When Lila had been packing lunch, Cristina came into the kitchen and squeezed her hands together in a guilty, worried way. “I’m sorry you have to take care of Grace for a few days,” she said. “The last thing I wanted was to bother you with her, I swear.”
Her apology was surprising because last night after Adam had left, Cristina and Lila tiptoed around the eggshell of Grace without mentioning her name. It was as if they had an unspoken agreement to part without strife. At breakfast Lila had stretched the truth and said the dog would be no problem.
Now in a cloud of exhaust, Cristina rolled down the van’s window. Mascara on the lashes of only one eye signaled how frazzled she was. “I’ll miss you. Greg’s dumb job. I hate leaving you.”
“You’ll be glad once you get on the road.” Lila’s heart felt heavy, like it had gained a pound. She bent down and waved to Rosie, who was belted in a car seat in the back. “I’ll draw Gerald some more animal friends.”
“He wants a giraffe.” Rosie waved, and crushed goldfish crackers in her hand flew into the front seats.
“Oh, God.” Looking stressed, Cristina brushed them to the floor. As she changed gears, the poodles, incarcerated in matching carriers next to Rosie, whined and pawed at their barred doors, searching for a way out.
“Don’t forget Adam’s on my contact list. You need anything, call him,” Cristina said. “He’s a good person. You’ll like him if you get to know him.”
“Possibly,” Lila said, as neutral as beige, “but he doesn’t like me much.” To win his approval, she’d have to become a wolfhound zealot.
“I’m sure he likes you. He just broke up with a leech. He’s about to be happy for the first time in years, but he doesn’t know it yet. You and Adam could be friends.”
“We’ll see.”
Lila reached out and squeezed Cristina’s hand. As Lila watched the van’s taillights travel down the hill, become red specks, and disappear, tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. Loneliness engulfed her. That was how she’d felt four months before when she had learned the truth about Reed.
He was tall and blond and handsome in a craggy, weathered way. His skin was ruddy; his nose, sharp. When a friend had introduced him to Lila in the grocery store, she liked his faded jeans and blue work shirt—the same clothes she wore to paint—and his tan from working as a contractor on construction sites.
She wished she’d known. She wished she’d seen the train wreck waiting down her track. The pro bono carpentry Reed did for St. Anthony’s Shelter, or the cups of tea he brought her, in bed with the German measles, were only a cover-up for future betrayal.
The tee shirt Lila found wadded up behind the passenger seat of his Ford pickup last September should have tipped her off. As she and Reed were driving to Berkeley for dinner with friends, she held up the shirt by the shoulders. “Whose is this?”
“Must be yours.”
“It’s not mine.”
“Should be. You’d look great in it.” His stroking of her thigh had been like hot buttered rum on a cold winter night.
Lila told herself that the shirt must have been one of the many she bought for a quarter each at the Turnaround Shop to use as turpentine rags for her brushes. But she could not explain away the picture at the PhotoMat.
She was standing in line behind a woman whose Chanel Allure perfume wafted from her body in sultry waves. The skin on the back of her neck was porcelain white, and she swept her chestnut hair back from her face with gold barrettes, curved in the shape of satisfied smiles. When she got to the counter, she pulled a five-by-seven color photo from her purse and said she wanted an eight-by-ten for a silver frame she’d bought.
Curious, Lila looked over her shoulder at the photo. The woman was sitting behind Reed on his new motorcycle. Her arms were wrapped around him, and her siren-red polished nails spread out on his chest like two small fans of exclamation points. The siren of her nails matched her moist lips, which, like his, were parted in a smile that could have run New York City air conditioners for an entire summer.
Lila felt as if someone had jumped on her stomach with both feet. In two seconds, the photograph had broken her life into pieces; she could never crawl around on the floor, find them all, and glue them back together. Later, however, she realized that putting her life back together with Reed wasn’t what she wanted anyway. For years she’d considered breaking up with him, as you’d work up the resolution to quit a bad habit, like smoking.
