Teaching the Dog to Read Read online

  “No, of course not. I thought—”

  “What did you think, Tony?”

  Hearing her speak his name swung his attention. “How do you know me? Where have we met? What are you doing here?”

  She ignored the question and pointed to his left wrist instead. “Nice watch.”

  Disconcerted, he looked at her and then at his watch. Her again, the watch again. “You know about this?”

  “Sure, your own Lichtenberg ‘Figure’. A Porsche and a Lichtenberg watch—hand in hand. Oh come on Tony, didn’t you think for even a minute that there might be a connection between them—the two things you’ve been coveting forever suddenly appear out of the blue? Now they’re yours, one right after the other.

  “Plus a root beer for lunch! What more could Señor Areal want?” She reached into the bag, brought out a bottle of the soda and unscrewed the plastic top. “Want some?”

  He shook his head slowly.

  She took a swig and wiped her top lip. “I’ll give you a hint, but only one: Tuna Fish.”

  “Tuna fish?”

  “Yup—tuna fish.” She drank again.

  “That’s not much help.”

  She pointed the root beer bottle at his head. “Then dig deeper. The answer is right in there, I promise you.”

  He put the key in the ignition and started the engine. “Where should we go?”

  She said “I don’t care—surprise me. No, no wait a minute—drive to the river. Let’s have our lunch by the water.”

  Neither of them said anything during the drive from Tony’s office to the river. Down there a short distance from the parking lot were some green metal picnic tables close by the water. Several were occupied, including one with a bunch of loud teenage boys horsing around and showing off for each other. They all went quiet and stared as Tony and the woman walked by them to the table farthest away. Making sure his friends were watching and that the woman had her back completely turned to him, one boy licked his lips like a starving slobbering wolf in a cartoon and stretching out both arms, pretended to reach for her ass with both hands after she’d passed him.

  When his friends erupted in a chorus of snorts and sniggers, the woman stopped; half turning, she said over her shoulder, “Dream on, Marcus—You’ll never score an ass as good as mine.”

  Hoots! Howls! One of the boys laughed so hard he fell off the table which brought on another wave of shrieks.

  Marcus was horrified—how could she possibly have seen what he did when he was certain her back was to him? And how did she know his name?

  “Hey man, you know her?”

  “N-no. I’ve never seen her before.”

  “Yeah well then how did she know your name, bro?”

  “I… I don’t know.”

  This Marcus must have been the leader of that crew because by the time Tony Areal and the woman had reached their table, the boys were quietly leaving but not before most of them cast backward glances at this chick who’d jammed up their boy good.

  Sitting down at the table, she opened the bag and took out two sandwiches wrapped in wax paper. She undid one and slid it on its paper across the table for Tony. He hadn’t sat down yet—just stood tensely facing her on the other side of the table, sizing this all up in his head. “You knew that kid?”

  “No. Come on, eat your sandwich.” She took the two bottles of root beer out of the bag and put them on the table. “Eat something. We’ll talk in a minute. It’ll make you think better.” Holding her sandwich in two hands, she took a big bite and hummed to let him know how tasty it was.

  He didn’t sit but not having eaten anything that day, he was hungry. Picking up the fat sandwich, he saw it was one of his favorites—pastrami on rye bread with coleslaw and Russian dressing. At that moment he didn’t even feel it necessary to ask her how she knew. He took a big bite because he couldn’t think of what he wanted to say to her although there were so many questions going through his head.

  As he took another bite and chewed, he watched a lovely tall woman walking a Hungarian Vizsla dog near the river’s edge. The dog was not on a line but stayed close to the woman, constantly looking up at her as if to make sure she didn’t stray too far.

  Boom! It hit Tony and he froze in mid-chew. Tuna. The dog. A dog named Tuna. The dream. That dream.

