Part 14 (1/2)

”Like a piano,” she said, almost but not quite smiling, looking for just an instant into my eyes, then away. After a minute she came a few feet into the garage, sort of looking at the machine, not me, and leaned on the workbench. Hesitantly, carefully, she raised one foot onto the grease-can I kept oil and parts in. It struck me that the pose was the same one she'd got into when she was leaning on the barstool, one foot raised on a rung, but it didn't look like a movie-ad pose now, just tired and natural. I said, ”What did you want to talk about?”

I thought how far it was from her house to mine, then remembered she had a car, a red convertible. When I turned I found I could see it, s.h.i.+ny under the streetlight.

”You won't be mad if it seems a little ... funny?

”Me?” I suddenly grinned, forgetting myself. ”I don't think so.”

She thought about it, getting up her nerve, once or twice glancing up at me. At last she said, ”Did you ever hear of something called 'Imperial Dog'?”

I pursed my lips, making myself look thoughtful, then shook my head.

She pushed off from the bench and walked to the narrow back door of the garage. She opened it to look out. She could see the lake from there, I knew, very still in the moonlight, maybe two miles away, though it looked a lot nearer. I thought of going to stand with her, but I didn't. ”There's this ancient Chinese recipe Arnold found, called 'Imperial Dog,' ” she said. She spoke as if to the darkness, the lake. ”According to the book, it's supposed to be the absolutely most elegant dish in the world.” She half turned her head, checking my reaction.

”Oh?” I said.

She turned around more now, and looked not at me but at my boots. ”It has to be completely black-the dog. It has to be killed just a minute before it's cooked. And-”

I said, ”Is that why he was yelling at me?”

”He was yelling at my father.” She avoided my eyes, then relented, and when she saw that I was waiting, hoping she'd see fit to explain, she said, ”I guess he was yelling about a lot of things, not just that my father didn't want him to cook it at the restaurant. We had this big fight last night, my father and I. About school and ... things.”

”Boys?” I asked.

”Boys! What boys do I ever see?”

But I was on to her. ”Oh, I guess there are those that hang around. Too love-sick to go out in the suns.h.i.+ne.”

She studied me, guarded. ”You think you're pretty smart, don't you.”

”Nah. Not at all, really.” Again I picked up the rag to wipe my hands. ”So he was yelling at your father. Defending you?”

Her expression was exactly that of someone suddenly catching on to a new game, figuring out all at once how to play it. ”I guess you'd have to say he was yelling at the whole world. I mean, Death and everything. By pure chance he found this recipe-I mean, I guess it was chance-and it was something Rinehart had eaten over there....”

”So now he wants to cook it. At the restaurant. A dog.”

She nodded.

”Well, well,” I said.

She waited, watching me. I folded the rag and tossed it over on the workbench, then switched off the trouble-light, unplugged it, and began to loop the cord.

At last I said, ”So what is it you want me to do?”

For the first time all night, she looked straight and steady into my eyes, cranking up the nerve to say what she'd come to say. ”Get him the dog, Finnegan.” She paused. ”Please.”

I laughed.

She looked astonished, then furious. I realized only later that probably a lot of what she was feeling that instant was embarra.s.sment, even shame. She knew as well as I did what a thing it was she was asking of me. If I'd been smart I would've been indignant at her thinking I'd do it. But I just laughed. Her eyes widened, then narrowed again, and she started toward me-from the back door she had to get past me to leave. Though I was still laughing, I reached out and grabbed her arm. She tried to shake free, jerking away hard, half turning, about to swing at me, but I held on and suddenly I saw her change her mind. She stopped struggling. Her face was still angry, but the quiet elbow was a dead giveaway. My mother was right. Arnold Deller believed it too, I knew now. That was why in his crazy way he'd played matchmaker, though for his own purposes. It made me laugh harder, remembering his talk about Chinese cooking, how it brought people together.

”I'm sorry,” I said. ”Look, anybody'd laugh. It's like those fairytales, you know? Where the princess gives her lover this quest-'Go kill the dragon!' or, 'Find me the magic golden duck!' ”

Her eyes flashed. ”What do you mean, lover?”

”I just mean it's like that,” I said.

”If you get any ideas-”

”No ideas!” I let go of her arm and raised both hands in surrender. ”So what you want is, I'm to go rip off some kid's black dog.”

”Of course not! Jesus, Finnegan, what's the matter with you? But we do need a black dog from somewhere, somehow.” Her face was tipped up toward mine, the scent of her endangering my heart. She looked troubled, as if she had still worse to say, then said it. ”It has to be completely black. And we need it tonight.”

”Tonight! Hey, listen!”

”I promised Arnold. Look, he can't cook it at home,Finnegan-he hasn't got the right kinds of pots and pans and things, or the right kind of stove, whatever.” There were suddenly tears in her eyes. ”He has to cook it at the restaurant. You understand that.”

”I don't understand why he's got to cook a G.o.dd.a.m.n dog at all.”

”Well, he does,” she said. I don't think she knew until this minute, when she said it, how firmly she believed it.

I backed away a little, not giving up exactly but trying to come at it more from the side. ”Your father says it's okay, if we can get the thing tonight?”

”He didn't say anything. He doesn't think we can do it.”

I thought about that we. I also had questions of a philosophical nature. Arnold Deller had claimed to us, this afternoon, that the artist was the great servant of humanity, even that the artist was some kind of model for humanity, someone whose process could teach people the process of a higher art, the to-coin-a-phrase Art of Living. Now, for his alleged art, his childish faith in life's unstainable goodness, his chopped-off-ear innocence-really for his fanatical artist's ego, his cook's dementia-I was supposed to steal some dog.

”Dogs,” I said, ”are practically human.”

”Not to the Chinese.”

Reasoning with her, I saw, was useless. ”Angelina,” I asked, ”what's all this to you? How come you're helping him?”

”My grandfather made a promise,” she said. ”Arnold can cook anything he wants.”

”That's not the reason.”

”My father has no right,” she said.

”Ah!” I said. ”Ah so!”

”That's j.a.panese,” she snapped, ”not Chinese.”

”Same thing,” I said.

”Finnegan,” she said, ”you are so stupid.”

The scorn was partly faked, that old Calabrian play; but it was sufficiently real that I knew I wasn't being fair to her. It wasn't only to oppose her father's power that Angelina was doing this. Maybe it had to do with Rinehart, how he'd carried her around on his shoulders when she was five and he was nine; had to do with Arnold Deller's immense, exasperating sorrow.

”Angelina,” I said, ”it's wrong. It's unbalanced.”

She considered it, then shook her head. ”No, it's not,” she said. ”Not wrong, anyway.”