The Dog Year (3 page)

“Can't have too many hospital supplies,” said Envy without a smile.

Lucy looked at the woman and tried to decide what she had seen. What she knew. She lifted her drink in a mock toast. Some of the liquid sloshed onto the tails of her plaid shirt. “Nope, you can't,” she agreed. Unconsciously, Lucy patted the photograph through her shirt pocket.

Envy stood and took a step toward Lucy. “I don't know who you are, but it's time to go.” She took Lucy by the arm, helping her to stand. But Lucy resisted her. “I'm a doctor and I wanna stay,” she insisted. Envy, short, large busted and strong, pulled Lucy to a standing position and handed her the Nerf rifle. “I doubt that. You gotta go.”

“Whoa, you're a serious little Hobbit, aren't you? I'm in plastics,” Lucy added. Envy frowned, opened the door, and guided Lucy out of the closet.

“Well, even if that's true, Doctor, you still need to go.”

Standing amid the fray of the party again, Lucy said, “I don't feel very good. I haven't had a drink in, like, a year.” But Envy had walked into a gaggle of partiers and didn't hear her.

Melissa bustled by doing her best Lust imitation. “Whoa, Dr. Peterman,” she said, “you don't look so good.”

“I was fine until Envy over there shoved me out of my hiding place.”

Melissa glanced over her shoulder. “That's Phyllis Parmenter. She's in charge of inventory for the hospital. Takes her supplies seriously. She had that nurse fired last year because of poor needle documentation and unauthorized usage of a sharps container.”

Lucy felt a blaze of heat start in her belly and ferociously climb upward. “I think I'm going to be sick.”

She staggered outside with Melissa at her heels. Rummaging in her pocket, she pulled out her cell phone, preparing to call her brother.

“Dr. Peterman, how much punch did you drink?”

“Too much.” The fall air hit Lucy with a comforting blast. She bent over and let Melissa put her hand between her shoulder blades. She imagined Phyllis Parmenter, minus her all-green outfit, speaking with matronly authority to the administration office in the morning.

“I'm so screwed,” she said.

T
he next morning, standing in her beautifully tiled bathroom, next to the antique pedestal sink and the tall-glassed shower stall, Lucy pulled a roll of tape out of her satchel from the night before with a fearful expression on her face. Despite the amount of alcohol she'd consumed the previous night, she remembered everything. Even the gibberish she'd managed to blubber to her brother amid drunken tears. “I can either quit now,” she'd said to him. “Or wait for them to come and get me. Or I can deny everything. Or maybe pretend I was staying in Wrath character and just joking about all those suture kits I took.” Then she threw up once and fell asleep.

At the sound of a car engine turning into the cul-de-sac, Lucy snapped her head upright and shifted her gaze to the window. There was little traffic on the street, mostly wrong turns except for her few neighbors.

Lucy peered through the blinds and sucked in her breath. A city patrol car pulled to the curb in front of her house just two feet from her mailbox, which was a matching model of her renovated Victorian. When a police officer stepped out, Lucy looked around frantically. Her first impulse was to call her lawyer, flush the stolen supplies, and hide and run. Then with the wild clarity of her doctor-self she thought,
Do all of the above, but in reverse order.

“Simmer down,” she said aloud. She repeated Richard's phrase that meant
Namaste
to him, even as he waited for Med Flight to bring the latest Fourth of July fireworks casualty. “Expect the worst, hope for the best.”

Springing into action, she shoved the roll of tape into her pocket. With the comic coordination of Charlie Chaplin, she wrestled her arms out of the bathrobe she wore over the clothes she'd slept in, hitting herself in the face with her sleeve and knocking her glasses onto the floor. She forced herself to stroll to the front door, smoothing her T-shirt and jeans from the night before. The police officer reached the top of the steps just as Lucy pressed her face to the screen in the door.

Feigning composure, she said, “Can I help you, Officer?”

She saw him squint through the mesh, and if he was disappointed to have lost the element of surprise, he didn't show it.

“Ma'am, I wonder if you might step outside for a moment.” He held his identification up so that she could see his pixilated face through the metal of the screen door.

“I hope I'm not in trouble.” She laughed an uncharacteristically girlish laugh, which made her loathe herself. Once uncool, forever uncool. Why couldn't she laugh like a sophisticated woman? She touched her fingers to the font of her neck, said a silent prayer, and pushed the screen door open. As it screeched a warning, she imagined what she always imagined when someone saw her for the first time. The flash assessment. The categorization.

Not pretty.

She'd seen it work the other way her whole life. Her friends, roommates, colleagues . . . the beauties around her had been a daily demonstration of “pretty discrimination.”