  Great sleep dreams seduce and sometimes torture. The best ones can almost break our heart when we awaken from them and find ourselves back…here. I’m talking about those exceedingly rare dreams we’ve all had over the course of our lives so splendid or sexy or momentous or idyllic or all of those things combined that we never want them to end and are genuinely distraught on waking and those luminous experiences and images immediately begin to vanish into our never-very-trustworthy memory. No romantic moments in waking life have been greater than those in that one walk-in-the-forest dream you had when you were 19; the dream with the 101% perfect mate who faded away like morning mist as soon as you came awake. Or the magnificent candlelight meal outside under the trees in the garden of that small French auberge where both the mood and meal tasted like the gods had prepared them only for you. And remember the bliss you felt on meeting your dead parent (brother, sister, best friend…) in some unimportant place—an empty parking lot or a small rural airport. You sat together like in the old days and spoke about things that brought you peace and a heart-filling reminder of the strength of the love that lost person once had for you when they were alive.

  Tony Areal once dreamt of a dog named Tuna. In this dream which ended up being epic, he was sitting at a bus stop by the sea (who knows where?). The weather was summer-beautiful. He was content to sit on the bench and wait for a bus while watching the waves come and go a short distance away across the road. The warmth of the day, the smell of brine and hot asphalt, and the beautiful monotony of the tumbling sea had lulled him into a kind of half-hypnotic trance. His whole countenance drooped contentedly and he felt like he was stoned.

  What a shock when suddenly something big and twisty banged hard into his right leg and then squirmed up against it. Snapping out of his stupor, he looked down and saw a large brown and black mixed breed dog at his feet looking up at him with joyful friendly eyes and a long pink tongue lolling out the side of its mouth.

  Tony liked dogs and had no fear of them. “Hello there, guy. What’s your name?” Reaching down, he stroked the big beast under the chin. Its eyes immediately half closed in pleasure.

  “His name is Tuna.”

  Tony looked up to his right and saw a tall pretty woman in denim shorts, a white tee shirt and a cloth backpack. She wore a half battered and bent Panama straw hat tipped jauntily to one side and leather flip flop sandals so worn down and ratty that they looked like they’d been around the world a few times on heavy feet. Taking all of her in with one long look, he saw this woman really did have large feet.

  “His name is Tuna and yes, I really do have big feet.”

  Tony didn’t know what to say. He was embarrassed and curious in equal measure. Who names a dog Tuna and how the hell did she know what he thought about her feet?

  “I’m teaching him how to read.” She said this as if it were no big deal.

  “You’re teaching a dog to read?”

  “That’s right.” She sat down on the bench next to a now-slightly bewildered Anthony Areal and crossing her bare legs, took hold of one knee with both hands. Her fingers were long and thin, the nails short and unpainted. Her dog leaned against Tony’s leg, pawing him gently to continue each time the man stopped petting it.

  “How do you teach a dog to read?”

  “Start by teaching them the alphabet.”

  For some reason her logical answer spoken in a matter-of-fact voice struck Tony as funny and he chuckled.

  “Do you have a better way?” She asked, sounding eager to know.

  He threw up his hands as if surrendering to the police. “No, not at all. I didn’t even know you could do that.”

  She shrugged. “Tuna looks bored a
lot if we’re not outside or actually doing something. If he could read, I think it would make his life nicer.”

  The lovely lunacy of that thought and the image of a dog reading a newspaper made Tony grin again.

  They talked about this and that until a small silver and red bus pulled up and stopped in front of them. The door hissed opened and the driver looked to see if they wanted to get on. They looked at each other and that one silent glance settled it—Tony raised a hand and smiling, waved a ‘no thanks’ to the driver—they were staying here. The bus drove off and the most sublime day Tony Areal ever spent with a woman began.

  After a while they stood and walked across the hot pavement to the beach. While Tuna raced around chasing indignant seagulls and anything else the dog found interesting, Tony and the woman—only after some time did she tell him her name was Alice—talked. Talked and talked and talked. She was smart and wickedly funny, insightful and observant in a way that straight away had him eager to hear anything she had to say about whatever topic they were discussing. It was like that the whole afternoon. It kept getting better and better but never once did they touch—only talked and laughed and learned how the other saw the world around them.

