Teaching the Dog to Read (4 page)

“Did something happen, Tony? I mean, are you okay?”

He smiled and tilted his head a little to the side as if to indicate he didn’t understand why she asked. “
Happen?
No, nothing happened. Why?”

“Because you seem really different; like,
completely
different than you were when we talked an hour ago. You know, right before you went down to your new car in the parking lot. I saw you talking to that woman inside it and when you two drove away I thought something might have happened. Maybe something she said?”

Tony shook his head. “Ah! No, the opposite—she was there to give me some good news, really good news. Maybe that’s why I seem different now?”

That sounded logical to her. Each of them waited for the other to say more but nothing came. Lena realized she was staring at his mouth. She realized she was wondering what it would be like to kiss that mouth. She wondered if she was going nuts. “Tony?”

He was looking down again at the paper in his hand.

“Would you like to go for a drink after work today?”

He raised his eyes slowly. They were amused and he was smiling. “No.”

Stunned, Lena was speechless a moment. She had never asked a man to go out. She had never been so blatantly rejected by one either. “Oh… well…uh sorry…”

He reached out and took her arm. “But I would
love
to go dancing with you. Could we do that instead?”

She lit up like a 4
^th
of July sparkler because she loved to dance. It was her great passion and the office knew it. “Really, you dance? What kind… what’s your favorite?”

He pointed his index finger at her, “It’s up to you—I’m game for anything, Ginger Rogers.”

In a small hopeful voice she asked hesitantly, “Do you tango?”

Tony Areal jumped up, grabbed Lena Schabort around the waist, and taking her right hand in his left, extended both arms out stiffly to the side in the classic tango pose. Face close enough to hers so she could feel his warm breath on her cheek, he said in a voice sexy enough to seduce a nun, “Nope, not a step. But you can teach me.”

The two Tonys sat on the same bus stop bench by the sea, comparing notes. Tony Night Shift lit a cigarette.

Tony Day didn’t smoke and scowled when he smelled it. “So how did it go for you?”

Tony Night sighed. “—was okay. We went out, went dancing, had something to eat, then went back to her place. Afterwards I came home, went to sleep and
voila
here I am, dreaming. End of story.”

“Did you do it with Lena?”

“Yeah.” Tony Night shrugged again. After dragging deeply on the cig he let out a thick white plume of smoke. Two cars passed by going in opposite directions.

“And?”

“And
what
?” Another long pull on the cigarette.

Tony Day slapped his forehead in frustration. “How was it? How was
she
?”

“Dull, Dude, dull. She looks all sexy and delicious on the outside, right? But in the sack she hardly moves, never does anything interesting or original, and doesn’t make a sound. You might as well take yourself out on a date. You’d have better sex at the end of the night.”

Tony Day couldn’t help grinning. So Foxy Lena was all show and no go, eh? In contrast he’d come from the exact opposite experience with the lovely, bewitching, sexy-as-all-hell Alice. What a day it had been with her!

Tony Night saw that contentment and said sourly “I take it from the happy look on
your
face that things went well with Alice?”

Tony Day sighed with pleasure. “They did. Hands down it was the best time I’ve
ever
had with a woman.”

Tony Night said in a monotone, “Glad to hear it.”

“You don’t sound glad.”

“Well Brother I’m actually not, truth be told. I had a shit time while you had a great one. It wasn’t supposed to go that way, you know?
Both
of us were supposed to benefit from this swap of ours. But here you are beaming like a flashlight and I just had sex with a mop.”

Tony Day grinned. “A
mop
?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Hey,
you
were the one who wanted to do this.
You
came to me and said let’s switch jobs for a while: You take the day shift and I’ll take the night. We’re doing what you wanted.”

Tony Night nodded while grinding out the cigarette but he didn’t say anything.

“So?”

“So
what
?”

Tony Day asked, “Is our deal still on or do you want your job back? I’ve got to say, so far I love being the Tony who lives in and controls his night dreams.” He stretched both arms out wide to the sides. “I get to create my own
world
here night after night. It’s amazing! Live out all the dreams and fantasies I’ve ever had? Yes please. Bring Alice back whenever I want for another fabulous time with her. Or I could have a movie star, like Arlen Ford…

“Hey, what do you think of my new car?” Parked down the road from the bus stop was a brand new white Aston Martin ‘Vanquish,’ the Oz of automobiles in Tony Areal’s universe. Now,
here
, he had one. The keys were in his pocket.

Tony Night briefly glanced at it and smirked. “No more lowly Porsches for
you
, huh? Well it’s certainly jazzy—Childish, but that’s okay. We all want to play with the toys when they’re new. After a while though stuff like that won’t spark your noodle anymore, believe me.”

A loud ominous rumbling sound came from down the road. Both men turned toward it. A bunch of rhinoceros and bullterrier dogs came thundering towards them. The much smaller dogs ran right beside and among the huge galloping beasts as if they were all comrades in arms charging into battle. The air suddenly reeked of mud and heavy animal musk, wood smoke, dung, rotten fruit and unknown wholly exotic smells. It was as if the stench and perfume of wildest Africa had arrived all at once.

Tony Day’s eyes grew enormous and he made to scramble the hell off the bench and away. But the other Tony grabbed his arm and shaking his head, held him there.

