A Hell of a Dog

by Carol Lea Benjamin

  19

  YOU DIDN’T DO A VERY GOOD JOB

  Martyn was still taking questions when I headed back to the hotel. I too was going to miss Tracy’s talk on phasing out food rewards, but from what I’d seen in the park, I wouldn’t be missing much.

  The old guy was on, Jimmy’s father. I asked him to ring 306. After shuffling around as if he’d forgotten where the switchboard was, he did.

  He held the phone a few inches away from his ear and shook his head. “No one’s picking up.”

  “Keep trying. He might be sleeping.”

  “It’s twelve-fifteen.”

  I flicked my hand at him to ring again, waiting until he shook his head a second time.

  “Probably out in the park with that big dog of his—bigger than yours, that one. My son’s having a hard week.” He chuckled, having himself a whale of a good time at his son’s expense.

  “Did you see him go out?”

  “Can’t keep track of all of you. Not with mail to sort, checkins, check-outs.”

  He shook his head again. No wonder his neck was so skinny.

  Dashiell and I headed up the stairs. Boris’s room was across the hall from mine. Maybe a knock would wake him where the phone hadn’t. Maybe he was sitting in there letting us stew, not answering on purpose. At least I’d find out if Sasha was in the room. No way I could stand outside of Boris’s room with Dashiell and not get a rise from the Rottie.

  Dashiell headed for our door but then followed me over to Boris’s door. When there was no sound from inside, I knew before knocking that Sasha wasn’t home. So did Dashiell. He went over to sniff at the sill of Betty’s door.

  I knocked twice, just to be sure. But if Sasha wasn’t there, Boris wouldn’t be there. Boris could go out without his dog, but it didn’t work the other way around.

  I thought about checking out the park, but who was I kidding? It was enormous. Boris and his dog could be anywhere. I wouldn’t know where to begin.

  I headed downstairs for the café, hoping that someone else had seen Boris, and felt a little foolish when I got to the bottom of the staircase. I could hear him from the far end of the hallway.

  “It’s your temperament that should be tested,” he was shouting, “afraid to test Boris’s dog. You make students think something wrong with Sasha, all dogs tested but him. What did he ever do to you? And what are you doing in dog business if you can’t handle well-bred Rottweiler?”

  I heard no response.

  When I opened the door to the café, everyone but Sam was at the table, all of them staring at Boris, whose face was as red as it had been the night before.

  “Maybe that’s way things are in England, whole country maybe a little—” Instead of spelling his insult out verbally, he raised his eyebrows and rocked his hand from side to side. “Afraid of rabies coming in through Channel tunnel, have six-month quarantine, dogs can die of broken heart before you let them on your island, afraid of pit bull, ban them, shoot them, castrate them, muzzle them, now afraid of Rottweiler, what next?”

  His face was redder now than when I’d come in and taken my place at the table.

  “Where’ve you been?” Chip asked. “You missed the first ten minutes of this?”

  “Powdering my nose.”

  “You didn’t do a very good job. It’s still shiny.”

  “High-gloss powder,” I told him in Russian accent. “Deflects harmful UV rays. Keeps Rachel’s skin young.”

  “Keep your day job,” he said.

  “Has Martyn said anything back?”

  “Never got the chance. Besides, I think Boris has a point. He’s got a well-behaved dog with a sound temperament. There was no reason for excluding him from the testing. It could give the students the wrong idea. On the other hand, someone with less of a temper, and less of an ego, would have let it go, or spoken privately to Martyn.”

  “I wonder why Martyn doesn’t just apologize. Wouldn’t that be the gentlemanly thing to do?”

  “Perhaps he’s not a gentleman,” Chip said, as if he knew that to be the case. And didn’t I suspect the very same thing?

