Teaching the Dog to Read Read online

  He was looking down again at the paper in his hand.

  “Would you like to go for a drink after work today?”

  He raised his eyes slowly. They were amused and he was smiling. “No.”

  Stunned, Lena was speechless a moment. She had never asked a man to go out. She had never been so blatantly rejected by one either. “Oh… well…uh sorry…”

  He reached out and took her arm. “But I would love to go dancing with you. Could we do that instead?”

  She lit up like a 4th of July sparkler because she loved to dance. It was her great passion and the office knew it. “Really, you dance? What kind… what’s your favorite?”

  He pointed his index finger at her, “It’s up to you—I’m game for anything, Ginger Rogers.”

  In a small hopeful voice she asked hesitantly, “Do you tango?”

  Tony Areal jumped up, grabbed Lena Schabort around the waist, and taking her right hand in his left, extended both arms out stiffly to the side in the classic tango pose. Face close enough to hers so she could feel his warm breath on her cheek, he said in a voice sexy enough to seduce a nun, “Nope, not a step. But you can teach me.”

  The two Tonys sat on the same bus stop bench by the sea, comparing notes. Tony Night Shift lit a cigarette.

  Tony Day didn’t smoke and scowled when he smelled it. “So how did it go for you?”

  Tony Night sighed. “—was okay. We went out, went dancing, had something to eat, then went back to her place. Afterwards I came home, went to sleep and voila here I am, dreaming. End of story.”

  “Did you do it with Lena?”

  “Yeah.” Tony Night shrugged again. After dragging deeply on the cig he let out a thick white plume of smoke. Two cars passed by going in opposite directions.

  “And?”

  “And what?” Another long pull on the cigarette.

  Tony Day slapped his forehead in frustration. “How was it? How was she?”

  “Dull, Dude, dull. She looks all sexy and delicious on the outside, right? But in the sack she hardly moves, never does anything interesting or original, and doesn’t make a sound. You might as well take yourself out on a date. You’d have better sex at the end of the night.”

  Tony Day couldn’t help grinning. So Foxy Lena was all show and no go, eh? In contrast he’d come from the exact opposite experience with the lovely, bewitching, sexy-as-all-hell Alice. What a day it had been with her!

  Tony Night saw that contentment and said sourly “I take it from the happy look on your face that things went well with Alice?”

  Tony Day sighed with pleasure. “They did. Hands down it was the best time I’ve ever had with a woman.”

  Tony Night said in a monotone, “Glad to hear it.”

  “You don’t sound glad.”

  “Well Brother I’m actually not, truth be told. I had a shit time while you had a great one. It wasn’t supposed to go that way, you know? Both of us were supposed to benefit from this swap of ours. But here you are beaming like a flashlight and I just had sex with a mop.”

  Tony Day grinned. “A mop?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Hey, you were the one who wanted to do this. You came to me and said let’s switch jobs for a while: You take the day shift and I’ll take the night. We’re doing what you wanted.”

  Tony Night nodded while grinding out the cigarette but he didn’t say anything.

  “So?”

  “So what?”

  Tony Day asked, “Is our deal still on or do you want your job back? I’ve got to say, so far I love being the Tony who lives in and controls his night dreams.” He stretched both arms out wide to the sides. “I get to create my own world here night after night. It’s amazing! Live out all the dreams and fantasies I’ve ever had? Yes please. Bring Alice back whenever I want for another fabulous time with her. Or I could have a movie star, like Arlen Ford…

  “Hey, what do you think of my new car?” Parked down the road from the bus stop was a brand new white Aston Martin ‘Vanquish,’ the Oz of automobiles in Tony Areal’s universe. Now, here, he had one. The keys were in his pocket.

  Tony Night briefly glanced at it and smirked. “No more lowly Porsches for you, huh? Well it’s certainly jazzy—Childish, but that’s okay. We all want to play with the toys when they’re new. After a while though stuff like that won’t spark your noodle anymore, believe me.”

