“Where is he now?” Donna asked.
“He’s in his little tote bag. Actually, he frightened me a little, Safe-T-Man. I think I ordered him too dark or something. I never did get used to him.”
“That’s racist,” one of the fat girls said.
“Yeah, what a racist remark,” the other one said.
“I bet he wonders what happened to me,” the old lady said. “I bet my car does too. One minute you’re on the open road, one excitement after another, the next you’re in a dark garage. I’m not afraid of dying, but I don’t want to die old.”
She was quite old already, of course, but the fat girls did not challenge her on this. Cynthia came into the room, eating a piece of fruit, a nectarine or something.
“The first thing I’m going to do when I get out of here is go home and make Festive Chicken,” the old woman said. “I hope you’ll all be my guests for dinner.”
The fat girls and Cynthia stared at her.
“I’d love to,” Donna said. “What is Festive Chicken? Can I bring anything? Wine? A salad?”
“It requires toothpicks,” the old woman said. “You bake it with toothpicks but then you take the toothpicks out.”
“It sounds wonderful,” Donna said.
Cynthia rolled her eyes. “Would you give it a rest,” she said to Donna.
“I’m tired now,” the old woman said sweetly. “I’m tired of playing cards.” She put the cards back in the box but it didn’t have reef residents on it. It had a picture of a drab, many-spired European city, the very opposite of a reef resident.
“These don’t belong in this box!” she cried. “It’s the first time I’ve noticed this. Would you go to my house and bring back the other deck of cards?” she asked Donna.
“Sure,” Donna said.
“My house is a little strange,” the old woman said.
“What do you mean?”
“I bet it is,” one of the fat girls said.
“I love my little house,” the old woman said anxiously. “I want to get back to it as soon as I can.”
She gave Donna the address and a key from her pocket-book. That evening, when visiting hours were over, Donna drove to the house, which was boxy and tidy with a crushed-rock yard and a dead nestling in the driveway. The house didn’t seem that strange to Donna. One would be desperate to get out of it, certainly. There were lots of things that were meant to be plugged into wall outlets but none of them were plugged in. She found the cards almost immediately, in the kitchen. There were the colorful fish on the cover of the box and the deck inside had the image of the foreign city. Idly, she opened the refrigerator, which was full of ketchup, nothing but bottles of ketchup, each one partially used. Donna had an urge to top the bottles up from others, to reduce the unseemly number, but with not much effort she resisted this.
On the way back to her apartment she stopped at a restaurant and had several drinks in the bar. The bartender’s name was Lucy. She had just come back from a vacation. She had spent forty-five minutes swimming with dolphins. The dolphin that had persisted in keeping Lucy company had an immense boner.
“He kept gliding past me, gliding past,” Lucy said, moving her hand through the air. “I kept worrying about the little kids. They’re always bringing in these little kids who have only weeks to live due to one thing or another. I would think it would be pretty undesirable for them to experience a dolphin with a boner.”
“But the dolphins know better than that, don’t they?” Donna said.
“It’s not all that relaxing to swim with them, actually,” the bartender said. “They like some people better than others, and the ones that get ignored feel like shit. You know, out of the Gaia loop.”
People in the restaurant kept requesting exotic drinks that Lucy had to look up in her Bartender’s Bible. After a while, Donna went home.
The next afternoon she swept into Pond House in her long black coat bearing a bunch of daffodils as a gift in general.
Cynthia was in the lounge in a big chintz slipcovered chair reading Anna Karenina.
“Should you be reading that?” Donna asked.
Cynthia wouldn’t talk to her.
Donna found the old lady and gave her the deck of cards.
“I’m so relieved,” the old lady said. “That could have been such a problem, such a problem. Would you do me another favor? Would you get my dog and bring him to me here?”
Donna was enthusiastic about this. “Do you have a dog? Where is he?”
“He’s in my house.”
“Is anyone feeding him?” Donna said. “Does he have water?” She had found her vocation, she was sure of it. She could do this forever. She felt like a long-distance swimmer in that place long-distance swimmers go in their heads when they’re good.
“Nooooooo,” the old woman said. “He doesn’t need water.” She, too, looked delighted. She and Donna beamed at each other. “He’s a good dog, a watchdog.”
“I didn’t see him when I was there,” Donna admitted.
“He wasn’t watching you,” the old lady said.
“What breed of dog is he?” Donna asked.
She suddenly looked concerned. “He’s something you plug in.”
“Oh,” Donna said, disappointed. “I think I did notice him.” He looked like a stereo speaker. She thought they’d been talking more along the lines of Cerberus, the dog that guarded the gates of hell. Those Greeks! It wasn’t that you couldn’t get in, it was that you couldn’t get out. And that honey-cake business … Actually, she had never grasped the honey-cake business.
“He detects intruders up to thirty feet and he barks. He can detect them through glass, brick, wood and cement. The closer they get, the louder and faster he barks. He’s just a little individual but he sounds ferocious. I always liked him better than Safe-T-Man. I got them at the same time.”
“But he’d be barking all the time here,” Donna said. “You have to consider that,” she added.
“He can be quiet,” the woman said. “He can be good.”
“I’ll get him for you then,” Donna said as though she had just made a difficult decision.
As she was leaving Pond House she passed a man dressed all in red yelling into the telephone. There was a pay phone at the very heart of Floor Three and it was always in use. “What were you born with, an ax in your hand?” he shouted. “You’re so destructive.”
Donna returned the next day with the old lady’s dog, which she carried in a smart brown and white Bendel’s shopping bag she’d been saving. She arrived just about the time the group meeting was coming to a close. Lingering near the door, she saw the fat teenagers and Cynthia’s round neat head with its fashionable haircut. A male patient she had not seen before was saying, “Hey, if it looks, walks, talks, smells and feels like the anima, then it is the anima.” Donna thought this very funny and somewhat obscene. “Miss!” someone called to her. “You are not allowed in these meetings!” She went back to Cynthia’s room and sat on her bed. The old woman’s bed was stripped down to the ticking. She sat and looked at it vacantly.
When Cynthia came in, she said, “Donna, that old lady died, honest to God. We were all sitting around after dinner eating our goddamn Jell-O and she just tipped over.”
“I have something she wanted here,” Donna said, raising the bag. “This is hers, it’s from her house.”
“Get rid of it,” Cynthia said. “Listen, act quickly and positively.” She began to cry.