“My bad,” I apologized as we approached the automated ticket dispenser. Tom continued to tug at the leash around his neck like Rodney Dangerfield in his heyday. Shalom was getting his jollies treating Tom like a dog, saying things like “Heel” and “Good boy!” Referring to the phone, I relayed Tom the confirmation numbers for our reservations and he pecked at them on the computer screen. It went off without a hitch. All our planning was paying off. Like magic, the printed boarding passes slid slowly out of the mouth of the screen, one, two, three—to us they looked like winning lottery tickets, ’cause that’s what they were.
32
DOG BITES PIG
We walked over to the big board where they show the times and gates of all arrivals and departures, and as we looked, we could see the flights to India, to Turkey, and to Israel, all on time. It was too good to be true. We each took one of the passports we had stolen from the farmer’s underwear drawer, and as we were fixing to say our goodbyes and head to our respective gates, we became aware that one of those bomb-sniffing dogs had become very interested in us, especially in Shalom. Shalom wheeled around and said, “Get your nose out of my butt, dude.”
“That’s all right, mama, don’t fight the law,” said this German shepherd with a thick Rhineland accent, even though he seemed partial to American urban patois, which made him end up sounding like Dirk Nowitzki.
“What’s your name, sweet thang?” I guess the diaper and disguise were fooling this particular doggy into thinking not only that Shalom was a dog, but that he was female as well.
“What? Did you just call me ‘mama’?”
I realized what was going down before Shalom did, and I started urgently shaking my head from side to side, imploring him not to blow our cover while we were so close to victory.
“I like me a feisty bitch,” the dog growled comically. “Well, all right now. Look at you standing tall on your hindies—you go, girl. Can I holla at ya? Can I holla? Can I holla?”
I felt for Shalom, doubling down on the indignity of having physically injured his manhood earlier in the day, and now this, a psychic injury to that same ailing masculinity.
“Did you just call me a bitch, Rin Tin Tin?”
The dog kept sniffing the air around Shalom like it was the sweetest of perfumes. “Funny story. I am related to the Rinster on my mother’s side. Truth. You ever dated a shepherd? We Germans, well, let’s just say we do our business and we take care of business, our clocks are not the only things that run on time, if you know what I’m saying.”
“I have no idea what you’re saying.”
“You want some of this?” The dog now angled his backside close to Shalom’s nose. This was not going to end well. “Can you tell they feed me steak? Go on, have a whiff. I would share with you, meine kleine bitch.”
This was making me uncomfortable in so many ways.
“Did you just call me a bitch, Rin Tin Tin?”
Shalom smacked the dog on the backside. “What is wrong with you? Can’t you tell I’m a pig?”
The dog froze, stopped breathing, his eyes registering shock, disappointment, and embarrassment all at once.
“Of course I know you’re a pig. My nose is a highly trained instrument. Not only did I smell out that you were a pig but that you also may be smuggling drugs.” He spoke into a radio attached to his collar. “Code green, repeat we have a code green, requesting backup.”
“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute,” I said. “That’s not fair.”
“And I’m a guy!” said Shalom.
“Now that I didn’t get. I have to admit. Are you sure?” asked the dog.
“Am I sure?” Shalom squealed.
The dog nodded. “Okay, then, I am gonna have to ask you all to come with me. Is that a turkey?”
“Hey, good for you,” Shalom said, “you got one right.”
The dog barked to get the attention of his human handlers. This was all coming apart fast.
“Wait!” I said. I had to do something before the humans arrived. “It’s clear you are not good at your job.”
“Okay, yes, my olfactory powers were not the strongest in my graduating class. What are you, a deer?” he asked, sniffing the air around me.
“Close,” I said. “Yes … or cow. Deer or cow—either, really. Some days I’m not sure myself.”
“That was my second guess. I knew it. Very similar.”
“Listen,” I pleaded, “we are all chasing a dream here, mine is to go to India, the turkey to Turkey, and the pig, or dog, or whatever you feel like calling him, to Israel.”
“So?” asked the dog, seemingly unimpressed.
“Well, let’s be honest,” I hurried on, “this could not have been your first choice of occupation, your nose is not cut out for this work, if we’re being honest.”
