question? I thought about it. Sometimes I think better with my eyes closed, so I closed them.
When I awoke, I was back to feeling tip-top, so tip-top I knew I must have done some world-class thinking. I sat up straight, stuck my head out the window. Ah, the Valley. No place like it. The Valley goes on forever in all directions, and those smells! You haven’t smelled till you’ve smelled the Valley. Hot rubber, hot pavement, hot sauce, hot charcoal ash, hot everything! Yes, even hot ice cream. Plus all kinds of grease-deep-fry grease, pizza grease, burrito grease, unwashed human skin grease, and human hair grease-not to mention the grease on my tail at this very moment. Where had that come from? I tried to remember, but not hard. Back to the lovely smells of the Valley, all of them with something in common, namely the dry dusty scent of the desert. I wouldn’t live anywhere else.
Bernie glanced over at me. “Smell anything, big guy?”
He stuck his own head out the window and took a few sniffs.
“I don’t,” he said.
That Bernie! The best human sense of humor in the business, bar none. This had to be one of his little jokes, what with the whole river of smells flowing by and us smack in the middle of it. A nice refreshing breeze sprang up behind me so I turned to check it out-I can probably turn my head a bit farther around than you, no offense-and there was my greasy tail, wagging away. I just love Bernie.
We pulled into a strip mall. We’ve got strip malls out the yingyang in the Valley, just one more thing that makes it great. This particular strip mall was where Suzie Sanchez worked. Suzie’s a reporter for the Valley Tribune, and also Bernie’s girlfriend. If he had to have a girlfriend, then Suzie was a great choice. Compared to Leda, for example, Bernie’s ex-wife and mother of his kid, Charlie, who we miss a lot, seeing as he’s only around some weekends, plus every second Christmas and Thanksgiving, a complicated human arrangement that turned out to mean having even less of Charlie. Thanksgiving’s my favorite holiday and Halloween’s the worst, but no time to get into that now.
We entered the Tribune office, walking past the workstations, all empty, and there was Suzie at the back, fingers going tac-tac-tac on the keyboard, a sound I happened to like. If I had Suzie’s job I’d make that sound twenty-four seven, faster and faster, and with all my paws in action that would be pretty damn rapid. Kind of a strange thought; probably better if it never happens again.
Some humans have the sort of brain where you can feel it at work, like a powerful, pulsing muscle. Suzie was one of those, but at the same time, she had a big warm smile and black eyes that shone like the countertops in our kitchen after Bernie polishes them, which doesn’t happen often. Only when we got real close did she look up.
Then came a surprise. Suzie wasn’t smiling, and her eyes, shining for a moment, lost that sparkle almost right away.
Bernie was smiling, though, that real big one, always so nice to see.
“Hey, Suzie,” he said. “Lookin’ good.”
“Liar,” she said, sweeping back a lock of her dark hair. Hey! What was that? A line on Suzie’s forehead? And another? Those were new, unless my memory was playing tricks on me, something memories can do, Bernie says, although I don’t remember ever experiencing that personally.
“How’d the car thing go?” Suzie said.
“Found a beauty,” Bernie said.
We had? News to me, but I got most of my news from Bernie.
Suzie pressed a button and her screen went dark. “Bernie?” she said. “Got a moment?”
“More than a moment. How about we take you to lunch?”
Suzie bit her lip, another one of those human things I look for. In the nation within the nation, as Bernie sometimes calls me and my kind, we don’t bite our lips, except by accident, when a bit of lip gets caught on a tooth, say. Human lip biting sends a message, a message I’d never gotten from Suzie before.
“I’m slammed today, Bernie,” she said. “Let’s just go out for a little walk.”
“A walk? It’s ninety-seven out there and just getting started.”
“A short walk.”
Bernie’s smile faded and was gone. “Something on your mind?”
Suzie nodded, her eyes not meeting his. I got a sudden urge to chew on something; almost anything would do.
“We can talk here,” Bernie said.
Suzie glanced around. Still just us in the office, but she said, “Outside’s better.”
“Okeydoke,” said Bernie. Okeydoke is a way Bernie has of saying yes, but only when we’re on the job, so what was up with that?
We went outside. There was some confusion at the door, but I ended up going out first. We walked toward a line of skinny, dusty trees that separated this strip mall from the next one. An old picnic table, weathered and lopsided, stood in the shade.
With picnic tables, it usually works like this: humans sit on the benches, facing the table, and I settle down underneath, waiting to get lucky, picnic food usually being pretty messy. But none of that happened now. No food, for one thing. Bernie sort of leaned against the table at a funny angle; Suzie sat at the end of one of the benches, but facing out, legs crossed and then uncrossed; I circled around. What was this? None of us could get comfortable? I started panting a bit.
“Bernie?”
“Yeah?”
“I have some news.”
“You’re a newswoman.”
Suzie’s lips turned upward in maybe the quickest, smallest smile I’d ever seen. Then she nodded. “I’ve got a job offer.”
“That’s all?” said Bernie.
“What do you mean?”
“I thought maybe you’d met somebody.”
“Met somebody?”
“Or Dylan was back in the picture.”
“Dylan?” Suzie said. “Oh, Bernie.” She held out her hand. Bernie took it in his.
Dylan McKnight back in the picture? He was Suzie’s boyfriend long ago, a perp who’d done a stretch at Northern State Correctional, and was now where? LA? Hard to keep all the details straight, but the best one-that time I’d driven him up a tree-was still so clear in my mind!
“Let me guess,” said Bernie. “The Trib ’s making you managing editor.”
She laughed, one of those tiny laughs that’s just a little jet of air from the nose. “That would never happen,” Suzie says. “It’s another reporting job, but somewhere else.”
“Not the Clarion?” Bernie said.
Suzie shook her head.
“Whew,” said Bernie. “Not sure how I’d handle that. They won’t stop until every square inch of the whole state’s totally developed.”
“It’s the Post, Bernie.”
Bernie has very expressive eyebrows, one of his best features, although they’re all so good, it’s hard to choose. Right now, his eyebrows were sort of trying to meet in the middle, a puzzled look you didn’t often see on Bernie’s face. “The Post?” he said.
“The Washington Post,” said Suzie.
Bernie let go of Suzie’s hand. “Oh,” he said.
Something was up-I could just tell. But what?
“I’m so torn,” Suzie said. “And the irony is it’s all due to that series I wrote about the Big Bear case.”
Whoa. Big Bear Wilderness Camp? The sheriff? Those deputies? That judge? The mama bear? All of them breaking rocks in the hot sun by now, or very soon. Except for that mama bear, of course. Let’s not get started on her.
“Don’t be torn,” Bernie said. “You deserve it.”
“There’s no deserving, Bernie. Not in this business.”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” Bernie said. “But-” He went silent.
