FIFTEEN
Back home, Bernie filled my water bowl and went into the bedroom. I lapped some up and followed him. “Hate sleeping in the daytime,” he said, lying on the bed, still in his clothes. He rolled over and fiddled with the alarm clock. “One hour, tops.” He lay back, closed his eyes. I wasn’t really in the mood for this, felt like a hike in the canyon out back, or a game of fetch, or even a quick walk up and down the street. But Bernie looked so tired, and that strange zigzag line was showing on his forehead again, like maybe he was in some kind of pain. I backed out of the bedroom, went into the hall, looked out the side window, and there was Iggy, in his side window. He jumped up, front paws on the glass, excited to see me—Iggy was a good pal. I got up on my hind legs, too. Iggy went yip-yip-yip, that high-pitched bark that annoyed all the neighbors, except for us, of course. I started to bark back, but then swallowed it—or most of it, or at least some of it—thinking of Bernie. Then old Mr. Parsons appeared behind Iggy and said something that I could tell was all about knocking it off and getting away from that damned window. Iggy kept yipping and jumping up and down and wagging his stubby tail. Mr. Parsons went away, then came back with—hey! with a chew strip, a real big one. He waved it in front of Iggy’s nose and walked away. That was the end of all the yipping, jumping, and wagging; Iggy turned from the window and scuttled after old Mr. Parsons. I wanted that chew strip real bad.
“Chet!” Bernie called from the bedroom. “Cool it.”
I caught the faint echo of barking in the air. Me? Oops.
I moved toward the front door, circled around a bit, lay down. Then I got up, looked out the side window again. No Iggy. He was probably working on that chew strip. I came close to barking again, very very close, maybe even too close. I went still, listening for Bernie. He was breathing, slow and regular. I went down the hall, peeked in the bedroom. He lay on his back, forearm over his eyes, chest rising and falling. I watched him for a while. He was sleeping. That was nice, watching Bernie sleep. Soon he’d be up and we’d be hiking in the canyon or playing fetch, or doing that other activity I’d thought of before but couldn’t think of now.
I went into the office, gazed at the elephants on the rug, and was still gazing at them when the phone rang. The machine picked up.
“Still not taking your calls? The retainer I put down doesn’t entitle me to more . . . Christ. Listen, it’s Marvin. Marvin Winkleman. Give me a call at your, quote, earliest convenience.” Click.
I like most humans I’ve met, even some perps and gangbangers. Take Boodles Calhoun, for example, now breaking rocks in the hot sun, but once he’d scratched between my ears—this was just before he realized Bernie and I actually didn’t have a trunkful of gold coins for him—and he’d been very good at it. But forget Boodles Calhoun. The point was Marvin Winkleman seemed to be turning into one of those few humans I didn’t much like.
I went into the kitchen, lapped up more water. Water’s my drink, although I’ve tried others, like beer from a hubcap, that time with the bikers. Loved those bikers! For a while I thought about all the fun we’d had and then I went sniffing under the table and found a few crumbs and after that I returned to the front hall and gazed through the tall window beside the door. Oh, no: a squirrel on the front lawn, just standing there! I growled. Maybe he heard me, because he scampered off, although not that desperate scamper squirrels do when they’re running for their lives, and that’s the scamper I like to see.
Sometime later, old man Heydrich appeared on the sidewalk with a broom. He glanced over at our place, saw me, and made one of those nasty faces humans can make—I think that one’s called a smirk—and then started sweeping all the dirt from his part of the sidewalk over to our part, something Bernie hated. If only I’d been out there, I’d have—
Old man Heydrich went away. A moment or two after that, a dusty pickup drove by. We get lots of dusty pickups in the Valley and I wasn’t watching very carefully until the driver’s head turned and he looked at our house. He got a real good look at the house and I got a real good look at him: his crooked nose, his long sideburns, his bandanna. I started barking my head off.
“Hey, Chet, what’s happening?” Bernie came into the front hall, not looking so tired now, the zigzag line gone. I barked and barked. “Heydrich sweeping the damn sidewalk again?” Bernie peered out the long window, gazing in the direction of Heydrich’s strip of sidewalk. Down at the other end of the street, Jocko rounded a turn and disappeared from view; Bernie looked that way, too late. I barked a few more times, but what could I do? “Come on, boy, how about a snack?”
