The Darkest Evening Of The Year

Chapter 37

Something unnatural happens to you-judging by the evidence probably something supernatural-and at the same time your dead past suddenly comes alive and catches up with you, with the consequence that you have to make the most wrenching confession you’ve ever made in your life to the one person in the whole world whose opinion of you matters desperately, yet you still have to feed the dogs, walk the dogs, and pick up their last poop of the day.

When Amy had first come into his life and had brought an arkful of canines with her, she had said that dogs centered you, calmed you, taught you how to cope. He had thought she was just a little daffy for golden retrievers. Eventually he had realized that what she had said was nothing less or more than the dead-solid truth.

In his pantry, he had kibble and treats for those evenings when Amy came by with the dogs for dinner and two-hand rummy, or to watch a DVD together.

After feeding Fred, Ethel, and Nickie, they walked them through the twilight to a nearby park.

“If this works out,” he said, “and Vanessa really will give Hope to me, I’ll understand if at some point you decide it’s too much.”

“Too much what?”

“Some people with Down’s syndrome are highly functional, others not so much. There’s a range.”

“Some architects are highly functional, and some are more dense, yet here I am.”

“I’m just saying it’s going to change things, it’s a lot of responsibility.”

“Some architects are highly functional,” she repeated, “and some are more dense, yet here I am.”

“I’m serious, Amy. Besides the girl’s disability, we don’t know what Vanessa might have put her through. There may be psychological problems, too.”

“Put any three human beings together,” she said, “and three of them are going to have psychological problems. So we just cope with one another.”

“Then there’s Vanessa. Maybe she’s had enough of tormenting me, and maybe she just wants to take my money, dump the girl on me, and forget the two of us ever existed. Or maybe it won’t be that easy.”

“I’m not worried about Vanessa. I can bitch-slap with the best of them.”

“If Vanessa decides to be in our lives, one way or another, a Holly Golightly attitude won’t work with her.”

“Holly Golightly like in Breakfast at Tiffany’s?”

He said, “If there’s a Holly Golightly in Bleak House, I’m not aware of it.”

“Listen up, nameless narrator, I don’t have a Holly Golightly attitude. It’s more like Katharine Hepburn in anything with Cary Grant.”

“Nameless narrator?”

“Breakfast at Tiffany’s is told in the first person by a guy who’s in love with her, but we never know his name.”

They let the dogs lead them in silence for a few steps, and then Brian said, “I am in love with you.”

“You said so back at the apartment. I said it, too. We’ve said it before. We don’t have to keep saying it every ten minutes, do we?”

“I don’t mind hearing it.”

“Dogs know when you love them,” she said. “They don’t expect you to say it all the time. People should be more like dogs.”

“No dog has ever asked you to marry him.”

“Sweetie, you’ve been so patient. It’s just that…I have some issues. I’m working on them. I’m not just being rotten to you, though I’m sure sometimes it seems like that.”

“It never seems like you’re being rotten. You’re the best. The way you’ve handled all this with Vanessa, Amy, you’re a wonder. It’s just…nameless narrator never got Holly Golightly.”

“He got her in the movie.”

“The movie was nice, but it wasn’t real. The book was real. In the book, she goes away to Brazil.”

“I’m not going to Brazil. I don’t like to samba. Anyway, you’re not nameless narrator. You’re much cuter than he was.”

The lampposts brightened as night pressed the last red wine out of the twilight.

Along the pathway, from lamp to lamp, across the grass, from bench to bench and back again, the dogs enjoyed the park entirely as dogs will, sniffing the messages left by legions of dogs before them, alert to the scents of squirrels in trees, of birds in higher branches, and of far places from which stories are carried on the breeze.

“Earlier, when I was doing all those drawings, I sensed-I knew-that Hope and Nickie are inextricably entwined, that I can’t have Hope without Nickie. There’s something so strange happening…yet Nickie acts like any other dog.”

“Most of the time,” Amy said.

She held Fred’s and Ethel’s leashes in her right hand. With her left hand, perhaps unconsciously, she touched the cameo locket at her throat.

“You want to tell me about the bedroom-slipper thing?” he asked.

“It doesn’t mean anything. It can’t. Anyway, it wouldn’t make sense to you without the backstory.”

“So tell me the backstory.”

“Sweetie, it’s not just a backstory, it’s a big honkin’ backstory. We don’t have time to get into it right now. In that last e-mail, Vanessa said ‘Stand by.’ We should see if she’s followed up while we’ve been out.”

When they got back to his apartment, an e-mail from Vanessa was waiting.