Teaching the Dog to Read (2 page)

Right then a strange thing happened: he didn’t move. He didn’t do what she ordered which ten minutes ago would have been unthinkable. Ten minutes ago he would have gotten Lena Schabort fried clams from Florida if she’d asked. But now he didn’t move. Even more interesting is he didn’t
need
to move because he knew—he knew he knew he knew—that the car was
there
. Down in the parking lot waiting for him, zero mileage, was a brand new gunmetal gray Porsche Cayman with coral red leather interior registered in his name—the car of his dreams. He knew.

“Tony? Is
that
your car down there?” She was pointing out the window.

“Yes.” He still didn’t move.

“When did you get it?”

He gave his best Robert DeNiro one shoulder,
Good Fellas
no-big-deal shrug. “Ah, recently.”

Lena turned from the window and looked at him a long time without saying anything. A beautiful new Porsche. Tony Areal. What else didn’t she know about this man?

Frank Rothner from billing came down the corridor and sidled over to Lena. He was so predictable—the whole office knew he used any excuse to get close to her. “What’s up?”

“Did you know that Tony drives a Porsche?”

Rothner grinned like a lottery winner. He’d recently spent a fortune getting his teeth straightened and whitened, so he smiled whenever he could. Plus he thought Lena was joking and wanted her to know that no one in the world appreciated her sense of humor more than him. He looked at Tony dismissively, as if he were the butt of a joke. When he spoke his voice wore ten pounds of sarcasm, “
Really,
a Porsche? What model, pal?”

Tony stood up from his chair. He looked at the floor and smiled to himself a happy moment, putting off the gratifying
coup de grace
he knew was imminent. Vengeance really
is
a dish best tasted cold. He took out the certificate of ownership and walked over to Rothner with it in hand. “A Cayman GTS,
Pal
. Three hundred and forty horsepower with every option you can imagine
and
a custom red leather interior
.”
Handing Frank the certificate, Tony stood with one hand in his pocket while the other man scanned it.

Doubt and then…waiiiit for it…yup—a delicious little frisson of
outrage
showed on Rothner’s face as the fact of what Tony had said sank in. Blinking too much, he did not do a good job of hiding that rage when returning the paper.

“That’s pretty, uh…” Stumped, Frank looked at Lena as if she knew what word he should say now. “That’s awesome, man. I had no idea.” Frank always made fun of Tony. How many times had he said different variations of sentences like “Hey gang, it’s A-real-Tony in our midst!” Lame word play like that, jibes and sometimes not so subtle verbal cattle prods, were annoying after the zillionth time. And it wasn’t only that. Tony frequently had the feeling Frank Rothner didn’t like him but there was no reason for it. The two men had almost no contact professionally or otherwise. About the only thing they had in common was their interest in Lena Schabort, not that she was interested in either of them.

“Who’s the woman, Tony? Is that your girlfriend?”

“Huh?”

“In your car; there’s a woman sitting in the passenger’s seat. Who is she?” Lena’s voice was now wheedling and thin, as if she was trying to coax/flirt the answer out of him. In the world according to Lena S, anyone who owned an eighty thousand dollar car had backbone and didn’t answer any questions they didn’t want to. In her estimation, Tony Areal’s backbone had miraculously transformed from a wet noodle to a titanium rod in the last ten minutes.

“What are you talking about?” Tony strode to the window and looked out. He paid no attention to the fact he was now standing closer to Lena Schabort than he had in all the time he’d known her. But to him at that moment she might as well have been a Coke machine.

The first hard thump in his heart came when looking out the window, he located the gleaming gunmetal gray German machine down in the lot for the first time. There it was—his car,
his
Porsche. The papers to prove it were right here in his hand. Hot damn!

The second heart thump came on seeing the elbow, arm and the long hair. A woman
was
sitting in the passenger’s seat of his car. Her window was down and a thin bare arm and elbow rested comfortably on the door there. She must have had long hair because even that was visible from this distance too.

“Who is she?”

