Outside the Dog Museum

by Carroll, Jonathan

  “Can you imagine buying a mountain because you like the name?”

  “From what you have told me, he knew he was going to build this museum a long time ago.”

  “Yeah, but in Saru! Far as I know, the Sultan didn’t have any plans while he was alive to make Mount Dog into Mount Museum. That’s why he asked me to Saru—to see the country and the site. It was his son Hassan who decided to do it here because he’s afraid Cthulu will blow it up if they build there.”

  “A fair guess to make, knowing the history of that man. I have been reading about Cthulu since you hired me. My room is full of books about Saru. Come, let’s get something to eat first. We have days to talk.”

  I DON’T KNOW ABOUT Morton, but the ten days we spent together in Zell am See were some of the best of my life. As an adult, I have never had a real man friend, and I use that term in all the rough and tumble, us pals, drink into the night, talk about women, spill your male guts way it was intended. As friends, women interest me far more than men. Women’s minds are more intricate and labyrinthine, their perceptions deeper, and what they tell you is generally new stuff. Male friendships are ham and eggs, toast and coffee meals. Men-Women friendships are an exotic, foreign taste—delicious in odd ways, like fresh paprika, like fennel.

  But those days with Palm showed me how satisfying ham and eggs can be as a meal, how filling and delightful in its simplicity. We went for long walks around the lake, drank beer in the restaurant we found at the train station, which turned out to be the best place to eat in town, and took every cable car ride up to look at the genuine splendor of those mountains in winter. What made me smile was thinking how, on that first day, I had wished to have a woman with me there. What I’d learned was a pal of your own sex wasn’t as romantic and prickly, but the ease and natural empathy in the air around this kind of relationship was a pleasure to know and possess.

  HARRY? IS THAT YOU?"

  I’d picked the phone up without really knowing what I was doing. “Hello? Yes? Hello?”

  “Harry, is that you? This is Claire. I’m calling from California.”

  “Claire! Hi, Claire! How are you?” I sat up in bed and tried to focus my eyes. It was four in the morning.

  “I know it’s very late there, I’m sorry, but I had to call when I knew I’d get you. This is so important and you’re the only one who can help.”

  “Sure, don’t worry about it. What’s the problem?”

  “Harry, I need to borrow twenty-five thousand dollars. You’re the only one I know to ask.” She began to cry. “I would never ask but you’re my last hope and it’s so important. It’s my life.”

  “Claire, it’s no problem. I’ll call the office tomorrow and they’ll have a check ready for you by the end of the week. Okay? Honey, are you all right? Do you want to talk about it? Listen, the money is yours. Don’t even think about that. Are you in trouble?”

  “Oh Harry, thank you so much. No, it’s not like that. I didn’t know what I was going to do. You can’t just go to the bank and say, ‘I want to borrow twenty-five thousand dollars for a hand.’ They’d think you’re crazy. Oh thank you! I can’t tell you—”

  “Wait a minute! What do you mean, a hand?”

  “The Sterling Hospital in Portland has invented a prosthetic hand that is supposed to be the most advanced in the world. But it’s so sophisticated that they’ve only made a few, and they cost … . The whole procedure costs twenty-five thousand, Harry. And if I want to have one soon I have to be able to prove I have the money to pay for it now. I just learned this a couple of days ago and I’ve been going crazy trying to think of how to get it, short of selling the store. You were my last hope. You saved me, Harry.”

  THE SULTAN IS NOT to be reached, Mr. Radcliffe. He is still asleep. It is only seven o’clock in the morning here.”

  “I don’t care what time it is there. You tell him that if he doesn’t come to the telephone right now he can kiss my ass about this fucking museum! He cheated me!”

  “That is not possible, Mr. Radcliffe. Call back later and perhaps he will talk to you. If you are not so rude.” Click.

  I was the only one in the breakfast room at seven the next morning. I’d been walking around the lobby, fuming, for half an hour when the doors opened. Not that I was hungry. I wanted something to do before calling Saru again and raising hell. I ordered coffee.

