by Bill Boggs
Fifty yards later, I check if I’m in the clear and see Bud’s helped me by throwing honey-roasted nuts all over. The squirrels are scattered around gathering them.
That night, under the dining room table, Pip’s considering admitting defeat and retiring from squirrel hunting. Bud’s mother googles “squirrel attacks” and finds the headline “Rampaging Squirrels Protect Nests and Kill Large Dog in Germany.”
For their bravery and teamwork, I’m now appreciating squirrels even more. But I’m also thinkin’: Angry squirrels, illegal Christmas shows, Animal Control swindlers, tranquilizer darts, panthers in boxing rings…. Danger’s lurking everywhere—what’s next?
Oh yeah, New York.
10
The Trailer
Before we left North Carolina, Bud went online and picked out a furnished rental apartment at Sixty-Third and Madison. It costs him ten times more than the house in Thomasville with the pool. “This is turnkey!” he proclaims. “And Spike,” he says with great pride, “there’s a pup park for you on the roof.”
Yeah, small footnote here: The “park” turned out to be a patch of plastic grass about the size of a Little League pitcher’s mound with a ten-foot-high chain-link fence around it and a sign sayin’, “Fifty cents a minute, maximum capacity eighteen dogs.”
The building has a fancy, phony name, The Cheshire Gardens Mews. It’s missing any evidence of the gardens part, but at least it’s a couple of blocks from his new station—channel five. The internet pictures look like King Abdul from Saudi Arabia would live there, but they don’t show that the apartment is actually long and narrow—shaped like a mobile home. I’m feelin’ like I’m back in the Smiths’ trailer, except there’s no bologna and I’m on the eleventh floor with the bedroom window facin’ Madison Avenue, so we can have the comforting sounds of traffic, sirens, and blasting horns day and night.
The first morning, there’s about a quarter inch of snow on the sidewalk as Bud and me start for a walk in the park. The doorman’s throwin’ heaps of salt on the pavement. He looks like he’s got nothing to do in his spare time but pump himself up at the gym, but he still must be too weak to lift a broom and simply sweep the sidewalk; that’s why he’s tossin’ salt with one hand and checkin’ Facebook with the other.
So we gotta go back up to the trailer and wash my paws, which are stinging like I’ve been doing the Lindy hop in a vat of plutonium. We never make it outside, ’cause Bud gets involved in a long phone call with his new boss. I end up having to take a dump in the kitchen. Nice start to the new life.
Next day he’s off to work to meet everybody. He rushes back at lunch to walk me, sayin’, “I’ll take you in tomorrow.” He tosses me a couple of biscuits and runs back out. Didn’t seem to care that my brain’s melting watching The Maury Povich Show with some kid screamin’, “You had sex with me and my dad, so who’s your baby’s father?”
I set a personal record for daytime sleepin’. I wake up. Bud’s still not back. To comfort myself, I spend a half hour barking, till I hear someone pounding on the wall. I go over to investigate. They pound three times, so I bark three times. They pound once, I bark once. They pound five times, I bark five times. Then I hear screaming and the pounding stops. First fun I had all day. I’m feelin’ like I’m Clint Eastwood in a prison movie plotting an escape, which I wish I were.
When he’s finally back, Bud’s Skypin’ with Buffy, tellin’ her about work.
“I was a total stranger to these people; they had no idea what we’ve done. They just heard some new guy from the South was coming in. The story is, their host quit because management set up an appointment for him to have a facelift. He wouldn’t do it, so he walked out and he’s gonna sue. That makes me the fresh face in town till I’m the one with bags under my eyes.”
“So what’s it like there?” Buffy’s asking, while I’m glued to the screen hopin’ to catch a glimpse of Daisy.
“I got my own office with a door, which is good, but the show has weird problems. They constantly have to replace student interns from these fancy Eastern colleges, ’cause the kids take sick days if something they have to research offends them, and a lot of them won’t even preinterview guests they don’t agree with politically. So they get rid of them. The three interns who stayed are from a cheap community college where the only trigger warning they ever heard was that the kid at the next desk has a loaded gun.”
“Oh, boy,” Buffy says. “What’s Skrill like—the GM Lombardo said to watch out for?”