We had a nice snack—salsa and chips for Bernie, king-sized biscuit for me—and then Bernie took a shower, hanging his bathrobe over the bathroom door. This was the robe Leda had always called Bernie’s ratty robe, although I didn’t know why, since the pattern didn’t have a single rat on it, was all about martini glasses with long-legged women in them. Bernie loved his robe, an old robe he’d had a long time, and that used to belong to a buddy from army days named Tanner who Bernie never talked about except for one night when we were camping out in the desert and he’d been staring into the fire. “Poor Tanner.” That was all he said.
But now, in the shower, he was in a good mood. I could tell from his singing. He went through some of his favorites: “Lonesome 77203,” “Born To Lose,” “A Tear Fell,” “Sea of Heartbreak”; yes, a very good mood. Steam came pouring through the doorway and I went closer; love the feel of steam. And what was this? Maybe Bernie didn’t have the shower curtain quite right, because water was pooling on the floor. I tasted it: a little too warm and soapy, but not bad, not bad at all.
Soon Bernie was all dressed—khakis, sneakers, T-shirt—and fresh coffee was dripping into the pot. “Love that smell,” he said; Bernie was capable of smelling coffee, I knew that for a fact. We went out to the patio, Bernie sipping from his mug, me checking under the barbecue and finding zip.
“Kind of odd,” Bernie said. “Haven’t heard from Suzie in a—oh, my God!” He hurried into the office, got on the phone. “Suzie? Pick up if you’re there. I just, um, realized about our, like, date—you know, the Dry Gulch. Something came up, work, this case, developments. Uh. But I should have called. So, um, sorry. Please call. Or I’ll call you, maybe that’s the best way to . . .” He hung up, looked at me. “I’m an idiot,” he said. No way. Bernie was always the smartest human in the room.
“Maybe I should send flowers,” he said. “Or buy her a present. But it’s so hard to . . . She never wears those earrings I gave her, for example.” Earrings. I tried to remember. Was he talking about the ones that glowed at night?
His gaze fell on the blinking message machine. He pressed a button.
“Still not taking your calls? The retainer I—”
Bernie pressed the button, shut him up. “Winkleman’s trouble, Chet. Big trouble.” That little guy with skinny legs and a comb-over was trouble? I didn’t see it. Jocko—he was trouble.
“Hey—what are you barking about?”
Jocko had cased our house, that was what.
“Easy, big guy. Want a Milk-Bone?”
Life can be funny. Milk-Bones had been the farthest thing from my mind, but now I wanted one more than anything. And soon I had it.
“Let’s try to be smart about this,” Bernie said. I had no idea what he was talking about. We hopped in the car, me downing the last bite.
Pretty soon we turned into High Chaparral Estates, one of the nicest developments in the whole Valley, as Leda often mentioned. She and Malcolm had a big house there, and that was where Charlie lived now, except when he was back home, which wasn’t often.
We parked in front of their house. It had columns, big windows, balconies, and a bright green lawn that went on and on. “There’s only one aquifer,” Bernie said as we left the car and walked up the winding, flower-lined path to the door. “Why don’t people get that?” He pressed the buzzer.
The door opened and there was Leda, talking on a cell phone. Her eyebrows went up in surprise at the sight of us, not that she has much in the way of eyebrows, on account of how she’d go at them with tweezers, at least back when we were all together. “A hundred and ninety a head and you’re telling me we don’t get the sabayon?” she was saying. She listened to a squeaky voice on the other end, but not for long. “Stop, stop, stop, stop,” she said, her voice rising in a way I remembered well. “Run those numbers again and call me back—with a different answer this time.” She clicked off. “Caterers are going under all over the goddamn Valley, and still they try to pull this shit.”
“What’s sabayon?” Bernie said.
“Sabayon? You don’t know sabayon?” She blinked. “What are you doing here anyway?” She checked her watch, a beautiful glittering thing that reminded me of an unfortunate incident involving me and her leather jewelry box, not long before the split. “Charlie’s not home yet, and it’s not the weekend, and even if it were it’s not your weekend.”
