The Hand That Feeds You: A Novel Read online

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because I would.”

  I returned my attention to my dog, who was loving her freedom.

  A deer stood on the path several yards ahead of us. It didn’t bolt. Cloud froze, did not give chase. “Good girl,” I said. We stayed silent and didn’t move, until people talking on the path behind us startled the whole lot of us, and the deer took off into the woods.

  “We should get going,” Billie said. “Better to arrive while there’s still light.”

  We drove the rest of the way without music or talk to New Milford. Down the dirt road to For Pitties’ Sake, bouncing in ruts from melting ice, we pulled up to the raised ranch house and parked alongside other cars in front of the garage. Alfredo had heard the car and came to the door to greet us. He handed Cloud a biscuit, then another.

  Alfredo asked if we could stay long enough for him to give Cloud a bath. That way, he explained, he could blow-dry Cloud with the dog’s head between my legs and me holding a towel around her head to shield her from the noise of the dryer. I told him that of course we would stay.

  He led us into a downstairs bathroom that had been converted into a kind of dog spa. I urged Cloud into the tub and stood back while Alfredo shampooed her. Once her fur was wet and clinging to her body, I could see how much weight she had lost. I rubbed her ears through the towel and thought again about Billie’s having said that I would not run away and start over with my dog. That she would, but I would not. But I no longer believed that anyone could start over. You can continue and grow, but you can’t begin anew. People who believe you can don’t understand the continuum of life.

  I didn’t want to see Cloud put into her kennel, as spacious and clean as it was, so we left while Alfredo was brushing her out. I was grateful for this vision of my girl—clean, soft, being cared for by someone who cared. Billie walked ahead of me, out into the muddy yard. The wetlands that bounded the property on one side were the reason they’d got the place at such a good price. That’s what Alfredo had told us. Dogs didn’t care if one side of the seven-acre property was marshy. I was glad we were leaving while it was still light. The view from the heated garage’s window, Cloud’s new view, was wetlands, and she loved the water.

  “I got a text from McKenzie,” Billie told me as we got into the car.

  “Just now?”

  “When he got the photos of Cloud.”

  “What did he say?”

  “That he can finally put your case to bed.”

  Finally? I reached into my tote bag for a Kleenex, just to have something to do to break the thought.

  “I should tell him I can’t make it tonight. Could you get my phone out of my bag?”

  I reflexively reached for her phone when she asked if I would text him since she was driving. Now I was the go-between.

  She dictated, Rain check. Unless you’ll be up late?

  “You hungry?” Billie asked.

  “I could use a drink.”

  “There’s a bar in Danbury, a few miles ahead. We can shoot some pool while we drink.”

  Billie drove to an Irish pub, Molly Darcy’s. A drum set and a couple of coffin-size amplifiers were onstage, but it wasn’t yet seven, too early for live music. There was even a dance floor, empty now, but the scuff marks promised it wouldn’t be empty for long. Maybe a dozen customers sat on garnet-red stools facing a soundless soccer match on a flatscreen on the wall. The pool table was free. I ordered two beers while Billie racked up.

  She chalked the tip of a cue stick, collected the balls from the trough under the table, and filled the rack. She walked to the far side of the table.

  I wondered why Billie was taking the time to shoot pool with me when she could have been meeting up with McKenzie. A choice I would not have made.

  I watched her sink two more balls. “You didn’t tell me you were a hustler.” It was less a game than an exhibition as she leaned over to make her shots in such a way that her black tank top gapped and showed her black lace bra.

  Billie missed the next shot and handed me the cue.

  “I only ever played solids and stripes,” I said, paving the way to a second-rate show of skill. There would be no show of skin with me; I was more than demure in a vintage T-shirt and skinny jeans. I had pulled my hair into a ponytail to reduce interference, but the bangs I had recently cut on a whim fell in my eyes anyway.

  “No excuses.”

  I sank two balls in corner pockets, then scratched.

  Billie dispatched the next four, then reached for the bridge to make a seriously difficult shot—she had to bank off three sides before sinking it. She didn’t waste a motion.

