I could hear their lovemaking (I watched Ernie walk in front of me, tall and dark, the red rose still in her thick hair. Just a little further to go. I saw her move through the crowd. Something caught her eye and she turned her head with that rehearsed detachment. The street lights echoed off her as she went on, and further ahead Union Station’s glowing columns and brilliant clock burned her shadow into the street, as if she were walking into the light of god) from the car. I could see into the house, its shabby furniture, its modest size. "Don't wake my kid," Maryann said before they pushed through the door leaving it open.
I took off my shoes, my heels freshly cut from the new shoe leather. I looked around. The small houses had bars on their windows and fences separated each property. The road in front of me lobbed into a hill, beyond which I could see downtown's skyline cast softly by the incessant glow of the highway just below.
Exhausted, I suddenly hit the wall. The night's events, manic and chaotic - Michael and Ernestine, her wedding, the curse she passed to me now fully realized, then later the bar and now Maryann and Michael at her house in North Denver and me in the car - all came to a sudden halt (Ernie's face was pasted on my brain; her wedding dress long and pearl-like, everyone dancing around her. Slowly the colorful beautiful people faded away one by one, the voices and music ceased into silence, lonely and defiant, until all the light and all color and all the silence centered around her standing on the dance floor, stirring her gown with her slender fingers. What to do now what to do now? The belief of god is real when you’re at the bottom of the food chain because survival of the fittest is for the strong. The evolution of enduring chromosomologic traits from generation to generation to increase the chance of coitus and finally reproduction – is for those who prevail. But the weak have the curse of hope and god and Ernie had the curse put on me, blueprinting me even now.
At Michael's behest I accompanied him to Ernie's wedding. My shoes hurt like hell even in the beginning when Pachabel's canon played during the procession.
"I gonna make her wish it was me up there," Michael said. He played the part of the old reconciled ex well. This was the moment he waited for. First to receive his ex-lover, the bride, in an act of unorthodox etiquette – standing tall and intractable in a dark suit, black shirt and sunglasses, a blood red rose stuffed in his breast pocket, obviously late to a wedding and grossly oblivious to that fact.
But I knew Ernie invited him to make peace with herself, to finally bury what she rid herself of. But Michael and his blueprint was now mapped on me since she cried in my arms one night, tears running like faucets and me saying it will be okay when I knew it would not be.
It was the last time I'd see her. Married now, and Michael exacting his last revenge on her, left me with the terror of what I feared most. Ernie in pain. Just before we left her wedding, Michael whispered in Ernie's ear and walked away. I turned and followed Michael out. I glanced back and there Ernie stood, enfeebled, in the middle of her dance floor.
I didn’t ask Michael what he said to her. During the entire car ride Michael didn’t mentioned Ernie and all for the better because she was cursed and that goddamn curse was on me and I carried it and I didn’t have enough booze in me yet to kill what wasn’t even mine (even though she did), to stave it off for just a little while yet. She couldn't tell Michael because she loved him and couldn't corrupt that love. But she spilled his burden from her into me, and so she cursed me like a magi, a spell I can't get rid of because she laughs with a laugh that reveals more than her eyes.
Downtown we met Maryann, a waitress at the PourHouse, and drank with her between orders. I sat there, drunk and lonely thinking of Ernie on that dance floor. Thinking that right here at this table many months ago, I told Michael. He in that chair and I in this one, telling him what Ernie did. Because I looked like a priest and she cursed me by telling me and I was going to curse Michael by telling him but he sat there still, not scornful, not surprised, just still and looked at me and I knew the curse did not catch and I knew for sure Michael vanquished the curse as soon as he heard it because he was looking at Maryann bringing our drinks and then he smiled at her and after a while they left together for the first time many months ago and I was alone that night and from then on with that irrevocable curse and Ernie killed it away but you really can’t killing anything away that you hear and see).
Michael said he'd be five minutes, he was going to walk drunken Maryann to her door. But I knew what that meant so I tossed my shoes in the back seat and settled in the car.
Wisps of Ernie lulled me into a slumber once again when something stirred to my right. I turned. At the foot of Maryann's porch stood a German Sheppard. It's large eyes glowed at me. It made no sounds, no movements whatsoever. He just stood steadfast, watching, and for a moment there, the house seemed to have been built around the majestic animal, forever anchored in that spot. His thick fur hung around his neck like a king's robe, almost venerable. I could see him perfectly. He was absolutely still, only his nose flaps flared with each breath, which was steady and controlled.
Then in one leap he dashed through gate and into the street. He turned and looked at me again. As soon as I stepped outside, he ran.
"Maryann, your dog's out here," I yelled. "Maryann?"
I ran after him. With each stride I lost traction, donating skin to the street, slipping and trying to keep up, running and sliding.
He stopped at the intersection and turned to look a me. I skidded to a stop, panting. I knew I would never catch him. I composed myself and tried to approach him. He backed-up, pranced and sputtered in his tracks, then took off.
I saw him jump over a fence then I lost him in the dark. I heard the sound of a heavy mass crashing against chain-linked fence. The dog squealed. A long cry, then rustling and a thud. Then he moaned. I found him on the other side of the fence. The razor wire on top was wet. Through the fence he didn't move, his eyes watching me, his moan flushing through his limp tongue.
The razor wire made it impossible to climb over. I made my way around the fence until I found a gate and went to the dog. I looked at him, then at Maryann’s house. I was about a hundred feet away; the light shined from the open door. I took my jacket off and tried to cover the dog. He snapped and bit my hand, the fleshly part just below the thumb. I went to touch him again, my bloodied hand pet his fur. He stopped moaning. I looked down. The wire sliced his belly. I scooped up whatever I could.
I wrapped my jacket tightly around his body and picked him up and ran back to the car. I set his limp body in the back seat. His breathing slowed
Inside the house, Michael was behind Maryann. "The keys," I said.
"Oh my God," Maryann said.
"What the hell happened to you?" Michael screamed. I yanked the keys from his pants and went out the door.
I sped towards the highway just below the hill. The 911operator directed me to an emergency vet. I eased my foot off the gas and listened for the dog's breathing. Nothing.
I was crying (My mother always told me I looked like a priest, I said and Ernie laughed for the first time breaking the flow of tears and when I cupped her face softly the tears came back and streamed furiously over my hands and I kissed her on her forehead, cursed now, but still it was a forehead belonging to her and she was Ernie only cursed inside but Ernie on the outside. It’s okay that you told me because I look like a priest and you trust me and I will help you and she kissed me back and then I felt the curse on me transmogrified and heavy and once you know you can’t forget, cannot forget because she told you out of everyone and makes you not only an accomplice but arbitrator, judge, and condemner).
I got to the vet’s and ran inside with the dog hanging in my arms. The technicians took him from me and laid him on a gurney and rolled him in a room.
I walked outside and sat on the curb. I lit a cigarette and my movements triggered the automatic doors. The florescent bulbs buzzed above me, the parking lot was vacant. I didn’t want that dog to die. Not this way (Not this way, Ernie chanted over and over. I hugged her and we swayed together like two monks in prayer. Not this way because she loved Michael and now it was gone and not this way with the women I loved who cursed me because I loved her unconditionally even though she was blueprinted by another man, my friend - because I loved her irrevocably and final and she knew it and cursed me because of it and knew she cursed me when she saw the burden would kill me too me too me too me).
The vet woke me. Outside the sun was just about to rise.
“Are you responsible for this animal?" she said.
I thought hard.
"Yes."
