Beware of Flight Attendant

by Cactus Moloney

  Tamara was a self-proclaimed “word hound,” and as she watched Buster’s stormy gray body twisting in the air, she couldn’t help but think he looked every bit the second definition of the word—a sudden violent wind coming from the south.

  Cindy’s own mother had died of Type-two diabetes. She had watched both her mother’s feet be amputated. Cindy decided to devote her life, to not only her dog training passion, but also to focus her efforts on fulfilling her life’s purpose: to provide people with service dogs to help combat their debilitating disease.

  It costs a person upwards of thirty-five thousand dollars to acquire a service dog through NIDAD, the Institute for Diabetic Alert Dogs. She was able to train and place service dogs at a fraction of the price. Tamara thought Cindy should charge at least twenty thousand dollars per service animal, but Cindy felt she could go as low as ten thousand to help an individual without the financial means to purchase a NIDAD dog.

  Several weeks prior to placing Buster with his forever home, Cindy sat in her living room with Clyde on her lap and Bonnie at her feet; she was working on the dog business’s budget and checking emails on her laptop, when she opened an email from June Swartz’s nephew. The email perfectly coincided with the completion of Buster’s service dog requirements:

  Dear Ms. Cindy Stiles,

  I have been doing quite a bit of research lately on diabetic alert dogs. Most are completely out of our price range. I found you by accident. You see, we need a dog for my Aunt June. She is terribly ill, suffering with confusion, shakiness, and heart palpitations. The hypoglycemic episodes are coming more often. She has a limited budget and is unable to afford assistance. Please let me know if you have a dog available for my aunt. We have started a www.gofundme.com to help with the cost. We are already at $4,300. Let me know what I can do to help with this process.

  Kind regards,

  Kyle Swartz

  “Things always work out this way,” Cindy gushed. “You send a message out to the universe and bam you get an email from Mr. Swartz.”

  “This is destiny,” she yelled to Tamara, who was stretching in the other room.

  “You manifested it, Cindy,” Tamara said.

  This is what Cindy lived for—she only wished Lenny could have seen how Buster turned out.

  3 Buster

  My heart is on fire. My hind legs burn, the muscles pulling and contracting with each jolting step, as I chase after the dark car. I am angry and sad thinking of him. Running faster. I must catch the car. Lunging at the vehicle, my front paws latch onto the steel trunk. I’m slipping. I fail to hold on, sliding from the back end. Cringing at the screeching sound of my nails slipping against the hot metal. Blazing the purple paint with my mark. I crash onto the burning asphalt, rolling several times. Listening to the rumble of the engine speeding off. Crying out in pain from the fall and from a broken heart.

  The sound of my own howling yanks me from my sleep like the jolt at the end of a leash.

  I could hear the front doors of the building opening. It was Cindy and her entourage. I listened to the clicking of sixteen paws tap dancing through the lobby.

  Breath in. Standing from my spongy mattress to stretch my white paws straight in front of me, with my back end rising like the sun, in proper yoga form. Breath out. Cindy’s wife, Tamara, told me people call this morning stretch the Downward Dog. I love new words.

  I loved Cindy. She smelled like cheese and bacon bits. I think bacon bits might be my favorite food. She handed treats out faithfully as reward for following her commands.

  The energy came off her in pulsating amber waves.

  “I need to connect with the dog I’m training,” she had explained.

  We were connected through the cheese...and the bacon bits. I loved her.

  After Lenny died, she tried to hold her emotions together for the dogs. We detected Cindy’s underlying sadness and the anxiety caused over the loss of her friend, so we tried even harder to be good canine students.

  I knew this day was going to be different by the way Cindy approached my kennel. Sensing she was nervous and excited. Mostly, I was thrilled to be getting a piece of cheese, affection, and stimulus. Plus, I was desperate to take a piss. I could hear her boots clonk against the floor, and then the clink and the whine of the chain link gate opening. She wheezed through her open mouth from her heaviness. I stood quietly, listening for the rap of her heartbeat; the tick tock of time against her chest. Deep inhale. Sniffing her glucose levels. High. Not high enough to warn her. She smiled down at me, waiting patiently in my kennel.

