Carmen Dog (18 page)

Pooch is stopped, of course. Right away. She is no sooner out the door than she is grabbed by a very large policeman. He was standing there as though waiting for her, and he is the largest policeman she has ever seen. And fat, too. He holds her arm so tightly that she can feel all four fingers and thumb, and she knows she'll have five bruises from it. “It's me,” the policeman keeps whispering to her. “It's me, it's me. Me!” And all the while he is dragging her to the back of the building instead of toward the front door where she is struggling to go. She is struggling so hard to escape that she hardly hears what he's saying and doesn't even pay attention to her nose, for there is certainly a strong, musky smell to this policeman ... a hot, damp fur smell. The baby, all this while, is trying to bite the policeman, but can't get a grip on anything but cloth. But then it does get a grip on rubber and the policeman's hand seems to tear away, showing long white glistening fur and the tips of five (abominable) black fingers visible beneath it. As with every human being, it is by now the visual that strikes Pooch the most forcefully, rather than the aural or olfactory.

Clearly Rosemary, hunching down and disguised as her lumpy old self has overpowered a policeman (a large one), traded clothes with him, and left him, perhaps in the very cell where he had been about to lock her up.

So now Pooch lets herself be led to a back room, with the baby still trying to bite Rosemary, though Pooch is struggling to keep it turned away. She's worried that the baby will be biting all the time now just to cause some excitement, since that first bite at the side of the master's lip was so effective and made so much happen. Poor baby. Pooch wonders not only what will become of it, but what it will become. And then that bite that had started off all these misadventures, when the baby was bitten by its own mother. But for that they'd never have left home. Though now ... of course the master is under a lot of tension, but it's clear that home is not what it used to be.

And here he is now, the master, as though a reminder of how it really is and perhaps was all along. He has come up behind them and is beating Pooch with the short whip. It is of braided leather with four short tails, hardly longer than two feet. He is beating at her face and shoulders with all his strength, yelling that she must be retrained and that he paid over six hundred dollars for her. Already there are red welts on the back of her neck and on her cheek, but Pooch is so angry that the lashes don't hurt. She is holding her arms and hands over the baby to protect it rather than over her own head (she still has the back of its diaper in her teeth) and is wondering, how can the master endanger his own baby like this? Why there is even a red mark, now on its cheek. Luckily another policeman, coming down the hall in the opposite direction, misinterprets the situation, pulls the master away, easily takes the whip from him, and leads him off toward the front of the building. Pooch can hear the master yelling all the way: “You're making a mistake. That animal just bit me right here. By the lip. Has killed."

Pooch is so angry at the lie that she hopes the baby
does
bite everyone it sees—and she may do the same. She wonders if she, too, had a mother who bit. That is certainly possible, though considering her pedigree it's unlikely. I am a dangerous animal, she thinks, and proud of it. But Rosemary's grip on her arm reminds her that her strength is only the strength of an ordinary female human being, that her humanity will force her to use her wits instead, and that she must now try to live by the mind. All right, she thinks, whether
some
human beings are acting human or not, I will do so, and do so proudly. And he called
me
animal!

So, led by Rosemary, she marches off to a back room where three policemen are interrogating the doctor. As soon as the baby sees him it begins to shout “Poo poo” and “Go away.” Then it pushes itself out of Pooch's arms (Pooch lets go of the diaper in her teeth) and, actually standing up, the baby wobbles towards the doctor, mouth open, ready to take a bite. Unfortunately, it seems that the baby has somehow, in spite of the lack of opportunities to practice, and here, at the worst possible moment, learned to walk.

"Go away, little boy,” one of the policemen says, though not unkindly. Probably because the baby is still completely bald—only a fine, almost colorless see-through fuzz on the top of its head—the policeman has taken it for a male. Or perhaps it is the vicious look in its eye that makes him think so.

But now Rosemary is holding her furry white hand in front of them all, and Pooch is standing beside her with her own kind of grin, teeth bared, looking rather like the baby had a moment before.

