“Come on, Frankie,” he said, opening the back door.
Frankie jumped to the blacktop and stayed near Allen,waiting to have his leash clipped onto his collar. Once leashed, Allen walkedthe dog to the rear of the Jeep, to a 50' x 50' grassy area bordered on twosides by the parking lot, and on the other two sides by streets.
“Looks like the perfect place to take a dump,” said Allen.
Frankie couldn't concentrate on anything but the gulls onthe sidewalk across the street. He barked and stared them down.
“Quiet down, dog. We'll be here for the next two weeks andI'm not going to want to hear you barking at those damn birds the whole time.”
When Allen had adopted Frankie from a shelter. He was toldFrankie was a “Heinz 57”, a conglomeration of several unidentified breeds. Inother words, a good, old-fashioned mutt. Allen considered this the best kind ofdog. The shelter people thought Frankie had some border collie in his mix. Thedog's intelligence, sweetness, and easy trainability bore this out, although itwas hard to detect any physical evidence of the breed in Frankie's shaggy blackand white coat, which reminded Allen of the love child of Chewbacca andBigfoot. Fortunately, Frankie did not have a herding dog's hyper-energetic,workaholic nature; he was more laid-back, which was a compliment to Allen'smostly sedentary writer lifestyle. He did, though, have the border collie's“herding eye,” an intense stare he reserved for birds, for some reason.Frankie's strange bird fixation was a peccadillo Allen had learned to livewith.
Allen tugged at the leash. “Shit or get off the pot, pal.”
Frankie lifted his leg and peed. He scratched at the grasswith his back feet.
“It ain't a litter box, dog.”
Allen raised his arms over his head, stretched, and yawned.He scanned the horizon, his focus eventually settling on a backhoe sitting on amassive mound of dirt, between the sidewalk and the rocky beach. White plasticsawhorses and orange cones sat on the sidewalk and curb, restricting access toa one hundred-foot section of the sidewalk and beach. Yellow plastic tape wasstrung between the sawhorses. There was also a bulldozer thirty feet south ofthe backhoe. Being Sunday, there were no workers.
“I wonder what they're doing over there?” Allen asked no onein particular. “I wonder how loud that's going to be all day?”
As Allen turned back toward the motel, a thin woman withshort gray hair caught his eye. She was standing in front of a door, to theleft of a soda machine.
“Come on, let's go talk to this lady.”
Allen and Frankie crossed the parking lot toward the oldwoman.
“You the manager?” Allen asked.
“Housekeeping,” the woman replied, her voice a crow-likerasp from the smoke of a million cigarettes. She coughed, and spit ayellowish-green chunk of lung three feet to the parking lot.
Nice, Allen thought.
“Is the manager around?”
The wrinkled hag nodded her head in the direction of theoffice. “What's that sign say?”
Allen gazed at the red neon sign. “Vacancy?”
“Not that one. The one on the door.”
Allen squinted to see the writing on a piece of computerpaper that had been tapped to the glass panel in the door. “I can't read itfrom here.”
“I can get yer wheelchair outta yer Jeep fir ya and wheelyou closer.”
“I don't have a wheelchair.”
“Then walk yer ass over there and read it.”
The old woman turned, opened the door she was standing infront of, and went inside.
Allen looked down at his dog. “Now that's what I callhospitality, boy,” he deadpanned.
He heard a door slam behind him and turned to see thelong-haired boy coming out of a room on the first floor. He dropped his skateboardto the blacktop, hopped on it, and sped away. Allen watched as the kid crossedthe street and jumped the curb.
The door the boy had exited—room number four—swung open. Thewoman who had crossed the street with the stroller stepped onto the porch. She hada baby on her hip.
“Jacob!” the woman hollered.
Allen knew the boy could hear her. Everyone in York Beachprobably heard her.
“Jacob Palmer!”
A few seconds later Jacob rolled out of sight.
The woman looked at Allen and shook her head.
“Selective hearing!” Allen called out.
“So it seems,” the woman responded. She stepped back intothe room and shut the door.
“Let's go read that sign, Frankie.”
As Allen and Frankie neared the office door the words on thesheet of paper came into focus. Manageron duty from one to nine, it said in pencil.
“No manager till one, can't check in till three. Whaddayathink, boy, should we take a walk up the street and see what's going on?”
Frankie didn't object, so off they went. They crossed thestreet and stepped onto the sidewalk.
“What do you think?” Allen asked the dog. “First time seeingthe ocean?”
Allen knew it was the dog's first time. It was the firsttime Frankie had been more than fifty miles from home.
Frankie was incarcerated at the Herkimer County HumaneSociety when he and Allen first met. “Get a dog,” several of his friends toldhim. “It'll take your mind off things.”
None of Allen's friends had ever lost a spouse, so hewondered how they knew a dog would take his mind off things. But, eventually,he figured he'd give it a try. They were wrong. They meant well, but they werewrong. The dog didn't take his mind off anything. Rum took his mind off things.Scotch took his mind off things. Tequila and whiskey also worked pretty well.As far as the dog was concerned, it was nice to have him around the house. Itwas great having someone to talk to, even if Frankie never talked back.
While standing on the sidewalk overlooking the water Allenrealized that the heavy machinery and sawhorse barricade were part of theongoing construction of a stepped concrete seawall. The finished section of theseawall ended right in front of the Sunrise Motel. He knew the workers wouldprobably be back at it in the morning, and the thought of construction noiseentered his head again. He wondered how early they started in the morning. Hewondered if he'd be able to sleep. He wondered
