My heart raced, seeing her. “Hey, Cody! Cody girl!” I shouted, my voice cracking in my throat. She turned and saw me. Two things happened to her body at once: first, she began to joyfully rush toward me; second, she began to wag her tail so hard that the sideways action halfway canceled out the forward action, and so she came galumphing toward me with an odd camel-like gait, sweeping the ground behind her with her tail. I ran to her, collapsed to my knees on the packed dirt, threw my arms around her. I’d never squeezed that dog so hard.
She raised her chin, her tongue darting briefly in and out of her mouth with her Little Match Girl kisses, as if sipping some unseen Essence of Rory. I rubbed her ears and her muzzle and her chest and wanted to just pick her up and run away. “Hey, Cody,” I said. “Cody! So sorry about all this, girl. Let’s go.” I stood up. In response to the word and gesture together, she scrambled up to her feet, her attention trained devotedly on my face to see what we were doing next. It’s dazzling, what that devoted stare can do when you have spent a few days thinking you’ll never see it again. I’d have offered her my liver for dessert if she wanted it, I was that relieved that she was near me. She had never looked so happy to see me, but that was probably just my imagination. I’m sure that pox had been spoiling her rotten.
After our initial moment of joyful reunion, she looked around for Sara. She saw the MINI. Heedless of the lane, she galloped toward it, tail wagging wildly, panting expectantly.
“Cody, wait!” I called in a panic. I heard footsteps start running toward the car from behind me.
Eagerly she jumped up, forelegs grappling at the open window, like a little kid grasping for a treat from the ice-cream man. I ran across the street and opened the door. She scrambled in excitedly, looked around as if expecting Sara was maybe hidden in there, clambered into the back and sniffed at her bed, and then curled up and lay down on it, looking very happy. Seeing her in a familiar place, seeing her where she should have been all along, I released a little cry of relief. Then I took a deep breath to keep from tearing up in front of all the manly men.
I turned back toward the clubhouse. Alex was trotting toward me. Behind him was Jay. It was the first time I’d seen him in person since he’d taken her. He looked ridiculous here in his long black coat, surrounded by all the bikers—and yet somehow the ruined-baron dignity was still intact. Fucker. “Well, there you go,” I said, calling out to him across the row of bikes. “Nice try, wanker, we’ll just be going now. Thanks for your hospitality, Alex.” I turned back to the car to get inside, but Alex had reached me. He casually grabbed me around the shoulders and pivoted me away from the vehicle, as if I were a Bunraku puppet and he was the puppeteer.
“That’s not how it works, brother,” he said, cheerfully admonishing. “We haven’t started yet. We’re just balancing the scale here, getting her used to both of you again. You need to start on equal footing so that her choice is not determined by excitement or distraction.”
I shrugged him off me. “Why should we start on equal footing? We’re not on equal footing. We shouldn’t be on any footing. We shouldn’t be here. I should be halfway to L.A. with Cody in my car.”
“It’s actually your wife’s car,” called out Jay. “And, oh yes, your wife’s dog.”
I clenched my fists and jaws and neck and shoulders and it was a miracle I kept myself from sprinting across the road and decking him. “I’ll be dug out of you, ya pox bottle!” I threatened. Alex stuck out a large, cautionary arm across my chest to keep me contained. “Someday,” I informed Jay. “Just you wait, pal. You are going to scream for mercy while I rip out your fingernails. Then I’ll push you off a fucking cliff.”
“Your green card’s still conditional,” Jay said calmly. “Be a good boy.”
I had to turn in circles, fists clenched so tight I almost sprained some hand muscles. My entire upper body shook with the rage. I heard Alex say (but he sounded amused), “Jonathan, buddy, don’t be an asshole, okay?” He gave me a moment to go through my convulsions, then firmly propelled me back across the road, and called Cody out of the car because I refused to. She came trotting over beside him, looking delighted that two of her favorite people—Rory! Jonathan!—were in the same place! And both smelled of bacon! That dog was having a really great day.
Alex ordered her to sit, and obediently she did so, between Jay and me, in a patch of dirt outside the clubhouse, looking back and forth between us, very happy. Being close to Jay without leveling him took all my willpower.
