In a trickle as slow as molasses, all the employees had gone home for the day, except one. She could see him through the window, appearing and disappearing while puttering around the store. He bore his heavy weight like a cross that had been nailed to him long ago. She felt infuriated with how satisfied he seemed with his meager sense of power and the blatant underachievement that, tonight at least, he seemed oblivious to.
“Can you just be done already, goddamn, what the fuck is there to do?” She said the words out loud even though, with both distance and glass between them, he would never hear them. The projection of her irritation did not hurry him at all. How could she expect it to? This man was oblivious and she was hidden to the point that he would never know that she was there. Eventually, her irritation was disrupted by the assault of the sound of grating metal. The back door had opened. She watched the man carry four pizza boxes out to the dumpster and throw them in.
Aria waited despite her nerves, like a predator knowing that it cannot act on its prey just yet without losing the chance altogether. She suffered a few more minutes of watching him resume his puttering before all but a row of dim fluorescent lights went out. Still she waited just those few moments longer to ensure that he was gone before rushing to the dumpster to tie the loose end of the shoelace that was affixed to Clifford’s collar to the dumpster wheel.
The weight of the lid was uneven against her palms. When she lifted it, to throw it back, a warm waft of sickly plastic rot came rushing out to greet her face. She turned away too late to avoid it. She found it funny that no matter where a dumpster was, or what went inside it, they all smelled the same. Grabbing two of the pizza boxes that she had just seen the man throw away, she closed the lid again and sat down on the pavement to eat as fast as she could. The white cheese had already hardened and the tomato sauce had turned to a paste. When she bit into it, the crust smelled like flour, having lost its succulence without the heat. But her starvation elevated both its status and flavor. It was the best pizza she had ever eaten.
Aria pulled the cheese off two slices, and placed it in front of Clifford. Her voracious chewing was making her view of him jiggle as she watched him. In the stress of the last few days, Clifford had failed to groom himself. His coat, which was usually shiny, was beginning to look dull.
Clifford sniffed at the cheese apprehensively. He seemed to be put off by it. Maybe it’s the tomato, she thought to herself. For the last two days, Aria had been suppressing the awareness that she did not have the wherewithal to take care of Clifford out here on the streets. She felt selfish for bringing him. And yet, until this moment, she had been able to lie to herself about his wellbeing enough to overlook the fact that he was beginning to decline. He had not eaten anything. She had tried on multiple occasions to find him something. But each time, he had protested. She wondered whether his pickiness genuinely owed itself to his tastes or whether it was a form of emotional protest taken out on the food. She knew the answer.
Aria felt sick to her stomach. Again, she found herself almost amused by one of the painful aspects of her current state. The body can be starving, but when it is too starving and you feed it, it rejects the food. One more of life’s little design flaws.
Nausea had a way of capturing all of her attention. So much so that she did not notice the man that she had been watching in the store just minutes before, rounding the corner and catching sight of her.
“Hey! You there!”
The words cut through her like a skewer. Suddenly, she was in a race. He was hurrying toward her, with the intention of shooing her off. Would he reach her before she could untie Clifford? Her fingers fumbled to loosen the knot.
It was anyone’s game. Like a gift from somewhere beyond her, the idea occurred to unclip the latch to Clifford’s collar.
Aria grabbed him and ran as fast as she could. She knew there would be no way for the man to catch up to her, given his weight. But she felt his words again skewer into her back. “You stay the hell out of here!” And then, more faintly, “If you come back here, next time I’m calling the cops.”
She rounded the corner into the alley of a nearby building. She was out of breath and the shoe that was missing its laces was only halfway holding on to her foot. Her heavy breaths quickly became the doorway for suppressed tears. She was crying. Smothering Clifford’s bulk with her arms, she could feel nothing but his resistance to her. Having ended up in this touch-and-go hostage situation, he looked as aghast as a cat could ever look.
The close call with the Pizza Hut manager was what it took to corrode Aria’s denial of the situation at hand. She could not keep Clifford with her. In that moment, she felt herself splitting in two, torn between her need to keep him with her, and her need to know he was both safe and happy. After she had been taken away from Lucy, he was the only living thing she had felt true belonging with. She held him
