by James Howe
“What’s that?” Max asked.
“‘Women. Sometimes I think I’d be better off without them,’” Taxi repeated.
“And then what did he say?” Max asked.
“Nothing. He murdered his wife.”
I looked at Taxi. He looked at Max. Max stared straight ahead in the direction of Louise’s bungalow.
“That’s terrible,” he said softly.
Taxi just shrugged his shoulders and began drinking again. He looked up after a moment, water dripping from his lips, and said, “I don’t think so.”
I looked at him in surprise. “How can you say such an awful thing?” I asked.
“Oh, I wouldn’t!” Taxi said.
“But you just did.”
“Did what?”
“Say such a thing.”
“Did I?”
I was getting confused. “Yes, of course you did. You just said it wasn’t such a terrible thing for a man to murder his wife.”
“Oh,” Taxi said, thinking it over. “Well, I guess I must have meant it then.” I could see that holding a conversation with Taxi was definitely going to be a challenge.
“She wasn’t a very nice person,” Taxi added, as if that made everything okay.
“Still, that’s no reason—” I started to say when Max cut me off.
“How’d he do it?” he asked suddenly, turning his gaze from Louise’s bungalow to Taxi.
“Poison,” Taxi answered simply. And then: “In her soup.”
“Hmmm,” was Max’s only reply.
I observed him for a moment. He must have noticed me, for he laughed suddenly and said, “Well, that’s one way of handling women, I suppose.”
“I suppose,” I replied, not at all sure I liked being part of this conversation.
“Yes,” Max went on thoughtfully. “Murder is one way. Murder in its infinite varieties. Poison, stabbing, drowning, strangling—”
“Split pea,” Taxi interjected.
Max and I looked at him. “He put poison in her split pea soup,” he explained.
“Oh,” I said.
“Ah,” said Max.
“Yoo-hoo,” called a new voice.
We all turned and saw a tiny white French poodle standing a few feet away.
“Georgette,” Max whispered.
“Good afternoon, Max,” Georgette cooed as she approached the water cooler. She smelled of honeysuckle and magnolias. She also smelled of trouble. “How’re you doin’ after that terrible fight? I just felt so awful-awful bad about it, I couldn’t sleep a wink all night worryin’ about you.” And here she yawned, showing us, I gathered, how much she had suffered on Max’s account.
“Don’t believe a word of it,” Taxi whispered to me.
Max started pawing the ground self-consciously. “Aw, shucks,” he said at last. “I’m fine today. Thanks for asking.”
“Oh, that’s silly,” Georgette replied.
“What is?” Max asked, grinning openly now.
“Thankin’ me for carin’ about you,” Georgette answered.
“Aw, shucks,” Max said again. It struck me that when Georgette came around, Max’s vocabulary suffered.
It was then I noticed that Louise had joined us.
“Hah!” she exclaimed. “‘Aw, shucks,’ says Monsieur Max. I come over here to tell you that I am—how you say—sorry that we have had our little fight. And what do I hear? ‘Aw, shucks!’ Well, mon ami, is this what you will say when I am no longer around? Eh? ‘Aw, shucks’? Because if you are keeping this up much longer with Hester Prynne here—”
“Georgette,” Georgette said softly.
“Georgette, Hester, what am I caring? If you think you can have your Louise and your Mademoiselle Aw-Shucks, too, you are sadly misshapen!” I think she meant to say “mistaken” but she was so overwrought at this point, it was understandable that the word came out wrong. I wanted to console her, but she left us with a grand flourish before anyone, including Max, could speak. Just as she was about to reach her bungalow, Lyle suddenly pounced on her back.
“Bombs away!” he cried.
Louise screamed. “What are you doing?! You are a very crazy cat, you nutty Lyle, you! Get off me this instant!”
Lyle didn’t seem to be paying any attention to Louise’s screams. In fact, it appeared that he was talking to someone else entirely.
“Ace-One to Four-Seven. Come in, Four-Seven. Have bombed the target area. Meeting resistance. Roger. Over and out.”
