The Adventures of Young Elizabeth and Rollo, the Wondercat* (*Who thought he was a dog?)

by Les Cohen

Episode 9:

  Where’s Rollo?

  So there we were, the four of us – Bobby, MR, Eleanor and me – huddled together in the center of the floor in that little elevator, watching smoke coming up all around us. It didn’t look good. For the moment at least, we couldn’t go up, or down.

  “I thought it was against the law to smoke in elevators.” Eleanor was trying, unsuccessfully, to break the tension with a little humor.

  MR just looked at her. “You think that’s funny? Maybe you’ll do twenty minutes of stand-up at my funeral.”

  “You know, I often thought I’d be good at stan..”

  “Ralph! ..Nobody’s having a funeral. Not today. ..And Eleanor, standup comedians have to, well, stand up. I’ve never seen you stand for more than twenty-two minutes and that was only because there were no seats on the bus and you only made it that long because you were holding on to the strap with both hands!” I paused for a moment to catch my breath.

  “True.” Eleanor knew I was right.

  It was bold talk meant to rally the troops but, I have to admit, it didn’t look good. Being trapped in the elevator would have been bad enough, mostly annoying, but smoke was something else altogether. It wasn’t heavy, not yet, but we had to do something fast. It could be the fire below us was just getting started. “Wait a minute.”

  “What,” Bobby asked me.

  “There’s smoke, but no heat.”

  “You’re right,” MR agreed, but then wondered what difference it made. “Good news? So maybe the building’s not on fire. Bad news,” he was talking unusually fast, “we’re going to suffocate anyway!”

  No doubt about it, it didn’t look good, but does it ever, look good, that is? All my life I’ve always believed that, no matter how much trouble I got into, somehow I’d figure my way out of it. Which is pretty much what happens I suppose, until one time you don’t. Fortunately, back then in the elevator, I was way too busy to think about failing. Rollo, sitting up next to my laptop, shook his head, up and down, in agreement. At the time, of course, he had been three floors up in my father’s office building with the old man, fighting for his life – for both their lives, for all I knew – with the two thugs with Russian accents. ..I wondered sometimes, watching him stare so intently at the screen while I typed, if he really could read. Mostly, I think he sat there to keep an eye on the birdhouse I had stuck with a big sucker on the outside of my window.

  Meanwhile, while the rest of us were just standing there thinking, Eleanor was trying the “3” button again and again, and then the “Open” button. No luck. “I think we’ve stopped between floors,” she said, but nobody was paying attention. Bobby had moved to the door, doing his best to pry it open with his fingers, each hand pulling in opposite directions.

  “Hit the emergency button, the big red one,” Bobby pointed.

  “I did. ..See, it’s not going in.”

  “No,” MR reached around her to the panel. “Try pulling it out,” which he did, and that worked. It probably worked that way to prevent people from setting it off accidentally. But then MR just stood there staring at it, at the red button. “Why isn’t it going off? We should be hearing an alarm. ..I don’t hear an alarm,” he said, turning to Eleanor. “Do you he..”

  “Of course not, Bozo! You’re not deaf. If there was an alarm going off, you’d hear it too.”

  “Hey!” I interrupted, holding out my palms “Everybody just.. just focus.” And then I looked up. “How about it?” I asked Bobby, pointing to the plate over my head, to the left of the light in the ceiling.

  The smoke was beginning to burn everyone’s eyes, and Bobby coughed as he bent down a bit to give me a leg up. This was serious. The fooling around part was just because we were nervous. Actually, scared out of our minds was more like it. It’s just that none of us wanted any of the others of us to know. I put my hands on Bobby’s shoulders – which was very nice, but a distraction neither of us needed – and my right foot on the platform of his interlocked fingers that he’d made for me. “Go!” I told him, and he lifted his arms at precisely the moment I stood up, reaching as high as I could to touch the high metal ceiling directly above me. My right palm pounded flush against the plate, but it didn’t budge. “No screws. Nothing. It’s just stuck.” And I was back on the floor again, just as fast as I’d gone up. “But it’s cold.”

  “So?” Eleanor, and MR too, had been watching what we’d been doing.

  “At least we know there’s no fire above us,” MR understood. “If there’s a fire, it’s under the elevator, maybe even in the basement. We’ve got to go up. Even if Rollo wasn’t in trouble, we can’t just sit here until we pass out!”

