Other People's Pets Read online

  When Clem put a finger to his lips, shushing her, La La wanted to slug him.

  “You’re pretty passionate about animals, aren’t you?” he said, smoothing the tablecloth.

  La La sipped her beer, smudging the images on the glass. If he wanted quiet, he could have it.

  “You have a calling. I envy you.” He pushed a piece of lettuce around on his plate.

  “Don’t you feel that way about being a chiropractor?”

  “My dad’s a surgeon. Both of my brothers are doctors. My parents expected me to be one, too, but I flunked out of organic chemistry. Twice. People think what I do is bogus, don’t they?” He tore a roll in half, then seemed to lose interest and dropped both pieces on his plate. “Technically, I’m a doctor, you know.”

  “I don’t think what you do is bogus,” La La said.

  “Well, it isn’t.”

  After the waiter cleared the table, Clem took La La’s hand. Warmth rolled through her fingers into the crook of her arm, traveled from there like a small brush fire to her belly.

  Examining a long scar above her knuckles, he asked, “How’d you get that?”

  She rubbed the skin as if she could erase the jagged mark. “I wasn’t careful with a surgical instrument.” She remembered the first time Zev had let her break a window, glass shattering and blood pooling on a veneer floor.

  After Clem paid the bill, they walked around the college town, his long arm around her small, square waist. La La leaned into him, surprised at how good it felt to be held, even by someone she hardly knew. Outside a falafel joint, she nodded to students she recognized from class, and they looked Clem over and smiled, as though at unexpected good news. Though she didn’t let on, no one was more shocked to find her on a date than La La herself.

  When they got back to his car, Clem pressed her against the metal door and brushed his lips against hers, his breath coming in warm, doughy puffs. His beard was infused with the bright smell of a citrus styling cream. He towered over her, and even through his coat, she could feel how strong he was. She liked the sensation of being trapped. Others in her life had held her too loosely or not at all. His heat contrasted with the frigid door, and she pulled him closer, his beard chafing her chin. Desire raised a tumult in her body. His tongue swept her lips, her teeth. La La pressed hard against his mouth.

  After a while they separated, the force of her desire rattling La La. Clem reached for his car keys, but they weren’t in his pocket. “Maybe I left them on the table.”

  “What’s with you and keys?”

  “I wanted to see if you had a trick for opening car doors, too.”

  “I don’t,” she said, though she could use a wedge, a wire hanger, and a slim jim, and could sometimes break in through the trunk.

  * * *

  Clem washes the spaghetti pot, and La La dries. Preparing to take the dogs out, Clem dresses Black in a sweater because lately the dog gets cold. He helps La La on with her coat, then wraps his arms around her. She leans into him, feeling his rib cage and the tendons in his arms, and they remain that way until Blue begins to whine. Outside, the dogs race from one scent to another—coyote scat, a field mouse burrowing under the snow, a yellow hamburger wrapper—pulling the humans along. The air is crisp and fresh, and La La imagines it washing away the day’s corruption. If she focuses on the dogs more than she does on Clem, he doesn’t seem to notice.

  She and Clem have a good life. They rarely fight, and when they do, the sex is rough and inspired after, and lasts till nearly morning. They like the same TV shows—reruns of Grey’s Anatomy and House—and the same classic country music. Clem has agreed not to eat meat in the house and La La looks the other way in restaurants. He listens when she talks about her work in the clinic, and if it bothers him that she never asks about his clients, he doesn’t mention it.

  They furnished their house with a castoff sofa; an overstuffed chair, velvet worn in the center of the cushion; bookshelves and a desk they found on Freecycle; a scratched oak kitchen table from the Salvation Army. The used items gave the place a lived-in feel and a bedbug problem. La La hated to call an exterminator—insect life was life, too—but Clem pleaded with her and she gave in. She’d had the same problem deworming puppies, but in the end, she couldn’t avoid it if she wanted to be a vet. “Try to live a perfect life, you’ll live no life at all,” Dr. Bergman had counseled.