The sun was bright and the day was beautiful, nature so big and magnificent, and all of us so small and dull in comparison that it was hard to believe we piddling mortals were doing anything of consequence. It was just a little disagreement about a dog. No biggie. I’d heard Sara’s version, I’d heard Alex’s, but now I needed to hear it from ground zero: “Why did you do this?” I demanded.
“Do what, get my dog back?” Jay answered. “An opportunity presented itself. I took it.”
“She’s not your dog,” I insisted.
He gave me a mildly contemptuous look. “Of course she is. Sara forfeited her right to ownership.”
“How?”
He gave me a lofty smile. “The funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth—”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, don’t quote Shakespeare to an actor,” I groaned. “That’s tacky. Anyhow Hamlet was—”
“Save it for the after-party, guys,” Alex said. “We’re not here to chat. We’re here for Cody. So. You may both touch her.” We both immediately reached out to put a hand on top of Cody’s head. I got there first, and gave Jay a childish, angry look of triumph. He peaceably moved his hand to her muzzle and began to rub along her nose. Cody, blissed out by two of her people patting her at once, flopped into tarty-dog pose.
So we competed to put a hand on her belly first. Again, I won. Jay, looking unperturbed, began to gently rub her face again. I studied his expression. He really loved this dog. Arsehole.
But he really loved her. Maybe not as much as Sara loved her, but more, in truth, than I did. It wasn’t as if she’d suffer, spending her life with him instead of with Sara. She’d be grand no matter what happened, as much as I didn’t want to admit it and Sara would never believe it. There was no bad outcome for Cody here. Only for me.
“Here’s how it works,” said Alex, like a presenter on a game show. “You will both rise on my order and walk into the clubhouse. Jonathan, you’ll move to the right of the door; Rory, you’ll go to the left. Turn your faces to the wall so the dog cannot read your expressions. I’ll bring her in. Neither of you is to call or make any kind of visual or audio sign at all. At all. If you try to pull a fast one, the other guy wins immediate possession. We see where she decides to go. Might take her a while. She might get distracted. But we just wait. Got it?”
“That’s a thick-stupid way to make a decision,” I protested.
“Nice way to talk to someone who made you such an awesome breakfast,” said Alex with a grin. “Once she’s made her decision, we will all abide by it.”
“What does that mean?” I demanded. “If she happens to wander over to Jay, I just go on to Los Angeles and tell Sara to forget about her?”
“As soon as this is over,” said Alex, ignoring my question, “Cody and her guy will get in his car and drive away. The other guy will remain here with me and my brothers for four hours. Four hours, got it? At that point, he’s free to go, if he doesn’t want to party with us any longer, and I take no responsibility for what happens after that as long as you don’t fight over her on our turf. This has been entertaining, but my brothers and I don’t want a sequel.” He whistled suddenly, high and sharp and piercing. Cody leapt to her feet in alarm, showing the whites of her eyes. What happened next was like something out of a movie.
The forty bikers left off whatever they were doing in the parking lot (or in a few cases, within the building), and all began to walk toward us with a wondrously quiet dangerousness. They moved close enough to describe a h
alf circle that began at one exterior corner of the clubhouse, arced out around us, and then cemented itself at the far corner. They looked like a hirsute version of the Rockettes. Most of them did not acknowledge us directly, although a few nodded and several grinned at Cody. Cody stared at them in fascination, wagging her tail slowly. She moved tentatively around the enclosed space. Then, as if swooning from the attention of so many alpha males, she fell back down into her submissive tarty-dog pose, craning her neck a bit to the side to try to see if they had noticed.
When the men had completely settled into place, creating the impression of an impromptu bare-knuckle boxing ring, Alex gestured to them and spoke to the two of us. “Just so you see, gentlemen, I am not fucking around here,” he said, with a congenial smile. “Got it?”
Jay nodded calmly. I frowned and ducked my head once in acknowledgment.
“So we’re all in agreement this is how it works, gentlemen? Your hands on it, please.”