“It’s okay, we’re safe.”

Tony Day looked alarmed but didn’t move. The rhinos and dogs reached them quickly but without pause pounded past as if all were racing flat out towards some invisible finish line far off in the distance. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen of the magnificent monsters raced down the road next to the sea, accompanied by no telling how many of Tony Day’s favorite dogs. When in his life had he seen anything like
this
?

As soon as the stampede had passed he sang out ecstatically, “That was
amazing
! I love them both so much—but rhinos and bullterriers running
together
? Those are my two absolute favorite animals. Do you know a group of rhinos is called a ‘crash’?”

This did not interest Tony Night. “You’ll get used to that kind of nutty scene the longer you’re here. This is Anthony Areal Dreamland, remember—the ultimate mixed salad of everything you are, all whizzed up together in weird combinations and presented in nightly servings. Don’t be surprised to see a
lot
of what you like or know here. Favorite dogs, old friends
and
enemies—they’re all here. Sometimes it’ll come straight as fact, other times squashed and smooshed together, like in any dream.” He pointed down the road towards where the animals had gone. “And to tell the truth, it’s not always pleasant or cool like that little stampede of your favorites. But all that’s here came from
your
life, good and bad. Rhinos, your favorite cars, even Mrs. Zlabinger is somewhere. I saw her the other day playing a trombone.”

“My eleventh grade English teacher?”

“Yup. Don’t be surprised if you bump into her and she asks if you’ve finished your Shakespeare essay yet. Welcome to Tony Dreamland, Mr. Areal. You are the sole creator and proprietor now.”

Tony Day considered all this while out of the corner of his eye he saw his exquisite new automobile parked down the road. He couldn’t wait to drive it again. “But what about you? I’ve got to say truthfully that compared to what goes on here, my old life is a big bore.”

Tony Night shook his head. “And that’s absolutely
fine
with me. I needed a change, man. I had to get out of here and live some
normal
, you know? No rhinos suddenly running down the road or other weird crap. Good old plain donuts and black coffee for breakfast for me, thanks. When you’ve lived at the circus all your life, it’s great to take a break from the clowns and zebras, you know? For me after being here all these years, it’s a real pleasure being bored for a while.”

That answer made sense to Tony Day but he still was puzzled about something. “If I
am
in charge of things here, and I arrange the ingredients of your dreams, why that stampede now? I didn’t order it. Alice and the car yes, but not that.” He pointed down the road.

Tony Night took a deep breath, knowing he was going to have to do some explaining now. “Think of it this way: when you were living where I am now, you passed your days constantly experiencing this great huge
mass
of various things. Whether you were aware of it or not, most of that stuff went into your memory and
stayed
: The ugly woman with the green purse at the Mexican restaurant, that long distance phone call with your funny sister…

“It’s like you’d go to the market every day and buy bags and bags full of groceries. But there was no logic to what you put in them. Eventually you’d bring all those bags home and give them to me, Tony Night. I’d sift through what you’d brought and choose which ones I wanted to cook. Then I’d combine them together into your nightly dream.

“But sometimes life or fate interferes. You forget to buy the tomatoes but you don’t feel like going back to the store to get them. So the meal is cooked without tomatoes. The same with my job—sometimes things get added or subtracted from the dreams because of, I don’t know, outside sources or forces or whatever you want to call it. Hey look—you’re never in complete control of either your life or your dreams. You love rhinos and bullterriers. For some reason they decided to make a guest appearance together in
this
dream. No reason why they showed up. But it was cool, right? So enjoy it.”

It’s not hard to guess which Tony was lying. Lena Schabort was sensational in bed—ravenous, endlessly inventive, and almost overwhelming in her horizontal skills. But Tony Night was not about to tell his counterpart
that
. Hell no. If he did, what if Tony Day said he wanted to sleep with her too? Worse, what if he said I don’t want to do this switch anymore? I want to go back to who I was.

On the other hand from the sound of it, there wasn’t much reason to worry. Tony Day was smitten with the sheer novelty and power of running Dreamland where it was true—he
could
create any dream he wanted to show each night on the big screen TV inside the other Tony’s head.

In his first few attempts, the dreams he created were pretty tentative and as dull as a documentary about fish hatcheries in Finland. In one he sat in his boyhood kitchen watching his Mom make an egg soufflé while a bright orange SONY radio on the counter played pop hits from his childhood. Limahl’s song “The Neverending Story” almost had him in tears because it was so packed with happy memories. In another dream, Tony and his sister ran around a lush meadow in a driving summer rainstorm in their underwear, heads bent back, mouths wide open to catch raindrops on their tongues, arms out to either side as if they were flying. The only odd thing about it was in the dream they were adults, not little kids. And
that
detail, like the racing rhinoceros, was not his doing.

It wasn’t until the eleventh dream that Tony Day returned to the bus stop by the sea and a meeting with the wonderful Alice. Why wait so long? Simply because he was afraid he might do it wrong and spoil everything. The dream where they first met had been so perfect (as far as he remembered) that if he were to continue it now, he wanted to make sure he was totally in control of what he was doing. Hell, he’d wanted to meet up with Alice the first time he created a dream in his new role but his wiser self said no, wait long enough to figure out how to do this dream-making right.