by Tor Seidler
The doorman came in and closed the door with his foot, preventing Gulliver from dashing out.
“You could get run over out on the street, boy.”
Gulliver fled back through the kitchen and out the pet flap.
“Look at him go!” Consuela said, laughing as Gulliver dashed across the backyard.
The mutts laughed, too, but Gulliver hardly heard. There was only one place left where the professor might be: the toolshed that had produced the college kid. Gulliver sprinted between the pool and the trampoline and hurled himself in the open door.
The toolshed was a bedroom, the walls plastered with movie posters. The boy was inspecting himself in a dresser mirror.
“Hey,” he said, turning.
It wasn’t the boy. It was a monster with bright red woolly hair, a huge round red nose, a white mouth bigger than a banana, and feet the size of dachshunds.
Gulliver passed out.
Carlos and Consuela figured Roberto was saving up quite a bit of money for journalism school, since over the summer he was working five nights a week in the ticket booth at the Forest Hills Multiplex. They were wrong. He actually worked only four nights a week, and half of what he made went for the acting class he took when he snuck into Manhattan on Thursdays. The truth was, Roberto didn’t want to be a journalist any more than he wanted to spend his life selling tickets to the movies. He wanted to be in the movies. What money he managed to put away was for his move to Hollywood.
His acting teacher, Ms. Treadle, encouraged her students to use every opportunity to sharpen their skills. So on that sunny Sunday he was about to entertain his little sister and the other kids with a clown act. But when he saw the dog faint, he took off his wig and fake nose.
“Did I scare you?” he said, picking up the limp animal. Roberto sat on the bed and stroked its damp fur. “See, just me,” he said when Gulliver opened his eyes.
Wriggling in the strange lap, Gulliver craned his head. There was a small bathroom in a corner of the hut, but the door was open, and the professor wasn’t inside.
“Escaping ‘the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,’” said Roberto, who often read poetry aloud to improve his diction. “You can hide out here if you want while I do my act. Just don’t take a leak on the bed, okay?”
Setting the dog aside, Roberto put his wig and clown nose back on and left. Gulliver remained behind, trembling on the sheet. The logical explanation for this nightmare situation was that these awful people had taken one look at him, decided they had to have him, and done something dreadful to his professor to get him. In a way it was perfectly understandable, considering the ill-bred mutts they were stuck with.
“Hi.”
The female mutt with the stupid name had walked in. He gave her a withering look.
“Are you all right?” Pogo asked. She’d seen how pitiful he’d looked after his swim but still thought he was kind of cute.
“Am I all right?” Gulliver said stiffly. “What do you think?”
“We’ve all gotten dunked before. It’s kind of nice on a hot day, don’t you think?”
Gulliver didn’t answer.
“Hungry?” she asked.
“You really think I could worry about food at a time like this?”
“Like what?”
“They’ve done something horrible to my professor!”
“You mean your master?”
“My friend,” said Gulliver, who considered the term “master” demeaning. “And traveling companion.”
“Traveling companion?”
“We’re en route to Paris. Or were, till they mugged him and stole my bed and carrying case.”
“Oh. Where’s your bed?”
“In your house.” Under his breath he added, “Or whatever you call that dump.”
Curious to see the stolen items, Pogo turned and walked out of the hut. It quickly dawned on Gulliver that the she-mongrel might try to lay claim to his precious possessions, so he hopped off the bed and followed her into the backyard.
“Look, Gully likes Pogo,” Consuela commented.
She and the other grown-ups, except for old Mrs. Ponson, were still drinking beer, but they’d turned off the ball game out of respect for Roberto, who was cracking jokes and doing pratfalls on the baked-out grass near the pool with the younger kids seated in a ring around him. Roberto was convinced he was a first-rate clown, for after his very first acting class Ms. Treadle had taken him aside to tell him that he had a lot of natural talent. What she hadn’t told him was that she said the exact same thing to all her new students, to keep them coming to class and paying her fees.
