"In here?" Todd said.
"Yes."
The doctor had opened a door into a room not more than eight by eight, painted in what was intended to be a soothing green. On one wall was a Monet reproduction and on another a piece of poetry that Todd couldn't read through his assembling tears.
"I'll just give you two some time," Doctor Otis said. "I'll be back in a few minutes."
Todd sat down with Dempsey in his arms. "Damn," he said softly. "This isn't fair."
Dempsey had opened his eyes fully for the first time in several hours, probably because he'd heard the sound of Todd crying, which had always made him very attentive, even if the crying was fake. Todd could be rehearsing a sad scene from a picture, memorizing lines, and as soon as the first note of sadness crept into his voice Dempsey would be there, his paws on Todd's knees, ready to give comfort. But this time the animal didn't have the strength to help make the boss feel better. All he could do was stare up at Todd with a slight look of puzzlement on his face.
"Oh God, I hope I'm doing the right thing. I wish you could just tell me that this is what you want." Todd kissed the dog, tears falling in Dempsey's fur. "I know if I was you I wouldn't want to be shitting everywhere and not able to stand up. That's no life, huh?" He buried his face in the smell of the animal. For eleven years—whether Todd had had female company or not—Dempsey had slept on his bed; and more often than not been the one to wake him up, pressing his cold nose against Todd's face, rubbing his neck on Todd's chest.
"I love you, dog," he said. "And I want you to be there when I get to Heaven, okay? I want you to be keeping a place for me. Will you do that? Will you keep a place for me?"
There was a discreet knock on the door, and Todd's stomach turned. "Time's up, buddy," he said, kissing Dempsey's burning-hot snout. Even now, he thought, I could say no, I don't want you to do this. He could take Dempsey home for one more night in the big bed. But that was just selfishness. The dog had had enough, that was plain. He could barely raise his head. It was time to go.
"Come in," he said.
The doctor came in, meeting Todd's gaze for the first time. "I know how hard this is," she said. "I have dogs myself, all mutts like Dempsey."
"Dempsey, did you hear that?" Todd said, the tears refusing to abate. "She called you a mutt."
"They're the best."
"Yeah. They are."
"Are you ready?"
Todd nodded, at which point she instantly transferred her loving attention to the dog. She lifted Dempsey out from Todd's arms and put him on the steel table in the corner of the room, talking to him all the while. "Hey there, Dempsey. This isn't going to hurt at all. Just a little prick—"
She pulled a syringe out of her pocket, and exposed the needle. At the back of Todd's head that same irrational voice was screaming: "Tell her no! Knock it out of her hand! Quickly! Quickly!" He pushed the thoughts away, wiping the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand, because he didn't want to be blinded by them when this happened. He wanted to see it all, even if it hurt like a knife. He owed that to Dempsey. He put his hand on Dempsey's neck and rubbed his favorite place. The syringe went into Dempsey's leg. He made a tiny little grunt of complaint.
"Good boy," Doctor Otis said. "There. That wasn't so bad now, was it?"
Todd kept rubbing Dempsey's neck.
The doctor put the top back on the syringe and pocketed it. "It's all right," she said. "You can stop rubbing. He's gone."
So quickly? Todd cleared away another wave of tears and looked down at the body on the table. Dempsey's eye was still half-open, but it didn't look back at him any longer. Where there'd been a sliver of bright life, where there'd been mischief and shared rituals—where, in short, there'd been Dempsey—there was nothing.
"I'm very sorry, Mister Pickett," the doctor said, "I'm sure you loved him very much and speaking as a doctor, I know you did the right thing for him."
Todd sniffed hard, and reached over to pluck a clump of tissues from the box. "What does that say?" he said, pointing to the framed poster on the wall. His tears made it incomprehensible.
"It's a quote by Robert Louis Stevenson," Andrea said. "You know, the man who wrote Treasure Island ?"
"Yeah, I know . . ."
"It says: 'Do you think dogs will not be in heaven? I tell you, they will be there long before any of us.'"
SIX
He waited until he got home, and he'd governed his tears, to make arrangements for Dempsey's cremation. He left a message with a firm that was recommended by the animal hospital for their discreet handling of these matters. They would pick Dempsey's body up from the hospital mortuary, cremate him and transfer his ashes, guaranteeing that there was no mingling of "cremains"—as they described them—but that the ashes they delivered to the owner would be those of their pet. In other words they weren't putting canaries, parrots, rats, dogs and guinea pigs in the oven for one big bonfire and dividing up the "cremains" (the word revolted Todd) in what looked to be the appropriate amounts. He also called his accountant at home and made arrangements for a ten-thousand-dollar donation to the hospital, the only attendant request being that five hundred of that money be spent on putting in a more comfortable bench for people to sit on while they waited.
He slept very well with the aid of several Ambien and a large scotch, until about four-thirty in the morning, when he woke up and felt Dempsey moving around at the bottom of the bed. The drugs made his thought processes muddy. It took him a few seconds of leaning over and putting the coverlet at the bottom of the bed to bring his consciousness up to speed. Dempsey wasn't there.
Yet he'd felt the dog, he would have sworn to it on a stack of Bibles, getting up and walking around and around on the same spot, padding down the bed until it was comfortable for him.
He lay back on the pillow and drifted back to sleep, but it wasn't a healthy sleep thereafter. He kept half-waking, and staring down at the darkness of the bottom of the bed, wondering if Dempsey was a ghost now, and would haunt his heels until the dog had the sense to go on his way to Heaven.
He slept in until ten, when Marco brought him the phone with a woman called Rosalie from the Pet Cremation Service. She was pleasant in her no-nonsense way; no doubt she often had people in near hysteria at the other end of the telephone, so a little professional distance was necessary. She had already been in contact with the hospital this morning, she said, and they had informed her that Dempsey had a collar and quilt with him. Did Todd want these items returned, or were they to be cremated with his pet?
"They were his," Todd said, "so they should go with him."
"Fine," said Rosalie. "Then the only other question is the matter of the urn. We have three varieties—"
"Just the best you've got."
"That would be our Bronze Grecian Style."
"That sounds fine."
"All I need now is your credit card number."
"I'll pass you back to my assistant. He can help you with all that."
"Just one other question?"
"Yes."
"Are you ... the Todd Pickett?"
Yes, of course, he was the real Todd Pickett. But he didn't feel like the real thing; more like a badly bruised lookalike. Things like this didn't happen to the real Todd Pickett. He had a way with life that always made it show the bright side.
He went back to sleep until noon then got up and ate some lunch, his body aching as though he were catching a heavy dose of the flu. His food unfinished, he sat in the breakfast nook, staring blankly at the potted plants artfully arranged on the patio; plants he'd never persuaded Dempsey not to cock his leg against every time he passed.