Spencer Quinn - A Fistful of Collars

Bernie pointed toward the top of the gate. “Okay, Chet. Up and over.”

Up and over? He wanted me to jump the gate? Not a good idea, the reasons why being so complicated that I didn’t even try to untangle them. Instead I just sat down.

Bernie shook the box of treats. “Come on, big guy. Don’t you want one of these?”

I did, big-time. But I stayed where I was.

Bernie turned to Mr. Parsons. “Maybe the low-percentage play isn’t so low after all.”

“Maybe,” said Mr. Parsons, giving me a close look. When humans are having fun, their eyes brighten; Mr. Parsons eyes were doing it now. “Think it would make any difference if you took one out of the box, showed it to him?”

“Nah,” said Bernie. “He knows what’s in there, believe me. The gate’s too high, simple as that.”

“Try it anyway,” Mr. Parsons said.

Bernie opened the box, took out a chew strip, gave it a little shake. “Up and over, big guy,” he said. One thing about the chew strips from Rover and Company: they had the best smell in the world. And another thing about them: if they got shaken like that, the smell got even stronger, especially if the breeze suddenly shifted a bit, now blowing-no, not hard-but right in your face. How to describe it? Like a wonderfully beefy breeze, hickory smoked? Something of the kind, and maybe given time I could have described it better, but it was too late. I was already in midair, soaring over the gate-clearing it by plenty, by the way; I checked-and headed for a nice soft landing in the canyon.

The naked bulb over the gate went on. The gate swung open. Bernie and Mr. Parsons gazed out at me, caught in the circle of light. I gazed back at them.

“Right after I took that picture,” Mr. Parsons said, “I heard a woman calling for him and the little critter took off.”

“Catch the name?” said Bernie.

“Shooter,” Mr. Parsons said.

“Oh, boy,” Bernie said.

Mr. Parsons leaned into the walker, letting it take more of his weight. His eyes weren’t quite so bright. “I kind of like it,” he said.

Where were we going with this? I had no idea. Bottom line: I’d jumped the gate and that chew strip was now mine. So what was taking so long?

Next day we swung by Leda’s place. She and Malcolm, the boyfriend-but they were getting married as soon as Leda decided on where to go for the honeymoon (“never really had one the first time,” I’d once heard her say on the phone)-had a big house in High Chaparral Estates, the nicest development in the whole Valley, a fact she mentioned now and then. Malcolm was a brilliant software developer, whatever that was, making money hand over fist; she’d mentioned that, too. Did humans put hand over fist to keep the money from falling out? I’d never seen it, but what else could it mean?

Leda and Malcolm had a big green lawn-the kind Bernie called an aquifer drainer-lined with flowering bushes. I lifted my leg against the bushiest of them, remembering at that moment that I’d missed out on marking our border with Mr. Parsons, so I made sure to do an extra-thorough job, and still hadn’t finished when the door opened and Leda looked out and saw me. Uh-oh. Trouble on the way, and making it worse was the fact I couldn’t stop just like that, not with my kind of flow, amigo. I’d tried more than once, believe me.

Then came a big surprise. She turned to Bernie and said, “You’re a doll.”

“Uh,” said Bernie.

“Be just a minute,” she said, waving her hands in a strange kind of way. “Song Yi’s almost done.”

“Huh?”

“She comes to do my nails.”

“Huh?”

Leda backed inside and closed the door.

Bernie looked at me. I looked at Bernie. “Don’t look at me like that,” he said. “I know what you’re thinking.”

Wow! He knew I was thinking of crossing the lawn and marking the bushes on the other side? But that was Bernie: just when you thought he was done amazing you, he did it again. As for whatever he’d asked me not to do, it was like one of those feathery little clouds you see sometimes, high high up, and the next time you look: nothing but clear blue skies.

“In fact,” he went on, “I was thinking the same thing.”

An absolute stunner. Bernie and I were going to cross Leda’s lawn and mark those bushes together? Had anything like that ever happened? I actually did remember something of the kind, maybe in an alley behind a biker bar in Rio Vacio, but it was all too vague, and before it got clearer, the door opened and out came Leda and Charlie, followed by a dark-haired woman carrying a pink sort of tool kit. Not to worry: those bushes weren’t going anywhere. And then… and then I had the most amazing thought of my life: given time, we could fill up the aquifer, me and Bernie, side by side. And didn’t we have all the time in the world?

“So nice to meet you,” Leda said, taking Thad Perry’s hand and not letting go. “I’m a big big fan, your biggest. Huge.”

“Thanks,” said Thad, looking at something over her shoulder. “‘ppreciate it.”

“And this is my son, Charlie. Say hello to Mr. Perry, Charlie.”

Bernie’s eyes have a way of-how to put it? Narrowing? Hooding? I give up. But the point is, I think it happens when he’s starting not to like what’s going down, and at that moment Charlie’s eyes were doing it. He looked like a little Bernie. What a kid.

“Uh,” said Charlie.

“Hey,” said Thad Perry, glancing down at Charlie. Across the set-we were back on the movie set, this time not a bar in the Old West but a campfire under an enormous saguaro that some landscape dudes couldn’t get to stand straight-Lars Karlsbaad was glancing at Charlie, too. Then Nan, glasses perched up on top of her head, listening to something in her earphone-I could hear it, actually, a man saying “get him on his goddamn mark”-was whispering in Thad’s ear, and he tugged his hand free and moved away.

Not long after that, we were sitting under an awning not far from the saguaro, me, Bernie, Charlie, Leda. “What’s the scene about, Bernie?” she said. “I’m so excited!”

Bernie leafed through the script. “Is this where the shaman-”

“Kina Molenta? She’s gorgeous!”

“-starts changing the history of the west or some bull-”

“Shh,” Leda said.

Thad Perry came in, cowboy hat pushed back on his head. He sat down in front of the fire. Hey! His knees cracked, just like Bernie’s mom’s. Then a woman entered and sat near him. I didn’t get a good look at her, on account of a big distraction from the get-go, namely-was it possible? — this wolf head she had perched on her own head. From Leda came one of those quick little in-breaths humans sometimes do. Her eyes were wide; Bernie and Charlie were both in that narrow and hooded mode.

A huge camera came rolling up on a kind of train track, Lars Karlsbaad and the camera dude sitting behind it. Lars walked up to the campfire.

“Kina, looking like a dream,” he said. “How were the Maldives?”

The woman shrugged.

“Excellent,” said Lars, puffing on his cigar, hands balled into fists behind his back. “Comfortable with this scene?”

“Except for this fucking wolf head,” said Kina. “It itches like a bastard.”

Lars turned to the woman with the clipboard, standing off to the side. “I thought you took care of that,” he said.

“This is the replacement, Lars,” said the woman. “She tried it out and said it was-”

Lars made a chopping gesture, kind of quick and nasty. The woman went silent. He turned to Kina. “Sorry, love, we’ll get it fixed by tomorrow-I give my word-but do you think you can soldier through today? It’s a very short scene.”