  A loud ominous rumbling sound came from down the road. Both men turned toward it. A bunch of rhinoceros and bullterrier dogs came thundering towards them. The much smaller dogs ran right beside and among the huge galloping beasts as if they were all comrades in arms charging into battle. The air suddenly reeked of mud and heavy animal musk, wood smoke, dung, rotten fruit and unknown wholly exotic smells. It was as if the stench and perfume of wildest Africa had arrived all at once.

  Tony Day’s eyes grew enormous and he made to scramble the hell off the bench and away. But the other Tony grabbed his arm and shaking his head, held him there.

  “It’s okay, we’re safe.”

  Tony Day looked alarmed but didn’t move. The rhinos and dogs reached them quickly but without pause pounded past as if all were racing flat out towards some invisible finish line far off in the distance. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen of the magnificent monsters raced down the road next to the sea, accompanied by no telling how many of Tony Day’s favorite dogs. When in his life had he seen anything like this?

  As soon as the stampede had passed he sang out ecstatically, “That was amazing! I love them both so much—but rhinos and bullterriers running together? Those are my two absolute favorite animals. Do you know a group of rhinos is called a ‘crash’?”

  This did not interest Tony Night. “You’ll get used to that kind of nutty scene the longer you’re here. This is Anthony Areal Dreamland, remember—the ultimate mixed salad of everything you are, all whizzed up together in weird combinations and presented in nightly servings. Don’t be surprised to see a lot of what you like or know here. Favorite dogs, old friends and enemies—they’re all here. Sometimes it’ll come straight as fact, other times squashed and smooshed together, like in any dream.” He pointed down the road towards where the animals had gone. “And to tell the truth, it’s not always pleasant or cool like that little stampede of your favorites. But all that’s here came from your life, good and bad. Rhinos, your favorite cars, even Mrs. Zlabinger is somewhere. I saw her the other day playing a trombone.”

  “My eleventh grade English teacher?”

  “Yup. Don’t be surprised if you bump into her and she asks if you’ve finished your Shakespeare essay yet. Welcome to Tony Dreamland, Mr. Areal. You are the sole creator and proprietor now.”

  Tony Day considered all this while out of the corner of his eye he saw his exquisite new automobile parked down the road. He couldn’t wait to drive it again. “But what about you? I’ve got to say truthfully that compared to what goes on here, my old life is a big bore.”

  Tony Night shook his head. “And that’s absolutely fine with me. I needed a change, man. I had to get out of here and live some normal, you know? No rhinos suddenly running down the road or other weird crap. Good old plain donuts and black coffee for breakfast for me, thanks. When you’ve lived at the circus all your life, it’s great to take a break from the clowns and zebras, you know? For me after being here all these years, it’s a real pleasure being bored for a while.”

  That answer made sense to Tony Day but he still was puzzled about something. “If I am in charge of things here, and I arrange the ingredients of your dreams, why that stampede now? I didn’t order it. Alice and the car yes, but not that.” He pointed down the road.

  Tony Night took a deep breath, knowing he was going to have to do some explaining now. “Think of it this way: when you were living where I am now, you passed your days constantly experiencing this great huge mass of various things. Whether you were aware of it or not, most of that stuff went into your memory and stayed: The ugly woman with the gre
en purse at the Mexican restaurant, that long distance phone call with your funny sister…

  “It’s like you’d go to the market every day and buy bags and bags full of groceries. But there was no logic to what you put in them. Eventually you’d bring all those bags home and give them to me, Tony Night. I’d sift through what you’d brought and choose which ones I wanted to cook. Then I’d combine them together into your nightly dream.

  “But sometimes life or fate interferes. You forget to buy the tomatoes but you don’t feel like going back to the store to get them. So the meal is cooked without tomatoes. The same with my job—sometimes things get added or subtracted from the dreams because of, I don’t know, outside sources or forces or whatever you want to call it. Hey look—you’re never in complete control of either your life or your dreams. You love rhinos and bullterriers. For some reason they decided to make a guest appearance together in this dream. No reason why they showed up. But it was cool, right? So enjoy it.”