Jay first, we both shook hands with Alex himself. Then Jay languidly extended his hand to me. I grasped it and shook it, avoiding his gaze and clenching my jaws together with all the pressure I wanted to use to break the bones in his fingers. I nearly cracked my molars from the force of it.
What the hell was going to happen after Jay drove away with Cody, and Sara’s cousin kept me captive for half a day? How was this going to end in any way besides complete disaster?
“Excellent!” said Alex happily. “And if it helps I want you to know that whoever stays here gets the better deal, in my opinion. We have several kegs and other drinkables waiting inside, Rooster is ready to DJ, and the strippers will be here in an hour.”
“I’m sure Rory will enjoy that,” said Jay. He gave me an infuriatingly confiding smile. “I won’t tell Sara about that last part.” I could have vomited with the rage. Maybe I should attack him and just let all forty bikers have a go at me—I would be the avenging Irish angel, liberating them all from their kidneys. Yeah, right.
“So,” Alex said, clapping his hands together. “We might be standing around for a while. Does either of you gentlemen need anything before we start? A drink of water? A piss? A cigarette? Speak now if you want anything.”
Despite the warm day, I was having hangover-induced chills, which would surely get worse inside, out of the sun. “I want to grab my sweatshirt,” I said. Alex nodded and I jogged over to the car, the Arc of Bikers parting for me. Inside the car, I reached in for the sweatshirt. I put it on, and zipped it up as I reemerged. There was a poignant comfort in feeling the fabric against my skin, because Sara had practically been living in this sweatshirt for a day and a half before she got on the plane. In my imagination, her scent, some ineffable Sara-ness, still lingered on it.
I stumbled back across the road—lost my footing, giddy with the sudden relief as I reentered the ring of bikers. I couldn’t take credit for doing it deliberately, but I’d just saved my own arse. Nothing in all Dixie screamed “Sara Renault” the way that sweatshirt did. I wasn’t going to get Cody back. Only Sara, the leader of the pack, could do that. And I was now wearing her.
I crouched down beside Cody, opposite Jay. Cody’s nose immediately started working subtly but madly. She looked around as if trying to trace the path of a passing butterfly.
“What have you got in that sweatshirt?” asked Jay.
“Nothing,” I said. I reached for the zipper. “You want to take a look?”
“I’ll examine it,” said Alex. I shrugged out of it and gave it to him. There was a guitar pick in the right-hand pocket, nothing more, except a hundred thousand scent molecules that only Cody and I knew about.
“It’s clean,” said Alex, and began to hand it back to me.
“Wait a minute,” Jay said sharply, and grabbed it from Alex’s hands with a jerkiness unlike his usual legato movements. He buried his face in it, breathing in deeply. For a long moment, he did not move, even to breathe out.
When he pulled the sweatshirt away from his face, he looked ashen. He gave me a weary, accusatory look. It was the first time he had ever seemed at all vulnerable.
“This smells like Sara,” he said very quietly.
It was an awkward moment. I really wanted to say, That’s right, you wanker! but in fairness, it’s an awful thing to be up close to a bloke when he’s having a moment like that. He probably didn’t even realize that he remembered Sara’s scent—until he did. It was like watching someone’s skin get peeled off.
“And you smell like bacon,” said Alex, trying to make light of it.
“Do you concede?” I asked quickly. “You know if you can smell it, the dog can, too.”
“Her name is Cody,” said Jay, in a low purr of disgusted anger.
“I win,” I said quietly. “What do you say we just call this farce off?”
Jay shook his head with the sad dignity I remembered from the arboretum. “I’m not conceding. We play it through,” he said.
It all happened pretty quickly after that.
We went into the clubhouse, a place I don’t imagine I would’ve ever found myself invited into under less extraordinary circumstances. Inside was a whitewashed cinder-block room with a pool table (“regulation size,” Alex pointed out) down toward one end, a bar with a refrigerator and all the promised booze along one wall, and a bank of chairs, sofas, and even an old church pew along the other for seating. The walls were covered with frame photo collages of motorcycle rallies, or snapshots of the club members and their birds at barbecues or picnics or parties. One photo montage was large enough to see one of the women clearly—a cheerful, pretty blonde, her arm around a bloke with a club patch that said his name was Elephant. She also wore a patch—PROPERTY OF ELEPHANT. Hanging from the rafters was a wide assortment of brassieres. Alex saw me staring at them.
