I’d been wrong about the dog’s bladder: he was on a mission, and hardly paused to sniff, let alone pee. Oblivious to other pedestrians, he pushed onward like a horse heading for the barn at the end of a long day. Perhaps he lived around here? The thought gave me a glimmer of hope.
Oops. The dog came to a sudden squat and was now doing the unmentionable alongside an iron gate guarding a storefront. As I hadn’t thought to bring along a plastic bag, I looked around guiltily, but no concerned citizens materialized to scold me. The storefront bore an ornate sign: THE RENOWNED MIRKO: PSYCHIC AND CARD READER. This was followed by a phone number, and then, in smaller font, WALK-INS — BOTH SORTS! — WELCOME. I was pondering that when I heard the tinkling of bells and looked up to see a man standing in the shop doorway.
We stared at each other. He frowned at me, his lips set in a horizontal line. He was tall and thin, the kind of thin that makes you think, for just a second, stage four cancer, but there was a kinetic energy about him, something in his gray eyes that nixed that impression. A high forehead, made higher by a receding hairline, made him look aristocratic, and strangely attractive, as did a three-piece suit more suited to a wedding than a psychic reading. I felt very American, and not in a good way.
“Unbelievable,” he said.
“I’m sorry, Mr. — ” I glanced again at the sign. “Mirko. I didn’t bring a plastic bag — satchel — whatever you call them here — okay, never mind. If you have a paper towel or something, I’ll happily clean this up for you.”
“No.”
“Okay, ‘happily’ might be overstating it,” I admitted. “But I’m willing to — hey! Dog! Stop.” The dog was greeting the Renowned Mirko like a long-lost lover and attempting to mate with his dress pants. I tugged on the leash.
“Go. Just go. Take yourself off,” Mirko snapped, and then, to the dog, “Not now.”
“Whoa. Hold up,” I said. “Do you know this dog?”
“No.”
“You do. You know this dog. This dog knows you.”
“Nonsense,” he said.
“It’s not nonsense. He dragged me right to you.”
“Leave.”
“I’m not leaving,” I said. “I’m walking in. A walk-in. Like the sign says. Both sorts!”
He gave me a curious look, but then glanced past me and said, “Bloody hell. Too late. Go in.”
“What?” I looked over my shoulder.
“In, in, go inside, are you deaf? Quickly.” The man took my arm and yanked me — he and the dog — through the open door.
The shop was warm, and musty with the odor of antiques and incense, the signature scents of psychics the world over. The decor was Victorian clutter. I got a fast impression of chintz, wallpaper, and books, books, books as Mirko herded me across the room to a kitchenette.
“Sit,” Mirko said, and I thought he was talking to the dog until he pushed me into an armchair and scooped the dog into my lap. He then hauled over a rococo screen and arranged it in front of me, blocking my view of the room. He leaned in so close I could smell the damp wool of his suit. “Do not make a sound,” he said. “Do not let the dog make a sound. This is critically important.”
Before I could argue the point, the tinkling bell sounded again, signaling someone entering the shop. “If you value your brother’s life, stay quiet,” Mirko said, and walked away.
That shut me up.
The dog and I listened as Mirko said hello to someone. Actually, he said zdravstvujtye. A man responded in kind. In Russian. I knew a few words of Russian, but after the pleasantries, the newcomer told Mirko to wait. A second later came the sound of Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond singing “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,” a ballad Robbie once said made him want to cut off his ears. The music source was a cell phone, was my guess, and I wondered why we were listening to it, until I realized it masked conversation. I could pick out only random words now, during the song’s lugubrious pauses, of which there were many. Then came the sound of a zipper zipping. The urge to peek around the screen was strong, but the dog began to struggle, wanting out of my arms and onto a small, narrow refrigerator next to us, on top of which sat a large frozen turkey, thawing, and a large ceramic Blessed Virgin Mary. As I thwarted his efforts to investigate the bird, the tinkling bell sounded again, and Streisand, Diamond, and Russian left the building.
“You may come out,” Mirko said.
I came around the screen to find Mirko taking off his jacket and kicking off his shoes. Alongside him was a wheelie suitcase, fully zipped.
“So how do you know my brother?” I asked, and promptly took off my own jacket, the room being hellishly hot.
“I haven’t time for this,” he said.
“But you know where he is?”
“I do not.” Now he had his vest off and was unbuttoning his dress shirt, as adroit as a stage actor doing a quick change. “I suggest you return to your flat, with the dog-who-is-not-your-dog, and sleep off the jet lag that you’re trying to ignore. It’s four in the morning Los Angeles time, and that red-eye you took did you no favors even with an exit row and a window seat. Nor does sleeping on floors agree with you.”
My eyes must’ve widened. He smiled, before whipping off his shirt and giving me a view of his naked chest. Not a bad chest, if you don’t mind skinny, which I don’t, but I wasn’t about to be distracted. “I don’t know how you know the things you know,” I said, “but all I care about is Robbie.” The dog, perhaps reacting to my tone of voice, produced a sound that was less a bark and more the yowl of a human infant. “You tell him, Churchill,” I said.
“Churchill? I’d have said Gladstone.” Mirko walked to a bureau covered with tarot cards, opened a drawer, and took out a some clothes and a pair of Converse high-tops.
“Whoever that is.”
“Victoria’s prime minister, who more closely resembled a French bulldog.” He pulled a T-shirt over his head, followed by a hoodie, a purple Grateful Dead relic from some bygone decade.
I stooped to let Gladstone wiggle out of my arms and over to Mirko, who was pulling on his sneakers, though not bothering to lace them up. “Fine,” I said. “But you’re pretty much the only person I know in London, not counting Pet Immigration, and I’m not leaving until—”
“Suit yourself.” He stood up, ruffled his hair, and put on a pair of black-rimmed glasses. The transformation from aristocrat to geek was not just fast, it was total. From his pants pocket he withdrew a remote, which he aimed at the wall behind me.
A creaking sound like the opening of Dracula’s coffin made me turn and see a wall-sized bookcase move.
Slowly, squeakily, so disorientingly I thought, Earthquake? the bookcase kept advancing into the room, as freaky as the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. I fixed my eyes at random on one frayed book called The Coming of the Fairies, willing it to stay put, but nope. It moved. When I turned my attention back to Mirko, he stepped over his pile of clothes, grabbed the handle of the wheelie suitcase, and moved to a now-palpable gap between bookcase and wall.
Behind the gap was a door. Mirko opened the door and went through it.
I grabbed the dog and followed.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he called out.