Do You Know Your Dogs?
When I got home from America, the cat had changed. He’d been thin and gray and he’d been sleeping on my lounge. Now he was fat and brown and, I realized as I examined him more closely, a dog. One of the little yappy kinds. When I was a kid, I was walking over to a friend’s house and a stranger accosted me and asked me if I’d seen his dog. I was probably in the third grade, and I remember the stranger as being a teenager, so he was probably just ten or twelve. I said what kind of dog was it, and instead of saying “a little brown dog” or something normal like that, the stranger asked me “do you know your dogs?”
“Do you know your dogs,” is what he said. I forget what I said back. It was “kind of” or “a little” or something like that. But I remember exactly what he said then. He said “A springer spaniel. Does that mean anything to you?” which of course it didn’t. I had, and have, no clue what a springer spaniel looks like. I knew cocker spaniel, is all. And I said no, and he was all “I didn’t think so,” and turned away in what I remember as disgust, which doesn’t make any sense because, like I said, he was the one who approached me asking about dogs. Which means maybe it was a teenager after all, because teenagers have zero manners.
My whole life since then that little exchange between me and the teenager has been wandering through the back of my mind, looking for something to connect to and join my holistic worldview. For a while when I myself was a teenager I decided that “do you know your dogs” was code for “I want drugs” and “springer spaniel” was code for “do you have the drugs for me?” But eventually I settled on the way-more-plausible conclusion that no, it was just a teenager being a dick to a kid. Lord knows that happened often enough.
None of this explained how my cat had become a dog, though. The pieces had yet to fall into place. As I looked around I realized other changes had occured: the layout of the apartment was subtly altered. The nail holes in the walls were in different places. The furniture had been taken out and replaced with different furniture. All in all, I would have thought that I was in a neighbor’s apartment by mistake, except that my keys had unlocked the front door.
I paced back and forth, and thought about this. I tried to call R—-, but I didn’t get any reception. I went into the kitchen, but my coffeemaker was gone. There was a French press there, instead. And I wasn’t that desperate, yet. I found a six-pack of Tab in the fridge, which only sharpened my suspicions because under no circumstances would I expect any of my neighbors to drink Tab.
I made a list in my head. I wanted to make a list on paper, but I couldn’t find any paper. The list I made in my ran was labelled “POSSIBLE EXPLANATIONS,” and it had numbered items.
One, maybe I had told the taxicab driver the wrong address, and been dropped off at some random distant apartment, the lock of which just happened to fit my keys. Two, maybe my keys were magic keys (or through some other, nonsupernatural but no less impressive, force could open strange locks). Three, maybe my keys and someone else’s keys had been switched at some point. The keys hadn’t been in my pocket the entire evening. I’d had to pass through two metal detectors. Someone might have pulled a switch.
Four, maybe I had through some unknown means been transported into a locale, in which causality and meaning were no more helpful than nonsense and blatherskite. Five, maybe some mundane but terrible force (the NSA, Greenpeace, the Crips) had torn apart my apartment while I wasn’t in it, and remodeled it completely, to frighten me. Six, maybe the front door hadn’t actually been locked and maybe I had a little too much to drink more than I had realized, and maybe I went up to my next-door neighbor’s front door instead of my own and maybe my next-door neighbor just likes Tab.
Further experimentation was needed. I devised the hypothesis that if I walked back out the front door I would be able to see my own apartment across the street, and resolved to test it. I stepped around the body on my way out.
Across the street there were no houses, only a thick underbrush with a handful of straggly pine trees sticking out. Was I even still in town? I wondered, but tabled that motion when the dogs started tearing out of the brush.
Springer spaniels. Five or six of them. I slammed the door hard enough to wake the dead, and went back into the kitchen, because this was plainly a two-Tab problem.
(I’d like to think they were springer spaniels. I still don’t actually know what a springer spaniel looks like.)
Sixteen men in a circle, sitting on the beach. Bonfire, men around the bonfire. Beach? Sand, lots of sand. A desert, but then, where did the men come from, and what’s burning in the fire?
A closer look at the fire answers both questions. The flames lick green glass without consuming it. Men from the Plaza of Memory.
I woke up with a start, because I hadn’t realized I’d fallen asleep. Granted, I was pretty exhausted after a day of meetings and a night in America, but also I was in a strange apartment cowering from a pack of springer spaniels (probably) outside, and you’d think that would be enough to keep me up.
Had the Tab put me to sleep? Tab is sugar-free, but is it also caffeine-free? Would drinking caffeine-free soda make me fall asleep? It seemed unlikely. Still, here I was, sprawled out on a sofa in a living room that only superficially resembled mine.
As I thought more about my plight, I decided that I could classify every case as either Implausible or Unnatural. Either I’d made some error getting home from America, or else I’d been kidnaped by goblins or whatever. Despite an adolesence spent reading fantasy novels and an adulthood spent playing fantasy games, nothing unnatural had ever happened to me before. No particular reason to expect it to start now. That left implausible.
So I was in a stranger’s apartment and I didn’t know where I was and there were dogs outside. Unless they’d left. I hadn’t heard them scratching or anything.
I went back into the kitchen, where I considered having another Tab but decided against it. There was a back door. Out the back door, into the little yard, hey, another little yard belonging to the house the next block over, through that to the street a block over. Unless the springer spaniels were covering the back door, I should be home free.
I opened the back door slowly. It opened inward. I opened the screen door slowly, too. It opened outward, and a light came on. It took me a minute to realize that the light was hooked up to a motion sensor. No spaniels. No fence in the back yard, either. Excellent.
I walked purposefully but quietly away from the house, and made it to the next street over no problem. It looked basically like all the streets in my neighborhood, which meant it could be anywhere. I needed to find a landmark, because I was pretty sure by this point that I had just had some really bad luck and when I told the cab driver to take me home he’d misunderstood and taken me someplace very far off.
