There is no sign of him as she walks down the sidewalk around her block. Kendra is tentative, as if she expects her dog to materialize out of the vaporous night air, like a furry, floppy-eared angel. She squats in the narrow deserted street and calls his name, as if to do so will launch him into her lap from behind some shrub or tree. Soon all she can do, though, is contemplate the designer rips, frays, and distressing on the knees and thighs of her blue jeans.
Chef suddenly comes to mind. He might have seen Toto. She remembers that she had to take in a package for him from FedEx earlier; a long box. Retrieving it, she climbs up the stairs and bangs on the door. He answers, and he’s still in his whites. — This came for you, she tells him, his face glowing as she hands over the box. — You haven’t seen my dog around, have you?
— No, he informs her, — not seen.
— I just came back from a drink with some friends and now he’s gone, she finds herself sniffing to stifle a fretful rising inside her.
They head back downstairs in the garden, where Chef, a flashlight in his hand, helps her to search again for signs of Toto. They shine the beam up to where a window is open in her apartment. It’s in the back spare room, but there is no way the dog could have survived had he fallen from that height and there is nothing in the garden to suggest he had.
Back in her apartment, Kendra sits on the couch all of a sudden aware that heavy sobs are bubbling up through her. She hears the chef’s voice through her muffled confusion; insistent, instructing, and she gets up and follows him up the stairs, without being fully aware why. The pufferfish in the tank pout in scandalized outrage at her. As Chef goes into the kitchen, she says softly to them, — I’m sorry I ate your friend. Please bring Toto back.
Chef comes through with two glasses of Scotch in cut-glass tumblers. Kendra thinks briefly this isn’t what she needs, then she tries to work out what it is she does need, and can’t, so lets the proffered glass fill the void. Then he makes her eat something, a noodle concoction.
As she forces down the food and drink, Chef opens the box she has brought and is delighted with the sword he takes out. Unlike the other one it has a straight blade. — Ninja sword, by Paul Chen, one of best makes, Chef explains. — Ninja sword always straight, no like Shinto katana. He points at the one they used yesterday. Chef swings the sword as Kendra half-heartedly munches her way through the small supper.
— As a chef, knives very important. A good set of knives is everything. Always must respect things that cut flesh, he says.
Kendra is not so fascinated this time, in fact she feels a little sick. She can’t help thinking about the danger such a weapon would be to Toto. He was so frail and small. How could anybody hurt something so defenceless? But there was evil in this world. She shakes off her melancholy thoughts. With the Scotch, the food comforts her a little and she regains some composure. — Thank you for being so kind. You like Scotch in Japan, yes?
The chef nods lightly with a dumb smile, like he doesn’t quite understand her.
— Japan, it seems so mystical, Kendra continues, feeling foolish as she recalls that Chef’s restaurant is called the Mystic East. — Eh, whereabouts in Japan do you come from?
— Korean, Chef points to himself. — Only came Japan study cooking. To Tokyo. But born and raise in Korea.
Korea.
And something thin and dark in the chef’s smile — something that does not lend itself easily to definition — disturbs Kendra greatly. Excusing herself she heads downstairs to her apartment. Cranking up the air con, she undresses quickly and tumbles into bed. An exhausted, alcoholic sleep claims her, and she feels herself fighting in the night against its terrors. Rattling sounds fill the bedroom. She can hear Toto whining miserably, as if entombed in the walls. She rises, aware that somebody is in the apartment. Chef stands in the doorway, naked. His body is sinewy and yellow in the light. He has an outsized penis, its tip almost at his knees. The samurai sword is in his hand, hanging losely by his side. Kendra screams.
She is back in her bed. Something warm lies next to her; her heartbeat races and dips, as she sees it’s just her pillow. The room is silent, save for the soft whirr of the air con.
The Saturday morning dawns muggy, the chirping of the birds in the oak tree outside particularly bellicose as Kendra wakes up, blinking in the striped sunlight pouring through the blinds. The bolt of fear surfaces in her. Toto, oh Toto. She rises and pulls on a Chicago Bears T-shirt, her dressing gown spilling, like so many other garments, from the wicker laundry basket to the floor. The desperate chaos of her apartment, clothes strewn everywhere, is hurtful to her, and it has been thrown into further disarray in the frantic search for Toto. Picturing the parental home at Highland Park, the stucco, the timbered gables, the electric green lawn, airy and swollen like a comforter (if only the earth really swallowed you up in that way), a sour alcoholic burping sob rises nauseously in her chest. She is supposed to work this Saturday morning but calls in, leaving a message on the answering machine. — It’s Kendra. I won’t be in this morning. My… she hesitates about telling the truth, —… my sister Karla… my baby sister, she says, choking with emotion as she recalls a young bathing-suited Karla with her on a lakeside beach, before an image of a galloping Toto with something in his mouth supplants it, —… was in a road-traffic accident… I just pray… I’m going there right now, and she puts the phone down.
Kendra doesn’t quite trust herself to drive and calls a cab, instructing the driver to head to the city dog pound at Western Avenue, on the South Side, going towards Cicero. In her emotional state, the guilt at using Karla in such an underhand way kicks in, and she fires off a prayer of forgiveness and one of salvation for Toto. On the journey paranoia is tearing from her. It takes them an age to get onto the Kennedy Expressway, and when they get to the South Side, it’s clear that the Indian driver doesn’t know the city. — You do nat stay on 55, Kendra screeches, her nerves shredded, — No Stevenson Expressway! No, no! You come off on Damon. Then you turn on to Western!
Now her overheated mind half recalls a recent case of a Chicago Police lieutenant’s dog being euthanized when it was supposed to be held for a ten-day rabies observation. The staff at the dog pound had tried to cover up the mistake and the authorities raided the facility. What if they had done the same thing with poor Toto?
Western Avenue is a desolate enough street on the North Side, but this far down Kendra finds the neighborhood positively sinister: run-down, empty, and with an ominous air of threat. Although it’s broad daylight, she is still happy to complete the short walk from the car to the building. But the dog pound merely distresses her further. Inside, all those uncared-for and abandoned animals. But a search reveals that Toto isn’t one of them. — I’m sorry, a chunky Hispanic woman tells her.
She dials a cab on her cell, waits twenty wretched minutes before it comes to ferry her back over to the North Side, away from all the happy poor people, reunited with their loved pets. On the way back, the pop-up downtown area drawing closer, she can’t stop thinking about Chef. Who was he really, and what did she know about him? His love of Asian cuisine and samurai swords, his keeping of pufferfish in the tanks to be consumed fresh. That sword. She suddenly shudders in her seat as she thinks of it cutting her beloved Toto in two pieces like the watermelon, his existence — and all that love — snuffed out in one sharp yelp. The cab is so hot inside and to stop her neck burning on the leather headrest, Kendra has to undo her ponytail and let her long hair fan out and act like a cover.