  “I’ll keep tryi...” she couldn’t finish, stopping to cover her mouth while she choked on the smoke she’d inhaled, but this time, “Chawaahhh,” and the elevator stared moving up, slow, but steady, leaving the smoke behind us as it rose past the second floor and then slowed to stop at the third. The exhaust fan in the elevator ceiling was doing its job, pulling out what was left of the stink we had been breathing. The door opened slowly, the four of us hesitant to move into the hallway, choosing instead to listen for the sound of a fight, of any ruckus. ..Nothing. Just quiet.

  With Eleanor’s finger on the “Open” button so the doors didn’t keep trying to close, all four of us slowly extended our heads into the hallway. Eleanor and MR looked to the right, Bobby and I, to the left. ..Nothing.

  “Now what?” MR needed to know.

  Bobby took a moment to look over his shoulder, sniffing to smell what was left of the fumes. “What about the fire, whatever, that was causing the smoke? Who’s going to put that out?”

  “Awfully quiet, don’t you think?” Eleanor was right, but none of us was sure what that meant. At least there wasn’t anyone on the floor we had to deal with. Unfortunately, no Rollo either.

  “Oh, yeah?” MR tiptoed, for some reason – which was a really weird look for him – across the hallway to the fire alarm, “I can fix that.” He pulled it, breaking the little glass bar, but nothing went off. No raucous wake-the-dead noise. We all looked up. The bell was right there, attached to the wall above the alarm, but it wasn’t going off.

  “What are you doing?” Eleanor asked, this time without thinking.

  “Are you kidding?” I was impressed. “It’s a great idea. The building could be on fire. ..And besides, even if it it’s not, the alarm will bring the Fire Department, people we can trust to...”

  “If it was working,” Bobby interrupted, reaching up to flick the bell with his finger to the sound of a barely audible “dink.” “..Maybe it’s a silent alarm.”

  “Silent?” MR asked. “You’re making a joke. Aren’t you?” Sometimes MR could be easily confused, an affectation which turned out to be the sign of a uniquely brilliant mind. “I don’t think so. What good does it do the people in the building if they can’t hear the alarm going off?! I think we should...”

  “What?” Bobby cocked his head slightly to the right, like we really didn’t have time for the obvious right now, “What? Oh,” he was being sarcastic. “I have an idea. Why don’t we call the Fire Department?” The fact was, for all we knew, the building was on fire even though the smoke had stopped coming through the floor. In any case, we were all spooked by the fact that there was no one around.

  “Why isn’t the fire alarm working?” I asked myself out loud.

  “Maybe someone,” Bobby said what we were all thinking, “disabled it, just in case guys like us tried to use it to call for help?”

  “Com’on.” MR thought Bobby’s point was more than a little far-fetched.

  “Are you kidding?” Bobby snapped back. “The elevator doesn’t work. The emergency button doesn’t work. The building fire alarms don’t work, and we’re been chased by Russian hit men for all we know. You think this is all a coinky-dink?”

  Eleanor just looked at him. “Did you jus
t say, ‘coinky-dink’?” Any other time, it would have been funny.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I agreed, “but the Russians, they’re thugs. You don’t really think they disabled the fire alarm system, do you?”

  “The emergency button?” MR added to the list. “Even if the smoke was just an accident, a problem with the motor or something, someone’s been playing with the wiring. ..No. Now that I think about it. The emergency button could just be broken. It’s the fire alarm not going off that really bothers me.”

  “Wait a minute.” I was on to something. “How did they know we were here?”

  “I thought it was a coincidence.”

  “Sure, Bobby. One time maybe, but think about it. Go back to the beginning. How did they know when the safe arrived?”

  “Maybe they found out when and where it was shipped and were waiting for it.” MR had a point.

  “Okay, maybe. They were in a hurry to steal it, so much so they took it in broad daylight and would have gotten away with it if their cable hadn’t snapped. How did they know my father was out that morning?”

  “Maybe they didn’t.” MR was challenging every one of my assumptions, which was actually a good thing. “Maybe they just got lucky. Maybe if your father had been there, they would have waited until he left.”

  “Okay, so how did they know we were here tonight?” Eleanor wanted to know.

  “Maybe we were followed?” Bobby suggested.

  “No. Nobody followed us. ..I mean, I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think so. ..Who else,” I looked at Bobby, MR and Eleanor one at a time, “who else knew we’d be here? My parents don’t count. We get here, and then they show up. Unless they were already hiding out in the building, how did they know? And why not wait until we left?”

