The Darkest Evening of the Year

nearby table,” Amy continued, “she was so horrified, she passed out facedown in her lobster bisque. I don’t think you can drown in a bowl of lobster bisque, it might even be good for the complexion, but I lifted her head out of it anyway.”
    Carl licked his cracked lips. “You must think I’m stupid.”
    “You might be ignorant,” Amy said. “I don’t know you well enough to say. But I’m totally sure you’re not stupid.”
    Brian realized he was grinding his teeth.
    “You give me a check for two thousand,” Carl said, “you’ll stop payment on it ten minutes after you’re out the door with the dog.”
    “I don’t intend to give you a check.” From an inside jacket pocket, she withdrew a wad of folded hundred-dollar bills held together by a blue-and-yellow butterfly barrette. “I’ll pay cash.”
    Brian was no longer grinding his teeth. His mouth had fallen open.
    Lowering the tire iron to his side, Carl said, “Something’s for sure wrong with you.”
    She pocketed the barrette, fanned the hundred-dollar bills, and said, “Deal?”
    He put the weapon on the table, took the money, and counted it with the deliberateness of a man whose memory of math has been bleached pale by tequila.
    Relieved, Brian put down the dinette chair.
    Moving to the dog, Amy fished a red collar and a rolled-up leash from another pocket. She clipped the leash to the collar and put the collar on the dog. “Nice doing business with you, sir.”
    While Carl was conducting a second count of the two thousand, Amy tugged gently on the leash. The dog rose at once and padded out of the kitchen, at her side.
    With her little girl in tow, Janet followed Amy and Nickie into the hallway, and Brian went after them, glancing back because he half expected Carl to find his rage again and pick up the tire iron.
    Jimmy, the keening boy, was silent now. He had moved from the hallway to the living room, where he stood at a window in the posture of a prisoner at his cell bars.
    Leading the dog, Amy went to the boy. She stooped beside him, spoke to him.
    Brian couldn’t hear what she said.
    The front door was open, as he had left it. With the dog prancing smartly at her side, Amy soon joined him on the porch.
    Standing on the threshold, Janet said, “You were…amazing. Thank you. I didn’t want the kids to see…see it happen again.”
    Her face was sallow in the yellow light of the porch lamp, and the whites of her eyes had a jaundiced tint. She looked older than her years, and tired.
    “You know, he’ll get another dog,” Amy said.
    “Maybe I can prevent that.”
    “Maybe?”
    “I can try.”
    “Did you really mean what you said when you first answered the door?”
    Janet looked away from Amy to study the threshold at her feet, and shrugged.
    Amy reminded her: “You wished that you were me. ‘Or anybody, somebody.’”
    Janet shook her head. Her voice lowered almost to a murmur. “What you did in there, the money was the least of it. The way you were with him—I can never do that.”
    “Then do what you can.” She leaned close to Janet and said something that Brian could not hear.
    Listening intently, Janet covered her split and swollen lip with her right hand.
    When Amy finished, she stepped back, and Janet met her eyes once more. They stared at each other, and although Janet didn’t say a word or even so much as nod, Amy said, “Good. All right.”
    Janet retreated into the house with her daughter.
    Nickie seemed to know where she was going, and moved forward on her leash, leading them off the porch, to the Expedition.
    Brian said, “You always carry two thousand bucks?”
    “Ever since, three years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to save a dog if I hadn’t had the money on me to buy it. That first one cost me three hundred twenty-two bucks.”
    “So sometimes to rescue a dog, you have to buy it.”
    “Not often, thank God.”
    Without command or encouragement, Nickie sprang into the cargo space of the SUV.
    “Good girl,” Amy said, and the dog’s plumed tail swished.
    “That was crazy, what you did.”
    “It’s only money.”
    “I mean letting him put the pry bar to your throat.”
    “He wouldn’t have used it.”
    “How can you be sure?”
    “I know his type. He’s basically a pussy.”
    “I don’t think he’s a pussy.”
    “He beats up women and dogs.”
    “You’re a woman.”
    “Not his type. Believe me, sweetie, in a pinch, you’d have whupped his ass in a New York