My Leash [a subtly dramatic novel]

 

“in truth the eyes are nothing more than lenses, it is the brain that actually 

  does the seeing” 

José Saramago, Blindness   

~1~

 

            The toughest part of my day is managing the rush and languor of the afternoons. I've stacked from 1-4pm no less than five 'elites': two who do not mind my merging of their pets, three who want me all themselves. And one of them who makes me think, I'm not a prostitute, but....

            I started this in high school—seemed a better gig than drive-thru at the KFC or tossing newspapers from what would be perceived as virtually a Schwinn with a banana seat—my rusty Fiat Panda not much more adult than that. Neighbors' dogs were relatively easy in the morning, then a scattering of appointments in the long meanders after school. Occasionally a buddy joined the fun, if I was protective of the cash. Ten bucks an hour, usually rounded up when my standard offer was thirty minutes to the closest park and back, picking up the poop, of course, and trying to train the animal a thing or two of social grace. 

            You get a chance to think along the way. I had a novel going in my head—perhaps I'll write it out some day—about a dog named Bedlam narrating his neutered sojourns with his brother Swarm, the Esau of this tandem. If anybody inquired of the theme, I'd say 'the systematic loss of instinct', because these ridgebacks have their genitals and names and family home with dogfood in the bowl and slo-mo poof! It all goes up in smoke. In AP English class, the teacher gave out copies of Franz Kafka's short stories and my heart rose and sank in seconds flat: "Investigations of a Dog" was smack in the center of the tome, narrated in first-canine point of view. The author of The Trial had poached my plot, I thought, so I threw the untried draft upon the funeral pyre. And while it metaphorically burned, I thought how fitting was my working title, End of My Leash, Bedlam having had the dull epiphany that no one cared to walk with him past puppyhood.

            Now I'm twenty-seven, a dozen years to consider this my calling. And yes, that is the death-trap age of Jim and Jimi, Janis, Kurt and Amy, plenty in between. My night job is to shadow them in tunes that barely ever reach a stage, the fear of which is crippling sometimes. Funny, that, as crowds and lights and even your guitar can never bite, while dogs, which I fear not at all, can and have done so a couple dozen times. Probably twenty-seven, if I did the actual math.

            The worst was from my former girlfriend's Corgi, jealous as a grizzly bear. We weren't even in the swing of things—just sitting on the couch in front of Breaking Bad ('Ozymandias' episode, I think it was), when the grenade sprung from her bedroom and up the arm I had not draped around his mistress. The wrestling was earnest on both sides—to say there was a winner wouldn't satisfy a single mind in that apartment, or at the clinic where they stitched a gash on my left shoulder or, later, the vet who calmed the critter down to see that, indeed, he'd lost a tooth by chomping down, and not a baby tooth at that (which I assumed dogs didn't have).

            You see, I've never owned a pet myself. My CV doesn't indicate this fact, as customers would invariably scratch their heads: "not a kitten? or a goldfish? even a pet rock?" And to explain would only underscore confusion. I like animals—I like myself, primate genus Homo species sapiens—but cannot bear a lifelong staring at aquarium reflections or feeling there's no end to being leashed.

            But there's a beginning to these things, deliberate or not, to what become routines. And, to play along with Hamlet, 'there is nothing either good or bad about routine, but thinking makes it so.' I probably don't think more than the average knave, but I have a fair amount of time on my hands; instead of studying stock indices, worth a thought, I walk dogs and think about instincts—theirs and ours and yours and mine. We just met, I should remind, and since I cannot know your name(s), let's assume that mine is what I go by now and then—and spare the smirk that usually comes. Boris. Because my loving older cousins used to say, 'go away, you talk too much—you bore us.' Owning that, I read all of Dostoevsky just to see how he would use the name. Turns out he eschewed the Tom, Dick, Harrys of his time, so I turned a couple thousand pages in vain, never getting a read on who I was, according to my cousins.

            The name was nothing in Chicago, where I cut my teeth (and shoulder from that Corgi). Now I live in Prague, and natives raise an eye because my accent doesn't match their expectations. Some regard me as a time-warp spy, especially if I nod at Yeltsin and frown at Johnson, the only namesakes everybody knows.

            Dogs in Prague are somewhere between rat-ubiquitous in other European cities and hamster-pampered in kindergarten classrooms. The latter comes to mind because, by happenstance, I became a teacher for such kids whose parents wanted English at an early age. My bona fides were basically assumed with whatever visa paperwork declared me not a criminal. Teaching's just that easy, especially when a hamster and a box of crayons take care of inside hours and playgrounds do the rest. I'm not exactly sure why the admin let me go, but I was tired of kids anyhow. I put my number on some flyers with a meme of dog-walks-man, just to mix it up a little. Perhaps the ones who called were curious if I really looked like that—the model was fetching, if you pardon the pun. I don't look like a model; nonetheless, smiles are pretty natural when folks meet me for the first time. I suppose I have an Adrien Brody face, if less defined; no eyebrow rise to who, me? oblivion, for instance, but just as tired eyes.

            They've become my calling card. I'd arrive at an apartment eager to get a leash in hand but just as ready to hear, "you could use a cup of coffee." Or an iced tea. An armchair for a well-earned rest. A dose of Czech tv. Sometimes these would follow the walk, as long as my next appointment wasn't right away. Half the time the lady (almost always, though I do provide for one old coot and an upstart businessman) would pay the hour going forward, no matter if I'd stay for half of that. But even if she wouldn't double up my fee, I felt the coffee and the comfort were good enough for free. I'd probably just plop down on a park bench anyway, waiting for my next and next and next.

            Prague has pretty parks, as you might imagine. Most have nearby trams or metro trains—any destination in the city tends to be just ten to twenty minutes away. Enough to read a chapter of, I don't know, Bulgakov's Heart of a Dog (to be topical). Enough to scribble notes for your own frankenstein. 

            Anyway, I was sitting in Stromovka, the plumber’s pipe of the city from a satellite's point of view, lamenting the fact that none of my current clients live close to this arboretum, tailor-made for dogs: required on leash for the eastern forty acres (if it's that), optional leashes for the western forty. My girlfriend loves this place, if we've only been here once together. Lenka's a medical student at Motol hospital, the cat's meow of cardiac units around the world. That's what she wants, by the way—a cat to test our collective caretaking; she's also never had a pet, so I guess that makes us more compatible. Or less tested. 

            I joked that I could probably steal a cat from one of the less organized of my clients—some leave a key under the mat or forget to close a window or.... She didn't find the idea funny, though. "Why are you going to places with cats, anyway?"

            "Coincidence. Some clients have both, dogs and cats."

            "Do they want you to walk both? Like, would a cat be on a leash?"

            "Seen that before, but... not for me, to be honest. It's like a dancing bear at a circus—out of place, not adding to the mirth."

            "What animal at a circus would add to your mirth, Boris?"

            "Oh, I dunno. The Pomeranians jumping through hoops aren't so bad. No worse than a kennel show."

            Lenka shook her head and repeated her usual good-bye: "I'm late for my shift and probably won't be back 'til late."

            In other words, intercourse (verbal or otherwise) will wait until tomorrow. It's kind of reassuring that we like each other enough without such proof.

 

~2~

 

             Back in the day (a phrase no one my age should seriously say), Prague had a modest share of buskers in the mouths of metro tunnels, a few parks and one-two-three spaces on Charles Bridge. I saw these guys—almost always guys—when I came here for a summer in sixth grade, accompanying one of my grandmother's visits to 'the old country' she left in '68. While she visited with old friends and older relatives, she'd be fine with my city serendipity—called it 'character building'—but also warned me not to tell my parents, who would never let me do the same in Chicago. The suburbs, sure. Nothing ever happens in suburbs.

            This one busker played 'Wish You Were Here' about every fifth song in his repertoire. He eyeballed me to scram when, knowing I was waiting for the joke, he'd sing, "cold comfort for change—[any loose change will do, right there in the hat]—and did you exchange..." I knew how to strum that song already from the guitar my dad thrust in my hands a couple years earlier, and thought: this aint too hard.

            What's become hard, though, is the permission and game of cat-and-mouse when, naturally, I don't want to be so governmentally licensed to busk for the loose change, taxed at thirty-some percent. I'm not a money-grubber, but I'm also not into spreadsheets and fine print. For the first couple evenings I played on Charles Bridge, a pair of constables would close in by my second round of 'Wish You Were Here' (the guy I saw in sixth grade long since gone); I relied on the ask forgiveness instead of permission rule, and that got me one pass, two citations, an escort to the precinct in order to ascertain what my visa would or wouldn't allow me to do. Maybe that's why the preschool fired me, come to think of it, as I'm sure the Czech conversation through the phone had to include whoever could legitimately vouch for my work permit.

            I still play in the evenings, but don't dare call it busking. Kampa Island has its share of drum circles and reefer madness, and sometimes it's the perfect environment to play a cover of Pavement, say, 'Range Life', which seems to bridge the known and new (though that album came out the year I was born). It's hard to get my fingers to fret the contemporary scene, much as I like Phoebe Bridgers or Twenty One Pilots. Kampa still wants Radiohead, Cardigans, Scorpions. Reminders of Europe, to reclaim something of the recent past. "Give us 'The Zoo'," an grizzled guy slurred when I finished 'Winds of Change'. "Las' was okay, but Gorki Park? At Kampa? Fuckíng hell..."

            "Could happen again, Pops," opined a girl who Lenka, I imagined, would be jealous of. "Plus—whadja say your name was?"

            "Boris."

            "Boris here whistles nice."

            "Thanks."

            "Still," came the original request, "Give us 'The Zoo'."

            I did, brushing the trochaic riff with hard and half-pressed strings. I told them before singing it'd sound better with distortion, and that invited some untrained beatboxing. The fade-out was messy and I segued into 'I Need Some Fine Wine and You, You Need to Be Nicer' to drop a hint from the front side of that mile-long title. Nicely, my whistle groupie understood and made a crucible in her left hand to pour a tidy puddle of boxed Zinfandel and put it up to my mouth to lap like a dog (which was implied in the song, I assured everyone).

            She did that four more times, not gauging the post-chorus interims very well. Giggling at my dribbles and faux protestations, she'd ask, "vadí?" and, like a babysitter teaching etiquette, answer the infant face with "nevadí!"

            "Where have I heard that before?"

            "Here, Boris, a minute ago—I just said it again. You know what it means?"

            "Vadí? Like being bothered?"

            "Yes! Are you?"

            "No. Nevadí. But where—"

            "You never asked my name, by the way."

            "Oh, sorry. We're just meeting, though. Like, it's—"

            "Yeah, I like you too, Boris. And I'm Maruška. Marie One, my parents like to say. 'Cuz that's where you maybe heard it, from Chytilová's film, Daisies."

            "Nope, doesn't ring a bell. But I like the name Maruška."

            The grizzled guy jousted a joint in my direction. "Hey, give us 'Creep'."

            "I beg your pardon?" I uttered, self-conscious how that must've come out.

            "Creep! Thom Yorke, ty vole."

            "Oh. American version or British?"

            Maruška leaned in to intercept the spliff, then mouth "nevadí" before a toke.

            I didn't partake and decided to do the British version as beautifully as I could. With the "run, run, run, run" I actually wanted to dump the group for a while, propose a café for Maruška, even a coupling of tramlines to Stromovka, as dark as that unpopulated park would be by the time we'd get there. But all those flash plans didn't matter in the jolt of my phone actually ringing (instead of the vibrator buzz of occasion notifications). It was Lenka coming off an E.R. shift at Motol, asking what she could pick up for dinner. 

            "Um, I dunno—frozen pizzas?" I paused to hear her own pause, each of us deciphering the other's background noise. Whatever Grizzly Guy was uttering made my side uncomfortable. Thankfully, Maruška wasn't whispering anything toward me at the moment. Lenka asked where I was, and I had no reason to lie. "Stromovka," I said, which was truly on my mind. "Tryin' to, you know, practice."

            It was always a pet peeve of mine to hear especially the contracted form of y'know. Like a drop of 'obviously' or 'capeesh', phrases meant to reduce or patronize. It occurred to me in this line of thought that I had seen Chytilová's film, after all, but knew it by the Czech title, Sedmikrásky, something my grandmother wanted to see in '66 when she hadn't yet immigrated but only managed to arrange a viewing with a relative during our visit fifteen years ago. We saw it in Kino Mat, by far the smallest theatre I'd ever been to, and I didn't comprehend a single thing. The vadí/nevadí banter seemed belittling, acquiescent and bullying at the same time. Marie One and Two were distinct, to be sure, yet cut of the same cloth (an idiom I wouldn't have known then, but fits now), and their liberal use of scissors was terrifying. Throughout the film they ate like wild boar and were even dirtier in a scene of cleaning up. They seemed to have a running joke about a bad world that couldn't, logically, punish them for being bad; the double negative, perhaps, rendering everything good. Or, you know, not so bad.

             Maruška seemed to read this in my eyes, and grabbed my phone after I pushed the goodbye button to keep the screen alive and type herself in as a new contact. She raised her eyebrows and swiped her irises toward the group in a playful way to suggest a pass-around (my phone just like a joint), but met my grasp halfway and laughed at my burgeoning angst. "Don't worry, Boris. You were a good boy today."

            

~3~

 

             I was in the proverbial doghouse that night because, truth be told... I told the truth. Why would a drum circle, let alone reefer madness, occur at Stromovka? "Is that where you want to perform your, your"—Lenka was searching for the term—"your covers? What does that mean, anyway? Like a cover-up?"

            It hadn't occurred to me what a 'cover' meant. Limp Bizkit having Pete Townshend's back, as if they in fact "know what it's like to be the bad man" behind those baby blues? I promised Lenka there was nothing sinister in what I did by playing other people's songs.

            "Why don't you make your own," she snipped, "and not plagiarize?"

            "I sometimes do strum my own," I replied. "You've heard some of them—like 'Tin Roof' or... 'The Barbaloots'. And I always cite my sources. Dr Seuss right there, for instance."

            "He's not a real doctor, you know."

            "Well..."

            Lenka practically frisbeed me a cooling pizza from the oven rack, then took hers and the rotary cutter to the bedroom and shut the door.

            Leaving me to contemplate tomorrow. Since being dumped from the kindergarten gig, I haven't had to wake up before mid-morning (whenever that is in this solstice-swinging country). Walking dogs in the morning would seem pretty intuitive, but owners aren't in a mindset for half-hour ambles then. Creatures are shameless about rolling out of bed, stumbling over the night's debris, whining through yawns so huge they hurt the temples, vying to take a shit and then hit the snooze button again. I'd want nothing to do with such a thankless daybreak, but maybe a few jobs from mid-morning to noon. Spread out my client load, maybe eliminate the least desirable tug of the afternoon.

            My buddy Tolliver recommended the Karlín neighborhood for its friendly feel of gentrified residents who could afford their cleaning ladies to let me in. With a sharpie I wrote on each flyer "10am-ish" and circled it with a fair flourish. I wondered if the man on all fours in front of a dog on hind legs was tacky, after all. None of my existing clients had said anything about that choice, one way or another, and I never bothered to ask what compelled them to tear my contact dangle. Tolliver, meeting me to help distribute these flyers on lampposts, smirked and told me I was overthinking it. "The thing they'll wonder about is what you mean by 'Amish'."

            "Huh?"

            "Like, you employ ten Amish guys? Earthy, no nonsense, sturdy stock?"

            "No," I knit my brow. "I mean not 6-ish. Not even 9-ish."

            "Can dogs wait that late?"

            I shrugged. "You make it sound like they'd need a first-responder! Keep 'em from bursting."

            Tolliver was a medical student like Lenka—I met him through her—and assured me dogs would more likely slurp their own urine or whiz in a potted plant rather than burst. "They're not cows with full utters. That said, if I were a dog..."

            I noticed a pretty lady with a Jack Russell on the other side of the park. "Maybe I could do 9am," knowing the top of that hour had just passed. I patted Tolliver's shoulder as a suggestion to hold my seat on the bench while I'd do a little word-of-mouth advertizing. I didn't bee-line, exactly, but made sure I'd get to her before she'd cross the street and measure me as a stalker. I held one of the flyers in front of me like it was a divining rod and she seemed familiar with such approaches. "I have boyfriend," she declared over my 'Excuse me, but' way of word-o-mouth.

            "Oh," I let out a little laugh, "I wasn't trying to be your boyfriend. Just... a dog walker. See?" I offered her the flyer.

            She whirled the Jack Russell's leash a couple times around her wrist to bring him closer to heel, then took the black-and-white paper. Her eyes, I could gauge, went right to the meme and her bottom lip pushed upward and out. "What is 'am-ish'?" pronounced just like Tolliver had predicted.

            "Deset hodin," I decided to prove I knew basic Czech. "But I could also do 9-ish."

            Still unsmiling. "What means 'ish'?"

            "Okolo."

            "Aah. Like 'foolish'."

            "No," I laughed again, "like 'around'."

            "Fooling around?" Her eyes flashed inscrutably. "I have boyfriend."

            I scratched behind my ear and looked down at her dog to see if she was joshing, as if this Jack would know. "Your boyfriend," I conjectured, "doesn't walk your beautiful dog. I can, however."

            "I call police."

            "No! No—I just... um. Jenom, ah..." I back-peddled and laughed again, somehow hoping a third time would be the charm. When she took her phone from her tight jean pocket, I realized my own phone number was dangling from the flyer in her other hand and, foolishly perhaps, lunged for the paper. The Jack snapped at me and barked like a 3-alarm fire, but I managed to snatch what she was practically holding out at arm's length, anyway, like a smelly sock. "Omlouvám," I offered, "I'm sorry to..."

            She clicked some photos of my retreat.

            Tolliver asked innocently enough, "how'd it go?" and I felt like belting him. Instead, I scooped up our modest stack and tape dispenser and bee-lined for real toward the street I had started on, tearing down the three or four flyers I had put up before Tolliver caught up with me. "That bad, huh? Hey, mate, I'll buy you a beer."

            "This early? Nothing's open."

            "Something's always open. Or brewing, I guess the idiom goes."

            "Trouble's brewing, the idiom is," I sounded like a twit. "If that's what you mean." He smirked bollocks to that and pushed us toward the bus depot at Florenc (Prague's answer to the Renaissance) and an anything-you-need café.

            What I like about Tolliver is his mesh of level-headedness and let's-get-shitfaced. Albeit neither had been tested at 9am. He had come off night shift at Motol and would start his next in thirteen hours, which tempts too much sleep or ungodly amounts of coffee. His specialty, he said, was drawing blood—"Vamps work at night, see?"—and that procedure didn't benefit from too much caffeine.

