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Emily KimelmanAuthor of the Sydney Rye Mysteries
Unleashed
CHAPTER ONE
BLUE
My dog once took a bullet that was intended for me. A bullet that ripped through his chest, narrowly missing his heart, and exited through his shoulder blade, effectively shattering it. This left him unconscious on the floor of my home. Amazingly, this bullet did not kill him.
Ten years ago I adopted Blue as a present to myself after I broke up with my boyfriend one hot, early summer night with the windows open and the neighborhood listening. The next morning I went straight to the pound in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Articles on buying your first dog tell you never to buy a dog on impulse. They want you to be prepared for this new member of your family, to understand the responsibilities and challenges of owning a dog. Going to the pound because you need something in your life that’s worth holding onto is rarely, if ever, mentioned.
I asked the man at the pound to show me the biggest dogs they had. He showed me some seven-week-old Rottweiler-German shepherd puppies that he said would grow to be quite large. Then he showed me a six-month-old shepherd that would get pretty big. Then he showed me Blue, the largest dog they had. The man called him a Collie mix and he was stuffed into the biggest cage they had, but he didn’t fit. He was as tall as a Great Dane but much skinnier, with the snout of a collie, the markings of a Siberian husky, the ears and tail of a shepherd and the body of a wolf, with one blue eye and one brown. Crouched in a sitting position, unable to lie down, unable to sit all the way up, he looked at me from between the bars, and I fell in love.
“He’s still underweight,” the man in the blue scrubs told me as we looked at Blue. “I’ll tell you, lady, he’s pretty but he’s skittish. He sheds, and I mean sheds. I don’t think you want this dog.” But I knew I wanted him. I knew I had to have him. He was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
Blue cost me $108. I brought him home, and we lived together for ten years. He was, for most of our relationship, my only companion. But when I first met Blue, a lifetime ago now, I had family and friends. I worked at a shitty coffeehouse. I was young and lost; I was normal. Back then, at the beginning of this story, before I’d ever seen a corpse, before Blue saved my life, before I felt what it was like to kill someone in cold blood, I was still Joy Humbolt. I’d never even heard the name Sydney Rye.
CHAPTER TWO
A HUGE FUCKING DOG
My foot tapped against the spotted linoleum as the subway squealed over the Manhattan Bridge, and clacked up the East Side. I scolded myself for my constant tardiness and vowed that from that day forth I would change my life. I would get organized. I would become better.
Three hours later, a pastel-clad woman with bad hair asked if she could have a macchiato, which didn’t make any sense. A woman wearing pastels, obviously from a place where they still wore scrunchies, asking for a shot of espresso with a touch of frothed milk on top. She should have been asking for a Frappuccino just like all the others who walked into the shop assuming that it was a Starbucks, because who could possibly imagine that there was coffee that was not Starbucks?
“Do you know what a macchiato is?” I asked.
The woman smiled benignly. “Yes, I want a caramel one.” She obviously had no idea what she was talking about. You don’t put caramel in a macchiato.
“So what you’re saying is that you would like a shot of caramel and a shot of espresso with a touch of frothed milk on top.”
“Why not? Let’s give it a go.” She smiled at me and I thought, this is amazing. She is willing to try a new drink—not only a new drink but a drink that she practically created for herself. Had anyone else ever ordered this? I swear, in that moment, I was filled with a renewed sense of life. I had been wrong—not all dowdy women dressed in pastels were unadventurous lemmings.
“Oh, this isn’t what I ordered,” she said, looking down at my small cup of perfect caramel macchiato from above her two chins.
“Yes it is. It is a shot of caramel and a shot of espresso with a touch of frothed milk on top.” I had been wrong. She was like all the rest of them.
“No, I’ve ordered this before at Starbucks and it’s iced and in a very large plastic cup with a straw. It’s not at all like this,” she said as she waved her pudgy hand at my creation.
“Actually, this,” I pointed at the little cup, “is exactly what you ordered. Exactly.” I looked at the line of tourists that snaked out the door behind her onto 60th Street and continued, “I asked you if you wanted a shot of caramel and a shot of espresso with a touch of frothed milk. You said, ‘Sure, let’s give it a go.’ ” I used a high-pitched nasal voice to imitate her. “Now, I will make you a new drink,” I said, “but it won’t be any Starbucks knockoff and you won’t get whatever it is you want unless you first admit that you are an idiot.” The woman’s face turned red and all her features made a mad dash to the center, leaving her with only cheek, forehead, and chin.