  How far, La La wonders, can you stretch that logic before it breaks?

  Clem clasps her gloved hand in his. “Thinking about school?”

  “Something like that.”

  Black lies in the snow. Older than Blue, he tires faster, despite having a complete set of limbs. Lifting the fifty-pound dog to his chest, Clem carries him back to the bungalow.

  When they get home, Clem reads the new post on his One of a Kind blog to La La. The blog is supposed to be for unusual acts of kindness. Clem started it months before, telling La La he wanted to do something about the decline in civility he had noticed and how quick people were to anger. He hoped the posts would remind people of their better nature. Like the one from last May about a woman who sacrificed her chance to win a marathon, carrying her exhausted friend across the finish line. And the story a month later about a man who intervened in an assault, though he made himself a target. He’s looking for heroes. But today’s post is more like what he usually gets and not what he wants to highlight: a teenager in Denver helped a man carry groceries to his car. “With all these posts about groceries, a supermarket chain should sponsor me,” he says. La La knows that despite Clem’s disappointment, he’ll reply, thanking the visitor for his inspiring message, though it will just give others the wrong idea about what the blog is for. He has only ninety-five followers. Often the same people write in. “I should shut the thing down. Don’t you think?” he says, but he won’t. He’ll keep it up, hoping for more posts like those early ones.

  On the bed later that night, television playing in the background, Clem unbuttons La La’s shirt. She’s as attracted to him as ever: his arms ripped from working on patients; the single crystal earring he never removes, a gift to himself—the only gift he received—upon graduating from chiropractic school. His chin sticks out like a fuzzy shelf. In her more devilish moments, La La wants to balance a biscuit there, the way she does on Black’s snout, the dog waiting for the command to eat it. Clem knows her the way few others do, from her connection to animals to what her life was like growing up. Knows her and loves her anyway. And she doesn’t have to worry about him getting picked up by the police.

  He kisses a spot between her breasts. La La buries her fingers in his hair, but she’s preoccupied. She slips off her clothes. Goose bumps rise on her skin, not from cold but apprehension. Though Clem prefers to see her face, La La turns toward the wall. She bends over the bed and guides him from behind.

  “Hey, slow down.” He kneels and grasps her thighs, turns her around, and presses his mouth to her. Desire wracks her body, but her mind is elsewhere, until he pierces her with his tongue and she gasps, forgetting about attorneys and prisons. He draws from her guttural sounds and shudders. When he rises from his knees, she lies back on the bed, and he lifts her legs and enters her. She rocks into him, her hands grasping his forearms.

  Later, he falls asleep, one arm around her. As he snores, La La nestles closer. The thought of losing him makes her feel as frightened as she did the morning she awoke to find her mother had disappeared without giving a hint of her intentions or bothering to say good-bye.

  It was a school day. Elissa always roused La La, shouting from the bedroom doorway, “I don’t want to have to explain why you’re late.” But on that day, Zev shook her shoulder. “Hurry up. I’m taking you.”

  “Where’s Mom?” La La asked, still half asleep.

  “She went away.”

  The words jolted La La. “Where?”

  “I’m sure she’ll call and tell us,” he said, the uncertainty in his eyes more frightening than Elissa’s mysterious absence.r />
  La La stayed under the covers where it was warm, refusing to accept her father’s news. Zev parted the shades, letting in weak light that illuminated a small bookcase filled with puzzles and next to it a wicker chair on which La La had arranged stuffed animals. At one end was a lion Elissa had brought home from a thrift store, fur matted and eyes hanging from fuzzy sockets. Her mother washed and sewed it, and it became La La’s favorite. La La held out her arms toward the lion, and Zev delivered it.

  “I’ll help you get dressed,” Zev said.

  “I don’t feel well.”

  Zev sat at the edge of the bed. He touched her forehead. “You’re not hot.”