“True,” said Bernie. “Uh, the fact is, we were in the neighborhood, and I thought, well, why not stop by and see how you’re doing?”
“See how I’m doing? Are you feverish?”
“Ha ha,” Bernie said. “There’s that sense of humor.”
“Bernie. Do I look like I’ve got time for your sarcasm?”
“No sarcasm,” Bernie said. “I always, uh, admired your sense of humor.”
“You hid that so well.”
“Ha ha—there it is again.”
A silence fell. I got ready for the door to slam in our face, wouldn’t have been the first time. Their eyes met, Bernie’s and Leda’s. And then, big surprise: Leda was laughing—and so was Bernie. When was the last time I’d seen that, if ever?
“So,” Bernie said. “How are you doing, really? Must be a lot of stress, planning the wedding and all.”
“Understatement of the century.”
“I’m sure it will be great.
“Thank you. Oh, Christ, don’t tell me you’re angling for an invitation.”
“No, no, no. Not in my wildest—”
“Because even though Malcolm’s doing so well—you wouldn’t believe what’s coming in even if I told you—we’re still trying to keep the guest list manageable. There’s such a thing as overdoing it. In terms of taste, if nothing else, what with the economy and all.”
“I agree. Remind me what Malcolm does again.”
“Software.”
“But more specifically.”
“It’s complicated—licensing, China, integrated apps.”
“Integrated apps?”
“No time to explain. Is this good mood of yours all about the alimony?”
“Alimony?”
“After the wedding you won’t have to pay alimony anymore.”
“Hadn’t thought of that,” Bernie said.
“You hadn’t?”
“Nope.”
“You know something, Bernie? You’re changing.”
“How?”
“I’ll put it this way,” Leda said. “If things hadn’t worked out so well with Malcolm, crazy as it might seem, I could almost even toy with the idea of . . . dot dot dot.”
Dot dot dot? What the hell was she talking about? Did Bernie know? I couldn’t tell. He was looking down at his feet, doing a strange little shuffling thing.
“Crazy,” he said. “I mean great, just great the way everything’s, you know, you and Malcolm. He’s, uh, excited about this, too?”
“What a question! He’s head over heels. Haven’t you seen the engagement ring?” She thrust her hand out at Bernie before I had chance to think about that head over heels thing.
“Wow,” he said.
“Forty grand,” Leda said. “Took it to the appraiser first thing.”
“Wow,” Bernie said again.
What was going on? I had no idea. A phone started ringing in the house, and Leda said, “That’ll be him right now.”
“The appraiser?”
“Of course not,” Leda said. “Malcolm—he’s away on business.”
“Well, then, we’ll just—”
“Bye,” Leda said. “And Bernie? Thanks.”
“—be on our—”
The door closed in our face, but not in a slamming sort of way. We got in the car. Bernie rummaged around in the glove box, found a bent cigarette way in the back. He lit up, breathed in, blew out a big smoke cloud. I knew he was trying to quit, but that smell—I couldn’t help liking it. I breathed in, too.
“That wedding has to happen,” he said, turning the key. “And not just that—the goddamn marriage has to last. In fact, it has to be great, like . . . like—I don’t know, think of some great marriage, Chet.”
Missed that, whatever it was. We drove out of the Valley and into the desert, and not long after on account of how we were passing everything in sight although I didn’t know what the hurry was, we entered a little town I recognized, the one that Bernie had called flea-bitten. I started scratching, first behind my ear, soon along my side, then both at once, really digging in with my claws, faster and—
“Chet, for God’s sake.”
We parked behind the palm tree on the street in front of the horseshoe-shaped motel. Two cars in the lot: one a red convertible, the other a dark sedan.
“Oh, boy,” Bernie said, and almost right away a motel room door opened and out came Marvin Winkleman’s wife—unless the divorce had already happened, couldn’t recall the details on that—short, blond, and curvy, possibly named Bobbi Jo, followed by Malcolm, knotting his tie. “I want to strangle him with it,” Bernie said. I got ready, but no strangling happened. We sped off while they were still getting in their cars, the strangling of Malcolm maybe being something to look forward to in the future.