by James Howe
“So?” Louise pressed on relentlessly. “What do you have to say for yourself, Monsieur Fancy-Pants?”
“I think you’re making a mountain out of a molehill, that’s what I have to say,” Max responded. “You’re making a little hello into—”
“A little hello?!?” Louise shot back. “This kind of little hello, as you call it, I will make into a big au revoir—that’s what I will do with this little hello.”
“Louise,” a soft breathy voice interjected. I strained my head to see where it was coming from. The speaker was in a bungalow off to my right, but I couldn’t see inside.
“Oh no!” Louise exploded. “This is too—oh, what is that word!? Oh yes—much. Now she wants to speak!”
“Now, Louise,” Max said, his anger building, “she has just as much right to speak as you do.”
“Yes, yes, defend her, why don’t you?”
“Louise, I don’t need defendin’,” said the feathery voice. I noticed the speaker had a slight Southern accent. “I’ve done nothin’ wrong.”
“Max is mine! Do you hear me, Scarlett?” Louise fairly ranted across the empty space.
“Georgette,” the voice responded gently.
“What?” Louise shrieked.
“My name is Georgette,” Georgette repeated.
“Scarlett, Georgette—it’s all the same to me. You may want him, but he’s mine, do you hear? Mine!”
“Louise!” Max bellowed in a full, rich voice. “Enough! I’ve had enough of your wild accusations! Now, let it be!”
There was the sound of a crash, and Louise vanished to the back of her bungalow. Max looked sullenly out into the distance.
“Oh dear,” Chester said drily next door, “I do believe Louise has thrown her din-din dish against the wall.” And then he let out a screech.
“What is it, Chester?” I cried. “What’s wrong?”
“Something—-something—landed on my door. I don’t know . . . what . . . what . . .”
“You’ve got to help me!” a new voice hissed eerily. There was the sound of wire rattling. “I can’t take it anymore.”
“Chester, is that you?” I whispered. “Is this some kind of joke?” Suddenly, a head appeared upside-down over the edge of my bungalow. I jumped and hit my own head on the ceiling. That must have jarred my visitor, for he flopped to the ground before my door.
“You’re new here, aren’t you, buster?” he snarled.
“Uh, yes, yes, I am,” I replied, trying to size up the vision before me. He was a cat, that much was clear, but a cat unlike any I’d ever seen. He looked like a walking, talking, patchwork quilt.
He glanced furtively over his shoulder before he spoke again, and then it was in a low, intense whisper. “Tuesday,” he uttered. “Over the wall. Don’t tell the others. Just you and me.”
“Just you and me,” I repeated. I didn’t have a clue as to what he was talking about.
“Sshh,” he said quickly, “not so loud. We’ll get out of here, pal, don’t worry about it.”
“Oh, I’m not,” I answered. “At least, I think I’m not.”
“Okay, just keep cool.” Again, he looked around him. “Watch out!” he snapped all at once. “It’s them!” And he was gone.
I cast my eyes in the direction he’d just been looking and saw Harrison and Jill coming with our dinners.
“Oh no,” Jill was saying, “will you look at that? Lyle’s gotten out again. He’s a regular terror. Come on, Lyle, let’s go now. Come on, be a nice kitty.”
Lyle swept by my bungalow, flattening himself against it as if trying to escape a searchlight. I could see he was the very same cat who had just been talking with me. Harrison swooped down on him suddenly and had him back in his bungalow a few seconds later. I heard Lyle muttering under his breath all the way.
“You know,” Jill said to Harrison as he returned to passing out our dinners, “we’re going to have to do something about that cat. He gets out of his cage all the—”
“Bungalow,” Harrison mumbled irritably.
“Right,” she said, “I stand corrected. Oh, by the way, I found Chester’s file. It was under your stack of comic books.”
“Oh?” Harrison looked up from Max’s bungalow, a puzzled look on his face. “I wonder how it got there.”
“That’s what I wondered,” Jill said. “Why do you read those things anyway?”
“Comic books?” Harrison shrugged. “It’s something to do,” he said simply.
