I went to my flat because I needed to be alone tonight. Too late to call Kerry; it was nearly eleven-thirty. But she’d understand when I explained it all to her. Our marriage worked because we were sensitive to each other’s needs: when one of us had to have space, the space was allowed without fuss or question. There for each other even when we weren’t together, in spirit and by tacit agreement.
I rummaged around in the fridge, found a can of Bud Light. It did nothing for the sour taste; in fact the smell and the first sip built a faint nausea that spread upward into my throat. I poured the beer into the sink, returned to the living room and put all the lights on and some moody jazz on my old turntable. Then, in spite of what I’d been thinking in the car, in spite of myself, I sat at the desk and went through Eberhardt’s papers again item by item.
Waste of time, just jerking myself around. It was all dead matter in every sense of the term. And yet when I was done, an hour or so later, I had the feeling I’d missed something, that something important had been staring me in the face twice now and I’d overlooked it both times. It was like smoke in my mind; I’d reach for it, almost grasp it, and it would break up, drift away.
Bed. But no sleep. And lying there, I wondered if I had after all been jerking my own chain; if the smoke was imaginary, just one more illusion among the many...
Dark place, narrow and chill, sometimes moving and sometimes stationary, an alley or tunnel or train whispering through a tunnel, and I was running walking stumbling toward a dot or spot of white, yellow, white glow, light glow, growing larger and then smaller and then it winked out and I was in clinging satin blackness and somewhere a voice said, “Join me for a midnight snack?” and all at once I was frightened and I tried to stop turn around run away but the walls bound in closer and the train whispered faster and the voice said, “Corner ahead, just come around the corner,” and I ran walked ran and the corner was there, I felt it with my hands, cold cold cold as death, and dragged myself around it and a door loomed up huge and I caught its handle and yanked the door open and I was in a car, sliding into a car, and Eberhardt was sitting behind the wheel with the Magnum in his mouth like an obscene lollipop and he mumbled something around the muzzle, “Quit looking for Trigger buddy boy Roy Rogers already had him stuffed,” and then he laughed and laughed, a madman’s laugh, and I yelled No! and he said, “Let’s eat” and the gun went off with a deafening roar but the hole and the blood appeared in his chest not his head and his blood spattered on me on me all over me...
I was awake for good or bad at five-thirty, up by six, climbing the walls by seven-fifteen, out of there and down to O’Farrell and into the office before eight. Cinder-eyed and headachey from lack of sleep, the remnants of the nightmare still adhering like dirty strands of spider silk to the corners of my mind. I made coffee, sloshed three cups on top of the two I’d had at the flat. All the caffeine worsened the headache, darkened my mood even more.
Tamara showed up promptly at nine, too cheerful and with a mischievous glint in her eyes. The glint faded some when she got a good look at me. “All beat up again,” she said. “Something happen last night?”
“Nothing for you to worry about.”
“Walks like a man, growls like a bear.” She hung up her coat, and when I glanced at her again she was standing midway between her desk and mine, grinning at me. “Never guess where me and Horace be going on Saturday.”
“Horace and I,” I said automatically. “Are going.”
“Not in my hizzy, man. You never heard of Ebonics?”
“I’m not in the mood for Ebonics. Or guessing games.”
She didn’t argue; she was leading up to something else. “We’re going out to Concord,” she said. “Horace’s brother’s part owner of a kennel out there. I ever tell you that?”
“Not that I remember.”
“Yeah. Zeke and his partner raise purebred Lhasa apsos, mostly sell ’em to dog-show people. You know what I’m saying? So some males they keep for stud, but one had a problem and they had to have him fixed. Mr. Mighty.”
“Stupid name for a dog.”
“Bitches didn’t think so,” she said. “So anyway, on Saturday we be hangin’ with Zeke while Mr. Mighty gets him a brand-new set of balls.”
My reaction to that — a blank stare — disappointed her. So did my verbal response. “Is that some kind of joke?”
“No joke,” she said. “Polypropylene.”
“What?”
“That’s what they’re made of. Polypropylene.”
“Tamara, what the hell’re you talking about?”
“Balls,” she said. “See, it’s this new process vets have for neutered male dogs, give ’em imitation balls that look and feel like the real thing. Supposed to build up their confidence. The dogs and their owners, not the vets.”
“Come on,” I said.
“No lie. It’s called CTI.”
“Which stands for what?”
“Canine Testicular Implants. Neuticles.”
I didn’t say anything.
“That’s what they’re called. Also the name of the company that makes ’em.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I knew you wouldn’t believe it. I didn’t believe it either, first time I heard about it.” She fished a sheet of paper out of the huge raggedy purse she carries and plopped it in front of me. “Look at this flyer.”
I looked. Neuticles. CTI–Canine Testicular Implant. Replicates the canine testicle in size, shape, and weight. Lets any-size dog look and feel the same as it did before neutering.
“How do they know, huh?” Tamara said.
“How do they know what?”
“That the new balls feel the same to the dog? Zeke says Neuticles feel the same to a human — you know, when you poke or squeeze one.”
“Tamara.”
“Hey, that’s what Zeke says. Show-dog owners always doing stuff like that. At one show Horace went to with Zeke, the owner of a puli... You know what a puli is? No? Hungarian sheep-herding dog, long ropy black hair. Anyway, one of this puli’s testicles got drawn up inside because the dog was nervous or something and there’s a rule that male show dogs not only can’t be neutered but have to have both their balls, so when the judge could only find one and was gonna disqualify the dog, the owner—”
“Tamara.”
“—the owner reached up and felt around and found the missing ball and yanked it—”
“Tamara!”
“Well, Horace swears it’s true and he don’t lie.”
“Go to work,” I said.
“Polypropylene testicles for dogs. Man. What’ll they think of next, huh? I’d still like to know—”
“For Christ’s sake stop babbling and do your job.”
The words sounded as harsh to me as they must have to Tamara. Both her grin and her good humor died; anger flared in the brown eyes, tightened the edges of her mouth. For a few seconds I thought she would snap back at me in kind. But the anger died, too, and some of the old, hard cynicism reshaped her expression.
“Yassuh, boss. ’Scuse me, boss.”
“Tamara...”
“Serious work bein’ done ‘round here. Ain’t no time for jokin’ and laughin’.” Then she dropped the dialect and said in her normal voice, “Balls.” She stalked to her desk and banged her purse on the floor, her behind down on the chair, and made more noise than was necessary hooking up her PowerBook.
I wanted to apologize to her but I had no words. The only ones in my head were a paraphrase of what she’d said a minute ago: What’ll we find out next? The question and the memory it’d triggered: Eberhardt and me, right here in this room, a year or two before the bust-up. Bobbie Jean had found an article in some magazine, called “You Broke Your What?” and documenting a number of actual cases of human penile fracture. Neither of us had ever heard of this phenomenon, and it had led to some speculation of one kind and another, and I’d made a joke out of the idea of a man having his broken member in a cast, all his friends coming around to sign it. But Eberhardt hadn’t seen the humor. Dead serious issue to him. How would you like it if it happened to you, wise guy? Serious work bein’ done ‘round here. Ain’t no time for jokin’ and laughin’.