by Lyle Howard
One sweat-covered mover lifted the edge of the corrugated box marked “kitchenware,” so that another worker, who looked just as grubby, could slip the platform of his dolly beneath it. They were both bursting at their seams to let the fireman in on the crisis upstairs, but thought it best that he find out for himself. “Yes, sir, it’s the last one.”
“Why are you smiling like the fox that just ate the chicken?” Muller asked the one controlling the dolly.
“We’re just glad to be finished for the day, that’s all, sir.”
Brandon shielded his eyes until they adjusted to the darkness of the interior in the cavernous moving truck. “This truck wasn’t filled to capacity, was it?” he asked nervously.
Laughter seeped out of the movers’ pursed lips.
Muller shook his head incredulously. “Oh, don’t tell me!” One of the movers had to hold his ribs his sides were hurting so bad from laughter. “It’s that bad?”
“Not if you don’t mind walking sideways like a crab!” one of them screamed.
Muller frowned. “I knew I should have gone shopping with her! She has no imagination when it comes to this sort of thing!”
The two movers stepped onto the tailgate and rode it down to the concrete. “Don’t worry, pal,” one of them consoled, “I’m sure since most of this stuff is new, you shouldn’t have a problem returning what doesn’t fit.”
Muller took a deep breath of the humid air that filled the musty underground garage. “So honestly,” he asked the mover with the dolly, “tell me how much of it do you think doesn’t fit?”
The two movers looked at each other and grinned. “Most of it!” they roared in unison.
Muller could feel his blood pressure soaring. “I can’t believe this.”
The mover who wasn’t pushing the dolly flipped the lever which returned the tailgate back under the truck. “Hey, man, don’t worry. Maybe you won’t think it’s so bad. Opinions are like assholes, everyone’s got one, you know?”
“But you guys know your business, right?”
The mover with the dolly leaned it back and began rolling the box toward the elevator. “Wait until you see it for yourself before you have a heart attack for no reason. Maybe you’ll like it.” He pressed the button for the elevator. “Come on, you can ride up with me.”
Muller could feel the perspiration starting to collect on the palms of his hands and it wasn’t from the humidity.
The ride up to the seventh floor seemed endless with workers getting in and out at every floor. “Is it going to be this way every day?” Muller asked of a painter who stepped on at the second floor.
“Just until five o’clock, and maybe on a little on Saturdays.”
Muller scowled. “We had no idea.” The elevator trudged slowly upward.
“It shouldn’t be any big deal,” the painter added, “you’re not home during the week, are you?”
Muller reached into his back pocket and pulled out his identification. “I work twenty-four hours on, forty-eight hours off, so yeah, I’ll be around during the week.”
The doors opened up on the fifth floor and the painter stepped out. “That’s too bad,” he said before he exited.
Muller looked over at the mover who seemed to commiserate. “This is turning into a nightmare, isn’t it?” Muller asked.
The mover tried to sound understanding. “You’ve got to expect these things in a new building.”
Muller’s head was beginning to spin from all of the paint and lacquer vapors in the lift. “It never crossed our minds that it could be like this.”
“How much longer until the entire building is completed?” the mover asked of an electrician who was patiently standing in the opposite corner.
The electrician set his toolbox down on the floor. “They’re saying six months, but I wouldn’t count on it with all of this rain.”
Two weeks would have seemed like an eternity to Muller. He desperately needed somewhere to sleep quietly after pulling his twenty-four hours on duty. There would be no chance for him to sleep with all of this hammering and drilling going on all day.
“This is unbelievable.” The electrician tapped on the floor buttons, as though doing so would urge the elevator upward. “What floor are you on?”
“The seventh.” The electrician wiped his forehead with a red bandana he removed from his shirt pocket. “Aw, you don’t have to worry. Once they finish the ninth floor, you shouldn’t hear the noise.”
“So how long do you think that will be?”
The electrician looked as though he was doing calculations in his mind. “Well, the eighth floor is almost completed. I would say, maybe another month and a half.”