“Roberto is a good boy, but he is a ham, I think,” old Mrs. Ponson confided to young Mrs. Ponson in an undertone.
As usual, she was right. But he was also the oldest of the kids, so the younger ones naturally worshipped him, and they laughed and clapped at everything he did.
Following Pogo into the living room on the ground floor, Gulliver was confronted by a very disturbing sight. The other two mutts were sniffing at his bed and carrying case, which had been set on the sofa. Gulliver bolted across the room, flung himself up onto a sofa cushion, and clambered atop the carrying case that should have been heading for Europe with him in it. From this imposing height he did his best to growl.
“Comfy-looking bed,” Pudge commented. “I’ll have to try it out tonight.”
“Over my dead body,” Gulliver snarled.
Frankie howled with laughter. “Get him! He thinks he’s a Doberman.”
“Or a pit bull,” Pudge said, snickering.
“What are you, anyhow?” Frankie asked. “A chow?”
“A chow!” Gulliver screamed. “I’m a Lhasa apso!”
“Sounds un-American,” Pudge said. “Are you an illegal alien or something?”
“Illegal alien! I was born in Manhattan!”
“Jeez, chill,” Pudge advised. “You’ll give yourself a heart attack.”
“Are you moving in with us?” Frankie asked. “Is that the deal?”
“Moving in!” Gulliver cried. “Here? Are you out of your mind?”
“Well, where’s the person you showed up with?”
At that moment the door buzzer gave Gulliver such a start he nearly slipped off the carrying case. But as soon as he caught his balance, his eyes fastened on the front door. Please let it open to reveal his professor!
It didn’t open. Carlos shouted something from the backyard, just as when the professor had buzzed. Gulliver turned and looked out a dirty window into the backyard. A man in a red-and-white-striped shirt came into view carrying three flat white boxes, which he set on the table by the boom box. Carlos gave the man some money and opened the top box. Gulliver’s heart quaked. Inside the box was a bloody pulp. It all came clear to him. Carlos had hired the man in the striped shirt to kill the professor, and now the man was delivering the remains in these boxes.
For the second time in less than half an hour, Gulliver blacked out.
Abig wet tongue was slobbering and slavering all over his face. He squeezed his eyes tight and let them spring open in hopes of waking up from this disgusting nightmare.
But he wasn’t dreaming. He was lying on the sofa in the Montoyas’ sweltering living room. Frankie and Pudge had gotten bored and left, but Pogo’s face was hovering over him, her long, dripping tongue dangling out of her mouth.
“Yuck!” he cried, squirming away.
“You’re all right?” she said. “You took a header.”
He smushed his face into a cushion to wipe off her saliva, then turned and looked out the window.
“They’re eating my professor!” he wailed.
“Who?” Pogo asked.
“Those cannibals!”
Pogo trotted off. She returned a few moments later, giggling in the most inappropriate way im
aginable.
“They’re having pizza,” she said.
“Pizza?”
“People food. Very popular.”
“But it’s all bloody.”
“That’s tomato sauce, silly.”
Gulliver didn’t know whether to believe her or not. But if she was right and the professor hadn’t been squashed into a pulpy mass and boxed up, why in the name of dog didn’t he come back to get him?
“Let’s go watch the stupid clown show,” Pogo said.
“Please do,” Gulliver said.
He had no intention of budging. Here on the sofa he could guard his possessions and keep watch over the front door in case his professor was still alive and came back for him. So while the other dogs frolicked in the breezy backyard, and the human beings stuffed their faces with pizza and birthday cake and beer and lemonade, Gulliver sat in the stifling living room, growing hungrier and hotter and thirstier and more miserable by the minute.
When the daylight finally began to die out, the Montoyas — all except Roberto — invaded the house. Carlos moved Gulliver’s bed into a corner and hid the carrying case in a closet and turned on a window fan. Juanita grabbed Gulliver and tried to squeeze the life out of him again, but luckily the girl had a very short attention span and soon abandoned torturing him in favor of fighting over the remote with her brother. Since it was her birthday, Pedro let her have it.
