Smells Like Dog (12 page)

“I said I’ll be there!”

“You’d better.” Gwendolyn heaved the duffel bag over her shoulder and stomped off.

Homer watched as his sister walked away, her footsteps feisty and determined. The Pudding kids had different interests, no doubt about that, but they shared the same passion for their dreams. Nothing was going to get in Gwendolyn’s way. Homer admired that. He raised his hand to wave, hoping she’d turn around, but she disappeared into the crowd. The towering shapes of the endless buildings made him feel small, as if he might also disappear and no one would notice. He almost ran after her, suddenly afraid to be left on his own in such a loud, stinky place.

“Solitude is the treasure hunter’s destiny,” Uncle Drake had once told him. “While you might begin your quest in a large group, as Sir Richard did with his elephant wranglers and veterinarians, you will face the final test of endurance and intellect on your own.”

I can do this,
Homer thought, but he didn’t feel convinced so he said it out loud. “I can do this.”

“Do what?” A girl knelt next to Dog and scratched his rump so that Dog’s back legs did a little dance. “What can you do?”

Homer didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t meant for anyone to hear.

“Hey, how come your dog looks so sad?”

“He just does.” Dog kept dancing while the girl scratched. They seemed to be getting along very nicely. “He needs a home,” Homer said. “Do you know someone who wants a dog?”

The girl stood. He and the girl were about the same height and were both wearing denim jeans. But while Homer wore a green corduroy farm jacket, she wore a red apron with a little nametag:
LORELEI
. Her hair was real short and dyed pink. No one in Milkydale had pink hair. “Why don’t you keep him? He’s a cute dog.”

“I’d like to keep him but my dad won’t let me.”

“That’s too bad.” She looked Homer up and down. “You a tourist?”

“I dunno.” He didn’t want to tell her that he was a runaway.

“Whaddaya mean you don’t know?” She circled around, looking Homer up and down. “You’re either from here or you’re not from here.”

Her questions were leaning a bit on the snoopy side. “I’m not from here.”

“What’s your name?”

“Homer.”

She stopped circling and smiled. “Like the writer?”

“No. Like my grandpa.”

“Well, Homer, my name’s Lorelei. Want some tomato soup?” She pointed to a cart that stood at the edge of the sidewalk. The cart had a red umbrella with big letters:
SCALDING HOT TOMATO SOUP
. “You look like you need to eat. Do you like to eat?”

“I guess so.” Homer’s stomach rumbled as he followed her to the cart. Steam rose as she removed a metal lid. “You got money?”

“No.”

“No matter. I got lots of this stuff.” She ladled red liquid into a Styrofoam bowl. Homer sat on a bench next to the cart, balancing the bowl in his lap. “Here’s a spoon.”

“Thanks.” Homer blew on the soup. Across the street, a bunch of ladies sat at little painted tables outside a bakery. They wore fancy hats and sipped small cups of tea. Homer suddenly missed his mother. He blew on the soup again, then took a few sips. “It’s good,” he said. Mrs. Pudding never served soup for breakfast.

Lorelei sat next to him and opened a packet of saltine crackers, which she fed to Dog, one at a time. Crumbs flew out the sides of his mouth. “Scalding hot soup!” she
hollered a couple of times. No one came to buy soup. “Most people want hotdogs with all the fixin’s, you know? The City’s full of hotdog carts.”

Homer wished they had a hotdog cart in Milkydale. He ate two more bowls of soup while Dog ate six more packets of crackers. Lorelei curled her legs onto the bench. “Homer’s one of my favorite writers,” she said. “I love
The Odyssey
, don’t you? I’ve read it nine times. Odysseus got to go to all those places and meet all those weird people like that Cyclops and that witch. Have you read
The Odyssey
?”

“Yeah. Mrs. Peepgrass assigned it last year.” Mrs. Peepgrass usually chose love stories about people named Heathcliff and Scarlett O’Hara, the kind of stories Homer wasn’t much interested in. But
The Odyssey
had been different. “It was pretty good.”

“Pretty good?” Lorelei swung her legs off the bench. “It’s the best story ever written. Odysseus was a hero. He left his home and family to go fight in the Trojan War. But when he tried to get back home, he had to face peril after peril. He thought he’d only be gone for a short while but he was gone for twenty years. Twenty years.”

