“You think the dog cares?” My voice went up half a register. “Who the hell else—oh. You brought someone home with you last night from the gambling den. Well, well. Quite an evening for you, huh?” Normally I wouldn’t be so vulgar about someone’s private life, but I felt I owed the old man a lick or two after all the snooping he’d done on my male visitors during the last three years.
He turned a deeper mahogany. “It ain’t what you think, doll. It ain’t like that at all. Fact is, it’s an old buddy of mine. Mitch Kruger. It’s been a real struggle for him, making ends meet since him and me retired, and now he’s been tossed out on his rear end, so he come home crying on my shoulder last night. Course, like I told him, he wouldn’t have to worry about his rent if he didn’t drink it first. But that’s neither here nor there. Point is, he’s never exactly kept his hands to himself, if you know what I mean.”
“I know just what you mean,” I said. “And I promise that if the guy feels inflamed by my charms I will put him off without breaking his arm—in deference to our friendship and his age. Now, put your jacket away and let me see how Her Serene Dogginess is.”
He wasn’t happy about it, but he grudgingly let me into the apartment. Like mine, it had four rooms arranged boxcar style. From the kitchen you went into the dining room and then into a little hall that fed the bedroom, bath, and living room.
Mitch Kruger was snoring loudly on the living room couch, his mouth hanging open under his bulbous nose. One arm was flung over the side so that his fingertips trailed the floor. The top row of his thick gray chest hairs peeped out from the edge of the blanket.
Ignoring him as best I could, I crouched next to the sofa, under the shadow of his malodorous socks, and peered around the back to look at Peppy. She was lying on her side in the middle of a heap of newspapers. She’d spent most of the last few days shredding these, building a nest over the stack of blankets Mr. Contreras had folded for her. When she saw me she turned her head away, but thumped her tail once, feebly, to show there were no hard feelings.
I got back to my feet. “I guess she’s okay. I’m going upstairs to make some coffee. I’ll come back in a little while. Remember, though, you’ve got to leave her alone— no going back there and trying to stroke her or anything.”
“You don’t have to tell me how to manage the dog,” the old man huffed. “I guess I heard the vet as good as you; better, since I took her in for a checkup while you was out doing God knows what.”
I grinned at him. “Right. Got it. I don’t know what she makes of your pal’s buzz saw, but it would put me off my feed.”
“She ain’t eating,” he began, then his face cleared. “Oh, I get you. Yeah, I’ll move him into the bedroom. But I don’t want you in here looking on while I do it.”
I made a face. “Me, neither.” I didn’t think I could stomach the sight of what might lie below the fringe of greasy chest hair.
Back in my own place I suddenly felt too tired to cope with making coffee, let alone assuaging Mr. Contreras’s expectant-father anxiety. I pulled the bloodied sheet from the bed, kicked off my running shoes, and lay down.
It was almost nine when I woke again. Except for the twittering of birds anxious to join Peppy in maternity, the world was quiet beyond my walls, one of those rare wells of urban silence that give the city dweller a sense of peace. I
basked in it until a squeal of brakes and furious honking broke the spell. Angry shouts—another collision on Racine.
I got up and went into the kitchen to make coffee.
When I moved here five years ago this was a quiet, blue-collar neighborhood—which meant I could afford it. Now rehab mania had hit. While housing prices trebled the traffic quadrupled as cute shops sprang up to feed the gentry’s delicate appetites. I only hoped it was a BMW that had been hit, not my own beloved Pontiac.
I skipped my exercise program—I wouldn’t have time to run this morning, anyway. Conscientiously donning a bra, I put my cutoffs and sweatshirt back on and returned to the maternity ward.
Mr. Contreras came to the door faster than I’d expected. His worried face made me wonder if I should go back up for my car keys and license.
“She ain’t done nothing, doll. I just don’t know—I called over to the vet, but the doc don’t come in till ten on Saturdays and they told me it wasn’t an emergency, they couldn’t give me his home number. You think you should call and see if you can make ‘em?”
I grinned to myself. A real concession, if the old man thought there was a situation I could handle better than he. “Let me look at her first.”
When we passed through the dining room to the hall I could hear Kruger’s snores coming through the bedroom door.