“I have
no
idea.” Tony turned to Lena wearing a smile that until an hour ago he didn’t possess. It was the devilish, confident, everything’s-coming-up-roses smile successful people throw at the world when they know success or at least something interesting is right around the corner for them—again. The arrogant self assured smile of people used to having nice things happen to them often. Tony turned away from his long time object of desire and headed for the door.

Sensing opportunity, Frank sidled up to Lena again and said indignantly, “What the hell’s gotten into him?”

Lena looked at Rothner like he was a contagious disease. “Why do you always have to stand so close to me, Frank? Are you some kind of perv?”

Before Frank could say anything in his own defense, she shook her head in disgust and strode off.

When he was sure she was far enough away, Frank lifted his chin and sniffed the air. The sillage of Lena’s perfume still hung there, as it always deliciously did after she’d made an exit. Savoring it, he realized he was sniffing too much and his eyes were closed as he did it. Snapping to open-eyed attention, he looked around to make sure no one had seen him perv’ing the air like that. Then he hurried back to his desk.

Tony Areal pushed open the door and stepped outside. It was a beautiful day—sunny but cool enough to wear a light jacket. His favorite kind of weather. He held the envelope containing all the car documents in case the mysterious woman in the Porsche was somehow officially connected to this. As he got closer to the car he saw more of her in silhouette. She did have long, what appeared to be auburn hair and wore large sunglasses that concealed much of her upper face. Sensing his approach, she turned slowly to him and slipped the glasses down her nose but not off. She was okay looking but that wasn’t what caused him to make a sudden stutter step.

He
recognized
her. He didn’t know when or where he’d seen the woman before but she definitely occupied a piece of real estate in his memory.

Auburn hair, pale skin, a small mouth, and brown eyes that looked amused but non-committal. “
There
you are. I’ve been waiting.” Her voice was high pitched and friendly. It sounded familiar too. Where the hell had he seen this woman before?

Tony stood a few feet from the car, waiting for her to say something else, to explain her presence here. But she said nothing so they watched each other in silence.

“Are we having a staring contest?”

His mouth twitched into a smile. “Do we
know
each other? You look familiar.”

“Why don’t you join me for lunch and we’ll talk about it.” She reached down to her feet and brought up a large white bag. “I brought sandwiches. And root beer.”

That
startled him. Root beer was his favorite drink when he was a boy and even into adulthood Tony always kept a can or two in his refrigerator. How did she know he liked it?

“Come on, let’s go. I’m dying to ride in this beautiful car.” She waved for him to get in.

Tony lowered himself into the driver’s seat and gently put his open hands at ten and two o’clock on the steering wheel. Overcome by the moment, he took them off again and rubbed his face. “I can’t believe this.”

The woman gathered her hair back into a ponytail and quickly wrapped a rubber band around it.

Dropping his right hand down to the shift lever, for the first time he saw something there that gave him pause. “It’s automatic.”

“What is?”

“The car—it’s an automatic.”

“Yes, so what?”

Frowning, he bit his lip. “I don’t know. My Porsche—the one I always wanted—had a six speed. It was a manual transmission.”

Areal was looking at the shifter in his hand while speaking so he didn’t see her expression darken and then quickly change right back to neutral.

“Is that a problem?”

“No, of course not. I thought—”

“What did you think, Tony?”

Hearing her speak his name swung his attention. “How do you know me? Where have we met?
What are you doing here
?”

She ignored the question and pointed to his left wrist instead. “Nice watch.”

Disconcerted, he looked at her and then at his watch. Her again, the watch again. “You know about this?”

“Sure, your own Lichtenberg ‘Figure’. A Porsche and a Lichtenberg watch—hand in hand. Oh come on Tony, didn’t you think for even a minute that there
might
be a connection between them—the two things you’ve been coveting forever suddenly appear out of the blue? Now they’re yours, one right after the other.

“
Plus
a root beer for lunch! What more could Señor Areal want?” She reached into the bag, brought out a bottle of the soda and unscrewed the plastic top. “Want some?”