“You are very perceptive, like many deer. Yes, my father forced me to go into the sniffing business like him and his father before him. I hate it.” The shepherd made sad dog eyes, and his tail collapsed between his legs.
“Well, you must have had a dream yourself, didn’t you?”
“I wanted to be a seeing-eye dog,” he confided. “I wanted to help people, but my father thought there was more job security in customs, so I didn’t chase that dream, and now I kinda feel like I’m just chasing my tail.”
“That’s what I’m telling you,” I said. “We are all chasing our dreams and so can you.”
“It’s too late.” He sighed. “I’m five years old, I’m middle-aged.”
“Hey, man, five is the new three. You can do it. Look, can you read the departure board up there?”
“I can. Anybody can—” blurted Tom and I kicked him, “—not. I cannot. Who could? No one could.”
Shalom said, “No, no, it’s so blurry from here, I would need a telescope or something.”
The dog glanced up. “I can read it.”
“You can?” I said. “That’s amazing!”
His tail stirred, went to half mast. “Sure, what do you need to know? India, you say—that’s 3:55, gate 31; Turkey 2:30, gate 11; and Israel not till 7:00, gate 41.”
We gave him the slow hoof clap of somber appreciation. “Man oh man, you don’t have eyes, dude, you have binoculars, lasers.” Shalom whistled.
I made a show of covering myself up. “Oh no, you don’t have X-ray vision too, do you? You can’t see through my clothes, can you?”
His tail started wagging so hard his whole rear end was wagging too. “Follow me,” he yipped as he jumped onto one of those big golf carts that beep around airports. “They’re with me,” he barked at the driver, and we all piled on for a VIP trip through passport control and straight to our gates. Forget about Global Entry, we had Global Exit!
The shepherd leaned over to me as he turned on the siren, and whispered, “And maybe you’re right, deer. It’s never too late.”
33
PENNY WISE, POUND FOOLISH
First up was Tom’s gate, 11. We said goodbye to the shepherd. He zoomed off in the cart, a new dog. Shalom and I walked Tom right up to the gate.
“Well, I guess this is goodbye,” Tom said. “How can I ever thank you? Let me see which is my ticket here.” He pulled the tickets out. “Uh-oh,” he said as he flipped from ticket to ticket.
“What?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
“I knew that was too good a deal to be true! Dammit! I shouldn’t have used Groupon!” He showed me the tickets. “I saw that I could get a deal on three tickets, a great deal, but I guess I got us three tickets all on the same flight. It’s my father’s fault—he had money issues.”
“What?” shouted Shalom. “How am I gonna get to Israel?”
“We can get you a connecting flight from Turkey, it’s not that far.”
“Don’t you travel agent me, you jive turkey! I gotta get to the Promised Land!”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “This was a mistake. A really stupid, really bad—”
“But frugal,” offered Tom. “A really bad, re
ally stupid, but frugal mistake. Perhaps because of a dearth of love from my mother, I have a permanent sense of lack, of not being enough, and this extends to money and miserliness.”
“I thought you said your father was the problem,” I said.
“Father, mother—see how bad I had it?”
“Please, shut your gob,” said Shalom.
“But then again,” Tom gathered himself, “maybe it’s fate that we shouldn’t split up yet. Maybe we’re meant to stick together to the end. We all have tickets to Turkey, we all wanna get the hell out. I know I don’t wanna end up being dinner tonight and Shalom doesn’t wanna be some police dog’s bee-yotch—so let’s do it. Let’s go: Turkey!”
The pig reluctantly nodded his assent. What other option did we have? We headed to give the agent our boarding passes.
“I’d be on my way to Tel Aviv tonight,” Shalom grunted at Tom as we made our way down the tunnel to the plane, “if you weren’t such a schnorrer.”