“Donated by some generous ladies.” He grinned.
In the corner hung a large Confederate flag emblazoned with the words I Ain’t Coming Down. There was a stink of old beer and old sweat accented with the stench of old tobacco, but to be fair, the place was actually neat and clean.
The near half of the room was largely open. I stood to the left, and Jay, looking even more depressed than Leonard Cohen, stood to the right. We both turned our faces to the walls.
Cody was mildly interested in all the unfamiliar scents in the room, taking inventory, and meandered both toward and away from each of us to make sure she wasn’t missing any morsels. But most of all, she wanted Sara, and her nose told her exactly where the Sara-est place was. She wandered over to me and sat before me, staring up at me with her big brown eyes, her tail slowly, hopefully, sweeping the floor. I did not dare to move, even to slide my eyes in her direction, lest Jay claim I was breaking the rules. After a moment, wanting my attention, she moved toward me, leaned heavily against my leg and stared up at my face adoringly, her cheek pressing against my knee. It was fucking adorable but I didn’t dare acknowledge her.
“I’m calling it,” said Alex. “She goes with Rory.”
Chapter 23
When Alex spoke, four of the bikers entered, and came across toward us. Seeing that Cody was with me, two of the bikers stood in front of Jay, in case he tried to rush me. But he had no intention of doing that. He was playing it cool for now, refusing to acknowledge any of us.
“You fucking prick!” I felt all the tension return to my muscles. The relief of getting Cody back didn’t relax me—all I wanted was to smash his face. The other two bikers moved in front of me to make sure I didn’t.
Alex stepped up to me immediately and shook his head. “None of that now, Rory,” he said, firm but friendly. “This was a gentlemen’s arrangement and you are to continue to act like gentlemen. That doesn’t only mean that Jonathan’s a gracious loser, it also means that you’re a gracious winner. So why don’t you just take the dog and go.”
I pressed up to tiptoes and craned my neck to look over his shoulder so I could see Jay, and opened my mouth to tell him—
“Rory,” Alex sai
d curtly. “I don’t care if you hate the man. Out of respect to me and my brothers, you need to leave now, without making a scene.”
I took a deep breath, feeling my heart pounding against my sternum, feeling the pulse in my neck, even inside my ears. “All right,” I said. “Fair enough, I understand”—although I didn’t, really, only that it was a code of conduct that he genuinely believed in. It seemed a lot of bollocks to me because that bastard had it coming to him. “Thanks, Alex.” I took another breath to calm myself. “I mean it, mate. Thanks.”
I threw one arm around him; he pounded me once on the back, said, “Brother,” and stepped back. Then he literally showed me the door.
My hands were shaking as I put the car into drive and pulled away.
Cody was delighted to be back on her bed, surrounded by the smells of familiar things. She sat up, her head brushing the ceiling of the tiny car, and I swear she smiled at me through the rearview mirror. Her head cocked slightly to the side as well, as if to say, But what have you done with Sara?
Sara had carefully packed and arranged the backseat—pre–dog nap—so that a water dish designed for travel was wedged in tight between two bags, with a water bottle beside it; I’d filled the dish that morning. She had also planted—in the passenger-side well, within easy reach of the driver’s seat—a bag of bully sticks (otherwise known as pizzle sticks, which gives you some idea which part of a bull it’s made from). I pulled one out and tossed it back over my shoulder onto her bed, but she was too excited and interested in our new adventure to be bothered to eat it.
After about half a mile, signs of civilization encroached upon the green around me: houses, shacks, a gas station. I could not stop shaking. At an intersection with a McDonald’s, I pulled into the car park and cut the motor. I unclenched my hands from the steering wheel and sobbed.
Cody looked over at me and stuck her muzzle against my neck.
“All right, it’s all right, girl,” I said, getting my breath. “I’m grand. You’re grand. Everything’s going to be grand.” I turned in the seat and put my arms around her, pulling her as tightly as I could against me. She tucked her head down and pressed into me.
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