  “Your tea, sir.”

  “I didn’t—” Looking up, I was blinded by the fat face of the mysterious Mr. Hasenhüttl from my Saru flight. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Do you mind?” He pulled out a chair and sat down. He was dressed in a burnt-orange jogging suit that made him look like a lifeboat.

  “What do you want? I saw you and Awwad together in Vienna. Why are you sneaking around me? I’m doing the job!”

  “I don’t sneak, Radcliffe. I’m your Invigilator. Here to make sure you play this game correctly.”

  “Play correctly? What about Claire’s hand? Is that how wishes are granted? She gets something with wires and rubber that costs me twenty-five grand, but still Hassan has kept his part of the bargain?”

  “You didn’t specify what you wanted. Besides, even if you had, it wouldn’t have made a difference. A wish is a dream come true. Since dreams are never clear, when they happen they invariably disappoint. Remember what happened to the old man and his bread house? Claire Stansfield’s new hand is without question the ne plus ultra of this field. It will allow her to be whole again.”

  “But it’s not a real hand!” Two waiters nearby stopped setting tables and looked at us. Hasenhüttl waved them off and said something in German which I took to be “No problem.”

  “Is this the way things are done in Saru?”

  “I’m not from Saru, Radcliffe.”

  “Oh, the gods are sending a guy in an orange sweat suit to make sure I play fair?”

  “You thought the Easterling child was Venasque. Tell me how I knew that. Why can’t a fat man in orange sweats come from the gods?”

  “Because all you did on the plane was threaten me. ‘I’m here to fuck you up.’ You don’t talk the talk of a heavenly emissary.

  “How’d you know Awwad?”

  “As soon as you committed to this deal, all of the people involved became aware of me. That’s how it works.”

  “Will Palm know you?”

  “Yes. He’ll think he recognizes me from when he was with the United Nations forces in the Sinai. But the truth is, I have never been to the Sinai. Eilat once, but not the Sinai.”

  “Why’d you threaten me on the plane? You sounded like a Mafia hit man!”

  “Sorry. I was in a bad mood.” He shrugged. “Probably something I ate. Don’t you hate airplane food?”

  WHEN CAN ONE SAY they’re home? When the plane touches down? The front door swings open, you see someone’s face again for the first time? Or is it a gradual process, like coming up from a deep dive? When I was single, I had to look through all the mail first to make sure no gruesome surprises had been sitting in the postbox, festering. That done, I was home. When I was married, it was getting into bed the first night, showered, unpacked, ready at last to have a great chat.

  This time I made sure not to tell anyone I was arriving in Los Angeles. At the airport I rented a car and drove straight through the city down to the Coast Highway and on out to Santa Barbara. One of the reasons why I built our house there was for the ocean view. I was no longer particularly sad the building was gone, but almost as soon as the plane left Frankfurt I felt a junkie’s hunger to sit on our hill and simply be on that piece of the earth for a while. It was the sensuality, and the generosity of the California light there. It was a home no longer mine, yet I felt a call to it I could not defy at that moment.

  Traffic was light and I arrived sooner than expected. Driving up the familiar last hill to the place my heart felt a delightful lift and sureness that I’d made the right decision to come. Also for two or three beats, my eyes tricked me into se
eing our house still there, waiting patiently for someone to return and bring it back to life. Turn on the lights, a radio, open the windows and let warm fresh air in, dial a number on the black telephone. But nothing had changed and my sweet moment of irrational hope passed when I saw the ragged chimney standing guard like a lone, useless soldier. Some artistic trespasser had spray-painted a rather nice picture of a couple fucking on one side of the chimney, the man’s cock wrapping up and around the woman like a Laocoön.

  “Welcome home, Harry,” I said while walking up to it and running a hand over the familiar rough stone.

  I suspect you have been waiting for what happened next, having read my history this far, but I swear to you I was not. It came as an absolute surprise. Venasque said we are usually the last to become aware of our own fate and what things affect it. We are simply too busy being busy to look up and see our clouds taking definite shape around us.