  “I’m waiting for Mom to come home,” she said.

  “You can’t stay here alone.”

  La La buried her face in the lion’s neck. “Stay with me.”

  “Just today.”

  They remained at home the next day, too, and the day after that. One by one, Zev took apart the locks in his collection and showed La La how they worked. He sprayed the moving parts with powdered lubricant before putting them back together, wiping his hands with rags he changed frequently. He contacted La La’s school and said she was sick. Still, Elissa didn’t return.

  Each time the phone rang, La La was sure it was her mother. “I can’t make it today,” Zev said to one caller, and La La squeezed the lion so hard a seam popped. “Yes, sir. In half an hour,” Zev said to another. “Get dressed,” he said to La La when he hung up. She rode in the van with Zev, as she occasionally did on weekends, to a home where a man had locked himself out.

  When a full week had gone by, Zev told La La she had to go back to school.

  La La began to tremble. “What if you disappear, too?”

  “I’ll be here when you get home.”

  She clutched his arm. “What if you’re not?”

  “I have to work.”

  “I’ll go with you.” She liked how customers thanked him when he unlocked their doors.

  “You can’t.”

  “Don’t you want me to come along? I can help.” La La thought about things she had done for Elissa: setting the table for dinner, pairing warm socks out of the dryer, not crying when her mother combed her hair no matter how hard Elissa yanked. The memories hardened inside La La like clay after it was fired; they were heavy and impossible to set down. “I can hold your tools,” she said, barely loud enough for her father to hear.

  Zev smoothed a wrinkle from his sleeve where she had gripped it. “Okay. But never, ever talk about what we do. Okay?”

  La La didn’t understand—what was so secret about being a locksmith?—but she agreed.

  Later that morning, Zev had her get into his car. “Why aren’t we taking the van?” La La asked, but he didn’t answer. In a strange neighborhood, he handed her a clipboard with a yellow form. “If anyone answers the door, we’re selling magazines.”

  Over the years, La La would sell hundreds of subscriptions. They received dozens of complimentary issues at the house, from Time to Southern Cooking to the Journal of Criminal Justice, magazines Zev read and quoted freely. Zev made her put part of her earnings aside for college, though she complained. “You don’t want to end up like me. Do you?” he said. La La didn’t argue about the money after that.

  “Magazines,” Zev whispered, tapping the clipboard, as they stood in front of a stranger’s door. Inside, a dog began to bark. “Let’s go,” he said. “You never want to mess with Fido.”

  “Wait,” La La said. Since she’d been pulled from the lake, dogs were always happy to see her. All animals were. “It’s okay, boy. We won’t hurt you.” The dog quieted.

  Zev glanced up and down the street. “You’re a goddamn secret weapon.”

  La La squeezed the clipboard to her chest. It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her.

  2

  On Saturday, while Clem lifts weights at the gym, La La calls Zev and catches him while he’s cleaning drapes. She pictures him on the stepstool, unclipping the sailcloth fabric. He’s barely taller than she is, wiry and pale, and no match for the people he’d meet in prison. “After you left yesterday, I called the bank,” he says. “They won’t give me a loan against the house because it’s already pledged for bail.” His voice cracks, and she wonders how much coffee he’s had, whether he’s eaten anything. Zev’s mother died when he was in his teens. He and his father don’t speak, and he has no brothers or sisters. No one willing to put up the kind of money he’s going to need for O’Bannon. When she hangs up, La La throws on a jacket and yanks on boots. She thinks about leaving Clem a note, but what would it say? It’s rare for her to visit Zev this often. Yet she doesn’t know what else to do. Maybe together she and her father can figure out a way to pay the lawyer.

  Fresh snow coats the street, bends evergreen branches under its weight. Driving toward a property surrounded by thick hedges, La La senses distress inside. It’s not unusual for animals to suffer behind locked doors. She can’t imagine what their owners are thinking. She hates to pass such pets by with merely the hope their ailments will heal or their owners will become more observant. But she can’t treat every one, least of all the ones on private property.

