Authors: Jonathan Carroll

Outside the Dog Museum (10 page)

BOOK: Outside the Dog Museum

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“The guy who ran the restaurant came over to our table to see if everything was okay. I asked about the bottles and he looked at his watch. ‘The drivers will be here soon. Tonight they celebrate. The whiskey is theirs.’

“That’s all he’d say, but fifteen minutes later, we heard the first truck coming. What a sound! Slammy went to the window and called us over. They were rendezvousing for their New Year’s party out there in the middle of the desert!

“The four of us stood at the window letting our dinner get cold watching them pull into the big lot in front of the place. There were real Nordic blondes, redheads, Arabs wearing kaffiyehs and thick black moustaches. But you know what they all had in common, Harry? They were the fiercest-looking bunch of men I have ever seen in my life. No matter what they were wearing or what color they were, they all looked like gladiators.”

“Wait a minute.” I started up from my seat, undoing my hand from Claire’s before she could say anything. I had to get out of the room as fast as I could. I was afraid I’d throw up. I was scared shitless.

“Harry, what’s the matter?”

Her question raced me to the door.

Outside, a startled nurse glared accusingly as I ran for the drinking fountain down the hall. The water was so cold it stung my lips. I slurped it down as fast as I could. Then I put my hand in and smeared it across my face, neck, the back of my neck.

I was
there
. I climbed out of one of those trucks. I saw this woman looking at me out of a window and wondered if I’d get to fuck her that night. Why not? New Year’s Eve everybody got loose.

We’d been on the road forty hours. There’d been trouble and delays the whole trip. We were running a half day late. I remembered everything: the acid stale smell of the cigarette the Bulgarian border guard was smoking as he looked over our papers; the ratcheting of bugs by the side of the road in Turkey when we stopped to piss; the warm sun on the back of my neck there after the cool in the truck.

I was this man. I remembered everything. His name was Heinrich Mis. I’d never seen him before in my life.

This … immersion happened once before with Venasque when the shaman was still alive. We were sitting in a diner in Silver Lake having breakfast when a man came in and sat down a few stools from us at the counter. Just a guy in overalls. Venasque and I were talking about something. When I looked up and saw the man, I … went away. Went away into his life and in an instant, knew everything that he was. Completely. His name was Randy. He was a union metal worker. He was a son of a bitch.

“Come. Come on. Come back!” Venasque, a hand on my arm, was calling me like he would a naughty puppy on the other side of the room. I looked at him flat stoned. He got me up and out of there and into the parking lot. Leaning on a white car. All the energy I had in the world was gone. When I came around, I looked at the old man. He was smiling.

“What the
fuck
was that?”

“Sometimes you meet up with your future, Harry. Usually it’s a person, but sometimes it’s a place or a thing. What you gotta do now is figure out where that guy fits into yours. It could be very important.”

“But I
was
him, Venasque! I was him!”

“You are your future, Harry. It’s in you every minute you’re alive. You just saw part of it for the first time. Now figure out where that guy belongs in it.”

But I didn’t get a chance to do that because three days later Randy was dead: the first man ever killed on a Harry Radcliffe project. Fell off the top floor of the almost-completed Gröbchen Building in Pasadena.

Poor sweet Claire was very concerned when I returned to her room a few minutes later, looking ill. I said it must have been something I ate for lunch but she wasn’t fooled.

“Don’t lie, Harry. Is it because of how I look?”

“No, honey, I saw a lot worse in Vietnam. No, it was … How much energy do you have? Tell the truth.”

Her smile, what there was of it, calmed me. “It doesn’t take energy to listen. Are you finally going to reveal one of the Radcliffe secrets?”

“Sort of. Remember what you were talking about before, that rest house in Saru? I have to tell you this. It’s disturbing, but I must tell you.”

Her good hand lay palm down at her side. She turned it over and wiggled the fingers. “Hold my hand and tell me. But I want to say something first: I talk to you all the time when you’re not here. We have long conversations. I know you better than you think, Harry. We can have a happy ending if you want. I just don’t know if you
want
happy endings. Artists are kids—they only want to eat junk food. Candy bars of muddle and unhappiness. They give you a charge, but only for a few minutes.

“I don’t know if you love your silly confused life now or what.
I haven’t been able to figure that part out yet.” She winked. “But I will—in our next conversation when you aren’t here. Now, what were you going to say?”

“Do you love me?” I asked, trying to sound naughty and cute. But our eyes locked and her answer came out serious as religion.

“More than you know. More than you deserve.”

“I
don’t
know what I’m doing these days. You’re right, but I can’t imagine you and I undone.”

“Well, then what about you and Fanny?”

“When I was a kid, my mother and I were walking down the street one day and saw two dogs screwing. They were really going at it. I knew what was up, but naturally asked Mom what they were doing, just to hear her answer. She said, ‘The dog underneath is hurt. The one on top is pushing it to the hospital.’”

“What does that have to do with my question?”

“‘Cause I don’t know whether you’re asking or telling me: You want the truth, or an answer to that?”

Claire was silent. “I don’t know. I keep wondering whether I love you for what you are, or what I think you could be with a little tinkering on my part. Maybe you’re simply not a monogamous person anymore. I am. What do I do then? I don’t want to hear that. Maybe you’ll want Fanny and me both for the rest of your life. Would
she
put up with that?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Not me. Let’s change the subject. My heart’s beginning to get a stomachache. Tell me what you were going to before. No wait a minute, there’s one last thing. I just remembered it. ‘The evil of another person can be averted: There is no escape from one’s own.’ Go on.”