  “That was me.”

  “What?”

  The woman sitting across the picnic table at the river took a bite of her sandwich and chewed. She held up a finger for Tony to wait till she’d swallowed.

  “I was Alice that day, that woman in your dream. Do you remember how it ended?”

  “No.” He only remembered how marvelous it had been spending time with Alice who wanted to teach her dog to read.

  The mysterious woman put her sandwich down and wiped her lips with a paper napkin. “We went back to the bus stop. It was getting dark by then and I said I had to go. When the bus pulled up, I gave you one of those,” she pointed to his Lichtenberg. “It was in my backpack the whole time.”

  Tony looked hard at the watch on his wrist “I don’t remember any of that; only how we walked on the beach and talked the whole time while the dog ran around.”

  “Well, that’s what happened.” The mysterious woman nodded twice as if to affirm what she’d said.

  “So you’re Alice, the woman from my dream?”

  “No, not quite.” She pulled a piece of bread off her sandwich and flipped it to three pigeons waddling around near their feet.

  Tony shook his head “But you said—”

  The woman tore off another piece of bread and dropped it for the birds. “Do you remember what Alice looked like?”

  Tony hesitated a moment, thinking. “No, not really. She was pretty but not gorgeous or anything.”

  The woman turned away from him so that her face was hidden, then seconds later turned back. She had a completely different face. “Did she look like this?’

  Shocked, Tony gasped. He needed time to even barely shake his head no. “I…don’t know, I don’t remember. What have you—”

  Holding up a hand to stop him talking, again the woman did the ‘turn away/turn back’ thing. This time she had a completely different face, that of a stunningly beautiful Eurasian with long licorice-shiny hair falling down her back like a black waterfall. Tony gaped slack jawed, eyes wide with disbelief and fear.

  “Do you remember her?”

  “No.”

  “Oh Tony—where’s your memory? Here’s a last one.” A third time she pivoted away and then back wearing yet a third new face—a California blond this time—big sensual mouth, cornflower blue eyes, white-blond hair. A surfer girl deluxe.

  “I don’t understand. What are you doing? I-I can’t do this… I’m going to go now.” Shaken to the marrow of his bones, Tony was barely able to stand up from the table.

  “Sit down. I’m not finished.”

  He remained standing, ready to bolt.

  “Sit down.” The woman said threateningly. If her voice had been a gun, it would have been cocked and pointed an inch from his eye.

  He sat.

  “Those are all faces you created, Tony. Those three women and thousands of others you first saw and then borrowed from your life. Or you fashioned them entirely out of your imagination for the 13,487 dreams you’ve had in your 37 years.”

  “Thirteen thousand what?”

  “Night dreams—that’s how many you’ve had in your life. Or I should say we’ve had.”

  Silence. After waiting a while for Tony to say something, the woman took another big bite of sandwich and chewed with one eye closed while watching him intently with the other, a hint of a smile on her moving lips. He did nothing but stare at her. Only once did he lick his lips because his mouth had gone as dry as a lizard.

  “Who are you?”

  She nodded. Finally he was asking. It was about time! “Who? I’m you, but the night shift version Tony.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She finished the sandwich and patted her thin mouth with a green paper napkin. “I could have come here today looking exactly like you, Tony. You saw what I’m capable of doing. But I didn’t want to freak you out, so I’m here as some woman you walked past in one of your dreams a decade ago; no one important or in any way memorable.

  “I thought it best to break all of this to you gently and slowly, one step at a time. So first I sent you the watch a few weeks ago, then the Porsche today. Now this nice lunch together with your favorite sandwiches, the two of us…”

  Unconsciously Tony touched his wrist. “It was you who gave me this?”

  “Sure, who else do you know who’d give you a nine grand watch? You’ve had it in so many of your dreams lately that I thought you’d like to have one of your own. Do you like it?”

  Areal stared down at his wrist and frowned stupidly, as if he had been smacked on the head and was dazed by the blow. In a dead monotone he said “Yes. It’s nice.”