Max ran over to Louise to help. “Lyle!” he commanded. “Stop this at once!”
“Don’t you be helping me!” Louise cried. “I will take care of myself, merci-you-very-much.” Max backed off, tucking himself as far into his sweater as possible.
Louise turned her head around so that she was staring directly into Lyle’s eyes.
Lyle mumbled under his breath as if talking into a headset. “Enemy contact. Enemy contact. Standby. Mayday! Mayday!”
“Now you listen to me,” Louise said in a low, threatening tone. Lyle’s eyes went wild, and he stopped talking immediately. “We know all about you here. Do not think we are playing the fools. You have been driving us all—what is it?—ah, yes, pineapples . . .”
“I think she means bananas,” Georgette whispered across the way to no one in particular.
“. . . but I, for one, have had enough. Do you understand me, Monsieur Lyle? Enough pineapples you have driven me! You will not make me into a fruit salad, n’est-ce pas? Now, get off my back and do not ever again use me for a landing stripe!”
Lyle hissed at her and jumped off her back. He dashed to the other side of the compound and then he turned suddenly and faced her.
“You haven’t seen the end of me, toots!” he shouted. “No one talks to Lyle like that and gets away with it!”
“You are not frightening me, Monsieur Bombs-Away!” Louise yipped back.
There was a sudden crash of thunder, which shook us all. No one spoke for a few seconds; then there came a deep, rumbling sound. I thought at first it was more thunder. Then I realized it was coming from Lyle’s direction. I looked at him. He was growling at Louise.
From somewhere deep in his throat, he said, “I don’t like being crossed, sister. Just . . . watch . . . out!” He stared at her coolly, and Louise, momentarily stunned, stared back. She looked frightened, and I wondered, for the first time, if indeed there was reason for her to be.
[ FOUR ]
The Storm Gathers
ALL AT ONCE Louise broke into a rapid-fire attack of barking. I wanted to check out Max’s reaction, but Harrison’s voice startled the thought right out of me.
“What’s going on in here?” he asked, suddenly entering through the gate. Everyone froze. “What’s all this noise? Now calm down, or back into your bungalows you go.”
Jill appeared next to him, carrying a large bag of garbage. She was panting slightly. “What was it?” she asked.
“Oh, nothing. Just a dog fight, I guess,” Harrison said. Dog fight, I thought, what a quaint expression. I wondered if people ever had dog fights.
As Harrison and Jill turned to go, Jill tripped on the very rock I’d seen her trip over before. The bag of garbage flew out of her hands, spilling its contents all over the ground.
Harrison jumped back as some of the debris landed on his shoe. “What a clumsy oaf!” he shouted. “Can’t you do anything right?”
Jill’s face turned red. I could see tears coming to her eyes as she spoke. “Well, aren’t you Mister Perfect all of a sudden?” she asked, her voice quivering. “If you weren’t pushing me so hard, I wouldn’t be like this in the first place.”
“Maybe if you weren’t like this in the first place,” Harrison retorted, “you wouldn’t think I was pushing you so hard.”
Jill’s mouth fell open. After a moment, she spoke. “And maybe you’d like to work by yourself the rest of the day!”
“Okay, okay,” Harrison replied in a softer voice. “I’m sorry. Come on, let’s for
get it and clean this up.”
Jill, sniffling back her tears, knelt in silence and began shoveling tin cans and bottles back into the plastic bag. “I’m sorry, too,” she said quietly. “I’m just tired. It’s not your fault.”
They finished their task in total silence. We all sat motionless, watching them. I guess people do have dog fights, I thought.
Just before they went out the gate, Harrison turned back to us and said, “Now, keep it down in here.” And once again we were left to ourselves.
I turned to Max, but saw that he and Georgette had wandered off. Their heads were very close together. Taxi was watching them, too, and seemed to be annoyed. When he noticed me looking at him, he said, “A fine thing!” and walked away in a huff.
