Rachel Alexander 02 - The Dog who knew too much

rear end of the crab. I grabbed Paul’s arm and squeezed it
    “ Tha’s a good boy, Donny,” he said as the crab moved forward. “See,” he said, leaning down into the crab’s face, “it ain’t so hard to be a good boy.”
    He picked up Donny by one claw and quickly dumped him into a paper bag that he had anchored under his legs, struggled to his feet, and holding the bag out in front of him, staggered down the block.
    I didn’t feel hungry anymore, and apparently neither did Paul, because neither of us picked up the bag to take out any more of the food.
    “What did she say?” I asked. “My cousin Lisa?”
    “That she had wanted to bring me into her family, to have my children, for us to grow old together.”
    “And when you told her you weren’t ready, she didn’t want to see you anymore?”
    “No,” he said, looking straight ahead again, as if he were driving instead of parked. “I didn’t want to see her after that.”
    “Why not?”
    “It had all been spoiled,” he said. He looked back toward the street, but the little man with the crab was gone.
    “But you still loved her,” I insisted.
    “Yes,” he said. “She was ...” He looked down, into his lap, the chopsticks still in his right hand. “I had hoped ...”
    He took off his glasses, placing them on the dashboard, and put his fingertips over his eyes. I don’t know what got into me then. Maybe it was all the walking in Lisa’s shoes. Once again, I reached over and slid my arms around his neck. But this time, it was different. When he moved his hands away and looked at me with those hurt, dark eyes, I leaned closer and kissed him. My lips gently brushed one cheek, then the other. When I kissed his eyes, I tasted the salt of a tear. Then I felt his chopsticks against my back as he embraced me, his other hand on my neck, his long fingers reaching into my hair. I felt a familiar heat starting and spreading quickly, as if someone had dropped a match in straw. Live in the now, Avi had said. So I did. I sank into it and let it happen.
    That’s when something caught my eye. Over Paul’s shoulder, I could see them as they came out of Hong Fat and stood just across from where we were parked, kissing. They talked quietly for a moment, then Teddy’s arm went up, for a taxi.
    I pulled away from Paul and ducked.
    He put his glasses on and turned.
    “Why do I get the nagging feeling you’re using me?”
    “Because I am.”
    “I thought as much. Follow that cab?” he said.
    “Wait until they get one,” I told him.
    You had to give him this. The man was a good sport.
    Men like this don’t grow on trees, my mother would have said.
    But only if he were Jewish and a professional man.
    A cab stopped. We took off after it. Ten minutes later, I knew where the blond lived. Had I been alone, I could have rushed in and told the concierge she’d dropped her pen on the street and gotten her name. Or I could have waited in the car for my brother-in-law to emerge.
    And then what?
    “Rachel?”
    He touched my cheek with the back of one hand.
    I had gone to Sea Gate to ask about my sister’s situation, to find out if Ceil thought I should say something, or do something, to see if between us we could think up a way to prevent the shattering of my sister’s marriage, of her life. Interfering, after all, was my family’s stock-in-trade.
    Leave them alone, Ceil would have said.
    But, I would have said, in my usual articulate fashion.
    Exactly, darling, she probably would have told me. Butt out. It’s not your life. It’s not your problem. Let it go.
    What on earth had I been thinking?
    “Let’s go home,” I said.
    “And where is that?” Paul asked , his voice as soft as the fur between Dashiell’s round brown eyes.
    “I’ve been staying at my cousin’s,” I said.
    “I thought so.”
    “You did?”
    “You don’t have anything on that didn’t belong to Lisa. All finished here?”
    I nodded.
    Paul drove to Lisa’s and found a spot that was good for the next day. On our way across the street to Jimmy Walker Park, we pitched the Chinese food into a comer trash basket. Let some poor homeless person who didn’t know Donny eat the crab. I certainly couldn’t.
    Leaning against the fence, watching as Dash left notes for the other neighborhood dogs, I was here, and here, and here, I wished I were still a dog trainer and that the man whose shoulder was touching mine were really a date and not part of a criminal investigation.
    I’m sorry.