LITMIR.BIZ

       4.

       Chance Pays the Karmic Bill; or, Give Chance Some Peace!

      I WATCHED THE COP THROUGH THE RAGGED EDGE OF THE glassless window. Guilty or innocent, I couldn’t talk to a cop. Even when I knew that up close he’d smell like cinnamon, when his hair was a halo in the sun with pale streaks gleaming and golden as a wise man’s aura. Rex Galore wouldn’t talk to cops.

      Herman, ex-boyfriend-turned-landlord, he’d say House Rule: No cops. Herman had long since lost his license for too many DUIs, and was busted for possession once. Low profile was Herman’s goal. In Herman’s house, I followed his rules.

      The cop spun the urine-collection funnel on two fingers. He whistled the first bars of “Happy Trails.” Another spin and the funnel whirled off the ends of his fingers, whizzed past his face and over his shoulder. “Whoa!” he said. The funnel landed like a Frisbee in the dust. Good thing it wasn’t his gun—Happy Trails indeed. The dry ground of the empty lot made dust storms on the heel of each step as he walked, picked up the funnel, and kept going. His pants were too long. The cuffs dragged at the back of his shoes. He was probably single.

      I needed that funnel.

      I followed the cop for a block, creeping close along the wall. He swung the funnel loosely, like a briefcase. I willed him to toss it into a Dumpster or leave it alongside a recycling bin, but he didn’t stop until he reached his cop car.

      He opened the door and put the funnel in the backseat. He dropped into the front seat, heavy and hot. When he pulled away from the curb, I gave up—what else?—and walked my own direction toward Baloneytown, to my room in Herman’s house. That urine funnel lasted in my hands for less than half a day.

      REX GALORE’S USED AMBULANCE WAITED IN FRONT OF Herman’s house like a faithful dog for Rex to come home. The ambulance waited the way I waited—stalled out and nearly abandoned some would say, though I tried to see it otherwise: the ambulance and I, we waited with patience.

      It was an old style retro Travellall ambulance, bought cheap at the county auction. Long and low, it was the same design as a hearse only two-tone, red and white instead of black, a hearse of another color. The side windows were sandblasted with a pebbled fog in white stripes. Crosses marked the windows closer to the front. Gray plastic shades, meant to shelter a patient, were pulled now to hide piles of costumes, props, and gag tricks. That ambulance was our own little chapiteau, Rex’s and mine, our collapsible, expandable mobile circus. I patted a swiveling chrome mirror, then made my way up the side yard.

      Baloneyville Co op it said, on a wooden sign over Herman’s front door. My room was the mudroom, off the kitchen in back. I opened the back door, heard a screech. The first thing I saw was the muscled, nearly naked body of Herman’s new girlfriend—Natalia, Nadia, or Italia, whatever her name was. She was doubled over and laughing, knees pressed together, ready to piss her miniskirt.

      Nadia-Italia, obviously wasted, snorted and stamped a booted foot. Her thighs were thick, her laugh loud. Below the thin string of knotted halter top, her bare back was the blue cascade of a tattoo, the peacock swirl of a geisha in a kimono at a waterfall. Muscles flexed under the tattoo, under her skin, over her ribs, like shifting glaciers. The weight of her foot shook the floor, the house, my nerves.

      My little black dog, Chance, ran full speed in circles around Nadia-Italia. It was a scene torn from a circus poster: The Strong Lady and the Dancing Cub! Chance scooted under the kitchen table and back out, hind legs tucked in tight for speed. Gadzooks! She slid through a pile of newspapers, knocked over her water dish, and kept running.

      I said, “What’s up?” I put the plastic jug and what was left of my Green Drink on the counter. “What’s wrong with Chance?”

      Nadia-Italia straightened, eyes wet with tears, she laughed that hard. She snorted again, then tossed her head like a horse. “Look who’s home. Little Miss Clown Girl, everybody’s favorite tramp.” Her hair stood up in three tufts of bleached pigtails, each pigtail tied with yellow yarn. “Our own Shirley Temple for the next Great Depression.” She kicked a juggling ball into the wall and the ball ricocheted. Chance ran at the ball, fell, slid, bounced off the wall like a juggling ball herself.

      Herman sauntered in from the living room. “Your dog’s OK, just wasted. It’s my stash that’s down. I ought to charge you for the loss.”

      I said, “You fed my dog pot? You’ll make her brain damaged!”

      “We didn’t brain damage your dog,” Italia said. She rolled her eyes and caught her breath, one hand still tugging on the pigtail. “You’re catastrophizing, chick.”

      Herman tapped the ash off a smoke into a dirty coffee cup on the kitchen counter. His skin was the amber glow of whiskey, eyes tobacco brown. Everything about him was calm. Usually, I liked his calmness. His calmness was the reason we still lived together, technically speaking.

      I lunged as Chance scrambled past. I said, “Settle.” Then, “Ettle-say.” She was half-fluent in pig latin, but apparently not that half. With a second swing, I caught her. In a crouch, I held Chance by the loose skin on the back of her neck, and she went limp as roadkill. She panted like mad, her mouth split in a wide dog grin, a Hieronymus Bosch creature. “She’s fried—Herman, you let her feed my dog pot? I’m gone for one night, and my dog’s a lab experiment?”

      Herman rolled a honeydew melon along the counter. He found a carving knife. “It was an accident, OK? The dog was hungry, found a bag I’d been counting out. Only a gram, two at most.” He rested his smoke on his lower lip, pushed aside old papers and empty cups on the cluttered counter, and, with a squinted eye, used both hands to push the knife through the melon. “If you’d been around to feed her, she wouldn’t have eaten the stuff,” he said.

      The melon fell in two pale green halves.

      I cradled my dog.

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