Dogs and Goddesses

by Jennifer Crusie

  Abby leaned forward and said, “Beetlejuice!” delighted to find another fan.

  Daisy looked confused. “Not The Wizard of Oz?”

  Shar shook her head. “Nope, sorry, Beetlejuice. A cinematic masterpiece. You’ll have to come over and watch it—”

  Her voice broke off and she looked surprised at what she’d just said, but Abby thought, That would be fun. Movie night with the girls. She lifted her cup. “I’ll be there. As the undead one would say, ‘Let’s turn on the juice and see what shakes loose.’ ” She looked in her cup. “Except I’m out of juice.”

  “I haven’t touched this yet,” Shar said, holding out her cup. “I’ll share.”

  “Me, too, please,” Daisy said, holding out her cup. Shar said, “Absolutely,” and divided her cup among the three of them. “Because We Shall Be Friends.”

  Daisy giggled. “Hell, I can always do with some friends. And Abby’s new in town—she needs friends, too.” She knocked her paper cup against Shar’s with an ineffective thunk. “All for one and one for all.” She tapped Abby’s as well, and they all drank the remnants.

  “You will take tonic with you,” Kammani said, suddenly before them again.

  Abby inhaled her drink in surprise and coughed as Shar started and Daisy said, “Crap, you scared me.”

  Kammani presented glazed ceramic bottles to them as if she were handing out treasure.

  “About that source—,” Shar said as she took hers.

  “All will be explained when you return on Tuesday,” Kammani said, and moved toward the back of the room again.

  Abby squinted at her ceramic glazed bottle. “This tonic is really good.” She took another slug of the sweet, spicy liquid. For tonic like this she could manage to come back, maybe long enough to find out what was in it.

  “I don’t want to come back,” Shar said, sounding more like a rebellious child than a dignified, gray-haired professor.

  Which reminded Abby of Christopher Mackenzie, who was nowhere near gray-haired and far too dignified himself, and if she was going to have to go buy ingredients for his cookies, she’d better get a move on.

  “We’ll all come together,” Abby said. “We won’t let the scary lady get you.”

  Shar shook her head. “It’s not the scary part; it’s the waste of time. I have work to do.”

  “Who doesn’t?” Daisy said, and her dog yanked at her leash, practically hauling her out of the chair.

  She was small and strong, Abby thought, but not much of a match for a spastic dog like Bailey. She straightened as Noah came around the circle with handouts.

  “Here’s the class list with phone numbers.” He handed one to Abby while he smiled at Daisy.

  “Thanks.” Abby rose, and as she did, she caught sight of Kammani in the shadows at the back of the room.

  She was watching them.

  “I’m telling you, Kammani’s nuts,” Daisy said as Noah moved on, passing out the class lists. She nodded at the thin, dark-haired girl at the end of the circle. “There’s another one in the last chair there. She’s been staring at me all evening.”

  “Mortuary Mina,” Shar said, and when Abby and Daisy both looked at her, surprised, she added, “Grad student in the history department. Writes all her papers on disasters. If somebody died horribly in history, Mina’s your woman.”

  “Good to know,” Daisy said, and then her dog jerked her away. She met Abby’s eyes. “See you back at the coffeehouse?”

  Abby nodded. “Where’s the nearest grocery store? I need to make cookies.”

  Bowser woofed beside her, and damned if it didn’t sound like he said the word “cookies.” He’d always had a sweet tooth.

  “Kroger’s out on Route Fifty-two,” Daisy said absently. “You’re going to bake?”

  “There’s a butthole professor who seems to think I inherited my grandmother’s obligations as well as the old building, and I’m not interested in fighting him. You want a ride?”

  Daisy glanced toward Noah, who was scratching the tiaraed head of one of the dogs. “It’s a nice night. I think I’ll walk,” she said, trying to sound innocent.

  Shar leaned closer and said, “A professor? I know most of them. Do you need help?”

  “I don’t think Professor Mackenzie is likely to be reasonable.”

  “Oh, Christopher.” Shar nodded. “He’s a good man, but he has a tendency to tunnel vision.” She stopped and looked back at the curtain. “I guess we all do.” She turned back to Abby. “Let me know if you need me to run interference. You’ve got my number.”