The policemen, all three, whip out their guns and tell Rosemary to take off her stolen police uniform and mask, to turn around, and “up-against-the-wall.” She doesn't turn around, but slowly takes off the uniform and mask, all the while looking at the three policemen in turn. They watch, fascinated, as the whole of Rosemary appears, shimmering in all her abominable brilliance. They are so absorbed that the doctor, the baby, and Pooch aren't noticed. They move as though on signal, though there is no signal. The doctor, handcuffed with his hands behind him, butts his head into the back of the policeman in front of him. Pooch jumps on the one in the middle. The baby has by now reached the doctor and firmly bites his ear so that Rosemary can, with one swipe of her big arm, cause all three of them to drop their guns. But the baby will not let go of the doctor's ear. Pooch thinks again of its mother and quickly resorts to the same solution that she used in that case: a lit match to the chin. The baby lets go in order to bark at her. This time the barking is a relief to Pooch. At least it shows that the baby cannot be becoming all snapping turtle. In fact, Pooch believes that its ability to speak (as now it is saying “Don't” and “No"),
and
bark,
and
bite,
and
growl,
and
walk,
and
crawl, all surely confirm that it is remaining human, although no doubt a little perverted by its experiences. One would hope not irreversibly so.

One of these days, if she does not end up in jail for good, Pooch hopes to be able to make a happy home for the baby, now that the other home is completely out of the question (and now that becoming an opera star seems unlikely, though she had once hoped to be able to combine career and marriage and perhaps even to bear children of her own).

By now the policemen, gagged and wearing nothing but their undershorts, are handcuffed to each other and to the heating pipe in the far corner of the room. Rosemary is back in her policeman's suit, and Pooch and the doctor, free of the handcuffs, are also dressed as policemen. Rosemary has put the guns, clubs, and walkie-talkies into a plastic bag that she found in the wastebasket. The doctor had wanted to keep the guns and clubs, and Pooch was tempted too, wanting to have something with which to defend the baby from the doctor, though she is more occupied, right now, with the opposite problem. She still does not quite understand how the doctor came to be on their side and why she should be escaping now with the very person who deprived her of her voice. But Rosemary has easily wrested the gun from her. “Don't be silly. You're not going to kill anyone and I don't believe you ever have."

Rosemary bundles up the third policeman's uniform and tucks it under her arm. “Come on,” she says, “or we'll miss the main action.” She will drop the bag with the guns and clubs into the first sewer they pass, and give the uniform to the first outrageous female it fits.

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Whither, ‘midst falling dew,

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,

Far, through their rosey depths, dost thou pursue

Thy solitary way?

—William Cullen Bryant

There are not many vestiges left to Isabel of the human being she had once been: a random word or two, the coquettish way she behaves when in sight of anything male, a gold bracelet that she keeps simply because she has forgotten how to release the catch. She lost her bearings long ago, though she still circles the Waldorf Astoria (but of course avoids the Plaza; she has that much sense). She still looks in Altman's and Lord & Taylor's windows, and can often be found around three am drinking from the fountain at Lincoln Center (popular watering hole for many of the female creatures in the early morning hours). Sometimes she balances on her hind legs, showing off her black fur coat and the white patch on her chest. If anyone approaches, lured by her sporadically provocative behavior, she warns them away with a show of teeth. Touchy, suspicious, always alone, but now a creature-mildness shows in her eyes. She will kill, but only if cornered. When she was more human, one was never quite sure what she was capable of. The temperament of a wolverine has made her, if anything, a little
less
wild—for the first time, willing to let well enough alone. In her present state, no one would wish harm to her in spite of what she has done, but only that she should be removed safely to Montana or upper Michigan.