  “Enough.” Sam stood in the doorway like the principal come to discipline a class that had gotten away from its teacher. “Next time you want to play the fool, Boris, kindly let the rest of us know precisely where you’ll be performing so that we can fail to show up. And next time you pull a disappearing act, you can book your own future seminars. I was just upstairs banging on your door and was this short”—she held her thumb and pointer a half inch apart—“of calling in the police. After what’s happened this week, I’d prefer knowing where everyone is. And I’d prefer it if none of you would listen to music in the bathroom, and when you eat your meals, I hope you’ll cut your food into small pieces.”

  She turned and left the café, leaving the door open instead of slamming it, but the effect was the same.

  “Sam’s got a point,” I said, barely over my own pointless worry. “There’s been enough excitement this week. We need to make a real effort to get along for the next few days, and then we can agree to never lay eyes on each other again.”

  “But—”

  “No buts, Boris. First, Martyn, do you have something you’d like to say to Boris?”

  “Indeed. I apologize, Boris. You are absolutely correct that I should have tested Sasha. He’s a fine dog, well trained and with excellent Rottie temperament. I hope you will forgive me. You see, I was once bitten very badly by—”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Boris, can we get by this now?”

  “Why test pit bull and not Rottweiler?”

  “Boris?”

  “Boris accepts apology.”

  “Good. Thank you both. A few more days, people, and that’s it.”

  Tracy was at the buffet table, a plate in one hand, a glass of lemonade in the other. No one was arguing about her talk. It was as if it had never happened.

  Audrey was speaking in the afternoon. Aside from the meditation, she would talk about her psychic experiences with animals, what they had told her, and how they had revealed in their own words surprising solutions to the common problems so many dog owners face. She said she would do some readings with our animals too. I couldn’t wait. They say smiling, like sex, is good for the immune system, and Lord knows I hadn’t done enough of either lately.

  After lunch, we walked as a group into the auditorium. Audrey started with a basic chant, and so for five minutes Dashiell and I sat in the middle of a sea of noise, the energy rising with people’s voices. Some of the dogs joined in, too, howling along as their owners chanted.

  When it was over, Audrey lowered her head, her hands together as if in prayer, and remained that way for what seemed like an eternity.

  “I know that some of you find what I have to say foolish, and that some will not be able to implement these skills and ideas in order to have a better understanding of the animals you train. But I hope all of you will try to be open, to listen with your hearts as well as your ears, and to try the techniques instead of just writing them off.

  “What I would like to do today instead of telling you old stories I’ve heard over the years from the many wonderful animals I’ve met is to work with some of the dogs that are here and see if they will tell me new stories, stories of their lives with you and how they could be made better. Boris,” she said, “would you bring Sasha up front?”

  Audrey was sitting cross-legged on the edge of the stage, wearing the same T-shirt and jeans she’d had on in the park this morning. I was a little disappointed that she hadn’t worn her Native-American garb, but excited that she had chosen Sasha to be a first subject. I looked around for Martyn, to see his reaction—surely this was a slap in his face, that little Audrey could work with a dog he had declined to use—but I couldn’t see his expression. He was leaning forward, and he seemed to be writing.

  Boris and Sasha were on the stage now, Boris beaming, the Rottie standing at his side.

  “I’d like Sasha to be free to
say whatever it is that’s on his mind, Boris, so could I ask you to leave him with me and take your seat?”

  Nearly everyone there leaned forward, and there wasn’t a sound in the room. Some of us, at least, must have been waiting for the volcano to blow, but Boris left the stage without a word. He was so pleased his dog had been selected, Audrey could do no wrong. If she’d asked him to leave the country, he probably would have pulled out a cell phone and called the airlines right from the stage.

  “Sasha, come on over here and tell me what’s been on your mind.” Audrey patted the stage right next to where she sat, and the big dog, his head rolling from side to side, walked slowly over to where she was and sat. Then he rolled onto one hip so that he was leaning against her. Everyone began to clap.

  Audrey stroked Sasha’s neck, just sitting at his side. And listening. Or so we were meant to believe.

  “He says he’d really like to go to Burger King, and have one his way.”

