9

Twilly missed McGuinn. Missed the sound of his panting, the musky warmth of his fur.

It's only a dog, he thought. I got through my whole childhood without so much as a goldfish for a pet, so why all the guilt over a damn dog?

For two days Twilly Spree drove, scouting the likeliest locations. Okeechobee Road in west Dade. Sunrise Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale. Dixie Highway in North Miami. U.S. 1 from Kendall Drive to Florida City. And all the time he was missing McGuinn.

I'm going soft, Twilly grumbled. I'm definitely slipping here.

On the third day, after finally finding what he needed, he returned to the veterinary clinic. The frizzy-haired lady in pink met him in the reception area and took him to Dr. Whitcomb's private office. The veterinarian, who was on the telephone, motioned Twilly to a chair. The lady in pink closed the door on her way out.

As soon as Dr. Whitcomb hung up, Twilly said: "Well?"

"Yes. You ought to have a look." The veterinarian took a small round object from the top drawer. He handed it to Twilly, who rolled it in the palm of his hand. Seeing the object on an X ray was one thing; holding it was something else, a handful of guilt.

It was a glass eye from the stuffed head of an animal.

"And you've got no idea," Dr. Whitcomb was saying, "how your dog came to ingest something like this?"

"Beats me," Twilly lied. "I told you, I just found him a few days ago."

"Labs'll eat just about anything," the doctor remarked.

"Evidently."

Now Twilly knew the truth: He was the one responsible for the dog's sickness. If he hadn't removed the eyeballs from Palmer Stoat's taxidermy, McGuinn wouldn't have found the damn things and swallowed them.

Twilly wondered why Desie hadn't told him. He might've returned the dog to Stoat if he'd known the truth about the surgery. Now he felt purely rotten.

"A glass eye," Dr. Whitcomb was saying, "imagine that."

"And it got stuck inside him?"

"Basically, yes. Pretty far down the chute, too."

Twilly said, "God. The poor guy needed another operation?"

"No, Mr. Spree. A laxative."

The door swung open and McGuinn clambered into the office, trailing his leash. Excitedly he whirled around twice before burrowing his snout in Twilly's crotch, the customary Labrador greeting.

"A very potent laxative," Dr. Whitcomb added, "and plenty of it."

Twilly found himself hugging the dog fiercely. He could feel McGuinn's tongue, as thick as a cow's, lathering his right ear.

"You sure he'll be OK?"

"Fine," said Dr. Whitcomb, "but pretty soon he'll need those staples taken out of his belly."

From a damp crumple of cash Twilly counted out a thousand dollars in fifties, which he handed to the veterinarian.

"No, Mr. Spree, this is way too much."

"It is not."

"But – "

"Don't argue, just take it. Maybe next time somebody can't afford to pay, then ... "

"That's a good idea," said Dr. Whitcomb. "Thank you."

He followed Twilly and McGuinn to the parking lot, where the dog methodically peed on the tires of five late-model cars, including the doctor's.

"Can I ask a favor?" the veterinarian said. "It's about that fake eyeball. Mr. Spree, would you mind if I kept it for my collection?"

"That depends," said Twilly, "on the collection."

"Weird Things Dogs Eat," Dr. Whitcomb said. "I've got doorstops, earrings, fountain pens, cigarette lighters, car keys. This one Lab – Rachel was her name – she swallowed a cellular phone! And here's the funny part: It kept ringing inside her stomach. That's how her owners figured out what'd happened."

Twilly reached into his shirt for Palmer Stoat's Cape buffalo eye. He tossed it underhand to the veterinarian. "It's all yours, Doc."

Dr. Whitcomb looked amused as he fingered the glossy orb. "Crazy dog. How'd you suppose he got hold of something like this?"

Twilly shrugged. "Crazy damn dog," he said.

Why couldn't he stop thinking of Desie?

Her neck, in particular – the pale snowy slope between her pearl-spangled earlobe and her collarbone. Twilly had a grand weakness for the female neck. The last time he'd seen one as alluring as Desie's, it nearly got him killed.