            "Alcohol neither, I'd assume."

            "True, that. But I'll sleep these off before tonight and be in fine poking form."

            I took a coffee in place of a second beer. "What can you possibly like about being a vamp?"

            Tolly bobbed his head in consideration. "Being necessary, I guess. An' talking people down about their fears. You know the Czech word for 'mosquito'?"

            "Sure. You joke about being their 'komar'?"

            "Their kamarad—without the risk of malaria."

            "Huh? That's your idea of easing tension?"

            He bobbed his head again. "It's a way in. Can't script things too much. Some start telling you camp stories."

            "In Czech? or English?"

            "Yep. Russian, German, too. Whatever comes to Motol in the middle of the night."

            "And you're that fluent?"

            "By body language... conversant. Probably as much as you are with your dogs."

            I didn't want to talk about dogs. But... "whadya mean?"

            "Oh, I dunno. You gotta make some connection with those critters. Talk them down, too, if they get too giddy or grumpy."

            "You think I'm a dog-whisperer?"

            "You tell me! But yeah, you better be to some extent, 'r else you get your balls bit off."

            Nice. I guess Tolliver was sampling my own blood and grit in whatever I was attempting to do this side of the ocean, this side of young adulthood, fleeting as it sometimes felt. We talked a while more, rehashing some of why he elected to take most of med school here instead of Manchester. Much came down to systems, pro and con. Answering to the Man. "Manchester?" I punned. Again his bollocks smirk and reminder that I was the one leashed to the beast in all these flyers, my more-or-less identity, self-imposed. I mean, somebody else made the Google image in the first place.

            "But you were the bloke to own it," Tolliver punctuated with a clink to my empty coffee cup.

            I contemplated ordering something else, yet truly didn't have the cash. "I've never been called a bloke before."

            "Congrats. Rather call you that than the wanker that is our prime minister."

            "You can think of me as Godunov."

            "Good enough?"

            "Boris, the medieval tzar."

            "Was he a wanker, too?"

            "Jury's out. But at least he got an opera for his troubles."

 

~4~

            Karlín, safe to say, was a strikeout, though in retrospect I kind of liked the spunk of Mrs Jack Russell. I'm pretty sure in some horizonal morning I could explain myself with less foolishness (and no Tolliver in tow). For the time being, though, I had a few hours to kill before my 1pm at Pankrác.

            I hadn't been to Guitar.cz near that metro station since my settling in a couple years ago. At the time I needed to replace my ratty guitar for one that would be suitable for kindergarteners—no Grateful Dead skull stickers or Rolling Stone tongues lolling out. The sales reps there had been very nice to let me play the Les Pauls and Washburns well out of my price range as long as I wanted, provided my riffs and quips added to the atmosphere. They weren't too humored by my third and fourth request for a job application, though—my cry for help even before meeting the rascals I would fail—so I made a mental note not to push my luck this time.

            And wouldn't you know: the guitar store had turned into "malvíkCity" in bubbly pink lettering. I opened the door to baby buggies and other mála items for new parents, several of whom were trying out this infant backpack or that diaper dispenser.

            "Dobry den," a chirpy voice sideswiped me. Seeing my open jaw and probable lack of anything Czech to say, she continued in English. "Can I help you? New daddy?"

            "Um...," thinking of how to account for myself, "dog walker. Old—I mean, not new to that."

            "Dog?" she stepped closer and tented her fingertips. "Like, a baby dog?"

            "Yes, for sure. I like puppies. You?"

            She shook her head as if to swirl 'yes' and 'no' and 'what the hell?' Then she raised one tented finger above the others. "You need a puppy crib? or..."

            "I'm sorry," figuring myself out. "I... I thought I was walking into Guitar C-Zed."

            "Oh," instant recognition in her dark brown eyes. "They closed. Pandemic..."

            Nothing should have shocked me about that. We had been relieved of mandatory masks for a while and enjoying a world-back-to-order, if (of course) much had been lobotomized. Guitars, I guess, were less a staple of survival than baby apparatus—the pacifiers and perambulators that lend credence that humanity will, in fact, live on. "But," responding to my thoughts, "the music. Where will... people go?"

            Natálie—her name badge indicated—shrugged sympathetically. "To the woods, maybe. Tramping, you know."

            I didn't really know bohemian tramping, but nodded as if I'd been there many times. I also took a business card from malvíkCity (she didn't have her own, she made clear) just in case parenthood might befall. "Or maybe," she suggested, "come play some songs for us. We sometimes have baby—what do you call them?—announcements?"

            "Baby showers?"

            Her eyes glistened. "Yes! It's a strange idea—like raining babies."

            I agreed with a smile. "Then you should call me," I held out one of my flyers, "when... ever." After laughing at its silliness, she took the number I tore off for her. "Boris," I pointed at the proof that I wasn't actually a telephone bot.

            "Yes," she got it, "B-O-R-I-S, dog walker.... And baby shower man."

            "Well, not yet." I decided not to tell her that I had been god-awful at being kindergarten cop. Quit while you're ahead.

            I came to my 1pm with a skip in my step and declined a post-walk cup of tea by the invalid pensioner, a lady who had been helping my Czech develop through the memories she liked to share. With Natálie in mind, I figured some of the flyers could be put up here in the Pankrác area—metro and bus stops and such. My 2pm was not far away, on Jeremenkova street: a pair of dachshunds for a disorganized family of four, including teenagers who tended to play video games from my arrival to my quizzical adieu—why again aren't you in school right now? Probably just as well for all involved (or uninvolved, as their system had it). 

            Onward to the windfall of my weekdays: half-past 3 at Karlovo náměstí, happy mutts a-waitin'. Actually, as much as that would be great—to avoid buzzing into each of the five apartments near that square—it's satisfying to have that many clients within a few blocks who all agree to the socialization of their animals and sorta get off (so to speak) with the New York vision of my gangly frame being pulled by her shih tzu and another her pinscher and your beagle and his elkhound and their basset. Lucky for me the puppy of the bunch is the basset, otherwise he'd be the flat tire to this hippie caravan. The shih tzu and elkhound I can trust off-leash when we get to the park, as long as eyebrows stay unraised. It's easier to plastic-bag their 'business', shall we say, when I can affect a measure of separation.

            And that's basically it: let the beast out of each beast and get paid a fraction of what their dogfood costs per week (still a pretty penny—or haléř, as they used to call it here). A half-hour later I have to decide who to bring home first and whether or not the others can handle the up-and-down of a compatriot's building. I've sometimes had to tie the shih tzu to a post and worry someone would steal her; she doesn't 'do' stairs well, as much as I've tried my dog-whispering, as Tolliver would say.

            I admit that I keep her for last, as debriefing is almost always a bit of a thing with her owner, a work-from-home editor for a beauty-tip blog. Sometimes she has me weigh in on perfume samples she gets sent to review (i.e., I review her fieldwork, so to speak). The shih tzu would usually be tuckered out and lose interest in us, plebeians with pathetic olfactory skills.

            But I misspoke. She's actually not "last" in the scheme of the daily grind that is my job. Most days I need to catch the yellow metro line to Smíchovské nádraží and then a tram to Geologická where the famous Barrandov movie studios hide atop a steep bluff along the Vltava. While most actors wouldn't live there—too quiet or not remote enough—my 6pm is, shall we say, a prime B-lister. That was her own epithet when she interviewed me for her Irish setter, "and no herpes jokes, please!" I didn't get it until she spelled it out. The setter is rather the opposite of the shih tzu, always on guard and suspicious anytime a door would close. The actress (I'll mask her identity to ward off extra paparazzi) sometimes liked to join me in the walk, the duskier the better. She didn't have a true command of the creature, so she never bothered with a leash. Fine by me, as I tacitly contemplated the title of my wannabe novel and what 'the end' to all instinct restraints would make of this world.

            When I got home—just the other side of the Hlubočepy valley, still west of the Vltava—Lenka was watching an episode of Grey's Anatomy. "Hey," we muttered to each other and, eventually, clinked glasses of red wine.

            "You smell like a dog," she deadpanned.

            "Aint that a bitch," I tried to jest, but she didn't think that was funny.

            We watched silently for five minutes and I could sense she was getting teary. "This is what I wanna do with my life," watching Amelia decompress after neurosurgery.

            I held her hand. "You will." Then, to underscore the moment, "you are." She didn't make eye contact—partly for the ongoing episode, but probably also for the lack of a reciprocal thing to say.

~5~

 

            The next couple days went as routine, sleeping in 'til 10am-ish because, as yet, no one called me to be their morning hound-walking man. No one, that is, besides Maruška inviting me to another do at Kampa. "Bring your girlfriend," she giggled, as I shushed her to say that a message would have been better than an out-of-the-blue phone call.

            "I could have been in the shower," I explained, "in which case, I wouldn't have been able to answer..."

            "Unless I keep it ringing and ringing."

            "Well, that wouldn't be good.... Frighten the..., you know, dog."

            "Oh, you have a puppy?"

            I imagined the basset. "Not exactly... A puppy in spirit, though. And who'd wanna grow out of that?"

            "So bring your puppy to Kampa!"

            Between borrowing the basset (whose elderly owners might assume they'd have okayed that request weeks ago) and convincing Lenka to swing by for a while, the former seemed more feasible. Not that I had to 'bring' anything for Maruška's sake. Or for my sake, according to her. It's damned confusing reading people's intentions of other people's intentions.

            In the end I just showed up with my Grateful Dead guitar. Grizzly Guy was there with, of all things, a hairless dog—hard to say how old, but rife with worry lines on his bald head (well, bald everything). "Her!" he corrected when I asked his name.

            "Oh, sorry. What's her name?" scritching behind her batlike ears.

            "J-Lo."

            Was he yanking my chain? "What kind of breed, exactly?"

            "Xoloitzcuintli," he slurred, "from Mexico. Via the Troya pound, which took her in from the streets."

            "So... J-Lo?"

            By this time Maruška had snuck in and practically dove for whatever cuddles this creature could produce. She then greeted everybody but me with a kiss, sometimes on the lips. Her arms akimbo as she stood above me, it looked like I was in for a lecture. Where's my basset? Or my ball-and-chain? What's with my disdain for Grizzly Guy and his malapropic pooch? Instead: "Ahoy, Borisi, jak se máš?"

            "Um," I tried to shake my head of Borat, "okay, I guess. Brought my—"

            "your guitar—the truest love of your life." Then she bent down to kiss my forehead (probably just as grooved as J-Lo's). "Whatcha gonna play?"

            I hadn't thought about it. Lenka's comment about doing constant covers got me thinking that maybe it's time to be myself for a change (any loose change will do). I played the Barbaloot Song and cited Dr Seuss as my source—"you know, 'The Lorax' movie about ten years ago?" Only the Grizzly Guy grunted recognition. One chick yawned while I strummed, and Maruška went back to stroking the faux fur of the Xoloitzcuintli. "And you know," I crooned, "the Lorax lifts himself up when he's through." Pause to think how stupid to open with this, "'cuz you know, no one sees the downsides like you do--oo--oo."

            Doggie do was what that was, but I received some polite applause. And an offer of a doobie to chill out. A gangly dude bid with his fingers to borrow the guitar, as if I needed a breather. I couldn't quite make out what he was playing, even after some guesses—Plíhal? Hladík?—it seemed he wasn't sure himself. Didn't know the words, at any rate. But played adequately. More important, at the end of whatever was his second blur, Maruška caressed the instrument free of his bony limbs and placed it back into my relatively pumped-up frame. And as much as I wanted to Eddie Van Halen things at that moment, a little voice—not even Maruška's (though her eyes agreed)—said, "we're glad you're here." And the walrus in me perked up an old favorite:

            "To lead a better life, I need my love to be" here, there, and everywhere. And truth be told (tacitly), I did have Lenka on my mind for at least some of the song. Maybe all, but... a musician naturally has to multi-task. Eye-contact with Maruška would be mega-multi, to "see her everywhere, and when she's beside me I know I need" to concentrate on the frickin' song, Boris! Luckily the fingers were on autopilot—left hand as the workhorse, right hand as the artist (to mix all metaphors)—and nobody minded if my voice cracked here and there. "Not everywhere," I tried to joke, but people weren't listening to my petty narratives for the greater need to talk among themselves or tell me what they'd like to hear next.

            Eventually, after mostly repeats of the other night, Maruška said, "you know what I want"—no question mark, and a cryptic grab of the guitar—"John Lennon." Less than a whisper, she mouthed the name to let no one else in on the request, yet curiously gave my battered Cort back to the gangly dude. In a flow of motions, she pulled me from the circle as another Plíhal or Hladík sounded in our sudden retreat. Kampa was in its lovely glow of park lamps and distant window light. I'm sure I asked where we were going, as if I really wanted to know. She stopped me with a hand to the chest—"počkej"—before ducking into a clump of bushy trees. I waited obediently, glancing back at the circle and then the other way where I thought we were heading.

            "Everything okay?" I asked when she re-emerged. "Is 'Lennon' code for needing to use the john?"

            "Huh? Lennon Wall is where we're going, magore!"

            And things fell into place. Of course I had been there in passing, oh, I don't know how many times. A tourist's obligation, like rubbing certain parts of bronze sculptures or padlocking a promise to the fencing on some bridge. The wall, outside a Maltese courtyard, would confirm any mood a person brought to it—the cynicism that knows 'all we are saying' is long-since moot; the hope that a scribbled note will proxy for a prayer; the wow that Prague should always harbor; the shrug that shows we are aware but not so taken in. "You know," I pointed to the canopy keeping watch from the other side, "that's Beethoven's tree."

            "You want we should make love there?" she wondered.

            "What? It's... it's gotta be locked." Dummy! No time for logic...

            She pulled me to what used to be a phone booth, barely big enough to lean into the shadow of the floodlights between the wall and the French embassy that faced its playful subversion all these years. We made out for, I don't know, whatever time it takes to know this was worth it because (it seems) the 'it' is worth the other's time, too. And yes, that's made for asking forthrightly, which I aimed to do... just before—fuck!

            The Grizzly Guy was wielding my guitar like a light saber, minus any light. My instincts (trying to be unleashed) understood he wanted to crush as much of me as the moment would allow—kissing his girl, having a bad high, bitter about his ugly pet—

            "No! Get lost!" Maruška shouted in English, adding to the confusion. Grizzly could argue he 'no la comprendo' as he landed the Cort on the frame of the booth, then the shoulder where I still had the memory of the Corgi fang, then the back of my thigh as I shook us out of our sarcophagus and corralled us toward the embassy. Grizzly must have figured out his knock-out blow would be now or never, tossing the wounded instrument to trip us up, which nearly happened.

            Strangely, with all that ruckus, no security stepped out, even as Maruška and I huddled in the entryway for longer, probably, than the making out (that wasn't on our minds anymore (though holding each other was—or didn't have to be, 'cuz that's what we were doing, thinkingly or not)). The Grateful Dead decal was the only part of the guitar that looked intact; even the Rolling Stones appeared a bloody mess. "Well," I finally found my voice, "at least that forces an upgrade."

            "I'll help pay," Maruška offered, then stayed quiet as my phone rang.

            "Hmm," I realized before pulling it from my pocket that it, too, could have shattered, had the angles been different. "It's Lenka," I decided to say before pressing green. "Hey.... Yeah, 's alright.... Played the Barbaloot song.... No, I think," looking at Maruška, who didn't want to interfere, "I think I'm gonna head home.... What?"

            

~6~

 

            You know the adage, 'keep your friends close and your enemies closer'; not really having either, I guess my instincts are to stargaze and see... that one as part of a pretty constellation, and that one as a meteor in disguise, et cetera. I couldn't regard Grizzly Guy as an enemy, to be honest, nor Maruška as a friend. And as I fretted home (having dumped the unrepairable Cort), I figured any future return to Kampa would be like poking a snoozing beast. My dog-whispering skills would only exacerbate the roused consciousness.

            I didn't sleep well on the couch, where Lenka had fluffed the pillow, so to speak, and locked the door to her bedroom. It was never 'ours'—she paid rent on this place before meeting me and, while the fifty-fifty arrangement helped us both, the lease was never changed to include my name. The landlord turned a blind eye to my presence, apparently not inclined to do the extra paperwork. I could relate to another edge-dweller.

            The next morning, I met up with Tolliver at the anything café. "Thinkin' of boarding a random bus," I told him on the phone when he asked why I wanted to go to the Florenc depot again.

            "Seriously, mate? Like, for a day-trip?"

            "No,... not seriously. Just,... Well, I'll tell you when I see you."

            Nothing like setting up nothing much to say. I arrived a half-hour earlier than we agreed and wandered about the moribund streets of Karlín this time of day. Of course I had an eye out for Mrs Jack Russell and the titillations that could incur, with or without my stepping out to explain myself. Certainly without my insipid amish flyer.

            At the depot Tolliver had an orange juice and cinnamon roll in front of him, lamenting his day shift in a couple hours that wouldn't benefit from a breakfast of alcohol. "But go for anything you want—don't mind me."

            "Maybe a shot of Baileys, then," I ordered with a cappuccino. "Couldn't hurt."

            "So what's up? You look glum."

            I told him that Lenka was this close to kicking me out. My gesture didn't know whether to pinch index finger to thumb or spread my arms yea wide to approximate the 'fish that got away'. So I did both simultaneously, causing Tolly to smirk that I looked like I'd downed a couple shots of Baileys already. "No. Last night was, among other things, sobering. She found something in the pocket of my jeans that I had tossed in the laundry hamper."

            "What."

            "Yeah, exactly. That was my first word when she told me on the phone."

            "What? Like 'so what—my pocket, my business'?"

            "Nah, I wouldn't be that crass. Anyway, she had every right to ask."

            "So what the hell was it?"

            "A calling card for malvíkCity." Blank look. "You know, the baby supply store?"

            "No. How in fuck would I know about a baby store? Are you expecting?"

            I almost choked on my ill-timed sip of cappuccino. "What!?"

            "What else? A baby."

            "No! Not that I know of."

            Tolliver sensed a need to clarify: "By you, I mean you and Lenka—"

            "Yes, Tolly, I'm well aware you meant the second-person plural. And Lenka, as far as I know, isn't expecting. But she wonders whether I have a pregnant paramour somewhere in the city."

            Reasonable pause for propriety. Then, "well, do you?"

            I had to think. "Not that I know of."

            "You don't know much, mate."