  We all laughed. I could hear Boris from where I sat, laughing louder and longer than any of us. Then I saw him smirking at someone off to the left. He was apparently trying to catch Martyn’s eye, but Martyn didn’t see him. He was still paying attention to whatever was on his lap.

  “He says he doesn’t like to be disciplined.”

  Audrey was smiling, patting Sasha on the top of his broad head. There was a loud moaning sound from the humans, as if to say, Get on with it, tell us something we don’t know. And as if Audrey heard those very words, she did.

  “He said his leg still hurts when it’s damp out,” she said. “But not when he runs. It used to. But not now. And he’d like you to rub it the way you used to. He says it’s much better, but it still aches when the weather is wet.”

  It was quiet again. Very quiet. Boris stood. “Leg was broken when he was nine months old. Sasha jump for fly in office, come down on slippery floor and skid. Break bone.” He sat again, and waited. We all did.

  I had once let Lili drag me to a numerologist all her friends had been raving about. It’s ridiculous, I’d told her, I have better things to do with my time and money than listening to some charlatan telling me the sort of junk everyone wants to hear, call it a “reading” and charge an arm and a leg for making up stuff to fool me with. My treat, she’d said, and when I’d told her that the money wasn’t the issue, she’d said, Please, Rachel, do this for me, I’d never have the nerve to go without you. And so I’d gone with her, laughing all the way, until the guy had gotten specific enough, and scary enough, to get my attention. The way Audrey had just gotten all of ours.

  “What else would you like Boris to know?” she asked, her cheek against Sasha’s. We waited a long time, just watching them. With nothing else to do, I wondered if Boris had told her about the broken leg, and if he’d forgotten that he had. Or if there were stitches there, an old scar she’d felt when the dog sat next to her. I thought I could feel his legs later on, see if that was the case.

  “You’re safe here,” she told the Rottie. Then we all waited for him to answer her question, the way we’d all waited for him to sing the national anthem.

  “He won’t say anything else,” Audrey finally said. “He’s—” But she didn’t finish her sentence. She was looking out into the audience, at Boris. “I think that’s it for now,” she said, but when the dog lay down at her side and began to tremble, Audrey continued. “He’s afraid of making you angry,” she said, her hand on the dog’s back, her eyes on Boris. “He’s afraid of you,” she added, as tenderly as she could. “Of your anger.”

  “What anger?” Boris shouted, his arms raised, palms up. He looked around the room for confirmation of his judgment, but didn’t receive any. “This is biggest baloney I ever hear.”

  “Perhaps next time,” Audrey said.

  “People come here for knowledge, not ridiculous storytelling, dog says he’s afraid, wants hamburger, ach.” He charged up to the stage to get his dog.

  I expected him to storm out of the room, but he didn’t. Audrey waited until he was seated again. “It’s just that he wants to please you so badly,” she said. “He would never want to make you angry at him by complaining.”

  Boris grunted, appeased by what she’d added.

  Audrey asked Tracy to bring Jeff up, but she declined, saying that Jeff had always told her absolutely everything he required for total happiness. She was clinging on so tight, I had to wonder exactly which beans she was afraid Jeff would spill.

  Boris was sitting quietly now, stroking Sasha’s neck. How easily he’d gone into a rage, I thought. And then I had a psychic revelation of my own. For just a moment, there was a picture in my head, the way you remember a snippet of a dream before it blows away as quickly as it came. I saw a hand, maybe Boris’s hand, leaning down on that small shelf in the hotel bathrooms, the one they leave the extra towels on, the one that Alan Cooper had put the radio on so that he could listen to music while he soaked in the tub.

  Bucky had brought Alexi to the stage and had gone back to his seat.

  “I can’t understand a word he’s saying,” Audrey said. “Does anyone here speak Russian?”

  But before Boris got the chance to volunteer, her hands were up, stopping the laughter and letting us know we should remain in our places. “This is the time for me to explain how psychic communication with animals works. Or more accurately, how it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work in words, so language differences never become language barriers. The communication is done in pictures, things the dog imagines and sends to you and things you imagine and the dog picks up. I’ll ask you to close your eyes now—no, not you, Alexi, you can keep your eyes open.”