  They lay at the bottom of the chimney, where once a marble-and-steel fireplace had been my postmodern joke in the middle of a simple but deeply pleasing living room. Since the earthquake, some enterprising thief had made off with the marble and steel. What was left was a square about four feet high. Where once cozy fires had burned were four stones—each about the size of a man’s hand. They rested against each other as if they’d fallen from anywhere and only by happenstance ended up here like this. They had no unique or memorable shapes. They were brown and white, one was sort of red. You wouldn’t have seen them, much less picked them out, on a beach while rock hunting. They didn’t glow or hum, buzz like neon or whistle like sirens. They were stones. They were stones. But I looked at them as one would at a woman so penetratingly beautiful that her beauty sucks up everything else around it like a black hole. A face that demands you watch it and nothing else. If you remain in her orbit, you will be forced to look at this woman for the rest of your life.

  Four dull stones lying against each other on a smoke-blackened floor. They made a small pile—the kind a child builds. I saw them and part of me said no, nothing’s here. The other part said everything is here, not in the stones alone but in what has come together—them, their colors and shapes, the way they touch, the fact they’re here now, what I have gone through to get here, what I must do next. Everything. That was the word that held my mind as I stared—everything. The Easterling boy had said, “Don’t be surprised that all the words are God.” Is that what this was? “Don’t be surprised that everything is God—all words, shapes, objects … .” I did not believe in Tao or the Oneness of Being. If this was an epiphany or religious moment, then it was funny because what came to mind next was an old joke—a fool wants to sell his house, so he carries one brick with him to show as a sample of what’s for sale. The exact shape of the Dog Museum I would build in Austria was inherent in the way those four stones lay in the fireplace. I could pick them up, take them with me, and no matter how I put them down again, that shape would remain in my mind.

  “You’re so active, Radcliffe. I thought flying to California would be enough for one day. But you have to drive halfway up the coast to visit a ruin.”

  I looked up from the stones and saw Hasenhüttl making his way over. This time he was dressed in a bush jacket and khaki pants. It was useless to ask how and why he’d come.

  “I’ve got a question. Come closer,” I instructed.

  A few feet away I caught a whiff of cologne and sweat. The underarms of his jacket were dark.

  “See those stones in the fireplace? What do they look like to you?”

  “Nothing. Stones. Should I be seeing something else?” Neither his voice nor the expression on his face said he was joking or testing me.

  I took a pad of paper and mechanical pencil from my pocket and drew a quick sketch. Line line line, crosshatch, diagonal, arc, done. “What does that look like?”

  He bent down, took off his glasses, and peered. “It looks like … It looks like those four stones with wires around them. And an arc.” Glasses back in place, he rolled his head in a circle. “My neck gets so tense and tight when I travel. What’s the matter, Harry, did I give the wrong answer?”

  “You honestly don’t see anything other than that? Please, tell the truth.”

  “No. Nothing.”

  “Did you have anything to do with my coming here today?”

  “No. I thought you would go straight home. What is it?”

  I turned over the paper and started another drawing. This one took a good ten minutes to complete. It was so easy because it was so clear and whole in my mind. What worried me was only his influence. Was he telling the truth? Had coming to Santa Barbara been my choice or were my strings being pulled, both physically and mentally, by Hasenhüttl or those behind him? I wanted this to be mine! I could accept the mystery of where it had come from, but only if it was from some place inside me and not Them.

  We sat together amid the stillness and lush smells of twilight. Quiet voices and laughter rose now and then from the other side of the hill—Bill Rosenberg and his girlfriend Vicky were barbecuing. Sketching away, I remembered the last time I was up here was with Bill and Bronze Sydney.

  “Are you going to follow me around until I’ve finished the job?”

  “Only if you want. I can do other things for you, you know.”

  I looked up from the drawing. “Really? What?”