“What do you mean? How does that apply? Are you saying I’m evil?”

“No. Take out the word ‘evil’ and put in ‘confusion.’ But maybe there
is
some evil in there too.” She closed her eyes.

CLAIRE’S REACTION TO MY
story about being at the Saru rest house with her was disconcerting, to say the least: She smiled and patted her good hand on the bed as if applauding, because she’d experienced the same precognition or voodoo empathy or whateveryouwanttocallit throughout her life!

“Doesn’t it scare you?”

“It used to. Now it helps me see better. Like those people who die and come back. The one thing they have in common is, afterwards, none of them is afraid to die anymore because they’ve experienced what’s coming and it’s wonderful. When I’ve traveled out and seen myself from different perspectives, it makes me less afraid. And makes me feel better about myself generally. Compared to most people, I’m better. More thoughtful, kinder … things like that.

“I’m glad you were there, that you know what it was like. I remember that truck driver. He was so young. I could tell he was interested because he kept looking at me. But he’d never have done anything—he was so shy and unsure of himself. He sat with the drivers and drank his scotch, then put his head down on the table and passed out! He was still there when we went up to bed.”

BANANAS ARE THE ONLY
democratic food: Everyone looks ridiculous eating them.

Bronze Sydney, Big Top, Dr. Bill Rosenberg from next door, and I were all standing around the ruin of my Santa Barbara house, eating bananas. I’d peeled Big Top’s for him.

“Bill, is that cologne you’re wearing or an insult?”

“You’re just pissed off because your house looks like a miniature golf course.”

“We’ve got insurance.”

Sydney looked at me surprised. “You’re not going to rebuild, are you?”

“Naah. You don’t want to live here anymore and neither do I.”

Bill ate the rest of his banana and threw the peel into what was once my garden. “But your apartment in L.A.’s screwed up too. Where are you going to live?” He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. “Are you two going to start living together again?”

As one, both Sydney and I said, “No!”

“Harry’s going to the Mideast for a few weeks.”

“I’ll decide what to do when I get back. I may not take a place at all if I accept the job. It’s a big project. They’ll need me on-site for a while.”

“What’s the deal?”

I finished my banana and threw the peel after the other. “A dog museum in Saru.”

Big Top wagged his tail slowly.

“A
dog
museum? You going to take the dog with you as technical advisor?” Bill snorted.

“Actually, he is going with me. They’re going to make a statue of him for the front gates.”

“How come?”

“Because he’s a verz.”

“That says a lot, Harry.”

Sydney looked at me. “Are you really going to take him?”

“Absolutely. He’s already had the necessary shots.”

“Who wants a dog museum in Saru? Isn’t that where they’re having all that trouble with the Muslim fundamentalists? There was a thing on TV the other night. I’d steer clear of
that
Casbah, Harry. Unless you want a rhino-horn scimitar up your ass.” Adventurous Bill took another banana from the bunch Sydney was holding and unpeeled it. We watched with interest.

It was going to be another beautiful day in Santa Barbara. The only thing marring it was the landscape immediately in front of us:
the ex-Radcliffe homestead, which looked like ground zero after a slight nuclear attack.

Rosenberg called immediately after the earthquake to tell us there wasn’t much left of our house. This was the first time we’d been able to come up and survey the damage. Yet it wasn’t damage so much as total destruction and disappearance. In fact, I was shocked more by what wasn’t there than what was. Okay, sure, the earth opened its big mouth and swallowed up this and that, crunched other things in its teeth down to nothing. I could accept those rationalizations, but almost nothing was left on the site of what had once been a large and detailed house. Not that Harry Radcliffe designs were all meant to survive the full volume of God’s wrath, but this whole motherfucker was gone!

“It’s like a flying saucer came, vacuumed it up, and took it back to Saturn.”

“How do you feel, Harry?”

I looked at Sydney and squinted because the morning sun was directly over her shoulder. “Raped. It was a beautiful house. Fit perfectly on this hill and added nice human color to the landscape. I feel raped.” I wanted to say something more but my voice lost all of its appetite to talk.

“Why do you think my house wasn’t touched, Syd?”

“Luck of the draw, Bill.”

I grabbed Sydney’s arm and pulled her close, like a lifesaver on the vast sea that was suddenly roiling all around me. “They’re the only real I know, Syd. The only ones I knew how to do well.”

She nodded. Kept nodding.

“What do I do when they disappear like this?”

“You can build it again, Harry.”

“But it’s not the same! It’s like cloning someone from one of their hairs. We can use the old plans, sure, build it exactly the same. But
it’s
not
the same! This one’s dead. It’s gone. Put up a stone over it.”

I started down the hill to the car. At the point where the ocean shows again after a thick stand of pine trees that perfume the dry California air with crisp northern smells, I turned and shouted back, “You know what the difference between tragedy and comedy is? Tragedy keeps reminding us how limited life is. Comedy says there are no limits.”

PUT ON THE SEX
Pistols.”

I turned around and scowled back at her on the bed, naked, leering at me. She had on a black baseball cap with the word “Fritos” in yellow across the front. She tipped it at me.

“Fanny, my idea of good sex is not fucking to a Sex Pistols album.”

“No,
you’d
fuck to
Hotel California
if I gave you the chance.”

“Those are Bronze Sydney’s albums.”

“Which you’ve kept.” She accused.

“Why do we have a fight about this every time we go to bed?”

“Because we like music when we do it but hate each other’s taste.”

BOOK: Outside the Dog Museum

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