“ Aspen? You mean Colorado? What would you do there?”
“Cook. They have lots of restaurants there. Or be an environmentalist.”
“An environmentalist? I thought you wanted to be a chopper pilot.”
Doug was annoyed that Linda had brought the chopper pilot idea up, because it made him seem flighty. He
“The thing is,” Doug said, “that there are so many possibilities. Like, I could be a chopper pilot in Aspen, or a cook in Aspen, or a cook here, or an environmentalist in, like, Peru, or a heart surgeon. Or anything. It’s like, there are so many possibilities. If you pick one, it means you can never pick one again. You only get one shot and what if you fuck up? What if you pick heart surgeon and after three years you’re like, ‘Man, I hate hearts. I’m so sick of looking at fucking hearts,’ you know?”
“You think you could be a heart surgeon?”
“Shit, I don’t know.” He pulled a knob on the passenger seat and leaned back to see the black cloth of the SUV’s ceiling. “Why? You don’t think I’m smart enough to be a heart surgeon?”
“No, that’s not it,” Linda said so forcefully and sympathetically that Doug really believed her and really believed that she did think he was smart enough to be a heart surgeon, even though he himself knew he wasn’t. He didn’t want to be a heart surgeon anyway. But it was nice to hear her say it and he had the thought that no one else he knew would have said that to him. Mitch would have laughed at him and told him to get a job unloading trucks at the farmers’ market. Kevin would have asked him if he wanted to steal another television.
“No, it’s just that I didn’t think you ever wanted to do anything like that.” She smiled. “Don’t be so sensitive.”
Doug was warmed by the smile, which was something he didn’t see on her face very often, and was going to tell her she had a nice smile but then he thought it might sound like a come-on. By the time he had processed this thought, he realized they had been making eye contact for several seconds. The type of eye contact that happened just before a first kiss. But that wasn’t going to happen, because she was his friend’s wife and he wasn’t the type of guy who-
Linda leaned over and kissed him. He didn’t mind the chicken salad breath.
KEVIN WAS WALKING Butch Rogers at the Wilton Dog Park, a remnant of the days when Wilton had civic pride. Two decades ago, the citizens had pitched in to fund a fenced, four-acre park on the outskirts of town, which over time had become a fenced, dog shit-covered wasteland with a lone tree still standing in it. Whatever type of tree it was, Kevin thought, it must be a type that thrived on dog pee.
Butch Rogers was a spiky-haired terrier of some sort, easily terrified and desperate to please, and Kevin liked taking him to the dog park because the presence of other, bigger dogs made Butch piss himself with fear. Ostensibly, Kevin could claim to the owners that he was “conditioning” Butch, “socializing” him, or some other sort of dog psychology crap that his rich clients loved. But the truth was that Kevin found it entertaining to make the dog freak out with terror. He couldn’t help wanting to punish the dog for being a pussy. If Butch would just stand up for himself once, Kevin had decided, the nightmarish trips to the park would come to an end. He just had to stand his ground one time in the face of an Australian shepherd or a mixed breed as scrawny as he was and it would be over; Kevin would resume walking him in the peaceful neighborhood around his home. But no. Butch saw a small child playing with a Super Ball about fifty yards away and he ran and hid behind Kevin’s legs, trembling.
“Butch, you’re a pussy,” he told the dog as he leaned down to attach the leash, ready to go home. Behind him, he heard the clink of the metal gate, indicating someone new was coming into the dog park and had most likely overheard the comment. He straightened up, looked around, and saw a man he remembered from prison standing right behind him with a Doberman pinscher.
Kevin was never sure what to say to people he recognized from prison. Usually there was a mutual decision to ignore each other and go on your way. What were you going to talk about? The toilet paper shortage of July 2005 or the time one of the inmates had found an actual turd in the meatloaf in the mess hall, resulting in the dismissal of the entire kitchen staff? This time, however, the man was filling Kevin’s whole field of vision, and they were looking right at each other, so it was too late.
“Hey,” said Kevin.
“Hey,” said the guy and unsnapped the Doberman’s leash. The dog bounded over to Butch, who cowered even lower and began to tremble even more violently as the Doberman gave him a few bored sniffs before darting off.
“How’s tricks?” asked the guy, whose name Kevin couldn’t remember. He did remember what the guy had done: some kind of computer fraud. Kevin only knew that because he had heard the guy bitching in the mess hall one day about the provisions of his sentence, which included a year of counseling and a lifetime ban on using computers, which indicated to the guy that the judge had no faith in the counseling. “If I have to pay for a year’s worth of counseling, why not take away the ban when the counseling is over?” he had complained.
“Things are pretty good,” said Kevin. “I walk dogs.” He had meant to convey that he ran his own profitable dog-walking business, but instead he sounded like a retarded kid stating the obvious. It didn’t matter, because the guy clearly had something on his mind.