  “Maybe they didn’t know we were coming.” It was Bobby again. “Look, it could still be coincidental. We’re both chasing the same clues. It only figures we’ll run into each other.”

  (This is me, college student Elizabeth again. Have you noticed yet how complicated and confusing something simple can get? It’s not like TV where the writers make sure all the details fit perfectly. In real life, they don’t. Trust me. This is a true story. I was there. I know what I’m talking about. Just to be clear, we were worried. ..No, “scared” is more like it, but we were trying to be mature which, until you are, turns out to be easier said than done. Under the circumstances, I’ve been impressed to this day at how well we handled ourselves. Had we been alone, anyone of the four of us by ourselves, I’m not so sure. But together.. Together we were able to play off each other’s strengths and keep our wits about us.)

  “Sure.” Bobby had a point. It just wasn’t the point I was trying to make. “But why confront us? Why risk the mess? ..Why not just hide out until we’re gone?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they’re idiots.” Bobby was reaching. “Maybe they just don’t care.”

  “No. She’s right,..”

  “Thanks, Ralph.” I smiled at him, but only with my lips. No teeth.

  “..but not for the reasons you’re thinking. I think they think we’ve found something or, I don’t know, that we’ve figured something out. ..Think about it. They kidnapped you in front of the grocery store probably by mistake. I think they were after the files. The deal on the boat at Harness Creek wasn’t about you, it was about the old man. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been willing to let you drown.”

  “I was going to drown too,” Eleanor wanted to make sure she got full credit.

  “And tonight?? Tonight, they actually knocked on your father’s door.. I mean, how bold is that? ..and then chased you into the hallway. Tonight, they either wanted to kidnap you or.. or worse.”

  “So what?” Eleanor had been listening intently, as intently as she listens to anything, but now she had something to say. “We don’t really have any idea what they’re doing, do we? All we know for sure is that someone disabled the emergency button on the elevator and the fire alarms in the building.”

  “I don’t understand.” Bobby didn’t get it, not yet anyway, but I did.

  “Bobby,” I explained, “her point is that those two Russians had no idea we’d be getting on the elevator until you two grabbed us. Heck, we were headed for the stairs when you and MR showed up. When would they have had the time, let alone know how to disable the fire alarms? The panel, I know because I’ve seen it, is in the basement, where the..” I stopped, because that was the moment when all four of us finally got it.

  “It’s the super,” Bobby said carefully, “isn’t it? The super who let the pizza guy, what’s his name..”

  “Paul.” As a rule, Eleanor never forgot the names of guys with blonde wavy hair.

  “Paul, whatever,” Bobby continued. “He knew we were here, called his buddies and had them come over.”

  “Exactly,” I agreed. “It just stands to reason that there’s a third guy, someone who’s in a position to watch the building, to get into my father’s office because he has a key and knows when we’re all coming and going.”

  “What do you wanna bet,” Eleanor extended her arms out to her side, like we were about to have a group hug, ushering all of us out of the elevator into the third floor hallway, “he’s turned off phone service to the building, or at least to your father’s office?” (Remember, none of us had cell phones back then, and there was no pay phone in the building or even out in the little plaza in front of us.

  “Well,” MR was having another wave of nervousness, fumbling to think of something cool or at least important to say, but couldn’t think of anything. “Yeah. Let’s find out,” was all he could come up with.

  “They could still be in my father’s office.” I was worried, and just realized that I was holding onto Bobby’s arm with both hands. I let go so quickly it startled him, and he turned to look at me. “Just keep talking,” I told myself, and I did... “They could be anywhere, hiding out in someone else’s office or even the stairwell, waiting for us. They could...”

  “We just need to find a phone, any phone, and call the police.” Good idea, Eleanor. “Let’s go to your father’s office. ..Com’on, I think they’re gone, Rollo and the old man with them.” And so the four us, huddled together not six inches apart, like some gangly, uncoordinated spider, moved quickly from the elevator to the broken front door of my father’s office, stopping just at the edge of the broken glass still on the floor.

  “Wow.” What I saw caught me by surprise.

  “The place has been trashed,” Eleanor stated the obvious. Papers, files, books everywhere.

  “We were only in the elevator for, what, twenty minutes tops.” MR was right. “In twenty minutes, everybody’s gone and they had time to do all this,” he nodded in the direction of the mess.

