Joe watches Woman lower the black thing. Her expression has changed. She looks at Good Man, then back to him. Her face is sorrow. She does not need words for Joe to understand that something very bad is happening.
“It breaks my heart, too, Miss Blazak. He is already past the limit. It is the policy.”
“Just leave him where he is. In this cage. Simple.”
“Injured dogs are considered bad luck.”
“With all he’s been through!”
The woman kneels near the bars. Joe smells the cinnamon and coffee on her breath and a spilled drop of hot sauce coming from the knee of her pants. He’s used to finding valuable smells, but these are not valuable. He rests his head on his front paws and sighs.
“Excuse me, Doctor.”
Woman walks briskly to the clinic building, turns, brings a hand to her mouth, and looks back at Dr. Rodríguez and Joe. Who understands that Woman doesn’t know what to do. Dan always knows.
Then she’s back.
“May I open the door?” she asks.
“Allow me.”
Joe rises and stretches, then limps out of his cage and into the noose of the doctor’s expertly dangled lead. Joe is long legged, long tailed, and concave like a whippet. He sits before the kneeling Woman and they are almost eye-to-eye, Joe’s brown and Woman’s blue. He reads her face for meanings as best he can. He can’t understand them as he does Dan’s, Teddy’s, or Aaron’s, or other people he has spent more time with. He has never known a Woman well, and never liked the way they take attention away from him. Away from Dan and him, the Team. Same as when he and Aaron were the Team, and when he and Teddy were the Team.
Woman is sad but Joe doesn’t know why. The sadness began when Good Man said thirty days, but Joe doesn’t know what those words mean. Dan is almost never sad. Dan is strong, and fast moving for a human. Sometimes angry, sometimes happy. But not sad. Joe smells her breath and body, under her arms, her legs, her feet and sandals.
She reaches out her stranger’s hand slowly, palm down. Joe decides not to bite it. He has been sore and sad since coming here to the clinic, but his training is to bite only on command. He lets her pet him under his chin. He holds her gaze, and his eyes narrow at the pleasure. Then she strokes his throat, and behind his ears, and gently rubs the raised scar inside his ear flap. On her face Joe sees Woman’s sadness change to something else: happiness. He smells her tear forming before it rolls down her face.
“Señor Rodríguez,” she says. “I came here to do a story on your clinic and adoption center. It will be a good story. And I want to adopt Shot Dog. I will not let him die here. I want to help him heal and get him off these streets forever.”
Good Man looks at Woman, his face filled with happiness. Joe knows that these two people have gone from sadness to happiness very quickly. He taps his tail once, looking at Woman. He thinks he understands what all this happiness means: Dan is coming to get him. They will be the Team again. What else could it be?
“Señorita Blazak, you have just done a wonderful thing for one of God’s own creatures! You will be blessed forever by the Holy Mother.”
“Let’s do the paperwork quickly, before I change my mind. I have to be back in Laguna by late afternoon, and the border will be awful. I’ll make a donation to your clinic, beyond the twenty dollars.”
“I am a very happy médico veterinario and I know Shot Dog will be happy too.”
“I’ll probably change his name.”
“This is your right.”
“I need video of us together.”
In the office, Joe lies under the big wooden desk, his leg hurting but not badly. He’s leashed at Woman’s feet, her bag on the floor beside him. He smells the leather of her sandals, the woman skin of her feet, a medley of flowery smells flowing from inside the bag, and one of the very valuable smells he’s trained to track. He listens to her making pleasant talk with Good Man, and scratching something on paper. From the man’s side of the desk come the same sounds that Dan makes at home when he uses the black slab on his desk. Woman’s hand descends and takes something from her bag on the floor beside him, and Joe smells the money. There isn’t much. Dan would not be happy.
Two men walk in. From under the desk, and judging by their shoes, Joe sees that one is big and one is small. He knows people like these, their jangling metallic sounds, their commanding voices, their smells of leather and gun oil and solvent. They always do what Dan says. Joe does not like police, because they take Dan’s attention away from him, just like women do. They are not part of the Team. So Joe stays where he is, listening, out of sight under the desk where Woman and Good Man sit. He understands none of their fast, unfamiliar language.
“What do you want?” asks Good Man.
“We are looking for a dog that ran away in the North Zone last month. There was a dispute and he was shot.”
“Was it the narcos, or men just shooting dogs for fun?” says Good Man.
“It is under investigation.”
“We have no such dog.”
“We will search the kennels.”
“Of course. Take your time.”
When the police have clanked from the room, Good Man says strong, fast, quiet words to Woman. Dan sometimes gives orders in this tone. It means now. It means important.
Joe hears clunking on the desk, feels a firm tug on his leash, and follows Woman out of the clinic and into the bustling Tijuana streets.
He understands that his world has just changed.
3
Bettina Blazak steers her red Wrangler down Calle Benito Juárez toward the port of entry at San Ysidro. She doesn’t want the policemen from the clinic to see her, but she can’t exactly gun it in the heavy Tijuana traffic. Bettina keeps her eyes on the mirrors and her hands at ten and two. The potholes still hold last night’s rain.
The wait at the border is long and the air is humid and dirty. Vendors weave their way through the waiting cars with churros and foil-wrapped tacos, huge paper flowers, guitars, bright pottery, piñatas, statuary, acrylic blankets with images of pop singers emblazoned on them. Bettina buys a beautiful yellow vase with red roadrunners on it and a large cold bottled water. Gets the dog into the front seat, where he can drink from this morning’s coffee cup.
The dog laps, his tongue rasping on the paper.
“Hey, pooch, what am I going to call you? I wish you could tell me your name. But it’s possible you’ve never had one. The Dog with No Name? Nah. Guten Doggen? Mom called all our dogs that because she was part German. Nah. Can’t believe I came down here for a story and am going home with you. I’m a dog person, don’t get me wrong. When I was a girl, we had Labs and terriers. The Labs were for quail hunting, and the terriers roamed around killing things. We lived in an old house and had a barn and some acres we leased out for grazing.”
Bettina thinks of her mom and dad, still there in Anza Valley — Gene, a water district hydrologist, and Barbara, an English teacher at the high school.
One older brother up in the Bay Area, raising kids; another in Nashville, waiting tables and making music. All living somewhat distant lives but always in touch.
She doesn’t think of her youngest brother right now.
Has to pick her moments for Keith.
“Water?”
She pours the dog a refill, and when he’s done he glances at her, then puts his nose out the window.
“Of course, you’re dying to know something about me,” says Bettina. “But maybe I shouldn’t make ‘dying’ jokes to a dog that’s been shot and almost got euthanized. If someone shot you just for fun, then he’s going to a very hot place in hell. I’m hoping it was an accident. From the narcos going at it again. That big shoot-out last month in Tijuana made the news in California. Were you there?”