  “Buenos días Señor Buster!”

  It didn’t matter what language she spoke. It was more important for humans to use the universal language of gestures. Which made it perfect that Cindy trained dogs mainly using sign language commands.

  I greeted her in return with the enthusiasm she deserved. She let me smell Luke, Zeek, and the wieners on her pant legs and up her arms. I kissed her face with my not-so-mean mug. Gentle velvet kisses with one small lick. She had just eaten a sausage omelet. She motioned her hand against her thigh for me to follow her down the concrete corridor, out the back door, and onto the agility course arena.

  Oh boy! I danced my white paws in front of me, declaring my elation.

  We were getting ready to have some fun. She gestured for me to Sit.

  “Buster today you are going to meet someone special,” she sang with excitement.

  I had no idea how to read her intonation. I waited.

  I could hear movements and voices coming from the building. The back door opened, and two people emerged, following closely behind Cindy’s wife. Tamara was always helping at the training center nowadays, since Lenny died.

  I watched an elderly woman limping slowly towards me, with her large swollen legs exposed; I could see the pink flesh hanging over the tops of her mid-calf white socks. She was wearing adjustable-strap sandals to fit around her fat feet. She smelled old: of mothballs, urine, Listerine mouthwash, and White Shoulders perfume. Her fuzzy white hair formed a feathery crown. A middle-aged man, wearing wrinkled khaki pants and a collared dark shirt, held the woman’s elbow. His round wire-framed glasses pinched the top of his sharp nose.

  “Please come and join Buster and me,” Cindy invited the couple over.

  They were taking particularly cautious miniature steps aimed at the fold-out metal chairs that Tamara had placed next to the agility course, under my favorite tree. The elderly woman shakily lowered herself onto one of them.

  “Buster, I want you to meet Aunt June.”

  “Reach your hand out for Buster to smell,” Cindy instructed Aunt June.

  I sniffed at her spotted, wrinkled hand, pleased with the odors I encountered: the strong soap and perfume had covered the yummy smell of tuna fish, cookies, prunes, a cat, cat poop in a litter box (a.k.a. Almond Roca), and stagnant dust.

  “And Buster this is her nephew Kyle,” she said as the stranger reached his hand out for me to smell.

  He had that new car smell. Kyle smelled of plastic and Kellogg's Fruit Loops cereal. Fruit Loops had a similar smell to a person with high glucose levels.

  “This is a massive dog,” Kyle said hesitantly. “How will my elderly aunt be able to keep control of him? I was thinking it would be a golden retriever…or something smaller like a beagle.”

  “He is but a gentle giant.” Cindy smiled brightly. “Buster has never exhibited even the slightest bit of aggression. Honestly, he is one of the most agreeable, well-mannered, intelligent dogs I’ve come across in my thirty years of dog service. Mark my words, you will never encounter a problem with Buster.”

  “Can he travel on airplanes?” Kyle asked Cindy. “I have a trip planned next month, to fly Aunt June to Miami to see my mother…her sister.”

  “Of course!” Cindy exclaimed. “He will have no problem traveling in an airplane. Plus, airlines are extremely accommodating with service dogs.”

  “How is he around children?” Artificially sweet-smelling K
yle interrogated Cindy.

  My white paws began to tap dance at the prospect of being around kids.

  “Buster was introduced to the entire Sand Cliffs Preschool. He let the kids crawl all over him, with their sticky fingers fondling his mouth and ears.”

  “When I introduced him to a cat,” she started laughing. Then, recreating the scene, she crouched her knees and splayed her arms out in front of her body. “He carefully dropped to the floor with his two white paws in front of him like an Egyptian Sphinx, then he waited for the cat to come and rub against him, before licking the cat’s face clean.”

  “I don’t have kids, but there are lots of little’s living in the trailer park,” Aunt June giggled. “I do have an old feline friend, Mr. Magoo.”

  “First, Aunt June needs to set the entire week aside for training intensives and time for bonding with Buster and to gain a better understanding of the proper hand signals,” Cindy explained to Kyle, dismissing Aunt June as though she were a child.

