if I agree with you one hundred percent, it's not my decision to make. I promised Sara I'd return her dog to her, and I keep my promises to people I love even if I don't always want to. So that's what I'm going to do now. Cody, let's go.” I turned my back on him and tugged at her leash until she followed me. Back at the car I opened the door. “Get in the back,” I said firmly.

With an accusing look, she climbed back to her bed. I got in
myself, then closed the door, took a moment to calm myself. It was stuffy, so I opened the window a little.

Jay approached us slowly and calmly, as if we hadn't just had that conversation. He waved to Cody through the window on the driver's side. She leaned across me to see him better. His sad smile was genuine, and so was her eagerness to see him. Why couldn't she realize he was a wanker? Weren't dogs supposed to have some tribal loyalty? Even if she sensed the upset (Sara once said dogs could smell emotions), Cody had no clue her pack wasn't actually a pack.

“Please, mister, can't I just get out and say hi to my dad?” Cody asked.

Oh, Jesus, for a moment I really thought she'd said that. Her eyes were glued to Jay and her tail was wagging tentatively.

“Fuck off,” I said to her.

She looked at me, tail still wagging, hoping maybe she would get a treat with that.

With an aggravated sigh I turned away from her, out the driver-seat window, right at Jay, who was bending over to peer in. His expression had changed from plaintive to stern. “Do you understand how cruel you're being?” he asked in a warning tone. “Cruel and foolish. You're going to ruin everything for all of us. That's unforgivably foolish. You should change your mind, or be prepared to live with regret.”

I rolled up my window.

“I'll see you in Alburquerque,” Jay said, overenunciating to make sure I understood him with the window closed. And a final warning:
“Change your mind.”

I ignored him. Took a deep breath. Found, from Sara's well-supplied pack, the hand lotion, and used it on my face. Drank
water, but not too much. Refilled Cody's water dish. I gave her another bully stick, which she accepted but then tossed down onto her bed in the backseat, climbing back there herself to look wistfully out the back window at Jay, who had moved round to the Lexus. He waved to her again. She looked excitedly at me, still hoping for permission to get back out of the car. I couldn't even remember when she'd last had exercise. Oh, wait . . . it was early this morning. Back in Memphis. No, it was actually after Memphis, right? It was all blurring together. I pulled my seat belt back into position. Jay, seeing the movement, got into the SUV. The wanker was going to tail me all the way to Cali-fucking-fornia. Classic example of the dangers of early retirement.

I wanted to burn rubber and tear out of there, but there was no point in racing away from him into the night. There was only one road. I'm impulsive (as we've seen) and a bit hotheaded (ditto), and I wanted to mess with him—drive in spirals to make him accidentally smash into a wall or something. But the MINI actually had a pretty crap turning radius; its main asset was that it was cute. Frankly, it was imbecilic to be driving it cross-country. We really should have just flown, together, and put the dog in cargo. If Sara had just been willing to do what most pet owners did regularly whenever they traveled, none of this would be happening right now. All of this should have been avoidable. It all came down to Sara coddling the dog. Which she would soon be doing more than ever.

I let out a loud growling sigh of frustration, which brought Cody to the front seat, offering to lick my face. I pushed her away and called Sara even though it was probably midnight where she was.

“Hello?” She sounded as if I'd woken her from a deep slumber.

“Sorry, love, it's me,” I said.

“What time is it?” she muttered, then before I could answer, “It's three thirty
A.M.
here. What's wrong?”

“Oh, crap, sorry, I get confused about the time. I wouldn't be calling except I don't think I should stop in Albuquerque, I want to push on to whatever's next. Flagstaff?”

“What?”
she said. “Rory, you've been driving nonstop since
Memphis
.”

“I stopped in Tulsa.”

“Long enough to squabble with Jay. You've been on the road for nearly twenty hours. Where are you now?”

“Tucumcari,” I said, “I think that's finally New Mexico. I stopped for a nap back in Oklahoma. Texas is fucking huge. I should have known this would be a bad idea when Connecticut seemed so big.”

She sighed. “Just stay in Albuquerque. Please? Get some sleep. Sleep all day and all night before you drive to Flagstaff. You need the rest.”

“He's still tailing me,” I said. “I'm at a gas station and he's behind me. Five feet away, like. He's not giving up.”

“Oh,” she said unhappily. “Oh, boy.”

“If I stop in Albuquerque, he'll just get a room in the same hotel, and I won't be able to relax because I'll be so pissed off about his being there.”

“How will Flagstaff be any better?”

“You're meeting me there, remember? We're going to the Grand Canyon together. I want to be back with you as soon as possible. And so does Cody. I think we three should have some quality time
together.” For fuck's sake, that sounded so forced and pathetic I expected her to guess what Jay had just been doing to my head.

“Oh,” she said affectionately, touched. “But, sweetie, if you're going to be in Flagstaff by the middle of the day, I can't get myself there in time.”

