T. Boyle - T.C. Boyle Stories II - Volume II

“I thought you’d want a German beer, something like Beck’s or something.”

He set down the bottle, picked up the camera and let the lens wander down the length of her legs. “I’m Swiss, actually,” he said. “But I live here now. And I like American beer. I like everything American.”

There was no mistaking the implication and she wanted to return the sentiment, but she didn’t know the first thing about Switzerland, so she just smiled and tipped her beer to him.

“So,” he said, cradling the camera in his lap and referring to the notepad he’d laid on the table when she’d served him the sandwich, “this is the most interesting for me, this idea that Mr. and Mrs. Striker would hire you for the dog? This is very strange, no?”

She agreed that it was.

He gave her a smile she could have fallen into. “Do you mind if I should ask what are they paying you?”

“Yes,” she said. “I do.”

Another smile. “But it is good — worth your while, as they say?”

“I thought this was about Admiral,” she said, and then, because she wanted to try it out on her tongue, she added, “Erhard.”

“Oh, it is, it is — but I find you interesting too. More interesting, really, than the dog.” As if on cue, Admiral backed out from under the table and squatted on the concrete to deposit a glistening yellow turd, which he examined briefly and then promptly ate.

“Bad dog,” she said reflexively.

Erhard studied the dog a moment, then shifted his eyes back to her. “But how do you feel about the situation, this concept of cloning a pet? Do you know anything about this process, the cruelty involved?”

“You know, frankly, Erhard, I haven’t thought much about it. I don’t know really what it involves. I don’t really care. The Strikers love their dog, that’s all, and if they want to, I don’t know, bring him back—”

“Cheat death, you mean.”

She shrugged. “It’s their money.”

He leaned across the table now, his eyes locked on hers. “Yes, but they must artificially stimulate so many bitches to come into heat and then they must take the eggs from the tubes of these bitches, what they call ‘surgically harvesting,’ if you can make a guess as to what that implies for the poor animals”—she began to object but he held up a peremptory finger—“and that is nothing when you think of the numbers involved. Do you know about Snuppy?”

She thought she hadn’t heard him right. “Snuppy? What’s that?”

“The dog, the first one ever cloned — it was two years ago, in Korea? Well, this dog, this one dog — an Afghan like your dog here — was the result of over a thousand embryos created in the laboratory from donor skin cells. And they put these embryos into one hundred and twenty-three bitches and only three clones resulted — and two died. So: all that torture of the animals, all that money — and for what?” He glanced down at Admiral, the flowing fur, the blunted eyes. “For this?”

A sudden thought came to her: “You’re not really a journalist, are you?”

He slowly shook his head, as if he couldn’t bear the weight of it.

“You’re what — one of these animal people, these animal liberators or whatever they are. Isn’t that right? Isn’t that what you are?” She felt frightened suddenly, for herself, for Admiral, for the Strikers and Frankie and the whole carefully constructed edifice of getting and wanting, of supply and demand and all that it implied.

“And do you know why they clone the Afghan hound,” he went on, ignoring her, “—the very stupidest of all the dogs on this earth? You don’t? Breeding, that is why. This is what they call an uncomplicated genetic line, a pure line all the way back to the wolf ancestor. Breeding,” he said, and he’d raised his voice so that Admiral looked up at the vehemence of it, “so that we can have this purity, this stupid hound, this replica of nature.”

Nisha tugged down her T-shirt, drew up her legs. The sun glared up off the water so that she had to squint to see him. “You haven’t answered my question,” she said, “Erhard. If that’s even your name.”

Again, the slow rolling of the head on his shoulders, back and forth in rhythmic contrition. “Yes,” he said finally, drawing in a breath, “I am one of ‘these animal people.’” His eyes went distant a moment and then came back to her. “But I am also a journalist, a journalist first. And I want you to help me.”

—

That night, when the Strikers came home — in convoy, her car following his through the gate, Admiral lurching across the lawn to bark furiously at the shimmering irresistible disks of the wheels of first one car, then the other — Nisha was feeling conflicted. Her loyalties were with the Strikers, of course. And with Admiral too, because no matter how brainless and ungainly the dog was, no matter how many times he wet the rug or ravaged the flowerbed or scrambled up onto the kitchen table to choke down anything anyone had been foolish enough to leave untended even for thirty seconds, she’d bonded with him — she would have been pretty cold if she hadn’t. And she wasn’t cold. She was as susceptible as anyone else. She loved animals, loved dogs, loved the way Admiral sprang to life when he saw her walk through the door, loved the dance of his fur, his joyous full-throated bark, the feel of his wet whiskered snout in the cupped palm of her hand. But Erhard had made her feel something else altogether.

What was it? A sexual stirring, yes, absolutely — after the third beer, she’d found herself leaning into him for the first of a series of deep, languid, adhesive kisses — but it was more than that. There was something transgressive in what he wanted her to do, something that appealed to her sense of rebellion, of anarchy, of applying the pin to the swollen balloon… but here were the Strikers, emerging separately from their cars as Admiral bounced between them, yapping out his ecstasy. And now Gretchen was addressing her, trying to shout over the dog’s sharp vocalizations, but without success. In the next moment, she was coming across the lawn, her face set.

“Don’t let him chase the car like that,” she called, even as Admiral tore round her like a dust devil, nipping at her ankles and dodging away again. “It’s a bad habit.”

“But Admiral — I mean, the first Admiral — used to chase cars all the time, remember?”

Gretchen had pinned her hair up so that all the contours of her face stood out in sharp relief. There were lines everywhere suddenly, creases and gouges, frown marks, little embellishments round her eyes, and how could Nisha have missed them? Gretchen was old — fifty, at least — and the realization came home to Nisha now, under the harsh sun, with the taste of the beer and of Erhard still tingling on her lips. “I don’t care,” Gretchen was saying, and she was standing beside Nisha now, like a figurine the gardeners had set down amidst that perfect landscape.

“But I thought we were going to go for everything, the complete behavior, good or bad, right? Because otherwise—”

“That was how the accident happened. At the dog park. He got through the gate before Cliff or I could stop him and just ran out into the street after some idiot on a motorcycle….” She looked past Nisha a moment, to where Admiral was bent over the pool, slurping up water as if his pinched triangular head worked on a piston. “So no,” she said, “no, we’re going to have to modify some behavior. I don’t want him drinking that pool water, for one thing. Too many chemicals.”

“Okay, sure,” Nisha said, shrugging. “I’ll try.” She raised her voice and sang out “Bad dog, bad dog,” but it was halfhearted and Admiral ignored her.