“Honey, you understand why Daddy told you not to ever do that again, right? Why people can’t know that you can do that?”
“We’re different than other people?” Sophie said.
“That’s right, honey, because we’re different than other people,” he said to the smartest, prettiest little girl in the world. “And you know why that is, right?”
“Because we’re Chinese and the White Devils can’t be trusted?”
“No, not because we’re Chinese.”
“Because we are Russian, and in our hearts are much sorrow?”
“No, there is not much sorrow in our hearts.”
“Because we are strong, like bear?”
“Yes, sweetie, that’s it. We’re different because we’re strong, like bear.”
“I knew it. More tea, Daddy?”
“Yes, I’d love some more tea, Sophie.”
So,” said the Emperor, “I see you have experienced the multifarious ways in which a man’s life is enriched by the company of a good brace of hounds.”
Charlie was sitting on the back step of the shop, pulling whole frozen chickens from a crate and tossing them to Alvin and Mohammed one at a time. Each chicken was snapped out of the air with so much force that the Emperor, and Bummer and Lazarus, who were crouched across the alley suspiciously eyeing the hellhounds, flinched as if a pistol was being fired nearby.
“Multifarious enrichment,” Charlie said, tossing another chicken. “That is exactly how I’d describe it.”
“There is no better, nor more loyal, friend than a good hound,” said the Emperor.
Charlie paused, having pulled not a chicken from the box, but a portable electric mixer. “A friend indeed,” he said, “a friend indeed.” Mohammed snapped down the mixer without even chewing—two feet of cord hung from the side of his mouth.
“That doesn’t hurt him?” said the Emperor.
“Roughage,” Charlie explained, throwing a frozen chicken chaser to Mohammed, who gulped it down with the rest of the mixer cord. “They’re not really my dogs. They belong to Sophie.”
“A child needs a pet,” said the Emperor. “A companion to grow up with—although these fellows seem to have done most of their growing.”
Charlie nodded, tossing the alternator from an eighty-three Buick into Alvin’s eager jaws. There was a clanking and the dog belched, but his tail thumped against the Dumpster asking for more. “Well, they have been her constant companions,” Charlie said. “At least now we have them trained so they’ll just guard whatever building she’s in. For a while they wouldn’t leave her side. Bath time was a challenge.”
The Emperor said, “I believe it was the poet Billy Collins who wrote, ‘No one here likes a wet dog.’”
“Yes, and he probably never had to get a squirming toddler and two four-hundred-pound dogs out of a bubble bath, either.”
“But they’ve mellowed, you say?”
“They had to. Sophie started school. The teacher frowned on giant dogs in class.” Charlie flipped an answering machine to Alvin, who crunched it up like a dog biscuit, shards of dog-spit-covered plastic raining down from his jaws.
“So what did you do?”
“It took us a few days, and a lot of explaining, but I trained them to just sit outside the front door of the school.”
“And the faculty relented?”
“Well, I spray-paint them with that granite-texture spray paint every morning, then tell them to sit absolutely still on either side of the door. No one seems to notice them.”
“And they obey? All day?”
“Well, it’s just a half day right now, she’s only in kindergarten. And you have to promise them a cookie.”
“There’s always a price to be paid.” The Emperor pulled a frozen chicken out of the box. “May I?”
“Please.” Charlie waved him on.
The Emperor tossed the chicken to Mohammed, who chomped it down in a single bite.
“My, that is satisfying,” said the Emperor.
“That’s nothing,” Charlie said. “If you feed them mini—propane cylinders they burp fire.”
15
THE CALL OF BOOTY
Fuck puppets,” Ray said out of nowhere.
He was on the stair-climbing machine next to Charlie and they were both sweating and staring at a row of six, perfectly tuned female bottoms aimed at them from the machines in front of them.
“What was that?” Charlie said.
“Fuck puppets,” Ray said. “That’s what they are.”
Ray had talked Charlie into coming to his health club with him under the pretense of getting him into the flow of being single. Actually, because Ray was an ex-cop, watched people more closely than really was healthy, had too much time on his hands, and didn’t get out much himself, the real reason he asked Charlie to come work out with him was so he could get to know him outside of the shop. He’d noticed a strange pattern that had developed since Rachel’s death, of Charlie showing up with people’s property shortly after their obituary appeared in the paper. Because Charlie kept to himself socially and was secretive about what he did when he was out of the shop, not to mention all the little animals that ended up dead in Charlie’s apartment, Ray suspected that he might be a serial killer. Ray decided to try to get close to his boss and find out for sure.
“Keep your voice down, Ray,” Charlie said. “Jeez.” Since Ray couldn’t turn his head, he was talking right at the women’s butts.
“They can’t hear me; look, every single one has on a headset.” He was right, every one of them was talking on a cell phone. “You and I are invisible to them.”
Having actually been invisible to people, or nearly so, Charlie did a double take. It was midmorning and the gym was full of lean spandex-clad women in their twenties with disproportionately large breasts, perfect skin, and expensive hair, who seemed to have the ability to look right through him the way that everyone did when he was in pursuit of a soul vessel. In fact, when he and Ray had first come into the gym, Charlie had actually looked around for some object, pulsing red, thinking that he might have missed a name on his date book that morning.
“After I was shot I dated a physical therapist that worked here for a while,” Ray said. “She called them that: fuck puppets. Every one of them has an apartment that some older executive guy is paying for—just like he paid for the health-club membership and the fake tits. They spend their days getting facials and manicures, and their nights under some suit out of his suit.”
Charlie was wildly uncomfortable with Ray’s litany, talking about these women who were only a couple of feet away. Like any Beta Male, he would have been wildly uncomfortable in the presence of so many beautiful women anyway, but this made it worse.
“So like they’re like trophy wives?” Charlie said.
“Nuh-uh, like wannabe trophy wives. They don’t get the guy, the house, whatever. They just exist to be his perfect piece of ass.”
“Fuck puppets?” Charlie said.
“Fuck puppets,” said Ray. “But forget them, they’re not why you’re here.”
Ray was right, of course. They weren’t why Charlie was there. Five years had passed since Rachel’s death, and everyone had been telling him he needed to get back in the game, but that’s not why he agreed to accompany the ex-cop to the gym. Because Charlie spent too much time on his own, especially since Sophie had started school, and because he’d been hiding a secret identity and avocation, he’d started to suspect that everyone might have one. And since Ray kept to himself, talked a lot about people in the neighborhood who had died, and because he really didn’t seem to have a social life beyond the Filipino women he contacted online, Charlie suspected Ray might be a serial killer. Charlie thought he’d try to get closer to Ray and find out.