The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories (18 page)

Her smiled remained. It said nothing different from a moment ago. Or was it the slightest bit pitying?

He liked to shave before going to bed—a personal quirk. Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, scraping off the last bits of snowy foam, he suddenly pointed his razor at the mirror.

“I heard what you two are doing. Don’t think I don’t know, you bastard!”

“Are you talking to me?” She called from the bedroom.

“No, Peter Copeland.”

He smiled his own weird smile when she didn’t say anything to
that.

Her fingers were moving lightly across his face when he saw how to break it. Pushing her hand away, he took over and started touching her much too hard, hurting her. To his surprise, she jerked and twisted but remained silent. It was always silent now. Somewhere in these recent days they had both accepted that. But why wasn’t she protesting? Why didn’t she tell him to stop? Did she like it? How could she? She had said a million times she couldn’t understand how people could like hurting each other in bed. Or was Peter Copeland allowed everything? Worse, was the pain he gave pleasant to her now? That was insane! It meant he knew nothing about his wife. It made him breathe too fast. It scared the hell out of him. What parts of her did he know, for sure? What else had she held back from him over the years?

He started saying brutal, dirty things to her. It was something they both disliked. Their sexy words to each other were always funny and flattering, loving.

“Don’t!” It was the first time she had spoken. She was looking straight at him, real alarm on her face.

“Why? I’ll do what I want.”

He continued talking. Touching her too hard, talking, ruining everything. He told her where he worked, how much money he made, what his hobbies were. Didn’t she want to know more about her mystery man? He told her where he’d gone to college, where he grew up, how he liked his eggs done.

Soon she was crying and stopped moving altogether. He was in the middle of explaining to her that he wore white sneakers because he had this bad foot infection ...

M
Y FRIEND SARAH IS
one smart cookie. When everyone else was still parachuting in and out of each other’s beds, she was already buying stock in genetic engineering and the Daimler-Benz companies.

“Sex is finished, Frank. Fear and prestige are next. Sooner or later one of those gene-splitters will find the cure for AIDS and herpes, so we buy into that now. But as long as going to bed is still dangerous, driving a Mercedes will be next best. You watch.” I followed her advice and have never regretted it.

She was right about that, as with so many other things. When she said she had a line on a warehouse full of ugly Fifties naugahyde furniture, I shut my eyes and handed her a cheque. A few months later, we sold it all for a bundle to a new discothèque in town, Edsel.

We had a fling a few years ago but found out fast that we got along better over the phone or a good dinner than nose to nose in the dark of night. Smart enough to stop while we still liked each other, we’ve been close ever since. There’s an unspoken agreement that we can call or visit any time to complain or crow or cry and the other will be there to give what they can.

A few months ago, Sarah called and told me she was going to buy a dog. I was surprised, because she’d never mentioned liking animals, besides having the kind of apartment that was always so clean you could have done brain surgery on the living-room carpet.

“How come?”

“I read a book about stress. It says if you don’t want a heart attack, you should get interested in the three P’s: people, pets and plants.”

“Why not just buy a cactus? You don’t even have to water them.”

“I’d feel stupid talking to a plant. No, I saw a picture of this dog in a magazine the other day and fell immediately in love. They’re the greatest-looking thing you ever saw.”

“What kind of dog?”

“A Zoondel.”

“A what?”

“They’re a rare breed from Austria. They look exactly like the caboose on a train.”

“How much do they cost?”

“A thousand dollars.”

“What?”

“Will you come and help me pick it out?”

“I’ll come and talk you out of it.”

We met and took a train out to the tip of Long Island. At Montauk station, a round bald man named Otto Kak picked us up and drove us to his house. He talked about Zoondels the whole trip. How smart they were, how they house-trained themselves, never barked ... I shook my head and looked out of the window the whole time. I had no patience with animals, even other people’s. They always seemed to be shedding, or under your feet, or sick. I could understand why old people liked them. Maybe one day when I was eighty and lonely I’d go to the pound and take one home so I could have company and something to boss around. But until then, I’d see their shit under my shoe or hear them out on the street barking me awake at three in the morning and I’d be glad they lived somewhere else.

