The Dog Who Knew Too Much Page 8

  “Avi, you—”

  “I have only taken on an apprentice. You act as if—”

  “That’s what you said last time.”

  “But who?” It was a man’s voice this time. A young-sounding man.

  They were all young. Howard Lish, a massage therapist who worked out of his home on Bank Street, only a block and a half east of the school, I had learned by surfing around in Avi’s computer files, was, at thirty-eight, the oldest on staff. Stewart Fleck, a social worker who apparently had no compunction about signing out to the field and then coming here to study or teach, was thirty-four, just two years older than Lisa. Hey, it’ll be nice to meet a couple of young men for a change, I thought, even if at this point in time they were both murder suspects.

  Like I’m perfect.

  “You mean you’ve ignored my request again, Avram?”

  That was Janet again, Janet Castle, thirty-three, a bodybuilder who earned her living as a personal trainer and, like the others, did t’ai chi on the side.

  “Enough. I want you all to accept her. To help her learn.”

  They all lived in the neighborhood, all close to the school.

  “Where did she come from? Where were you hu-hu-hiding her? Lisa’s only been d-dead two—” A man’s voice.

  “Enough. This pushing, this ambition, this jealousy, where does it get you? Not where you say you want to go. You come here so full of yourselves, all of you, how can I teach you anything? Look at the sorry lot of you.”

  I could picture their heads hanging, like three reprimanded golden retrievers. If they had tails, just the tips would be hopefully beating against their chairs as they waited for some sign of forgiveness.

  “I was hoping,” Avi continued in a softer voice, “that when she comes, you would welcome her, teach her, embrace her.”

  “Embrace her?” Janet said.

  I let go of Dash’s collar, and together we sauntered into the staff meeting.

  “Ah, it’s Rachel and Dash. Come in, come in,” Avi said, beaming at me as the other three all turned in unison and stared daggers in my direction. “I’d like you to meet the others.”

  “Hey,” I said, offering one of my most dazzling smiles. “Great to be here.”

  There was an empty chair next to Avi, so I took it, dropping the full backpack and the Zen book next to it, then slipping Lisa’s jacket off and letting it drape, inside out, over the back of the chair. I crossed my legs, adjusted the sleeves of Lisa’s soft black cashmere and cotton sweater, and began to play with her jasper necklace.

  Avi extended a big red hand. “Rachel Alexander, Howard Lish—”

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Stewart Fleck—”

  “Hey, Stew.”

  “And Janet Castle.”

  “Hey, Janet.”

  I might have gotten a more animated response from Mount Rushmore.

  The phone rang, and Avi excused himself. It was the first time I’d seen him interrupt anything he was doing to take a call, and I could only think he wanted the others to have a chance at me. You could just see they were dying of curiosity. He’d probably sit in his office listening as they circled and closed in for the kill.

  “Now I see what my problem is,” Stewie said, staring after Dashiell as he followed Avi into the office. “I don’t have a dog.”

  Janet smirked and ran her fingers nervously through her short hair.

  “So, Rachel,” Howie said, his big face flushed, his hands trembling, “wh-what did you do before coming here?”

  That’s New York for you. Skip the foreplay and get right down to it. I stared for a moment, making him even more nervous than he managed to be on his own. He was wearing a plaid shirt and jeans that both looked as if they had come from Goodwill, and I’d bet a day’s pay he had at least one hole in his socks.

  “I was a brain surgeon,” I finally said.

  I heard a chair scraping in the office. Avi had probably just fallen off it.

  “Oh, great,” Janet said in her Texas twang, “another one. Oddly enough, we were all brain surgeons before finding t’ai chi.” She began to laugh. “Looks like the old man got a live one this time,” she said, “got to give him credit.” Her hair was boyishly short and blond, nearly white, with a small splash of green at the crown, a case of better living through chemistry.

  “We all have d-day jobs, so to speak,” Howie said, his forehead wrinkled as he waited for me to volunteer something. Good fucking luck on that one. I was only sorry I wasn’t chewing gum. It was definitely the missing touch.