Jill stopped where she was and regarded Harrison. Shaking her head, she said. “What are you going to do, Harrison? Read comic books all your life? Don’t you want to be something?”
“You mean, go to college like you?” he asked. “No thanks. I don’t have the time. I want to retire at twenty-one. All I have to do first is make a million bucks.”
“Oh, is that all?” Jill replied. “And how will you do that, if I may ask?”
“That is what I haven’t figured out yet. But don’t worry. I will. I’m thinking all the time.”
“I’ll bet you are,” Jill said. “I’ll just bet you are.”
“Oh, I am.” There was a growl of thunder. “We’d better hurry,” Harrison said. “It may start raining.”
Quickly, they finished dishing out our food and started toward the door. Jill turned back. “Okay, everyone,” she called out, “enjoy your dinners! I’ll check in on you later.”
I stared down at the fare that had been set before me and wondered what Chester had been so worried about. After all, any place that would put a sprig of parsley on top of a bowl of dog food couldn’t be all bad. Mold and rainwater, indeed! I dug in.
IT WAS much later that night when we first heard it. Jill had already checked in on us as promised, and now the sounds of snoring and deep breathing convinced me that most of the guests at Chateau Bow-Wow were already fast asleep.
I was thinking what a strange bunch they were: Max, Louise, Georgette, Lyle—Dr. Greenbriar and Harrison and Jill. Who would I meet tomorrow? I wondered. I was just about to ask Chester what he thought, when—
“Aaah-oooooooooooooo!”
I sat bolt upright, a violent chill racing down my spine.
“Chester!” I cried. “Did you hear—”
“Aaah-oooooooooooooo!” it went again.
It was a howl, of that I was sure. But a howl so terrible, it was unlike the howl of any dog I’d ever heard. Apparently, Chester felt the same way.
“Werewolves!” I heard him utter from his bungalow next door.
“Oh come on, Chester,” I said, “you’re letting your imagination run wild.”
“Werewolves!” he exclaimed again, as the howls reverberated through the night air, alternating with the thunder, which was growing in loudness and intensity.
“Beware!” Chester hissed at me. “Beware!”
“Aaaaah-oooooooooooooooooooo!” went the cry in the night.
There was a sudden silence. Exhausted, but unable to sleep, we sat, side by side, staring into the blackness before us. I held my breath in anticipation of the next sound I would hear. As it turned out, it was Chester.
“Chateau Bow-Wow, my foot,” he uttered in a deep, throaty voice. “Welcome to Howliday Inn.”
[ THREE ]
An Uneasy Calm
I AWAKENED to the sound of rain pelting the roof above me. As my eyes began to focus, I found myself staring at the words, “A Bow-Wow Breakfast.” After a moment of confusion, I realized I was reading the side of my new food dish. What I saw when I raised my head a little was not what I personally would have described as a bowwow anything. My dish was heaped with some sort of grayish gruel that was rivaled in dreariness only by the day outside. Perhaps Chester had been right, after all.
“Chester,” I called out over the patter of the falling rain. “Chester, are you there?”
“Of course I’m here,” he answered churlishly. “Where’d you think I’d be on a day like this? Out on the golf course perfecting my putt?”
<
br /> “How did you sleep?” I asked, ignoring his early morning grumpiness. By this time in our lives together, I was used to it.
“Oh, fine. Fine. Why should I let the incessant howling of werewolves disturb my slumber?”
I didn’t take up the issue of werewolves with Chester just then, because I’d finished eating my breakfast and discovered the words “Have a Nice Day!” at the bottom of my dish.
“Chester, does your food dish—”
“If you’re going to ask me to discuss the attack of cutes this place is suffering from, I refuse,” Chester grumbled. “If I wanted my fortune told every time I ate, I could have gone to a Chinese restaurant.” And with that, he let out a great sigh and went back to sleep.
I could tell that any attempts at further conversation would prove futile, so I fell back asleep, too, waiting for something else to happen and wishing I were back home.
BY THE TIME I woke again, the rain had stopped and the something else I’d been waiting for was about to happen. Harrison and Jill were going from bungalow to bungalow opening the doors.