The neck had been attached to a woman named Lucy, and Twilly didn't know about the pharmaceuticals and the booze and the bipolar disorder. All he knew was that Lucy had an indisputably fabulous neck, and that she freely let him nuzzle her there. She was also nice enough to have sex with him, which meant he quickly fell in love with her and moved in. They had known each other sixteen days. Lucy, it turned out, was not well. She took lots of self-prescribed medicine and washed it down with Bombay gin. Some nights she was the happiest person on the planet, a joy to behold. And some nights she was a skank monster, violent and paranoid and gun-crazy. Twilly had never known a woman so fond of handguns. Lucy owned several, mostly semi-automatics. "My father was a policeman," she would say by way of explanation. Whenever Twilly came across one of Lucy's firearms, he would secretly take it from the house and throw it down a nearby manhole. But she always seemed to have another at the ready; where she hid all those guns was a mystery. Sometimes she shot at the telephone; sometimes it was the television. Once she shot the bagel toaster while Twilly was fixing breakfast. Another time she shot out her personal computer because one of her drug connections had e-mailed to say he was out of Percocet. That was the same afternoon she ran next door and shot her neighbor's scarlet macaw for squawking during her naptime (Lucy needed lots of naps). The police took Lucy downtown but no charges were filed, since she promptly reimbursed the grief-stricken bird owner and agreed to undergo counseling. There the therapists found Lucy to be a model of stability – engaging and self-aware and repentant. Happy, too. One of the happiest patients they'd ever seen. But of course they didn't have to live with her.

To Lucy's credit, she never purposely tried to shoot Twilly, although on several occasions she nearly hit him by accident. For all her vast gun-handling experience, she was a surprisingly lousy shot. Yet during fourteen hair-raising weeks under the same roof, Twilly's fear of taking a bullet was outweighed by his neck-nuzzling lust. It was, he realized later, another appalling example of his own deficient judgment.

Twilly never knew which Lucy was coming through the front door until he leaned down to kiss her neck, which was the first thing he always did. If it was Happy Lucy, she would sigh and press close against him. If it was Bipolar Lucy, she would shove him away and beeline for the medicine cabinet, and then the gin. Later a loaded handgun or two might appear. Most boyfriends would have wisely bolted after the first drunken shooting episode, but Twilly stayed. He was infatuated with the Happy Lucy. He truly believed he could mend her. Whenever Bipolar Lucy surfaced, Twilly declined to do the sensible thing, which was run like a scalded gerbil. Instead he hovered at the scene, endeavoring to soothe and coax and communicate.He was always trying to talk Lucy down; he dearly wanted to be the one to catch her when she fell. And that's how he nearly died.

Lucy worked at an acupuncture clinic, keeping the books. One day the doctor caught her in an error – a minor mathematical transposition that resulted in a $3.60 overstatement of the accounts receivable. The doctor made a remark that Lucy deemed unfairly harsh, and she arrived home in a moist-eyed fury that told Twilly she'd stopped for cocktails and toot along the way. For once he knew better than to attempt a neck nuzzle. Lucy disappeared into the bathroom and emerged five minutes later, naked, with an empty pharmacy bottle clenched in her teeth and a 9-mm Beretta in her right hand. Twilly, who remembered she was left-handed, prudently stepped back while she did her Elvis routine, shooting up the TV and the stereo and even the Mr. Coffee. Many rounds were required, due to Lucy's poor marksmanship, yet there was little risk of anyone calling the police. Lucy considerately used a muzzle suppressor to mute the gunshots. Twilly made a practice of counting, so he'd know when the clip was empty. His near-fatal mistake that night was assuming Lucy was too fucked up to reload. After she'd exhausted herself and collapsed in bed, Twilly waited patiently for her ragged and fitful snoring. Then he slipped beneath the sheets, enfolded her in his arms and held her as still as a baby for a long time. Soon her breathing became soft and regular. Through his shirt Twilly could feel the steel coldness of the Beretta, which Lucy continued to clutch with both hands between her breasts. The snout of the silencer pressed ominously against Twilly's ribs, but he wasn't afraid. He thought the gun was empty; he clearly remembered Lucy pulling the trigger over and over until the only noise from the gun was a dull click. He didn't know about the spare clip that she'd stashed inside a tampon box under the bathroom sink.