Homer stopped eating as a powerful homesickness fell across him like a shadow.

“Just goes to show you that you never know what might
happen.” Lorelei slid onto the sidewalk and scratched Dog’s head. “So, whatcha doing in The City?”

He pushed the feeling away. “I’m looking for a library. Do you know where one is?”

“Sure. I go there all the time. Want me to show you?”

Homer reached under his collar and pulled out his compass. “If you tell me what direction to go, then I can find it.”

Lorelei’s eyes got real wide and she leaped to her feet. “Hey, that’s a Galileo Compass. How’d you get one of those? Are your parents rich?”

A huge grin broke across Homer’s face. “You know about Galileo Compasses?”

“Of course I do. I had one once but I lost it. They’re the best compasses in the world.” She stuck her face right up to the dial. “Sure wish I could find mine. I retraced my steps a million times. If I could find it I’d never lose it again.” She sighed. Then she grabbed the empty soup bowls and tossed them into a garbage can. “You know, it’s pretty easy to get lost in The City, even with a fancy compass like that. I’d better take you to the library.” She set the lid back onto the soup canister and started pushing the cart down the sidewalk. Homer and Dog followed.

Homer didn’t feel as nervous talking to Lorelei as he always did when he talked to Carlotta. Lorelei didn’t
seem to care that her face was smudged with dirt or that her short hair was kind of stringy. Or that she took big clomping steps like a boy. But she liked to read and she knew about compassess, so Homer thought she might possibly be the greatest girl ever. “Whatcha going to the library for?” she asked.

“I need to do some research.” Homer wasn’t sure how much to tell and how much not to tell. “I inherited something because my uncle died.”

“That’s too bad,” she said. The cart’s wheels rumbled. “My parents died. So did my grandparents.”

“That’s terrible. I’m sorry.” Homer pulled Dog away from a fire hydrant. “Who do you live with?”

“Just me.”

How was that possible? How could a kid live all alone in The City? He was about to ask that question when Dog tugged hard at the end of the leash. “Urrrr.” He pulled Homer off the sidewalk and into a little flower bed. Lorelei stopped pushing the cart as Dog sniffed the dirt. “I don’t know why he’s doing that,” Homer said, trying to pull Dog out of the bed. “He can’t smell. He can’t smell anything.”

“You’re gonna get a ticket if he messes up those flowers,” Lorelei said. “I got a ticket once for spitting on the sidewalk.”

But there was no pulling Dog from the flower bed
because he’d walked around a rosebush and had tangled his leash in the thorny branches. As Homer tried to untangle the leash, a door slammed and a tall man stomped down the front stairs, right next to the flower bed. “Well I never!” he exclaimed angrily. Then he shook his fist at one of the upper story windows. “I’ll never do business with Snooty and Snooty again. Do you hear me? NEVER AGAIN!”

“You want some scalding soup?” Lorelei asked. The man snorted at her, then hurried down the sidewalk.

As Dog continued to sniff, Homer remembered the letter.
The law office of Snooty and Snooty regrets to inform you that your relative, Mr. Drake Pudding, has been declared dead due to the carnivorous appetite of a reptilian beast.
He was just outside the office of his uncle’s lawyers. Surely they’d know what had happened to his uncle’s belongings.

“Uh, Lorelei,” he said. “I need to do something here before I go to the library.”

“Suit yourself,” she said with a shrug. “The library’s eight blocks northeast. Well, see ya around. Bye, Dog!” And off she went, just like that.

“Thank you,” Homer called as her red apron disappeared around the corner. He wished he could spend more time talking to her. She’d been so nice. But the rope went taut again as Dog rolled in the dirt. “Hey,
stop that.” Then Dog scrambled onto his paws. Dirt and pansies flew in all directions as he began digging a hole.

“We’re gonna get a ticket,” Homer said. The rosebush toppled over as the hole grew. Passersby shot dirty looks at Homer. A clump of bluebells landed on a lady’s head. A tulip flew into the road. He pulled the leash as hard as he could, lost his balance, and fell onto the sidewalk. That dog was as stubborn as Gwendolyn!

