14 Degrees Below Zero Read Free Page A

everywhere. Lewis counted a half-dozen mounds before he found a clear patch of grass and unclipped Carew’s leash. He wasn’t supposed to let the dog run free in the city, but fuck it. He felt a certain sympathy for Carew’s plight—it couldn’t be easy, living with Lewis.
    Carew took off and ran a big circle in the grass. He looked back with undisguised doggy affection, his big tongue hanging out.
    Yeah yeah, Lewis. OK OK yeah.
    “Yeah, OK to you, too,” Lewis called to him. “Now go play. We have to get home soon.”
    There was another sign in the neighborhood that read: BEGIN ONE WAY . Someone had obscured two letters to make it read: GIN ONE WAY . The gag rankled him every time he saw it. The better joke, obviously, was to erase the GIN and make the sign read BE ONE WAY . Wasn’t that apparent to everyone?
    Lewis took his cell phone out of his pocket and, with surprise, realized that he was smiling. He was too emotional these days; it was as though some defensive barrier inside him had been breached and couldn’t be put in place again. For the moment it was working in his favor, though, because the sight of Carew’s mottled brown pelt gave him pleasure. He thought of the animal’s not-disagreeable smell, and the satisfying clack of his claws on the hardwood floors at home, and the feeling of Carew’s body against his when they watched TV on the sofa together. And Lewis felt all right.
    After dialing a familiar number Lewis pressed the phone against his ear and, with his free hand, fished for a cigarette in the pocket of his sweatshirt. He managed to get the thing lit before Jay picked up.
    “Hello, what?” she mumbled. “Dad?”
    For the moment he had no aches, no chills, no heaviness of heart and mind. The sound of his daughter’s voice was a warm fire on a winter day—he could melt, he could die. He lived to hear her call him Dad. He loved her like music, like light. She and Ramona were all that he lived for, and he knew how much they needed him.
    “How did you know it was me?” he asked, watching Carew digging in the grass.
    “Who else would call so early?” she said.
    “Early?” he repeated, an unintentional note of mockery in his voice. “It’s almost seven-thirty. I’m out with Carew. Isn’t Ramona out of bed yet?”
    A moment of silence.
    “Dad, it’s more like ten after seven,” Jay moaned. “Ramona’s asleep. I need to rest, Dad. You’re twenty-five years ahead of me in melatonin depletion. Is there something important you want to talk about?”
    “What do you mean, you need to rest?” Lewis asked her. “What time did you get to bed last night?”
    Another pause. Lewis had miscalculated. He shouldn’t have asked her that, at least not in that
tone.
Jay and Anna had always been major sticklers in the matter of Lewis’s
tone
—he was too cutting, too acerbic, too
something.
He wasn’t sufficiently empathetic. He had been made to understand that sometimes he
came on too strong.
He lacked warmth. The criticisms of the mother had been passed on to the daughter. At least some part of her still lived.
    “Stephen was here last night, if that’s what you mean,” Jay said. She was waking up, her voice turning sharp.
    Lewis took a drag on his cigarette. He needed to be alert. He was entering a conversational wilderness.
    “Honey, you know I didn’t mean anything,” he told her. “Did Ramona at least get to sleep at a decent hour?”
    Jay let out a long breath. “Yeah, Dad, she
did.
She’s
fine.
”
    “You make it sound like I’m giving you a hard time,” Lewis said. “Truce, all right? I just called to talk to you. It’s a beautiful morning—cloudy, but the sun’s coming out like a big bald head. You remember that song?”
    “Yeah, Dad, I do.” Softer now.
    “You should get up,” Lewis told her. “Get your day started.”
    Carew was fussily smelling trees, the grass, turds. His back twitched with the olfactory explosion of the park. Lewis winced as a plume of