“Okay, animals, let’s go,” Harrison was saying in a bored sort of way. “Exercise time.”
“Thank goodness it stopped raining,” Jill called out. “I thought I’d go crazy if I had to spend another minute working on those charts.”
“There’s still the office to clean,” Harrison said, “and the storage shed.”
“Harrison,” Jill replied, “we don’t have to do it all today.”
“Oh yes, we do,” Harrison answered with some urgency.
Jill put her hands on her hips and looked at Harrison with wonder. “You’re really something, you know that, Harrison?”
“Am I? Gee, thanks.”
“I didn’t mean it as a compliment.”
“Oh.”
“I mean you blow hot and cold. Like yesterday, all you wanted to do was lie around and read your comic books all day. Today, you can’t stop working, and you’re driving me crazy. What’s with you, anyway?”
“Who knows?” Harrison replied. “Maybe I’m getting ambitious. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” He smiled in Jill’s direction, revealing the remnants of that morning’s breakfast neatly lodged between his two front teeth.
In disgust, Jill turned away and poked her head inside my door. “Good morning, Harold,” she murmured softly. “I hope you had a good sleep your first night at Chateau Bow-Wow.” I allowed myself to be coaxed out into the muddy outdoors. I wasn’t too thrilled with the condition of the ground, but was happy just to have the chance to stretch my legs and move about.
“Where is that storage shed, anyway?” Jill asked after a moment, continuing her conversation with Harrison as she unlocked Chester’s door.
“Out back,” Harrison answered, pointing to the far corner of the compound. “Right outside the fence near Howard’s bungalow.”
“Oh.”
“But there’s no entrance from here. You have to go around the outside wall,” Harrison went on. “That’s why it’s such a pain to clean.”
Jill groaned. “That’s too bad,” she said, picking Chester up and stroking him. Chester’s face looked like a car accident. Obviously, he had not slept well at all. “Well, I guess we’d better get to it.” She put Chester down and headed for the gate.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Harrison asked.
Jill looked blankly around her, then quizzically at Harrison.
“Lyle,” Harrison said simply. “You didn’t let Lyle out of his bungalow.”
Jill shook her head slowly. “Oh, of course,” she said at last, “I guess I’m just so used to Lyle getting out all by himself, it doesn’t even occur to me to unlock his door anymore.” I watched as she opened Lyle’s door and then walked to the gate, tripping over a small rock that was in her path.
Watching her, Chester dropped his head and moaned.
“All right, everybody,” Harrison called out, “hurry up and enjoy yourselves before it starts raining again.” And then he too went out the front gate, carefully locking it after him.
Chester and I looked back to discover Max bounding spiritedly in our direction. With his natty turtleneck sweater and his square shoulders and jaw, he resembled the captain of a college football team.
I remarked on my observation to Chester, whose only response was a rather anemic, “Yea team. Rah. Rah. Rah.” Then, he added, “If he says anything athletic, I’ll scream.”
Max stopped abruptly before us.
“Want to jog?” he blurted out.
True to his word, Chester let out a bloodcurdling screech and immediately turned on his heels. Max appeared to take it in stride.
“I’m Max,” he said.
“I’m Harold,” I replied politely. “And this is—uh, that was—Chester,” I added, introducing Max to Chester’s retreating hindside.
“Pleased to meet you both,” Max said with a nod to Chester’s tail. He returned his gaze to me. “So, Harold, you want to jog?”
I remembered the one time I’d tried jogging with Pete and Mr. Monroe and had had to be carried home on the back of Pete’s bike.
“Uh . . . well, no . . . uh, not really . . . uh . . .” I stated emphatically.
“Helps work out your aggressions,” Max countered.
“I don’t have any aggressions,” I said honestly.
Max seemed disappointed. “So you don’t jog, eh?” he asked a little sadly.
“No,” I told him again, disappointed that he was disappointed.
“Well, then, now’s the time to start. Come on.” I could see that Max was not going to be a pushover. I, on the other hand, was and always have been a pushover, so before I could say anything more I found myself trotting, somewhat breathlessly, alongside Max.