            True, that. I don't know how to talk myself out of a paper bag, if that's not abusing the idiom too badly. Natálie, I told Lenka (and now was narrating to Tolliver), was the salesperson I bumped into in my confusion about where the guitar store had gone. (Huh? Tolly's face contorted, so I had to backtrack to that detail). And we got to talking about baby showers malvíkCity might host, and how some of those occasions could benefit from background music, like what I could provide on guitar and—

            "—wait, what? You'd play 'Bang, Bang Maxwell's Silver Hammer' or something of the ilk?"

            "Sheesh. I've never played that song in my life! No, I'd play, I dunno,... 'Rainbow Connection' or... I dunno, I'd take requests. Like usual."

            "And Lenka didn't buy this story."

            She didn't. This wasn't the first calling card of sorts she'd discovered, not that she wanted to be a snoop. She had boyfriends in her past she couldn't trust and made it clear when we started dating that she didn't want to cat-and-mouse or second-guess or any of those other hyphenated mindsets. I prefer you just cheat and tell me, she once said, and you'd get a fair shot toward forgiveness. At the time I assured her I had no such designs and, by the way, vice versa—I'd easily forgive her for the infraction. Tolliver listened to this drivel with abstract eyes. He never spoke specifically about his own love life and, on the contrary, had too often referred to his flabby body that wouldn't be a pleasure for anyone to touch ("even for my doppelgänger self, if ya know what I mean").

            I decided to get to the point. "Well, I think she's running outta patience with me. I mean, she doesn't tend to threaten three-strikes-you're-out, but—"

            "What's that translate to in cricket terms?"

            "Cricket? I haven't a clue. An over? A busted wicket? At any rate, she's on the verge of..." No, Boris (I thought, while my mouth formed a slough of other words for Tolliver's gracious reception). She's not on any verge. She doesn't want to think of me as a problem, let alone something she'd attempt to fix or tolerate or act on in some counter-intuitive way. If I'm a fuck-up, I'm my own problem. I'm not getting kicked out; I'm kicking myself out. I was the one who smashed the guitar over my own body; Grizzly Guy just facilitated my feckless spirit.

            "Do you need a place to stay?" Tolly figured out.

            I sighed a blend of relief and restlessness. "Um, I might. Just for..."

            He reached to touch my arm in a move that surprised us both. "No worries, mate." Then, jerking back his hand as quickly as it landed, he chaffed, "just one rule: no dogs allowed."

            We walked together to the metro, where he took the yellow line and I took the red. I was plenty early for my Pankrác jobs and wasn't sure if malvíkCity would be open (I didn't have their calling card anymore), but figured I'd at least head that way. Muse about the novel I'd never write, even if my Bedlam-self demanded its serendipitous draft. Unlike Bedlam, I didn't have a sibling, let alone one with a cool name like 'Swarm'. Bedlam and Swarm could survive this city as a team of stray Ridgebacks, having been neglected by their owner who had reluctantly accepted responsibility for them in a divorce settlement. Responsibility shirked: too huge to feed on a thinning budget, too removed from puppy innocence (times two) when the still-intact family picked them from a litter of fourteen. Too needy for long walks or runs. Too bored with their unkempt cage in the courtyard of a block of flats. Too aware of racoon skills to open up the gates and barrel out. Too—

            "Boris," a voice chimed from behind my bench. "What are you doing here?"

 

 ~7~

             First instinct—my mother, risen from the grave. Then, in the nanoseconds it took to shake that specter from my mind, Natálie took shape, puckering the 'B' to tease out my name and point us to the staffroom of the store for a cup of prenatal tea (it's all we got) and tête-à-tête to start the showers. I was pretty excited to twist around and drape my arm upon the back of the bench—a natural contortion to betray my semi-surprised savoir-faire.

            Upon eye contact with the actress from Barrandov, I misjudged the back of the bench and slumped like a drunkard. "Oh, me?" I blubbered, pushing myself all the way up. "I'm, uh... gonna walk dogs in a bit," looking around for any to vouch for.

            "Oh," she feigned a moue, "so I'm not your only one."

            Of course she knew I had more clients. Or did she? Had it ever come up? "And where is your"—name, name, name, name!—"Irish beauty today?"

            Confused at first, she fingered her shoulder-length burgundy hair. "You mean, my dog? You don't you remember the name, do you? Irish beauty!"

            "What," I tried to counteract my instant blush, "am I wrong?" And seeing her tolerant smile, I did my best Chalamet to admit, that, "yes, I don't—I mean, no, I... forgot her name."

            "And gender, Jesus Christ!"

            "Well, I don't... necessarily check."

            "Do you know my gender?"

            "Of course... I—"

            "Then how wouldn't you know his?"

            Gulp. "Because he's a... dog. It... matters less..."

            She wasn't smiling anymore. And I had nowhere else to go with that. She looked over my shoulder at malvíkCity, I supposed, and part of me wanted to add that to my purpose of being here—waiting for the doors to open for baby showers and.... No. That would just sound weird. I asked instead what she was up to in this neck of the woods.

            "Woods? More like communist buildings. Even the newer ones," casting a glance at the seventeen-floor sloping glass edifice in the near distance. "But why am I here, you're asking?"

            "Yeah. If... it's not a secret."

            She said it wasn't a secret, but not so interesting. A traffic ticket she needed to deal with at the Pankrác courthouse for these sorts of things. She came early, she said, to get in her 'steps' since she had to cancel the gym for this. Walked to the greenest couple of hectares in this shittiest part of the city, and now she needed to face justice. It wasn't the amount she'd have to pay, or even the possible suspension of her license; the citation included "a nip" of alcohol in a zero-tolerance state, so she feared some bad publicity would be waiting in the wings. "But that's probably what I deserve, Boris, for all my sins."

            I didn't know what to say. "Will I see you at six?" sounded stupid. "At Barrandov?" Even stupider.

            "Unless they throw me in—how you say—the slammer?"

            "Oh, they wouldn't—"

            "No," she pressed her lips sardonically. "Not for this. So... yes, we'll keep our date. With what's-his-same."

            "Your Irish beauty."

            "Yeah, if that's how you'll know him any better." She reached out her hand to shake mine, as if we were ending a business meeting. "And me? How will you decide to call me?"

            I called her by her name, of course. And—fair memory I sometimes have—I promised not to divulge that (you peeping tom).

            A quarter-hour later, lost in my thoughts, malvíkCity opened from the inside, as if letting out a little fart. The figure turning the key was clearly not Natálie, and I calculated how fruitful my entrance would or wouldn't be if I asked about her, with or without the context of doing baby showers. What a benign idea, right? Yet, without asking her boss (who may have been the opener), she could be nabbed for under-the-table negotiations. A smarter me would mosey away, get an early start with the invalid who relished an audience for her yarns in Czech. A smart-ass me would... well, did.

            "Excuse me," I addressed a portly man who fit the silhouette of the door-opener, "but I'm here for... Natálie, is it?"

            "Nevím," he responded, so I was pretty sure I'd have to hash this out differently.

            "I think so—Natálie, she said she was," I resorted to Czech. "Anyway, she was very helpful the other day when I asked about—oh, how do you say it... baby showers?" He furled his splotchy brow. "Like, welcome parties before the baby is born..." Some recognition, though he didn't seem to approve of the notion.

            "Is your wife expecting? What month?"

            Hmm. "She is,... and in terms of weeks, we are at around fifteen." That sounded plausible.

            "And Natálie told you... what?"

            "She first of all wished us well, which, not for nothing, is... very nice. Customer service—she gets it." He, on the other hand, didn't register what I was trying to say. I plowed on. "She understood our tradition in America to—how to put it?—to honor the tradition"—idiot! two traditions?—"and, well, I'm here to follow up. Is she going to be here today?"

            "For your baby shower? Nevím. It's not on our calender of events."

            "Ah. But it could be, right? Like, you host these kind of things?"

            "Sure. Especially if guests buy our items."

            Naturally. I thanked him and said I'd be back another day. "My name?" when he asked what he should tell Natálie.  "Uh, Tolliver." For no good reason. I tend to regard myself as 'good on my feet' (or, like a cat, able to land on my feet). Drawing Tolliver in might help my cause, whatever it is, or piss him off. And while I can't afford to litmus test that relationship, I wasn't altogether sure I wanted to move in with him if Lenka indeed kicked me to the curb. For the direct moment, I wanted to move in with Natálie,  or at the very least have her remember me. Tolliver would arrange a baby shower (maybe by telephone—yes, that would be easier to pull off) and say he knows this Boris guy who'd... well, I know what I'd script for him. And it wouldn't matter who'd answer the phone, because I'd show up the next day to make arrangements—Tolly to the portly man, Boris to Natálie,  pretty sure they wouldn't compare notes. I could always blame my faulty Czech, at any rate.

            On that note, I practically skipped to the invalid's apartment. Almost eager to try out my own yarns in Czech. Then walk her mongrel, of course.

 

~8~

             I shouldn't call any creature a 'mongrel', and in fact the invalid's dog had a better personality than, well, me at least. But the word for mongrel in Czech doesn't sound so pejorative—'křiženec', with that soft kazoo the language here has for letters with up-side-down carets—and by the lady's own ancient guess, her dog was a mix between a clumber spaniel and a briard (or some such date with destiny). Mutts tend to live longer than purebreds, and notwithstanding the biological reasons to unblue the blood, they often have a Big Lebowski disposition which can't hurt their blood pressure. 

            Most of my clients have dogs with papers—pedigrees—and I'm actually surprised they trust me to them. That basset, for instance, probably cost a couple grand in American currency, and the shih tzu, sheesh! If the Irish setter had a hairstyle that said, 'hands off, buddy', the shih tzu doubled down with a 'don't touch—but brush me, dammit!' Her owner (I know the shih tzu is a she) sometimes greets me at the door with said brush and watches my kneel-down technique, pretending to be on the phone or some other reason she's too busy for her high-maintenance pet.

            Then again, the shih tzu gets pooped pretty fast and drags her long locks to the very puffy bedding in the anteroom of her mistress's apartment. "So," I bid that mistress, "until tomorrow—"

            "Not so fast, bull boy."

            "What!?"

            "Isn't that what they say in the movies?"

            "Don't you mean 'cowboy'?"

            She danced that in her head. "Maybe. But you're not a cow, last time I checked."

            Uh oh. Last time this happened, I was rather late to Barrandov and the Irish setter. She's a body-enhancement blogger—vlogger, more to the point—and has socialite needs if, ironically or not, she rarely gets out of her apartment. I'd tell you her name to let you Google her work, but... that wouldn't be fair. You probably can't Google Natálie's work or Maruška's or Lenka's or Tolliver's (and maybe I've changed their names anyway); I don't really want to expose people, even if...

            Back to the shih tzu mistress. She promised this wouldn't take long: a trial run of drag queen cosmetics and, especially, a focus on the eyes. She insisted that she'd have to pluck my Adrien Brody eyebrows first of all, then (catching my retreating self by the belt)... "just kidding—your caterpillars are a gift from God. But we'd love to turquoise the shadow, then apply these lashes"—holding up what looked like baby tarantula legs. I protested a hundred different ways, but that only made her more obdurate. She took photos on her phone, kissed the air a lot, sometimes landing those on me to (I don't know) keep me cooperative.

            "You aren't going to put me on a video, are you?"

            "Oh, Boris," was her only response to that. The shih tzu waddled in to wonder why I was still there, and our eye contact seemed to answer with no clear answer. Her mistress began to brush my eyelashes with microscopic tenderness, and if the dog were jealous, I sensed some voyeurism as well. "You like it," she declared (instead of asked), so I let her think so.

            Propriety suggested I should leave by now, but also, from her perspective, that the shih tzu should vamoose for, let's say, the unveiling of the new me. In the end, I allowed a bit of video interviewing. As long as the camera was off when the non-talking began.

            To clean up thoroughly would make me uncasually late for Barrandov. The eyelashes had to come off, of course, as well as the apricot lip gloss and cheekbone glitter. The eye shadow was deep and tiding into my unplucked brows, so... I'd try to kleenix them in the metro train to Smíchovské nádraží, or, barring that, the tram from there to Barrandov.

            My actress was already out of her flat and waiting at the Geologická stop, her Irish setter uncharacteristically on a leash. The red numbers on the inside of the tram read 6:19—not as bad as I thought.

            But still bad. "Why, if you reinforced six o'clock with me just a little while ago, would you...?"

            She stopped and scowled at the mess I had likely made of my eyes. "I'm sorry... I had a longer appointment at Karlovo and... I'm sorry." I reached to the setter to have her—him—sniff my hand for familiarity. "I see the leash is..."

            "Boris, were you putting me on outside that baby store? Were you really there to walk other dogs?"

            Had I even mentioned malvíkCity to her? I mean, it was in eyesight, but she would have been well within the courthouse across the highway when I was talking with the portly manager. And so what if I was? I did walk dogs in the area: the invalid's clumber mongrel, the pair of dachshunds (while their stupid teenage owners gobbled more pacman pellets). Then to Karlovo, where... "I have to admit, I'm trying to find other work than walking dogs. The baby store, for instance."

            "You want to work at a baby store?"

            I explained the idea of playing guitar for baby showers—a concept I had to further explain. We walked to the more wooded side of the bluff, where the Irish setter could run free. I asked how her court appearance went, which she was just as reluctant to talk about. There's no acting when it comes to bureaucracy, she said, and I thought deeply about that. Acting. Occasions that more or less availed to it. The Irish setter came up to see if we could walk another round of the bluff, as limited as space really was up here. I raised my Brodies to see what the boss would say about that proposition. "I mean, I have nothing pressing—"

            "But you were already late, Boris. And maybe I have something pressing."

            "Of course—I'm sorry again. Don't pay for today's—"

            Out of the blue, she slapped me with an expert swipe, hard enough for the setter to shutter. "Don't you don't me. Or however you say things. Don't you think I can smell the sex on you? And your ridiculous make-up? And your baby lies?"

            I sniffed for perhaps that nip of booze that brought her to court in the first place. But probably I also sniffed my compunction. "I've been," I had to rehearse in my mind, but hated that feeling, so just blurted out, "a bad dog today. A mongrel, really."

            She sized me up, then decided to drop at my feet the leash. "Then take that," pointing down, "and don't come back for a while." 

            The setter stared at me for a half-minute after she turned to go home. It might have been a test—surely I shouldn't take the leash, and even more surely not leave the dog confused. Slowly, then, I bent to attach the spring-loaded clip to the setter's collar, speaking sweet nothings as if to smooth out the sudden drama. Naturally, I'd lift the hand loop to guide the dog, but that very instant the actress blared out his name, and he torpedoed toward her in evident relief. The leash so quickly out of my grip caused a little rope burn. Probably what I deserve, I thought, for all my sins.

 

~9~

             Curious thing, sin. In my reception to various definitions, I wondered how much I was 'missing the mark', as heard in church, or victim (almost) of a 'hamartia', as learned in literature class. Surely I wasn't King Lear, "a man more sinned against than sinning"—at least in the off-chance anyone wants to hear the old fool's voice. Released by his own recognizance, if only to return to nothing of a government, let alone any route toward rehabilitation. His court appearance is solely on the heath, cross-examined by a pelting rain that offers no baptismal grace (by how the denouement pans out), if his prayer for the "poor naked wretches" creates an infant empathy that has to count for something.

            I needed to wash my eyes before facing Lenka, whom I guessed was home by now (I had forgotten my phone on the little table near my sofa-bed, so couldn't call her to see how she was doing today, or what I could pick up for dinner). Walking through Barrandov to a gas station with a fitting name of 'MOL', I contemplated how utterly unlike baptism this would be: erasing the evidence of sin instead of confessing, coming clean, falling on a heavenly mercy. The cashier correctly reminded me, in Czech, that I needed to be a customer in order to use the restrooms. So I bought a small box of Raffaello coconut balls—an after-dinner favorite, as we'd maybe watch Grey's Anatomy or something in Czech. Lenka liked anything with Anna Geislerová; I liked her too, but favored older shows like the Hrabal-Menzel collaborations.

            With my eye shadow—if not really my sins—washed away, I trammed back down the hill to the station called Zlíchov, as close to a home as I'd ever had, including Chicago (but I don't want to go into that). Ours was a two-plus-one apartment on another slope—perhaps a twin to the Barrandov bluff, if anyone cared to see them that way. 

            It wasn't dusk yet, but the light was on in the window. I took a peek around the other side to see if the balcony door was open and, if so, how I might Romeo the moment to my Juliet inside. But soft, what light through yonder window breaks...

            But then, instead: "Oh, hello!" as I was surprised to see Lenka already there, hanging laundry on the plastic-coated cords that many of these balconies have.

            "Oh, hello?" she shot back at me. "Is that how you'd answer your telephone?"

            "I... I guess. Isn't that the normal way to... greet anybody?"

            She went in and stomped an apparent path to the sofa-bed; ten seconds later she held up my not-so-smart phone like Thor's hammer. "You'd greet some 'Marie 1' with heart emojis, I'd assume! Or is that just the way she greets you?"

            Marie 1? "Ah, you mean Maruška—"

            "Sweet—she has a cute little ška at the end of her name, right before all those happy hearts."

            "No, yeah—she's my, um..."

            "Your sister from America? Your girlfriend from Canada?"

            I could say 'I can explain', but... that would take some doing. "I can't... know what she means with heart emojis. I've never seen any message from—"

            Lenka let the device drop—my dive scraping my forearms to keep it from smashing on the ground. "Read it and weep, Boris," she even-keeled, "likely tears of joy. It looks like she has a place for you near the Lennon Wall, where she'd like to pick up where you two left off."

            I looked at the message that glowed even before a PIN would open anything further. Simply: 'Lennon znovu? Just me this time ♥♥♥'. I looked up at the balcony, which Lenka had vacated again. "She's one of the hipsters at Kampa," I explained to the emptiness. "She maybe had the wrong impression—"

            In less than a minute, Lenka returned with an armload of my clothes and tossed them over the rail. "And your guitar? Can't find that, Boris." Again, the even-keel that would serve her well for medical prognoses in her near future (one I hoped would have included me). "You didn't bring home your guitar last night, apparently."

            Yes! A chance to be truthful. A godsend (God willing). "Exactly. Maruška was there when it happened. Some grizzly guy barged into the songs I was playing and he was, well, unhappy about... something—"

            "About you hitting on his holka—"

            "No, I swear—she wasn't his. She wanted to hear the Barbaloot song and—"

            "Where's your guitar, Boris?"

            "Smashed. At Lennon Wall. I was running away from this enraged man."

            "And now this woman you weren't hitting on has fixed it."

            Honesty. Honesty. Honesty. "She felt bad. She said she'd help pay..."