“He’s nuts…. Ready for this?” Bud asks. “His big claim to fame is that he created a moronic program they put on before awards shows called The Countdown to the Countdown to the Countdown to the Red Carpet. It starts so early, the carpet’s not even laid when they come on the air.”
“That’s a challenging visual,” Buffy says. “Just empty space and wires all over the place, I guess. Hey, how’s Spike? Let me see ’im. I’ll show you guys Daisy.”
Daisy and I are pressing our noses to the screen; I’m tryin’ to play it like I could take her or leave her. Meanwhile my heart’s pounding.
Bud’s sayin’, “I’m gonna take in Spike at some point. I gotta pick the right time; these people are all on edge. Everybody’s protecting their own turf; Erica the producer seems like a control freak. I don’t think she’s gonna win any awards for flexibility when she meets Spike. It’s early, but I’d say they seem more interested in keepin’ things as they are rather than making changes.”
I’m pressin’ my nose so hard against the screen, I start drooling all over Bud’s keyboard, and he’s gotta power down to clean it.
“I’ll talk to you soon, Buffy. They’re still in reruns up here. How’s the show?”
“We’re in reruns, too. I’ll be in your chair sometime next week. We miss you guys,” she says.
“Me too,” Bud says, and I’m thinkin’, “Me three.”
We leave to go for a walk, and in the little elevator going down is a beautiful tall blonde. Naturally, Bud intros us. She says she just read in the paper that he’s the new guy who’ll be taking over the noon show at channel five.
“I’m Donna Hanover,” she says,” not the one who was married to Mayor Giuliani; I’m the one who was with CBS Sports.” There’s a connection between them ’cause of TV, and it’s real likely Bud’s gonna see if she might want another kind of connection later that night, so he says, “Let’s get a drink.”
“Oh good, I love to drink,” she says, smiling with teeth that are way whiter than normal really white teeth.
“Let’s go to Nello,” Donna says. “It’s right down the street, and it’s one of my favorites in the neighborhood, ’cause they got the biggest pour, plus I never cook anyway; I’m always going out to eat. I call it ‘meals on heels.’”
I figure Bud’s getting an eyeful of an authentic single New York woman with this one.
“But I don’t know if they’ll let the dog in,” she says.
This is the first time Bud gets to use the fake ID he got for me before we left High Point. After we get back from Vegas, Bud wants to find something that’d work anywhere for me, like the Ike “I Got Money” Piles Triple Dollar Sign All-Access 3-D Hologram Boxing Glove Total Access Pass did during fight week. So he goes to Gertie at City Hall to get her to make fake government documents that’ll get me in anywhere.
All she wants from Bud for committing dog ID fraud is a pair of tickets to the Radio City Music Hall Christmas show. Bud’s always saying, “People will do anything for tickets to that show.” So he’s figured ways to get them.
They take a headshot of me for the ID that makes me look too heavy—bad lighting.
A week later, Bud gets a bunch of different plastic cards saying I’m a therapy dog, a Homeland Security agent, a robot dog you get free when you buy a Tesla, and a food and wine taster for Dog Food magazine.
“If none of those badges work, which is not going to happen,” Gertie says, “use this.” She gives Bud a little red vest thing
for me to wear that says, “Service Dog in Training.”
“This could work for the rest of his life,” Bud says. “I’ll just tell them he’s a slow learner.”
He hands her the tickets. She looks at them and bursts into tears. She’s sobbing so loud clutching those second-balcony, ninth-row tickets that I hear her all the way to the parking lot as we’re leavin’ City Hall.
The food and wine ID works at Nello. I guess they figured they’d score a review in Dog Food World.
Walkin’ to a table in the back of the place, I’m feelin’ sad seeing a lot of fur coats hangin’ off the backs of chairs and dragging on the floor. I can’t help but notice that a lot of people are pointing, going, “A dog! A dog!” Like sailors yelling, “Land ho!” after four years at sea.