  Getting to know Aunt June was easy. She was fragile although hefty. Aunt June had lost everyone she knew, that is what she told me, all but her nephew Kyle. Divulging that all her family and friends had either “passed on” or were “barely living” in nursing homes.

  “My husband Wilber died after having a stroke ten years ago, when he was seventy-eight years old,” she told me, sitting on the folding chair, under the tree, next to the agility course. “It was a good life for him… and he was happy when he passed on.”

  I wasn’t sure what “passed on” meant, but I associated it with the “final walk” the downtrodden dogs took at the shelter.

  I liked how she talked to me like I was her friend. I was.

  She lost her son Ralph in a jet boating accident. Her twin sister had died slipping down the tiled concrete stairs leading into a pool, hitting her head against the ledge—kind of like Lenny—I remembered his blood blending with the sudsy water.

  “I guess it was a real mess,” she told me.

  Her and Wilber had spent their entire lives managing a bowling alley they didn’t own in Forked River, New Jersey. Upon the sale of the alley, with no retirement to speak of, except for a small social security stipend, the couple decided it was time for some warmth and relaxation. They chose to retire to the Cottonwood Estates Trailer Park, ideally located just outside Albuquerque. The trailer park came with all the amenities: a pool and Jacuzzi, shuffleboard, and a putting green. Behind her trailer was an endless expanse of yellow desert and tumbleweeds. This is where Aunt June continued to reside.

  “The property was affordable and the weather hot,” she told me, dabbing sweat from her brow with a tissue.

  I was happy to love Aunt June and planned to take good care of her.

  I was aware of the tingly sweet scent associated with an impending diabetic emergency. The smells made me want to sneeze; instead I would go tze tze between my teeth—saliva spritzing those around me—I was taught to paw at Aunt June’s leg.

  “It’s the change in a person’s scent from having high blood sugar levels,” Cindy had explained during training.

  “There will be five separate test sites we’ll be using,” Cindy interrupted my thoughts. “We will be following the standards of the ODOR Service Dogs Inc,” she droned on. “We will be testing his alertness in numerous situations; noisy distraction and anywhere that is unfamiliar to the dog.”

  We started the test sites by visiting Aunt June’s trailer park. Walking through the rows of single-wide trailers, I was bombarded by a multitude of distractions; each modular home emitted its own distinct odor, the sound of dogs yipping and howling from open windows and fenced yards, food distractions from the dumpsters at the end of the park, and strangers calling out to me. Fire hydrants. I ignored it all.

  I watched Aunt June wobble out onto the rickety wooden porch of her avocado green, single-wide trailer. She was smiling joyfully at our arrival. This made me happy. My non-existent nub-of-a-tail wagged with delight. The old wooden porch planks creaked under the strain of our mutual weight as Cindy and I joined Aunt June on the front patio.

  Walking into the house I was swamped by the sensory overload.

  “Aunt June is a hoarder,” Cindy later explained to me when we returned to the shelter. I assumed that meant she liked stuff; hoarder was a new word.

  Inside the dark paneled trailer, we found furniture piled high, coffee tables, and side tables were stacked on top of one another, each corner, crevice and shelf jammed with crafty items.

  “I love to sew and craft, as you can see,” Aunt June told Cindy. “I’ve also purchased some items from the church craft bazaar and Saturday morning yard sales.”

  I sniffed at a chalk-covered painted ceramic sign, engraved with the unfamiliar words: Smile, God loves you. Moving on to the little dust-bunny dolls in home knitted outfits, sitting next to needlework pillows inscribed with phrases: The Smallest Things Bring the Greatest Joy…Follow your Dreams…Thankful Grateful Blessed. She had filthy orange, red and yellow hexagonal-patterned afghan blankets smelling forty years old, with matching knitted armrest covers on her chairs and couch. I knew her chair was the cream colored one with the urine stains. The smell hit me like a fifty-pound bag of dog food. I wanted to lift my leg and cover the chair with my own scent, but I knew better, and respected her territory. Sniffing around the boxes filled with old mothball covered clothing; I began exploring down the hallway with my nose, finding my way into the back bedroom.