            Lenka went in and rummaged a few other items, including, generously, my phone charger. And as much as I prayed she'd leave my passport and visa papers in their secret drawer (enabling a necessary return), she added those to a final air-drop. She looked at me for maybe fifteen seconds more—time enough for last-ditch pleas or drop-down-on-my-knees—but in my astounded silence, she backed herself into the flat and latched the balcony door.

            Hear me out.

            Like the dogs I've walked in life—and this is not to say a human is a dog, but just to know me better (or know a better me)—I've never deliberately harmed another creature. I may not be good at helping fellow creatures, or building on a given relationship. I've been selfish, but not, in my own humble estimation, manipulative. If I haven't been square on a deal, I also haven't been a thief.

            For instance, I thought (while thinking what to do next): the temptation to be a thief had been tested not too long ago. Tolliver inquired if I'd ever steal a dog in order to hold it ransom. "What? Why would you ask me that? And under what circumstances would—" And he filled in the blanks this way: he'd seen a flyer not unlike my own on a bulletin board that offered a four thousand koruna reward for a lost Shar Pei. Wouldn't it be interesting, Tolliver conjectured, if the person who found that dog was actually the person who lost the dog in the first place, wink-wink?

            "You're suggesting that I, as dog-walker, would deliberately lose a client's dog and then claim a reward for finding it? Are you loopy?"

            "No, no, no! Of course you wouldn't steal a client's dog. But you'd use your savvy to lure one out of, say, a dog park. You'd take care of him okay, wait for the reward notice, then call the number saying you found him while, I dunno, jogging the path along the river."

            "Why there?"

            "That's where I'd go if I were a stray. Catch a gull or somethin'."

            I wondered out loud how a guy entrusted to extract patients' blood would be so heartless. And bone-headed. I mean, if he were joking, that'd be one thing; but he was actually trying to be useful in my under-employed concern of getting paid enough to stay in the country. "It's like you're trying to get me kicked out of the country," I told him then, and underscored my point: "I may be a slacker, but I'm no thief."

            Tolliver also underscored, "just tryin' to help you out, mate," with a forlorn wince of his chubby face.

            Heading to his place now—I managed to call him as his shift ended—I realized I'd have to be a better friend and a tolerable guest. That would mean more than a house gift of Raphaello coconut balls in a box. He wouldn't ask for anything, of course, but would want me to listen to his stories or schemes or worries or dreams....

            Holding onto my clothes—sans suitcase—inside a tram made me feel somewhat naked, obviously stripped of something in nearly every passenger's mind, as far as I could discern from their flitting glances. Naked like Lear, I reflected, who's thrown away wisdom, the only treasure I could say I've possessed now and then. "I have taken too little care," I mumbled aloud, hoping Lenka might hear my regret, even a dozen tram stops away.

 

~10~

 

            My trek from Vítězné náměstí, which stands for 'Victory square', to Tolliver's flat on Puškinovo náměstí, which stands for the Russian poet, was inglorious. I dropped a pair of underwear before stuffing them as well as socks into my usually untucked shirt; then I draped pants and sweatshirts around my neck, tying their appendages to reduce their chances to escape. A six-year-old across the street asked his mother, in Czech, if I were a homeless person, and she hushed him for being, basically, accurate. Truth is shameful sometimes, I guess he learned. And shame puts a lid on learning.

            Tolliver wasn't home yet—he said on the phone he'd come straight out of work and, since I had nothing else going on, I'd just take a bench on the square and imagine how Evgeny Onegin would handle similar circumstances. Brood, probably. And then throw down a glove (underwear, in my case) and demand a duel at dawn.

            Which wouldn't happen here, not after '68 and '89. Curious thing, this square, surviving the shifts of history. But Pushkin wasn't Putin, after all, and people in this neighborhood probably didn't bother their brains about it. No great pressure to find that Bohemian poet to lay claim to the place. Maybe if my dog novel would ever take shape, I could make a case; then Lenka would see me in a better light, and—

            "Wha's up?" the voice of a knackered vamp. "You look homeless, mate."

            "Yeah, well," I stood up to shake his hand (for the first time ever, I immediately realized). "I spooked a kindergartener over there—or his mom even more so."

            "Nah," Tolliver kept hold of my hand, "you don't look so bad. Down in the mouth, maybe. Lenka gave you the heave-ho, huh?"

            Of course I had already established that, but I suppose he wanted to use the alliteration. "Helluva heave-ho," I echoed.

            "Really? Was it brutal? Worth getting drunk about?"

            I couldn't really read where he was going, so I pursed my lips into a don't get me started grin and slight shake of my head. Then I gathered my scattered bundle to nudge us toward his place. He finally released my hand to grab some items despite my protestations—most of this was unlaundered—but.... Tolly was undeterred.

            Tired as hell, though, as much as he was trying to hide it. We said little in the journey to his one-plus-one that used to be an attic in this rather upscale district. "More than a poor med student can afford," he faux-lamented, knowing full well he had it better than most of his colleagues. After a twenty-second tour, including the futon (all yours, mate), he told me he could pull his air mattress into the kitchen. I waved that idea off as unnecessary, but wondered if he was saying so more for his sense of privacy than mine. After a few minutes of shuffling and small talk, I offered to fetch us some dinner from the burrito bistro down the road, and he threw me a hundred koruna, which of course I refused. "For a bottle of Božkov," he rationalized, tucking the rogue bill into my front pocket.

            "Oh, well, if—"

            "Not if," he said enigmatically, "but when."

            I wondered, while walking down the stairs, if it may have been better to be homeless for a couple of nights. Buy some time for Lenka to soften to my misdemeanors. I smiled, despite myself: they were decidedly 'sins' a couple hours ago at Barrandov. Hah! Now the ol' noggin had renamed them 'misdemeanors'. Tomorrow they'd turn into 'whoopsies' and then 'charming indiscretions'. But nevadí (Maruška back in my imagination)—the nomenclature didn't matter. I was relegated to the penalty box of Tolliver and his bottle of rum. "And I should be thankful," I said to a random passer-by before ducking into the bistro. In the minutes it took to whip up my order, I had moved that should to a working would, then thanked the burrito chef in that spirit and exited for the mini-market a few doors down.

            Because I didn't want to share Tolliver's Božkov, I purchased for myself a two-litre plastic bottle of Braník beer, the cheapest of the relatively cheap. I also grabbed a couple bags of chips—"crisps", I mimicked in cockney—and (because it was begging some mercy from the questionable produce corner) a watermelon for dessert.

            Plenty to balance on my way back to Puškinovo náměstí, yet I felt in fair practice by now. That didn't mean I wanted the six-year-old or, more importantly, his mom to see me again. And, like magic, they did (probably back from their own errand). "Ahoj," I decided to say, lifting my watermelon elbow a bit for a simulated wave.

            "Nedívej se," I heard her instruct her little gawker. Don't look at a stranger, even if he's trying to be a bit more neighborly. One never knows—little lesson #2.

            I rang the right button with my nose and Tolliver buzzed me in. He had put half my clothes in his washing machine and set his Spotify to Depeche Mode, presently the track 'Enjoy the Silence'. "Hope you don't mind," he said, not specifying what I would or wouldn't.

            "The music?" I guessed.

            "No—that I'm washing your clothes. I should've asked."

            "Not at all—I appreciate..."

            "Do you mind the music? Turn it down if you want."

            In fact, I turned it up a tiny bit. "I played 'Personal Jesus' at Kampa the other day," which wasn't exactly true (I had it prepared, at least).

            "You mean yesterday?"

            "Holy shit—was Kampa just yesterday?"

            Tolly opened the Božkov and took a fair slug. Then, grinning at the question, "You're asking me? How would I know, 'cept that you clued me in this morning."

            My God, what a long-ass day. "No, the first time I played there. Yesterday didn't, um, afford the chance."

            He brushed the air with his unrummed hand. "What doesn't kill us..."  

            I allowed time for him to finish that thought, lost in another swig. Outside the lone window, the sky was darkening. "I don't think I'll be going back there any time soon."

            "Well," Tolly said, looking around his spare furnishings, "I wish I had a guitar here for ya. I mean... don' have the fingers for it myself, but..."

            "How'd you become a vamp, then?" I twisted open the Braník. "Seems like that's a dexterous job."

            "Oh, basically bollocks. Nobody else wanted to do it in my section of training—not full-time, at least." He went on to describe the process, chomping his burrito as he mixed the gentle slaps to the forearm with the distraction banter he thought I'd like to hear: "won't take a minute, Miss, 'nless I miss"; "see? beauty's more than skin-deep"; "that said, those toes might like a little nail polish"—

            "What? you'd comment on their toes?"

            "Make 'em look away. Talk about that socks-in-sandals nonsense. See if they groove to scarlet. By the time she thinks about it, the procedure's done."

            Since I hadn't eaten all day, I decided not to let this conversation ruin my appetite, and remarked as much. "No, the shih tzu lady didn't offer me lunch," I told him when he wanted the blow-by-blow of my day. "Nor did I have time after that to snarf down a hotdog, running to Barrandov..." I abbreviated some of the details, of course, but said enough to justify Lenka's disdain.

            "So do you love this... shih tzu person enough?"

            It had never occurred to me—love, one way or another. I used the word as colloquially as anyone: ooh, I love this song on the radio, or make love, not war at the Lennon Wall (or anywhere). Being tucked in by mom and repeating what she whispered, not imagining how ephemeral things could ever be. From scarlet nail polish to turquoise eye shadow (and much subtler hues), I nearly forgot how she gussied herself up sometimes. Maybe to feel loved. Tolliver's chomping, now into the second bag of crisps, allowed a fair interval to forget his question. When he didn't (and indeed repeated the prompt), I had to be honest: "Her, Lenka,... even you, buddy—I wish I knew how."

            

~11~

 

            Days passed—no need accounting for the blow-by-blow. I suppose you need to know that I tried again with Lenka, but ended up after five minutes giving her my keys to the flat. I offered to keep paying rent (Tolliver not charging me a dime), though she shook her head, wanting a clean break. Maybe wanting a new roommate—not my business.

            You also need to know that Tolliver sleepwalks. Not like Lady Macbeth, which has its kind of panache for connecting-the-dots. More like a zombie looking for another bag of crisps and occasionally mistaking my futon for his air mattress. I treated that like a matador—lithely sliding out of danger and to the vacant mattress, then back again when the sleeping bull made another, lugubrious charge. I brought it up, of course, in waking light. "Oh, not so!" he laughed, "I'd have to know what I'm doin', mate. I mean, it's in my blood."

            The be-all and end-all of 'it'. Cover it with make-up, put it in the sewers at arm's reach to pull you in—and there you have it: the genius of Stephen King.

            But Tolly was no Pennywise, and in fact, our waking hours together (as few as they turned out to be) were great for talking shop. A few years younger than me, he had it in mind to intern here as Lenka was already doing, then, "who knows?"—venturing to southeast Asia or staying here or... "And what about you?"

            I had more reason to stay, what with my distant relatives (none of whom, incidentally, ever offered more than a brunch date, which I've only taken a couple times to no great shakes) and my existing clients (who might have lost the instinct of walking their own dogs). Chicago called me not; southeast Asia... "they eat dogs there, in't?"

            Tolliver clapped my shoulder at my bad Bri'ish. "It's an urban feckin' myth! Let's you 'n I holiday there to check it out, huh?"

            Instead, I spent more and more of my free time at Stromovka—partly because the stroll was only ten-fifteen minutes from Tolliver's. I read Richard Power's novel The Overstory, reflecting on the arboretum I was in and each 'strom' that supported an ecosystem, seen and unseen. I must have read the chapter on Patricia Westerford four or five times. Her father quizzes her: "Which trees flower before they leaf, and which flower after?" and "If you carved you name four feet high in the bark of a beech tree, how high would it be after half a century?" Well, tune in, Boris! You're more'n halfway there.

            With the cash I could save by not paying rent, I metroed to Českomoravská and bought a guitar from Music City (joking with the staff there—"sure this aint malvíkCity in disguise?"). Turned out they had a cutaway Washburn with just a few dings to its lower bout, not affecting the action at all. The mahogany neck slid in my palm like a bobsleigh.

            Playing it at Stromovka was entirely different than a Kampa experience, and (I know—stupid me) it was a matter of inertia to either keep my butt planted with the stromy here or gravitate to the grizzly hazards there.

            It occurred to me only after passing under Charles Bridge to text Maruška and see if the coast was clear. 'Meet me top of lanovka in an hour' was her message back; the funicular wasn't far from Kampa, and the extra time allowed me to dip into Shakespeare & Sons to browse their cellar shelves. I decided to purchase Olga Tokarczuk's Primeval and Other Times to give to Maruška, partly to borrow it back, as I'd make no pretense in having read it already. In other things I've read from her, the feral blended with the tame in ways I thought matched Kampa, but then again....

            Nothing about Prague was really feral. I took the lanovka up from Újezd (trotting brazenly through Kampa) and, like a soldier coming home from a tour of duty, saw Maruška waiting at the platform, a stemless rose cupped in her hand. "For you," she stretched her arms before my motion toward a hug. I took the pink unfolding orb as tenderly as she had held it, "like a sýkorka," she suggested. "How's it named in English?"

            I blushed to tell her, "'tit'. We should have a better word for it by now. But, as they say, a rose by any other name..."

            She was grateful for Tokarczuk. "I read her Flights," she said, "and this will be also good for airport reading."

            "For what?"

            She took my wrist and we walked into the rose garden, its hub and spokes of pastel fragrance. "That little... tit is a rescue bird," Maru explained. "See, somebody—hopefully only last night's wind—chopped off some of the blossoms."

            "Nipped in the bud," I decided to say, detecting something of the hour to come.

            She finally noticed the sleeping toddler strapped to my back. "Oh! you got a new guitar! May I?"

            We floated to a bench and I mocked a little strip tease to finally unzip the Washburn and hand it over for her cradling. She smooched the top before bidding me to play something.

            "Something... what? Sad?"

            "Why sad?"

            I couldn't exactly justify. I had been practicing 'Topné obdobi' by Svěrák, a kind of kiddish thing to try out now, and I could tell right away Maruška disapproved (despite her gracious face). It wasn't autumn yet and... yet I felt like the falling leaves in the song would compel some cuddling like the title crossed its fingers for. Because she looked down into the cinder path, I played a fade-out without repeating the final verse. "It goes on, but..."

            "I'm going on, too," she announced, with some deliberation, "to New York." She tapped the book. "That's why this will be good reading for the plane."

            Stunned, I pulled the neck of the Washburn to my collarbone. "New York—what's there?"

            "You know—Statue of Liberty and stuff like that."

            "So, a visit...."

            She stood up and did her own version of a pirouette. "No."

            I was about to stand up, too, like a Pushkin dupe. Instead, I jackknifed the guitar back to playing position and tapped out a soft riff that had been finding its feet at Stromovka. If I could add a strain here, I'd think of it as an opus Praha (so far in B minor). She swung her dress a little more in that invitation, then sat back at my jab: "New York, you should know, isn't all that 'huddled masses yearning to be free' kinda hype. Not that you won't get swarmed in the masses..."

            "And yearn to be free?"

            "And yearn to be free. It's gonna be a grind, more often than not. What are you planning to do there, anyway?"

            "Walk dogs, maybe."

            Jokes sting by design. If I wouldn't take this one seriously, I wouldn't take my own life here as more than a joke (with Lenka, for one, not laughing). Nevertheless, I snickered, "d'ya want some pointers?"

            "Actually," she cuffed my right biceps, "I'm gonna be an au pair. Two little kids who stare at Central Park from the tenth floor, like prisoners."

            "—white collar crime. They'll be out by the next slate of presidential pardons."

            "Huh?"

            "Never mind." I lightly worked the middle strings and, wouldn't you know, the G suddenly snapped. Maru flinched and reached for her eye. "Holy shit! Are you—"

            "Ow," she moaned, then, "it's not so... ow..."

            "Damn it," I swiveled to examine the damage. "I'm so sorry! It's been unused at the music store, probably, and strings become—" Shut up, Boris, you boor! Who gives a flying fuck why the G lashed out now, of all moments. I brushed her hair back. "Can I?..."

            "No," she started to cry, and a tint of red couldn't be contained behind her hand. "Tell me it's not—" she pressed her hand harder, but then relented to my appeal to assess.

            It wasn't blinding, yet the corner of her left eye had what looked like a bee sting in the white that wanted to disappear into her lower lid. "You can see okay?" She nodded. "Let's get you checked out, at any rate."

            The best way (we both agreed) was to lanovka down and catch a quick tram to Malastranská metro to Motol, six stops away. While naturally we spoke less than we would have, Maruška assured a half dozen times that she felt fine and even teased me that if I wanted her to stay, there'd be better ways to do it. She asked me to read about Primeval, especially this angel assigned to a character named Misia. I did, despite the water welling in my own eyes. 

 

~12~

 

            When city planners extended the green metro line to Motol hospital, they knew which side to dump passengers—north, the 'back doors' of the complex where ambulances also docked. No one I know has ever gone through the front doors, because everything is processed through 'emergency' intake. And anything can be an emergency, of course, from a heart attack to a broken heart. My dad knew a radio personality in Chicago named Marcus who feared hospitals so much he never stepped into one from age 7 to 27; at that fateful age (my own, I should remind), Marcus had tonsilitis that necessitated removal. His fellow disc jockeys ribbed him of his fear and tried their own form of shock therapy by staging a mock funeral on air the morning before the out-patient operation. Marcus quavered his thanks and 'wish me luck'. He donned an undersized robe (being three hundred and fifty pounds) and took a local anesthetic; in a matter of minutes he had a seizure and died. The radio show the next morning, my dad recalled, was a moribund attempt to fill the silence.

             As Maruška's hand quivered in mine, I didn't tell her anything like the Marcus story. Tokarczuk satisfied through the public transit, then she wanted to let that rest. She spoke to three receptionists and two nurses to give the immediate impression that the poke wasn't bad—either adding to or reducing the wait time for a doctor. Eye drops and gauze and an ibuprofen helped the waiting room doldrums; the thin plastic cups of coffee probably hindered, but...

            It occurred to me an hour in that Lenka could be on duty, several floors and wings away. Do I call her for the occasion? Grease the rails, so to speak, for an optimal optometrist on site? Conversely, do I duck if she happens to walk by? Hide behind a prop—the coffee cup, the book, the Washburn in its case, the wavy hair of Maru, who might appreciate my whispered heads up. Wait—why would she appreciate... what?

            "My ex-girlfriend works here," I decided to pre-empt.

            "Oh?" Maru answered. And?

            I coughed lightly. "Maybe she... could help, you know..."

            "Maybe she'd poke my other eye out."

            End of novel. Boris the Gloucester-maker.