The place is real noisy. People are talking loud and eating fast. I recognize an investigative reporter for NBC News, can’t remember her name. She’s shovin’ food into her mouth and starting a long sentence at the same time. Not a pretty sight. You won’t see your dog doin’ that. We’re smart enough not to bark while eating. We take one, maybe two bites, then swallow stuff, mostly whole. Our digestive systems are like shredders—large chunks of meat, bones, gravel, wool, aluminum siding—in it goes, and it all comes out, well, you know how it comes out.
After about ten seconds Donna starts squirming around. “Don’t you hate it when you have to wait like this to order your first drink?”
Bud’s tryin’ to calm her, sayin’, “We just sat down,” but she asks him if he’ll go to the bar and get her a Grey Goose martini, “dry, dry, dry and straight up with a twist, please, and bring the shaker, too.”
We settle in as Donna starts work on what will be a river of elegant, large, glistening martinis. Bud’s a little self-conscious. He’s got a woman getting drunk and sloppy on one side, and a big white dog sittin’ on the other. Normally I like the floor, but I jumped on a chair, figurin’ I’ll review the meal while watchin’ Bud watch her get loaded.
“They fired me,” she’s moanin’. “Fired me from my sideline reporting job.”
“What happened?” Bud’s asking, while he quietly signals the waiter to stay away, ’cause she’s draining another glass.
“Waiter!” she yells, waving both hands, “Come back!”
“Is that why you’re drinking like this?” Bud asks. “Because of CBS?”
She’s explainin’ that she didn’t know much about football when she got hired, but turns out she couldn’t fake it like she thought she could. Bud says that he likes a woman who’s not good at faking it, and there’s a massive laugh from her, when all of a sudden Erica, who’s gonna be the producer of Bud’s show, is standin’ by our table looming over us.
“Bud? Bud?” she’s yelling over the din. “What are you doing here? Why are you here? I don’t understand.”
The sound of her voice is about as calming as a leaf blower blasting outside your window at seven thirty in the morning.
The Budster, who’s not a big fan of stupid questions, says, “Well, everybody’s got to be someplace, Erica, and I just happen to be here.”
“What’s that?” Erica yells, pointing at me with a finger that’s never seen the inside of a nail salon.
“That would be a dog, Erica. My dog, Spike. Say hello, Spike.”
I look her up and down. She’s one of those fifty-year-old women who dress like a teenager in ripped jeans and a camisole to try to look young and seductive, and end up seeming about as sexy as the hostess at pie night in a Shaker village. I bark at her, and it’s not my warm and friendly bark that gets people to pet me and go, “Ahhh.”
“How come he’s sitting on a chair at Nello with a napkin around his neck and a twenty-five-dollar bowl of chicken noodle soup in front of him?”
“They didn’t have the meatloaf, but the rest…that’s a long story. I was planning to tell you about him tomorrow, but for a preview of who he is, just google ‘Spike The Wonder Dog’ when you get home.
“Say hello to Donna Hangover…er, I mean Hanover. Donna Hanover, sorry,” Bud says.
“Your son Andrew’s a professional golfer. My brother’s a professional golfer,” she yells.
“No, I’m not the Donna Hanover who was married to Mayor Giuliani.”
“Oh, you’re right!” Erica blasts. “You’re right, you’re not!”
Donna shoots her a look like “Of course I’m right, you idiot. I may be drunk, but I can still remember I wasn’t married to Rudy Giuliani.”
“Oh, oh, yes, I know who you are. You’re the one who got fired yesterday from CBS Sports,” Erica says. “So what are you doing now?”
“Waiter! Waiter!” Donna yells. “Come back.”
Bud’s staring at his steaming bowl of pasta, I’m yawning, and Donna’s looking at her veal chop like she’d like to club Erica senseless with the thing. Erica gets the clue and makes a U-turn back to her table.
During most of dinner, Donna’s face is on the table and she’s moaning, “I just want to be Erin Andrews, I just want to be Erin Andrews.”
The bill’s around five hundred dollars. I see Bud’s jaw clenching over the price, so to get more value, I take a big roll out of the basket. As we’re leavin’, there’s a chorus of, “That’s the dog.” “That’s the dog.” Wish they knew I was a canine human food authority at work.
It’s snowing. Bud’s half carrying, half dragging Donna. Her shoe comes off, so I got both it and the roll in my mouth, as I’m blinkin’ back wet snowflakes walkin’ up Madison Avenue.