  She puffed out her lips and said sarcastically, “Nice? That’s it? Your dream comes true and all you can say is ‘it’s nice’?

  Tony undid the watch and put it on the table in front of her. “Take it. I don’t want it anymore.”

  She slid it back across the table towards him “No, that’s okay—you can keep it; the Porsche too if you like. It’s only stuff. We’ve got much more important matters to discuss.”

  When he returned to work that afternoon, Anthony Areal was a changed man. Lena Schabort noticed it first. Tony strode into the office like a guy who’d won two lotteries and a date with Miss Brazil. Seeing pretty Lena, he pointed his thumb and index finger at her like a gun and gave her the coolest, sexiest wink she’d ever seen. It absolutely stunned her—one wink—Wham! If someone had asked her to describe why it was so special she wouldn’t have known what to say. But its effect continued to slide slow and sensuously like a bead of sex-sweat down the exact middle of her flat tummy and stayed.

  She happened to be talking to Rick “The Prick” Olivier when Tony passed and Rick was the first to comment about the noticeable difference in his work colleague. That in itself was surprising because Olivier had an ego the size of Switzerland. He rarely noticed or expressed interest in anything other than his own reflection in the world around him. In fact at the moment Tony appeared, Olivier was yet again trying to coax Lena into a date but with little success. He stopped in mid-pitch when Areal swept confidently by them after that quick devastating wink at her.

  Rick scoffed “What’s with Areal? He looks like he’s high.”

  Lena snorted disgustedly “No Dear, he looks like he’s hot. Damn.”

  The Prick didn’t like hearing that and tried to steer the conversation back to him. “So what do you say Lena, you wanna go out or what?”

  “Rick, I’d rather have eye surgery in a helicopter than go out with you.” She flashed him a huge fake smile that lasted two seconds before striding off towards Areal’s desk. It was the long way around to her own but she had to get a second helping of the man to see if what she’d experienced of him was as hotwired as it felt.

  “Aloha!�
�

  Tony was scowling at a paper in his hand when he heard this. Looking up, he saw the very attractive brown haired woman he’d passed in the hall looking at him, a little wild eyed because she seemed sort of over-excited about something. It was why Lena had greeted him with that ridiculous, out of nowhere, trying-to-be-cute-and-amusing-at-the-same-time word. But while continuing to smile maniacally at him, she was thinking ‘Aloha? It’s so dumb. Why did I have to say that?’ Suddenly she felt as awkward as a fifteen year old sophomore talking to the most popular senior class boy in high school. At the same time, she thought Tony Areal? I’ve got my panties and head in a twist about him? Tony had to think a bit before he recognized her. “Lena? Lena Schabort?”

  She tried to giggle but it sort of stuck in her throat. “Uh yeah, Tony, don’t you recognize me?” Her voice was half tease, half scold with a little desperation in there too. She thought he was teasing her because she knew he had the hots for her, like most of the other men in the office.

  “I do indeed recognize you, Ms. Lena. Weren’t you my wife in our last life?”

  The line was so saucy, sweet and unexpected especially coming from him that her mouth fell open in surprise. She quickly put a hand over it while staring at this fellow who looked exactly like he had an hour ago but now somehow seemed an entirely different person.

  “Did something happen, Tony? I mean, are you okay?”

  He smiled and tilted his head a little to the side as if to indicate he didn’t understand why she asked. “Happen? No, nothing happened. Why?”

  “Because you seem really different; like, completely different than you were when we talked an hour ago. You know, right before you went down to your new car in the parking lot. I saw you talking to that woman inside it and when you two drove away I thought something might have happened. Maybe something she said?”

  Tony shook his head. “Ah! No, the opposite—she was there to give me some good news, really good news. Maybe that’s why I seem different now?”

  That sounded logical to her. Each of them waited for the other to say more but nothing came. Lena realized she was staring at his mouth. She realized she was wondering what it would be like to kiss that mouth. She wondered if she was going nuts. “Tony?”