All Gulliver knew about TV was that it was a mindless form of entertainment beneath the dignity of his professor. Now he realized why. The blaring voices and vulgar flashing colors quickly drove him out of the room into the kitchen.
The other dogs were there, all three of their rear ends sticking up in the air as they wolfed their food in true mutt fashion.
“That red bowl’s for you, Gully honey,” said Consuela, who was sponging off the counter.
Even if the red bowl had contained Prime Premium, Gulliver wouldn’t have joined a chow line like some stupid farm animal. But the red bowl didn’t contain Prime Premium, just cheap dry food.
Out in the backyard it was almost cool, and growing darker by the moment. He sat near the gate, staring forlornly down the narrow passageway his professor had led him up a few hours ago. It seemed like weeks.
His life in Manhattan and Parisian apartments had left him ignorant of crickets, so when their eerie whine started up, it frightened him, and he stole back to Roberto’s hut. The door was closed. He scratched. No response.
Anything would be better than the Montoyas’ crowded, sweltering apartment, so he climbed the stairs to the second story. The second-floor apartment was hot as well, but pleasantly quiet, since the Ponsons were out, even the old lady. The cat didn’t seem to be around either. There was dry cat food in a bowl on the kitchen floor, but the water bowl was empty. Gulliver really was awfully thirsty. He padded back down the stairs to the pool. The plastic walls were too high for him to get a drink.
He ventured back to the Montoyas’ pet flap and saw that the kitchen was mercifully free of dogs and people. He went in. But there was just a single communal bowl of water, and disgusting bits of food were suspended in it.
Even more disgusting was the sight that confronted him in the living room: Pudge curled up asleep in his bed, drooling on the lovely chintz! And when Gulliver let out his most menacing growl, all the uncouth mutt did was crack an eye, chuckle, and doze back off. The other two mutts were taking after-dinner naps on the rug, and the human beings were all staring at the TV.
Gulliver went into Pedro’s room. The water in the fish bowl was scummy, the glass filmed with algae. He looked into Juanita’s room. The calico cat was standing on the desk chair. She’d managed to open the door of the cage on the desk and had pinned the furry little creature’s tail down with a paw. The captive was trying furiously to tug his tail away.
Sorry as Gulliver was feeling for himself, he couldn’t help feeling a bit sorry for the little guy as well, so he went over to the chair and growled. The cat shot him a dirty look. Gulliver growled louder and bared his teeth. The cat hissed at him, then hissed “Next time you’re cat food” at the caged creature, then scuttled up onto the desktop to an open window. She squeezed out through a loose corner of the screen and vanished into the night.
After a moment a small face peered down from the edge of the desk. The mouth moved, but no sound came out.
“Excuse me?” Gulliver said.
The little mouth moved again, but again to no effect. Gulliver put his front paws up on the chair to get closer. Now he heard something. He cocked an ear and heard the faintest “Yo, thanks, man.”
The creature’s voice, it seemed, was as small as he was.
“Does the cat do that to you often?” Gulliver asked.
“All the time!” the tiny voice squeaked. “It’s the pits, man. She gets in that loose screen. She can open my door. But that’s the first time she caught my tail.”
The face disappeared, replaced by a scrawny tail with a cut on it.
“Oh, dear,” Gulliver said. “What are you, a hamster?”
The face came back. “I’m a gerbil, man. Name’s J.C. What about you?”
“A Lhasa apso. Gulliver.”
“Well, man, you really saved my skin. Though next time, ten to one . . . She seemed really ticked, didn’t she?”
“I suppose,” said Gulliver, finding it hard to think of anything besides his thirst. “You wouldn’t by any chance have some clean water?”
“It’s all yours, man.”
