Chapter 13

The next morning, Echo picked up Eros and me so that we could check on Phoenix before she got too wrapped up in the day to have the time. We found out that Phoenix's leg had been broken and untreated for at least six months and she was going to need to have it amputated because the infection had spread further than they had initially thought. Echo's demeanor darkened at the news, and I felt gut-sick over the money she was forking out because I really had no idea if I would be able to pay her back. Once the operation was all scheduled and there were no questions left to ask, we left to go back to the apartment Eros and I shared.

“You know, that really pisses me off.” Echo said suddenly, in a forceful voice that I had never heard her use before in all of my days of unintentional eavesdropping. Eros started and looked over at her.
“What, babe?” she asked, concern leaking into her voice.
“How her leg has been broken for so long without anybody even doing anything about it. It's so fucking typical!” Echo clutched the steering wheel and inhaled deeply. “I mean, she's lucky they didn't just kill her right off.”
“What are you talking about?” Eros frowned. “Why would they do that? I thought the vet tried to save animals, not kill them over broken legs...that's really stupid.”
“I know it's really stupid, I'm not talking about the vet.” Echo said, glancing from the road to Eros. “I'm talking about the fucks who race greyhounds. Once the dog breaks its leg it's no good to them anymore so a lot of the time what happens is they just kill them. Snag a life and throw it in the trash like it's a potato chip that fell on the floor.” She gripped the steering wheel in an outward display of disgust.
“Even the ones that aren't hurt are allowed only so much human contact and raised in pens that aren't climate controlled so there's the high risk of them either freezing or being overheated. But they're just money with legs to those people so it doesn't even matter.” She continued.
I almost wished she wouldn't. I was getting sick to my stomach, and car rides have never been easy on me anyway.
“Once they're finally retired and given the chance to actually be a dog instead of a remote-controlled human luxury, some of them are sent to adoption centers but there are so many of them that there are still thousands of them not adopted out that have to be put to sleep.”
Echo spoke passionately. She had become a public service announcement that I didn't want to hear. I grew more and more angry at myself with her every word for letting the New York City dummy go on unpunished. I was responsible for Phoenix, whether she was legally mine or not. Otherwise I never would have found her, she would never have been saved. I was more determined than ever to take care of her for the rest of her life and get the money to pay Echo for all that she had done.

Echo dropped us off and left to go to some class that was less than interesting enough to remember. When we got inside the front door, Eros and I exchanged a worried look. I had already been feeling this strong sense of presentiment in the back of my heart, and I hoped that this wasn't going to be the scene it was meant to play out. We could hear Dyce in the bathroom, screaming at herself in the mirror, playing the acoustic guitar that she and Cage shared. Playing violently. We closed the door quietly as we listened, trying to make ourselves as nonexistent as possible. She coarsely described her eyes and her smile and the way that others see them compared to the way that she saw them, the way that Cage saw them, the way her ugly-fucking-mother saw them. According to Dyce, humanity saw her as a one-dimensional surface to be walked on, labeled as this kind of walkway or that, dirtied, wiped clean, and repeat. Cage saw her soul, all the good parts that could never be lost in the oblivion of every day life. No matter who or what dirtied her up, he could wipe her clean, and still not pay attention to the grime left under his fingernails because to him, she was perfect no matter what. And her cunt mother just saw her eyes as needy, her smile as sycophantic, saw her as the three and a half year old leech that she had left at the daycare center, contacted 12 years later with empty promises of love and repentance-inspired trips to the zoo, and ultimately left reabandoned. She ended it with a frantic prayer. As she let the words spill out of her in short sobs, I could imagine her teetering unsteadily with her jaw arched toward the ceiling, her fists clenched, her soul ablaze, and I hated the world.
It was hard to tell if she was sober or not, the way that Dyce was. Sometimes when she was binging she would lock herself in the bathroom for hours writing and scribbling and strumming away at that guitar. Eros probably assumed that she was all doped up, but I had the feeling that she was completely sober and had probably just had a bad day. Cage wasn't anywhere around, so she might have just been feeling lost. He was her whole world, only it wasn't as pathetic as it sounds because she was his, too. They were always hovering around each other with an unhealthy-seeming devotion, a fact that at first I found revolting and really hard to stomach because it seemed like all they did was have sex and stay curled together in their bedroom when they weren't off doing the Madame's bidding. Eventually though I got used to the way they were and it became an almost comfortable norm. They were Cage and Dyce. They were each other's. Eternally. They were addiction personified.
And don't get me wrong, they were not just addicts of each other. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I would come back to the apartment to find them sprawled out right on the living room floor surrounded by dirty needles and pipes, Dyce draped like a doll over Cage's bare torso, Cage's mouth partially open, both equally lost in their own individual delirium. Sometimes they talked seriously about dying together, in just that position, Dyce draped over Cage's torso, clinging as though if she let go and they drifted apart the earth would shatter beneath them like ice.
They would die together, there was no other option.
Dyce saw life as a series of painful moments, monotonous ups and downs, a game that some lost, some won, and everybody else cheated at. Everything but Cage was just another dice rolled, a square to land on, and a consequence to live through until you finally reached the end of the game board. It kind of worried me sometimes the way that she assumed that life was just a game to pass the time until she died. And any shrink knows that there isn't a lot you can do once someone realizes the triviality of living...especially to convince them that something as small as the full harvest moon harbors the beautiful humbling majesty of existence and is worth staying awake to see. She refused to be humbled- strung out in an alley, yes, a puppet to her own lack of control, yes, but a big ol' no to humbled- and to me the fact symbolized that when it came down to it, she was beyond repair. I couldn't make her care about life or herself, things like her health and her future, as much as she cared about Cage and being obscured by her choice narcotic and having enough to last the rest of the month as well.
There wasn't anything I could do. People go through life guilt-tripping themselves about how they failed someone somewhere down their course of existence, how it's their fault that bad things happened and berating their decisions and actions or inaction with all the self-loathing pain in the world. I guess yes, sometimes blame is on your shoulders, but the truth is, some of us are just poisoned. Born to detonate. And there's really nothing you can do about it. All the loving words and nudges in the right direction you can muster will not keep someone determined to self-destruct from self-destructing. In fact, sometimes all it does is push too hard, cause more chaos, and set the detonation time from fifty seconds to fifteen.