  Fuss, fuss. Lisa had been heavily subsidized by daddy, five or ten thousand dollars at a time, for birthdays, Hannukah, Simchas Torah, whatever, in order to have the privilege of being Avi’s apprentice. So what was this all about? Being teacher’s pet?

  “You live in the neighborhood?” Stewie asked.

  Where were his manners? Next he’d be asking me what my rent was.

  “I’m staying at my cousin’s place,” I told him, “for now.”

  “Your cousin?” Janet asked.

  “My cousin Lisa.”

  Stir things up, Frank used to say; it makes the shit float to the surface.

  “You’re Lisa’s cou-cousin?”

  “Didn’t Avram tell you?” I asked.

  “I’m a massage therapist,” Howie said, his bulldog jowls trembling as he spoke. “It’s good to know, in case you ever get a crick in your neck or anything. So wha-what were you up to, before?”

  Maybe he was a bulldog. He sure didn’t know when to let go.

  I looked into my lap and smiled. “Look,” I said after a while, “Avi says now is all there is. Now I’m here.”

  No one spoke. Not one of them appeared to have taken a breath since Eve reached for the apple, sending the human race on its downhill slide.

  Frank would be so proud.

  “How long have you known Avi?” Stewie finally asked, as interested as if he were a cocker spaniel and I were holding a liver snap.

  “It’s hard to say.”

  “Just what we need around here,” Janet drawled, “another bitch.”

  Stewie shot her a look.

  Avi returned and with a motion of his arm called us for rounds. Howie, Stewart, and Janet went out into the hall to change shoes. I picked up Lisa’s shoes from right behind my chair and slipped them on. We were off to an auspicious beginning, I thought as I took a place in the back so that I could watch them from behind as well as in the mirror.

  Howard Lish, a sad-looking fat man, was off to the left. He was about five-eight, flabby, and had apparently found the very potbelly my brother-in-law had just lost.

  Stewart Fleck was as small and chary as a rodent out on a raid in some street cat’s territory. He was barely my height, on the gaunt side, and pale, as if he stayed indoors too much. I could see his dark, beady little eyes watching me in the mirror. Fuck him, I thought and watched him right back.

  The only other person I knew with muscles like Janet Castle was my pit bull. She was wearing a shocking pink cutoff singlet that showed off her rocklike abs. You could see her perfect quads under the floral latex tights, and her glutes looked as if they were made of concrete. Holy steroids, Batman, what a construction site she was.

  I looked around at the sorry group. Not one of them was quite what I’d expect to find if I opened the latest edition of Who’s Who in Zen in America. Where did Avi find all these nerds?

  But who was I to talk? I still cared far too much about what my family thought about me, even though most of them were dead. The strongest substance I’d abused lately was sherry out of a jelly jar with a seventy-five-year-old rabbi. And it had been a dog’s age since I’d shared my bed with someone who wasn’t wearing a flea collar.

  14

  Janet Gave Me a Wink

  After rounds Stewie and Howie left immediately, and Avi went into the office and closed the door. Janet gave me a wink, as if we were old buddies and we’d just pulled off another good one. While I was cha
nging my shoes, she came up to me.

  “Listen,” she said, “I’m sorry I came down so hard on you. It’s not your fault, what happened. It’s just the way things are.” She shrugged. “I mean, Avram’s great, I love him to pieces, but he does things his way. Shit, it’s his school, am I right?”

  I nodded.

  “So why don’t we go have lunch, my treat, to, you know, make it up to you for me being such a bitch?”

  “Why not?”

  “Great,” she said, slapping me on the back and nearly knocking me through the wall.

  I put Lisa’s shoes back where they belonged and, with Dash trailing along after me, met up with Janet in the hall changing to her thick-soled, multicolored cross-trainers. Was she figuring we’d run to the restaurant?

  “You like Chinese?” she asked. She’d covered her short hair with a baseball cap, worn backward.

  “Who doesn’t?” Actually, I’d had a yen for it for days now.

