She laughed. “That’s the introduction. How we have to have trust in”—she paused—”in logic, if we want to understand the true nature of reality. The whole book is more a history of the theory of life. From a cosmological perspective. For a general audience. It doesn’t prove anything new, just shows that our standard of proof is questionable, and so—”
She sounded like she wanted to convince me of something she didn’t entirely believe or understand herself. She was looking over my head, considering how to start over and say it again, whether to bother. She opened her mouth, closed it.
“You probably have a degree in English or something,” I told her.
She theatrically frowned. “You’ve been spying on my past!”
I pointed at the manuscript on the counter. “I saw the way you make corrections. Like a teacher.”
“Oh, my worst nightmare,” she groaned. “Teaching Milton to high schoolers.” She put her hand on my arm. “No offense.”
“That’s okay.”
Then she was back to stroking the cat, and in a jagged motion I reached over to touch him as well. As I did my pocket gaped open, and a few kernels of popcorn dribbled to the floor.
“Shit,” I murmured, kneeling down.
And just like that, Patra was on her knees helping me. The cat squirreled under the couch.
I watched Patra pop two stray kernels, absentmindedly, into her mouth. Then she caught my eye and her face reddened. “That was gross. Right? That was gross.”
In fact she was pretty, her smile lifting me out of myself.
“Not really.”
I sprinkled a few more kernels on the floor and ate them. When Patra smiled for real, her lips whitened and disappeared into her face. Up close, I saw she had down on her upper lip, brown freckles merging into spots on her eyelids. She had three parallel creases on her forehead, which almost, but not quite, smoothed away when she grinned. She ate another kernel when I set it on the floor and then another and another, smiling as she did. For the first time then, for the first time since we’d met, it occurred to me that she might be lonely.
5
HERE’S WHAT I DREAM ABOUT MOST NOW. The dogs. Trying to get my numb fingers around the tricky latches of their chains. Cracking open the ice in their bowls so they can have a drink. In my dreams, I do it with a stick, or the business end of an ax, or the heel of my boot. There’s a problem, I need to do this fast. In my dreams, I’m always getting back so late. I’m always coming around the last bend of the lake long after dark, pushing away branches, and there they are in a huddle by the house: too small to be dogs, somehow. They look more like rats or crows or scrabbling children—half crouching in some ditch of snow they’ve made. They’ve licked the ice from their paws, only to have the saliva seal ice again over the pads, which they’ve chewed until they’re bleeding. They’re whining, their chains are wrapped around their legs: you know how these dreams go. In reality, of course, my father brought them into the shed and fed them when I didn’t come home on time. But in my dreams, I see ice hanging from their muzzles like fangs. I see them catch sight of me in the woods, and their love is ravenous. They lunge and snarl. They’re so happy to see me.
*
It was a dog that found the stash of pictures in Mr. Grierson’s California apartment, actually. I’d read about it in the North Star Gazette the week after Mr. Grierson was fired. He’d sublet his apartment to some college student with a cocaine habit, and, according to the article, the local police had recently started a canine program with funds from a rich breeder of English bulldogs. Everyone was very proud of the program, which defied breed expectations. The crimes editor at the Gazette must have made some calls to Fertile Hollow, California, because there were lots of quotes about bulldogs in the article. “We misapprehend the true nature of these dogs,” the rich breeder said, “when we put booties on their feet and climb into bed with them. Give them a mission! Don’t make them into Riding Hood’s grandmother.”
It was an English bulldog named Nestlé Crunch who, in less than twenty minutes, found a kilo of cocaine in the college kid’s sock drawer and a shoebox of dirty pictures beneath the bathroom sink. The shoebox was a lucky find, not part of the initial drug investigation. Still, there was no question about what the pictures showed or whose they were. “Minors,” the article said. Minors in fat envelopes addressed to Mr. Adam Grierson of West Palm Blvd. Who knows why he left them there after he came to Minnesota or why, for that matter, he used his real name. The article was fuzzy about the unsavory parts, oddly upbeat and cheerful as it went on, focusing less on Mr. Grierson and his arrest than on the triumph of the dog who found him out. In the end, Nestlé Crunch of Fertile Hollow was promoted to sergeant and given a gold shield, a week’s vacation, and a police hat full of Milk-Bones.
*
There was nothing in that first article—or any of the early police reports—about Mr. Grierson and a student. There was nothing about Gone Lake or a kiss. But that didn’t stop the rumors.