Her mismatch with Reed had gone on too long; their relationship was worn out, a fizzless Coke. Still, that rational conclusion could not cancel her anger at him and her shock that he’d found another woman without having the decency to break up with Lila first. And Reed had nicked her self-esteem. Perhaps something about her had not been enough. Was she not pretty enough? Pleasing enough? Easy enough to get along with? Had her father been right that she was too stubborn?
Cristina had said that what Reed did was about him, not Lila, and she was better off to have learned he was a weasel before marrying him and staring divorce in the face. But Lila’s confidence was tarnished. After wasting five years with Reed, she was thirty-five without a partner. For all she knew, she’d missed out forever.
Her mother had always told her, “Look for character in a man.” On the subject of boyfriends, her father had kept up his crusade for independence. “Make sure you don’t need a man,” he’d told Lila. “Nobody can make you happy but yourself. It’s up to you to make your life the way you want it.”
To make her life the way she wanted it, Lila went to Cristina and Greg’s bedroom, where she would be sleeping. She took Greg’s navy terrycloth robe from the chrome hook behind the closet door and put it in his dresser drawer—one less reminder that she had no husband. She went into Rosie’s bedroom and glanced one last time at the stained-glass turtle nightlight on her dresser, and she closed the door. Now Lila wouldn’t pass by and see the turtle, or Rosie’s angel collection, or the moon and stars Cristina had painted on the ceiling above Rosie’s bed—and risk a wilting spirit because she had no child of her own.
To dispose of other signs that she missed having a family, Lila went downstairs to the mudroom and took Rosie’s, Greg’s, and Cristina’s coats from the antique brass doorknobs attached to the wall for hooks. Lila folded the jackets and parkas and set them in a cabinet above the washing machine. She put the boots and gardening shoes lined up against the wall into the water-heater closet.
While downstairs, Lila checked that the door to the backyard was bolted and all windows that murderers could reach were locked. She reassured herself that the bolt and locks were sturdy and she had no reason to be afraid. When Grace shuffled to her water bowl upstairs in the kitchen, though, apprehension about the dog—and men with guns—rippled through Lila. To be sure of her safety, she checked the door and windows again.
Grace was lying by the front door in a dismal heap, like a large yam. She pressed her nose against a sidelight and bristled her eyebrows, looking puzzled, perhaps about why Lila was there after everyone else had gone. As Grace stared through the glass, her body tensed; she could have been waiting for a T-bone steak to fall to her paws like Rosie’s Cheerios. Surely Grace was hoping Rosie, Adam, or Cristina would appear on the porch. The dog was waiting for someone she was attached to, to come home.
Grace’s apprehension was sad to see, but for now she’d have to tough it out with her people gone, as Lila was doing. The dog was not the only one in the house who felt alone.
Wanting to stay as far from her as possible, Lila headed toward the kitchen. As she passed Grace, she closed her sad brown eyes and cut off Lila, who got the point: Since she’d been ignoring Grace, the dog was going to ignore her. Their playing field would be even, and the match would be Invisible Dog vs. Invisible Human.
Lila stopped at the kitchen door and looked back to check that Grace hadn’t changed her mind and decided to sneak up behind her, brandishing her fangs. Grace was staring out the window and seemed miles away.
She looked innocent huddled at the door, but the little-lamb act might be a ploy, and at any time Grace could turn savage. Her gimp leg was no guarantee she wouldn’t charge.
Grace turned her head and glanced at Lila. The fur along Grace’s spine was rumpled like spikes along a stegosaurus’s back, and the usual wary glint was in her eyes. Lila was sure they said, as clear as a bugle blast, I’m not the only potential savage in this house. You could turn vicious. I’m keeping tabs on you, you rampant rat fink.
Lila poured granola and milk into a china bowl and set it on the kitchen table. As she eased into a chair, her foot hit something round and squishy—Grace’s tennis ball.
