The Mad and the MacAbre

'Hi, Kutter. You're a good boy, aren't you?'

Charlie tried not to grimace, Yeah, he talked to Kutter way more than he wanted to admit, but at least he didn't ask idiotic questions like that. What did she think Kutter was going to say? 'No, ma'am, I'm not a good boy at all, but I appreciate your vote of confidence.'

The woman had a wiener dog. Charlie didn't want to touch it. He knew he had to make some small talk before asking her out.

'What's your dog's name?' he asked.

'Harvey. With an H.'

Charlie frowned. What other letter would the name Harvey start with? Did she think he was a moron? She was the one with the hot dog dog, not him.

Then he realized from her smile that she was trying to be amusing by referencing his 'with a K' comment. Duh. He shouldn't have needed extra time to figure that out. If she thought he was a moron, she was absolutely right. But if she was joking around with him, then she trusted him, and if she trusted him...

'Do you want to get some coffee?' Charlie asked.

The woman held up her left hand, revealing her wedding ring. 'I don't think my husband would like that.'

'I didn't mean like that. Just coffee.'

'I'm just here to get Harvey some exercise. But I appreciate the offer.'

Charlie started to insist that he merely wanted to get coffee as friends, but no, it wasn't a good idea to appear desperate. The last thing he needed was for her to tell the cops that there was a creepy guy harassing women at the dog park.

'No problem.'

This wasn't working at all. Apparently only the dregs of society could be convinced to go anywhere with him, even with a Boston terrier in tow. It was time to give up on this idea and return to his old hunting grounds.

No. He had as much right to be here as anybody else, and it wasn't a crime to ask somebody to go out for coffee.

It was definitely a nice park--a lot nicer than the one near his house. Would hanging out here all day without bringing home a victim really be such a wasted day? Kutter seemed to be enjoying it, if nothing else.

There was a circular purple object lying in the snow. A Frisbee. Charlie picked it up, shook off the snow, and let Kutter sniff it. The dog seemed to approve.

Charlie flung the Frisbee, which went in the exact opposite direction that he'd intended and struck a tree that was about four feet away. As soon as the Frisbee hit the ground Kutter had snatched it up in his mouth and brought it back, holding it up expectantly.

Charlie took hold of the Frisbee and tugged gently, but Kutter didn't let it go.

'Give it to me so I can throw it again,' he instructed.

He tugged again. Kutter tugged back.

'You're not doing this correctly,' Charlie said. He knew next to nothing about dog/human interactions, but he at least knew how to play fetch. How was it possible that he understood the rules better than Kutter?

Charlie let go of the Frisbee. 'When you're ready to play right, let me know.'

Kutter stared up at him for a moment, then let out a whine.

'Don't whine at me. You have to let it go. Do you want me to throw it with your jaws still stuck on it?'

Charlie grabbed the Frisbee and gently tugged again. Kutter vigorously shook his head side-to-side and refused to relinquish his grip. Charlie tugged a little harder and Kutter tugged back harder.

'You're playing the wrong game,' Charlie informed the dog. Tug-of-war was supposed to be with a thick rope, or a sock, or maybe a dead squirrel. Frisbees were for throwing and playing fetch. This dog was totally mixed up.

Charlie released his grip again. This time, Kutter let the Frisbee fall. Charlie picked it up and gave it another fling--right into the same tree. He looked around the park to see if anybody had noticed.

Several people had. They were amused.

Charlie cursed.

Kutter brought back the Frisbee, and after another minute of not letting go of it, dropped it into the snow. Charlie picked it up and walked several feet to the left to distance himself from that stupid tree. He swung his arm back and forth a few times, trying to envision the trajectory the Frisbee would take when he released it. Finally, with all of his strength, he threw the disc.

It was another pretty lousy throw, but this one at least missed the tree and any other obstacles and flew through the air like it was supposed to. Kutter, barking furiously, chased after it, running across the park at top speed while kicking up snow. He leapt up into the air and caught the Frisbee in his mouth.

Wow. Charlie was impressed. He certainly couldn't do that.

Kutter happily scampered back over to Charlie and dropped the Frisbee in front of him. Then Kutter snatched it back up as Charlie reached for it. It was a bizarre combination of fetch and tug-of-war--clearly the poor animal had never been taught how to separate the individual games. No problem. Charlie played along, making several attempts to retrieve the Frisbee before Kutter let go of his prize.

The next throw was infinitely better. Charlie hoped lots of people had seen it, because it went perfectly straight and almost beyond the edge of the park. Kutter caught this one, too.

'You're pretty talented,' Charlie told the dog. 'That's a good skill to have.'

It wasn't really, unless there was a market for Frisbee-catching, but everybody else in the park was complimenting their pets, so why shouldn't Charlie? He scratched Kutter behind the ears, then threw the Frisbee again.

And again. And again.

He threw the Frisbee until his arm ached. Kutter never seemed to get tired of it. On the seventh or eighth throw, Charlie accidentally blurted out 'Go get it, boy!' which was of course a completely pointless command, but he found that he felt a surprising lack of self-consciousness while saying it, so he kept it up, going so far as to cheer on the dog as it sprinted toward the purple Frisbee. Though Kutter didn't catch it every single time, he at least got three out of four, and the ones he missed could generally be blamed on the quality of Charlie's throw.

Charlie shifted to his left arm when his right arm started to go numb, but after a throw that involved flinging the Frisbee straight down into the ground, he decided to quit for the day. He checked his watch. Wow. They'd been there over two hours. It hadn't felt anywhere near that long.

It was a lousy hunt, but a good day.

- 7 -

'That wasn't very smart of us,' said Charlie as they pulled into the McDonalds drive-thru. All that Frisbee- tossing had made him hungry. 'Everyone in that park is going to remember us. We can't hunt there tomorrow, or maybe any other time. We're too memorable.'

Well, perhaps they weren't. Certainly Kutter wasn't the first miracle Frisbee-catching Boston terrier to have spent a couple of hours practicing his craft in the dog park...but still, they had to be as cautious as possible, and running around in front of everybody was not the way to keep himself out of jail.

Even if he had found a woman willing to get into his car, it would've been a terrible idea to actually lure her inside. He'd screwed up.

That said, Charlie didn't feel like beating himself up over it. He didn't feel like crying. He wasn't pathetic. He felt fine.

He'd had fun. And it was a much safer kind of fun than torturing and murdering a woman in his basement.

He ordered a Big Mac, large fries, and Coke for himself, and three hamburgers and a cup of water for Kutter. Kutter gobbled the burgers almost as quickly as Charlie could unwrap them and toss them over to him, and also