  “Wait here,” in the hallway, I told them. “I’m going to see if the phone works,” which is what I started to do.

  “No.” Bobby grabbed my arm. “I mean, I’ll go with you in case they’re in the back.

  Stepping over the glass as best I could, I walked over to my father’s desk and picked up the phone. “There’s no tone.” I pressed one of the hang up buttons a couple of times. Still nothing.

  “And where’s the phone box?” Eleanor already knew, but asked the question anyway.

  MR, standing next to her in the doorway, answered for all of us. “And I’m guessing it’s in the basement, where the super hangs out.”

  “Okay, let’s go into the back room, just in case.” I was worried someone, maybe Rollo, might be back there, and hurt.”

  “You two,” Bobby was talking to MR and Eleanor, “go up and down the hall, together, to see if any of the offices are open.” It was after nine, pushing ten and plenty dark out even with the street lights. “All the stores and restaurants on the street are closed by now. Besides, for all we know, the super and his crew could be waiting for us to leave.”

  “I don’t want
to go out anyway.” Eleanor wasn’t the only one.

  “Right,” Bobby agreed. “Try to find us a phone in one of the offices.”

  “Guys,” MR had thought of something, “don’t touch anything. The police will want to see the place, check things exactly the way we found it.

  “Right,” Bobby agreed, and we split up. Turned out there was no one in the back. No sign of Rollo or the old man. Zero. The place was a mess. Back at the front door, we stepped into the hallway to see Eleanor waiving at us to join them in front of one of the offices a few doors down.

  “They’re all locked,” MR told us when we got there.

  “So what’s so special about this one?” I asked, noting the “Ronald Stevens, Esq., Attorney at Law” gold letter decals on the wooden door.

  “The thing is,” MR wrapped on the glass with his finger tips, “I know this guy. He did some work for my parents.”

  “Was that when they wrote you out of their will?”

  “Cute, Bobby.” MR rolled his eyes and sighed slightly, too nervous to smile.

  “Guys!” Eleanor seemed on the verge of losing it, but I knew better. “We need to do something. It’s late. Are parents are wondering where we are and if Mr. Coleman calls Elizabeth, she’s not going to answer, is she?!”

  I got the point. Of all the offices on the floor, Mr. Stevens’ was the only one other than my father that had glass in the hallway. My father’s door was, well, used to be glass framed by wood, before they kicked it in, but his phone lines were out. Mr. Stevens door was wood like all the others, but he had panes of glass on the side, I guess to make it to see who might be out there before letting them in. “Give me your jacket, MR.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m not wearing one. Just give it to me. Com’on.” Seeing I meant business, he took off the light weight, dirty orange jacket he wore everywhere, no matter how hot it was. I think he did it for the extra Kleenex and Snickers-es – “Rollo, what’s the plural of ‘Snickers’? I’ll look it up later.” – he could carry in its pockets. “Get back.”

  “Oh yeah, I’ve seen this on TV.” Eleanor was right. Rolling the jacket around my right arm, I looked away, eyes shut, and gave one of the glass panes a swift elbow to its stomach.

  “Hey, that’s my...” he paused long enough to turn away as the glass shattered, most of it falling inside, “...jacket.”

  “Here. You can have it back now.”

  “Thanks.” Looking it over carefully, it may have been the first time I’d ever seen MR that concerned about anything.

  Being careful to avoid the jagged pieces of glass still holding their own around the inside edge of the door, Bobby reached through and turned the deadbolt, and then the outside knob with his other hand, pushing the door inward, shoveling some of the glass that was on the floor out of the way.

  “Aren’t we, like, breaking and entering?” Eleanor had a right to be concerned.

  “I did it,” I told her and looked at Bobby and MR. “I did it, not you. It’s an emergency and we need to use the phone. ..MR, do it now. If the phone’s are working,” and it turned out they were, “call 911 for the police and fire department from that front desk. I’ll find another extension and call my parents. Then Bobby, you’ll call yours and Eleanor, yours. ..Go, Ralph. Do it.”

  “Careful,” MR warned us, mostly me actually, as he led the way inside. “Somebody get the lights,” which I did, although you could see pretty well from light coming in from the windows along the alley.

  Eleanor was the first to reach a phone, the one on the receptionist’s desk. “No dial tone.”

  “This one’s dead, too.” MR had gone inside what had to be Mr. Steven’s office.