“Hey, weren’t you in for, like, stealing cars?”
Kevin shook his head. “Nah. I got pot possession. And manufacture.”
“Because I know a guy who’ll pay great money for a Ferrari,” the guy said. “He really wants a Ferrari and he’ll pay big bucks.”
Kevin nodded, aware that this guy wasn’t listening to anything he said, just talking. Perhaps a bit manically. Perhaps he was wired up on a chemical of some kind. Perhaps the Doberman, who was doing laps around the dog park, had gotten some into his system too, though sometimes dogs were just like that. Half curious, Kevin asked about the Ferrari deal.
“This Italian guy I know. He wants to steal a Ferrari for his girlfriend. It’s all he ever talks about. This bitch, she’s going nuts bugging him for a hot Ferrari. She’s like, if you’re such a big mobster how come you can’t get me a Ferrari on the cheap, you know? So then I saw you, and I knew you were in for boosting cars, and I thought I’d let you know about it,” the guy said.
Kevin nodded sagely. Despite having just denied being arrested for stealing cars, this guy seemed set on the idea that Kevin was an experienced car thief, so he might as well go with it. “Do you have this guy’s number?” he asked.
The guy pulled out his cell phone, and Kevin copied the number and all the information. As he was driving Butch back home, he began fantasizing about stealing a Ferrari. Twenty grand cash, the guy had said. That would pay all his bills for months and maybe he and Linda could go on vacation, get things back together, like old times. He’d get a sitter for Ellie for two weeks and they’d go down to the Caribbean. He’d put Mitch in charge of the dog-walking business and, for the first time in his adult life, actually get to relax. Prison, money worries, they’d all be behind him. Burning his balls with bleach, getting kicked off the football team, stealing TVs from Accu-mart-all of it would melt into the past. He could be a good husband and a loving father and everything would be like it was supposed to have been, before all the details of reality started fucking everything up.
HAVING SEX WITH your best friend’s wife on the weed-covered shoulder of a road overlooking a metal-refinishing plant was about as seedy as it got, Doug figured. That was it, rock bottom. You could sell smack cut with battery acid to junior high school kids and still look down your nose at a guy like him. That morning he had woken up thinking of himself as a citizen of the world and perhaps a future chopper pilot but now he was carless, unemployed, and the shittiest human being in town.
One thing was for sure-Kevin couldn’t find out about this. But Kevin had just called and said he was coming over and wanted to talk to Doug and Mitch about something, and he was going to have to sit there and listen to Kevin with the smell of his wife’s perfume still on his shirt. He suddenly pulled off his shirt as if it were covered with biting insects.
“What are you doing, dude?”
He and Mitch were sitting in the den, watching some video compilations of people injuring themselves in humorous ways or, in the case of the current video, pets injuring themselves or their owners. Mitch, who had control of the remote, was watching it as if it were some kind of career-training video, as if his new job walking dogs required that he spend a few hours a week on home study, learning about a German shepherd’s tendency to chew up a wedding dress or a cat’s fondness for slamming its head into a window while a bemused bird watched from the other side.
Sitting in the recliner shirtless, Doug shrugged. “I have to take a shower before Kevin comes over,” he said.
“You have to what?” Mitch was hardly paying attention, his eyes riveted to the screen where a playful Rottweiler pup was pushing a toddler around on a tricycle.
Doug got up to take a shower and Mitch suddenly looked away from the screen. “You’re taking a shower for Kevin? What, are you guys, like, gay now or something?”
“Man, I’m not taking a shower
“Hey man, if you wait a while, maybe Kevin’ll join you.”
Doug got into the shower and cranked up the heat and the pressure, as if he could wash away his sins. The only way to make this right was to do something good for Kevin. Something that involved loss or suffering for himself equal to the loss or suffering he had caused in others. He strained to remember the book on Buddhism he had read in his senior year in high school. He had liked it. The paper he had written on it had been his last A. It had been the last book he had read too.
Maybe he could buy Kevin a present. No. What the fuck was he thinking? Mitch had already made a comment about them being gay because he wanted to wash Linda’s perfume smell off himself, so if he actually bought Kevin a present, it would open the floodgates of ridicule. Not to mention the way Kevin would probably react. Given the fact that Doug had known the guy for four years and had never been moved to buy him anything before except a pack of cigarettes, suddenly showing up at Kevin’s door (which, of course, was also Linda’s door) with a lavish gift might arouse his curiosity. And what would Linda think? Shit, shit, shit. This was all wrong.
He heard Kevin come in downstairs and could hear the muffled sound of Kevin and Mitch talking. He shut off the shower, toweled himself off, and listened to their conversation. They were talking about how he and Mitch would have to go grocery shopping now that Doug could no longer bring food home from the restaurant.