34
FLIGHTLESS BIRD TAKES FLIGHT
This was the first time any of us had been on a plane, and while it’s true there’s not much leg room, especially for a large mammal, the miracle of flight is wonderful to behold. To see the patterns of the earth way below, to soar through white clouds as if they were the Spider God’s cobwebs, the bluer blue of the blue sky, the hot nuts—all firsts, and all amazing. When Shalom realized we were traveling on the Sabbath, he got upset for a while, then he claimed he was sure some of his relatives were being served in the ham-and-cheese sandwiches the flight attendants tossed to people like they were seals. At one point he dropped to his knees in front of the food-service cart, yelling, “Uncle Schlomo!” like a crazy person. He finally settled down to watching the in-flight movie, Babe, three times in a row, calling out all the inaccuracies.
“This movie is dreck, so unrealistic, a pig would never want to be a dog,” he scoffed.
None of the flight attendants gave us any trouble, ’cause everyone acts like an animal on a plane. We didn’t stick out at all. Actually, I think we were the most human-acting folk on this flight. The people were disgusting. You should’ve seen the bathroom.
My favorite part was watching Tom look out the window. He’d never flown. And even though he was flying in a metal tube, he was up in the air for the first time. Where a bird should be. For the first time in his life, he wasn’t an oxymoron. I could see him flex his wings with the banking and leaning of the plane, the ascending and descending, as if he were the one flying. I saw a tear run down his beak and that made me in turn have to stifle a sob. He saw me see him, and said, “Marley and Me, man, this movie always makes me cry. It’s got Thanatos, Eros, wish fulfillment, the whole nine.” I nodded and went back to watching Breaking Bad, season two.
35
ISTANBUL IS CONSTANTINOPLE
I took a few cat naps en route. I very much enjoyed the hot towel. At one point, a woman leaned over her seat and complained about the service. “They treat us just like cattle up here, just like cows.” Like cows, I thought, you mean they’re gonna slaughter us and cut us up into unrecognizable segments and eat us? I think not. But because I can’t speak, I did the only thing I could do to let her know I heard her. I mooed. “Moooooooo,” I said. The lady laughed. “That’s right, like damn cows, moooo.” I kept mooing ’cause that’s all I could do, and she said, “Wow, that is a really good cow imitation.” I smiled and lowed, and gave her some of my other cow sound repertoire, and soon she was laughing, having forgotten how pissed she’d been, and, in a bit, she had the whole cabin in on the joke and mooing.
For much of the flight, Shalom studied his Torah and denounced anything he found unrealistic in Babe. At one point yelling out, “Bah, Ram, F-U!” Tom, the comfort turkey, strutted up and down the aisles as if he were the captain, making sure that everybody was having a good ride, was being attended to, and felt emotionally “connected.” The flight attendant was kind enough actually to let him up into the cockpit with the pilots, where he stayed for what seemed like hours. He came back using all the airline lingo, saying, “I could fly this baby.”
Right before final descent, Tom leaned over me ’cause I had the window seat, and we could start to make out the landscape beneath us, the land of Turkey coming into view. The blue of the Aegean, and then the beautiful seaside and dwellings. Tom just sighed and shook his head and said, “There she is. There she is. She is so beautiful. My country.” Then a melancholy seemed to fall upon him momentarily, and I thought it might be the sadness that lurks under the happiness of achieving your life’s goal—you know that feeling? A feeling like, okay, this has happened—now what? And Tom said, “You know, in France, they thought turkeys were from India so they called us ‘d’Inde.’ And in Turkey itself, they often call us ‘Hindi’ for the same reason, and I was thinking maybe things won’t be so bad for me if I wanna go to India with you if I’m named after their language after all, right?”
I didn’t say anything. I just smiled and nodded. I knew he was nervous about his new life and this was his way of saying he was going to miss me.
Tom’s reverie was interrupted by the purser, who came to us with a metallic pin, one of those cheap little captain’s bars they like to give little kids, and asked Tom if he would accept an honorary pilot designation and could she pin the little doodad on him. Tom shrugged like no big deal, said, “Sure, I mean, if you have to get rid of them.” As she pinned the bar on the bird, Tom could front no more. He wrapped his wings around her and started sobbing. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” he cried, and then, “Do the guys up front need any help bringing this big bird down into the ’Bul?” The purser smiled even though of course she had no idea what the sounds were coming out of his goblet. “I’m just sayin’,” Tom added, “just in case things get wonky up there, I’m a bird, mama, I’m here. On the case.”
