Jonathan Lethem: Lucky Alan: And Other Stories

“Sh-h-h.”

“We’re complicit with a well-recognized nightmare.”

“I’ve never seen any criticism of the pet show.”

That’s because everyone’s too busy scrubbing their brains of aesthetic and moral calamity, he wished to say. After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Instead he said, “That sturgeon back there almost took my finger off.”

“Too late, I think.”

“What, for the fish to eat my finger?”

“No, I mean too late for you and the fish to get on 60 Minutes , since this place already had its media moment.”

An emcee in a baseball costume and a headset microphone emerged and began introducing the pet show. Some failed actor, Pending Vegan supposed. His head shot having landed on SeaWorld’s human-resources desk, the kid was fated to deliver this obnoxious script five times daily. He described the Pet Olympics, in which the trained dogs would compete, then gave the star performers’ names as each appeared, beckoning to the children in the crowd to clap and squeal at each shameless antic. “All our dogs are rescue animals,” he explained. “They train for up to three years before making their debut in ‘Pets Rule!’ and you’re very lucky, because we have a ‘Pets Rule!’ rookie debuting today, a great little guy named Bingo. When I bring him on I want you to appreciate that he’s going in front of a crowd for the first time, so I hope you’ll give Bingo your love, give him your warmest reception—”

Bingo was a Jack Russell terrier. He seemed, at first, ready for prime time, flipping over twice, then operating with his jaw a bright-red wrench on an outsized fire hydrant, resulting in a burst of water that sprayed over a bystander piglet and into the faces of the first-row spectators, who screamed in pleasure. He stood on his hind legs, grinning widely, to gobble a discreet reward from the palm of the emcee. Then the new dog bounded from the stage, scrambled over the first two rows of seats, and into Pending Vegan’s arms. There Bingo begin frantically licking and nibbling Pending Vegan’s chin and lips, with tiny sharp nips mixed in behind the swirling tongue.

“Bingo!” the emcee called from the stage. The wet piglet wandered off erratically, but chortling music continued to pour from the speakers, lending an atmosphere of hilarity. The dog now applied itself furiously to Pending Vegan’s nostrils. Whether this was part of the show or not Pending Vegan was undecided. Chloe and Deirdre responded with delight, reaching to fondle the dog that pressed their father back in his seat. His wife touched the dog, too, and Pending Vegan felt her arm graze his stomach, the first time in months. Others in their row shrank slightly away.

It was their former animal, rescued once and abandoned, rescued a second time and trained, now restored to them. Bingo was Maurice, Pending Vegan understood. Like him, the dog had two names. It had recognized Pending Vegan immediately and leaped from the stage to apologize for having abandoned their family, the man and the woman and the twin girls who were now on the outside of the wife’s body instead of the inside, where Maurice had last known them. The dog had come to honor the alpha in his former pack. With his animal cunning Maurice perceived that Pending Vegan was off the drug now. Unless that was insane. It was insane. The ostrich had ducked from behind a curtain and goose-stepped to the lip of the stage, obviously off cue. The pet show was in tatters. An ostrich was not a pet . Pending Vegan’s crimes had a life of their own, yet the dog would, in its automatic way, offer absolution, especially given hands smeared with turkey juice. Pending Vegan’s crimes screamed to the infinite horizon. Quit globalizing , said the Irving Renker in Pending Vegan’s head, as the terrier’s frantic tongue drilled into the webbing between his fingers.

Jonathan Lethem is the New York Times bestselling author of nine novels, including Dissident Gardens, Chronic City, The Fortress of Solitude , and Motherless Brooklyn , and of the nonfiction collection The Ecstasy of Influence , which was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. A recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, Lethem has contributed to The New Yorker, Harper’s, Rolling Stone, Esquire , and The New York Times , among other publications.