The Dust of 100 Dogs - A. S. King [54]
She wasn’t waving at you, Fred.
“Yes, she was. Of course she was.”
She probably couldn’t really see you.
“Oh, she saw me. She saw me yesterday. She came back today, didn’t she?”
Not for you.
“What for, then?”
She’s just a tourist, Fred. You’ll have to do more than wave at her to make something happen.
“I will, I will. Next time.”
Sure, Fred, next time.
Once an hour had passed, he peeled his eyes from the beach view and made a few calls. He had some selling to do if he was to cut his losses on the Billy’s Bay property. Five hours and fifteen phone calls later, he was back on the sun deck scanning the pink horizon.
For over an hour, he gazed through his binoculars at three pelicans fishing. Then she came walking slowly into his view from the east, nearly a silhouette.
She stopped again, to adjust her short sundress, and then did something spectacular. Pulling the sundress over her head and leaving it on the sand, she walked slowly into the waves and continued walking until she was about chest-deep. There, she dropped down and floated face up, dove in and out of the sea like a dolphin and then stood up again, wet, glistening, and in water thigh-high. Her nipples jutted through the swimsuit and made Fred wince.
She walked so slowly toward the shore again that Fred was sure this was for him.
He reached for his zipper. “Jesus, where’s the camera,” he said, not caring about where it was.
Fred, stop perving. She wouldn’t ride you if you were the last man on this island.
“She’s looking right at me,” he said.
She’s looking at the reflection of the setting sun on the glass in front of you, you fat fool.
“She’s not. She’s taunting me,” he answered, sighing.
Before he could argue with himself any more, he watched her slip the dress back over her body and walk away, squeezing the seawater from her hair. He was so distracted by this performance that he never heard Winston come home, and was genuinely surprised when Winston walked into the office.
An hour later, Fred sat on the edge of his bed applying foot cream.
“You have to go to Miami again tomorrow. You’ll need to pack now, because I have you on the first flight in the morning.”
“But—”
“But nothing—you work for me, don’t you? Well then, you do as I say. Now get out of here. You’re stinking up my bed.”
DOG FACT #5
Humping Among Friends
Humans often credit their dogs with human emotion, logic, and forethought. They say things like, “I just don’t know what Rover was thinking running out in front of a car like that!” Though he is man’s best friend, it’s important to remember that your dog is not the same as a human being.
Science can explain everything a pet owner might describe as doggie “emotion.” It’s a dog’s nature, as it is most wild creatures’, to return to a place if he’s fed there and to be loyal to a person repeatedly feeding him. It’s a dog’s nature to fetch things that you’ve thrown, to repeat a trick if he gets a reward. The modern dog is much like a modern computer. You must train a dog to be your companion the way you have to install software before a computer will work. Some dogs are slower than others, running on an outdated or overbred motherboard, forgetting where they left their favorite toy only seconds before, walking into stationary objects. Some have one hundred gigabytes of memory, and can jump through hoops of fire and pee squatting over your toilet. But unlike our human idea of soul mates, your dog would be just as happy if someone other than you had picked them from the litter and trained them to do the same stuff.
I knew a pack of dogs once who gathered every night in their village green. I lived in Dublin, Ireland, in a growing suburb called Stillorgan. Most of the dogs there were well fed; we had a few strays from the traveler’s camp up the road, and the odd fight when they tried to work our turf. I say our turf, but I wasn’t part of the pack. I lived as a house pet—a rather attractive, fair-haired Chihuahua—and only saw the back garden for my occasional run.
Some trouble started one night when a group of lads were