  “They must have turned off service for the entire building.” Eleanor was sounding level again. We were beginning to click. (I love that feeling.. Don’t you? ..when you and someone or people you’re with start really working together, playing off each other perfectly. There’s that rhythm. What a feeling.)

  “Com’on, we’ll take the fire escape outside the hallway window,” which I’d wished I thought of before I broke into Mr. Stevens’ office.”

  “I thought,” Eleanor reminded us, “we didn’t want to go outside.”

  “We don’t,” Bobby agreed, “but we’re out of options. We’ll stay together.”

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” MR almost raised his hand for permission, but caught himself.

  “Me too.” It had been a while and the excitement just made me have to go more.. Too much information, but you get the point.

  “Okay.” Bobby had a plan. “We’ll all go, first to the mens room with you two,” referring to Eleanor and me, “waiting outside the door. Then the reverse, to the ladies room.”

  “And nobody starts doing anything until you say, ‘Clear,’ the way the do it on TV.” The three of us just looked at Eleanor, but then realized it was actually a good idea just in case someone was waiting in there for us. It wasn’t likely, but make us feel better, like we knew what we were doing.

  So we all went to the bathroom, and then headed back to my father’s office and his fire escape, worried that it might not be safe to walk down the stairs and out the front door.

  “What if we see them, Rollo, the old man or those other two?” I really didn’t know what we would do.

  “We’ll..” MR was talking softly, suddenly worried that someone might hear us. “..we’ll just have to wing it.”

  “Let’s go,” Eleanor knew we didn’t have any choice.

  We started out, walking quickly from Mr. Stevens’ office, down the hallway. “I’m worried about Rollo.”

  “Listen to me,” Bobby stopped for a second, grabbing me with both his hands on my arms to make sure he had my attention, as if he needed help getting it. “Enough about your cat. He can take care of himself.”

  “Are you kidding,” Eleanor had seen Rollo in action, “he can take care of himself and the four of us.”

  “As I was saying,” Bobby continued, “he’ll be fine and right now we’ve got to worry about getting ourselves out of here in one piece.” He wasn’t even trying to reassure me. “...Have you forgotten about the smoke?! For all we know, there’s at least a smoldering if not flat out fire in the building. ..Now, com’on. We’ve all been to the bathroom. Let’s get our butts out of here.”

  “Just the same,” we started running to catch up with the others, to the window at the end of the hallway along the front, the window they’d used to take the safe out of my father’s office, “if I see him.. If I see Rollo, I’m going to do something.”

  We’d opened the window and stepped out onto the fire escape platform after carefully looking up, down and out onto the little plaza, but we didn’t see anyone.

  “Ouch!” I looked over to see Eleanor sucking on the crease to her left hand by her thumb.

  “Watch your hands on the railings. They’re old and some of the paint’s sharp where it’s flaking off.”

  “Now you tell me?”

  “Shhhh,” I responded, looking down the hallway from the outside on the third floor grating. ..Empty, just the way I like it.

  “Where do suppose they all went?” Bobby wondered.

  “Hey, for all we know they’re still in the building somewhere.” Eleanor was right.

  “Let’s just get to the street and go for some help.” MR was already on his way down to the bottom platform.

  “Wait up,” I went next, “I’ll steady the ladder for you.”

  “Elizabeth!!” It was my mother, getting out of our wagon – the new used one my parents had bought after the other one sank – pulling up on, not in front of, but actually on the brick plaza below us. One police car with flashing lights, but no siren, I guess so not to scare anyone away, was coming up Main Street from the dock, and then a second from around the circle at the top of the block. The two of them drove up, stopping on each side of our car. My mother h
adn’t bothered to wait for our car to stop lurching as it came to a sudden stop, and almost stumbled on the uneven brick as she got out of the passenger side. My father, who had been driving, was right behind her, both of them running up to the building where we were on our way down the fire escape.

  “Careful, honey!” The ladder was normally about a full story off the ground, too high for anyone to reach, even if they jumped for it. No problem for MR whose weight took it down quickly enough, bouncing as it hit the pavement. He stepped off onto the brick and then held it steady for the rest of us.

  “Elizabeth!” My mother grabbed me by both shoulders as soon as I was down, leaving it to my father and one of the policemen to help Eleanor and Bobby. Do I look like I need to be grabbed? Am I wearing a sign? First Bobby, which was nice even under the circumstances, and now my.. “Are you alright?”

