I looked at Weis the same instant he looked at me.
The dogs. They had said “the dogs.”
I suppose in a way it must make it easier for a person to do something like this if they can remove their hearts from the event to some degree. Put your father in a nursing home, you suddenly stop referring to him as “Dad” and just as “him” when talking to the admissions nurse; “Dad” gives his identity a too-close proximity to your conscience, but “him,” “him” is safe because it’s nonspecific, “him” is a term applied to a Person You Don’t Really Know, someone removed from you, someone you haven’t spent your entire life around and who has helped determine the kind of person you’ve become. So “Dad” becomes “him,” “Mom” becomes “her,” and “the Its” become “the dogs.”
Christ, I felt suddenly so sad. I suspected Weis did, too. When our gazes met I could see the signal flares going off behind his eyes: Mayday, Mayday, we’re sinking fast, jettison all unnecessary cargo immediately, Mayday, Mayday…
I opened the door and started to climb out. “You wanna come along, Mr. Weis?”
“Thought you’d never ask.”
I retrieved his wheelchair and got him situated, then leaned down by Beth’s window. “I’ll find out what we’re supposed to do, where we take them and all of that.”
“Thanks. It’ll give us a couple of minutes to say good-bye.”
“I figured.”
She leaned out and kissed me. After all this time, her lips on mine still made my knees melt.
I grabbed the handles of Weis’s chair and moved toward the building.
“Alone at last,” he said.
“I didn’t know you cared.”
“No one ever does, it’s part of my well-honed mystique.”
I wasn’t quite sure what to make of that so I left it alone. “Any thoughts on what movie you’d like to see later?”
“So long as it doesn’t have Meryl Streep in it, I don’t care. Don’t get me wrong, she’s a great actress and a looker, but she reminds me too much of my daughter. Have I mentioned that I’m a little irked at my daughter right now? I mean, I don’t expect her to fly up here from L.A. every chance she gets, but I have trouble believing that someone can be so busy that they can’t pick up a goddamn phone and call for five minutes once a week. I’m not asking to be the center of her life, you understand, but it gets boring as hell out here on the periphery sometimes. Was I raving there for a moment? Sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too.” And I was. He was actually pretty splendid company, once you got past the bluster and brouhaha.
The entrance to the building was surprisingly small-I almost couldn’t maneuver the wheelchair through it-but once inside it seemed even larger that it appeared from the parking lot.
The entry area was probably about twenty feet wide and fifteen deep. To the right was a massive steel door with a single, darkened window at eye-level and a SANCTIONED PERSONNEL ONLY sign. It reminded me of the heavy iron door to that cell in every last Frankenstein movie where they imprison the monster and assure one another that it’s strong enough to prevent the creature from escaping. Whatever lay beyond that door took up exactly half of the building. I figured that’s where they probably kept the animal cages.
The wall facing us was concrete, about seven feet tall, and held three rows of eight cubbyholes, each big enough to hold a good-sized dog or cat; a fourth row, at knee-level, contained cubbies for the larger dogs-Saint Bernards, German shepherds, Dobermans, etc. Each cubby had a door of heavy iron bars attached to it. For the moment, all the cubbies were empty and their doors open. It looked like an automat after lunch rush; you could even see how the back wall of each swung open so whoever worked behind the scenes could retrieve the animals. A sign above stated that once an animal was placed inside, it became the responsibility of Keepers and would not be returned to the donor; it also warned that the locks were magnetized, so once a door was closed it could not be opened again from our side.
“Why do you suppose they do it that way?”
Mr. Weis shrugged. “My guess is it’s a safety precaution. Folks wouldn’t be bringing their animals here unless they absolutely had to. If you love a pet enough not to hand it over to those Nazis gas chambers at the Humane Society, then you love it enough to change your mind at the last minute, and that’s not a good idea for you or the animal. My guess is a lot of folks have second thoughts once they see their pet behind those bars. This way, there’s no going back.”
“So they really only give you one chance to back out.”
“Damn straight. Once it’s in that cage, that’s all she wrote.”
The wall behind us sported a long shelf deep enough for a dog or cat to sit on and be groomed; there were combs, brushes, nail clippers, flea collars, bags of treats, and countless other goodies set out for people to use before leaving their animals. There was also a series of wooden lockboxes where you could leave a monetary donation; a sign over each box read: “Keepers is a privately funded, non-profit animal protection organization. Donations from the public, though not required, are nonetheless welcomed. All money goes toward the feeding and care of the animals. Keepers does not believe in destroying animals. Once they are with us, they are here for life, even if a new home is never found. Here they will remain happy. Here they will remain loved.”
I read the sign again. “Seems almost too good to be true.”
“Gift horse. Mouth. Looking into it. Bad idea. Get it?”
“Got it.”
“Good.” Then: “A Danny Kaye fan, as well. There’s hope for you yet.”
There was no wall to our left; instead, there was a massive and cavernous play area that extended so far back it looked like a study in forced perspective; swing sets for children, sandboxes, rows of folding chairs, picnic tables, music playing from unseen speakers, the smell of hot dogs and hamburgers… if it weren’t for the walls surrounding all of this and the ceiling of skylights, you’d swear you were in Moundbuilders Park on a summer afternoon.
And the animals were everywhere, dogs, cats, pigs, birds, rabbits, a couple of horses and cows, each fenced off in its own area (except the birds, who flew freely throughout) so that children and adults alike could pet them, either from outside the barrier or from within.
“Looks like a goddamn 4H convention,” said Weis.
I thought it was cool. There were children playing on the swings, mothers sipping icy colas as they relaxed on the chairs or played with the dogs and cats. The animals themselves were clean and healthy and seemed quite happy. I caught glimpses of figures wearing tan jumpsuits with KEEPERS printed across their backs weaving through the pens and people, asking questions, making notes, handing out treats. All of them wore tan wool caps pulled down to cover the tops of their ears. Although it was comfortably cool in here-the air-filtration system must have cost a fortune, because you could barely smell any urine or feces or any other potently animal scents you would have expected-it wasn’t cool enough for a cap of any kind.
A sign on the farthest wall proclaimed this to be the “Selection Area,” and that we should take our time getting to know the animals before bearing them home with us. That was the actual phrase: “bearing them home.” I don’t know why that stuck in my mind. All of the signs contained odd little phrases like that, as if written by someone to whom English was a second language and so its most formal rules of usage were followed when composing the notices.
I wondered if the woman in the car and her two children had made a morning of it in here, playing with dozens of puppies and dogs before selecting the one that just seemed to love them so much they couldn’t bear the thought of leaving without it.
Everywhere I looked there were women-well-dressed women, women who drove expensive cars and wore white gloves for afternoon tea and had a standing appointment with their hair stylist each week and whose children attended private schools-playing with a dog or cat or bunny, smiling as the animal wagged its tail or whiskers and licked a hand or face, and these women would grin from ear to ear saying, “How is Mama’s little baby? Is Mama’s little baby lonesome?” It was sweet.
“Beth and Mabel need to see this,” I said to Mr. Weis. “I really think they’ll feel a whole lot better knowing how this works.”
“You don’t suppose they’ve got an elephant stashed away somewhere, do you?” asked Weis. “I was