“Do you drive a blue Subaru wagon?” the officer was saying. “Possibly a 2010 or 2011?”

She let the screen door slap behind her and rolled the tape in her pocket around and through her fingers.
Let's get this over with.
“Yes, as a matter of fact I do. Why?”

“A Subaru wagon was involved in a hit-and-run today. A child was injured. We're checking registered owners in the area.”

Relief blew through her lips, and so did her chance to stand out, however notoriously, in this man's eyes.

“Oh thank God,” she said.

He removed his dark glasses. Stock police officer accessories, direct from the prop room at central casting. “What?” he said.

“Oh, I . . . I mean, that's terrible.”

She was standing next to him and had to step back to take in his full height. He was trim and serious and not to be messed with. He cleared his throat. “Can I see your car?”

“Of course. Yes!” she said, and hurried to the garage as he followed her. “I can't imagine leaving the scene of a crime. But then the biggest offense I've committed to date is being the owner of a cat-at-large. Mrs. Bobo is very open-minded sexually and likes to cruise the neighborhoods.” Lucy widened her eyes to show him this was obviously a joke. When he didn't respond, she added, “I secretly envy her.” Giving the officer a double thumbs-up, the universal encouragement sign for idiots, she said, “Go for it, Mrs. Bobo. Get some for both of us,” and smirked, knowing how beyond pathetic it was to live vicariously through your cat and worse yet, to confess it.

She hit the garage door opener and pulled the roll of tape she still held in her hand into the bright sunlight. Teasing. The policeman did a slow stroll around her car, examining each bumper with care. When he was finished, he turned and focused on her face.

“You know, we graduated from high school together. It's Lucy, right?” He tilted his head, looking puzzled, then pulled a notepad from his pocket and riffled through it. “I thought I saw a different name registered to this house.”

“No, that's right. Lucy Peterman. Seventeen Viceroy Lane.”

“Wait, here I have it.” He consulted his notes. “Luscious Peterman. You're Luscious?”

“Ironic, huh?”

The officer furrowed his brow. “Ironic?”

“Don't worry, I get it. Apparently I was ‘Luscious' at birth,” she said, using another mannerism she loathed, the air quotation marks.
What's gotten into me?
“My mother named me when her postpartum nurse said I was so luscious she could lick me. Apparently intoxicated with gratitude, my mom named me Luscious. So here I am, left never meeting expectations and forever answering the question: ‘You're Luscious?'”

His expression remained blank. “Okay.”

“You can call me Lucy, like in high school.”

“Okay. Lucy. Looks like no crime has been committed here.”

Lucy watched him as he made his way back to his patrol car. “Don't be too sure,” she said.

“What?”

“Don't forget my cat.”

“I'll make a note of it.” He spoke over the roof of the patrol car as he opened the door. “What do you do? If I remember right, you were valedictorian.”

“Wow, good memory.”

“You gave the speech. Made fun of Roland Antilla, the history teacher who could never remember anything about the War of 1812 other than the date. It was funny.”

“I work at the hospital.” She twisted the tape off her fingers and pushed it back into her pocket. “What about you?”

He paused for a beat, putting his glasses back on, allowing her a minute to register the obvious and said, “I look for criminals who drive blue Subarus.”

*   *   *

Lucy watched the cruiser as it executed a smooth, 180-degree arc, leaving the neighborhood the way it entered, with purpose and high-minded goals: find the bad guys, make the world a better place, go on with the day. With her own ideas of right and wrong conflicting with her felonious impulses, Lucy moved back into the house and down the hall to the bedroom she'd shared with her husband. Reaching above the bedroom door to retrieve a hidden key, she unlocked the door's shiny brass deadbolt. The click of metal slid from its casing and the door creaked open. A waft of her old life reached her nostrils, carrying inevitable memories: the way her husband smiled, conservatively protecting a crooked incisor from display. The way he hugged her, every single time, like she hadn't seen him for a week. Like she was a life jacket. The way he said her name. Lucy fished the tape from her pocket, lobbed it through the opening along with the filled satchel from the night before, and slammed the door, slipping the lock into place.

She pushed her back against the door and caught her breath. “Valedictorian, my ass,” she said. “More like ‘Most likely to be
arrested
.'” Walking down the hall toward the kitchen, Lucy veered into the living room, wringing her hands. Turning, she paced back toward the kitchen. On impulse, she stomped down the basement stairs and upended a box of old medical school folders and textbooks. Grabbing an empty printer paper box, she hauled the two boxes to the main floor and down the hall. Outside her bedroom, she retrieved the key again. She took a deep breath as the key hovered above the lock, watching its silver teeth tremble in her hand. Then she pushed it into the lock and slowly slid the bolt back. Picking up a box, she began to turn the doorknob when a scuffling of footsteps moving toward the front door caught her attention again.