“That’s right,” I was really rolling now, “an idiot, a dumb-ass who has no idea what is in her coffee. I bet you don’t know that Frappuccino is a Starbucks name, not the name of a real coffee drink. Frappuccino is a trademark, not a beverage.” I was still explaining the finer points of coffee in an outdoor voice to the tourist when my manager, a guy named Brad who always seemed to be staring at my tits, came out from the back and fired me. Although the way I stormed out of there, you would think I had quit. I threw my apron on the floor and told Brad to fuck himself and stop masturbating in the coffee grounds. Yeah, the customers liked that one.
By the time I got home, I was crying.
It is not often that the weight of daily existence catches me in public. I usually have to be in bed, alone, in the dark. But this time I was standing outside my apartment crying so hard I could barely get my key in the door. The thing is, I wasn’t crying because I got fired or because I’d broken up with my boyfriend, Marcus. My job was stupid, and Marcus was an ass. Breaking up with that dick-wad was something on the list of “shit I’ve done lately that I can be proud of,” but it was pretty much the only thing.
I got the door open and Blue whined and circled me, desperately happy at my return. I sat down, my back against the door, crying. Blue nuzzled me and licked my face. I hugged him and he squirmed. “You’ve only known me less than a day and already you like me this much, huh?” I asked him, sniffling back my tears. He flopped onto his back, exposing his belly and warbled at me in answer.
Blue followed me down the hall and into the kitchen, where my answering machine sat blinking. “Five messages,” I told Blue, wiping my face with the back of my hand. He leaned his weight against me and nuzzled my stomach.
I hit play and heard Marcus’s voice. “Hey, listen.” I heard Marcus’s tongue slip out to wet his lips. My chest tightened. “I was thinking I’d come over later and we could…I don’t know…talk or something. Call me back.” Beep. “Hey, it’s me again. Look, I’m in the neighborhood. I guess you’re not home yet. I think I’m just going to head over…all right, um, bye.” Beep. “What the fuck, Joy. I was just at your house and there was a huge fucking dog trying to kill me. I—” Beep. “Your fuckin’ machine sucks, and where the fuck did you get that vicious dog? I mean, we just broke up last night and you already have a new dog. I don’t know what that means, but I just don’t know about you anymore.” Beep. “Listen, just call me, okay?” Beep.
I exhaled. “Did you really attack him?” Blue wagged his tail and sat. “I suppose it would be your natural instinct,” I hiccuped. “He was invading your home, right?” Blue looked at me blankly. “You don’t look mean.” He really didn’t. He was tall and very skinny. I could see his ribs under his thick fur coat. With the snout of a collie, the markings of a Siberian husky, and the body of a wolf, with one blue eye and one brown, he was a very unique mutt. It occurred to me that I knew nothing about this dog. Our history was barely twelve hours long. I’d basically moved a large, hairy stranger into my house. The phone rang as I stared at my new dog, a little confused.
“Hey.” It was my brother, James. “You want to get some drinks tonight?”
“Yeah sure, I have a lot to tell you.”
“Anything good?”
“Not really. Well, I guess one thing.” Blue had curled himself into a ball at my feet. “How about Nancy’s at—” I looked at the clock. It was 6:30. “How about a half hour?” I asked, planning a quick walk around the block for Blue.
“Perfect,” James said.
The sun was slipping behind the brownstones across the street and turning the sky pink when I left for Nancy’s. “Hey,” said the guy on the corner who always said hey. I ignored him. “Hey, pretty lady, you got a beautiful ass,” he tried again. I watched the concrete and power-walked away.
Ten minutes later I was at Nancy’s, a low-key lesbian bar with a nice backyard. If you wanted to talk to a stranger you could, but there was no pressure. If you wanted to take someone home you could, but again there was no pressure.
I ordered a ‘Tequila Gimlet, straight up’. The bartender, whose name I was pretty sure was Diane, nodded and moved off to make my drink. My face, reflected in the mirror behind the bar, peered from between a bottle of Blue Curacao and Midori. I needed a haircut. My fashionable bangs had grown out, and now I just pushed them behind my ears. Last night’s fight with Marcus and my early-morning journey to the pound had left puffy, blue-tinted circles under my eyes. All those tears had left the white around my gray irises streaked with red and—I leaned forward a little to make sure—my upper eyelids a bizarre orange.
Diane placed a martini glass brimming with a sheer red liquid on the bar, and I handed her a ten. I moved toward the backyard, trying not to spill my drink all over my hand while spilling my drink all over my hand.