  Abby looked at her, startled. “That’s very nice of you… .”

  “Well,” Shar said, “you know. Friends. Or else.” She stood up and put down her empty cup. “It was lovely meeting you both,” she said, and then she let her dachshund pull her to the door, a drab, quiet, totally nice woman with not much life left in her, and Abby wondered if she was going to end up just like her. Dried up and old before her time.

  The teenagers shrieked with laughter and the sour-looking dark-haired girl—Mortuary Mina—took her black Chihuahua and slipped behind the curtain, shadowing Kammani, and one of the little Temple Dogs looked after Wolfie and then padded gracefully back to the altar. Abby looked down at Bowser. “Let’s blow this Popsicle stand. We got cookies to make.”

  “Cookies,” Bowser barked, and Abby jumped, startled.

  “What did you say?” The moment the words were out of her mouth she realized how absurd that was. She shook her head, as if to clear the cobwebs that had surely set up shop. “Never mind; I’m imagining things. Let’s go.”

  Bowser woofed in agreement, a totally doglike sound, and Abby felt some of the tension drain away. It had been an extremely long day, and she’d been nuts to come here without taking time to settle in. They walked out the auditorium doors, across the hall, and out of the building onto the quadrangle. Her car was parked nearby, and it wasn’t until she climbed into the driver’s seat and Bowser had stretched out beside her that she let out her breath.

  “This is a very weird place, Bowse,” she said absently, rubbing his massive head.

  He looked up at her out of his dark, wise eyes. “You’re telling me,” he growled.

  And Abby let out a scream.

  “Bailey, heel!”

  Daisy jerked on the leash as Bailey dragged her to the grassy patch behind the step temple.

  She leaned back and dug in her heels, trying to balance her purse, the ceramic bottle, Bailey, and her sanity.

  “Heel! Heel! Heel!” Something snapped under her left foot. “What the— Heel!”

  Bailey stopped straining against the leash and danced back to her. Daisy dumped her bottle and purse on the ground and sat, then pulled off her left sandal. The heel had broken clean off. Bailey sniffed at it and then licked Daisy’s hand.

  “Don’t kiss up now, dog.” She held the broken heel to her sandal, checking for a way to fix it just to get home, because walking on one heel while being attached to Bailey was a suicide mission. She picked up the ceramic bottle and pulled out the cork. Maybe she could substitute it for the heel … no. Too short.

  “This is what you get when you buy cheap shoes.” She took a breath, catching the sharp scent of the temple tonic wafting up from the open bottle. She glanced at it, focusing on the pretty carnelian flower embossed on the side, the rich orange-red coloring almost swirling under the glossy surface. She lifted the bottle and took a generous swig. Damn, that stuff was good, sharp and exotic like an umbrella drink on a beach. It made her feel … not drunk. Relaxed. Calm. Happy, as if her life was better than she remembered it being. She took another drink, then looked at Bailey, who was doing his signature Let’s go! Let’s go! shuffle-dance two-step.

  She recorked the bottle and turned her attention back to the sandal. “I’m telling you, these classes better work, or I’m going to throw myself in the river.”

  “River!” Bailey barked.

  Daisy’s grip tightened on the sandals in her
hands, and she slowly turned to look at Bailey. Either she was crazy or she’d just heard words in his barks.

  “Did you just … ? No. You didn’t.” She tried to relax her shoulder muscles. “Because that’s impossible.”

  “Possible!” Bailey barked again.

  Daisy froze, feeling a little dizzy, then looked at Bailey.

  “M-m-maybe … there’s a … throat c-c-condition in dogs … ,” she stammered, gripping her sandals as though they were her firmest link to reality. “It’s a condition. Sure. Because there’s no way I’m really hearing a dog ta—”

  “Dog!” Bailey barked.

  “Holy crap!” Daisy screamed, and shot up.

  Bailey hopped straight up in the air. “Crap! Crap! Crap!”

  She felt a snap in her hand and looked down to see she’d snapped the toe off the good sandal. “Crap.”

  Everything okay?” Daisy twirled to see Noah walking toward them. “I heard a scream.” Noah’s eyes locked on Daisy and he smiled as he recognized her. “Hey there. You okay?”