He saluted the purser with his wing, and she understood his body language enough to stand and give him a big salute back while she winked at me. Humans can be decent and understanding at times. Which makes me think there’s hope for them.
When the announcement came over the PA system to buckle up for our final descent, I saw that Shalom was sweating like a pig. I thought I knew why. I leaned over and whispered, “I know Turkey is predominantly Muslim, but we’re just gonna be in and out of there.”
“I’m cool,” Shalom mumbled, “it’s just I’m a really nervous flyer. You’ve heard the expression ‘When pigs fly’? Well, there’s a reason for that—we are not supposed to be up here. I took three Ambien when we took off, but now they’re wearing off and I’m out! This is unnatural. Oh geez…” He turned back to the rest of the passengers and yelled, “Anybody got an Ambien? Xanax? Oxycontin? A mimosa? I need drugs, goddammit, get me drugs!!”
There was some turbulence, and Shalom squealed, “We’re all gonna die! Animals should not attempt to be gods. We are flying too close to the sun, too close to the sun. We’re all gonna die!” Tom, the emotional-support turkey, sidled over, whispered to me, “Leave this to the professionals,” and took Shalom under his wing. He held Shalom’s hoof the whole way down, telling him that the myth of Daedalus and Icarus was not about actual flying, but rather a pre-Freudian Oedipal psychodrama about when man overreaches, and distracting him with aeronautical details and facts about flight.
36
TURKEY IN, TURKEY OUT
At the moment our wheels touched down, Shalom finally fell asleep from all the pills he’d taken. Good timing. Tom and I had to prop him up between us as we left the plane. Tom hesitated at the open cockpit, looking longingly at the complicated controls and lights like he didn’t wanna leave. He kept spit-polishing those cheap little wings he’d been given.
We breezed through immigration (go figure), but it took us about twenty-five minutes just to walk through the concourse to get near the outside of the airport. It was daunting and strange to hear humans speaking human, but a different human from what I was used to. They were speaking Turkish,
and it was exhilarating, but also a little scary. I couldn’t understand a word. I certainly didn’t know where to go. Tom had been silent the whole time, and Shalom had fallen asleep and was lying on the floor, snoring and drooling. We weren’t going anywhere until he came to and joined the living again.
I went off to see if I could find some coffee. I’d heard Turkish coffee was the best and strongest in the world. How do I take my coffee? Well, the milk looks tempting, but you people pasteurize it and that takes out all the flavor. And what’s with this low-fat and 2 percent crap? The fat in the milk is what we live for. You humans are funny, constantly thinking about eating and trying to look like you never eat at the same time.
The Turkish coffee was exactly as advertised. After a few laps with my tongue, I felt like I could sprint for miles and pee for hours. In fact, the call of the cow patty was being whispered to me in Turkish by the magic bean. I had to find somewhere to go. I was aware you humans just don’t poop anywhere, and when in Rome, poop as the Romans do, even if the Romans are Turkish, right? I got back to Tom and Shalom. Silent since we’d disembarked the plane, Tom was still staring off into space, head in the clouds. I opened up Shalom’s mouth and poured a full cup of Turkish java down his throat. His eyes opened and spun around in his head like a one-armed bandit, landing on triple cherries. He jumped off the floor and screamed, “We’re back!” I told Tom I had to get outdoors to relieve myself. He snapped out of his daydream, smiled, and said, “I know just the place.” He fluttered up, we followed.
37
UP, UP, AND NO WAY
Tom led us back through the concourse, and then through a door that I think said DO NOT ENTER. It was in Turkish so I couldn’t really tell, but it was bright red and had lots of warning-type lines through it. I asked Tom, “You sure we’re going to the right place?”
Tom opened this door right onto the runway. The sound of the planes was deafening. Tom took off in the lead, flapping away. He ran us up to this smaller-type jet, maybe it was a private plane, and he said, “Let’s go for a joyride!” That scared me so much that I gave up all ladylike pretense and dropped a patty right there on the tarmac. The Turkish coffee had the same effect on Shalom, because he quickly followed suit with an anxious deposit of his own.
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