One overly cute couple sat in the soft candlelight cooing. I took a table close to the door and artificial lighting. As the tequila burned in my mouth, I wrangled with the memories of the past 24 hours. I usually shoved thoughts I didn’t like to the back of my mind. But they never went away—they’re always back there—lurking right on the other side of my self-control.
James appeared in the doorway, smiling, holding a Tequila Gimlet, splash of cran (but his was on the rocks). He was a head taller than me at around six feet. We shared the same gray eyes and blond hair, though James’s was short and styled while mine was reaching past my shoulder blades. Edging towards 30, James liked to talk about how his green-bean physique was morphing into eggplant. But the guy was still a pole.
“You look like shit,” James said as he sat down. I smiled weakly and slurped my tequila. “Seriously, what the fuck happened to you?”
“Well, I broke up with Marcus”—this elicited a gasp—“and bought a dog.”—an even bigger gasp—“Oh, and I got fired.” I raised my glass in a mock toast to myself and polished it off.
“I talked to you yesterday! All this happened in one day?” I nodded, tried to finish my drink, then realized I already had. I went and brought back another.
“It’s not really surprising,” I said as I sat down. “We all knew it was coming.”
James nodded. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“Well, I did lose my job because I went kinda crazy at work.”
“Crazy?”
I told him about the plump tourist, her misorder, my insane reaction, and Brad’s management decision. Then I told him about the masturbation comment.
James laughed. “I love it,” he said. “I’m proud of you, Joy. That job sucked. Marcus was a tool. You’ve got a whole new fresh start.”
“Easy for you to say. How exactly am I supposed to pay my rent?”
“You’ll figure it out. Now, tell me about this dog. I can’t believe you’re such an asshole that you went out and got a dog because you broke up with your boyfriend. It’s so pathetic.”
“You’re a real sweetheart.”
“Somebody has to tell you.”
“Jesus, I wanted a dog, so I went and got a dog.”
“Oh, this was something planned?” James leaned his elbows on the table with mischief dancing in his eyes. “It’s just a coincidence that you happened to break up with your boyfriend the night before.” He smiled at me.
“Oh, just shut up. So what if I bought a dog to console myself?” He was right, of course. I had gone and bought a dog because I broke up with my boyfriend. And, yes, that was pathetic.
“So, what kind of dog?”
“He’s really beautiful. He has one blue eye and one brown. Oh, oh, the best part is he attacked Marcus when he tried to come over.” James laughed. “I know. Can you fucking believe it? He left me five messages today.” I held up my hand with all five fingers extended.
“Your dog attacks people?”
“Not people, intruders,” I said with more confidence than I felt. For all I knew Blue attacked all sorts of people. Maybe it wasn’t that Marcus was breaking into the house. Maybe Blue would attack any douchebag we passed on the street. The thought made me laugh.
James smiled at me. “Not to talk badly about Marcus, Lord knows he was sexy as hell, but the guy is kind of an idiot. Not to mention that he tried to control you way too much. Low self-esteem fucks up a lot of men.” James sat back, his hypothesis fully expressed.
I laughed. “I guess. Whatever, I’m over it.” I sat up and scooped up my drink taking a long sip. “I’m so over it.”
“Well, are you going to call him back? I don’t think you should. Make a clean break.”
I knew he was right, but I also knew that I had no control over myself whatsoever and would probably call him. “How’s Hugh?” I asked, changing the subject. Hugh was James’s boyfriend of four years.
“He’s good,” James smiled. “Actually, we’re really good…our offer was accepted.” Hugh and James had spent the last eight months trying to find an apartment. Two months ago, they’d found it. A fifth-floor walk-up with a roof deck, two bedrooms (fine, a bedroom-and-a-half) and a kitchen that was recently renovated.
“Holy shit. That’s awesome. How much?”
“It’s a little out of our price range, but you always pay more than you want, right?”
Later, I stumbled into my building blind-drunk. I climbed the steps humming to myself, swinging my keys. I was feeling pretty good. Sure, I had no job, no boyfriend, and a weirdo of a dog, but life was not so bad, not so bad at all. I would make it; I could fix it. Everything was going to be just fine.
Blue greeted me at the door. “Hi, boy.” I crouched and rubbed his ears. He nuzzled my chest, knocking me against the wall. Blue wrapped himself in my arms. I breathed into his neck, smelling the pound. “We’re going to be okay,” I said into his neck. “I’m going to take care of us. Starting tomorrow, I’m going to fix this mess of a life of ours.” Then I passed out.
That’s the end of the sample.
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