Lila got up and grabbed five paper towels off the roll hanging below the kitchen cabinet, the better to protect her hand. With the towels, she picked up the ball like it harbored typhoid. “Let’s get one thing clear, Grace. No ghastly ball allowed in this house.”
Grace closed her eyes as if Lila did not exist.
With care, she threw the ball off the back porch into the ferns, where she hoped Grace would never find it. Back in the kitchen, as Lila crunched her granola, she had the feeling the dog was watching her, and she got a brief attack of the shivers.
Adam called when Lila was shivering. If he’d been sensitive, he’d have known she was anxious about Grace, and phoned to dispel her fears.
“Just checking on our dog,” he said.
Our dog?! No lukewarm “how are you?” or a verbal nod of recognition that I exist? “Grace is fine,” Lila said.
“Have you fed her yet?”
“Cristina did before she left.”
“Did Grace eat okay?”
“Her bowl’s still full.”
“You’ve got to encourage her to eat. Does she seem upset because Cristina’s gone?”
“Grace is always sad unless you’re here.”
Adam chuckled. “A walk would make her feel better. She shouldn’t be cooped up.”
Before Lila could remind him of her inability to walk the dog with just one hand, Adam ordered, “Get her to eat. That’s the most important thing.” He said he was late for a meeting.
Feeling used, Lila hung up the phone.
With her foot, Lila nudged the kibble bowl across the kitchen floor and stopped at the open doorway to the entry, where Grace was lying on her stomach with her head raised and her front legs stretched out like a sphinx. Extra pounds would make her more appealing to adopters and remove her more quickly from the house.
“Eat your kibble and chicken!” Lila commanded in the tone of lion tamers ordering their charges to leap through burning hoops.
She may as well have mentioned the Dow Jones to a being from Uranus. When Grace yawned and looked out on the front porch, she said clearly that obedience was a foreign concept, and, further, she was not eager for breakfast. She studied oak grains in the threshold.
“Grace,” Lila said.
The dog continued observing the wood.
“Adam wants you to eat. We’re talking about the Great Divide here. You gain some weight or you’ll never get a home.”
Grace seemed to find the warning tedious. She hobbled to the living room, flopped down, and toward the wall pointed her nose, which looked like a licorice gumdrop colored pink on top.
“If you don’t eat, no one will adopt you,” Lila warned again.
Grace stuck to her guns as a Uranian. She glanced at her food as if it were a personal affront.
Had Grace been more receptive, Lila might have encouraged her to eat by pointing out the starving dogs in Bangladesh and the dangers of anorexia. But Lila saved her breath. “All right. Whatever you want. I was trying to help.” She walked through the living room to Google Yuri Makov in the den.
Grace averted her eyes.
“Have it your way,” Lila said. “I’m not too thrilled about you, either.”
10
As Lila typed with only the fingers on her right hand, her wrist stiffened. Her left hand’s fingers itched to jump in and help Google Yuri Makov, but they sat on the desk chair’s armrest weighed down by her cast. As she hunted and pecked, she blamed Yuri for another limitation—until 347 citations for him popped up on Greg’s computer screen and a current of excitement ran through her.
As Lila scrolled down, however, she saw that the citations were for the newspaper articles that had flurried like a blizzard after Yuri had gone postal. They mentioned “rampage” and “carnage” and the same facts she already knew, such as Yuri’s occupation and Russian origin. Occasional articles questioned why he might have gone on a rampage, but the newspaper reporters provided no answers. The dead ends frustrated her as much as her typing limitations, and she exhaled a discouraged breath.
Then a different citation leapt out at her. Yuri had posted a message on NICOclub.com, a site for Nissan car owners. Lila clicked on the link and found his forum name: Goodlife. It suggested that he must have longed for one, but so did everyone else on the planet.
In a small window at the left of the screen was information he had registered for the site. He lived in San Francisco—no surprise. His age was thirty-seven, and his e-mail address was [email protected], probably meaning he was a Russian man born in 1975. Lila ached to e-mail him and demand, Why did you do it?