  It’s not hard to guess which Tony was lying. Lena Schabort was sensational in bed—ravenous, endlessly inventive, and almost overwhelming in her horizontal skills. But Tony Night was not about to tell his counterpart that. Hell no. If he did, what if Tony Day said he wanted to sleep with her too? Worse, what if he said I don’t want to do this switch anymore? I want to go back to who I was.

  On the other hand from the sound of it, there wasn’t much reason to worry. Tony Day was smitten with the sheer novelty and power of running Dreamland where it was true—he could create any dream he wanted to show each night on the big screen TV inside the other Tony’s head.

  In his first few attempts, the dreams he created were pretty tentative and as dull as a documentary about fish hatcheries in Finland. In one he sat in his boyhood kitchen watching his Mom make an egg soufflé while a bright orange SONY radio on the counter played pop hits from his childhood. Limahl’s song “The Neverending Story” almost had him in tears because it was so packed with happy memories. In another dream, Tony and his sister ran around a lush meadow in a driving summer rainstorm in their underwear, heads bent back, mouths wide open to catch raindrops on their tongues, arms out to either side as if they were flying. The only odd thing about it was in the dream they were adults, not little kids. And that detail, like the racing rhinoceros, was not his doing.

  It wasn’t until the eleventh dream that Tony Day returned to the bus stop by the sea and a meeting with the wonderful Alice. Why wait so long? Simply because he was afraid he might do it wrong and spoil everything. The dream where they first met had been so perfect (as far as he remembered) that if he were to continue it now, he wanted to make sure he was totally in control of what he was doing. Hell, he’d wanted to meet up with Alice the first time he created a dream in his new role but his wiser self said no, wait long enough to figure out how to do this dream-making right.

  The ingredients at his disposal were his life. The goal? To use some of them to create the perfect setting and circumstances for a second meeting with this woman who appeared to embody everything he loved. But where should that meeting take place, and what should the circumstances be? Some romantic spot in Europe perhaps—a seaside taverna on a remote Greek island, or a 19th century mountaintop hotel in Switzerland with a panoramic view of the Eiger or Matterhorn? Tony Day had been to places like these in real life. Their majesty and beauty wrote their signatures on his soul, but were they the right backdrop for this meeting with Alice? Eventually he decided no because he didn’t want the ‘frame’ to be more beautiful or interesting than a picture that had yet to be painted. Plus what if she spent the whole time they were together staring at the surroundings and paid little attention to him?

  He knew it was possible to create any dream right down to the smallest most insignificant detail. If he wanted, he could even script exactly what Alice would say and do when they met, but what would be the point of that? If he knew what the outcome would be, why even create the dream at all? Best to set the scene, then step back and let things take their course.

  Is it a treasure or torment to have every single past moment of your life at your disposal when creating the ultimate romantic dream? The heavenly smells of cinnamon, oranges or cloves, the unexpected smile of a stranger, the paralyzing cold of a mountain stream on hot bare July skin, the whistle of a distant train, the sky ballet of a flock of birds… Millions, billions, of things, details, memories, mind-photos…to sift through and then choose only a few to create the landscape and mood Tony Day wanted to wrap around this Alice when they met again.

  “But you ended up back here on this fucked up bench in the middle of nowhere. How’d that happen?” Tony Night asked, genuinely interested. “With all that material to choose from, you decided this was the best place to rendezvous with her? You are a strange fellow.” He took out of his pocket and lit up one of those awful little Indian beedi cigarettes that smell like burnt pocket lint.

  “When did you start smoking those?” Tony Day said disdainfully when they met for only the second time.

  “Today. Someone in the office offered one to me and I kind of liked it, so I bought a pack.”

  “Those things are horrible! Smoking’s bad enough, but now you’re into them?”

  Tony Night took a puff and waved his hand for the other to continue his story. “So why did you want to meet Miss Perfect here again? You obviously weren’t trying to impress her.”

  Ashamed, Tony Day looked at his feet and rubbed his knees. He wanted to say one thing but knew it was a lie, and on this subject he didn’t want to lie. “Fear, I guess. Plain old fear.”