  Three human heads waited for me on a dresser along the paneled wall to my right. They stopped me in my tracks, prompting me with an urgent desire to backpedal my way out of the room, but Aunt June stood behind me blocking my hasty departure. She must be a psychopath! Each head had the same short gray blond hair and no eyes or mouths. They smelled of Aunt June and Styrofoam. I might have overreacted.

  “Silly pup, are you scared of my mannequins?” Aunt June asked me giggling. “They’re made to hold my wigs. I don’t bother with them wigs much anymore. No need to play dress up with Wilber gone.”

  She had dresses hanging from wheeled clothing racks lining the walls. An unused ironing board was piled high with discarded dresses and shirts, propped in the middle of the room; the iron cord swirling to the floor. A vanity had accumulated unopened cosmetic boxes and bottles of perfume. The wall behind it was covered in costume jewelry that hung from hooks drilled in diamond patterns. Boxes lay open with fancy fake gold and silver bracelets and sparkling jeweled earrings spilling out. The carpet was old. I smelled layers of dirt, years of faded odors, emitting the slight whiff of a dog long ago. Leaving the room with the head trickery, I smelled the sweetness of old man Wilber’s aftershave seeping from the bathroom.

  I think Aunt June was lonelier than me when I was sat abandoned in the cold shelter cell. I smelled her seclusion biting at the air, as my nose led me back towards the living room, sniffing the carpet edges deeply. One large inhale made me halt—one white paw paused mid-step.

  “A cat!”

  My nose was drawn to the one-inch crack under the closed panel door on my right. I inhaled as if it was my first breath on earth. Aunt June had a cat. I wanted to append myself to him.

  “Buster, do you want to be introduced to Mr. Magoo?” Cindy asked.

  I lay down with my white paws pointing towards the closed door. My bum wiggled. They had started saying “Buster” in front of most sentences when addressing me. I understood it to be my new name. It was branded on the shiny red biscuit tag hanging from my new collar, decorated in green Saguaro cacti.

  “Buster, I guess that’s a yes!” Cindy was laughing at my eagerness.

  Aunt June opened the door and a crippled scraggly white cat emerged from the darkened room. The cat was missing most of his teeth, with one extra-long fang forming a snaggletooth over his lower paper-thin lip. He smelled like cat litter. Hissing all the while, as he strutted towards me. I didn’t flinch, but my eyes began blinking rapidly—the whites exposed.

  Please don
’t scratch out my eyeballs, I tried to send him the message telepathically.

  The cat came closer hissing a little softer. I could feel his fur gently caress my spikey whiskers. Then the pussy rubbed its cotton soft body hard against my neck and face.

  Oh, for the love of sweet Jesus!

  I had all but died and gone to heaven.

  It wouldn’t be a bad gig I told myself. I liked the stories the smells from her manufactured home told. The home provided a dark cave-like ambiance—the drapes closed it was déjà vu—the familiarity was right.

  I would be trading one good life for another.

  “Being a service dog is a very fulfilling lifestyle,” Cindy chatted at Aunt June. “Are you looking forward to your trip to Miami?”

  “Oh yes, very much so...I think Buster is going to love the beach...but wait...does he know how to swim?”

  AS HAPPY AS A DOG WITH TWO TAILS

  4 Carmen Fuentes

  Carmen was a strong, intelligent Cuban American woman. Nobody seemed to notice. Her beauty blinded people.

  It was happening once again with the perverted TSA Officer, Randy.

  “Put your hands above your head and turn around,” the paunchy uniformed man demanded, twisting his porn 'stache into a creepy smirk.

  He licked his open wet lips, leaving behind a residue of saliva on the 'stache’s bristles. His eyes began stripping off her flight attendant uniform, unbuttoning her blouse one snap at a time. No laws against imagination. She was regularly forced to abide by Randy’s requests on the routine Las Vegas layover. Ordinarily, she made it a point to arrive at the airport with the rest of the flight crew, so she could slip past the lewd official. But today she had called her parents in Miami; the phone call had run long, forcing her to take a later hotel airport shuttle than her co-workers.