I asked the House to recite me all its functions.
In Jamie’s voice.
It soothed me, cleansed away the ugly thoughts. When more memories drifted through my mind, I cringed, not wanting to think about the day Uncle Sam came to fuck Mom and found me sleeping in her bed. He’d said things I was too young to understand. I understood them later when it was too late.
Not remembering wasn’t working for me today. I crawled to the fridge for more of my pairing cake. Before I ate everything, I saved one piece for Jamie, then dug in at the table, stuffing my mouth with happy thoughts. I thought about him and his warm body against mine, and I thought about his mouth and his big hands, and how I didn’t want to experience his disappointment. I knew he’d be disappointed because Jamie had bought a perfect peach.
A peach who didn’t even dare to go out and walk in the backyard.
Not even with a cane.
But I had to get out, or I’d rot in the house, fall back into the depression hole I’d crawled out of last year. Dealing with sight loss and Mom’s drinking and drug use took a long time. Dad didn’t really know what to do with me. Not that he made the time to do anything with me either.
I wiped my face and breathed deep, sat there for a while.
I needed to get some fresh air.
A knock sounded at the front door. On the other side of the door, Dark barked, announcing his presence. I nearly tripped over my feet to answer. I flung the door open, a big grin on my face. “My boy!” Dark tried to curb his excitement and went to work immediately. He placed his body next to my leg and waited for the leash, but his rapid tail wagging shook his whole body and gave him away. He didn’t want to work. He wanted to play. “Thank you,” I said to the silhouette against the sunlight as I knelt to pet Dark. “Oh, I am so glad you came by.” Not that I’d given her an address or anything, but maybe she had tech to find my address.
I frowned. How did she even know my phone number? A cold shiver ran down my spine. I’d answered the door for a stranger. It didn’t matter she was a woman. I shouldn’t have flung it open the way I had. I looked up. “Hello? Anyone?” Nobody was there. I squinted against the daylight and tried to pick up on dark masses on the street. There weren’t any.
I guessed the girl had left without a word, so I closed and locked the door behind me. Bending, I hugged Dark and inhaled his hound scent. I scrunched up my nose. I’d need to give him a bath, but first I checked his paws since he’d run for hours. When I pressed on the soft bottoms, he didn’t respond or jerk his paw away as if in pain. I ran my fingertips over the bottoms of the paws and didn’t feel any cuts or objects imbedded inside. “You’re not even sore,” I told him. Weird, but okay. “Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll find you a place in the backyard so Jamie doesn’t go crazy and bite you. Don’t tell him I said that. Then we’ll rest. Do you like cats?”
Dark barked a definite yes. Or so I told myself.
Neither Dark nor I were ever trained on guidance. We trained together, worked together the best we could. At first, when I’d found him outside the community gates, we fumbled a lot. Back then, depressed and angry at the whole world, I often contemplated whether life was worth living. Dark taught me more about sight and humanity than any other person I knew. When he first started to lead me around by barking, I got out of my self-pity stage and rushed head-on to train with him. Although Dark had failed the temperament training once, he was a smart animal and, to be honest, a pretty good judge of character. He hated Uncle Sam and had bitten him.
I reached for Dark’s leash. He whined, in a way telling me I’d taken it off in the community. “I’m sorry, boy. I didn’t have a choice, but I promise I’ll work on the big bad beast.” I needed to leash Dark, hold him next to me, so we could go out in the backyard and he could see where I stepped. I had to find a place to hide him for the night, and I wanted fresh air.
We went up to the bedroom while I spoke to Dark and told him about our new talking house. I wasn’t crazy, I knew he didn’t understand me, but when this animal was all I had for company, it wasn’t crazy to speak to him. It would drive me crazy not to speak to anyone. In the past, a living, breathing animal in the house had been my salvation on days when all I had to look forward to were my soft footsteps in a dark house.
Upstairs, I dug into Jamie’s side of the walk-in closet and found his drawers. I opened every one of them, then touched in between the racks of jeans and leathers. He must have old belts, Dad had a dozen belts. I tapped around and tapped some more. I didn’t find a belt, and I knew I was running out of time. He’d be home any moment.