            We were silent for a while, then I kissed her forehead. I wanted to bring up New York in a tell me that wasn't truesort of way. The city of Holden Caulfield and phonies who wouldn't be caught dead at Gatsby's funeral. The Naked Cowboy dueling with Tickle-Me Elmo on Times Square. Woody Allen movies, which, heart of hearts, raft an ironic authenticity. But what does NYC have to really trump Prague, pun intended? Why trade places? Then why did you leave Chicago, I imagined she'd ask. Good point.

            Socialized medicine, maybe. Maruška's number blinked red and, like a train depot, pointed to the room she should go. "Do you want me to come with?" I offered.

            She seemed to think about that. "No, I'll be okay. But drž mi palce, if you will."

            Closing my hands like a church with no people, I nodded this wish.

            The first ten minutes she was in, I just stared ahead at the somewhat comforting mural on the wall of bohemian village life—fresher in style than what the communists might have put up in the first place, but hard to know from whence it generated. More on my mind was simply the seeing, the notion that opening our eyes to recognizable reality is something we take for granted 'til—snap!—a piece of our own creation lashes out. All good fun, the substitute teacher warns about the paper airplanes, until someone loses an eye. Maru assured me in the metro that she could see through the blur, but what if the blur stayed there forever? I'd donate my own eye. I'd become her black lab forever at her side. I'd become a monk.... I'd maybe get over myself for once in my life.

            The next ten minutes were an obligatory scroll of nothingness on the phone, like eighty-plus percent of the forty-plus people sharing this rectangle of patience 101 (or graduate level, by the looks of some wrinkled brows). I thought of texting the Barrandov actress for the third day running—if she had responded yesterday, I would have been there instead of the rose garden (not that she's to blame). But I'd have nothing new to ask or say. 'At Motol' would be new. 'Have a G string handy?' God, I'm a jerk.

            The Washburn begged release from its own leash, the zippered bag it hadn't known at the music store. I twirled the end of the offending string from its tuning key, then undid the longer lash from its peg behind the saddle. The bugger was still looking to do damage as I wound it up to make it fit the little garbage bin; the piercing ends were almost seeking ways to inflict more pain. Then, to prevent the others from doing the same, I decided to flatten them a half step or so. A riff or two I tried sounded strange as a result—especially without that G—and I was getting sideway glances, so I started to sheath the problem child.

            "Boris?"

            The voice came from the coffee machine. Then,

            "Boris?"

            Maruška's was the second voice, and instinctively I stood up to see how she fared in the doctor's office. The gauze was off, but a little butterfly bandage closed the outer half of her left eye, the pupil shining beautifully on me, then shifting to the coffee machine.

            Lenka, 20Kč coin in hand, was not in uniform—apparently on her way out with a cheapish coffee to sip at the tram stop. "Boris?" she repeated, and I looked a random third direction as if she might have had the wrong guy. "Are you... here for you?" she questioned in a tone that demanded my eye contact, "or... for me?"

            "Uh," not wanting to sound like a smart-ass, "um, neither (in my Bri'ish pronunciation of the long i)—I mean, we're here... for, um—"

            "Já jsem Marie." Maruška walked a hypotenuse toward her with an I've heard so much about you sort of smile.

            "I don't know what's going on," Lenka remained in English and with the same 20Kč poised to hurl like a martial arts weapon. "Are you here for an appointment?"

            I had to say something. "Well, technically not an appointment; an emergency... Maruška's eye... victim of my G string," pointing at my cowering Washburn.

            Lenka blinked her own eyes to understand. "This cow is the slut you traded me for?" she said in Czech (I'll spare you the translation, though I can't do much for the tender-eared in the waiting room who had to hear). "You bought a new guitar on, what, this month's rent? And of all emergencies, you bounce into my workspace and bounce right out with a butterfly clip?"

            "It could have been bad," I protested.

            "Is it?" Lenka addressed Maru, frozen in her tracks.

            "Not horrible," she shrugged. "I can see, and it didn't scratch the cornea. Just the sc...scara—"

            "Sclera? Or your tramp mascara?"

            "Lenko, prosím," I attempted to referee, causing an undertow of chuckles by a fraction of the forty now staring up from their phones.

            "Lenko, Lenko!" she mocked, then spun in a rather athletic move to jam the coin into the slot and pound the button she knew by muscle memory. Maruška made eye contact (as much as she could) with me to wonder what now? I could only shrug. Lenka tapped her foot for the twelve seconds these machines take, then took the scalding cup out with surgical care. She looked at me for the chance to explain why she shouldn't toss her purchase into my face. Despite self-interest, I was speechless, but for the record, she walked elegantly out the door, slowing at the threshold to sip off the froth.

            Maruška pussyfooted over and playfully punched my shoulder. "I'm sorry," she said in a general sort of way.

            "I'm sorry," I said, specifically studying what I could of the sclera that showed, reddened but not maimed. "How are you feeling?"

            "Fine, really. Feel bad for her, though."

            I did, too. I felt bad for everybody, then realized I couldn't feel badly for myself if I was the cause for making people feel bad. Not that I felt good about myself. Some double negatives don't work as tidily as math makes them out to be. "Will this... injury, I guess, prevent New York City?"

            "What would you want me to say?"

            I bit my lip. "No?"

            She smiled at my lack of sincerity. "Correct. You have become a knight in my heart."

            Which sounds so much better in Czech—rytíř—probably because that's Jagr, too, on his final team.

 

~13~

 

            We ran into Tolliver on the way to the metro—a night shift beginning for him, and Maru's emergency over. I introduced the two and filled in contexts (to their nods of half-understanding). I could sense Tolliver's mix of congenial nervousness, and while I wouldn't do otherwise, I brought up Lenka to give him a touchstone of something he could talk about. "She was on her way out when we saw her."

            "Passing ships," Tolly uttered awkwardly. "We almost never see each other here—place is so massive. How is she, then?"

            "Lenka?" I looked at Maruška, who shrugged. "Okay, I guess. Doesn't want me back."

            "Doesn't want you dead, either?" he figured (with an American long e).

            "Wants me dead, maybe," Maruška mumbled.

            "She doesn't want anyone dead," I deadpanned. "She's a doctor, for goodness sakes. Hippocratic oath."

            "Bedside manner," Tolly again tried to joke. "But, hey—you got your key?"

            As if I would have lost the copy he made for his flat. "Sure."

            "Okay—see you in the morning, then. Nice to meet you, um..."

            "Maruška."

            "Yes, Maruška—pardon my buggy memory."

            "It's okay.... Tolly."

            He blushed as he shook her outstretched hand and grunted some syllables to me, then pigeon-toed a relatively quick line to the hospital.

            In the metro, Maru asked, "what does it mean, 'buggy'?"

            Dullard that I am, I thought instantly of Natálie and malvíkCity, the baby buggies I'd help sell with my dulcet ditties. "Buggy?"

            "Yeah, what your friend said... about memory."

            I'm sure I gave a suitable read on the term. In my propensity to talk on one thing and contemplate another (less a skill than a pathology), I charted out tomorrow: Music City to bargain for a new set of strings, then malvíkCity to show my safer Washburn to whomever manned or womaned the store. Besides 'Topné obdobi', which would raise an eyebrow with its questionable "netrpím melancholií" (though I'd like to think the lyric's true: I don't suffer from melancholy), I had been practicing other, more kid-friendly tunes by Svěrák and Uhlíř. I could do a little set as a teaser, and if the portly manager became confused—'Weren't you the expectant father?'—I'd flatter his memory and say it's part of the surprise, all this initiative and behind-the-scenes planning. I'd play our baby shower, I'd tell him, but also avail myself to other lucky couples. The hope, though, is that Natálie would be on duty and I'd only have to deal with her. Or 'deal with' isn't right—sounds like a croupier or hitman, a more-than-melancholy thought as to where my thoughts could lead, as honestly, I'm—

            "Boris? Are you paying attention? This is Dejvická, you know—"

            My stop (Tolliver's, more accurately). "Are you...?"

            "Going with you? If you ask nicely."

            "Uh..."

            She pushed me and herself through the closing door. "Got to be quicker than that, Amik!"

            It was pretty dark by now, and I must've asked a time too often how her eye was feeling, as she cocked her fist to slo-mo punch me in my own left eye and boo-boo kiss the faux damage. "Then how's your stomach feeling? We haven't eaten a thing..."
            "That's more like it. I'm starving, actually."

            My lack of imagination (outside of baby showers, still brewing) and limited budget pointed at the same burrito and Braník tandem of stores. That satisfied her taste alright. "It's not the feast in Sedmikrásky, I admit..."

            "Well, you're not Marie 2, either," she rejoined (with a scrumptious long i).

            We had nothing much to do when we got up to Tolliver's—no tv to watch or unsheathed guitar (God forbid) to tempt déjà vu. Other temptations seemed tamer, despite the occasional 'kde jsi?' messages on her mobile phone. I asked if one of them was from Grizzly Guy, and she reminded me that wasn't his name. And yes. And none of your business.

            "How're your parents about you leaving for the States?"

            "Now that's totally none of your business." But she told me anyway. I was obliged to tell her equivalent tidbits, and while I won't share them here with you (no offense), it was surprisingly cathartic to hear her take on generational tethers and when to untie. Not like fallopian tubes, exactly, but...

            The nonsense in me wanted to ask a serious question: 'would you want to have a baby?... Not with me—not right now, but... After NYC, or using that experience to wait-and-see'... Instead, I resorted to the more eloquent communication of a backrub and whatever else would temper the impending melancholií for at least one of us.

            Tolly, to his credit, didn't try to wake us up at 6am. But in this clunk and that, Maru's stretch to inadvertently punch me in the mouth, her groggy apology and my inspection of her butterfly clip, we weren't going to get back to sleep. "I do need to get to work soon," she casually remembered.

            "Where's that?"

            While she told me, dressing, she didn't want an escort—not to Dejvická or beyond. "I think you'll need to forget me for a while. This week will be crazy otherwise."

            "You're saying to forget you until you leave? Then remember again?"

            "I'll call from the rose garden before I leave. We didn't do that place any justice."

            "'Cuz of this stupid chaperone," I pouted, kicking the case of the Washburn.

            She patted it forgivingly, embraced me another time, whispered bye-bye (the same to a Tolliver pretending to be asleep on the air mattress), then slipped out the door.

            The August air from Puškinovo náměstí, let in conscientiously before she left, would have helped me drift off to dreamland again, but the opposite occurred. Sometimes, to induce, I'd review plotlines to my stray ridgebacks (Bedlam and Swarm) and nuance their adventures, as dogged as they'd be and neutered, to boot—the 'systematic loss of instinct' forced that issue upon their mutual first birthday. So getting laid was not in the mix. God, what else to live for, muse about?

            Well, integrity (for starters). Learning the lay of the land outside an owner's prescription. Interpreting a world full of fragrant invitations and malodorous red flags—way better than Süskind's Grenouille. Seeing things in black and white and countless shades of gray; not being hung up on the way things should be. Having a twin to lean on with no strings attached, not even umbilical or those of some apron. Not quite at liberty to book a flight anywhere, they'd wind their way to Vyšehrad and somehow pick up on the myth of Šemík, the horse that leapt across the Vltava (for reasons worth reading about) and, in magical stride, galloping as far as liberty allowed.

            None of this rocked me back to sleep, so I took my derelict Washburn and a book (the Tokarczuk I'm sure Maruška simply forgot) and headed out. Music City wouldn't be open for a couple hours. Stromovka would be lonely—not usually, but in case it asks for a scoop. Karlín would probably have the factor most wise to avoid in the figure of Mrs Jack Russell. Or maybe a little reverse psychology: she shouldn't bar the gates to that side of the city. Besides, the anything café would be close by for a bit of breakfast.

            And, because my mood had suddenly soured, here is a spoiler for you: Šemík ran no further than Marathon did, dying exactly the same.

 

~14~

 

            Music City wasn't sympathetic to the flailing danger of a broken string. 'Occupational hazard' was in their monosyllabic shrugs. The one articulate guy there kept pushing me to use a pick to land more cleanly on each string, but I've always been a fan of finger free-styling. Why not Spanish guitar, then, with nylon strings? Less likely to snap... I put my Washburn back in its case with a fumbled phrase like 'you gotta raise what you adopt' and went out toward malvíkCity with a heavy heart.

            Which didn't lighten with the fact that Natálie was there. At her invitation, when she wanted to hear how I played, I decided to tell the truth of the past sixteen hours (or at least the front four of those). The fact that I only had five strings ready to play may have necessitated some context in that regard, but I knew I could fake through songs without a G. It's exhausting to be fake, though. And never gratifying.

            There was no one else on duty—the portly manager wasn't going to be in until mid-afternoon and the other cashier called in sick, so it was only me and Natálie and twenty tons (I'm guessing) of baby ware. And while I changed strings on the counter—a job I always hated for the way the pegs popped and the keys second-guessed every turn—Natalie attended to whatever the guts of the building required. She came back when I was almost through with a tray of tea (indeed, prenatal) and an 'all ears' aspect as long as there weren't any customers to serve.

            "All ears in terms of... some songs? Or more of what happened to Maruška?"

            She let that be up to me, so I chose to play some songs. 'Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head' seemed to please, and the fresh strings made the tune glisten. I contextualized that choice as one that could make the blustery days bearable—"kids will cry," we both agreed, and while the extent of experience I've had with kids (almost never crying) was in my failed semester as a kindergarten teacher, I agreed: "it's alright to cry." Which led to a Rosie Grier song from the albumFree To Be You and Me my father played to me as a little boy:

            "It's alright to cry," the L.A. Rams defensive tackle sang in a grandmotherly tone, "crying gets the sad out of you..." I sensed this one might have been less impactful on Natálie, who was still listening politely but looking more often toward the door, as if what we were doing might discourage a customer from coming in.

            I stopped playing after Grier to ask what songs she favored as a kid, but she gave a nevadí kind of glance that suggested it was my idea to have these showers, so it would be on me to supply the content. I wondered aloud if 'Topné obdobi' would be too removed a choice for a Czech audience coming to such an event, so she asked me to play that. I half-jokingly warned that this was the song that may have angered the previous G ("so watch out!"), but her lean against the counter wasn't so close to me anyway. I played it through to the repetition of the final verse this time—partly because she closed her eyes in dreamy contemplation. I felt the longer I could drag this out, the more she'd like my proposition. Or (more simply) me.

            And the more I did—the implausibility that no one else hadn't stepped into malvíkCity today besides us, having tea and a Kampa sort of vibe—made me realize (as we all do) that this couldn't be real, a don't pinch me, I'm dreaming too well type of moment. At which point, of course, the heaviness of daylight barges back in.

            "Umm," the real Natálie wondered, "are you... waiting here?"

            I reoriented my slumped body on the bench that looked toward the store. "Oh, ah... ahoj, Natálie...."

            She frowned a little. "I'm sorry—I forgot your name, even as you—"

            "Boris," I interrupted. "It's okay. I'd forget myself, too."
            "That can't be true."

            I looked over to the front door of malvíkCity which now I remembered peering into—what, maybe an hour ago?—as the portly manager and a non-Natálie employee were hunched over some detail at the cash register. "You're heading to work?"

            She scrunched her visage into an isn't it obvious? Instead of saying that, though, she point-blank asked: "why are you here, Boris?"

            "I was just dreaming of you," I blurted, knowing immediately it wouldn't sound right. "I mean, of our planning for baby showers. See? I brought my guitar."

            Her eyes narrowed as she waited for another clause or two that would either dig me in or out. "Have you been drinking?"

            "No! I mean, in our dream—"

            "—your dream—"

            "Yeah, my dream with you in it... so happened to also have tea—prenatal tea, it was—and so we were drinking that."

            "Where?"

            "In there," pointing to the store, "at the front counter. There weren't any customers, so..."

            Natálie shifted her purse from one shoulder to the other. "Listen," she began, and I did my best to. I can honestly admit to having listened to around forty percent, however, the gist of which was that (of course!) dreaming about being alone with another person who isn't sharing that vision is, well, not a thing to outright say. "Do I blame you for saying it?" I heard her pose as a rhetorical question, to which her own answer was a sort of yes-and-no: being candid is commendable unless it attempts to be opaque—about what someone wants of another, about leveraging some kind of influence because, you know, dreams.

            "But one can't control such dreams," I responded. "It wasn't like a daydream."

            She glanced at her watch. "Middle of the day. And I'll be late in a minute."

            "Please forget I even said that—I didn't get much sleep last night and... well, I just wanted to follow up on the baby shower idea."

            In a word, "no." She continued dispassionately for more than that minute, noting the business part of this proposition. While she had forgotten my name (see, I swallowed— I'd forget myself, too), she knew exactly who her portly manager had spoken with the other day—"some guy named 'Oliver', but it was really you, wasn't it?" —and before I could clarify, she wagged her finger at me to assert she wouldn't indulge in such schemes, in a way to get her own contact through her workplace. An irate Lenka had called the store, it turned out, and asked for Natálie, suspecting her of trying to filch her philandering boyfriend. And while it wouldn't matter who received that call—the portly manager, another colleague, Natálie herself—it was during business hours, potentially embarrassing, unsolicited, difficult to explain....

            All I could really do is nod and manifest remorse. I didn't want to apologize, per se—I've always had trouble with the etymology of that word against the other side of its coin, where an apologist actually defends his stance (arguments to the contrary be damned!). I wouldn't grovel, either, as the whole idea was rather spontaneous—a lark, if you will. But I did want Natálie to know I wasn't a complete jerk. "I'll completely vanish from here—promise—but you'll be able to YouTube me in the weeks to come: I haven't made any yet, but if you'll search 'Boris Baby Showers', that would suggest I wasn't just pulling your leg."

            "But don't involve me or this store," she warned, "because—"

            "I assure you I wouldn't. But you can refer me to a client who'd ask. I mean—hate to say it this way—I was really casting the chance for extra cash."

            Her eyes reflected an addendum: and another holka this side of town. But instead of that being her final word, she relayed an "I understand" before walking toward the store, "if you shouldn't read into that."

 

~15~

 

            Maybe on purpose, I haven't referred meaningfully to my relatives here. Let the quasi-guilt suffice to say that they, decent dumpling eaters, aren't often on my mind (and by the associative property, they wouldn't/shouldn't/couldn't be on yours). Yet, I just brought them up, slogging my way to the ancient lady with her křiženec, and that may compel a small digression.

