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Frank's a little edgy as he follows Karen into her apartment. He’s only been here once before, when he first tracked her down. Since then it’s mostly been down by the river. Someplace outside, someplace… safer he has to admit. It’s safer when it’s dark, when the cold and the threat of some asshole walking by means they have to keep things short. A few times he’s played homeless down by her office. Last couple times, she offered to buy him a cup of coffee. Last time, he accepted.
But he’s stayed away from her apartment. Her space. To keep her safe, Frank’s told himself, in case anyone’s watching, and knows that’s not entirely true.
It’s just like he remembers it, as she opens the door and drops her keys in the little porcelain bowl just next to it. Warm. Small — studio, but she’s fudged it into a one bedroom, sticking her bed in a small alcove by the window. Nicer than her old place. He’d only seen that right before it was blown to hell, but he remembered it looking a little spare, a little hollow. The kind of place someone crashes when they can’t afford anything better. She can afford a little better now — reporter must pay more than paralegal to two do-good lawyers — but more that she’s had time to settle. The worn couch, weathered coffee table that’s been sanded and refinished, a tall honeycombed bookcase that looks like it’s been salvaged from a thrift shop, spilling over with books. Frank’s glancing over the books, wondering if it’s a bad idea to borrow one — and deciding it probably is — when there’s movement in the small shadowed alcove of her bedroom. A low, heavy shape pops up in those shadows and — Karen gasps, “Frank, what?” as he jerks her back — charges for them. But even as he has his gun out, aiming, recognition hits.
So does the dog, doing that high-pitched excited yelping thing as it tries to jump up on him, pawing at his legs, straining to lick his hands, arms, anything it could reach.
He was not expecting the dog.
“Jesus, Frank.” Karen puts one hand his arm, hooking the dog’s collar with the other to pull it back. The mutt shifts its attention to her, almost knocking her off balance on those skinny heels — and then pinballs back to him, straining against her hold. Whimpering now. Automatically Frank shh-shh-shhh s it, like he did when he first found it, alone and bloody in that alley. The mutt strains for him again, breaking Karen’s hold, and it’s a dark grey bullet, tongue lolling as it tries to burrow into him.
“What the hell is this?” he demands, jamming the gun back into the waistband of his jeans. But it’s hard to sound tough when there’s a back alley mutt rolling around at your feet, acting like a giant puppy.
The look Karen gives him is long and wry. “It’s a dog.”
“Hell, I can see that, Karen.” The mutt wriggles around him, barreling through his legs, trying to lean into him and wag its stump of a tail at the same time. It didn’t have much of a tail left; he’d never figured out what happened to it, but he could see the faded patches of fur along its side where the old gunshot wounds had healed. “This is my dog.”
“Yeah, well.” Karen waves a hand at her apartment.
“You took in my dog.” The mutt shoves his head under Frank’s hand, and he scratches behind the ragged stumps of what’s left of its ears without thinking. The miserable thing was never going to win any beauty pageants, but it looks a helluva lot better than the last time he’d seen it. Coat was clean, glossy, and it’d put on enough meat that he couldn’t count every rib.
“He needed a home.” Karen says it lightly, as if it’s no big thing.
It’s not, Frank knows that, so he’s not sure why it knocked him onto his back foot. “When did you — he wasn’t here last time.”
Now it’s the dog’s turn to get one of Karen’s looks. “No, because he was at the vet — because he keeps eating every disgusting thing he finds on the street, if you’re not quick enough.” She glances at him. “I took him in after… Animal control was going to put him down. Said he couldn’t be re-homed. Said he didn’t play well with others,” she adds with a pointed smile.
“That so?” And there’s no surprise, none, that Karen would take it upon herself to prove them wrong. “You take in every stray you meet?”
She rolls her eyes as she crosses to the kitchen, pulls them out both a beer. “Let’s just call it a mutually beneficial arrangement,” she counters, popping off the bottle caps. “He gets three square meals and I let him sleep on the bed. And after everything that happened, I figured I could use something big and scary to watch my back.”
“Yeah, well.” Frank clears his throat, tries to cover it by leaning down to rub the mutt’s head. “He looks good. Friendly,” he adds dryly as the mutt tries to jump on him once again.