  I finished my beer and watched as she cleared the table. “Next round is on me,” I said, conceding defeat, “unless you want to get going.”

  “I earned another beer. I’ll rack ’em up again.”

  She retrieved the rack and started to fill it. A couple of guys who had been drinking at the bar walked over to the pool table. I didn’t know how long they had been watching.

  These guys were just off a construction job, looked like. They wore flannel shirts tucked into loose jeans, scuffed boots, and looked like men—none of that androgynous look you found in Williamsburg. When they saw Billie looking them over, they raised their beers and suggested a bet. Billie took them up on it. When she could have been with McKenzie.

  “Come meet our new boyfriends.” Billie waved me over.

  I did not appreciate being implicated, but I gave the men a noncommittal “Hey.” I told Billie it had been a long day.

  “Why are you being a wet blanket?” Billie reminded me that we were allowed to celebrate the successful transfer of Cloud to her new home.

  I wasn’t buying it; this had nothing to do with Cloud.

  The tall one asked where she’d learned to shoot pool like that.

  “My grandmother. She met my grandfather that way. Hustled him.”

  The tall one raised his bottle in salute.

  “You want to break?” Billie asked.

  “You think I need the advantage?” The tall one looked over at his pal, and I knew the look that passed between them: Was the short one okay to partner up with me, since the tall one had already chosen Billie?

  “You okay with me taking this one?” Billie asked me. I didn’t know if she meant the game or the guy. She must have seen me try to parse what she’d asked because she turned to rack up the balls.

  Billie took the break, landed a ball, and didn’t miss a single shot after that.

  The game, if you could call it that, went so fast that I was spared the job of making conversation with the short one. The tall one took his loss well.

  The cover band had started up just before Billie’s win. The tall one put his drink down and took Billie’s hand. The song the band played for their dance was Toby Keith’s “How Do You Like Me Now?!” Not the easiest to dance to, but rousing. I made my excuses to the short one, citing a sudden pulled muscle, and he looked relieved. We slid into a booth and watched his pal and Billie on the dance floor instead.

  A couple of couples were attempting a sort of line dance. It was just them and Billie and the tall one on the floor, so we had no trouble holding them in our sights. Everyone knows that a man who can dance walks onto a dance floor unlike a man who cannot. The way the tall one led Billie onto the floor conveyed ownership. That was something to see—Billie allowing herself to be led by a man. She had the confidence to be submissive; it cost her nothing.

  To my surprise, Billie could not keep up with the tall one. He led her around the floor in a two-step, but she stepped wrong and laughed. Drawing him to her, she set the pace for the next part of the dance. Slow and suggestive, even when the band finished, and then started in on Miranda Lambert’s “White Liar.” Nicely timed—I sang along in my head, The truth comes out a little at a time.

  I let the short one buy me another beer.

  Billie and the tall one joined us in the booth when the song ended. T
he tall one kept his arm around her, until Billie shook it off. His arm went back up to her shoulder, and Billie turned on him: “What do you think you’re doing?” I could see that he thought she was kidding. They had just been dry-humping on the dance floor.

  The short one said, “I’m out of here.” He nodded a good-bye to me, then looked expectantly at his friend. It struck me that even he sensed something was off.

  The tall one, however, was another matter. He was into her and said, “Play you for another dance.”

  “We’ve got to leave. Morgan?”

  I grabbed my purse and stood up to go. Billie was already heading to the door. She asked me to drive and tossed me the keys.

  As I was starting the car, the tall one knocked on my window and said to Billie, “Get your ass back in there.”

  “My boyfriend is waiting for me,” Billie called out.

  “Oh, your boyfriend is waiting.” The tall one’s face colored. “What, you come up from the city to fuck with the locals? That your idea of a good time?”

  “Remember that girl at the bar? Blonde. Drinking alone. Ask her what song makes her cry but she’s ashamed to admit it.” Billie looked at me when she said the words. I thought it was a look of scorn, but then I felt certain it was impatience—she had had to hand it to me.

