Drama City

'I don't think they meant it as, you know, a physical description,' Mark said.

'You tell me,' said Lorenzo. 'I mean, you done had it, right?'

Mark had blushed then. It was common knowledge around the shelter and the Humane office that Mark and Lisa had rocked a bed. But Mark, who had come out of the straight edge thing, felt it was wrong to discuss women in 'that way,' even though, as Lorenzo had pointed out to him, he liked to do them every which way.

'C'mon, Lorenzo.'

'Okay, so they were testin' her. The woman shoulda shook that shit off. You do. Shoot, sometimes I don't even think you hear the insults they be throwin' at you, man.'

'I hear them,' said Mark. 'But it comes with the territory. Lisa just wasn't suited to that kind of fieldwork, is all.'

'You mean she's got a color problem.'

'I don't think so. She was intimidated, is all it was.'

'By bein' around black folks.'

'By the conflicts, more likely.'

'City's black. You afraid of black people, you ain't got no business working out in the streets. Those women? That's what they were tryin' to tell her.'

'Maybe.'

'So about that ass…'

'It is white,' said Mark, one side of his mouth up in a reluctant smirk.

'Looks like it's nice and round too,' said Lorenzo.

Lorenzo spoke briefly with Lisa, then got back in his van and put the air conditioning on high. Since he was in the area, he went through Ivy City, past horribly run-down row houses, some with plywood in their window frames. He drove on to Mount Olivet Road, the thoroughfare that bordered the Gallaudet University campus and led eventually to the Olivet Cemetery and beyond to the National Arboretum. There on the four-lane he parked along the curb and walked to a set of low-rise warehouse structures grouped across the street from a drive-through burger house and a Chinese sub shop, the ubiquitous Kenny's. Lorenzo often wondered why so many Asians used that name. Wasn't like it was the coolest one you could pick.

He went along the sidewalk of the warehouse that fronted the street. To the left side of the structure was a parking lot that had been converted into a holding area housing several high chain-link cages. There were no dogs in the cages today. He had warned the woman who lived in the warehouse about leaving the dogs out in the sun, especially at the height of the August heat.

Lorenzo went to the front door of the warehouse and knocked. He could hear the deep, insistent barks of large dogs coming from behind the door.

He waited, then knocked again. The woman was in there, he knew. She rarely ventured outside.

Lorenzo stood on the stoop for five minutes, sweating, waiting, and rapping his fist on wood. Eventually the woman, a stocky, milky-eyed Korean with wildly unkempt hair, opened the door. She recognized him immediately, as he had visited her the previous week. Through the open door, he smelled ammonia.

'I did!' she said, stamping her foot petulantly, like a child. She wore sneakers without backs.

'I'm just checking up on you to see you did,' said Lorenzo, careful to inject no animosity into his voice, but raising it some so she could hear him. The barking had intensified.

'No dogs outside,' she said. 'All inside. I clean!'

'Where are they now?'

'Right there!' she said, pointing to a hallway. In the center of the hall, set in a cut-out of the drywall, Lorenzo could see a large interior window, glass streaked with saliva and clouded by breath. The barks were coming from behind the glass. The barking, teeth-bared heads of dogs appeared, disappeared, and appeared again.

'Can I come in?' said Lorenzo.

'I did!'

'Need to do my job and confirm that, ma'am.'

The woman shook her head and stepped aside.

'They all in that room?'

'All yes.'

Lorenzo entered the hall. His eyes burned immediately from the ammonia. His lungs burned too. He went to the window and looked through it. Had to be twenty, twenty-five dogs in that room, running around, sniffing at one another, barking at him, wagging their tails at the woman who stood beside him. All were large long-haired shepherd mixes. All had similar brown-black coats. Some appeared to be inbred through generations.

There was some sort of portable kitchen hookup along one wall in there, a trashed, barely cushioned chair and a sofa, looked like it had lost a firefight. Set against another wall was a bed, its sheets rumpled and dirty with grime and hair. This, he guessed, was where the woman slept.

Lorenzo walked down the hall to the open warehouse. Stand-up industrial-sized fans were situated around the warehouse floor, drying the concrete, which had been hosed down. The last time Lorenzo had been here, the floor had been littered with feces. She had taken care of it, as he'd asked her to do.

'I clean shit,' said the woman.