            They live in places that would stretch my serendipity if indeed I was less lazy. Kralupy, for instance, is only a half-hour or so from one or even two of the train stations of Prague, but it may as well be as far north as Half Day Rd is from the Chicago Loop. Because, once there, you need to do a tour of the vegetable patch in the courtyard of their apartment building, sit for slivovice (from plums they poached along a country road), update news from the old country and a grandma I don't talk to anymore. A younger couple, in their late sixties, live in Ořech, a village just outside the beltway, and they keep trying to get me to buddy up with their daughter, alone and lonely in Olomouc, which has been a destination once or twice (really? you can't remember between 'once' or 'twice'?). And rabbit holes can result real quick if I account for the third and fourth cousins, their kids or questions why I don't have any—twenty-seven being ample time, even for Kurt and Courtney to produce their Francis Bean.

            Už dost, Boris, you bore us. I was trying to think away Natálie in my attempt to think away Maruška in my attempt to... get my ass to the next client. Vladislava is her name, by the way—as old Slavonic as it gets. 'Government glory', if you'd like the literal translation, and once or twice we joked about that. She didn't sign Charter 77—"nobody turned that stone for me," she reflected in Czech, "and I just wasn't paying much attention." She gloried in her self-governance, if anything, raising kids as an early widow and becoming a babička by age forty-two, prababička before the internet would steal these youngsters away (if grinning ubiquitously from all her picture frames).

            "How come none of them have dogs?" I asked her presumptuously.

            She chortled an I have no idea, even as I could sense she wanted them to share such an experience. Theoretically, at least, on the virtues of caring for a creature which—horse before the cart—sets the standard of care. She told a tale about breaking an ankle during a hike deep in the Brdy Mountains and another dog—"not this golden mop" (pointing to the clumber-briard)—stayed with her for five minutes, then ran barking for three, then returned for five more, on and on until another hiker got the clue. "I know it was five minutes each time because I managed to sing 'Skákal pes' ten times—for each finger—"

            "That song's only thirty seconds long?"

            She clapped her hands. "Probably shorter. But, ježišmaria, I tried to stretch it out. To keep me from passing out, you know."

            "Wouldn't that be more important for the minutes he ran off?"

            "Oh, I'm sure I prattled on—let loose some cuss words unfit for tender ears!"

            "You wanted to keep him happy," I laughed, "just like the song!"

            "I doubt either of us were paying attention to the lyrics," she capped. "He understood enough to jump for my survival. Now this one," she patted the golden mop, "has never needed to jump, knock on wood."

            By this time in the hour, I would have been well into his walk, but another story from her turned into my own adventures, selectively, of the past half-week. "I can't believe I'm telling you this—or that you'd want to hear—"

            Her shrunken-apple face retained a inscrutable smile regardless, so I spoke about the unreliability of G strings and the standoff at Motol and the definition of 'crush' in English—'líbí se mi' in Czech—rings all too true when the damned thing doesn't work out. I segued to the vagaries of daydreams and those you can't control, then the wisdom of not divulging who's in 'em and why (and to what degree clothing's on or off). I didn't say it all in such terms, of course—the ancient ears weren't so tender, but also not in need of titillation. She paid attention, though, on the details of prenatal tea and how mobile phones could be as much an enemy as a friend—or neither (British 'i' in my head for however she said it in Czech), as the case should be.

             All the while the golden mop kept looking at me like I'd never shut up, his collar sometimes glinting with reflection from his tags.

            And it hit me—like a silver bullet, Marlon Brando ad libs in 'Apocalypse Now', between the eyes. Those tags saw me in a more penetrating gaze than the mongrel's own eyes, in large part because I wouldn't suspect a coin-sized disc to have such vision.

            I barely remember the way our tête-à-tête wrapped up—probably one of those more fish in the sea cast of comfort—and then I rushed through the walk so as not to be late to my next job. Problem was: the golden mop didn't want to (or couldn't) drop anchor—by far, the #1 reason for any canine's walk. I begged him to, even apologizing for all the hot air upstairs about my love life. I studied his dog tags as this sit-in (instead of the shitting he needed to do) went into a second and third minute; I studied his name—not 'Golden Mop', of course, but hereby rechristened—and the owner's phone number (still evidently a land-line, as cell phone prefixes never started the way this tag had it). Behind this metal wafer was another one shaped like a grotesquely fat thigh bone with veterinarian info carved in and his own social security code. Not that he cared. There could be anything of similar weight below his neck and he'd soldier that on, faithfully and through no choice of his own.

            Eventually, just after I called off the 2pm appointment at Jeremenkova, the GM did his business. It's almost like he knew those dachshunds would be in better hands with the cyber-addicted teens than with claptrap me.

            But my hands were energized with an idea that... Well, I should put a lid on it for now. I certainly didn't tell it to the invalid in our na shledanou at her door, so why (no offense) would I impart it so stream-of-consciousness to you?

 

~16~

 

            By skipping over those dachshunds, I had extra time to kick around Karlovo náměstí with an array of options: sitting on a bench to read more of Tokarczuk's Primeval or stringing my Washburn for real. Or, as if it weren't even a debate, knocking on the shih tzu's door to try out a little more of my emerging dog tag theory. Her owner might not want my company so early, of course, and I could say I read my wristwatch wrong (to which she'd say, "Boris, you don't have a wristwatch." To which I'd say...)...

            I shouldn't lie anymore. Mark Twain, I think, quipped that you'd never need to remember anything if you only told the truth. Not that memory's the enemy—more like an apparatus of war (in this analogy). I can shield, I can stab by virtue of my keeping tabs, whether we're in fantasyland or dealing in reality.

            Lucky for us all, the beauty blogger let me in with no question of my sense of time—or purpose, more to the point. She laughed when I requested use of her coffee table to fix the G (at least the G—I was thinking of going to Kampa after my Karlovo duties, and refreshing all strings would be wise). "You want to operate on that womanly shape and have me watch? Cause she's missing her G?"

            "Well, I haven't ascertained the gender of this guitar—or the 'sex', I guess, is the more accurate designator."

            "Sex? You want that on my coffee table?"

            "No! I mean—there's not enough time before I gotta gather the elkhound and basset and—"

            "Boris, you're blushing."

            This didn't have to come down to sex. Nothing should, if too much does. I asked again if I could change the strings (which would likely take longer than, well...)—and she assented, leaving me to do just that. "I'm thinking of making videos with this thing," I decided to say between rooms. "About playing songs for baby showers."

            She didn't respond, so I respected her probable lack of interest. Or perhaps her tacit disapproval. At any rate, I proceeded to undo the old, then peg in the new. The shih tzu came over mid-way through, curious about my kneeling concentration, and so I explained the mechanics as if she were one of my erstwhile kindergarteners. Then, remembering the glinting disc of the Golden Mop, I stopped to study her dog tags, obscured to about the same degree as the nose of Slash from Guns 'n' Roses. That might be a problem, I thought. To imagine how much her dog tags could see (more or less what we could see of them), I lay down with my head up and slithered to her silky fur in front—frankly said, her breast. Then I peered through what I'm sure her mistress brushed an hour before. Not that the dog was eking to get away from this unusual position, I held her torso in a reassuring way. And of course! The mistress came back in to spy on the sudden silence.

            "Are you...?"

            Truth, dammit. For the love of Mark Twain. "I'm just trying to see from her perspective. She was watching me change the strings and, well, I wanted to experience her vantage point."

            The dog stepped over my face as I finished and continued on to her mistress' black nylons. "You wanted... to experience... her vantage point."

            I got up. "Yeah. I mean, I was already coffee table low."

            For about ten seconds (and flashes of Lenka's same, inscrutable wait-time), she stared at me to see if I'd say more, or practice in her mind what she would say to me, or do a dry spit-take, which was finally what she did. "I can't determine if you like me or not, but I'd hate to think you're using me to flirt with my dog!"

            "Flirt with your dog? Ježišmaria!" The first Czech expression I had used in this apartment, to my memory, and she said it back with a laughing sneer. "I'd never," I continued in a Greek apologetic mode, "in my life consider—"

            "I'm just joking, Boris." She scissored those nylons toward me. "Don't you think," wrapping her arms around my neck, "I'd know your motives from the get-go?"

            What followed was rough and tumble and disrespectful for the other clients around Karlovo. I did not tell them why I was late, of course, but I also didn't lie. Working on that, if I haven't mentioned it already.

            Turned out, the basset couple were the only ones to give me grief, as their schedules couldn't wait for me to show up just whenever. A month ago or so, I had asked for a key to their place if that might provide more flexibility on their part (i.e., even a Boris-on-time with his own key would enable them to ditch their home office space for whatever they'd need to do with their clients, all lawyerly-like). But, predictably, they reasoned that beyond a matter of trust was the matter of too many of their clients' records, and if they'd ever sniff out a dog-walker's wandering interest in them, then the attorneys' credibility would plummet. I would be the cause of a meta-lawsuit sort of thing. And that would only exacerbate my own legal status, lack of work permit, a tak dále ("et cetera"—my favorite phrase for the convenience of lazing through a thought). I promised them I'd be punctilious in future, especially if this dog tag idea were to work out. I didn't tell them, of course, about my dog tag idea. One of them corrected my diction: "punctual" was what they were after, not fancier-sounding façades.

            By the time I had ended the 5-dog routine around Karlovo, I was exhausted. I returned the shih tzu last, as usual, and her owner invited me for a late afternoon-cap as if we hadn't already had a version of that today. "You haven't finished your guitar," she reminded, the impish thing still naked on the coffee table.

            "You're right. But you know I have to get to Barrandov—"

            "Oh yeah," she sighed, assuming that wasn't untrue. "I forgot your Irish angler fish."

            "Huh?"

            "Never mind. I'm not the jealous type."

            While it would have been easier to finish the job then and there—borrowing a nail clipper, for instance, to cut the flailing ends of strings around the head stock—I wrapped the Washburn in its case and bid this apartment adieu, forgetting even to ask for the week's salary. I'd be there tomorrow, though, and remember.

            And as much as Kampa really had been my plan, why not find a bench at Barrandov and bide my own time? Free world, in't? And my honesty today would remain intact.

            Finishing the strings as darkness was coming on was not fun, but at least the laborious task was done. I then began to strum, practically picking up from the very chords that injured Maruška's beautiful sclera. Not by grand design, I positioned myself to look outward toward eastern Bohemia, opposite the direction Šemík jumped from Vyšehrad to establish a new kingdom in western Bohemia. Well, not exactly (an historian of myths would interject). To my right, at about twenty-five degrees of incline and a hundred meters away, the windows of the actress' flat were lit and curtained. I had never been inside—only at the door, and usually the downstairs door, at that. I could imagine an elegant arrangement of things up there, not that I cared for fineries and the kind of stuff Havel satirized in his play 'The Unveiling' (exotic items, bourgeois fantasies to counteract the feel of communist claustrophobia). No—elegance was the opposite of kitsch, and from the walks we had, she never gave an inkling of such pretense. As a thespian, of course, her acumen was to pretend, but that is usually worlds away from pretense.

            But what do I know about such things? I'm basically a displaced Steve Miller, playing my music in the sun. Or the circle of a park lamp, presently. No one came down from that twenty-five degree incline, and anyone passing by didn't give me more than a glance of fleeting interest. The strings sounded pretty decent—the Washburn had good action, as I'd sought from the purchase. But my songs sounded sad, partly for the muted way I brushed the sound hole side and ambled through the folklore part of the neck. No risks tonight. No pretense. I had nowhere else to be, dreading a return to Tolliver's. Not because he'd be there.

            But because Maruška wouldn't.

 

~17~

 

            "You wanna do what?" Tolliver was slack jawed and all fleshy ears to my idea, inchoate as it was. We were sitting on the futon (before my nightly unfolding of it to a bed) and swigging Braník from coffee cups—the quarantine years had taught us not to pass the bottle.

            "I don't exactly wanna, but..." The rationale would be difficult on several levels. First and foremost: I was scoping out how to finagle into a different living situation, essentially implying to my brave-faced host that I was trying to wiggle out of his. Second: as ethical I like to think I am, the plan certainly was not so. I wouldn't be hurting anybody, if it's outlandish to guess at what causes or sustains suffering. Third: the nitty-gritty logistics. "I'd need to figure out the hook-ups, from dog tag to monitor. You know, like one of those crib cameras when mom and dad are in a different room—"

            "Prolly havin' sex."

            "Well, whatever. Point is, they've got an eyepiece on the baby."

            "And that's what you want? To check on your clients' crib behavior?"

            Before responding to that (and needing to use the john anyway), I reflected on how possibly deranged the analogy was. I've barely ever held a baby in my life, never in Chicago thinking one iota of that universal demographic that keeps homo sapiens solvent. Couldn't stomach a movie showcasing infants—'Boss Baby', perhaps, but soon thereafter relegating that clown show to the trash bin of all things Trump, cinderblock to civilization. But to the present point: here I am, hapless bachelor in Prague, planning to perform at baby showers. Wondering how crib cameras work. Is this my penance for failing kindergarten at age twenty-seven?

            Tolliver, like a St Bernard leashed outside a grocery store, hadn't moved an inch. "D'ja reconsider in there?"

            I guess he meant the bathroom, as if it were a confessional. But I wanted to be funny, so I said, "in my head I haven't reconsidered, but my heart is still iffy..., because..."

            It's been strange to end expressions on 'because', but linguists have determined (I assume) the particle to be an earmark of our generation. Because... it's obvious; it's Googleable; it's not worth the time to articulate or listen to. And yes, that would include my iffy heart.

            "Well, mate," he broke into a schoolboy grin, "how shall I be of service?"

            "Of service? You sound just like Jeeves."

            "—or a nightly escort, I suppose!"

            I let that go. "The main thing I'd ask is—and I know this goes without sayin': not to say anything. Especially to Lenka, as you're bound to run into her at Motol."

            "You're going to rig up a camera on her?"

            "No! No... she's not at all on my mind with this. Besides, she doesn't have a dog."

            Tolliver chinned his lips to help him nod. "Forgot. This whole scheme depends on dogs."

            "Their tags, to the point. The dog would be oblivious."

            "Naturally. Their fidelity wouldn't allow for such a breach."

            Hmm. I hadn't really thought of it that way. Me breaching. A dog betraying its instinct to protect. "Listen, Tolly, I'm just spitballing here—not sure I'll really try any of this out. I'm not aiming to be a spook, or a thief—"

            "—or a peeping Tom?"

            "Well, I am being that—but not in a, you know, exploitative way..."

            "You won't use what you'd see against the person," he deduced.

            "Yes," to his deduction, "I mean, no"—to the notion of 'against'. "I'd only be fact-finding to make sure I wasn't making a mistake...."

            Tolliver widened his eyes and swigged the rest of his Braník. "I think the whole idea is a mistake. A bit daft, if you don't mind me sayin'."

            "I don't mind at all. That's why I'm using you as a sounding board."
            "Oh, you're using me now as well! Even if I don't have a pooch?"

            Uncharacteristically, I gave him a light shoulder slap. "You know what I mean." And he returned my gesture. We had little to discuss after that, so he turned on the tv and puttered around the kitchen, glopping together a pasta salad.

            I pretended to watch the boob tube—a movie starring Anna Geislerová, which of course made me miss Lenka. Stubbornly, I doubled down into my own imagination, releasing any hope of begging my way back into her life. The present question was: which living situation would I want to surveil, beyond the why and how by an angel in one ear, demon in the other? Easy: the Barrandov actress. The fact that she had fired me spoke substantially to her level-headed judgment and a life in good order (notwithstanding that nip of drink driving). And, on further thought, she hadn't exactly fired me: "don't come back for a while" was the phrasing she used, if my recall is correct. That 'while' has been three days—the gestation of Jonah in the whale to grow from fuck-up to straight-n-arrow. Strumming in the lamplight outside her apartment block was... cathartic. I could imagine many an evening like that, poised to let her sense of 'while' mature on her terms.

            Until then, however, would I practice dog-tagging on the shih tzu mistress? I already knew her place inside and out—well, at least my role when there. But what about when I wasn't there? How fun or zany or sufferable or not would beteem a roommate situation with her? How many other dog-walkers did she do up with cosmetics? (Don't get me wrong—I'm not the jealous type, especially if I'm clearly not the commitment type). I looked over at Tolliver snuffling his nose above the salad he'd share with me in a minute. "Beggars can't be choosers," I mumbled too loud.

            "What's that?" Tolly turned with some enthusiasm that a between-buddies conversation could resume.

            "Oh, nothing... just that" (Mark Twain, Mark Twain, Mark—) "beggars can't be choosers." I waited for him to generally agree—why not? But when he didn't, I decided to supply a thought on what kind of equipment I'd need for the job. "I was just thinking... these mini camera suckers must be pretty expensive."

            "I wouldn't know, mate. Sounds like a Google search."

            Which we did for a while, each on our own device. The starting points had to be: wireless, naturally; tinier than 'mini', as most seemed much larger than a dog tag, which would defeat the point; accessible through a phone app, beyond a Bluetooth reach. "To be honest, the starting point is what I can afford. Which is practically nothing I've seen so far."

            "Maybe the market's standing in for wisdom."

            It was the wisest thing Tolliver ever uttered, so I affirmed it by being dumb. "Maybe I left wisdom back in kindergarten." I didn't specify whether I meant twenty-two years or five months ago—both qualifying for the good ol' days when I would never remotely resort to criminality.

            "I don't know if I should suggest this, Boris..."

            Anna Geislerová caught my eye. I'd seen this film before, with Lenka, in a theatre. Return of the Idiot, based loosely on Dostoevsky's novel.  The idiot is an extremely nice guy about my age, I'd say. He has nosebleeds when he gets nervous, and Anna Geislerová is an ad hoc nurse in a few of those situations. I suddenly wanted to pour myself into this film, but had to defer to Tolliver's salad (and suggestion). He said he knows someone in England who specializes in colonoscopy equipment—he stressed England to assure me he wouldn't bring up this notion at Motol, because... y'know. Camera technology has come a long way, he said, and perhaps this English friend could send something cheaper than what would retail on the internet. "It's awfully kind, Tolly," I told him in earnest, "but I'd worry about anyone wondering, even a thousand kilometers away. Plus, wouldn't that kind of camera still be cyber-attached?"

            "Dunno. You only brought this up tonight. I imagine, though, modern medicine would have tried free-floating devices—even digestible, I'd venture, to check out intestines and such. From the vascular side of things—"

            "—your expertise."

            "Gettin' there," he laughed and took the small diversion to stuff a spoonful of pasta salad into his mouth. "As I was sayin'," he swallowed and wiped his mouth, "I've heard of wireless angioplasty procedures where, admittedly, the free-floating thing is a balloon rather than a camera. But the principle would be the same, responding to an outer signal."

            "I'd like to think my situation would be easier," I said. "I mean, I don't want to get inside a body, but rather an apartment."