“Urrrr.” Dog stopped digging and trotted out of the flower bed. He stood over Homer, wagging his tail. Then he dropped something into Homer’s lap.

H
omer got to his feet, brushed dirt from his jacket and pants, then examined the heart-shaped brooch, careful not to prick himself on its rusty pin. Dirt was jammed into every crevice, but once polished up it might be pretty. “You sure know how to find things,” he told Dog as he tucked the brooch into his jacket pocket.

Dog wagged his little tail, then sneezed. Soil sprayed from his nostrils.

Homer set the rosebush into the hole, then packed
dirt tightly around it. He collected the other upturned plants and tidied up as best he could. He started to lead Dog into the building, but Dog hesitated on the stairs. “Urrrr.”

“Don’t worry,” Homer told him. “I’m not returning you. I promise. I would never do that. I just need to ask the Snootys a question.”

No one else stood in the building’s cold, shiny lobby. Homer skimmed the sign on the far wall.
LAW OFFICES OF TOE AND JAM, FLOOR 3. LAW OFFICES OF PICKLE AND DILL, FLOOR 18. LAW OFFICES OF LIVINGSTON, SWINDLE, AND LEMONGRASS, FLOOR 25. LAW OFFICES OF SNOOTY AND SNOOTY, FLOOR 32
.

Dog was having trouble keeping upright on the slick marble floor. His little nails scratched desperately as he tried to get some traction. He slid past the water fountain. Then slid over to an empty shoe-shine stand. Homer had to reach down and grab Dog’s collar to keep him from sliding right back out the front door.

Homer pushed the elevator button. A grinding noise sounded from the upper regions of the building as the elevator made its slow descent. Homer fidgeted nervously, for he’d never been to a law office or even to a thirty-second floor. There were no elevators in Milkydale. They had one at Walker’s Department Store, in the next village over, but it only went to the second floor.

Homer pushed the button again. Surely Snooty and Snooty would know where his uncle’s belongings had gone. Books and treasure hunting equipment can’t just vanish into thin air.

The double doors slid open. “Come on,” Homer said, stepping into the empty elevator. Pumping his back legs like an ice skater, Dog slid inside. Homer pushed button number thirty-two. Odd music floated from the ceiling—a toe-tapping melody without words.

Wa wa la la la la twing twing.

The doors began to close. “Hold that elevator!” a voice boomed.

Homer and Dog backed into the corner as a beefy man stopped the doors with his briefcase, then stepped inside. He took up so much space that Homer could only see a horizon of blue pinstripes. The man jabbed at a button. “Better hold tight,” he warned. “This elevator’s got a temper.” Right on cue, the elevator lifted a few feet, then dropped back to the lobby. Dog’s ears flew above his head. Homer bounced off the man’s backside.

The man jabbed the button again. “Prepare yourself. Feels like it’s going to be a doozy of a ride.”

The elevator lurched, rising higher this time. Then, with an exhausted groan, fell back to the lobby. Tomato soup sloshed as Homer’s stomach did a somersault. The man punched the button again and again. “Hope
it doesn’t dash us to our deaths like it did to poor Mr. Lovelord.”

“Uh, excuse me,” Homer said, trying to squeeze his way past the expanse of pinstripes. “I think we’ll take the stairs.”

“There aren’t any stairs.” The elevator lurched again and started its slow climb, the cable complaining the entire way. Homer braced himself against the wall. Dog whimpered and wedged between Homer’s shins.

Creak. Groan. Grind.

“Going to the thirty-second floor I see.” The man looked over his shoulder. “Got business with Snotty and Snotty?”

“Snooty and Snooty.” The cable made a sound that reminded Homer of a brooding chicken.

“Well, you’d better take my card in case you suffer injuries on the way back down. Snotty doesn’t handle that sort of thing.” He handed Homer a white business card.
MR. DILL, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW, SPECIALIZING IN PERSONAL INJURY AND UNWANTED PARTY GUESTS
. “Why don’t you take this, too.” He pulled a catalog from his briefcase and handed it to Homer:
STOUT AND HEFTY: DAPPER CLOTHING FOR DAPPER FELLOWS
. “First impressions are everything, young man. Just because you come from the country doesn’t mean you have to look like you come from the country.”