As Soldier began to poke his snout at Miranda's tail, Miranda crouched slightly and glanced around at the seemingly single-minded animal.
"You're so lucky to be able to write for a living," the woman said.
They were now both looking at the dogs.
Palfrey said, "It's not a job. It's my life."
"I feel that way about my ceramics."
Now he understood her rough hands and the powdery streaks on her arms. Clay, obviously.
"You could write a Travels with Charley-type book."
"My favorite book." He took out his wallet and showed her a snapshot of Queenie.
Now Soldier and Miranda were romping in the grass, chasing each other around the banyan trees. Palfrey recognized the barks: not warnings or fear but yelps of pure excitement. He explained that he had taken Soldier for the day as part of the Canine Caregivers Outreach Program. He could see on her face that Dahlia was moved by his saying this. Perhaps it was her plumpness that caused her to exaggerate her facial expressions? She touched his hand, and he could not keep his own hand still, for her fingertips were coarse and heavy. She believed he was strong. Palfrey didn't say he had felt afraid and lonely and put upon, that he needed the dog for reassurance, that the dog's leash was preventing him, Palfrey, from straying.
Dahlia said that she never went anywhere in Honolulu without Miranda. She said, "I'm fearless when I'm with my dog, because my dog is fearless."
In gratitude, Palfrey extended his hand and touched Dahlia's arm, and when he did so, she reached over and snagged his fingers, saying nothing, for the gesture was unambiguous.
"Almost time for Miranda's supper."
"I wish I had something for Soldier."
The dogs were now rolling in the grass, gnawing at each other.
"I've got something for your dog," the woman said. When she smiled Paifrey could see that she took good care of her teeth, so he knew that health maintenance was a priority for her. "Well groomed" was an expression he did not care for, yet it described an essential habit of sanity and cleanliness. Something grubby in a person, a certain smell, ugly
clothes, even something as simple as a salt-crusted bathing suit, indicated to him an unsoundness of mind.
Now he was following Dahlia, and both of them were following their
dogs.
To get to her apartment, they detoured down a side street, past an optical shop, a Korean restaurant, a sushi bar, an adult video store, a pharmacy advertising beta carotene in both English and Japanese, a lingerie shop, and a strip club. Neither Palfrey nor Dahlia remarked on the storefronts, yet their silent acknowledgment of these wayward businesses was like a form of preparation, as if this detour had been signposted, This is the world.
At the apartment, Dahlia said, "These dogs are thirsty!" She put out a bowl for each dog.
Palfrey recognized a dog lover's household — comfortable but nothing fancy, nothing delicate to break, a certain hairy odor in the air. He walked to the window.
"I wonder if I can see my hotel?"
When he told her he was at the Hotel Honolulu, she laughed so hard he decided not to reveal the fact that he was staying for free, writing a travel piece about it. Nestled behind its signature monkey pod tree just two blocks from the beach, one of the last family-owned hotels, he was thinking, as Dahlia stepped behind him, her laughter still present in her body as motion rather than sound. Palfrey could feel the mirth on her flesh when she embraced him from behind and pressed her face against his neck.
Receiving her embrace, Palfrey was keenly aware of the contentment of the dogs, their tongues in their bowls, their jaws masticating their lumps of food, and finally — satiated — the compulsive grooming, licking food flecks from each other's splashed face, snuffling and nipping, playing still.
"Getting personal," Dahlia said.
Did she mean the dogs? He didn't ask. In any case, they closed the door to the bedroom to keep the dogs out. But even here Palfrey recognized a dog lover's bedroom: a dog bed, chewed pillows and chair legs, teeth marks on the rubber toys, dog pictures in frames, a thick aroma of dog sweat and dog hair.
Dahlia took off her clothes, but her size, her very flesh, so much of it, swags and bags, made her seem less naked.
Palfrey was obliquely remarking on this when he said to her, "You never think of dogs as naked. And yet they are."
Dahlia said, "There's a Chinese lovemaking position called Autumn Dogs."
"Next time," Palfrey said, grateful for an exit line.
In the elevator, a woman said to Soldier, "So where are you off to, darling?" and Palfrey began to cry.
I asked Palfrey the same question. He said, "Home," and looked a little tearful. He actually did write a piece in "A Little Latitude," which he sent to me, a box drawn around it. Using Hawaiian superlatives, he praised the rainbows and the sunsets, the convenient location of the Hotel Honolulu, and the great taste of Peewee's chili. Nothing about Dahlia, nothing about the dog.
61 A Chinese Story
Tran, one of the bartenders, was looking past Pinky, through the lounge, at the next building, but he saw hot blue ocean and, without a horizontal seam, hot blue sky. He, too, was thinking of death. But he could hold two whole ideas in his head, and said, "Freshen your drink?"
Pinky's head possessed one crowding idea. In a hissing voice she had told Buddy that she planned to kill him with a razor some night when he was asleep. ("It gave me insomnia," Buddy explained to me.) But after issuing the threat, Pinky spent five days at the hotel, in the Owner's Suite, hiding from him. Glad for the break, Buddy pretended he couldn't find her. She had succeeded in terrifying him — not only the threat, but something in her smile.
"After I kill you they never catch me."
"In your dreams, baby."
This was when she had smiled her wicked, toothy smile.
Speaking like a troubled child to whom everything is logical, she had said, "Because after I kill you, I kill myself."
"Keep an eye on her," Buddy said to me. "She's figured out the perfect crime."
Downstairs, she kept to the bar, always at odd hours. Even when she was doing something as simple as drinking root beer, she stared bug-eyed over the rim of the glass, looking for Buddy; or eating pretzels, she chewed and scanned the doorway; sometimes smiling — though it was never a smile — she was swivelheaded like a feral cat.
Tran had an eye for upset people. He said, "So, you come from the Philippines?"
Skinny and uncertain, she bent over, got smaller on the bar stool, her knobby elbows and knees making her seem suspicious, and even her big teeth were like protruding yellow bones. She had death in her face — murder, suicide, illness, mayhem. She was capable of anything, Tran knew.
"Me, I was on Palawan Island," Tran said.
This fact from the Chinese man made no sense to her. She squinted at her empty glass and went back to her suite. Buddy picked her up. She sobbed, not in sorrow but in confusion, as though her head were full of violent plans. Her fingernails were bitten, her hair clawed into strings. Her small body and loose clothes showed how reckless, how dangerous she might be.
Tran had mentioned the Philippines because Pinky looked so desperate and unhappy. He was sympathetic, moved by misfortune, upset by misery in a way that made him compassionate. He was a good listener, quick with his hands, unflappable — the perfect barman.
Even an expression of slight inconvenience could rouse his pity.
"So did they care that my cable was down for two hours and I missed my soaps?" one bar patron groused.
"So sorry," Tran said.
Another drinker, a local woman who had dropped in, complained that because her daughter's social worker had been late, she had had to spend the night, and "Try sleeping without an air conditioner sometime."