Paintings from the Cave (14 page)

“You never asked what I do when I’m not at the shelter,” Greg says.

I feel stupid for not having asked, which, I guess, he wanted me to do even though I think it’s rude to put someone on the spot by asking them too many questions. He takes the pressure off me with his next sentence.

“You have really good manners not to pry, but I’ll tell you anyway: I’m a drummer in a local band. The pay’s not good, but it’s a fun gig and gives me lots of free time in the day so I can work with the dogs.”

“A drummer?”

“I was an investment banker for a bunch of years out of college. I made a fortune, but there was no joy to my life. I had lots of money but lots of problems.”

“I’d love to have those kinds of problems.”

He looks at me and says slowly, “Money isn’t everything.”

“It is if you don’t have any.”

“Ah.”

We sit for a few seconds after that, each of us looking out the side windows.

“So it’s just you and your brother?”

“No one knows that, though.”

“That’s what I thought.” He drums his fingers on the steering wheel like he’s hearing a song in his head and keeping the beat. “Do you really live here?”

“We’re staying with a … friend. For a while.”

“Then what?”

“Then we’ll stay with someone else.”

“Oh.” He’s still tapping his hands on the wheel.

“Rent is tough to swing, you know, just that first, last and deposit thing; we could handle rent, if it wasn’t too much. Erik works hard. It’s just …”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.” He’s still tapping and staring out the window and I get the feeling his mind is far away, but I’m not sure where, or if it was a mistake or a good thing to let him know so much about us. It’s not something I’ve ever done before.

I’m glad to see Erik coming around the corner just then and I mumble goodbye and thanks and then slip out the door and slide into the shadows so that Erik doesn’t see that Greg brought me home. Plus I’m anxious to get away from what I’m sure is pity and what I
hope isn’t the thought of calling someone to “help” us. Erik and I have worked really hard to keep far away from those things.

Erik is soaking wet from walking in the rain, but he doesn’t seem to notice that I’m dry. He nods, I nod back and then we both take deep breaths and head into the building together.

We’re on the fifth-floor landing when we hear thumping on the steps behind us. It’s Greg, closing his cell phone.

“I found you a place,” he says.

Erik looks at me and I know he’s not happy. Before I can say anything, though, Greg starts talking again.

“It’s a buddy’s apartment. He joined the service and shipped out to basic training last week. He couldn’t break the lease so I just called his sister, who’s been keeping an eye on things for him. I asked if you could sublet and she said he’ll be happy not to have to eat the rent as long as you don’t trash the place. I told her you were friends of mine and I’d vouch for you. It’s not much rent, because it’s not much of a place. But it’s clean and dry. It’s just six months, though.”

That’s six months more than we’ve ever had before, I think. And it’ll be ours. Mine and Erik’s. And it’s a start.

Erik’s Rule #8: If it’s even a little better than what came before, it’s a lot better than what came before.

“Grab your stuff; we’re out of here.” That’s what Erik always says to me when we’re about to move, but this
time Greg says it to both of us because we’re just standing there, frozen, on the fifth-floor landing.

“I can swing by his sister’s place and get the key on the way over and you can give me the rent money and I can send my buddy’s sister a check and she’ll pay the super and no one will have to know the details. I’ll see Jamie at the shelter, he can let me know everything’s working out okay.”

I hold my breath, thinking for sure Erik is going to say no, we’re okay, we don’t need help, but when I look over, he’s not looking mad or uncomfortable, but tired and totally out of it.

“Okay,” I say, breaking the silence and making the decision for us. We don’t have to say anything to Trudy about moving out because I’m pretty sure we’d be doing this same grab-and-go routine in a few days anyway—we always get kicked out of the places we stay and she wasn’t the friendliest person we ever knew to begin with.

Erik is still looking like he can’t move and Greg is fiddling with his phone, and for a second I think Erik is just going to keep standing there, but he follows me down the stairs to our car and we wait for Greg to start his car and pull up in front of us.

Erik doesn’t say anything as we drive, following Greg. We make a stop at a small house about ten blocks away and watch Greg jog to the door, get the key from the woman who answers his knock and then wave to us as he gets back in his car.

When we finally pull up in front of a shabby row of stores—a Mexican restaurant, a pawnshop, a convenience store and a secondhand shop—Greg gestures to us to park. Erik circles the block twice before a parking spot on the street by a liquor store opens up.

“C’mon.” I grab our bags and my box of drawings. We walk to the doorway between the Mexican restaurant and the convenience store, where Greg is waiting for us.

“It’s number five.” He holds the key out to Erik. I don’t think Erik is going to take it so I snatch it—I’m as hyper as Erik is out of it. I open my mouth to say thank you, but Greg’s disappeared.
Poof
, like smoke, he’s gone and it’s just Erik and me and the key to our new place.

I shove the door open with my shoulder and, slowly, Erik follows me up a flight of narrow stairs.

We climb to the third floor and turn right at the landing. I squint at the numbers on the two doors in the dim hallway. I jerk my chin at the door on the left and say, “That’s it.”

I turn to Erik, hand him the key and feel the stab of surprise run through him as I place it in his hand.

Because we’ve never had a key to any place we’ve ever stayed. We usually have to wait in the apartment hallway or sit in the car on the street waiting for whoever we’re crashing with to come home if they don’t answer our knock. And Grandpa was always waiting for us to get home.

We’re standing at the door and I’m wondering why he’s not unlocking it already and I look down and see that his hand is shaking. Erik’s hand is shaking as he lifts the key to the lock and he’s moving like he’s underwater or in a dream and I take a deep breath and then I realize that I’m shaking too, and finally he opens the door and we stand there and look.

