LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

pounds. Enough pot, you’ll kill her.”

      That dog was my sidekick, a showstopper in training. My big Chance. I couldn’t have a clown dog that drooled and stumbled, and not on command, canine mind blown, in diapers, handicapped by the herb. Her only trick then would be the famous egg-in-a-frying-pan routine, that omelet dance of a brain on drugs. I reached for the phone, hit three buttons for local information.

      Herman grabbed for the phone, but I swung Chance to one side and jammed the phone against my stomach. He wrapped his arms around me and the dog, came from both directions, pressed the button on the receiver down with one big thumb. “That dog found the pot,” he said. “On her own. I’m not going to lose my income over a dog’s ganja habit.”

      I wheezed under Herman’s hug. My head crackled, vision narrowed. “Poison Control isn’t the cops. It’s for health stuff. They want people to call.”

      “Sure, to turn themselves in.” Herman’s breath was smoky, close to my face. His heavy breathing and sweat were all too familiar, from the old days when we were a couple, as were his hands, sticky now with the summer sweetness of honeydew melon. I dropped to my knees and made a tight ball around the phone. Under one arm I still held the drooling, zoned-out throw rug of Chance.

      “Let go,” I said. “I have a right to call.”

      His ponytail fell forward, over my shoulder. “Give me the phone, Nita.”

      I was under a tent of Herman, breath, body, and smell. Our history. Then he let go. Stepped away. I dialed.

      “Jesus,” he said and unplugged the phone at the wall. He tossed the cord. “No calls to Poison Control. And no cops. Not while you live here.” In my house. That’s what he wanted to say.

      Herman had no idea how close I’d come to the cops. That gilded, golden officer, with his glass of water. “Poison Control doesn’t report to the cops,” I said again.

      Out of breath, Herman reached for his cigarette and took a drag like the smoke would settle his breathing. As he exhaled with a B-flat wheeze, he said, “I’ll tell you what. We’ll fix her up.” He took another drag. “In the bathroom. There’s a brown bottle.” He waved a hand toward the hall. “Hydrogen peroxide. Two table-spoons and your Chance’ll be good as new.”

      Natalia-Italia, behind him, cranked open the top on a can of sardines. She held one fish up by its tiny tail and slid the fish into her mouth. Comfort food.

      Dog drool ran in a thin line over my arm to the floor. “Really?”

      He nodded, and smoked like his lungs were starved, like he’d gone too long without, as though smoke were scarce and necessary. In a cloud of smoke he said, “First she’ll vomit, then she’ll be good as new. Trust me. I know how to detox, right? She just ate the stuff, like minutes ago.”

      “You’ve done this before?”

      He said, “My old dog ate drugs all the time. I fixed her up.”

      I ran my hand over Chance’s dark hair. “Where’s that dog now?”

      Natalia slid another headless, glistening bristling sardine between her lips. She leaned against Herman’s sweaty shoulder. Herman said, “She lived a long life, OK? Now go, before your dog digests the stuff. It won’t work digested—time’s wasting.” He shook Italia off.

      I took Chance down the long, dark hall. Herman kept our house dark. That’s how they catch pot growers, he said, by the high electricity bills. He knew things like that, like how to do drugs and how to clean up, how to pass a urine test and how to walk a straight line. Maybe how to detox a dog.

      I tripped on one of Italia’s barbells and banged an elbow and Chance against the wall. The dog didn’t flinch. Since Italia moved in, the house was crowded with free weights, sweaty spandex, and dirty towels. Instead of our old couch, her weight bench sprawled in front of the TV.

      I sat Chance on the bathroom counter and tipped her head back. Her eyes rolled and showed a sliver of white at the edge like new moons. I poured hydrogen peroxide down her open throat. In seconds she arched her back, opened her mouth, and curled her long tongue. She made a prehurl urp-noise, eyes big now. “Put her in the tub,” Herman yelled from the kitchen. “Once you give her the stuff, put her in the tub.”

      I picked her up like a child and carried her to the tub, her mouth working over a silent stammer. I sat on the side of the tub and ran my hand through her fur. My lovely, silky Chance, sweet dark-eyed stray. “You’re OK, baby,” I said, and hoped it was true. Her legs went stiff as a seizure; her nails trembled against the porcelain. She slid into a skittering dog dance. I steadied her with a hand to her belly.

      When she opened her mouth again and heaved, her stomach grew small and her ribs barreled out, tight under the fur. What came from her mouth wasn’t liquid but white foam thick as shaving cream, dense as Fix-A-Flat, flecked with the earthy green bits of Herman’s harvest.

      Between the gargle of vomit, she chomped her mouth open and closed, open and closed. The whole show was ripe for a ventriloquist act: A clown and a poodle walk into a hash bar…

      Herman came from the dark hall and leaned against the bathroom door. He flipped the overhead lights off, turned a small night-light on. “That’s the way,” he said. “That’ll bring a dog down.” He took a bite from a slice of honeydew in one hand, and held a fresh cigarette in the other. Melon juice dripped off his fingers. The honeydew melon and the cigarette, the clean taste of fruit spoiled by ashes—that was exactly the way Herman had always been, why we once got together and why I broke us up; he was all contradictions.

      Chance filled the tub with pot-spiked meringue, her stoner snowdrifts. I ran a hand over her shivering back. “Hang in there, sweets,” I said, quietly.

      “So, Nita,” Herman said. “Where you been, anyway? Looking a little ravished.” He took a drag on his smoke, his best friend and pacifier.

      I kept my eyes on shivering Chance. “I’m sure you mean ravishing.” It wasn’t Herman’s business where I slept, even when I slept at the hospital.

      “Yeah, that’s right. Clown date?” Herman said.

      Nadia came up behind him in the doorway, a barbell in one hand, a half-eaten banana in the other.

      “Funny, I could ask you the same thing,” I said. I turned on the water to wash away white drifts of vomit. Chance scrambled to the far end of the tub. She slipped. I caught her.

      A gentle world. Nice. A safety net, that’s what my baby dog and I needed.

      Instead, Chance was a Christmas tree flocked in her own fake snow. Behind Herman, Nadia-Italia raised the barbell with one hand and looked over his shoulder. “Ought to save that stuff. Recycle the drugs, right?” she said.

      If I had Italia’s muscles, I’d be a clown extraordinaire. I’d defeat physics by defying gravity, no doubt. Italia only used her muscles to build more muscles, until she was made of knotted lumps of stone.

      My plan was to get out of there.

      The clown money was my ticket out of Herman’s house and down to San Francisco, to Rex. I’d leave Baloneytown in the dust. Maybe I’d go to Clown College too. Then I’d sleep in the master bedroom, not the mudroom, right? Ta da!

      House Rules would be our rules, Rex’s and mine. I’d have my own family again, not a makeshift sideshow.

      When Chance slowed her vomit production to nil, I wrapped her in a towel and carried her against my shoulder like a colicky baby. On the way to my room, I stopped to plug the phone back into the wall.

      “Hey—who’re you calling?” Herman said. “The dog’s good as new.”

      She was droopy and wild-eyed, hardly new. “Rex,” I said. “Or is Clown College one more joint in the long arm of the law?” Like, the long rubber arm. I pushed past Herman and closed the mudroom door. The phone cord fell easily underneath. The room

Скачать книгу