“The thing is,” Max said after a moment, “you have to get your exercise when you can around here. They only let us out for a few hours in the afternoon. Of course . . .” and he looked around him before he continued, “. . . it’s easy to unlock the doors from the inside. Anybody can do it, Harold. Even you.”
“Oh, thanks,” I said. Or at least, I think that’s what I said. I was having a little trouble getting my words out and breathing at the same time. In a burst, I asked, “Do the others know?”
“About getting out? Oh, sure. Everyone knows how to do it. I’ll show you later. Lyle’s the only one dumb enough to do it when Harrison and Jill are around. The rest of us wait until after supper, when they’ve gone home.”
Suddenly, Max called out, “Taxi! Taxi!” I thought he’d completely flipped.
“Uh, Max,” I said, “I’m not sure how to tell you this, but I don’t think there’s a cab for miles of this place. Besides,” I went on between wheezes, “if you’re getting tired . . . we don’t . . . have to . . . ride. We could . . . just stop . . . running.”
“You don’t understand,” Max said, without once stopping to catch his breath, “I’m not calling a taxi. I’m calling Taxi.” He nodded to my right, and I glanced over to see one of the oddest-looking dogs I’d ever encountered, waddling frantically in our direction.
“What kind of dog is this?” I asked.
“Who knows?” Max replied. “I don’t think poor Taxi himself knows for sure. He’s one part of everything, I guess. He’s a good mutt, though. A little on the slow side, if you get my drift, and he tends to be something of a clinging vine, but—”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I don’t know what it is, but some days he sticks to me like glue. Seems to think the sun rises and sets on me,” Max said, without apparent displeasure.
Taxi joined us then, falling into step beside Max. He regarded Max with a look that was one degree away from idol worship. I could see what Max had meant.
“Hi, Max,” he said.
“Hey, Taxi, how’re you doin’?” Max replied gruffly. “Taxi, I want you to meet Harold.”
Taxi nodded absently in my direction. “How are you feeling today, Max?” he ask
ed.
“Not bad. Not bad. Taxi, I said I want you to meet Harold.”
Once again, Taxi nodded his head in a vague sort of way, not really acknowledging my presence. Of course, at that moment I was wondering how much longer it would be before my presence became my past. I could barely catch my breath, and my tongue was hanging somewhere around my knees.
“Had enough?” asked Max, brimming with energy.
“... uh ... uh ... uh ... uh .. .”
“I guess you have. Come on, let’s head for the cooler and take a break.”
At the community water cooler, my breathing returned to normal and Taxi noticed me at last.
“Oh, hello,” he said as if seeing me for the first time, “who are you?”
“I’m Harold,” I replied.
“Harold, Harold,” he said, a puzzled look on his face. “Where have I heard that name before?”
“I just introduced you,” Max said.
“Oh.”
I looked at Taxi. Max was right. He really was on the slow side.
“Are you okay, Max? You’re really feeling all right?” Taxi asked.
“Sure, sure,” Max snapped, a little irritably. “Why do you keep asking?”
“Well, after that fight last night ... I mean . . .”
“Oh, that,” Max answered.
Taxi and I looked at Max as his face grew red beneath his hair. When he returned our gaze, he looked a little embarrassed and not just a little angry.
“Acchh, women!” he uttered. “What a nuisance they are sometimes. That Louise can be so unreasonable.”
I glanced over at Louise’s bungalow and saw that she was watching us. I felt a little sorry for her.
Max went on. “Just because Georgette and I have said hello a few times, she thinks we’re going to run off together.” He looked about him and then in a low voice added, “As if we could get out of here even if we wanted to.”
Taxi nodded his head in sympathy. He looked up at Max with wide eyes and sighed deeply. “It must be pretty hard sometimes,” he said.
“Yup,” Max grunted. “Women. Sometimes I think I’d be better off without them.”
There was a moment of silence. All at once, Taxi’s face lit up. “Oh, Max,” he said excitedly, “you just reminded me of this television show I saw last week. The man said just what you did.”