  “Answer questions, most importantly. Within certain bounds.”

  “I thought you were here as my watchdog.”

  “Not only. I can help. There’ll be times when you need my help, believe me.”

  “That sounds foreboding. I thought my job was to make this building.”

  “It is, but you have enemies. Hassan wasn’t truthful when he said Cthulu wouldn’t mind if the museum is built outside of Saru. He minds a great deal.”

  “Swell. Look at this.” I handed him the pad. He took his glasses off again and held the paper close to his face. My farsighted Invigilator.

  “I don’t understand it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, yes, I know it’s a building but I don’t understand it.”

  “Gimme that!” I snatched it back. “This is the Dog Museum.”

  “I assumed that. But what can I say? I don’t understand it.”

  CLAIRE UNDERSTOOD IT ON the way back to Los Angeles (I didn’t offer Hasenhüttl a ride), I called her first at home and then at her store to say I was back and how about dinner? She said yes and we made a date to meet later in the evening. There is no such thing as rush-hour traffic in Los Angeles because the term indicates a certain time of the day when it is difficult getting from point A to point B by automobile. In the City of the Angels there is only rush-hour traffic, interrupted by lulls.

  It was dark when I got to my apartment. The place looked as forlorn as ever and the only alive thing to greet me was the blinking red light on the telephone-answering machine, silently insisting I check the calls. Imagine my surprise when I pressed the button and heard, first thing, “You’re an asshole, Harry. A selfish, insensitive asshole.” Click. Fanny Neville’s voice. Next came a business call, followed by, “And one more thing: Don’t call me, okay? Don’t even pick up and try.” Then a business call, then, “I just realized you’re probably gloating over those other calls I made. Which just goes to prove my point, doesn’t it?”

  The machine signed off and I stood there with eyebrows raised. I saw the stereo across the room and thought music would be a good way to clean out the Fanny smoke.

  Big Top was never amused by dog toys but he had had a hankering for rawhide bones, and a few of them were left in strategic spots on the floor. When bored, he would often go from one to the other for a few bites. Sadly, I picked them up and dropped them in a wastepaper basket. No more Fanny. No more Big Top. Lovers, pets, and habits were all going away. The Dog Museum would take a long time to finish but what would I do afterward? There was no question about wanting to go back to work now; magic and inspiration were in the air and I was i
mpatient to see what would happen next, even if it meant a run-in with Cthulu’s warriors in the Austrian Alps. Assuming I’d get out of that alive, what would come next, I wondered.

  “Stop banging your head against the wall and go have a nice dinner with Claire.” It was the best advice I’d given myself in days. Roy Orbison went onto the stereo and Radcliffe went into the shower.

  Besides having the appetite of a four-hundred-pound sumo wrestler, the Divine Ms. Stansfield also has a tongue that can withstand and relish any kind of sauce or cooking. I have seen her astound Indian chefs, Mexican waiters, and Korean kitchen help with her demand and delight for food as hot and zingy as they can make it. On and off I’ve hazarded bites from her fork and almost died regretting the bonfires she swallows with nothing more than a sigh of pleasure. I have even asked to look at her tongue to make sure it doesn’t come from another planet. It doesn’t, so the only possible conclusion is certain gentle souls are able to eat lava and like it. Perhaps the gentleness puts out the fire. Perhaps a gentle soul camouflages other blazes and infernos within. Perhaps I’m full of shit and she just has a cast-iron stomach.

  Anyway, we met at Gunga Din’s. We’d been there enough times for the staff to know the lady was asbestos as well as a bottomless pit, while the “Suh” was a picky old maid who ate dull chicken tandoori or beef curry.

  Claire was at the bar when I arrived. Her arm was bandaged and held in a sling over her chest. The sling and bandage and basketball sneakers were white. The rest of her was black. Before she caught sight of me, I stood off to one side to have a close look before making contact. People are good at covering up once they’re seen—faces, voices, gestures all go into cosmetic overdrive, and where they really are is known only to them.