He shook his head slowly.

She took a swig and wiped her top lip. “I’ll give you a hint, but only one: Tuna Fish.”

“
Tuna fish
?”

“Yup—tuna fish.” She drank again.

“That’s not much help.”

She pointed the root beer bottle at his head. “Then dig deeper. The answer is right in there, I promise you.”

He put the key in the ignition and started the engine. “Where should we go?”

She said “I don’t care—surprise me. No, no wait a minute—drive to the river. Let’s have our lunch by the water.”

Neither of them said anything during the drive from Tony’s office to the river. Down there a short distance from the parking lot were some green metal picnic tables close by the water. Several were occupied, including one with a bunch of loud teenage boys horsing around and showing off for each other. They all went quiet and stared as Tony and the woman walked by them to the table farthest away. Making sure his friends were watching and that the woman had her back completely turned to him, one boy licked his lips like a starving slobbering wolf in a cartoon and stretching out both arms, pretended to reach for her ass with both hands after she’d passed him.

When his friends erupted in a chorus of snorts and sniggers, the woman stopped; half turning, she said over her shoulder, “Dream on, Marcus—You’ll never score an ass as good as mine.”

Hoots! Howls! One of the boys laughed so hard he fell off the table which brought on another wave of shrieks.

Marcus was horrified—how could she possibly have seen what he did when he was certain her back was to him? And how did she know his name?

“Hey man, you
know
her?”

“N-no. I’ve never seen her before.”

“Yeah well then how did she know your name, bro?”

“I… I don’t know.”

This Marcus must have been the leader of that crew because by the time Tony Areal and the woman had reached their table, the boys were quietly leaving but not before most of them cast backward glances at this chick who’d jammed up their boy good.

Sitting down at the table, she opened the bag and took out two sandwiches wrapped in wax paper. She undid one and slid it on its paper across the table for Tony. He hadn’t sat down yet—just stood tensely facing her on the other side of the table, sizing this all up in his head. “You knew that kid?”

“No. Come on, eat your sandwich.” She took the two bottles of root beer out of the bag and put them on the table. “Eat something. We’ll talk in a minute. It’ll make you think better.” Holding her sandwich in two hands, she took a big bite and hummed to let him know how tasty it was.

He didn’t sit but not having eaten anything that day, he was hungry. Picking up the fat sandwich, he saw it was one of his favorites—pastrami on rye bread with coleslaw and Russian dressing. At that moment he didn’t even feel it necessary to ask her how she knew. He took a big bite because he couldn’t think of what he wanted to say to her although there were so many questions going through his head.

As he took another bite and chewed, he watched a lovely tall woman walking a Hungarian Vizsla dog near the river’s edge. The dog was not on a line but stayed close to the woman, constantly looking up at her as if to make sure she didn’t stray too far.

Boom! It hit Tony and he froze in mid-chew. Tuna. The dog. A dog named Tuna. The dream.
That
dream.

Great sleep dreams seduce and sometimes torture. The best ones can almost break our heart when we awaken from them and find ourselves back…here. I’m talking about those exceedingly rare dreams we’ve all had over the course of our lives
so
splendid or sexy or momentous or idyllic or all of those things
combined
that we never want them to end and are genuinely distraught on waking and those luminous experiences and images immediately begin to vanish into our never-very-trustworthy memory. No romantic moments in waking life have been greater than those in that one walk-in-the-forest dream you had when you were 19; the dream with the 101% perfect mate who faded away like morning mist as soon as you came awake. Or the magnificent candlelight meal outside under the trees in the garden of that small French
auberge
where both the mood and meal tasted like the gods had prepared them only for you. And remember the bliss you felt on meeting your dead parent (brother, sister, best friend…) in some unimportant place—an empty parking lot or a small rural airport. You sat together like in the old days and spoke about things that brought you peace and a heart-filling reminder of the strength of the love that lost person once had for you when they were alive.