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Even so, the night might have ended with a fuck. Not a passionate fuck, but an angry one, with Ronel trying to work up some desire and have an erection, if only to make Renana eat her words. Maybe. Who knows. But Ronel's cellphone vibrated in his shirt pocket right where his heart should have been and brought that completely pathetic evening to a new low.
"Sorry to disturb you in the middle of your meeting with the Germans," he heard Neeva's hate-filled voice stretching out the word 'Germans' as if she were referring to Hitler himself.
"Don't be silly, sweetheart, you're not disturbing me at all. We just finished," Ronel said, sucking up to Neeva the way he always did around clients. To sound more credible, he even tossed a few words in English at Renana, "It's my wife. She says hello." Renana promptly gave a loud belch in reply. "Mr. Mattenklott says hello, too," Ronel said, afraid Neeva might have heard the repulsive belch, and added quickly, "I think he's had one too many. I'll just drop him and Ingo at the hotel and come home."
"Ronel," Neeva rebuked him on the other end of the line, "I didn't call to find out when you're coming home. I called to tell you something."
"I know, I know. I'm sorry," Ronel apologized automatically as he tried to grab the remote from Renana, who was raising the volume.
"It's your dog," Neeva added after a short silence, "He ran away."
When a dog takes a thin little saw and saws through the bars on the bathroom window, then shimmies down a few tied-together sheets, you can say, "The dog ran away." But when you're walking down the street with him and he's not on a leash, and an hour later you realize he's nowhere to be seen, we're talking about a personal screw-up. Trying to lay the blame on Darko wasn't fair. "He was probably sniffing some curb or monument and when he looked up, he realized you weren't there," he said to Neeva in an accusing tone as they walked down King George Street trying to reconstruct the route of that disastrous evening stroll. "How many times have I told you not to let him out of your sight?"
"Tell me," Neeva said as she stopped walking and stood in the middle of the street like a wife about to make a scene, "What exactly are you trying to say? That I'm not a good enough au-pair for your
The list was titled "Places Darko Likes (?)" He didn't know why he'd tacked on the question mark. |
smelly dog? That I don't walk him according to the rules of the International Dog-Walkers Association? If you were home instead of fucking around with your Germans, you could've taken him out yourself and none of this would have happened."
Ronel could have complained about how he worked his ass off till all hours just to put food on the table, but decided, for tactical reasons, to keep quiet. One of the first things he'd learned in the world of business was never to reach a point of no return. You always left as many options open as possible. This often meant not saying or doing the thing you wanted to say or do. Now, for example, he felt very much like kicking Neeva in the shin as hard as he could. Not only because she'd let Darko run away, but also because she didn't call him by his name and insisted on referring to him as 'smelly', and mainly because she refused to take responsibility for her actions and behaved as if this terrible tragedy were God's way of punishing Ronel and not the mistake of a self-centered and totally irresponsible wife. He didn't kick her in the shin as hard as he could because that, as mentioned, would have been a point of no return. Instead, with the same composure and self-control so often displayed by murderers when cleaning up the scene of the crime and getting rid of their victims' bodies, Ronel suggested that she go home and wait there in case someone called with information about Darko.
"Who's going to call?" Neeva laughed, "Your stupid dog from a pay phone? Or his kidnappers asking for ransom? Even if someone does find him, they won't know our phone number."
"I still think it would be better if we split up," Ronel insisted and seriously considered abandoning the insight that had served him so well for so many years and kicking Neeva very hard after all. When she persisted in asking why, he shook his head wildly and said, "No reason."
Did he think of Ronel as his master? His father? His friend? Maybe even his lover? |
Ronel leaned against a yellow mailbox and read over the list he'd just made on the back of the receipt from the restaurant he and Renana had eaten in that night. The list was headed "Places Darko Likes (?)" He didn't know why he'd tacked on the question mark and parentheses. Maybe because he felt that if the list didn't include an element of uncertainty, it would be like claiming he knew all there was to know about Darko, whereas Ronel himself had readily admitted countless times, to himself and to others, that he didn't always understand Darko. Why sometimes he barked and other times chose not to. Why he started digging holes so furiously, then left the excavation as suddenly as he'd started it, for no obvious reason? Did he think of Ronel as his master? His father? His friend? Maybe even as his lover?
At any rate, it was definitely no more than a list to help Ronel search, and that's why it needed a question mark of uncertainty. The first place on the list was Meir Park, where he and Darko went every morning. That was where Darko met the dogs who were his friends and enemies, not to mention his bosom buddy, the stumpy Schneider. At that late hour, there were no dogs or people in Meir Park. Only a drunk, homeless Russian dozing on a bench. Ronel presumed he was Russian not just because of the somewhat stereotypical bottle of vodka cradled in his arms, but because he kept laughing and speaking Russian in his sleep. Ronel stopped for a minute and said to himself that despite the troubles that kept plaguing him and sometimes made him feel like a latter-day Job, or at least a Job-lite, he should be grateful for what he had and thank whoever it is non-religious people thank about such things for not putting him in that Russian guy's torn, old, newspaper-stuffed shoes. The Russian's laughter grew deeper and louder, demolishing Ronel's ideas about his own relative happiness. "Who says?" Ronel asked, suddenly filled with a great truth diluted by a substantial amount of self-pity, "Who says my fate is better than his? Here I am in the same park where he's drunk and happy. And I'm neither drunk nor happy. All I have in the world is a dog who left me, a wife I don't really love, and a business..." It was actually the thought of his business that cheered him up a little. This was, after all, a period of some growth, which didn't promise boundless joy, but for now, was still preferable to newspaper in his shoes.
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