“He’s not, usually,” Karen remarks, setting her beer down and stepping forward when the mutt nearly knocks a leg out from under him. “Here, boy. C’mon… Frank, here.”
The mutt perks up, dashes to her immediately. She ducks to scratch it’s cheeks, that long spill of gold hair falling in front of her face. On purpose, he knows, cause when she chances a glance back at him, her cheeks are flushed.
Karen blushing. He doesn’t want to like it as much as he does. Still, he’s grinning. “I’m flattered.”
“Don’t be. It wasn’t on purpose. He wouldn’t answer to anything else. People at the pound called him Killer,” and there’s a brief hitch in her voice before she says it. Frank shrugs, though it tastes a little bitter. He knows what he is. Not fair taking it out on the mutt, though. “When I took him in, I tried half a dozen names. Spot, Rover, Bigfoot, that sort of thing. Then Foggy called, and we were talking about your case, and he got excited when…” It’s her turn to shrug now. “I think he thought it meant you were coming.”
“That right?” He crouches down and holds out a hand, and it’s all the encouragement the mutt needs to come scrambling back over to him and try to wedge his massive head under Frank’s arm.
“So,” Karen says, handing Frank his beer. “What do you need me to look into this time?”
“Um. I’m working construction, out in Queens. Company that runs it, feels kinda shady, you know. I, uh, grabbed some files from the manager’s office.” He’s still wearing his backpack, and it’s a tricky thing to set his beer down and control the mutt with one hand as he swings it off. Karen takes it from him and pulls the files out. “I thought maybe you could look over them and, you know.” She looks amused when he nods towards the flowers that are still there, still blooming, on her coffee table. “If you found anything.”
“Or… you could save yourself some time and trouble, and just stay for a bit. I could look over these right now. After all, I didn’t really have anything exciting planned for tonight.”
It takes Frank a moment before he can nod. Before he can let himself say, “Yeah. Sure. Appreciate it.”
“Great.” Karen clears her throat a little awkwardly and strides to her kitchen, digging out a paper menu. “I was going to order some Chinese. There’s a place around the corner that’s not totally terrible. You hungry?” The last is a little too casual.
He is. More than he wants to be. He pictures the two of them, on her couch or standing across from each other at the tiny island in her kitchen, and for the first time in a real long time he feels hungry. “Taking in strays?”
Karen tilts her head, and the smile she gives him is full-on sardonic. “It’s just Szechuan chicken, Frank.”
He feels it in the twist in his gut, wanting it, and he knows he should say no. No ’d be safer. “Yeah. Okay.”
“Okay,” she says, and this smile is smaller, personal, as she dips her head to hide it. She hands him the menu as she heads to the couch, a sigh escaping as she sits to pull off her heels. Immediately the mutt is there, scrabbling up beside her, laying it’s huge, ugly head in her lap, and her face softens into a smile that’s sunlight. Frank feels something twist in his gut as he watches her, stroking, soothing this back alley mutt that the Irish mob used to use to chew up anyone they didn’t want poking around their business. The abject adoration on the mutt’s face as she scratches it just behind it’s scarred, stumpy ears.
Karen Page does take in strays. Not in a savior, cooing, bullshit baby-bird kind of way. She takes them in because she sees them. All the cast-off pieces of shit that most people look past. Sees the mud caked on their skin, and the blood underneath their fingernails, and the wounds, and the scars, and the rage, sees it all and doesn’t blink. She looks like a goddamn Disney princess, and she digs in like a warrior, and she seeks out the monsters and let’s them know they’re not alone.
His beer bottle is a little too loud against her counter as he sets it down. Karen glances up at him quickly, and then away. She’s already nodding before he says, “Actually, I forgot. I, uh, need to go see a man about — ”
“A dog?” Her voice is quiet, but there isn’t any judgement. Just… knowing. Karen gets it, though it’d be a helluva lot easier if she didn’t.
“Yeah,” Frank says, feeling whatever it is — expectation, hope, fear — sink. Better this way, he tells himself. For her. For him.
She nods again. “Yeah.”
“Thanks about the — ” He gestures to the beer or the dog, not sure what he’s trying to say, and he can’t stay to figure it out.
He leaves before he can change his mind. He leaves before he can regret it.