Kak’s house looked like something from a model electric train-set: small, perfectly kept, sunny. As soon as we pulled into the driveway, the front door opened and his wife came out. She was followed by three dogs that ran over to the car.

They didn’t look like cabooses, but were peculiarly square and
tight
all around. Tight was the word for them. Imagine an old-time mailbox covered with short reddish fur and you get an idea of a Zoondel. About as large as a beagle, they had floppy ears and soft dark eyes that looked friendly and intelligent. Nice dogs, but a thousand dollars?

We got out and bent down to pet them. Kneeling next to Sarah, I was able to say without being overheard, “They’re cute, but why are they so expensive?”

“Because there are only like a thousand of them in the world.”

“Is it an investment?”

She looked at me and rolled her eyes. “No, Frank. I
like
them. Is that allowed?”

Stung, I kept quiet and petted the dog closest. It licked my hand. Its tongue was lemon yellow.

“Hey, look at that!”

Mr Kak spoke. “That tongue is what got them into trouble! That’s why there are so few of them now.”

“How’s that?”

“The Zoondel was originally bred in Austria by a Graf Leopold von Bimplitz to hunt werewolves.”

“Werewolves?” It was time for me to roll
my
eyes.

“Yes. The story is that von Bimplitz was both a wealthy landowner and a serious student of alchemy. He must have been quite a guy because rumour has it that Goethe based his play
Faustus
on him. Anyway, he must have gotten himself in deep with something, dark powers or whatever, because he spent a big part of his fortune breeding a dog that could detect werewolves before they struck. That’s a fact—it’s in his biography.”

“Maybe he was just a nut.”

Sarah gave me a dirty look—she wanted to hear the story if she was going to buy one of the dogs.

“Maybe, but he did end up with a hell of a special dog, as you can see.”

“What happens when the dog sees a werewolf?”

Kak smiled. “The eyes turn the same colour as the tongue, once there’s any kind of bodily contact between the dog and the werewolf. But that happens only after it turns six months. Before that, it’s only a doggie-dog.”

“What happens after it detects the, uh, enemy?”

“Nothing. It only tells you it’s there. The rest is up to you.”

“Have you ever had any experience with that, Mr Kak?”

“No, I can’t say as I have. Maybe there just aren’t many werewolves in Montauk, eh?” He smiled a moment, then stopped. “But I’ll tell you something interesting, and this story
is
true. At the end of World War Two, Hitler sent an élite group of soldiers out in a last-ditch effort to stop the Allies. Called them the ‘Werewolves’; they were reputed to be the most vicious fighters anyone ever saw. Sort of like the LURP’s in Vietnam, you know? Anyway, these guys did a lot of work in Austria, and one of the first things they did was go to what was left of von Bimplitz’s estate and kill every Zoondel they could find. That’s documented. That’s why there are so few now. Luckily, a number of them had been brought over here before the war, so the breed survived, but not by much. The question is, why would those guys go to the trouble of killing a bunch of dogs if the story wasn’t at least a little bit true?”

Naturally Sarah bought one. She was so delighted with the “Werewolfbusters” aspect that I think she would have spent two thousand dollars if it had been necessary.

I must say that “Mailbox” (she liked my image and gave him that name) turned out to be as nice a dog as you were going to find. He slept late, almost never peed in the house (even though he was only a few months old), and liked to be with you but not on you. After some time, I sheepishly told her I liked him too.

“That’s good, Frank, because I think you’re going to have to do me a big favour. It looks like I’m going to have to go to Hong Kong soon for two months. That building for the Wakoski Institute is going to go up after all, and they want me to be in on the planning. Which means I either put Mailbox in a kennel, or give him to you.”

“Give him to me. I think I can stand him for a couple of weeks.”

“That’s the point, Frank. It won’t be a couple of weeks. It’s more like a couple of months.”