We can see the entire place from the doorway. It’s a furnished studio, small and grubby and painted hot pink. Every wall. I see a door that leads to what must be a bathroom. There’s a futon and a ratty couch and a dinged-up dresser and some cinder blocks and boards making a little bookcase and a tiny table and two mismatched kitchen chairs. The kitchen is a corner of the room with a small fridge and a two-burner stove and a mini-oven.

A stove and an oven.

We can heat up the burgers Erik brings home for supper. We can have hot food.

We don’t have to sleep on the floor and we don’t have to share a bathroom with other people and we can take our things out of our duffel bags for the first time in more than two years and we aren’t going to come back someday to find our stuff outside the door, which means it’s time for us to move on.

I feel dizzy and lean against the door frame. I notice that Erik has put his hand against the wall to steady himself, too.

We have a place.

After all this time and thinking it would never happen for us,
boom
, we’re shutting the door behind us and flipping the lock.

Neither of us has cried in a really long time and we’ve sure never cried from relief.

But tonight, we come close.

I
’m sitting against the wall at the end of the row of kennels, trying to get the ear right on a golden retriever who’s sleeping, tucked in a little dog ball in the pen to my right, when I hear a gacking sound.

I look up from my sketchbook and see the Border collie two pens over. She’s standing with her legs spread, head down, heaving. A shiver passes through her body and she starts to shake.

She takes a couple of steps forward and flops to the ground, her legs useless and her balance gone. I jump up and rush over, ignoring the rule not to enter any dog’s area without supervision.

By the time I get to her pen, she’s lying on her side, twitching and heaving, spasms racking her entire body,
her face jerking in her own vomit. I fumble with the latch on the gate and see that she’s lying in a puddle of pee. I throw the door open and drop to my knees next to her.

“Shhh, it’s okay, I’m here, you’re safe.” I automatically mumble the words I always say to Erik when he has bad dreams as I reach out to touch her flank, letting her know she isn’t alone.

Erik’s Rule #9: Everything is less scary when you’re not alone.

Her body is jerking and her legs are pedaling as if she’s trying to run away from whatever has taken over her body. Her eyes are open but unfocused, and she snorts, trying to breathe, arching and bucking on the concrete in her own filth.

I feel cold and numb, like I might vomit or wet myself, too. I want to make whatever this was stop because she looks terrified and I’m sick to my stomach, hoping she isn’t in pain.

As I stroke her fur and murmur soft words, she gradually settles down, her legs stop thrashing and her breathing quiets. Her eyes close, and other than the frantic pounding of her heart, which I can feel through the side of her chest, I can tell she’s getting calm.

I keep petting her and talking to her, nonsense about what a good dog she is and how pretty her coat is and what a beautiful line there is to her head and how much I want to draw her when she feels better.

Her heart slows down to a normal pace and she stops panting and flailing. Her eyes flutter and she gives one last shudder and seems to move from whatever was happening to her into a kind of sleep. I ignore the stench of her puke and the fact that I’m kneeling in urine and I never stop petting her and talking softly.

A few minutes later, her eyes flutter open and she jerks, scrambling to sit up. She’s weak, though, or dizzy, and she starts to tip over. I reach out to grab her so she doesn’t fall to the ground, and I pull her into my lap. I wipe away the sticky trickle of spitty throw-up that clings to the side of her muzzle. She looks up at me, surprised, I think, seems to sigh and rests her chin on my arm as I cradle her in my lap. I rock her back and forth gently, somehow feeling the warmth and strength flow back to her.

She pulls away finally, as if she were just waking up, and turns her face to me, that bright Border collie look back in her eyes, and I can feel her tail start to whip back and forth. She tries to scootch around in my lap so she can kiss my face—the rank smell of her pukey breath makes me want to turn away, but I don’t—and I hear the door of the kennel open.

“What are you doing in the pen?”

I look up at Greg entering the room with a mop and a bucket.

“Something bad happened to this one,” I say. “She
threw up and peed and then fell down and started shaking all over.”

“Oh, yeah, poor girl. She’s old and has seizures. The owner didn’t want to deal with the hassle and mess.” Greg kneels next to us, as if he doesn’t notice the smell of puke and piss. And maybe he doesn’t. “She’s a good soul, this one.”

“Why does she have seizures?”

“The vet says it’s just one of those things, he can’t find anything wrong with her. She doesn’t have them all the time.”

“Do they hurt her? Is she scared?”

He smiles as she shimmies around in my lap so she can nuzzle my ears. “You wouldn’t think so by looking at her, would you?”

“What’s going to happen to her?”

“She probably won’t be adopted.” He shakes his head. “Most people don’t want to take on the responsibilities of an older dog who’s hard of hearing, with bad eyesight, and has seizures.”

“So then she’ll just live here forever? In this pen?” Even the Toyota was better than this dog prison, I think. Because at least Erik and I had each other.

“It’s not that bad,” Greg says. “We do the best we can. It’s a no-kill facility so she’ll live out her life and be warm and clean and looked after and she’ll always have enough to eat.”

“Oh …” I look down at her. The seizure must have
made her tired, because she’s starting to doze in my arms. Her weight and heat feel good and my eyes sting to think of her alone in the dark, falling down with no one to hold her and talk to her until she feels more like herself. I blink away the tears that spring to my eyes and bury my face in her neck. She sighs again.

Greg looks at me, looks down at the Border collie sleeping in my lap, over at the door leading to the outside pen and then back at us. “Why don’t you just take her outside for some fresh air? I have to clean up this mess. She’s new, only been here a couple days, you know. I haven’t even entered her paperwork into the system. It’s kind of like no one but you and I know she’s here.”

I look up at him and he winks, leans down to pet the collie goodbye and walks away.