The Bone Bed

know.
    He hasn’t a clue what I’ve been through.
    “I got a ride here I didn’t ask for,” I reply, as the battering ram swings back again and slams again, and wood splinters.
    Deadbolt locks break loose of the wooden frame, and the metal door swings in, and the blasting noise is louder. Frozen carbon-dioxide vapor condenses the humidity in the air, and we are enveloped by a cold white cloud.

two nights later
    LUCY HAS BEEN HIDING MORE THAN ONE DECEPTION AT her country home, and I remind Marino that a dog is a problem if it’s not taken care of rather constantly.
    “I’ve seen my share of neglected pets.” I sauté crushed garlic in olive oil. “Having a dog is like having a child.” I wish I’d started the sauce earlier.
    But there’s been no earlier time to do anything civilized, the last two days a relentless ordeal that didn’t include cooking or sleeping or eating decent food. I keep wondering how it would have turned out if Lucy hadn’t insisted on installing GPS trackers on all CFC vehicles, if she hadn’t followed my SUV. A part of me is haunted by what didn’t play out.
    “Dogs require a lot of attention,” I’m saying to Marino, as I stir fresh basil and oregano into the sauce. “Which is why Bryce and Ethan have always had cats.”
    “You’re kidding me, right? We know why the hell the Odd Couple has cats. Gay guys are into cats.”
    “That’s a terrible stereotype, not to mention ridiculous.” A few pinches of brown sugar would be nice, and some red pepper flakes.
    “You know, that same guy who played Felix Unger also played Quincy. You ever stop to think about that and how long ago it was?”
    “Jack Klugman played Quincy. Not Tony Randall,” I reply. “A dog is a lot of work, Marino.”
    “I don’t know. It’s just weird, Doc. Where time goes. I remember watching that show before I knew enough to realize how damn stupid it was, like that episode when cancer mutated and started killing everyone? And the guy who had his arm reattached and then his good one went bad after that? Jesus, at least thirty years ago, and I was still boxing, just getting started with NYPD, had never even met a real Quincy, and here I am working with you. People think getting old happens to everybody but them. Then you hit fifty and go
What the fuck
.”
    I remove a damp cloth from a ceramic bowl and check on the dough, and Marino is sitting on the floor. His big legs are stretched out as he leans against the wall, at home inside my kitchen with a rangy-looking German shepherd puppy, a rescue Lucy airlifted out of a pig farm she and Janet shut down the other day. All paws, with huge brown eyes and cocked-up ears, black and tan, maybe four months old, curled up in Marino’s lap, my greyhound, Sock, on the rug next to them.
    “Cambridge was all set up to get a K-nine, and then they didn’t approve the budget.” Marino reaches for his beer, and he’s different with the puppy.
    Marino’s gentle. Even his voice is different.
    “The problem’s paying overtime for whoever has the dog, but in my case I can do it for free and it’s not a union problem or whatever because I don’t work for them. You want to grow up to be a cadaver dog?” he says to his puppy.
    “What an ambition.” I divide the dough into three balls.
    “Then he could come to work with me. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Come to my big fancy building every day,” he says to the puppy in a voice that can’t be described as anything but silly, and it licks his hand. “That would be okay, right, Doc? I’ll train him, take him to scenes, teach him to alert on all kinds of things. That would be really cool, don’t you think?”
    I don’t care anymore. Sleeping over in an AeroBed, a dog in the office, none of it seems important anymore. I’ve played it out so many times and can’t answer the most fundamental question. Would I have cut him badly enough to save myself? It’s not that I wouldn’t have tried, because I have no doubt I was going to slash at his face, but a scalpel blade is very short and narrow, and can break off from the handle.
    I had one slim chance that it turns out I didn’t need, but I can’t stop thinking about it because it’s just one more reminder that the tools of my profession don’t save anyone. Even as I’m thinking this I know it’s not entirely true, and I need to snap out of this damn mood.
    “I’ve been making myself crazy trying to come up with a name,” Marino says. “Maybe