  “Yep.” Daisy looked down at Bailey. “Saw a spider. A terrifying, but likely imaginary, spider. I think it’s gone now.” She tightened her hold on Bailey’s leash, then knelt down to pick up her purse and—her whole body relaxed as she saw it—the ceramic bottle.

  Right. She wasn’t crazy. She was sauced. Thank god.

  “Everything’s okay.” She straightened up. “I think maybe I drank too much.”

  “Too much!” Bailey yipped.

  Daisy turned the bottle in her hands, searching for some kind of labeling. “This has got to be … what? Seventy, eighty proof?”

  “I don’t think there’s any alcohol in that,” Noah said.

  “No?” She glanced down at Bailey. “Yes, there is.” She raised her head and her breath caught as she looked in Noah’s sharp blue eyes, all warm and …

  Whoa. Daisy wasn’t sure if the sudden whoosh she felt was from the guy or the bottle, but either way, it was time to go home.

  “Well, it was nice meeting—,” Daisy started, but then Bailey jumped straight up into the air, twirled, and landed.

  “Ta-da!” he barked.

  “—you,” she finished, then jerked on Bailey’s leash.

  “Stop that.”

  “Stop what?” Noah said.

  “Not you. Him. He keeps—” She stopped herself before she could say, talking, and then Bailey leapt into the air again, and she said, “—doing that.”

  “The jumping?”

  “And … other stuff. He might be making me literally insane. Can dogs do that?”

  “Jack Russells are challenging dogs, but you can handle it.” Noah gave her an encouraging smile.

  “I’m beginning to doubt that,” she said; then a flash of hope shot through her. “Hey, but if I come back for Tuesday’s class, can you fix him? Because I have to tell you …” She looked at Bailey, daring him to speak again.

  “… I’m not sure anything we picked up tonight has been all that helpful.”

  “Training takes time. You’ll get it.”

  Daisy noticed the crinkles around Noah’s eyes deepening as he smiled down at her, and felt a flutter of excitement, and then Bailey barked, “I want a cookie!” and she decided striking up a flirtation during a mental breakdown wasn’t the best timing.

  “Well, I’d better get him home,” she said. “It’s been hours since he’s humped my couch pillows. I wait any longer, he’s gonna get the shakes.”

  “Wait.” Noah motioned down at her feet, then met her eyes again. “I can’t let you just walk off barefoot. Where are you going?”

  “I’m on Temple Street, right over the coffeehouse.”

  “Then you’re right on my way.” He nodded in the direction of town. “If you don’t mind taking the scenic route through the park, we can get to Temple Street without touching pavement.”

  “Park!” Bailey said. “Park! Park!”

  “Okay,” Daisy said to Bailey, then smiled up at Noah. “Let’s go.” She gave him the bottle to hold for her, held on to Bailey’s leash with one hand, and tucked the other in the crook of Noah’s arm.

  “Thank you,” she said. “It’s nice of you to be so concerned about my feet.”

  “Well, it’s not just that,” he said. “I hate to see a couch pillow get lonely.”

  Daisy laughed, and Bailey hopped up and twirled. “I like him.”

  “Me, too,” Daisy said.

  They made their way across the rolling green of campus, the grass tickling Daisy’s feet, keeping them cool, making her feel powerful and connected to the earth. I need to walk barefoot more often, she thought. As they walked, Noah showed her how to get Bailey to heel, and it almost worked. Then he told her a joke she’d already heard, but it was so funny when he told it that she had to stop to catch her breath. She didn’t get her first Uh-oh until they were almost through the park, when he mentioned that Bug-Eyes from class was his cousin Mina.

  “You’re related to her?” she asked. “By blood?”

  “That’s usually how it’s done.”

  “No, I mean—” She shot him an exasperated look. “You know what I mean. She’s just … no offense, but she seems—”

  “Insane?” Noah nodded. “She is. My father got out of the family with his sanity mostly intact, although he’s doing this comb-over thing that has me concerned.” He nudged her with his elbow. “I just threw my family’s crazy closet wide open for you. I usually don’t let women meet Mina until never. Now it’s your turn. Fair’s fair.”

  “Well,” she said, “my mother believes there’s no outfit in the world that can’t be made better by a pillbox hat. No one’s seen the top of her head since 1982.”