  Billie said to the tall one, “You come tell me her answer and I’ll go back inside with you.” He strode off. “God love him, men are so predictable.”

  She had thought this through. She had picked her moment. She had gotten rid of the men and gotten me into her car in an empty parking lot.

  I grabbed the door handle but Billie stopped me. She was holding a gun. “Just drive.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Head south for now.”

  I considered crashing the car, but feared the gun would go off, so I did what she told me to do. Feelings of stupidity nearly trumped fear. My hands were steady on the wheel; physically, I was surprisingly calm.

  “What’s today, Friday?” Billie asked. “By tomorrow night, guests at the Omni King Edward in Toronto will start complaining to the front desk about the taste of the water.”

  I had no idea what she was talking about. I looked down at the gun. The safety was off.

  “A body in water, as in a water tower, decomposes about twice as fast as a dry one. It takes about forty-eight hours for a body in water to release enough gases to be detected.”

  “Who’s in the water tower?” I knew who was in the water tower. I knew Samantha had paid for the room at the Omni. I changed lanes so that I might sideswipe the barrier on the passenger side. But at sixty miles an hour, could I control the car when it hit?

  “You tell me.”

  I was strategizing desperately. What was in my best interest—playing dumb, or tipping my hand? “How would I know?”

  “Process of elimination.”

  “I can guess who, but I can’t guess why.”

  “That would interest you. What interests me is why you think you’re not in the water tower.”

  I held the car at a steady sixty. Billie’s question was not rhetorical. “I’ve been asking myself the same thing.”

  “Causality is overrated,” Billie said, seeming to reverse her stance. “I mean, shit happens.”

  Coming up was a split on the parkway—south to New York City or west to New Jersey. “Which lane?”

  “Head into the city.”

  I did, and I did something else as well. I leaned on the horn. She wasn’t going to shoot me at this speed. But she did—shoot, that is. She aimed at the roof and fired.

  I screamed.

  “If this doesn’t bring help, honking sure won’t. Oh, come on, let’s talk. I’ve had no one to talk to since Bennett died.”

  “Was he the intended victim that morning?”

  “There is no right or wrong answer to that.”

  But I knew that there was. I knew they had an assignation in my bed that morning.

  Billie opened the glove compartment and removed a pack of gum. “Want a piece? It’s sugarless.”

  I took one hand off the wheel and held it open. Billie used her free hand to remove the wrapper before placing the gum in my palm.

  “Samantha wasn’t a challenge. You told her yourself he was dead. And I came along and said, ‘I’m alive.’ You know who she believed. All I had to do was get her to Toronto.”

  “Samantha killed herself?” So Billie had gone to Toronto, not the Caribbean.

  “Samantha couldn’t swim. Ask me about Susan.”

  “Did Bennett know what you were planning?”

  “Susan became tiresome. So earnest: the homeless, the homeless. I told Bennett to stop seeing her. He wouldn’t, so I took over and it felt right. So you see, it was really Bennett’s fault. Though isn’t blame boring? Where does it get us?”

  The gas gauge was nearing empty. I pointed this out to Billie and she said we were almost there.

  “Interested in Pat?” she asked.

  “That was you in the bushes.”

  “Who doesn’t have a bathroom in their studio? I didn’t care for her or her work, did you?” Billie didn’t wait for an answer. “Though Bennett did. He kept up with it. He thought the nude self-portraits with pig hearts showed a bravery he hadn’t seen before he left her. He wanted me to buy one, said it was a good investment. But when I saw the work in the studio that night, it only confirmed my opinion. It wasn’t brave, I mean it wasn’t a human heart. I think of what I did as collaboration.”

  I didn’t dare take my eyes off the road.

  “Oh, don’t look like that.”

  Billie told me to take the 116th Street exit off the FDR, and soon we found a parking space in front of the shelter annex. Billie got out first, came around to my side, and took me by the arm. I felt the gun in my ribs.