Suddenly, I found myself alone. I could feel that a light rain was beginning to fall. And a second crack of thunder announced that the storm was about to break again. Not knowing what else to do, I headed back to my bungalow in the hopes that Chester might be around to talk to.
I guess I was so lost in thought that I never saw them, but when I was almost to my bungalow, I tripped. Looking down, I discovered that what had crossed my path were two long, low dogs, the likes of which I’d never seen before. As politely as I knew how, I spoke.
“Please forgive me for tripping over you,” I said.
“Not at all. Not at all,” said one. “Indeed, it was our fault for—”
“Yes, yes,” said the other. “For walking in your way.”
“We weren’t watching—” said the first.
“—where we were going,” concluded the second.
There was a moment’s silence as I looked them over. They were almost identical, and though one had a slightly higher-pitched voice than the other, they spoke as if one mind were encased in two bodies. Their heads did not stop bobbing up and down.
“I’m Harold,” I said.
“Howard . . .” said the one with the lower-pitched voice. He nodded his head once.
“. . . and Heather,” said the other. And she nodded her head crisply.
“We’re out for a stroll,” Howard continued, as if he owed me an explanation. “We do like a stroll. Of course, Heather here isn’t up to—”
“Now, now, now,” Heather said, cutting Howard off. “No need to go into all that, is there?” She smiled vaguely in my direction, and our conversation drew to a halt. The rain began to come down more heavily then. I was more than a little relieved to have a reason to excuse myself.
“Well, it was—” I began.
“Yes, yes, it was,” Howard said eagerly. “So sorry we have to run, but—”
“Oh, I understand,” I said.
“—but, I’m not feeling myself suddenly,” Heather added. “Dear, mightn’t we—?”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Howard said to her. There was a look of great concern in his eyes.
“Goodbye, Harold,” he said, as they turned to leave. “We will talk again, I am sure. Oh, and Harold . . . ?”
“Yes?” I asked.
“Beastly sorry about that noise last night. Frightful, what? But we just can’t seem to—”
“—help it, really,” Heather finished the sentence for him. “Come, dear.”
“Quite,” was all that Howard said then, and the two of them strolled off, rather more hurriedly, their heads bobbing like pigeons all the way home.
“CHESTER!” I cried as soon as I saw my friend waiting for me in my bungalow. The rain was really coming down by that time.
Chester sat licking a paw and staring into the distance. As he did not respond immediately to my calling, I concluded that he was once again in a state of advance mellowhood. I waited another moment before I spoke again.
“Guess what?” I asked.
Chester looked at me through half-lowered lids. “Harold, you know I hate it when you do that,” he said.
“When I do what?”
“When you say ‘Guess what?’” he replied with faint disdain. “How am I supposed to guess what, when I don’t even know where you’re coming from?”
“Oh, sorry,” I answered. There was a pause.
“Harold,” he said quietly after a moment.
“What?”
“I think we’ve established that I’m not going to guess what. So why don’t you just tell me what’s on your mind, hmm? I have a lot to think about, however, and I don’t wish to be distracted by trivia.”
“Oh, I don’t think this is trivia,” I said, though I couldn’t be sure since I didn’t know what trivia was. “It has to do with these two strange dogs I just met named Howard and Heather. They said they were sorry about the noise last night. Do you think they were the ones who—”
“Is that all?” Chester said sharply, interrupting me. “I figured that out long ago.”
“You figured what out?” I asked. I hadn’t figured anything out, except that it was Howard and Heather who had been howling all night.
“That Howard and Heather are werewolves.”
I couldn’t help myself. I chuckled at the thought of those two little dogs being werewolves. To me, they looked more like sausages with legs, and I told Chester so.
“Dachshunds,” he replied.
“Gesundheit.”
“I didn’t sneeze, Harold.”
“Oh, but you said—”
“Dachshunds.”
“Gesundheit.”