  Tony Night barked a loud laugh and shook his head ruefully. “Shit! I know exactly what you mean. You didn’t want to make a mistake with her, right? So you opted for something that had already worked once. When in doubt, play it safe. God, you and I are such cowards! I totally understand why you did it.” He chuckled again and took another hit off the stinky cigarette. “But then again, it was a pretty great dream, I have to admit.”

  Tony Day straightened up and rubbed his knees again. “You think so? I’m glad. I didn’t know how you’d react.”

  Tony Night nodded. “Personally I like a rendezvous that’s more down and dirty. Like those dreams you had about Lena a while ago? Those were hot stuff. But hey, you’re in charge of this department now and I’m only here to deliver the raw material.

  “Anyway, I thought your dream was very Zen, stripped down and basic but in the best way. You guys met here, walked on the beach with the dog again and ate burgers: simple and sweet.

  “But you know what part I liked best? How at the end of the meal she reached over and took that last French fry off your plate. That’s a very intimate gesture. You gotta have something good going with another person to feel free to take their last fry.”

  Tony Day grinned. “Yes, wasn’t that cool!”

  “It was. You didn’t make it happen?”

  “Nope. The whole dream was unscripted; that was the best part. Only where I drove up in the Aston and she and Tuna were already waiting here—I made that up. But afterwards it was all free style.”

  “Then hat-tip to you, Brother. I think she’s hooked. Wait a minute—do you hear something?”

  A familiar rumbling came from far down the road. The two men looked at each other and shook their heads simultaneously—neither knew what was happening and certainly hadn’t summoned whatever was coming their way.

  The noise grew but oddly nothing appeared.

  Tony Night finally asked, “Is this something you cooked up?”

  “No, I have no idea what it is.”

  Louder and louder until the colossal sound felt like it was right on top of them but still they saw nothing.

  Then as quickly the noise subsided—much faster than it did the time the rhinos and bullterriers raced by them.

  Tony Night slapped his forehead “Ah, I know what that was—the ants. How could I forget? Jeez, I live in your world only a few weeks and already I’m forgetting things.
”

  “What ants? What are you talking about?”

  “The ants in big shoes.”

  Tony Day stared blankly at the other man, completely lost.

  “You don’t remember?”

  “Remember what?”

  “Your ant nightmares.”

  Another huh? look from Tony Day.

  “Really, you don’t remember? Wow, that’s incredible. When we were a boy you saw an old black and white cartoon about a picnic overrun by ants. I thought it was funny and harmless, but for some reason you latched onto the idea and many of the worst nightmares of our whole childhood were centered around ants wearing big shoes kidnapping you and taking you prisoner inside an anthill as big as a Disneyland ride.”

  “No way! I don’t remember any of that.”

  “It’s the truth, Buddy: You were scared shitless of a bunch of ants wearing brown wingtip shoes on their feet. I thought it was only a dopey cartoon, but you sure didn’t; you used to wake up screaming and brushing your arms crazily like they were climbing all over you.” Tony Night pointed to the empty road in front of them. “Ergo I think we witnessed the return of the biggest boogey men of our youth—ants in big shoes. Welcome back to Tony Dreamland.”

  The real trouble began when both men fell in love. In one case it was entirely predictable, but in the other not so. Much to his surprise, Lena Schabort made Tony Night a better man. That sounds like an old bromide but in this case it was true. Almost more interesting was the fact he made Lena a better woman.

  It began with the sex, which was fireworks between them from the start and more than enough to make Tony Night happy and content. Lena seemed happy too and for those first few weeks they spent most of their time together in bed.

  But one day at work she walked by his desk and dropped a note on it. He was surprised to see she didn’t stop to watch while he read it as she’d done before when her first note to him at the office said “I want your tongue in my mouth right now.” This time she almost flung her second note onto his desk and hurried away without even glancing at him. He thought that was sort of odd, but Lena had her own way of doing things and so far he was okay with it.