“Please just text me the address of a Flagstaff hotel in case I feel up to making the drive.”

A pause. “All right. But if you're driving that far, try to find a way to give Cody some exercise.”

“Do you not understand what I'm saying?” I said. “He's literally right behind me. I have to keep going. I need exercise as badly as the dog does, but neither of us is getting it. She'll just have to deal with it. Jesus.”

“You sound like you need to eat,” she said. “You're a little cranky.”

“Sara!” I never shouted at her, and I shocked myself. “This isn't a game. He's
serious
. He's dead set on getting her. It's like convoying with Ahab.”

“There's nothing he can do as long you have her,” Sara said. “He won't do anything violent, he would consider that beneath him. I'll send you the address and let's just keep each other in the loop, okay? Love you.”

I finally drove out of the station. Jay followed me. Cody was staring out the window at the dark plains, exactly the same way she'd be staring at them if she were now in Jay's car headed back east. I
hated
myself for wondering if I'd made the wrong decision here, but to be honest, I wondered briefly—but with great intensity—if I'd made the wrong decision.

I
drove on into the night. Behind me, tragic and irritating, and gazed at by the fucking dog out the back window, was Jay. No sense trying to outrun him; that would just make him feel important.

I ate the Snickers bars as I drove and immediately felt even more disgusted with myself. Even Cadbury's—for all the awful childhood associations I had with it—was better than this shite. Drove on for miles and miles more, Jay on my arse, through unchanging, vast, moonlit expanses. The highway went dead straight, and I was on a bit of a height, so I could see it bang on to the horizon, toward the massive full moon. For miles ahead there was nothing at all along Interstate 40. Eventually, a flurry of billboards announced the Flying C Ranch (whatever that was), which, when we finally passed it, looked like a giant gas station. It was surrounded by such a density of juniper bushes that the flat-topped hills beyond seemed forested.

The grey light of dawn was creeping up my backside as relentlessly as Jay, making the world uglier and colorless. We passed Clines Corners (whatever that was), then back to high plains and
junipers. My arse was killing me—had been for a while, but I'd been too stressed and distracted to notice the discomfort. Cody sighed, and spent about an hour moving back and forth between the front seat and the back, forever staring at my face for hints about what might come next. I found it a terrible irritant. If she were currently in Jay's car, his whole fucking soul would have welled with love for her while she did that.

C
LOSER TO
A
LBUQUERQUE,
Interstate 40 spilled down over one final vast, pale plain. Far ahead rose a lumpy line of mountains, like the worked side of a key. It was a cloudy dawn, but the light kissed the eastern slopes and they were . . . gorgeous. It was the first time anything had looked gorgeous in days. I rolled the window down to let in cold fresh air. Cody leapt to her feet and stuck her nose toward the window, no matter that meant blocking my view. I pushed her away and raised the window again. She sneezed all over me. It was disgusting, as dog sneezes go. Except for the pause in Tulsa and the service-road catnap, I had driven nonstop for a thousand miles, and eaten nothing but three Snickers bars. I don't think I've ever felt so wretched in my life—which is saying something, given my old party days.

Here at last was Albuquerque. Behind me was Jay.

I couldn't stop here. I couldn't risk listening to him anymore. I had to keep going literally into Sara's arms.

Somewhere, the sunlight had changed. It was probably Arkansas or Oklahoma, but who can say, Arkansas had been rainy and I'd driven Oklahoma in the dark. It was a searing light now, the kind of light that triggered the instinct to seek shade, even though it wasn't hot yet.

We skirted Albuquerque. There were no tall buildings, and the mountains rose up around it regally, so that the city was insignificant compared to the landscape, and that was comforting.

Then everything grew flat again. Dullsville.

Sara sent a text with a hotel address, but it wasn't in Flagstaff.
Tusayan,
she wrote.
Closer to GC
.
Enjoy it for the both of us xx.
I pouted. What was the point of the Grand Canyon if I was going by myself? Or worse yet, saddled with Sara's dog. Especially while Jay trailed along behind us, sighing tragically.

After a good long while of nothing else, I passed the Route 66 Casino, rising up to the south of the highway, random and gratuitous and causing the obvious song to start percolating in my brain stem. Cody was getting more uncomfortable, stressed and bored. She was very dusty from the stop with the burs. She put her nose down by my elbow on the armrest, and covered it with both of her paws trying to scratch her own face, looking as if she were playing peekaboo with some invisible creature under the dash. Sara had included Benadryl in the overly thorough Cody-As-Surrogate-Child bag, complete with half a page worth of instructions (these boiled down to:
Give Cody 2 Benadryl
) but I hadn't thought to give it to her. Jay would have, of course.