Gulliver backed away and, getting a little running start, hopped up onto the seat of the desk chair. When he put his front paws up on the desk, J.C. was back in his cage, pointing at a water dropper attached to the side of it. It contained only a couple of thimblefuls of water, and there was no way Gulliver could have drunk from it, since the end of the dropper was pointed into the cage.
“Thanks anyway,” he sighed, hopping back down.
He checked Carlos and Consuela’s room, but although there was a glass on the bedside table, it was empty. That left the bathroom. The only water he could find there was in the toilet bowl, and he would have preferred dying of thirst to drinking from a toilet.
Parched as he was, Gulliver started spouting tears. They soaked his mustache and dripped onto the bathroom tiles. Poor him! Instead of being pleasantly tranquilized, thirty-five thousand feet above sea level, on his way to Paris to reunite with Chloe, he was about to die of thirst in a tasteless, overcrowded, un-air-conditioned, ground-floor apartment in Queens!
Out in the living room Consuela informed Juanita that it was her bedtime.
“But it’s my birthday, Mom! Can’t I stay up till nine-thirty like Ped?”
“You’ve had a long day, sweetie. You’re exhausted.”
“I am not!”
“Do what your mama says, Nita,” Carlos said.
“And brush your teeth,” Consuela added.
Scowling, Juanita trudged off to the bathroom. The sight of Gulliver instantly perked her up. She grabbed the weeping dog and fixed her mother’s shower cap on his head.
“Look!” she cried, carrying him back to the living room.
Pedro laughed. Pudge lifted his head from Gulliver’s bed and sniggered, and Frankie sniggered, too.
“Leave the poor guy alone, it’s his first day,” Carlos said. “Pudge, get out of there, that’s Gully’s bed.”
After stretching a couple of times, Pudge vacated the bed. But when Juanita set Gulliver down and removed the plastic cap, he dove under Carlos’s La-Z-Boy. It was incredibly dusty there. In fact, it was so dusty it occurred to him that he might choke to death and put himself out of his misery. But while he coughed several times, the dust proved no more fatal than the humiliation of a shower cap.
After what seemed like hours, Consuela ordered Pedro off to bed. Ages later, the TV finally quit blaring, and Carlos
and Consuela headed for bed themselves, flicking off the lights behind them. Gulliver poked his head out of his dusty prison. The other three dogs were sprawled asleep on the rug in front of the TV. Gulliver wriggled the rest of the way out and crawled over to his bed. It reeked of mutt.
He crept into the kitchen. Chances were the water in the communal bowl was still disgusting, but in the dark you couldn’t tell, and he was so thirsty he couldn’t hold himself back.
When his thirst was quenched, he stuck out his tongue and plucked a single pellet of dry food from the red bowl. The pellet had a turkey flavor, slightly less horrible than he’d expected. He swallowed it. The next pellet was fish-flavored, truly disgusting, so he spat it into Pudge’s bowl. The next, flavored like chicken, was semi-edible.
He ended up finishing off about a quarter of what had been set out for him, and the light supper, though far from “gourmet,” left him feeling less suicidal. He went out into the backyard and once again parked himself by the gate. The eerie whining had died away, and the temperature was actually quite pleasant.
All day he’d been disgusted with everything, but now he began to feel a little disgusted with himself.
“What’s the matter with you, Gulliver?” he asked himself. “Well-bred dogs don’t feel sorry for themselves. He never would have left you in the lurch like this on purpose. If he wasn’t in those flat boxes, maybe he’s lying in a gutter with a cracked head. Or sick, like that time last winter when he couldn’t get out of bed for three days. You have to help him. After all, the hallmark of the well-bred dog is loyalty.”
His coat was already a dusty mess from his La-Z-Boy adventure, so he didn’t hesitate to shimmy under the nearby bush and set to work on an escape route under the fence. The ground was very hard, however, and he wasn’t used to digging, so he kept having to take breathers. His progress was very slow.
