“We’re divorced,” Jesse said.
“She’s got every
right.”
“Un-huh,” Marcy said. “But how
does it make you
feel?”
“It makes me want to puke,” Jesse said.
“It makes me want to
kill any man she’s with.”
“But you don’t.”
“Nope.”
“Because it’s against the law?”
“Because it won’t take me where I want to go,” Jesse
said.
“I don’t mean this in any negative
way,” Marcy said. “You are
maybe the simplest person I ever met.”
“I know what I want,” Jesse said.
“And you keep your eye on the prize,”
Marcy said.
“I do,” Jesse said.
4
BobValenti came into Jesse’s office and sat down. He was
overweight with a thick black beard, wearing a blue windbreaker across the back of which was written Paradise Animal Control.
“How you doing, Skipper?” he said.
Valenti was a part-time dog officer and he thought he was a cop.
Jesse found him annoying, but he was a pretty good dog officer. In the fifteen years he’d been a cop, dating back to Los Angeles,
South Central, Jesse had never heard a commander called Skipper.
“We’re pretty informal here,
Bob,” Jesse said. “You can call me
Jesse.”
“Sure, Jess, just being respectful.”
“And I appreciate it, Bob,” Jesse said.
“What’s
up?”
“Picked up a dog this morning,” Valenti said, “a vizsla -
medium-sized Hungarian pointer, reddish gold in color
…”
“I know what a vizsla is,” Jesse said.
“Anyway, neighbors said he’s been hanging around outside a house
in the neighborhood for a couple days.”
Jesse nodded. Jesse noticed that the sun coming in through the window behind him glinted on some gray hairs in Valenti’s beard.
“Not like it used to be,” Valenti said.
“Dogs running loose they
could be lost for days before anybody notices. Now, with the leash laws, people notice any dog that’s loose.”
Jesse said, “Um-hmm.”
“So I go down,” Valenti said,
“and he’s there, hanging around
this house on Pleasant Street that’s been condo-ed. And he’s got
that wild look they get. Restless, big eyes, you can tell they’re
lost.”
