The Drop Read Free

around a stranger.
    “I don’t know,” Bob said. “How about Francie Hedges?”
    She shook her head. “You know the Sullivans?”
    That wouldn’t narrow it down. Not around here. You shook a tree, a Sullivan fell out. Followed by a six-pack most times. “I know a bunch.”
    This was going nowhere, the puppy looking at him, shaking worse than the girl.
    “Hey,” she said, “you live in this parish?”
    “Next one over.” He tilted his head to the left. “Saint Dom’s.”
    “Go to church?”
    “Most Sundays.”
    “So you know Father Pete?”
    “Pete Regan,” he said, “sure.”
    She produced a cell phone. “What’s your name?”
    “Bob,” he said. “Bob Saginowski.”
    She raised her cell phone and took his picture. He hadn’t even known it was happening or he at least would have run a hand through his hair.
    Bob waited as she stepped back from the light, phone to one ear, finger pressed into the other. He stared at the puppy. The puppy stared back, like, How did I get here ? Bob touched its nose with his index finger. The puppy blinked its huge eyes. For a moment, Bob couldn’t recall his sins.
    “That picture just went out,” she said from the darkness. “To Father Pete and six other people.”
    Bob stared into the darkness, said nothing.
    “Nadia,” the girl said and stepped back into the light. “Bring him up here, Bob.”
    THEY WASHED IT IN Nadia’s sink, dried it off, and brought it to her kitchen table.
    Nadia was small. A bumpy rope of a scar ran across the base of her throat. It was dark red, the smile of a drunk circus clown. She had a tiny moon of a face, savaged by pockmarks, and small, heart-pendant eyes. Shoulders that didn’t cut so much as dissolve at the arms. Elbows like flattened beer cans. A yellow bob of hair curled on either side of her oval face. “It’s not a boxer.” Her eyes glanced off Bob’s face before dropping the puppy back onto her kitchen table. “It’s an American Staffordshire terrier.”
    Bob knew he was supposed to understand something in her tone, but he didn’t know what that thing was, so he remained silent.
    She glanced back up at him after the quiet lasted too long. “A pit bull.”
    “That’s a pit bull?”
    She nodded and swabbed the puppy’s head wound again. Someone had pummeled it, she’d told Bob. Probably knocked it unconscious, assumed it was dead, and dumped it.
    “Why?” Bob said.
    She looked at him, her round eyes getting rounder, wider. “Just because.” She shrugged, went back to examining the dog. “I worked at Animal Rescue once. You know the place on Shawmut? As a vet tech? Before I decided it wasn’t my thing. They’re so hard, this breed . . .”
    “What?”
    “To adopt out,” she said. “It’s very hard to find them a home.”
    “I don’t know about dogs. I never had a dog. I live alone. I just was walking by the barrel.” Bob found himself beset by a desperate need to explain himself, explain his life. “I’m just not . . .” He could hear the wind outside, black and rattling. Rain or bits of hail spit against the windows. Nadia lifted the puppy’s back left paw—the other three paws were brown, but this one was white with peach spots. She dropped the paw as if it were contagious. She went back to the head wound, took a closer look at the right ear, a piece missing from the tip that Bob hadn’t noticed until now.
    “Well,” she said, “he’ll live. You’re gonna need a crate and food and all sorts of stuff.”
    “No,” Bob said. “You don’t understand.”
    She cocked her head, gave him a look that said she understood perfectly.
    “I can’t. I just found him. I was gonna give him back.”
    “To whoever beat him, left him for dead?”
    “No, no, like, the authorities.”
    “That would be Animal Rescue,” she said. “After they give the owner seven days to reclaim him, they’ll—”
    “The guy who beat him? He gets a second chance?”
    She gave him a half frown and a nod. “ If