  “Great. We’ll go over to Charlie Mom’s. Did you ever try their vegetable dumplings? They’re fabulous.”

  The waiter’s erased blackboard of a face never changed as he regarded Dashiell’s credentials and his yellow Registered Service Dog tag. I was pretty sure he had no idea what they meant, or what the law said, but he let him in anyway. We were led to a table in the back. Dash slid to the floor right behind my chair and fell immediately asleep. As usual, no one else in the restaurant seemed to notice he was there.

  Janet ordered soup and dumplings for both of us. By the time we’d unfolded our napkins, the soup was in front of us.

  “It’s so cheap here. I come every chance I get.”

  “So why the fuss over Avi teaching me t’ai chi, Janet? He must teach lots of people. It’s what he does, isn’t it?”

  “But there’s only one apprentice,” she said, picking up the baseball cap and placing it back on her head.

  The waiter brought the dumplings even though we hadn’t touched the soup yet.

  “What’s the big deal?”

  “It means he thinks you have special ability. And so he gives you lots of time. What else do you think we’re talking about? Sure, the man teaches t’ai chi, we get to work with him in class. It’s not the same. His special student gets to spend time alone with him, I mean, hours at a time. That he doesn’t do with everyone. And that’s what this is all about, time with Avram. The man goes, Get that, will you? when the phone rings, and he changes your life. It’s not what he does. It’s what he is. And just being around him, I don’t know. It does things to you, Rachel. The man’s amazing.”

  “He sure is,” I said, dipping one of the crispy noodles in duck sauce, then just hanging on to it. “Janet—”

  She looked up from her soup.

  “What do you make of the note?”

  “The note?”

  “You know. The one Lisa left?”

  “Oh, that note. Here’s how I see it,” she said, taking a handful of noodles and tossing them into her soup bowl. She leaned forward. “We had talked, me and Lisa, what, a month ago. I mean, I was pissed.”

  “About Lisa being Avi’s apprentice instead of you? But you were both at the school for years, weren’t you? Why did you wait so long to tell her?”

  “It wasn’t that,” she said. “I mean, in the beginning, when she came, well, I knew it wasn’t her fault that Avi spent the time with her, not me. It was his decision, so how could I blame Lisa for taking a wonderful opportunity?”

  “Of course. You couldn’t,” I said.

  But of course, you could.

  “So, what was it?”

  “A few months ago, something changed. Lisa changed.”

  “In what way, Janet?”

  “She got real la-di-da, like she was more important than the rest of us. So finally one day I got her alone, and I went, What got into you, and she goes, What are you talking about, Janet, and excuse me, but can’t you see I’m busy here? and I went, This won’t take long, it’s just when are you going to stop being such a bitch, woman?”

  “What did she say?”

  “Nothing at first, you know. She just looked, well, shocked. I mean, we had been close, me and her,” Janet said, holding up two fingers that appeared to be glued together at the sides. “So then she goes, Janet, I had no idea. There’s a lot of stuff going on in my life right now, a lot to deal with. She looked like she was going to lose it, you know. I actually felt bad for her for a minute. But then she goes, I guess that’s why I’ve been short with you people. You people! Give me a damn break. I mean, isn’t that pathetic, not to know the effect you’re having on the people around you. And to call us you people, as if we had just fallen out of her nose or something.”

  “What else did she say?”

  “Nada. She just shook her head and walked away. And then, well, it happened. I mean”—she made an arc with her chopsticks and whistled—“out the window.”

  “I don’t get it, Janet,” I said, leaning over the table to get closer. “You’re not saying she killed herself because of what you said to her, because you were upset—”

  “Hell, no.”

  She drank some tea and picked up a dumpling with her chopsticks.

  “So what are you saying?”

  “I figured the note just took care of our unfinished business.”

  “Such as?”

  “She’d explained herself, you know, a lot of stress, blah, blah, blah, like that’s an excuse. But she didn’t really apologize, you know what I’m saying? Now she has. That’s all.”

  “And you forgive her? Now.”

