Annoyed, she embraces him loosely and returns to her car.
* * *
When his daughter is gone, Zev sits on the couch and lifts his right foot onto his left knee to get a better look at the monitor that transmits GPS data so the authorities can tell if he’s left the house. A fiberoptic beam runs through the length of the strap that secures it to his ankle. Cutting the strap would sever the beam, setting off an alarm at the monitoring company. The device makes his skin itch. He pushes his fingers beneath the too-tight band, trying to scratch. The officer at the jail, sadistic son of a bitch, laughed as he fastened it.
As he lowers his foot to the floor, Zev says to Mo, “We got ourselves into a mess this time.” The cat is asleep on the back of the couch. She blinks, then throws a paw over her face. “Believe me, I’d rather ignore the whole disaster, too.”
Mo whistles in her sleep, the only sound in the too-quiet house. Grabbing the remote control, Zev flips to a Sopranos rerun, one of the early episodes, where Tony’s on his way up.
* * *
In the car, La La’s cell phone plays “Honky Cat,” the ringtone for Dr. Bergman. She lets it go to voice mail. As their family vet, Dr. Bergman taught La La how to care for Tiny and Mo. He was the first to recognize her empathic connection to animals, even before she understood it herself. Without his encouragement, she might not have gone to veterinary school. Now and then he checks to see how she’s doing and to ask about interesting cases she’s following. She doesn’t know how to tell him about Zev.
Ash trees with grim, leafless crowns, and tent-like blue spruce line roads streaked with tar, temporary fixes for cracks that constantly widen. In the west, the Rocky Mountains jab the sky. East the land is flat for hundreds of miles, to the Colorado border and beyond to Kansas. Longview is a town in transition. Cows feed in the shadows of packed residential developments. It takes La La ten minutes to reach the one-bedroom bungalow she shares with Clem.
When she opens the door, Blue, a cattle dog mix with one cerulean eye and one brown, clambers up her side. Trampled by a horse, he lost a hind leg and the ability to herd sheep, and the farmer who raised him abandoned him. As if he were a broken tiller or a worn-out plow, La La thought when she learned what happened. Blue steals—socks, belts, keys, Clem’s wallet, untended food—burying the items under piles of snow in the yard or beneath sofa cushions. Her other dog, Black, is so excited to see her, he spins. Feeling dizzy, La La reaches a hand to the wall to steady herself. Black is part Labrador retriever with a short snout that turns up like a pig’s.
Three and a half years earlier, right after La La and Clem moved into the house with a yard, they visited the shelter. In the crowded facility, barks ricocheted off gray cinder-block walls. La La stiffened. Growls rumbled in her throat. Longing for families who deserted them, the dogs whined, and La La’s eyes burned. She imagined locking their former owners in the kennels to show them what it was like.
Black and Blue were caged together, their water dish upended, soaking a frayed orange blanket. Blue gnawed Black’s neck, the two as comfortable as littermates. La La wouldn’t be the one to separate them. Paperwork showed how long they’d been waiting for homes: Blue seven months and Black, a stray whose muzzle had whitened with age, an astonishing three years. La La wasn’t blind. With his square head, patches of fur lost to mange, and pig-like snout, Black was ugly. He also seemed familiar, an older version of the dog that had called her back from the lake. Yet dogs his size generally didn’t live that long. If she felt drawn to him, it was probably only because she viewed herself as a kind of stray.
“He’d frighten children. Don’t you think?” Clem said.
“Then I guess it’s a good thing we don’t have any.” From the start, La La had told Clem she didn’t want kids. Elissa had demonstrated that parenting could be a form of cruelty. Zev had done the best he could but still put her in harm’s way. When La La imagined her future with Clem, which she often did, it was in a house overrun with animals. As she kneeled and reached through the bars, something in Black stirred, and he inched toward her, reinforcing a decision La La had already made.
“If we don’t take him, who will?” La La said, looking up at Clem. “They’re good dogs.” He knew about her connection to animals.
Clem reached into a basket of treats kept next to the kennel and fed one to each of the dogs. “She rescued me, too,” he said to them.
In the shelter’s store, they spent more than they could afford on food, leashes, and toys. The shelter manager was so delighted that Black had found a home, he offered to forgo the dog’s adoption fee. La La waved aside the suggestion, never wanting Black to feel any less valuable than Blue, or that he’d been obtained at a discount.
As she contemplates Zev’s predicament, La La sits on her living room floor and buries her face in Black’s neck, savoring the smells of dust and fur and the oils that waterproof his coat. Blue is on to his next adventure, restless energy driving him from one end of the house to the other. She loves them both, but Black is the one she turns to for comfort. With his heart beating alongside hers, she briefly forgets the upheaval of the last twenty-four hours. When she kisses his ear, he gives his head a vigorous shake.
On her way into the kitchen to prepare dinner, she passes a photograph of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, hanging above the dogs’ toy basket. When Elissa used to describe traveling through the Southwest after college, her voice floated up and her eyes lifted toward the ceiling. The only other time her mother seemed that happy was talking about her work as a behaviorist with shelter animals. Instructing La La to get ready for school or to take a bath, her speech was clipped and low.
La La tosses each dog a toy and pours herself a glass of red wine. She sautés mushrooms and chops salad.
When Clem gets home, dinner is ready. Distracted, La La overcooked the spaghetti and burned the roasted garlic and mushroom sauce. Hearing him take off his boots in the entryway, she rolls her shoulders, trying to release some of the day’s tension.
In the kitchen, he leans over and kisses her. Wraps her feathery brown hair around her ears. La La drops her forehead to his chest and closes her eyes.
“Everything okay?” he says. “You’re home early.”
“Clinic was slow.” She’s not sure why she’s lying. She isn’t the one who got arrested. When Clem plucks a piece of cucumber from the salad, La La slides the bowl beyond his reach.
“Rosalyn Baylor stopped in,” he says. “Brought me a piece of pecan pie. Nice of her, wasn’t it?” He has a habit of turning statements into questions, a quality La La finds endearing because its effect is to include her in even the most mundane matters. “And Judge Macy had an appointment. I’m always afraid he’ll find a reason to sue me.”
I know a good lawyer, La La thinks.
While La La tosses the spaghetti, Clem massages her shoulders. “Let’s go to Florida for Christmas,” he says. “Surprise my parents. What do you think?”
“I’m helping Dr. Roeder with clinical trials.” La La’s face is hot, and not from the steaming pasta. She finished her work with Dr. Roeder. But she can’t leave town as long as Zev is trapped in his house.