Carry the Dog by Stephanie Gangi

Author:Stephanie Gangi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

I can’t get in.

The Medeco is jammed. I try the key, all directions, and then I try every key on the keychain. I knock and then pound. I say Echo’s name low near the jamb—I don’t want to disturb my neighbors—but then I call out. Dory is on the other side of the door, pacing, her nails ticking along the hardwood. Her anxiety ratchets mine, or vice versa. I text Echo, no answer. I call her phone, no answer. Dory whines in intermittent bursts and then nonstop. I am picturing a crime scene inside the apartment, with bloody paw prints. I’m cold and I need to pee. My next-door neighbor, Arnold, opens his door a crack.

“What’re you, locked out?”

“Yes.”

“You need to use the phone?”

I wave mine. “No. I’ve got one, thanks.”

“So call Marcus!” Arnold shuts the door.

I slide down and sit against a hall wall to wait. Marcus, who lives on the first floor with a wife and two small daughters, comes with one badass multi-tool in hand. He wears a tight navy blue pocket T and navy blue chinos, no belt. He has a heavy orange Stanley tape measure clipped to his back pocket that drags the pants down a little bit. As he works, his T-shirt lifts and the dimples of Venus on his lower back are on display. He twists the tool so that his shoulder pumps and his scapula extends and retracts. His arms are striated with veins. His fingers splay against my door. I redirect heat for Bix and flashes of the gleaming skin of the Mapplethorpes to a Marcus fantasy, for private time later: he backs me up against my kitchen counter and lifts me up and sits me there and spreads my knees. He kneels. I scoot close and pull his head against me.

I will not have a young man’s arms around me ever again. My fingertips will never tap along the indentations, this side, that side, at the base of a young man’s spine. A taut torso, the tender spots, his hair, the muscle and bulk and height and width of him. Gary had the dimples of Venus once. They don’t hold up. Aging, it’s an accumulation of small losses and tiny glitches that you don’t notice and then you do and you ignore them at first and then you can’t. I can’t buckle a strap on a shoe anymore without getting a stomach cramp. I can’t reach a top shelf without spasms in my shoulder and neck. The pills on the counter. The magnifying mirror. A special pillow. Miriam used to say she hated old people because all they talked about was their ailments. I do think about my ailments more frequently, it’s crept in, and Gary never stops talking about his, but maybe we’re not just complainers, maybe we’re saying it out loud over and over until we accept it. Age is not just a number.

Marcus pops the brass plate, unscrews the screws, ratchets the through bolts, and the old lock works clatter to the floor.

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