The Accidental Tourist

“When I was a little girl,” Muriel said, “I didn’t like dogs at all or any other kinds of animals either. I thought they could read my mind. My folks gave me a puppy for my birthday and he would, like, cock his head, you know how they do? Cock his head and fix me with these bright round eyes and I said, ‘Ooh! Get him away from me! You know I can’t stand to be stared at.’ ”

She had a voice that wandered too far in all directions. It screeched upward; then it dropped to a raspy growl. “They had to take him back. Had to give him to a neighbor boy and buy me a whole different present, a beauty-parlor permanent which is what I’d set my heart on all along.”

She and Macon were standing in the entrance hall. She still had her coat on — a bulky-shouldered, three- quarter length, nubby black affair of a type last seen in the 1940s. Edward sat in front of her as he’d been ordered. He had met her at the door with his usual display, leaping and snarling, but she’d more or less walked right through him and pointed at his rump and told him to sit. He’d gaped at her. She had reached over and poked his rear end down with a long, sharp index finger.

“Now you kind of cluck your tongue,” she’d told Macon, demonstrating. “They get to know a cluck means praise. And when I hold my hand out — see? That means he has to stay.”

Edward stayed, but a yelp erupted from him every few seconds, reminding Macon of the periodic bloops from a percolator. Muriel hadn’t seemed to hear. She’d started discussing her lesson plan and then for no apparent reason had veered to her autobiography. But shouldn’t Edward be allowed to get up now? How long did she expect him to sit there?

“I guess you’re wondering why I’d want a permanent when this hair of mine is so frizzy,” she said. “Old mop! But I’ll be honest, this is not natural. My natural hair is real straight and lanky. Times I’ve just despaired of it. It was blond when I was a baby, can you believe that? Blond as a fairy-tale princess. People told my mother I’d look like Shirley Temple if she would just curl my hair, and so she did, she rolled my hair on orange juice tins. I had blue eyes, too, and they stayed that way for a long long time, a whole lot longer than most babies’ do. People thought I’d look that way forever and they talked about me going into the movies. Seriously! My mother arranged for tap- dance school when I wasn’t much more than a toddler. No one ever dreamed my hair would turn on me.”

Edward moaned. Muriel looked past Macon, into the glass of a picture that hung behind him. She cupped a hand beneath the ends of her hair, as if testing its weight. “Think what it must feel like,” she said, “waking up one morning and finding you’ve gone dark. It near about killed my mother, I can tell you. Ordinary dull old Muriel, muddy brown eyes and hair as black as dirt.”

Macon sensed he was supposed to offer some argument, but he was too anxious about Edward. “Oh, well…” he said. Then he said, “Shouldn’t we be letting him up now?”

“Up? Oh, the dog. In a minute,” she said. “So anyway. The reason it’s so frizzy is, I got this thing called a body perm. You ever heard of those? They’re supposed to just add body, but something went wrong. You think this is bad. If I was to take a brush to it, my hair would spring straight out from my head. I mean absolutely straight out. Kind of like a fright wig, isn’t that what you call it? So I can’t even brush it. I get up in the morning and there I am, ready to go. Lord, I hate to think of the tangles.”

“Maybe you could just comb it,” Macon suggested.

“Hard to drag a comb through it. All the little teeth would break off.”

“Maybe one of those thick-toothed combs that black people use.”

“I know what you mean but I’d feel silly buying one.”

“What for?” Macon asked. “They’re just hanging there in supermarkets. It wouldn’t have to be a big deal. Buy milk and bread or something and an Afro comb, no one will even think twice.”

“Well, I suppose you’re right,” she said, but now that she’d got him involved it seemed she’d lost interest in the problem herself. She snapped her fingers over Edward’s head. “Okay!” she said. Edward jumped up, barking. “That was very good,” she told him.

In fact, it was so good that Macon felt a little cross. Things couldn’t be that easy, he wanted to say. Edward had improved too quickly, the way a toothache will improve the moment you step into a dentist’s waiting room.

Muriel slipped her purse off her shoulder and set it on the hall table. Out came a long blue leash attached to a choke chain. “He’s supposed to wear this all the time,” she said. “Every minute till he’s trained. That way you can yank him back whenever he does something wrong. The leash is six dollars even, and the chain is two ninety-five. With tax it comes to, let’s see, nine forty. You can pay me at the end of the lesson.”

She slipped the choke chain over Edward’s head. Then she paused to examine a fingernail. “If I break another nail I’m going to scream,” she said. She took a step back and pointed to Edward’s rump. After a brief hesitation, he sat. Seated, he looked noble, Macon thought — chesty and solemn, nothing like his usual self. But when Muriel snapped her fingers, he jumped up as unruly as ever.

“Now you try,” Muriel told Macon.

Macon accepted the leash and pointed to Edward’s rump. Edward stood fast. Macon frowned and pointed more sternly. He felt foolish. Edward knew, if this woman didn’t, how little authority Macon had.

“Poke him down,” Muriel said.

This was going to be awkward. He propped a crutch against the radiator and bent stiffly to jab Edward with one finger. Edward sat. Macon clucked. Then he straightened and backed away, holding out his palm, but instead of staying, Edward rose and followed him. Muriel hissed between her teeth. Edward shrank down again. “He doesn’t take you seriously,” Muriel said.

“Well, I know that,” Macon snapped.

His broken leg was starting to ache.

“In fact I didn’t have so much as a kitten the whole entire time I was growing up,” Muriel said. Was she just going to leave Edward sitting there? “Then a couple of years ago I saw this ad in the paper, Make extra money in your off hours. Work as little or as much as you like. Place was a dog-training firm that went around to people’s houses. Doggie, Do, it was called. Don’t you just hate that name? Reminds me of dog-do. But anyhow, I answered the ad. ‘To be honest I don’t like animals,’ I said, but Mr. Quarles, the owner, he told me that was just as well. He told me it was people who got all mushy about them that had the most trouble.”

“Well, that makes sense,” Macon said, glancing at Edward. He had heard that dogs developed backaches if they were made to sit too long.

“I was just about his best pupil, it turns out. Seems I had a way with animals. So then I got a job at the Meow-Bow. Before that I worked at the Rapid-Eze Copy Center and believe me, I was looking for a change. Who’s the lady?”

“Lady?”

“The lady I just saw walking through the dining room.”

“That’s Rose.”

“Is she your ex-wife? Or what.”

“She’s my sister.”

“Oh, your sister!”

“This house belongs to her,” Macon said.

“I don’t live with anybody either,” Muriel told him.

Macon blinked. Hadn’t he just said he lived with his sister?

“Sometimes late at night when I get desperate for someone to talk to I call the time signal,” Muriel said. “ ‘At the tone the time will be eleven… forty-eight. And fifty seconds.’ ” Her voice took on a fruity fullness. “ ‘At the tone the time will be eleven… forty-nine. Exactly.’ You can release him now.”

“Pardon?”

“Release your dog.”

Macon snapped his fingers and Edward jumped up, yapping.

“How about you?” Muriel asked. “What do you do for a living?”

Macon said, “I write tour guides.”

“Tour guides! Lucky.”

“What’s lucky about it?”

“Why, you must get to travel all kinds of places!”

“Oh, well, travel,” Macon said.