The Dust of 100 Dogs - A. S. King [42]
He searched the beach all morning but couldn’t see her. He even tried on some other women for size, but none of them fit like she did. The rest were ordinary, anyway, and he’d had plenty of ordinary women in his life already. His thoughts wandered back to a time in his past when no woman could resist him—a time when college girls were easy and date rape hadn’t yet been invented—the time of his life. How many girls had he lured into his trap? Ten? Twenty? Fifty? He used to keep count. Had it ended at seventy-six? Seventy-six in four and a half years, not counting summers—or his year in love with Penny—averaged two and a half per month. “Only one every two weeks, Fred. You could have done better.”
Life on the island had made up for that. So many tourist seasons had passed, each with dozens of conquests, that Fred could barely contain his elation at the thought of counting them all.
But they were all ordinary women, like the ones on the beach. Some firm and sexy, yes. Some young and pretty, yes. But ordinary. None of them better than any other and none of them elegant or graceful or interesting like Sarah.
By the time Rusty returned for more beatings, it was three thirty. Winston was due back at five, and Fred had wasted his day watching women he would never get close enough to touch from his second story floor-to-ceiling window. Rusty scratched at the rear entrance four or five times before Fred got up to let him in.
“Welcome home, asshole,” he said as Rusty pranced past him, then slammed the door and followed the dog to the kitchen.
Rusty sat by the cupboard, obediently seeking food, as Fred jotted a quick note that read, Your dog is an asshole, and then continued on, leaving his dirty cups and dishes for Winston. He kicked off his boxer shorts in the hallway and went directly to the shower.
When he returned, Rusty was still sitting there, wincing a little with each excited breath. Fred looked at the clock in the kitchen and faced the dog. “He’ll be home in an hour or two. You can wait, like I did all morning,” he said, then walked back to his office and shut the door. He checked his messages and opened a large planning map before him.
On the days he wasted over the years, Fred took to making himself feel better by looking at how much he owned. He’d bought up eighty percent of the beachfront land on Billy’s Bay, and now offered it at ridiculous prices to businessmen from Europe who didn’t know any better. Most of it was completely covered in thick vegetation and sea grape groves.
He rolled the map back into a tight tube and sat in his Italian, pastel-yellow, leather desk chair, which he spun to face the beach again. Rusty moved from the kitchen to the office door and rested his head on his paws. They both fell asleep, waiting for Winston.
A deep, sudden bark woke Fred from his slouched position in the chair. He bolted upright and wiped the slobber from his chin. Rusty had already gone to the door and bounced on Winston, who acted happy to see him and scratched him behind the ears. The dog bounded after Winston into the kitchen, where an extra-large portion of dog food was put before him. He set to work eating it.
Winston looked around at the mess one man could make in seventy-two hours. Fred had used every cup in the house, all of them still half full with sweet instant coffee gone cold. A pair of socks was thrown over a barstool, a wet towel grew musty in a ball on the floor. Mundane notes scrawled on scraps of paper lay everywhere: Do laundry more often or buy me more boxers—Your dog is an asshole—Your