            Tolly chortled. "You wanna get inside a body inside an apartment, what it is!"

            Crude and refutable, I nevertheless wagged my head a bit to let him enjoy that prospect. "My priority," I hesitated, guessing this could hurt his feelings, "is finding a suitable roommate, not another lover."

            It did hurt his feelings (devouring dollops of salad), and I realized how much worse of an idiot I was than the one on tv. Or in Dostoevsky's novel, which I really should re-read. God knows I could use more than marketplace wisdom.

 

~18~

 

            I found that novel at Shakespeare & Sons and, finished with Primeval, plunged right in. You see, a couple days have passed with less and less to do—no lure to malvíkCity, no progress on the dog tag plan, no dachshunds after insulting that family with a dose of common sense: "I'm enabling a joystick addiction, and"... they didn't want to hear the rest.

            An extra hour or so at Karlovo meant Prince Myshkin's world could replace mine for a while—and temper the Xanadu of the shih tzu mistress. I still had Washburn on my back as if it were one of those babies you see clinging to the sideburns of dads my age. Strumming at Barrandov could happen any time after Karlovo was done, but I didn't want to go too deep into twilight. The Irish setter would have had his walk by then, presumably, and any perception of loitering could have an adverse effect on my chances of getting back into his owner's graces.  

            Then there was Maruška, an avatar I longed to touch if my finger hovered bashfully, like Pyrrhus' sword (or was that Damocles'?). She texted once after three or four of mine that she had a ton to do before leaping over the ocean, Šemík-like—but with nobody on her back. 'I will be at Kampa, tho, tmrw nite.'

            I answered with a meme of Ja Morant dunking a basketball over a bunch of opponents, to which she followed with a question mark. To which I texted, after some thought: 'Já jsem rád'—and both of us left it at that. Truth be told, tho (I like her abbreviations), I was hoping she'd pick up on my clever use of a Memphis Grizzly player to inquire—obliquely, I admit—whether Grizzly Guy would be there. And what I should do in fair sportsmanship. Ja, you see (maybe unlike me) is a very together dude. Down to earth. Magnanimous to past detractors. A loving dad from age twenty of a daughter who's almost three. Sublime responsibility.

            Tmrw couldn't come soon enough, and I rushed through my clients' canines as if in doing so the hands of time would get the point and spin faster, or less lethargically. I left the guitar at Tolliver's—sparing it from a repeat of the jealous rage that killed the Cort, descansa en paz (or however Koreans say it). I figured my presence at Kampa would have to be low-key, practically invisible to keep it Maruška's thing instead of mine. That's pretty hard, btw: to make a matter of passion not about you. There's this song Tolliver likes that drives me bananas, so he turns it up when drunk and skips ahead on the playlist when sober; it's called "I Will Possess Your Heart" by the horridly-named band 'Death Cab for Cutie'. I won't dwell on this, but... well. Suffice it to say an effort to possess another one's heart is borderline Frankenstein. Better off dating a zombie, who at least is interested in brains.

            I came early via the Lennon Wall portal, then spied behind the bush that doubled as an outhouse, proportional to the draining of bottles passed around. Grizzly Guy was there with his Xoloitzcuintli, the latter looking anything but cuddly—a hairless wet blanket, one could say. Others were lying this way and that, a tummy here and buttocks there for pillows. The gangly dude was sitting Indian-style, beating his thighs off-key. A gal with dreadlocks mumbled something of a song; her friend joined in with rhythmic coughs to belie the skill of smoking weed.

            A sudden, tiny breeze of butterfly wings curled from each side of my head, covering my eyes like the moment after lightning and holding them closed as gently as a kitten's paws. "Vadí?" came the code, to which I melted into instinct:

            "Nevadí!" and turned to muffle further exclamations with the invite of her lips, lingering a tantalizing game of one click equals friendship, two clicks equal love, three and four and who can count clicks anymore would equal... where we found ourselves, behind the arras of the outhouse bush.

            "Come on," she bid, risking our exposure as she blew a kiss abstractly toward the middle of the island, then pulling me to the Čertovka canal and the footbridge south of Lennon to a square of grass unpeopled (unless you count the statue of the nude with an amphora). We leaned against her pedestal and spoke about nothing I can here record, not because I'd ban such selves-expression, but that the minutes were ineffable.

            Her sclera was fine, she insisted, and all goodbyes had run their course this week, so... yes, New York was tapping its foot to have her. "Your bohemian bounce," I suggested, swallowing immediately the compunction of earmarking her that way. But she didn't care—nevadí—and proposed a revisit to that rose garden in order to create a better memory there.

            We ambled up the paths of Petřín, musing on the way the cherry trees had traded mauve and fuchsia blossoms of the first of May for dusty dark green leaves this heartache side of summer. Still, in homage to Mácha, we rested under one of these orchard sentries and kissed in the spirit of spring, as palpable now as it might have been in '68, when thoughts of Russian tanks were far from lovers' minds. Unfortunately...

            By coincidence, then, Maruška lifted from my back pocket the paperback by Dostoevsky. I had forgotten Primeval, intent on gifting it again to Maru, and instead (my stupid self-indulgence) grabbed The Idiot in my cack-handed departure from Tolliver's. "What's this?" Maruška gibed. "Some sort of confessional?"

            "I meant to bring Tokarczuk." I wondered how to frame my reason for neglect. "I'll send her to you in a care package." 

            She bobbed her head. "That would be nice."

            "You want this one instead? Like for airport reading?"

            "No," she said, "that would take away from time looking out the window. Plus, I've read this already for maturita. I can give you spoilers if you want."

            We continued up the slope toward the rose garden, not at all talking about the novel. She clued me in more about what she could expect upon arrival, as well as what she wondered about. I didn't offer advice on the latter, not having spent meaningful time in NYC. "It won't be Prague and it won't be Chicago. Maybe somewhere in between."

            No shit, she was too polite to utter. "Hey," a notion struck her, "let's sneak into the stadion—it's where I first..., well—you'll see!"

            Strahov stadium, the largest in the world, where a quarter-million people could line themselves with enough elbow room to raise a figurative mug for the Sokol gymnasts before the fascist war and the Spartakiáda afterward. Everything in sync—the stuff that North Koreans carry on, or (more aesthetically) the murmuration of starlings. The Rolling Stones came to coronate the new republic and slam the door on communism. In the year I was born, Pink Floyd followed suit to recreate the Berlin Wall—just to tear it down again. From what I understand (an infant can only fathom so much), the feud between Roger Waters and the rest of Floyd had put the show in doubt—perhaps a harbinger that angst would not subside with the onset of litigious capitalism. Welcome, my son, to the machine.

            Maruška knew which holes around the rusty fortressing would be more or less conspicuous on sleepy surveillance screens. The Czechs did not secure many places with German shepherds or Klieg lights. Still, we were sneaking in like sixth-graders with a plan to smoke our older siblings' cigarettes, and that would mean we'd have to skulk from pillar to pillar, crumbling stairs to fold-down chairs, all in effort to explore an intimacy that a quarter-million onlookers could applaud: a running bet, a couple points for charm, a seamless execution of why we train for these, and in the end, a perfect ten!

            Most of this was whispered as a joke, yet faces turned more serious when, in Czech, the growls of 'you can't be here' caused our amygdala(s) to fight this final stand or fly away—like falcons that inspired the term 'Sokol' way-back-when. Maybe knowing we'd be separated anyway by an ocean in two turns of the moon, we split our options without consulting one another: Maru stayed put in the row of chairs we had cuddled into, and I ran like a stupid Sundance Kid, sans mustache and revolver. I knew the more I'd hurdle over barriers and chance the sprawling open pitch that could host a dozen football games at once, the more I'd trip over my dick (or, more modestly, my bonehead decisions of late). I'm sure whatever flickers in a streaker's mind is not at all what I was feeling, especially as no one would egg on this dare-you-to. I was audience to myself... in frickin' Strahov stadion.

            The guard who tackled me was not particularly unpleasant—sort of had an empathetic aspect, even, when I told him it was a last tryst before she'd fly to America. Why would she fly there and you'd stay here? he inquired (instead of reading my Miranda rights), and I responded "protože"—because—and had no dependent clause to follow.

            I claimed, when asked by a second guard, that I left my Český průkaz at home—a document (he didn't have to remind) that must always stay on one's person, as basic as underwear. I shrugged my shoulders in a what's-a-guy-to-doway to wiggle out of this, Maru being ushered out a hundred meters away by other guards, waving something undecipherable. In retrospect (as I reflected an hour later at the Střešovice police station—aptly named, for the střess the evening incurred), it must have been The Idiot she held high, as if a different kind of torch she'd soon see in Lady Liberty's upstretched hand. I felt guilty, because... it would deprive her of some window time.

            

~19~

             My basic abilities with the language here made the cops regard me slightly worse than a tourist, I'd say, but maybe better than a Czech guy my age acting like, well, a guy my age. They took my iPhone as a matter of procedure—sort of the 'one phone call' provision, which eventually they assured I'd be able to make. "Musíš zavolat" someone, in fact, and I was surprised (if not exactly offended) that the officer underscored the mandate with an informal second-person construction—that whole 'du' versus 'Sie' thing they have in European languages. You, little Boris, must call someone if you've really forgotten your identity document at home. And not your real home in Chicago.

            "That's not my home anymore," I told him in Czech, "not really."

            "Then," handing back my phone, "you talk to someone who will come here to bail you out."

            "And Maruška? Is she also locked up?"

            "Your holka? No, she wasn't arrested—she didn't run like a wild hog, did she?" Now I was offended, so the officer lifted palms to quasi-apologize. "You can telephone her if you want, but she'd have to provide evidence of your residency here. Your průkaz." By now he had reverted to the formal second-person, as if to recognize the sobriety of the moment. My phone call would have to justify my existence or else (well beyond the season a tourist stays), I'd be forced to leave. "Sweet home, Chicago," the officer decided to croon in English.

            My choices were grim. Tolliver was the intuitive one to dial for the fact that my passport and residency permit were at his flat. But he'd have to vouch for my living there—an arrangement which was technically allowable, yet not in sync with what the computer would corroborate. I could explain breaking up with Lenka, moving in with a friend, all that... and, procedurally, they'd update the database and conduct a follow-up with my employer, who is...

            Shit. "Ahoj, Lenko," I practiced in my head a dozen times before shakily pressing her number. I'm lying—I didn't practice my greeting in Czech, as I knew I'd need to do some fast explaining that couldn't risk an officer's eavesdropping. "Um, uh—hi," I stammered, astonished that she answered after just the first ring. "Are you, ah,... busy?"

            I should have asked if she were okay or happy or in good health or any better greeting than an insipid 'hi'. My nonsense ums and uhs, though, were more human than whatever else I was going to utter, and now the cop's wild hog epithet made more sense. I was scrounging for grubs with a woman I still loved (and hated to think she still loved me). And instead of trying to recapitulate the back-and-forth we had, I'll ask you to trust that... my tears were earnest, her questions impossible to capture here in this self-serving narration. She asked to pass the phone to the officer, who had been feigning disinterest on the other side of the room.

            And here I'm now just like you—oblivious as to what she said. By the officer's "ano, ano" affirmations, I could imagine she was just as likely tossing me under the bus as throwing me a lifeline: 

'yes, yes,' he is a pig who doesn't deserve a bail; 'yes, yes,' he gets this way sometimes but learns from his mistakes. Boys will be boys; pigs will be pigs; Boris will be—

            Released on his own recognizance. "No, no," I wanted to protest—"I should have to at least pay a fine." But I kept my pie hole shut: this was Lenka's orchestration, who, in rather short time, brought to the precinct a bank statement addressed with my name to verify I was salaried by the kindergarten (never mind the months ago, as the officer didn't question (maybe didn't see) that detail). And my průkaz? Did she have that with her?

            "I just came from work," Lenka told him, then quickly turned to me to cover up the lie: "do you know where your průkaz is? In the nightstand drawer, right?"

            I shook my head like it was obvious. "Yeah. Ano."

            A few clicks of the computer, noting the address match and whatever else cyber capillaries required, and my processing was done. "Na shledano"—the typical way Czechs say goodbye—seemed weird to hear and echo back: "until next time," basically, as if we'd look forward to the prospect.

            Lenka even pointed that out as we walked through the castle grounds (pragmatically—just to get to the closest metro). "There will be no 'next time', you know."

            "Of course—I don't deserve the present time... I... uh."

            "Boris?"

            "I know... I should just—"

            "You speak an endless já, já, já. I don't wanna hear your point of view. And not a fucking word about what got you there tonight." We were practically goose-stepping our pace down the Hradčany slope. "You do have your průkazsomewhere, right?"

            "I do." Altar-affirmation. An unworthy vow. "At Tolliver's. He's, uh, taken me in."

             Lenka probably smirked at that—I feared checking with so much as a glance at this point. The cobblestones were plenty challenging to negotiate for our pace, especially without the crutch of a lover's arm, as almost every other couple modeled on this sublime overlook of the city.

            I'm sure I asked her about work, if the rotations were going as she liked or (a sheepish risk) if she encountered any surprises of late. Pleasant, unpleasant? She'd typically shrug off extremes with a theory that went like this: 'I got this far on my own, studying beyond what I had to, dreaming as fully as five hours of sleep would allow. No way am I letting an internship sway me one way or the other. Can't afford to love or hate how things are going, or allow any surprises to hijack the cause.' Something like that (in a voice I was starting to miss).

            Then, to my own surprise, she seemed to open a door while we walked, wondering about 'End of My Leash' and where I was with that draft. I had broached it with her when I started the dog-walking jobs here in Prague—reasonably, the notion would be too out-of-the-blue if Boris, bereft all his life of pets, suddenly thought he'd manage the psychology of canines, let alone their owners. "The systematic loss of instinct," I'm sure I had told her the logline, "and how anyone copes with the whims of adjustment." Yeah, yeah, yeah, Lenka's hand would twirl, but how's the damn draft?

            To throw it back to her realm, I thought of comparing it to empirical science. You know—the whole idea that we observe the natural world (maybe with enhancement tools, like telescopes or microscopes) and then we tinker with it (hopefully with Google's erstwhile slogan, 'Do No Evil', in mind). We experience, we experiment. We diagnose, prognose, sometimes stick our nose into things at incremental risk. The dogs I see outside the work detail are just as interesting as those I need to walk—maybe more so, as imagination of their instincts, lost or otherwise, is rather unleashed. Thus the title, which, you know, is aspirational: a vision of the 'End of My Leash'...

            Her eyes, now that I ventured a glance on the fly, had heard all of this before. How's the damn draft? could have its reboot, but we were getting close to the Robert Frost point where our roads would diverge. I'm sure she implied a 'good luck with that' sort of benison—not just concerning the book, but the reasons to wander about town, empirically looking and nosing at this thing and that. I'm sure her slight smile said to stay out of trouble: statistically, you only draw one of those Monopoly cards a game, and then the getting out of jail comes down to a roll of the dice. Or is it rolling the die?

            I'm never sure.

 

~20~

             Midnight, almost, and I entered Tolliver's flat with tail between my legs. He was up watching The Twilight Saga(episode whatever) and greeted me with a how's it hangin' sort of grin. I sighed through puffed cheeks in a similar lack of syntax. What could one say after being arrested, being bailed by an ex? I was even reluctant to answer Maruška's voice messages, which surceased after my typed response: "out of custody, all is ok". Would have explained it was Lenka—nothing to hide about her role—but... In ways metastrange, it wasn't my story to tell.

            "Taking notes?" I decided to joke, pointing at a vampire a thousand times sexier than Tolly.

            "Nah. Jus' killing time, y'know." He shifted his weight. "Got duty after first metro out, so... falling asleep at this point is...."

            "Pointless." I said it to punctuate what, for me, needed to end-stop the day. "Mind if I crash on your mattress? I'm...," scratching my head, "pretty wiped out."

            "Have at it, mate. What, the dogs are gettin' you dogged?"

            I faked a yawn (hard to do, actually). "Yeah, something like that."

            He neglected to say anything about sheets—getting mine from inside the futon or grabbing some fresh from a closet. He turned down the volume on Bella's pleas: 'don't touch me' to boys who weren't vampires. Robert Pattinson would swoop in to save the day—a Lenka, of sorts. No. That's dumb. Lenka is... Lenka is....

            The morning found me lonely, less ebullient than a liberated prisoner should feel. Tolliver had exited on tip-toes, evidently, and I had no sense on how the day should unfold, even if I could afford to just go through the motions of mundanity. What's Salieri's final line in Amadeus? "Mediocrity," his arms flung open from his wheelchair, "I absolve you!" That's my plan today—to be on either end of such an 'I' or 'you'.

            Washburn on my back (why not? The loneliness of Barrandov would be a tad less so while strumming a guitar), I walked from Bubeneč through Letná, then across the bridge that hovers over tennis courts and skateboard ramps and kayak runs. Like a wandering monk, perhaps, I was heading to Karlín to feel invisible in the relative calm of the square across from Cyril and Metodéj, the church that tried not at all to be beautiful (and so it wasn't, so it was). Of course I wasn't there to chance upon Mrs Jack Russell—the one who had threatened to call the police for my foolish advances with the fliers, so why would I tempt such a fate? On the other hand, I could light up a cigarette (in pantomime—I don't actually smoke) and give her a been there, done that wink: 'it warnt so bad, being in the clink; took good advice from The Handmaid's Tale'—to which she'd raise a dubious eye—'don't let the bastards ground you down' (I forgot how the Latin went, but reciting that would sound over-the-top anyway). Then we'd talk literature at length, life in Karlín, this "boyfriend" of hers—and maybe I'd say I have one of my own in the figure of Tolliver, to see where that gambit would go.

            "You're a pathological liar," Lenka had determined after a similar gambit, likely on date #5. For sure it was then, because (playfully, still) she went on to say, "I count on one hand how to tolerate lies: five fingers is two more than—how you Americans warn—'three strikes and you're out'."

            "I'm listening," I said, beguiled by a theory 'to tolerate lies' and glad that she wasn't berating whatever I'd done or said to trigger this tutorial.

            "Pinky promises are supposed to be deep, but... child's play, the pinky, so—"

            "Within tolerance."

            "Yes. Next is the ring finger—fidelity and to death do us part. That should be it—"

            "Tolerance over in two," I widened my eyes. "So why does it linger to five?"

            "Don't get too cocky. Lies don't have to come in this order." She twirled them like a magician. "Middle finger is for cut it the fuck out—not funny anymore."

            "Okay. Annoying, but tolerable."