The mover poked Muller in the ribs with his elbow. “See? That’s not so bad!”
“That’s not so bad,” Muller mimicked to himself. As the doors opened on the seventh floor, Brandon stepped forward and held the door open for the mover. “Yeah, I guess that’s not too long.”
The mover rolled the dolly down the hallway with Muller trailing behind. “It’ll be over before you know it.”
As they reached the door to 726, the mover parked the dolly before he knocked on the door. “Last box,” he called out.
The foreman opened the door and was surprised to see Muller standing outside, too. “Good timing, Mr. Muller. We’re just about through.”
Brandon stepped through the doorway and thought that he had walked into a furniture showroom during a once-a-year clearance sale. There was hardly a square of tiled floor left uncovered. He had tried to imagine the worst, but this surpassed those dreaded fears by a country mile. Crystal was standing near the patio doors with her cheeks quivering as she tried to hold back her tears. She knew she was in for trouble the instant she saw the overwhelmed expression on Brandon’s face.
“I need you to sign here,” the foreman said to Brandon, holding out his clipboard.
Muller said nothing. He took the foreman’s pen and scribbled his name at the bottom of the checklist. The foreman looked at Brandon and then over at Crystal before signaling his men to leave. “I think we’ll leave you two alone now. It’s been a pleasure…”
Brandon pointed to the front door with a backhanded gesture of his thumb.
The foreman nodded his understanding and crept sheepishly out of the apartment without saying another word.
After waiting for the door to close behind him, Brandon wandered silently around the living room, occasionally wiping his hand across a piece of furniture, or moving a framed lithograph away from the wall to see if there was anything else lying behind it. There was easily enough possessions in this room to fill up three more apartments.
Brandon rubbed the back of his neck to relieve some of the pent-up tension as he turned to face his future wife. She was staring at him open-mouthed like a grouper waiting for the hook to be set.
“I’m going to try to remain calm,” he said, pacing back and forth in the only three-foot-by-three-foot area left to move in. “I’m not going to yell.”
Crystal bit frantically down on her bottom lip. “I’m so sorry, Brandon. I had no idea I had bought so much.”
Muller lifted a small stack of boxes from one side of the sofa and took a seat. “What are we going to do with all of this stuff?”
Crystal walked closer to her intended husband, but made sure she stayed out of the range of his grasp. “I don’t know why that I thought the rooms would be larger.”
“Larger?” Muller cackled, “We’d have to live in the Taj Mahal to fit all of this furniture in comfortably!”
Crystal held out her hands in submission. “I just thought…”
“Mistake number one!” Brandon snapped.
“What?”
“You thinking. That’s mistake number one.”
“Oh, Brandon!”
Muller slapped the seat cushion with the palm of his hand, startling Crystal. “Oh, don’t Brandon me! Who buys furniture without taking the floor plan of the house w
ith them?”
“I thought I knew the sizes of the rooms!”
Muller shook his head. “I’ll bet the salesman is enjoying a month in Hawaii with his family on the commission he must have made from this sale.”
Crystal hugged herself as the tears began to trickle down her face. “Well, I’m sorry, Brandon, I tried.”
Muller let his head fall backward until he was staring up at the ceiling. “I hope you realize that most of this is going to have to be returned.”
“Returned?”
Brandon’s thoughts suddenly flashed back to the evening that he walked into Crystal’s bedroom closet at her folk’s old house. Half of the clothes still had price tags dangling from them. It was obvious that Crystal had bought the garments, but never wore them. Crystal had purchased them just to fill some deep-rooted hunger to spend money. “Yes, Crystal…returned.”
“But Brandon, I’m sure if we were just to rearrange a few things…”
Muller leaned forward with his eyes bulging from anger. “There will be no more discussing this matter, Crystal. Tomorrow morning, you will be on the phone with the furniture store having everything that we don’t want picked up. Do you understand me?”
Crystal’s chin trembled. She wasn’t used to being ordered around, and she didn’t like it much. “I can’t return the furniture.”