  Noah stopped walking and looked down at Daisy. Daisy stopped walking and looked up at him. Bailey leapt in the air and barked, “Hat!”

  “That’s the best you’ve got?” Noah said. “Hats?”

  “Well, it starts with the hats, revs up with her total lack of boundaries, and ends with her pretending to have allergies so she can dump her dog on me and go shopping in New York under the guise of seeing a specialist. It’s a whole gestalt of crazy.”

  He hesitated, then nodded and started walking again. “All right, I’ll give you a pass. Plus bonus points for coining ‘gestalt of crazy.’ Can I use that?”

  “In what?”

  He lowered his eyes. “I write songs.”

  “You’re a musician?” Daisy had a vision of Noah surrounded by braless teenagers and empty beer bottles in a smoky room while his bandmates cooked heroin with spoons and Bic lighters. Uh-oh.

  “I wouldn’t call myself a musician,” Noah said. “I write songs. Play when I can. The rest of the time, it’s odd jobs to pay the rent.”

  “Oh.” Relief. “Like dog training?”

  “Like whatever. Dog training is the flavor of the week.” He shrugged. “I’m good with dogs, and my aunt Miriam—Dad’s sister, Mina’s mom, the source of all batshit—asked me to help out her old college roommate with the class, so I figured, why not? I’m not one to turn down a job that pays.”

  “Don’t you want … I don’t know. Something more stable?”

  “Not really.”

  Daisy went quiet as the Uh-ohs flew fast and furious around her. No goals, no real job, family tree full of nuts. Great. Well, she didn’t have to marry him.

  She could just sleep with him.

  “So,” he said, “what do you do for a living?”

  “I write Web code for the humanities department. It’s pretty boring.”

  He eyed her sideways. “But stable.”

  She gently squeezed his arm. “Is that a dig?”

  “No. I’m just saying everyone makes choices.”

  They moved closer to cut through a line of buckeye trees, and then they were at Temple Street, almost home. Despite the fact that she saw Temple umpteen times a day, Daisy found herself suddenly awed by its colorful strip of storefronts and bars, its streetlights just start
ing to break into the haze of dusk. How could she have lived there so long, and never noticed how pretty it was?

  Because you’ve never had Kammani’s temple tonic before . ..

  “So, hey,” she said, “back to Kammani, I have to ask: is she full-on nuts or just suffering from delusions of goddess?”

  Noah stopped short at the sidewalk and handed her the bottle, then turned his back to her and lowered down a bit. “Hop on.”

  Bailey jumped up in the air. “Hop on, hop on, hop on!”

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  Noah glanced over his shoulder at her. “Piggyback. Let’s go.”

  She laughed, then noticed he didn’t laugh with her. “You’re serious?”

  Noah straightened. “This is a bar street in a college town. The sidewalk is made of broken beer bottles. You’re going piggyback.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because …” She flushed and looked down the street. “It’s childish. And embarrassing.”

  “Half the fun in life is doing things that are childish and embarrassing.”

  “But—”

  He put his hand on her shoulder, and the warmth shot through her so strongly that she almost felt dizzy just from his touch. He lowered his head and spoke quietly, his eyes on hers.

  “Trust me, okay?”

  She looked up at him, and before she even understood why, she heard herself say, “Okay.”

  THREE

  Daisy saw Noah’s smile widen and her heart quickened and Bailey flew up in the air and barked, “Yay!!!”

  She handed the leash to Noah, then took the bottle and her purse in one hand as she grabbed on to his shoulder with the other and crawled onto his back. She tightened her legs around his hips and he straightened, bouncing her into place and …

  “Hoo boy,” she said as the sensations shot through her.

  “You okay?” he asked over his shoulder.

  “Yeah,” she squeaked, then cleared her throat. “I’m fine.”

  Noah started down the street and with each movement, each breath, a fresh wave of pure want shot through her. The energy pooled within her, tightening in her abdomen, and everything around her seemed to pop and crackle. They crossed the street just as a warm summer wind shot down the street, taking a handful of colorful flyers from the hands of a woman who chased after them, cursing. The colors dancing on the air made Daisy feel woozy, and she closed her eyes, but then the wind on her face made her feel a little too warm in certain places, so she opened her eyes again and tightened her grip on Noah, and—