Then I realized I didn’t have any money. Whenever I go to America I get as much cash as I’m going to need, because I always have empty pockets when I leave there. Less the cost of the taxi home. Whenever I go to America I leave everything else at home — no ID, no ATM card — for safety’s sake. All I had on my were my keys and my cell phone, which wasn’t getting any reception because I have the crappiest cell phone company in the world.
I shuddered, because suddenly I felt homeless. I had a home, but I didn’t have a way to get there, and I didn’t know where it was relative to where I was. I had no money, so I couldn’t even go to a coffee shop and drink a latte and figure out how to get home. I was broke and effectively homeless.
I picked a mostly-random direction, bearing left, hoping to find a major street, something with open businesses or a subway station or something. If I could get cell phone reception I could try calling R—- again.
I don’t mind telling you I was pretty worried and feeling very sorry for myself. Ever since I was a little kid I’ve been terrified of homelessness. I have this fear that one day I’m going to come into work and my boss will be like sorry dude there’s no place for you here any more, and I’ll be unemployed and the next thing you know I won’t be able to pay rent and I’ll sell everything I have for money to buy food with and then I’ll run out of stuff to sell and I’ll end up starving to death in a ditch somewhere.
It’s an irrational fear. I have a four-year contract, and a two-year lease, and for that matter I have relatives I could stay with and friends who could probably get me leads on work, if I had to. My sister wouldn’t like it if I lived in her den, but she’d let me, if I needed to. It’s a stupid thing to be afraid of.
It’s why I went into accounting, because I figured there were very few homeless accountants. It’s also why I went to the state university, my safety school, because I had a scholarship and if I went to my first-choice school I’d have to go into debt.
I decided, while I was walking, that I didn’t like this city. Everything’s closed at night and there are no street signs and there’s no cell phone reception. Then I found Canada, and I at least knew where I was.
Canada was closed, of course. I left America pretty late, and that was a couple of hours back at this point. I don’t know exactly what Canada’s hours are, but it doesn’t seem likely that they’re open any later than America. That just wouldn’t make any sense, you know?
But now I knew where I was, so problem solved. New problem: I wasn’t at home. In fact I was a long way from home. Home was much closer to America than to Canada. Canada was clear across town. There’s a taxi stand near Canada, but I didn’t have any way to pay. And my cell phone was now getting a signal, but it also kept beeping “low battery” and turning itself off, so screw that.
Even if Canada had been open, it wouldn’t have improved my options any. First off, they check IDs, and I’d already been through that whole rigamarole coming into and going out of America. Second, nobody I know goes to Canada preferentially over America. Maybe if there was something special happening in Canada that night? But I’d have heard about it. So there wouldn’t have been anyone there whose goodwill I could trample on. And thirdly, much as I wanted a drink — I was regetting not helping myself to a third Tab — I still didn’t have any cash.
All of these problems swirled through my head, as I looked at Canada’s closed and locked doors. Sat down on the pavement, feeling homeless and helpless. If I was in a movie, this would be the point where the female lead appeared unexpectedly and acted all zany. If I was a fictional character of another stripe, I’d get attacked by random thugs at this point. But there was just me, and the pavement, and Canada’s unwelcoming locks.
After a couple of minutes of feeling sorry for myself, I settled on a plan. That’s not strictly accurate. In the first three seconds after I saw Canada was closed, I settled on a plan. Then I sat and felt sorry for myself for a couple of minutes, and then I went ahead with carrying out the plan. Canada isn’t far from a train station. I’d walk over to the station, wait until there was a big rush of people coming out the gate, and go in. Chances are the morning rush hour would be such that no one would notice or care. Then I’d take the train across town to “near” my apartment, walk the rest of the way, call work and tell them I wasn’t coming in, and sleep.
It was a good plan, and it might have worked, except for the dogs.
If the bullet has your name on it, does that really make a difference? I mean, say your whole life you’ve had recurring dreams about going to the beach and swimming in the ocean and losing control and getting sucked out way out, on an inflatable raft, and you can’t see the coastline and you don’t know which way to paddle and you’re probably spinning around, and you’re sunburned and there’s salt stuck to you from where the seawater dried, and it’s hot. No one knows where you are, no one saw you get sucked out, and you’re one tiny tiny little person in the great big sea, and your lips crack and you get stung by jellyfish and your skin dries out until finally you die of exposure. Say that’s your recurring nightmare, and one day you’re at the beach and your sister or whoever is all, let’s get on this inflatable raft. It’s a bad idea, but is it a more bad idea, because it’s yours?
“I told you so” is cold comfort. Whether you’re hoisted on your own petard or ambushed by springer spaniels as you tried to hop the gate to the commuter trains — is there a difference? Torn and bleeding, with your throat bitten open and losing blood out the aorta. You go back, in the last moments of life, after the pain stops, you go back and you examine every choice you made, every fork in the road from birth to the fated end. Was there a point along that arc when you could have escaped them? What if you’d tried to wake up the stranger sleeping on the floor of the living-room-that-was-not-your-living-room? Maybe you should have gone the other way, or tried harder to get to a phone and call R—-, or broken into Canada. It’s too late now.
Did you die on the way home from America, and find yourself in a particularly boring afterlife? Did you die when he drank the poisoned Tab? The first time the dogs came after you, did you get away? Was that the first time the dogs had come after you, or was it simply the first time you had the wit to see them? How long had you stumbled through your life, half-asleep, before the dogs jerked you awake? Why am I using second person? It felt right, when I started, and now I’m not so sure.
But do you know? Do you know your dogs?
Because I never knew my dogs.