Brandon looked at her as if she was suddenly speaking a foreign language that he didn’t comprehend. “I beg your pardon? Why can’t you return it?”
Crystal held up her head aristocratically. “Because my family knows the owner of the store, and it might prove embarrassing to them.”
Muller’s eyes opened as wide as silver dollars. “I can’t believe what you’re telling me! That is the lamest … “
Brandon’s tirade was abruptly interrupted by a sound that took both of them by surprise. “What was that?” he asked, leaning forward to hear the strange noise better.
Crystal looked toward a stack of boxes piled in one corner of the room. “It sounded like growling, didn’t it?”
Muller stood up and walked cautiously around an end table and past a halogen floor lamp. The noise was softer now, but still intelligible. Crystal put her hand on Brandon’s back as they made their way across the obstacle course of bric-a-brac. Muller located the source of the sound and slid two or three boxes out of the way to find the exact origin of the strange whining.
“What the hell is this?” Brandon asked, pointing at the pet carrier.
“Spunky?” Crystal cried, “how did you get here, boy?”
Brandon lifted the plastic case out from behind the boxes and carried it over toward the opened patio doors. “I thought you told me you had gotten rid of the dog?”
Crystal moved a piece of stereo equipment out of the way and sat down on the cold tile floor next to the pet carrier. “I did. I took him to Animal Control yesterday.”
Brandon loomed over his fiancé. “You know that they don’t allow pets here. We could get booted out if someone were to hear him!”
Crystal looked up at Brandon with eyes that emitted all of the love for the dog that Brandon wished they held for him.
“I don’t know how he got here, Brandon, but let him stay with us just one more night. I swear, I’ll take him back in the morning,” she pleaded.
Muller let out a heavy sigh and ran his finger through his hair. “Just one night,” he said, holding up his finger. “Tomorrow he goes back.”
Crystal rubbed the wetness from her cheeks and grabbed the latch to open the cage.
“Wait !” Crystal flinched. “Don’t touch the cage!”
Crystal looked at her fiancé like he was a raving lunatic. “What’s the matter with you?”
Muller put his hand over his mouth. Suddenly, all of the pieces of the puzzle were right in front of him. The pet carrier, the animal appearing seemingly out of nowhere…
“Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”
“Brandon? What’s gotten into you?”
“Move away from the cage, Crystal!” Brandon warned.
“Brandon? It’s only Spunky, for goodness’ sake!”
Muller cautiously reached down and slid the pet carrier away from his future bride. “Back away slowly from the cage, Crystal.”
Crystal pushed backward on the floor with her hands, sliding a few more feet away from the carrier.
Inside the cage, the twelve-year-old Scottish terrier whimpered pathetically.
“What’s wrong, Brandon? It’s only Spunky! Have you gone completely crazy?”
Muller quickly glanced around the room. “Where’s the phone?”
Crystal was suddenly very afraid. “They haven’t connected them yet.”
“Then where’s your cellular phone?” Crystal could see the primal fear etched on Brandon’s face, but she didn’t understand what was happening.
“Where is it?” Brandon screamed again.
“I … I left it in the trunk of the Corvette … downstairs … in the garage.”
The veins on Brandon’s forehead throbbed like writhing snakes. “Since when have you gone anywhere without your Goddamned telephone glued to your ear?”
Crystal cringed. This was a monstrous side of Brandon she had never seen before. “Don’t yell at me, Brandon! You’re frightening me!”
Muller’s eyes flashed around the room. Everything seemed flammable. If the pet carrier went up in flames, it would take just about everything else in the apartment with it. “I want you to slowly get up and go into the kitchen,” he directed Crystal, “and fill any container you can find with water from the sink.”
Crystal held her hand over her mouth. The words came out painfully slow. “There is no water.”
Brandon’s eyes widened again. “What? There has to be!”
“Not until five o’clock.”
“How do you know?”
“There’s a note on the sink that says so.”