  The house is large, two stories topped by a fancy tile roof. Reached by a long circular drive. A rich family’s home. The kind where she and her father did well. But all of that is in her past. If she stops now, she tells herself, it will be only to make sure the animal is okay.

  She brakes, swerving left and right, her Honda pinballing off the curb before she manages to park and walk up to a window. A yellow Labradoodle lies on a rug, panting. When he scratches his ear, pain slices through La La. She shuts her eyes and waits for it to pass.

  If she can’t help Zev, perhaps she can assist some other creature. She’ll advise the owners the dog needs a vet and be on her way. They might think she’s crazy, or maybe they’ll finally pay attention to his scratching and panting. When she rings the doorbell, no one answers. She presses the button a few more times and knocks on the storm door. Inside, the dog whines.

  She looks around. The hedges provide good cover, but it’s the weekend. No counting on people—the home’s occupants or nosy neighbors—to be at work. At least for now, the street is empty, and the owners don’t seem to have bothered with a security system. La La doesn’t see any stickers on the windows or signs. If she were suffering as the dog is, she’d want someone to help. She’ll be quick, she promises herself. From the trunk of her car, she grabs her veterinary bag.

  She tries the front door. Though she and Zev got lucky sometimes, it’s locked. Lifting a welcome mat sprayed with snow, La La uncovers a thin layer of displaced earth, crumbling leaves that escaped a blower, but no key. She sifts through damp, brown mulch in a large planter sheltered under the eaves. Bingo.

  Tires hiss through the snow. She wonders whether it’s the homeowners returning. If you don’t count the key in her hand, she hasn’t done anything illegal—yet. A fire has lit beneath her wool coat. When the car passes, she reconsiders and starts back toward her Honda.

  She’s taken only two steps when pain shoots through her, and she clenches her jaw. He must be fussing with the ear. Her eyelids sweat. Opening her palm, she sees the key.

  In the entryway, a sign above an oak bench reads KINDLY REMOVE YOUR SHOES. La La’s boots drip onto the bamboo flooring. The sign isn’t meant for her. The Labradoodle approaches and sniffs her, his collar embroidered with the name “Clyde.” La La scratches his chin, her fingertips disappearing in soft curls, her pulse slowing. Animals are incapable of deceit. They don’t say, “I’m making a run to the grocery store,” while secretly planning to leave you. Crouching, La La offers the dog a biscuit and observes while he chews.

  The house is quiet, except for a furnace that breathes like a dragon. Outside, the wind twists tree branches, brushing them against a window. A thump behind La La revs her heart. She wheels around, scrambling to her feet, but it’s only a cat. He knocked her bag from the be
nch and scratches his claws against it. Reclaiming her property, La La pulls out an otoscope and examines the dog’s ear. A foxtail is embedded in the canal. The barbed seed heads lodge there when people take their dogs hiking and can lead to serious infection. In rare cases, death. It’s unusual for it to happen in the winter but not unheard of. Why didn’t his owners—who must have heard him cry and seen him scratch—take him to the vet? She’d report them for animal cruelty if she weren’t in the house illegally.

  She wipes sweat from her forehead onto the sleeve of her coat. “I can’t sedate you, but you’ll have to hold still.” The dog plants his paws as if he’s appearing before a judge in the Westminster Show. With a pair of alligator forceps, La La removes the foxtail. “That’ll be eighty-five dollars,” she says, holding out her hand. The dog places his paw in her palm.

  As she’s about to leave, she notices a white envelope on a coffee table, Donella written on the outside. She picks it up and opens it, revealing a stack of twenties. Payment for a housekeeper? Without thinking, she stuffs the envelope down the front of her jeans and rushes to her car. It will make only a small dent in the payment for O’Bannon, yet she feels relief having taken it.