"He was on the road. I didn't see."
"Well, that's obvious."
The woman turns back to her dog and dots it with kisses.
The outline of the school appears, its cream and red brick exterior lit soft like a museum closed for the night. The dog lets out two faltering cries. Jennifer turns into Barker Street and pulls outside the veterinary clinic. The gates are shut and there's a large brass padlock in place.
"It's closed."
"What are you talking about?"
"There's no one here. They probably don't work after-hours."
"Find another one."
"I don't know where else to go."
"He's dying," cries the woman.
Jennifer looks over her shoulder into the back seat, the dog is breathing hard now, its ribcage expanding with effort.
"Use Google maps," says the woman.
Jennifer hunts through her bag, but her phone isn't there.
"I don't have my phone."
"We need a proper telephone directory."
"Do they even make them anymore?"
"A gas station will have one. Hurry up would you."
Jennifer does a u-turn and the tires squeal and she guns it back in the direction they've just come from and pulls into the empty Sunoco forecourt. Jennifer looks over her shoulder and finally gets a good look at the woman, at the uncombed wildly frizzy red hair, the flecks of black mascara stuck in the creases beneath her eyes, the nose broken sometime back.
"How's he doing?"
"For God's sake, will you just bloody move it."
Jennifer gets out and half jogs into the building. An old man is sitting behind safety glass reading a battered copy of Game of Thrones, a steaming mug at his elbow. A badge is pinned to his faded knit polo. Martin B.
"Martin –" says Jennifer, breathless. "I need help."
He blinks at her.
"That ain't my name. I'm just wearing his shirt." He takes a careful sip from his mug. "You want gas or what? I ain't got all day."
"I need a phone book."
He mutters something she can't hear.
"What was that?" she says.
He puts his mug down.
"I said waste of time it's so old."
"It's better than nothing."
"Hey," he says, getting off his stool and backing away from the safety glass. "What's going on? Someone hurt?"
Jennifer follows his gaze to her hands outstretched on the counter. The left one is smeared with blood.
"I hit a dog."
He looks at her doubtfully then peers through the small rectangle window leading to the forecourt to look at the car.
"We need a vet. Hurry please, he's not in good shape."
The old man looks back at Jennifer and scratches the side of his nose.
"I'll see what I can find," he says finally.
He goes out back and Jennifer hugs her shuddering body and thinks of the lamb's wool pullover in the backseat somewhere beneath the dying dog. A moth throws itself against the naked light and drops into the old man's cup. Martin B, or whatever his name is, seems to be taking forever and Jennifer can't be sure he hasn't fled out the back door, across the corn fields, to the police station to report her as some sort of murderer but then there's a rust-induced groan and the door opens and pseudo-Martin appears with a phone book.
"Like I said, it's old. Three years at least."
He glances down at the moth in his mug, a look of disgust on his face.
"Will it fit?" says Jennifer, pointing to the safety glass opening.
The man tries but the directory's too big.
"Could you look it up for me and write it down."
He nods and leafs through the pages.
"Here we go," he says. "Big Spur Road. There's an emergency clinic there."
He tears out the page and passes it through the chute. Clutching the paper in her bloody fist, Jennifer rushes out the door and gets into the car. The smell of animal feces hit her and the dog has stopped whining.
"I don't think he's going to make it," says the woman, burying her face in Baby's fur.
"I found another place," says Jennifer. "Hold on."
She drives as fast as she can, ticking off street signs until finally the Big Spur Road sign appears on her left, but the clinic, sandwiched between a barber's shop and a Mom and Pop grocery store, lies in darkness.
"It's closed."
"Go see."
"There's no one here."
"For God's sake."
The woman gets out of the car and hits the clinic door with her fist for a full two minutes. A large black man with very thick glasses wearing a Cher in concert T-shirt appears. He comes and lifts Baby from the puddle of watery diarrhea and carries the dog inside the clinic to a small examination room.
"What happened?" he says.
Under the fluorescent light Jennifer can see a bone splinter protrude from the dog's left leg and she tries not to faint.
"She hit him with her car."
"It was an accident," says Jennifer.
"You should take better care," spits the woman.
"He was on the road!"
"He doesn't know. He's only a dog."
The vet turns to Jennifer.
"Why don't you wait outside?"
Jennifer goes and sits in the dark waiting room amongst the rawhide chews and catnip mice. She tastes something foul – excrement, blood and something else, her own sweat – and looks around for something to drink but there isn't anything, not even a toilet where she can wash her hands, so she waits in the dimly-lit silence studying rows of flea treatment packs and birdseed bells and tries not to read anything into the fact there's nothing but total silence coming from the examination room.
It's nearly an hour before they emerge.
"We'll watch him closely overnight, Lenise, and call you in the morning."
The dog is still alive. Jennifer allows herself to breathe.
"Thank you, doctor," says the woman flatly.
The vet pats her shoulder and asks Jennifer to take her home.
*
Lenise does not sit in the front, but in the back, and stares out the window in silence.
"I don't know where you live," says Jennifer, starting the engine.
"34 Pine Ridge Road."
"Really? The Jacksons' old place? That's right across the road from me. I must have missed you moving in. They've been trying to rent it for ages."
The woman says nothing so Jennifer just drives and steals looks in the rearview at the hooked-nose profile and thin-lipped mouth and hand stroking the empty space where the dog had been.
When they pull up at number 34 Jennifer turns around.
"Lenise – is that your name? I'm Jennifer. I just wanted to say how sorry I am about all of this, truly sorry."
Lenise pauses, her fingers coiled round the door handle.
"I know you've been drinking," she says. "I can smell it."
Then she gets out of the car, and walks swiftly, with purpose, up the path and into her house.
3
Lenise Jameson can't sleep. The temperature seems wildly out of control and she flips between blankets on, blankets off, blankets on, blankets off until she finally gives up and tosses them aside and lies there in the center of the bed curled up like a whorl on a fingertip. She can't get the image of him out of her head, hurt, those sweet, soulful eyes pleading for help.