  “Absolutely.” She popped the dumpling in her mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “She was perfect, you know,” Janet said. “She’d never leave anything undone. It’s like a dis-ease, being like that.” She picked up her bowl and drank some of her soup.

  “Why did she do it, Janet? She was so young, and she was doing what she wanted to do, wasn’t she? I just don’t get it. Did you ever find out what she was talking about, the stuff she said she was dealing with?”

  “Not really. I figure there’d been big trouble with her boyfriend, because he’d stopped coming by to pick her up. But that had been a while before. Maybe there was some new guy busting her chops. Who knows? Or maybe she just got tired of having to be perfect. That can be a real drag.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Janet shrugged, picked up another dumpling, and dipped it into the little dish of soy sauce before putting it into her mouth. I spooned up some soup.

  “See,” she said, pointing at me with her sticks. “That’s how Lisa ate. She’d never pick up her bowl. Afraid she might drip a little soup on her chin.” She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Like it would be the end of the fucking world if she did.”

  “Janet, what did Avi mean when he told you there was something important you hadn’t done?”

  “We were that loud?” she said. “You heard us fighting before you even walked in?” Janet put both hands over her mouth.

  “I did.”

  “No wonder you were such a bitch!”

  “I couldn’t help hearing you all, Janet,” I said, leaning over the table and punching her playfully on her concrete arm. “The door was open, and I was walking—”

  “Because Lisa never took the elevator,” she said. Then she crossed her eyes and stuck her tongue out to the side.

  “So, the thing Avi said—”

  I picked up a dumpling and dipped it in the soy sauce. The strong flavor made my eyes tear.

  “The bodybuilding.” She lifted her right arm and flexed the most astonishing biceps I had ever seen. “Avi says t’ai chi makes learning everything else easier. And everything else you do, physical stuff, like sports or exercise, makes it more difficult to learn t’ai chi.”

  “Is that true?” I asked, thinking of all the hyperbole I had read in one of Lisa’s books, particularly the sweeping statements about health and longevity.

  The waiter arrived with the check. I reached for
my wallet, but Janet shook her head.

  “Yes,” she said, looking down. “He gets really pissed when I come to class so sore from weight lifting that I can hardly move without groaning. T’ai chi, he goes, is about letting go, relaxing the muscles, strength from softness, all that shit. He goes, Ach, you know how he does that? So what do you do, he goes, you make rocks out of your muscles. You’re not happy until you’re in pain.

  “What happens when the most pliable element meets the hardest? he goes one time. But he doesn’t wait for an answer. He’d be one unhappy dude if you ever answered one of his questions. He has to ask and answer. Am I right?”

  I nodded.

  “The rock yields, he goes. It is worn away by the water. Nothing, absolutely nothing can withstand the force of water.” Janet leaned forward and lowered her voice. “He got so mad at me once, he can be a cranky son of a bitch, you know, so he goes, How long are you going to go on trying to be superwoman? like one word from him and I’m going to burn my cape and throw away my shirt with the red S on it.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Nothing. I didn’t say squat. So he goes, Janet, haven’t you noticed that it gets more and more difficult to find a phone booth nowadays? And when you finally do, someone’s already gone and pissed in it.” Janet covered her mouth when she laughed. “The man’s a fucking riot.”

  “Have you ever thought of giving it up?”

  “Shit, no. You done any? It makes you feel so good.”

  “Pumping iron? Not really.”

  Janet raised one eyebrow. “Never?”

  I pushed up the sleeve of Lisa’s sweater and flexed my biceps. She wasn’t impressed.

  “You’re coming to the gym, woman, for a real workout. I want you to feel what I’m talking about. Hey, it’s on me. No charge. Okay?”

  She took out her appointment book and a pen, and we made a date for my bodybuilding lesson, for Thursday at five. She carefully wrote my name in her book, holding the pen with her left hand. This would have been a huge issue, perhaps even exoneration from my suspicions, had I not already seen Rabbi Zuckerman and heard his opinion that Lisa had written the note herself, the note that Lisa’s parents, Paul, and now Janet thought had been an apology to them.