We drove on. Then
suddenly
—and really, it was
sudden,
or else maybe I'd fallen asleep at the wheel—as suddenly as Tulsa had sprung up earlier, there were mesas and buttes and canyons and valleys and cliffs and arroyos and lots of other things I didn't know the names of. As if some John Wayne movie had erupted in Technicolor out of the earth and exploded all over. There were little adobe huts and abandoned old shacks and houses all along the way, too. They were, even by the standards of the rurals in Ire
land, very picturesque.
This
was the Old West I had envisioned! For a moment I was alert and completely charmed, sloughing off Jay and even Cody, as my Inner Child and Inner Émigré cavorted together through a wonderland of weirdness.

However, as delightful as it was to encounter, I was now so fried and so hungry, and the Old West went on for so long, I got tired of it. So did Cody, who had occasionally raised herself to look around, and finding nothing but more of the same sights and smells (mainly dried earth, secondly dried manure), would sigh, or yawn, then stare at me beseechingly.

“Stop
staring
at me,” I said, which come to think of it was something I had said to her at least once a day from almost the very beginning of our relationship.

The car claimed the temperature was only fifty-nine, hard to believe given the bleaching intensity of the sunlight. A slow-moving freight train stretched on for so long, I lost sight of it behind an enormous trailer park, which had appeared almost as suddenly as the interesting landscape—thousands of homes that evolved, farther west, into dingy tract housing.

Whatever township that had been, we were out of it again quickly and into the same open, empty, cooked-salmon rock that now lined the roadway. My phone rang. Danny, this time. God how I wished he was in the seat beside me, or better yet, that I was meeting him in person at the Plough.

“Ach! Big man! The stories I'm hearing from your man Alto!” he said. “You're in the Wild West, yeah? Oklahoma, is it? Is it like cowboys and Indians?”

“I'm done with Oklahoma,” I said. “I'm in . . . Arizona or New Mexico, I always get those two mixed up. New Mexico.”

“How's it?”

“It's big and dry and empty and dusty.”

“Sounds great. Except for the dusty part. How's Sara? How's the wee dog?”

“Sara's in Los Angeles and the dog is dusty but fine.”

“You missed a great game, man, they
killed
Liverpool.”

“I'm shattered, Danny. I haven't really slept since I can't remember when.”

Danny chuckled. “It's crazy, like. That man's mental. Where is he now?”

“Oh,” I said, making sure to sound offhand. “He's in my rearview mirror.”

“He's not!” gasped Danny. “He's
following
you?”

“He is,” I said.

“That's fucking mad! He's chasing you over a wee dog now?”

“He is.”

“It's like your own reality show for the telly!”

“I've already
got
a show for the telly,” I said. That almost felt like a lie.

“Yeah, fuck that, this one's more interesting,” said Danny.

“Piss off,” I said. As much as I wanted his company, I didn't have the energy to even hold a conversation. “I've gotta go drive off a cliff now in my Batmobile. Later.”

There were billboards for a place advertising opals and agates and gold. Also, moccasins, casinos, Dairy Queens, hotels, and fast food. Soon, increasingly urgent billboards for turquoise. Plus there were now rows of cliff faces to the right, a series of them too indistinct to count, like waves, smaller swells backed by larger
ones. I rounded a slight bend in the road to see that they continued on out of sight in the haze.

The sun rose higher, shrinking the car's shadow. The temperature was still cool outside despite the bright blaring sun. This made more sense when we passed a sign announcing the Continental Divide, meaning we were higher than I'd realized. The landscape to the north got pretty impressive. “This is it! We're in Grand Canyon territory!” I announced triumphantly to Cody.

A few miles later, it all got dull again.

But finally, as we approached the small city of Flagstaff, there was respite from the oppressive openness: for the first time in at least twelve hours of driving, there were
real trees
. Pine trees. Not like those great ol' North Carolina pines, but still, their presence changed everything. Seeing familiar bits of nature lifted my spirits, and Cody, smelling the shift away from pure open plains, yawned and rested her chin on my shoulder, nestling her head against mine. Jesus, it was good to know the end was nearly in sight.

The GPS steered me away from the city, onto a two-lane road through a massive ponderosa-pine forest, and then up onto high plains. It looked almost exactly like what I'd been driving through for many hours—sage, scrub, junipers, baked red earth. But it
felt
different, because I knew I was nearing the end. And of course, I knew I was nearing the Graceland of the natural world: the Grand Canyon. This time, I'd actually get to see something. A straight shot up 64 took us into Tusuyan. The hotel was smack off the road.

Jay was still right behind me. If he followed me into the hotel, no good would come of it—I'd either give him the dog or give him
a bruising. I began to pull into the hotel car park when suddenly a squeal of tires made me jump. I looked back into my rearview mirror.

Jay was suddenly pulling past me. That damn Lexus SUV sped off up the road and out of sight. Disappeared.

Jay was gone. Gone!

What?

Victory! The wanker had finally called it off!

But why?