  “How did you guys know to..” I was so glad to see them I was almost shaking.

  “You didn’t pick up Daddy’s phone. None of the other parents had heard anything and, what with the past few days, we had to do something.”

  “Right. Of course. Look, you’ve got to get the Fire Department,” I told her, looking back at the building for any sign of flames. By then, one of the policemen had walked up next to where we were standing, and I touched him on his arm to get his attention. “Officer, there’s smoke coming in the elevator on the first floor. We pulled one of the alarms, but it didn’t work. It may just be a motor thing, but..” Without waiting for me to finish, he was on the radio he was carrying, calling for help.

  “Guys,” I turned to my friends, “look around for Rollo. ...Please.”

  “Officer,” my father, seeing how concerned I was, asked the policeman we’d been talking to for help. “Can you and your men…”

  “Sure, Mr. Coleman,” he’d overheard us talking. “What does your son look like?”

  “No, no. ..He’s a cat. A large cat.”

  “Mr. Coleman, we’ve got another unit on its way.” For a thin man who seemed to be trim, the Officer sounded a bit out of breath. “Wait here for them to arrive. In the meantime, we’re going inside to look around. ..And do me a favor,” he said, turning as an afterthought, backpedaling on his way to the front door. “Use the pay phone by the alley to call your super and get him over here to unlock the back door, all these offices and anywhere we have to go in the basement.”

  “Right away,” and off my father went.

  “No. Dad!” I shouted at him on my way to catch up. He stopped and the two of us stood there, Bobby, MR and Eleanor waiting near my mother, while I brought my father up to date.

  “Okay, okay,” was all he had to say, taking a moment to take it all in. “Alright,” he took a quick breath. “I’ll call the detective we met here when the safe fell. I’ve got his card with me. ..I’ll tell him what you told me and leave it to him figure out what to do next. He may still want me to give him a call. ..You know,” my father cautioned me, “you don’t really know our super’s involved. It’s easy to get into the basement and, even assuming there was a third man, or woman, it could have been someone else. You understand that, right? ..You need to be careful, and smart, but careful not to accuse people of things until you’re sure.”

  “I know, Daddy.”

  Maybe forty-five minutes later, after midnight by then, we had looked everywhere. My parents and I had gone back to look inside while my friends went out with the police for a block in every direction – not just looking for Rollo, of course, but also for any sign of the old man and the two Russians. Nothing. None of the few people they ran into had seen anything, least of all a large, stocky cat or an old man with a bad leg who might have taken him. Turns out the fire in the elevator never really got started. It was some motor, belt, something problem that the maintenance man had been planning to get fixed. Dangerous to breathe, but, you know how they say, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”? Well, lucky for us, not this time.

  My parents took us home. They almost had to drag me away from the plaza. Bobby even volunteered to stay up all night with me, hanging out in front of the building, hoping that Rollo would come back – I told you Bobby’s crazy about me. – but my parents wouldn’t hear of it. Neither would his. I knew they were right. It was late. We were way beyond tired, and agreed to meet at my place in the morning for a late breakfast and figure out what to do next. We were quiet in the car. Eleanor was falling asleep on MR’s shoulder in the “way back” seat that faced out the rear of our wagon. Bobby put his hand on top of mine on the back seat between us, while I stared out the window looking for any sign of fur.

  To be continued…

  “You know, Rollo,” I reached under his chin to make sure we were eyeball to eyeball.

  “Mrr?”

  “To be honest, I thought you were done for. I thought that would be the last time.. That seeing you in the hallway, protecting that old man.. It’s just that I’ve always thought, as long as we were together, the two of us would be okay.”

  “Mrrrrrr.” Rollo pushed up on his front legs to bury his head in the palm of my hand.

  “Yeah. That was scary for both of us, wasn’t it? Not so much when it was all happening, but later, after we left Main Street without you. I have a feeling that’s the way it is. We lose someone we love, to illness, danger, …”

  “Murrk.”

  “It doesn’t make any difference. We don’t really get it until after it’s happened, when ordinary words become the last things we’ve said and there’s nothing we can do about it. ..I felt weak going home that night without you, Rollo, like I imagine what it’s like to be dying. Weak and desperate. I felt like crying, Rollo, but crying would have meant giving up. Promise me..” But then I stopped, because it occurred to me that was too much to ask.

  * * *