“That’s OK. I owe you a lot of favours anyway. I like him, it’ll be fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely.”

So Sarah went off to her building in Hong Kong and her Zoondel came to live with me a while. It took some getting used to, but within a week I liked knowing he was around. When I came in from work at night, he was always at the door to greet me with a lot of jumping and running around the room. When I took him out for a walk, he stayed close by and never pulled on the line like I’d seen so many other dogs do. An added benefit of walking a rare dog was meeting good-looking women on the street who also happened to be dog-lovers.

All in all, having Mailbox as a houseguest worked out fine except for one strange occurrence. One very nice summer day, weeks later, I took him to Central Park for a long walk. As we were standing next to the Dakota, about to cross 72nd Street, I heard a loud crash nearby. Jumping back, I saw that a large piece of slate had fallen nearby and come very close to hitting us. Without thinking, I looked up and saw someone hanging half out of a high window in the building, shouting down at ... us? It certainly appeared that way. New York is packed to the gills with loonies, but I couldn’t imagine someone would be
so
crazy as to throw something like that down ... No, it was very possible that might happen in this city. All you had to do was look at the nightly news to be reassured of that.

And speaking of the nightly news, it was right there that everything bad began. A few days after the stone fell, I was watching the news and shaking my head at a particularly awful story about a mass murder in Westchester County. A man had entered a pizza parlour in White Plains and, taking out a submachine gun, opened fire on everyone. He killed ten people before the police arrived and shot him. The newscaster gave the report with the same serious but bland tone of voice he used for every item. These explosions of horror have become so much a part of our lives that no one seems surprised any more; even newspapers run them only on page ten, next to the weather report. People’s indifference and acceptance of this growing madness scared me. We grow astonished and indignant when we hear about what happened to the Jews in Nazi Germany, but the same is happening in our everyday life and our only response is to shrug and either turn the page or the channel.

“Why are there so many of these things happening now? Why does it all get worse and worse?”

The dog’s only response was to wag his tail and look hopefully at me: were we going out?

I sighed and got up to get his leash. By the time I’d reached the door, he was already next to me, bumping up against my leg. I looked at him and realized how big he’d grown in the time we’d been together. I forgot exactly when Sarah would be back, but for many reasons, most of them trivial and sweet, I’d be kind of sorry to give him back to her. I still didn’t want to own a dog, but I could well understand why so many people loved them.

“Come on, boy, let’s go.” I clipped him on to the line and went out of the door. Sarah’s return started me thinking. Exactly how long had I had him? I finally figured out almost two months.

Outside it was raining in a gentle, summery way: nice walking weather if you didn’t mind getting a little wet.

As we were going out of the building, a man and a woman walked by, heads close under an umbrella, rich sexy voices closing them off from any world other than their own lucky one. We were close enough to them for the woman to accidentally bump into Mailbox, who let out a surprised little yelp. The woman immediately stopped and bent down.

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry! Did I hurt you?” Even in the rain I could see she was one of those great New York women, full of chic and warm perfume smells and enough allure to drive you crazy. What was nicest, though, was that she appeared genuinely worried that she’d hurt the dog. While her friend waited, she stayed down petting and tickling Mailbox, trying to make up for what she’d done. He forgot what had happened and started jumping around, playing and nipping at her friendly hand.

His eyes began to grow yellower and yellower. Even in that rainy dark, they were bright fire. I looked quickly at the woman. Remembering the dog must be six months old now; remembering what Kak had said about the origins of the breed. For one second I reeled dizzily, thinking what it all meant. That is, if it were true.

“Come on, Jennifer, let’s go.”

“One second. Isn’t he adorable? Look at those funny yellow eyes. They’re like little flashlights!”

“Honey, we’ve got to go. The show starts in ten minutes.” From her squatting position, the woman looked up at him with such astonishing evil and hatred in her eyes, in her expression, that it felt like pure radiation. That anger could do anything, that was sure.

My God, who was she?