Summary
Winter comes and makes life harder for Enzo. The cold weather exacerbates his joint pain. When he looks out the window of their new apartment, he longs to be a human and to interact with the pedestrians walking by. In his old age, he feels more trapped by his dog body than ever before. He feels inadequate as a companion and friend to Denny because of his inability to speak.
One winter night, while walking back to their apartment from Volunteer Park, Enzo lags behind Denny. The snow on the ground slows him down. Denny calls for Enzo on one side of an empty street, and Enzo runs to him; but then, out of nowhere, a car drives over a hill. The driver slams on the brakes, but a little too late, and the car still swipes Enzo.
The car belongs to a teenage boy, who upon hitting Enzo gets out of the car and panics. Denny coaches the boy through the situation. Denny says he knows it was an accident, and the important thing is to focus on getting Enzo to the vet.
Chapter 47 consists entirely of Enzo describing the death of Ayrton Senna, a racecar driver who advocated for better track conditions and higher safety standards for drivers. Ironically, Senna himself was killed while driving in the San Marino Grand Prix in 1994 when his car lifted off the track on a turn and he was impaled by a beam. Mysteriously little information and evidence exist around Senna’s death, and Enzo speculates that this is because the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile deliberately destroyed evidence to prevent having to cancel the race and lose money. At the end of the short chapter, Enzo claims that Ayrton Senna died because he had fulfilled his purpose in life: to advance the safety of other racecar drivers. Enzo relates the anecdote to his own life by claiming that he was spared from dying when the car struck him because he had not yet served his purpose in life.
Enzo suffers a cracked pelvis from the accident, but the vet says he will make a full recovery. The problem becomes the cost of the emergency vet visit, which comes to $812.00. Denny offers up his debit card, but the charge is declined. He explains that there must be a mistake, because he made a deposit that morning. The vet allows him to make a partial payment and then pay the rest in the morning. Denny asks if he can keep twenty dollars in his account for gas. The whole situation deeply humiliates him, and when he and Enzo return home, Denny is despondent. He tells Enzo that The Evil Twins have won. They financially ruined him, and he admits to Enzo that he does not know if he can keep fighting.
A short time after the visit to the vet and Denny’s subsequent loss of hope, he and Enzo go to Mike and Tony’s house, where Denny prepares to sign over custody of Zoë to her grandparents. He would still get Zoë every other weekend and on certain holidays, and the rape charge would be dropped to misdemeanor harassment. Denny agrees to sign because he feels like he has no other choice, but Enzo thinks it is crazy to sign when Denny is innocent, so he takes action. Just as Denny is about to write his signature, Enzo charges the table and snaps up the documents into his mouth. Denny, Mike, and Tony chase after Enzo, but he jumps out of a window to escape them. When they corner him in the yard, Enzo urinates on the documents. After this wild display of displeasure, Denny realizes that Enzo is right; he should not sign over custody when he has done nothing wrong. He denies Maxwell and Trish’s settlement and goes home to watch old racing tapes of Ayrton Senna with Enzo.
When Enzo turns 10 years old, Denny is still struggling with his court cases. Enzo’s hip dysplasia worsened from the car accident, but he conceals his pain to prevent Denny from paying for more treatment. Denny lands a job teaching driving classes at Pacific Raceways to help pay for legal fees, and sometimes he brings Enzo with him to work. One day, while his class takes their lunch break, a man named Luca Pantoni pays a visit to Denny on the track. Luca works for Ferrari, and he had dinner with Denny and Eve years ago, when Denny was on a hot racing streak. Luca heard about Denny’s struggles and admires the way he is fighting through them. He offers Denny a job with Ferrari in Italy, working at a dealership and test-driving new models. Denny explains that he is honored, but with his current legal situation, he is not able to leave the country. Luca understands, and says he will keep the job open for Denny until his legal issues are resolved.