  There was laughter again. I looked around and saw everyone smiling, eyes closed. Audrey had won them over. Even Boris had his eyes closed.

  I closed my eyes and waited for Audrey’s voice to tell me what to do, but before she said a word, another picture came, an awful picture, Rick Shelbert turning pale as he struggled for air.

  I opened my eyes and thought about what Chip had said when I’d told him I’d been late because I’d stopped to powder my nose.

  You didn’t do a very good job.

  He was right. I hadn’t.

  I had been hired to prevent the loss of life, and yet two people were dead. I thought about the elevator falling, the people not being warned. Maybe once things were set in motion, there was no way to stop them. Maybe all I could do, like the police, was make sure that whoever was doing this would be found out, that we could have the small but important satisfaction of knowing who and why. But that wasn’t enough. There had to be an end to this.

  “Is there an image in your mind now?”

  Her voice seemed to be coming from very far away.

  “If you have a companion animal with you, change the image so that you are picturing something pleasant that includes your pet, taking him for a walk in the park, feeding him a favorite treat, or playing a game he likes. One image. And hold that image. Now see if your pet starts to react in any way, but don’t open your eyes yet. Wait until you’re sure he’s got it.”

  Dashiell wasn’t impressed. He was lying on his side, snoring lightly. But sitting there and watching Audrey bonding with Alexi, I was formulating a mental image that got me excited, a way that, starting tonight, I could do my job better, a way, I hoped, to interfere with fate and prevent the next senseless killing.

  20

  I’VE BEEN HEARING RUMORS ABOUT YOU

  “Ante up, people,” Woody said, breaking the seal on the deck and shuffling. “Ante. From the Latin, meaning ‘before.’ Come on, Boris. You know the American saying, A fool and his money are soon parted. Let’s go here.”

  I tossed my chip and heard the satisfying sound of plastic against plastic as each of my cohorts did the same, the chips landing on each other and then sliding off onto the green felt cover of the round table I’d asked Jimmy to have brought to my room after dinner.

  I’d gone out for the supplies myself, not wanting to leave the s
election of junk food to an amateur. Boris had volunteered to supply the cigars. He’d brought vodka too, not knowing that I’d had the same idea. We had enough booze to fill a kiddie pool.

  I waited until all my cards were in front of me before picking them up.

  The other women had declined my proposition, each making her own lame excuse for not spending the night in a cloud of smoke. I didn’t care. It was the men I was after. If they were all together playing poker, I hoped they’d all be alive in the morning. Because even without the sort of hard evidence that was needed to change anyone’s opinion about what had happened to two of our male speakers, the knot in my stomach was telling me these cleverly orchestrated episodes were not accidents.

  I sat next to Chip. Boris was across from me, which is exactly where I wanted him, in full view, and Woody sat at my right, Bucky sat at Chip’s left, and Martyn, who had been the only voice of dissent in the group but gave in and came anyway, was sitting between Woody and Boris.

  I took a look at my cards. “In,” I said. I tossed in a five-dollar chip, the last of the big spenders.

  “Call,” Chip said.

  “Call.” Bucky picked up a chip with two fat fingers and tossed it into the pot.

  “Boris calls.”

  There were two more pings as Martyn and Woody pitched a chip each toward the pot, nobody going out on a limb just yet.

  “How many?” Woody asked.

  “I’ll play these.”

  “Two,” Chip said. He peeled off a couple of cards and tossed them to Woody. Woody sent two back, only the three golden retriever puppies showing. I’m nothing if not appropriate.

  “One,” Bucky said, trying to look inscrutable.

  Boris held his cards from above, his fingers coming down over the top like ivy growing over a stone wall. “Three.”

  “Three?”

  “You heard Boris,” he said, looking irritated now.

  “One,” Martyn said. “No, make that two.”

  “I’m taking one,” Woody said. Then he turned to look at me and waited.