Muller looked at his wristwatch. The time read four thirty-five. “Well, it’s almost five. Try it anyway.”
Crystal slowly rose to her feet and made her way into the kitchen.
Terrific, Muller thought. That meant that there was no water for the emergency sprinkler system, either. He began to wonder how many other safety violations he could cite the builder with. “Is there any water?” he called out toward the kitchen.
“I’m looking for a container!”
Muller pulled on his hair. “Why don’t you see if the water even works first?” he yelled. Even from the living room, Muller could hear the hollow hammering that came from a dry faucet.
“Nothing!” Crystal cried.
Brandon warily walked around to the far side of the cage and knelt down on his hands and knees to look inside. The dog looked content and happy. Maybe he was letting this whole exploding pet thing get the better of him. His heart was just beginning to return to its steady cadence when he noticed the wet towel jammed into the back of the cage.
“Crystal?”
Crystal peeked out from the kitchen doorway. “What?”
“Did you put a towel in the cage when you returned Spunky yesterday?”
Crystal shook her head. “Brandon, I don’t even own a cage! I’ve never seen that pet carrier until just now!”
Muller backed away from the cage judiciously. “Crystal, I want you to go down to the car and call 911, understand?”
Crystal nodded.
“I want you to tell the operator that they need to contact Inspector Lance Cutter of the Broward Arson Unit. Have him beeped on his pager, or he might have a radio in his car. Have them give Cutter our address, and tell the operator to tell him that Brandon Muller thinks that he has a suspicious pet carrier at his residence. He’ll understand. Then have the operator call the closest fire and rescue unit to this condominium. Have you got all of that?”
“But Brandon,” Crystal sobbed, “you’ve got to tell me what’s going on. I can’t just leave you alone if you’re in danger. What’s wrong with Spunky?”<
br />
Muller wiped the gathering beads of sweat from his forehead. “Please, Crystal, I’ll be all right. Just do what I tell you, and everything will be okay. Now please, sweetheart … go … quickly!”
Crystal’s hand was shaking uncontrollably as she reached for the knob on the front door. She looked back into the living room and watched as Brandon crawled on all fours around the cage, examining it from every angle.
“Are you sure you want me to leave you alone?” she said, unable to hide the trepidation in her trembling voice.
Brandon was sniffing at the plastic carrying case the way an animal would forage for food in the underbrush. If there were any odd or peculiar odors, they were being masked by the musky scent of the dog. “Just hurry, Crystal. You’ve got to make that call.”
Crystal threw open the front door without taking another look. As she stepped out into the hallway, the door slammed shut behind her with another thunderous boom that made Brandon jump with terror. “Calm yourself down,” he warned himself, “there’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s just good old Spunky.”
The dog’s tongue waggled back and forth like it was thirsty.
“I’m sorry, fellah,” Brandon said, peering in through the bars of the cage’s door. “There’s no water here, otherwise I’d give you some.”
The dog whimpered in a low husky tone. Brandon made a small circling motion with his finger so that the dog could see it. “Can you turn around, Spunky? Come on, little guy, turn around so I can see if there’s anything on your back or bottom.”
The dog tipped his head with curious interest. “Come on, boy. Spin around like this … ” Muller turned around on the tile, hoping the dog would follow in kind.
The dog remained stationary. It was obvious to Brandon that the only way he would be able to examine the dog would be for him to remove it physically from the cage.
It was 4:45 P.M. … quitting time. The elevators were gorged to capacity with tools and supplies that the construction workers needed to reload into their trucks. The red emergency stop button was pulled out at each floor, enabling the various work crews to fill the elevators with their equipment.
Crystal repeatedly pressed the down arrow button, but the indicator wouldn’t light up. Through the seams in the clenched brass doors, she could hear conversation and laughter echoing up the vacuous elevator shaft. Crystal rammed her fists against the doors, but it was no use. No one could hear her anguish. She slammed her fists a few more times on the elevator doors, jabbed at the down arrow again, but it was all in vain.