“Hello? Luce?”

She snatched the key out of the lock and slid it back into its hiding place, then walked, breathless, down the hall. Her tall and handsome younger brother pressed his nose against the screen door. She breathed a sigh of relief.

“Stop that. You're going to wreck the screen.”

“Somebody's crabby. Did I just see a police car cruising your neighborhood?”

“Yeah. I guess they go door-to-door sometimes to find their man.”

“Does this have something to do with all that crying last night about stealing and jail? You were making absolutely no sense.”

“No,” Lucy lied. “I don't remember a thing after you picked me up.”

“You said that if Envy gets ahold of you, you'll be out of a job. Something about tape and IV bags. Seriously, Luce, it's a good thing you're not a drinker. So what did the police want?”

“They looked at my car; some kind of hit-and-run in town that involved a blue Subaru. They cleared my car. But it turns out I went to high school with the cop.”

“Is that how you beat the rap? An old admirer?”

“Ha!” she said a little too loudly. “Yeah. ‘Weren't you the prom queen? I was always in love with you.'” Lucy laughed again. “Yep, I get that all the time.”

Nodding, her brother said, “Me, too.”

“At least, in your case, they have the queen part right.”

“You funny lady.”

“You are
not
still using that Asian accent. You understand that that's been considered hate humor since the seventies.”

“When you're part of the Ten Percent Society and have a Vietnamese love interest, you're exempt from politically correct lingo. Hell, I'm PC just by being me.” He smiled winningly and said, “So who was the cop?”

Charles was Lucy's younger brother and the only person in the universe who rivaled her husband in the game she called “Fun Facts about Lucy.” He knew that Lucy both hated and was vain about her hair, that she had become a surgeon only because she aced calculus, and that she'd been a virgin before she met Richard.

“He never said. I never asked.”

“Typical Lucy.”

“Whatever.” She spun away from her brother and kicked the boxes into the would-be nursery, the room Lucy slept in each night. When Charles and Lucy talked, Phong, Charles's lover, always complained that he felt like he was in the middle of a Nora Ephron movie where all the jokes were private and there was no faked orgasm scene.

Charles strolled down the hall and turned the doorknob of her bedroom.

Lucy popped her head around the corner and snapped, “What are you doing?”

“Bedroom still padlocked?”

“I don't want to accidently wander in there. I'm not ready.”

“I think we should move you back into your bedroom, Luce. Sleeping in the extra room is ridiculous. It's been almost a year.”

“Eight months.”

“Let me see, if you're anything like Mom . . .” Charles slid his hands across the molding of the door. “Yep. Here it is.” He held the key aloft, wagging it with triumph.

“No!” Lucy leaped for it. “Give it here, Charles.”

But he held the key above his head and said, “Come on, grab one of those boxes and let's clean out your spare room. Move everything back into your bedroom.”

She reached again for the key and said, “Stop it. This isn't funny.” Something in her tone made him drop his arm and she swiped the key from his hand.

“Jeez, sorry. I thought that's why the boxes were here. That maybe you were going to pack up some of Richard's stuff.”

“That's never going to happen. I'm never getting rid of Richard's stuff. The boxes are for junk I have to bring to the hospital. Just some stuff I borrowed. No big deal.”

Charles gazed levelly at his sister. “You're doing that thing with your pinkie.”

“What are you talking about?”

“When you lie, you hook your pinkie like you're a dainty tea drinker. I don't see it often because you don't lie to me much. So what gives, Luce? What are you not telling me?”

“I'm just on edge, Charlie. The party sucked. I had to hold a baby, they're trying to fix me up with some doctor, and I need to figure out what to do about some missing supplies.”

“What's that got to do with you?”

Lucy grabbed her crooked pinkie finger and said, “Nothing. But I have to go back to work and dodge Mr. Mystery Date after having thrown up in the parking lot.”

“Is that what this is all about? I'm pretty sure you weren't the only sinner sinning at the party. Just go back in there like nothing happened at all. You know how it is; what happens at the Monster Mash stays at the Monster Mash.”

“Act like nothing happened?”

Charles shrugged. “Remember in high school when I grabbed Tom Pakonen the football star's tight end at the prom and I blamed it on my date Melanie Skoviack? I just denied everything.”

Lucy looked at the silver key in her hand and said, “That's exactly what I'm going to do then. Deny everything.”