Analysis
This section underscores the connection between Enzo’s rapid aging and his longing to be human. In the introduction to Chapter 46, Enzo ponders why this winter has been particularly difficult. He suspects his hip condition has something to do with it. The cold weather makes his joints ache, the stairs up to their apartment make the simple act of coming and going home painful, and overall, he is just tired of this life as a dog. And once again, in the midst of explaining his sorrows, Enzo mentions the recurring idea of auto-manifestation: “That which we manifest is before us” (253).
This theme of willing one’s situation blends New Age spiritual practices like positive visualization with Buddhism and creates a tension between Enzo’s perception of chaos, as symbolized by the sadistic zebra plushie, and his belief that living things are responsible for random circumstances due to their attitude. Enzo explicitly blames his own downtrodden state of mind for being hit by the car, just like he blames Eve’s inability to face her sickness for her eventual death.
The fact that the car hits Enzo because of unseasonably icy conditions on the road fits perfectly into the overarching analogy of the book, which is racing in the rain. This novel repeatedly proposes that life itself is much like a race, and every person drives their life much like a car. When that teenager hits Enzo with his car, the kid freaks out, but Denny remains calm. The novel also proposes that the mastery of a racecar driver lies in their ability to react to unanticipated circumstances. Denny coaches the boy through driving to the emergency vet. So, the crisis of Enzo being hit by the car serves as a microcosm of the extended metaphor which drives the novel forward, no pun intended.
The following chapter describing Ayrton Senna’s untimely death further demonstrates Enzo’s quasi-Buddhist brand of spirituality. By proposing that Senna’s whole life purpose boils down to his role in improving the safety conditions for racecar drivers, Enzo seems to argue for predestination, but then at the end of the chapter, he communicates his belief that when Senna died, his soul went on to inhabit the body of a human child who inherited his dexterity and quick reflexes. Ultimately the chapter communicates that Enzo’s purpose in life has not yet been fulfilled, and that is why the universe spared him from dying in the car accident; however, the chapter also demonstrates how as Enzo approaches his imminent death, he thinks and talks about the possibility of life after death more frequently than at the beginning of the novel, which reflects his fear of the unknown and the strengthening of his faith as a result of the fear.
This novel takes the shape of a classic “man in a hole” plot structure, and Denny continues to dig his hole well into the novel. Nowhere is this clearer than when he takes Enzo to the vet and incurs an $800 charge. Stein repeatedly offers his readers hope that Denny’s situation will improve, only to crash that hope into another obstacle. In this case, Denny’s financial woes almost get the best of him. With barely enough money to put gas in his car, he feels totally incapable of competing with Maxwell and Trish’s wealth, which leads him to consider signing their custody settlement. This continues with previously established themes around class— Stein treats Denny’s blue-collar background as one of his defining characteristics relative to his status as the novel’s hero. In other words, Denny’s financial instability makes his fight that much more courageous. This falls in line with Buddhist ideas surrounding the moral superiority of asceticism and the general wickedness of excess wealth. It follows that Maxwell and Trish’s wealth makes them apt villains.
This section also makes a pronounced return to the themes of communication and gesture. When Denny goes to Mike and Tony’s house to sign the custody settlement, Enzo wishes he could convince him not to sign; but of course, he cannot use language and rhetoric to convince him, so he must rely on physical actions. He chews up the settlement documents and urinates on them, inspiring Denny to say, “I’m with Enzo. I piss on their settlement” (267). This moment shows how Enzo’s ability to communicate in a non-verbal way actually inspires Denny, a human being, to apply Enzo’s gesture to idiomatic language. While Enzo literally urinates on the documents, Denny interprets Enzo’s actions for their figurative significance.
Fate rewards Denny’s courage in not signing the document in the very next chapter, when Luca Pantoni offers Denny a job with Ferrari by virtue of fighting for custody of his daughter. Pantoni admires Denny’s resilience—resilience which Enzo inspired. Pantoni’s offer marks the first sign of a long-term positive trajectory for Denny. When Pantoni promises to keep the position open for Denny until he sorts out his legal issues, he creates a foreseeable future in which Denny has escaped from his current problems.