I see a guy under a couple of smelly, snow-covered blankets, just lyin’ on the pavement sleepin’ right there by a window full of big blue handbags. For the first time, I’m seein’ and smelling the homeless people they’re reporting about on local news. I wonder what the five hundred dollars Bud just spent would do for this poor guy. All I can do is put the roll in his dirty, frozen hand and hope that it’ll be there when he wakes up.
“Good boy, Spike,” Bud tells me.
Can’t quite explain it, but that night we sleep closer than usual in the king-sized bed that’s part of his turnkey deal.
The next morning, I smell a dog outside the apartment, and Donna’s knocking at our door.
“I am Donna Hangover,” she says, walkin’ in and looking cute but worn, and older than she did last night in the dim lights at Nello.
“Sorry, Bud, three martinis should absolutely be my limit, unless they’re small ones like over there at the Atlantic Grill.”
Bounding over to me is an old chihuahua—gray muzzle, gray legs, back going gray, but he’s hopping around like he’s on springs. “Very spry dog,” I’m thinking, and then wonderin’, “How old you gotta be to get called spry?”
“Benny, be nice; say hi to Spike and Bud.”
Donna’s got some flowers for Bud and askin’ if he knows anything about her shoe. Benny’s sniffing me all over and I’m enjoying the attention from a breed I greatly admire, ’cause chihuahuas always want to be the boss, but I let Benny know that’s not the deal with me by batting him around the floor with flicks of my paw. He loves it! Here’s a pal.
Donna’s tellin’ Bud that’s she’s got lots of time and is happy to walk me when she takes out Benny—who, judging by his age, is getting his “frequent urinator” card stamped so much, Donna’s running low on ink. Anything that gets me out of this trailer is good news, and I figure I can probably learn a few big-city tricks from a New York veteran like Benny.
All that day, I’m pushin’ furniture around with my head to relieve boredom, and celebrating that I figured how to work the channel button on the TV remote by clicking it with the middle nail of my right paw. For better or worse, the world of daytime TV is now opened for me. I’m switching back and forth between FOX News, CNN, and New York 1.
They’re all blastin’ warnings about the potential dangers lurking in Times Square on New Year’s Eve—ISIS, the Taliban, homegrown terrorists, crazy people buying guns and ammo from vending machines at Walmar
t, skinheads, angry postal workers. The news is scaring me so much, I’m planning to sleep under the bed that night and hope for the best.
Donna has to run some errands with Benny, so she gets me and grabs my bomb-sniffing ID. Bud figures it’s pretty much good anywhere—unless, of course, you meet an actual bomb-sniffing K9-unit dog and cop like we did that day waiting for the number-six train.
The cop asks Donna why such a big dog like me is in the subway. He starts studying the ID and notices the word “freelance” in real small letters under “Bomb Detection.” He sees what looks like a government logo, but it’s just something Gertie invented to look official—a firecracker, a fish, and a parakeet twisted together in front of the Las Vegas Pyramid Hotel with puffs of smoke coming out the top.
The German shepherd with the cop is lookin’ at me like he’s the bartender and I’m a twelve-year-old trying to enter a Jägermeister drinking contest. Fortunately, he’s got no bark signal for that.
“OK, let’s just stroll the platform as a little test of your dog,” he tells Donna, with his hand stroking his gun, makin’ her feel like she’d better drop on all fours and sniff around, too.
The shepherd’s patrolling next to me and I’m copying his every move, knowing that if there is an actual bomb, he’ll bark and my superior reflexes will get me to it first. I’m smellin’ the subway stench as carefully as I can: the heavy headline smells—vomit, urine, BO—then the lighter smells—hairspray, deodorant, breath mints, then the intriguing tang of people who had morning sex.
I’m inhaling big blasts of a Starbucks Venti Mocha Cookie Frappuccino somebody spilled when I smell something else and run behind a garbage can with my tail on speed wag.
“He hasn’t barked,” the cop says, “but let’s see what it is.”
I’m swallowing a pizza slice when the cop says, “This is no bomb-sniffing dog,” and asks Donna if he can see her identification.
