him high above his head like a football and bellowed, “Who wants a puppy?”
A chorus of “I dos” filled the room.
Josie plopped down on the floor next to Barkley. She scratched him on the head before sitting on her hands. The tremors were always a nuisance while you were climbing on the wagon.
“They’ll go away,” I said. “Maybe if you hold this guy?”
She considered him. “He does look like you.”
“Attack,” I said, releasing Sherpa, but instead of heading to Josie, he scampered toward the cat, then veered off behind the furniture.
“Some guard dog,” I said.
Josie absently rubbed Barkley’s head again. “So is this it? You all, like, sit around and pet some pets that aren’t your pets?”
“I say it’s wonderful. We don’t have to feed them or bathe them or pick up their poo,” Valencia said.
Alice added, “Especially after the day we’ve had.”
And wasn’t that the truth, with one resident sentenced to Simmons, another one to death. We counted on stuff like this to keep us afloat, and none of us took it for granted.
Barkley leaned into Josie, eventually setting his head in her lap. Valencia let out a hoot, because her puppy had finally scaled her leg and found something very interesting to smell in her armpit. Her laugh turned contagious, until everyone had it but Josie and me. Josie watched the routine with an observant smile; I returned to watching our backs.
“Help,” Valencia giggled.
Josie leaned in to me and whispered, “This isn’t bad.”
I smiled and whispered back, “Welcome to Centennial.”
She popped up to rescue the ladies from being licked to death. Meanwhile, I glanced over my shoulder at the front door, where Shawn stood like a lineman, poised to keep everyone from going out, though in my opinion, he should’ve been looking in an entirely different direction.
38
Josie noticed me jumping every time the front door whistled open and nagged me over the next few hours to relax. I returned the favor whenever her breathing started to look like desperation instead of an automatic body function. It took some time, but eventually my worry dissipated alongside the late afternoon. I stopped checking the door and peering out the window; Josie stopped having the shakes.
Happy Tails packed up, and Tovah said goodbye, but the aftereffects stayed. Pure joy bottled up to borrow from later. Bates became an addendum, moved to an unused corner of my brain to wait until tomorrow. And we only had one more night to worry about Josie being here. One more long night.
In the meantime, I took all that newfound energy to slip away before dinner. I snuck some tape, scissors, and a tacky album page from Shawn’s crafting closet.
Back in the room, I located Carl’s torn picture of Jenny. I had Koko and baby Kaiya in hand. The last bit was Carl, who waited in scraps in my cigar box. I pulled the walker up to the dresser, laid out all my parts, and went to it, piecing Carl back together like a jigsaw puzzle. At the end of it, I had all three girls behind the album sheet’s plastic overlay, and then Carl, who looked fair to middling except for his missing left foot. If you weren’t looking for it, you hardly noticed.
I trimmed the page and taped it to its rightful spot on the mirror, then backed up to admire it, pretty sure Carl would like it just fine. I thought it best if he used the frame Josie got him for a nice picture of the two of them, and I made a mental note to ask Anderson to snap one with his magical pocket phone.
By the time I left for dinner, I was practically skipping between the legs of my walker. Something told me this evening would be more than all right, and I was ready to take it in. Immortalize it. Wrap it up with ribbon before it had even come to a close.
There are only a handful of nights that are shelved in my memory bank as being perfect. There is the evening my father took Cormac and me to a picture show,