Under interests, Yuri listed music and art—but didn’t say what kind—and boxing. Boxing? Did he watch or pound fighters in rings? To Lila, the interests conflicted and indicated a dissonance inside him. Out of the soil of his soul, the flowers of music and art had grown along with a testosterone-driven, down-and-dirty, thorny cactus of destruction. How had he reconciled the opposites? Maybe he hadn’t. Maybe that was the problem, and boxing had been one step away from shooting. For half an hour, Lila stared out the window at nothing and wondered.
The English he’d posted was as garbled as the English he’d spoken. “Own 1994 Nissan Maxima. How get catalitic cheap converter? Must okay in California. I highly thank anything of this subject information.”
So for his Nissan Maxima, Yuri wanted to find an inexpensive catalytic converter that measured up to California standards. A reasonable request. It contained no hint of a motive for murder.
Since cars people drove were supposed to reveal their identities and values, Lila looked up images for 1994 Nissan Maxi-mas. But the car seemed plain and ordinary—a fender here, a bumper there. Headlights. Doors. A windshield. The best the car could say was, I’ll get you there.
Only one person on NICOclub.com had replied to Yuri’s message: “Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s such a thing as a cheap Cali-spec converter.” Lila stared at the person’s forum name until her eyes blurred: the Minister of Doom.
An irony like Goodlife vs. Doom had to contain a cosmic message. Was the universe tugging at Lila’s sleeve to underscore opposites, such as art and boxing? Or was it pointing out a linear progression in Yuri’s life—from happy boy to tortured killer? Or was the message about her own life, changed by a bullet from a tolerable and healthy struggle like everybody else’s to a painful string of challenges? Whatever the meaning, one thing was sure, and Cristina and Lila had discussed it many times: The universe could sprinkle tantalizing signs around you. You had to be on the lookout for them and try to understand.
Side by side on the living room sofa across from Lila, Rich and Joe looked like a pair of buzzards until Rich set his elbows on his knees and gave Lila one of his eager Boy Scout looks. Joe leaned against the pillows, jingled the coins in his pockets, and hooded his eyes at her as if he didn’t feel like opening them wide on what he didn’t like. The week before, he’d seemed to want more from Lila than she could give, and flowing out of him had been an undercurrent of disapproval. It kept Lila off balance, though maybe that had been Joe’s aim.
He glanced at Grace lying in the corner on her side so he couldn’t miss her protruding ribs. He gave Lila an accusatory look. “Where’d that pathetic dog come from?”
She couldn’t tell him that Grace was stolen. “She came with my ho
use-sitting job.”
“She needs some decent food,” Joe said, seeming to suggest that Grace’s scrawny body was Lila’s fault.
“I tried to get her to eat this morning. She wasn’t interested.”
“Change her diet.”
“I’m supposed to feed her what my friend left her,” Lila said politely. She sat back farther in her chair, recrossed her legs.
Grace seemed to know she was being discussed, and she wanted to wring more sympathy from Joe. She hobbled to the kitchen and, with a wrenching sigh, plopped down on the oriental rug under the table where he could see her.
Joe shook his head and muttered, “Damned shame.”
Rich flashed Lila a smile like sunshine. “Forget the dog. We want to talk to you about the case.”
“Fine,” Lila lied as Grace slumped into the position of a roosting chicken, rested her chin on her paws, and groaned like she had crippling arthritis Lila also needed to attend to.
Rich said, “We’ve talked to your colleagues. It sounds like something personal was bugging Makov.”
“That could be,” Lila agreed.
“Since he sent you a valentine and you knew him so well, we thought you could tell us . . . was he mad at anybody at work?” Rich asked.
“I told you last time—I didn’t know him well.” Why wouldn’t this simple fact sink into the policemen’s brains?
“Was he mad at anybody?” Joe pushed Lila back to the question.
“Not that I know of.”
“Could he have been mad at you?” Rich asked.
Lila swallowed against the tightness in her throat. “I don’t see how. I was always polite to him.”
An Unexpected Grace Page 6