“Harold, put the etiquette on the shelf for a minute and listen to me. Howard and Heather are not sausages. They are a kind of dog called dachshunds. Because of their long hair, I am assuming that they are what is known as wire-haired dachshunds.”
“But you said they were werewolves.”
“It is my belief,” Chester went on (and here he drew out his words to give the impression that what he was saying was of the most crucial importance), “that Howard and Heather are a cross between a wire-haired dachshund and ... a werewolf.” He paused and looked at me to check out the impact of what he was saying. There was none. With a slight tremor in his voice, he added, “A most vile and dangerous combination.”
I yawned. I knew Chester well enough to know when to respond and when to yawn. This was definitely a time to yawn.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” Chester asked. “Well, it doesn’t matter, Harold. This isn’t the first time you’ve chosen to ignore my warnings, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. Just let it be said that Howard and Heather are to be watched.”
“If you ask me,” I replied, “Lyle is the one to watch. Now, there’s a basket case.”
Chester agreed that Lyle was worthy of observation, for he too had witnessed the scene earlier with Louise. “Indeed,” he concluded, “I’d say all of the guests in this establishment deserve our careful attention. There is an undercurrent of tension here, Harold.” He looked out at the pouring rain and the darkening sky. “An undercurrent that will one day erupt with a sudden and terrible force.”
There was a loud explosion of thunder. I jumped.
“The storm gathers,” Chester commented drily as I landed.
“What shall we do?” I asked.
“Nothing to do. Nothing to do but wait.” He lay down then and closed his eyes. “Meanwhile, I’m going to get some sleep—while I still can.”
“Mind if I join you?” I asked, not wanting to be alone.
“Not at all,” Chester said, making room for me next to him on the rug. I was thinking how hospitable he was being, when I realized that we were in my bungalow.
“Just one favor, Harold.”
“What’s that, Chester?”
“When you dream?”
“Yes?”
“Try not to smack your lips all the time, will you? It drives me crazy.”
So promising, I fell into a deep sleep.
THE NEXT THING I remember was the deafening crash of thunder that awakened us. Chester jumped up and ran to the door.
“It’s dark!” he cried.
Max and Taxi were in the center of the c
ompound, barking loudly.
“What’s going on?” I called out.
“They’re late with dinner,” Max responded. He and Taxi began barking again, as Georgette ran out and joined them. I noticed how she cuddled up to Max’s side and immediately my heart ached for Louise. Since my attention went rather quickly to my stomach, however, my heart didn’t ache for long.
“What do you think has happened?” I asked Chester. “I can’t go without food. Dogs aren’t meant to be starved. Cats are different. Cats can live off their own fat, but dogs are—”
“Try living off the fat on your brain,” Chester said, cutting me off.
Just then, the door of the office swung open and Jill and Harrison rushed out. Jill was wearing an orange slicker, and Harrison carried an umbrella that quickly turned itself inside out, doing neither him nor our dinners any good. I made a mental note to complain about the service. But later. At the moment, all I cared about was that our food was here at last.
The storm was in full force, the wind lashing the rain against us. Harrison and Jill scurried about quickly, calling to each other across the compound. I couldn’t hear everything they said, but I did pick up snatches of conversation.
“. . . can’t understand how we let this happen,” Harrison was saying. “We’ve never been late before. It’s your fault, you know. I told you to keep your eye on the clock.”
“My fault?” Jill answered. “You were the one who insisted that we clean the office after we finished the shed. Push, push, push.”
“Okay, Jill,” Harrison said, with an exasperated tone in his voice, “give it a rest, huh?”
“Give it a rest, he says,” Jill muttered to herself. “He doesn’t know the meaning of the word.” Then turning her attention to us, she said, “Oh, you poor things, you must be starving. Sorry, sorry,” she kept saying to everyone. “Sorry,” as she put down the food dishes and scurried us back into our bungalows.
I was so relieved to get my dinner, I hardly noticed that I’d gotten soaked by the storm. I was glad, though, when Jill suddenly showed up at the door of my bungalow with a big white towel in her hands.