Isabel usually sleeps until noon, as was her habit before all these changes began, but today something has awakened her earlier than usual. A rustling in the trees and on the ground, twitterings and laughter. She sees all sorts of female creatures gathering in small groups and combining into larger ones. Everyone is heading south. Isabel follows, keeping a safe distance. It is clear that she still has vestiges of that insatiable human trait, curiosity.

Valdoviccini, consumed with longing not only for the throaty baying voice he had heard from the top balcony a few weeks ago, but also for Chloe—especially for Chloe—has spent the night wandering in the vicinity of his Village
pied-à-terre
. He has found that he has more feelings for Chloe than he had thought. In fact more feelings for her than he has had for anyone in a long time, perhaps ever. Unlike all the women he has known before, she never minded his idiosyncracies, was neither afraid of him nor condemned him. Always she remained aloof, always sinuous and elegant, always dignified in
any
position. He remembers her curled up on the windowsill as though waiting for him. She would blink at him. Then stretch. Such a voluptuous stretch! In the garbage, for she cleaned up after herself (another aspect he liked about her: always impeccable), he would find the empty cartons of cream, the empty jars of caviar, the shells of the frozen shrimp he'd bought her. She was a voluptuous eater, and he liked that about her, too. Voluptuous in other ways—in
all
ways (like him in that) for, now and then, she would be so sexually turned on that she would roll on the floor and yowl. He knew she was disturbing the neighbors, but he didn't care. That black face! Those blue eyes! He doesn't want any other face than that one. Even the way they fought, a childish bickering they both enjoyed. And yet he has never told her that he liked her ... loved.... But she must have seen that. Though why should she, when he hadn't even seen it himself?

Now he is wondering—and the thought terrifies him—if she could have been rounded up and taken to the Academy to be inseminated. If it's not too late, maybe he can persuade them that he should be the one to father her child. He is, after all, well known in his field. Also he is well paid. He will go, now, to the Academy and see if she is there and, if she is, he will do anything to get her back or, if that can't be, to father her child. He does not let himself think that she might have been taken instead to the pound, though in the back of his mind he knows that, if she is not at the Academy of Motherhood, he will rush to the pound. He hopes they are still required by law to keep the inmates seven days. Before he leaves he puts that cryptic note in his pocket: “I am she whom you seek."

The streets are full of policemen and Rosemarys—probably exactly what Rosemary had in mind when she brought down the masks and uniforms from the attic. Some of the Rosemarys are very large indeed while many of the policemen are quite small and have rolled-up pants legs that keep coming down and tripping them. Now and again there is a car that has hit a lamppost or fire hydrant and has not yet been towed away, or that has stopped right in the middle of the street. None of the policemen pays the slightest attention to them.

Rosemary, the doctor, Pooch, and the baby have no sooner hurried away from the police station than they see a group of Rosemarys on the opposite street corner looking at them and speaking into their walkie-talkies. Rosemary leads Pooch and the doctor in a quick right turn down a side street, but the other Rosemarys make that same turn and follow, half a block behind. Pooch is too busy to think about this, though; she is having a great deal of trouble keeping the baby from biting the doctor again. He tells Pooch, “That baby should get out of your sphere of influence before it is damaged irrevocably.” He has called her Isabel twice and 107 three times already.

Again Pooch is wondering how (or if) the doctor got to be on their side. He had represented the essence of evil to her because he thought only of ends and never seemed to consider means or meals. She is wondering how it came about that they are trotting down the street together as though the dreadful testing that went on in the laboratory had never taken place. But Rosemary seems to have him under control.

In answer to the doctor Pooch shakes her head vigorously, but he isn't looking. Then she manages to bark out a fairly clear “No,” which the baby reiterates. In the same barking fashion, she stutters, “Not, not, not, not.... “And at last she gets out a fairly clear “Isabel.” Barks, yes, but a “Not Isabel” nonetheless. But the effort is wasted. She is walking a bit behind the other two, for the safety of the doctor, and just as she manages to get the words out, she trips on her unrolling pants and falls down. Since she is behind them, the others don't notice and hurry on.