  It was just before 11:00 p.m., and Billie knew that the garage entrance would still be unlocked for about another fifteen minutes before the last of the kennel staff left for the night. Sure enough, Jose was unloading one of the industrial dryers in the garage. He said, “Buenas noches,” and didn’t ask why we were there so late.

  This was probably my last chance to enlist anyone’s help, but Jose had already turned his back on us and resumed his work. There would be no imploring glance on my part; on the other hand, I had not endangered an innocent man.

  We slipped past him into the wing that housed the overflow of small-dog cages. The only light came from the occasional red EXIT signs. No one was swabbing a hallway or hosing down a last kennel. Billie had timed our arrival perfectly. We walked down the hallway past ward after ward.

  “I never did anything to you,” I reminded Billie.

  As we approached Medical, I started to shake. I thought surely she was going to euthanize me. I mean, what more fitting way to mock what mattered so much to me. But we didn’t stop.

  I knew that the moment we opened a ward door, the preternatural silence would explode with barking and wailing. Billie had slipped behind me. She didn’t exactly tiptoe, but moved soundlessly, at the ready. As much of a performance as she’d given at the pool table, these movements were authentic. She was in her element, it seemed to me, and failure was not an option. It occurred to me that this rush was what she lived for. The moment she opened the ward door would be like the moment a skydiver jumps from the open door of a plane.

  You could draw out that moment just before you jumped—or were pushed—but once you were in the air, it was out of your hands.

  Billie opened the door of the ward that once held Cloud and George and motioned me inside with the gun.

  I experienced the moment first as a visual. The single bulb was sparking like a strobe, so that each time Billie was illuminated, she was in a different pose. The dogs in their kennels were likewise lit like wild creatures in a lightning storm. I observed this before the wall of sound hit me. As expected, the noise was a visceral sensation; I felt my body vibrate with it. I could hear the different voices, differe
nt pitches. Some sounded baleful, others sounded frightened, still others frightening.

  The next time Billie was visible, she held out a key ring. “Open these two.” She waited for me to unlock the kennels. When the light next sparked, I looked to see which dogs I was freeing. For a blink, I saw two large, white dogs, ghosts in the dark that followed. Eerily, they made no sound. I recognized them as the Dogos Argentinos in the kennels that formerly housed Cloud and George. The mirrorlike stances of these dogs had spooked me the first time I saw them. I felt no more comfortable with them now that I was releasing them.

  Billie knelt in front of the dogs and began singing a kind of lullaby to them, but in German. The dogs sat at attention, their eyes on Billie. Still singing to the dogs, Billie produced two slipknot leads and told me to loop them around the dogs’ thick necks.

  “Heidi and Gunther won’t do anything without my permission.”

  “So these are your dogs.”

  “I belong to them as much as they belong to me.”

  “Sitz,” Billie commanded.

  The dogs sat.

  “Pass auf.”

  The dogs growled low in their throats.

  She put her gun in her purse.

  The dogs were attack-trained. I knew enough German from school to know that the second command meant “guard.” I hoped they were not waiting for the command Reeh veer, “hunt.” If Bennett’s body were exhumed, I knew now that the bite marks would match the teeth of Billie’s dogs.

  I raced through the methods I had learned to disarm an attacker. I was outnumbered, so I had only two options: try to humanize myself in Billie’s eyes, or run for safety if I could reach a safer place within five seconds. I had already failed at the first option. Before I could try the second, Billie ordered me to unlock a third kennel. I glanced at the kennel card above it and saw in the fractured light the red-inked word CAUTION—SEVERE.

  “Morgan, meet Gotti,” Billie said conversationally. “He is three years old and on hold for biting. Gotti, Morgan is a thirty-year-old female who is here for not seeing what was right in front of her.”

  A low growl came from Gotti. I was about to credit him for picking up on Billie’s vibe, but then the two Dogos moved into view. Billie had not issued a verbal command for them to approach, and she yelled, “Sitz.” One dog sat immediately, one walked behind Billie to assume the position on her other side. Gotti barked at the trio just outside his kennel door.