            "And," stabbing the space between us, "what do you call this again?"
            "The index finger," I answered in stride, "for pointing impolitely."

            "Poking, pressing buttons. Sticking into things that..."

            "Maybe you shouldn't—but is that really a lie?"

            "It's part of the 'count on one hand'. All you got left is the thumb. The thing that distinguishes humans from beasts."

            Cheekiness now was easy. "Squirrels also have hands."

            "Glorified paws. And they don't use them to make bombs."

            "Is it a lie to make bombs?"

            "It's also a bad thing to do." She swigged some red wine. "So where do we stand on date #5?"

            I don't hate myself when I recall things this way, but maybe that's not fully true. There are lies you control—I suppose you can hate; then lies you cannot—well, you can hate those, too. Or love them. Who's to say? I came here to Karlín not to trudge down this road, seek out confession and absolution from Cyril and Metodéj. Maybe that's why they were such a good team: one listened to colloquial gibberish, the other codified it into language the angels could appreciate. There's method in this madness of spewing out desires.

            An hour snailed into the next, and part of me enjoyed an utter lack of anything to do. If dog tag plans so much as peeped a hello, I squashed them down to make believe I had lived a long and happy life without the need of artifice or espionage. I people-watched, as paltry as the population was this time of day. I persuaded self I was not merely waiting for Mrs Jack Russell to appear, and to prove that point, I called this vacant visitation quits precisely at that moment and made my way to a linden tree (called 'lípa' in Czech) to pee. A few seconds into that stream—or out of my unzippered pants—my eyes met hers from across the small square. She had the terrier at her feet and a phone in her unleashed hand. Not filming yet, but... maybe a matter of time.

            Naturally, I pivoted to privatize. I hadn't had a cup of coffee or carton of juice this morning, but my bladder decided to tease—yank my chain, so to speak—and I couldn't curtail this typical half-minute-taking all-freakin'-day. Maybe she'd think I'd been drinking through the night, gallons of booze before using this park as my bed. Maybe she'd post this on Instagram (maybe she should) and pick up some likes and subscribes for my folly. Maybe this breaks the ice, like those origin stories that start: 'it could only get better from here.' I'd joke that all these years watching dogs mark their spots has fine-tuned my primary aim in life. 'Namely?' she'd ask, and I'd go on rambling about being an observer of instinct: leashed or unleashed, neutered or not, part of a pack or being a lone wolf. 'Lone wolf, like a post-office shooter?' I'd put up my hands (well, not quite yet, still streaming) to assure—a lonesome wolf, more to the point. Then I'd gauge her visage to see when to stop... this já, já, já claptrap I can't seem to shake.

            There. Finished at last. Time to put theory to practice and all these 'maybes' to might. I double-checked etiquette and turned to see the butt of the canine and the total non-interest by Mrs Jack Russell in the arms of her boyfriend (at least so it seemed), delighted to scan their own eyes instead of some screen.

            And because there's a God who's not laughing at me, my phone buzzed inside of my pocket to say there are others thinking of thee.

 

~21~

             To say my heart stopped would be, of course, hyperbole—there'd be no more me to carry on this rambling. But on the smart phone screen (I promised not to use her name, so let it be): the Barrandov actress, calling me. "I hope this isn't a butt call," I thought of answering, but resorted to a trembling "hello?"

            She must have waited second-thoughts before returning the same without a question mark. The dialogue was unsyntactical—I'll spare the attempt of doing no justice to it here—but the thrust was:

            She'd seen me several times strumming the guitar. She accepted my apologies for stalking (my word, not hers) and gathered it was to regain her trust instead of the opposite. Indeed. Trust is what I'm all about, I assured, still trembling. And since she didn't laugh at that, I believed its earnestness a tad bit more. Anywho (her word, not mine), she said she needed me to walk the Irish setter again—twice a day, alas—as she had a shooting to attend in Bratislava for about a week.

            "Bratislava?"

            "Yeah."

            "You've been... before?"

            Dummy. "Do you know how old I am, Boris?"

            "Um, ah—"

            "Not old enough to be your mother."

            "I wasn't thinking that! But... why?"

            "Of course I've been to Bratislava. It was the second city of my nation as a little girl."

            "Oh, so like... a New Yorker would naturally have visited Chicago..." I instantly imagined Maruška headed there in her window seat, and I shook my head in fear of losing everything.

            "I can't speak for you Americans. But Czechoslovaks—yes, that was a thing back then."

            We didn't speak very long: she reiterated that this was about the dog and a one-week contract. I could even stay at her place, she said, if that made the morning and evening obligation more doable.

            And now I shook my head at the specter of Tolliver, pretending not to be morose about this move. "Cool, good f'r you, mate," I could hear him brave face already.

            "What?" she demanded of my mumbling.

            "Ah... what what?"

            "Are you gonna come over today, or what?"

            "Oh—for sure. I... have my guitar and was already planning—"

            "To stalk my dog again?"

            "Just you," I wanted to say. Instead, "I'm really glad, ah, that..."

            "Bye, Boris," she even-keeled, "'til five."

            And suddenly—and through the rest of the morning—the dulcet voice of Ellie Rowsell shouted whether this was not meant to be. "Don't Delete the Kisses," she raps self-consciously, perhaps getting off the phone with her own Barrandov crush. I once tried to play that Wolf Alice song on my Cort (before Grizzly Guy sent it to a splintered grave) and, objectively, failed. I couldn't keep up with the pulse. I couldn't replicate the descant. I couldn't concentrate on a love that's meant to be—Ellie's wistful conclusion.

            The one exotic trip I've managed to take since living here was to Istanbul, where they sell these cobalt, white and turquoise discs of glass they call the 'evil eye'. I bought one on my bachelor budget—this was before I had met Lenka—and proceeded to crack it when the ribbon through its hanging hole unraveled. Dime-a-dozen, these things, but I decided that fate was telling me not to buy another one. I mean, was a kitschy souvenir really going to guide my eye to unevil things? Or—back up, Boris—were innocent things making my eye evil? Or—Jesus!—was I regarding people like Natálie, Maruška, Mrs Jack Russell, the shih tzu mistress, the Barrandov actress as 'things'?

            I liked that trip enough, though, to want to go back with Lenka, who also favored the idea of such an adventure yet fretted about cutting away from the unrelenting time-suck of medical school. We took day trips to places like Karlovy Vary or Olomouc instead (the latter to visit my lonely relative, which kind of made the three of us feel lonely together—which sounds bad, but had the effect of a double negative. I know: it would be a triple negative, but Lenka and I were sort of like 'one', you know? (of course you wouldn't know, but...)).

            Trust me—I had no real intention of bouncing from Lenka to Maruška to Barrandov actress, let alone the confusion imbued with the shih tzu. I'm not really an amorous guy, and by no means a sex addict. I can admit to being afraid of loneliness. Perhaps that's where the whole dog deal began: man's best friend, affirmed throughout history again and again and again and... as long as such instincts were intact.

            Speaking of, I was slowly risking being late to the invalid's Golden Mop. Singing a final chorus of "Don't Delete the Kisses", I rang Vladislava's bell and waited for her twenty-to-thirty second migration to buzz me in. When that didn't happen after a second and third attempt (now stretching into minutes), I figured she might be on the toilet. I hesitated using her phone number to check—she had a landline, anyway, so....

            I'll spare the blow-by-blow. In buildings like hers, a neighbor going out, a postwoman coming in, a couple blurs of "sorry, in a hurry" before a universal key could be procured by someone not quite 'landlord', but 'friendship manager' the Czech language roughly represents... Anywho (that stupid term still scintillating in my ear), the door finally opened to a whimpering mongrel trying to lick the fallen woman back to life.

            Because I had given up the following hour that would have been those dachshunds with the video idiots, there was time enough for me to attest to the immediate details once the ambulance came—I mean, I didn't have to stay as some sort of witness to something I didn't even witness, but, because I might have been the last to see her alive..., let's just say I was a 'person of interest'. The medic took my contact info in case I was needed as a reference to her habits. More to the neighbor's concern, however, was what to do with the dog.

            Sighing heavily—and certainly sad for the loss of this friend (as she was)—the least I could do would be to walk the Golden Mop presently and even take him into my evening and, I don't know, return him here when a relative of Vladislava might be packing up her stuff. 

            Sketchy plan all around, but ethics said I was obliged to do this. The Mop knew me and (I assume) trusted what needed to unfold. He didn't know any of the Karlovo náměstí dogs, of course, nor would he be readily inclined to quadruple up his afternoon walk. The shih tzu mistress was beside herself with the absurdity of the situation: "how commendable," she said with ample doubt, and certainly didn't offer her usual 'coffee, tea or me' flavors of the day. The Mop (still Golden, but) was a trooper through the various ways I had to get all five dogs together—bringing him up to the door of the basset puppy (whose lawyer owners weren't enamored by the extra client), then keeping him tied to a post while fetching the elkhound, who might have lashed out at the strange rival at his threshold.

            Credit to the canines, all went about as smoothly as the complications and the fardel of my guitar case would allow. I borrowed dog food from the shih tzu to tide the Mop over, as that would have been what Vladislava provided by now. Then, approaching four-thirty, I rang Barrandov to confirm—"yes, I'll be on time" and "you wouldn't believe..."

             And she didn't, until she did—coming out with her unamused setter to see my huge new orphan. "Pro Pána Krínda!" she swore in Czechoslovak. "And what will you do with it?"

            I told her I'd return him—"not it"—to Vladislava's relatives when, "you know, they'd..."

            "Not to sound selfish, Boris, but I'm counting on you to be here for Seamus"—the setter's name, I was glad she reminded. "And, by the looks of these alpha faces, I don't think you'll manage both."

            Technically, the 'look' was strictly on the setter's mug, as the Mop had a faraway aspect too melancholy to return any snarls. "I don't know what to tell you," I told her. "I feel responsible for getting this dog through a difficult day. You're not going to Bratislava tomorrow, are you?"

            "Day after. Just enough time to find someone else."

            We had been walking for a few minutes—Seamus on her right, the Mop on my left, sandwiching us loosely. "I was thrilled you called me this morning," I said, "but if you need to find someone else, then... I wish you the best."

            She stopped in her tracks and had strength enough to halt her bemused setter. I kept the same pace and didn't look back. The Mop did, maybe (as wingman) trying to get me to think this move over some more. And I would think it over on the rather long tram ride from Barrandov to Dejvice, where Tolliver met us—I'd given a heads up call with a "feel free to say no," but he was rather sympathetic to the dilemma. Or dilemmas in plural, when I framed how I left the Barrandov actress.

            "Cool, good f'r you, mate," he chimed with a tap to my shoulder. "A guy's gotta stick up for himself sometimes."

            He then asked for the Mop's leash and blushed when I suggested, a half-minute into his fair success, "he likes you, I think."

            "Least somebody does."

 

~22~

 

            Maybe the Mop was a Godsend: a ram caught by its horns in order to stop Abraham from killing Isaac. I think what I mean is that Tolliver would not kill me now for abandoning him, even though I had only been his roommate for about a week. After a pleasant evening scritching the nape of his neck (the Mop's—by me and Tolliver in turns), taking a midnight walk before manufacturing some doggy bedding, we all slept soundly with a fair harmony of snores—I assume my own were in tune, anyway.

            I telephoned Vladislava's nephew, who in rather quick time was heading up the transitioning aspects of his aunt's soul. He was more than glad that I'd be able to take the Mop off his list of things to sort. "Don't get me wrong," he almost sputtered in Czech. And, not prone to presumption, I certainly elected not to get him wrong. We agreed that I could pop on by during my regularly scheduled time slot—sans Mop, to prevent the emotional toll that would take on the animal. "And on me?" I sort of joked in Czech.

            "How can you show up sans you?" he asked, hanging a silent 'dumbshit' on the question mark.

            I showed up fully me, sans guitar. I brought the Washburn's case, however, in order to stuff it with whatever the Mop needed in terms of logistics—an extra leash, a couple dog dishes, roll-up mat, amorphous chew toys, a muzzle for public transport (we managed to skirt that law yesterday). It was strange leaving Vladislava's apartment for probably the last time; the nephew promised to text me if there'd be a funeral at Strašnická, but he was Tip-Sport sure there wouldn't be—a pretty irreverent way of putting it. I relayed my appreciation for, you know, Vladislava's.... I could tell the nephew didn't want to hear anything more.

            So I sat an extra hour more at Karlovo náměstí and internally wept. That would suffice for a funeral, and maybe the best kind, really. No blurring of the purpose.

            When the shih tzu mistress detected my glum aspect, she breathed in to prep some typical sarcasm, then held it. "Want a coffee?" she asked, turning toward the kitchen to answer that for me.

            As much as she and I would banter about this and that in the mere months we've known each other, we never really revealed anything personal. She knew about Lenka, vaguely, but not that I had been kicked out. She had no idea of a friend named Tolliver, let alone his delight in helping rescue the Mop. "How did that dog cope overnight?" she asked with equanimity. "Miss his mom?"

            I glanced down at the shih tzu to gauge how she'd cope in similar circumstances. Not that I imagined another death ('heavens forfend!', I'd imagine Vladislava conveying in whatever equivalent of Czech). "Yeah, well...," and nothing else emerged from my mouth. So, tactfully enough, she kissed me and pulled me to the bedroom, our coffees barely begun.

            Fast-forward to the end of today's dog walks, the shih tzu being the last to return, by routine. "Feel better?" she queried, again restraining her penchant for sarcasm.

            "Than...?"

            "Than before. I mean,... you looked like hell, if I might say so."

            Better that, I supposed, than looking guilty. So I wrapped up this part of the day by nodding a smile into shape. "You may say so. I too often try to prop up appearances." I caught her eye, craftily framed by make-up I didn't remember an hour earlier. "I guess I'm mourning that old lady. She's meant more to me than..." I was going to say my relatives here, but a) I hadn't ever contextualized them to the shih tzu mistress and b) I wasn't sure how I'd feel if one of them so instantly dropped dead.

            "More to you than me?"

            I kissed her cheek. "Don't die—don't even joke about that!"

            She blushed (for the first time in my viewing) and gave a silent impression that she wasn't joking. Instead, she reminded me to take the Washburn case. "It's not so heavy today. And look—" flipping up the jackknifed neck, "it's gone a little limp."

            "It’s because I left the guitar at home. Using it as a suitcase today."

            "Oh," she deduced, "helping your new roommate move in."

            "Exactly."

            If I were smart and better organized, my horizonal problems would already be solved. I mean, that was an honest-to-God good date, if complicated by the service-to-client conventions of a 'relationship'. I reflected on my sketchy goal: to move out of Tolliver's and move in with someone, well, that I was more used to—'female' wouldn't necessarily have to translate to 'paramour', though I didn't know otherwise and always kinda envied those Will & Grace sort of arrangements. Anyway, my smarter, more organized self would abandon the dog tag camera idea and give no further thought to the Barrandov actress and her stuck-up Seamus. The shih tzu, by contrast, was rather easygoing and already regarded me as a dad of sorts. I liked brushing her hair, liked the faux jealousy such strokes affected on her mistress, liked the banter (usually). Case closed—I'd gradually try to 'court' the situation, if that's what gentleman callers did, back in the day.

            But, if you haven't noticed, I'm neither very smart nor organized. That's laziness talking, not low self-esteem. In fact, I had it in mind to continue on to Barrandov and play the part of the groveling prodigal—see, I'm here without the baggage of the other dog, 100% yours, at your disposal, a tak dále until the sun would set, when I'd trudge home to Tolliver and the Mop.

            And there I found the two, practically having a tea party in front of another episode of Twilight. Tolliver (I assume) had arranged the top of the Mop's head into what they call a 'Love-in-Tokyo'—at least that's the term I read in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things. "Where'd you get the guma?" I asked—the word in Czech coming off my tongue more readily than whatever abbreviates the little elastic hairband in English.

            "Oh, this?" (Tolliver wanted to say 'this ol' thing'—I just knew it.) "We took a trip to the mini-market, didn't we Goldie?" The dog didn't nod, apparently rapt in the machinations of Robert Pattinson.

            "Goldie? Is that what you've decided?"

            "C'mon, mate—he can't be 'the Mop'! I mean, would you wanna be,... I dunno, 'the Rake'? Anyways, his bangs were flopping in front of his vision—I shocked you never noticed that, if you've been walkin' him fer, what, a couple months?"

            "Almost a half year. He never bumped into anything. Sort of like Slash playing guitar. Plus, he wasn't mine to manipulate."

            "I'm not manipulating him! Just lettin' him see. See? He loves this show, by the way."

            "That close to the tv, next thing you'll need is to fit him with glasses."

            "Ha! Elton John varieties—that's a damned good idea!"

            Again, the Mop ('Goldie' hasn't resonated with me yet) didn't nod. His tail somewhat flinched this way and that when I poofed his Love-in-Tokyo. Hardly a wag, but what looked like sullen tolerance. Invariably, the mongrel was wondering what had become of Vladislava. And maybe Pattinson and Stewart could provide some clues. God knows Tolliver wouldn't be helpful on that front.

             Despite the twilight promise of a more extended evening (pun too tired to revise), I crashed on Tolliver's mattress for what I convinced myself would only be a nap. Not that I had anything pressing to do, but I hated not using the fair fullness of a day—reading, searching stuff online, scribbling notes toward the oblivion of my novel. I had no illusions about whether End of My Leash would ever really start. Maybe the title was a filip to get to the end of a fricking chapter, for goodness sakes. I mean, how hard can this kind of thing be? Just make stuff up—the characters won't care; the fact-checking would only bother pedants; the interest in an abstraction like 'instincts' and the loss of them would be, like, total stream of consciousness, no? Let 'er rip, I could hear my narrator say—Bedlam, his name (or 'its name', after neutering). I haven't yet decided if his ('its' is just wrong!) brother Swarm is also neutered, but that would stand to reason if they remained with the same household. The household was going to change, too, in the rough-n-tumble of a divorce. So, the instincts of who to bark for—happily or not—were also up in the air. If Dad stomped out one weekend, then came back the next to swoop up the kids, then Mom had to walk us begrudgingly until meeting another Dad-like guy, who'd swoop up the kids a different way, then force us to live with original Dad, who begrudged us all the more.... All with human hubris that their arrangements would far outshine that of our own doggie parents, wherever they were now.

            I fell asleep knowing this final waking thought: End of My Leash was no autobiography—I'd have no one stretch me on some couch to pick my brain: "so tell me Bedlam—I mean, Boris—if it had been two moms and one dad, would you...."

            The phone rang. Barrandov. I answered without rehearsing a split-second thing to say. She had apparently rehearsed: sorry for being snippy; you can bring that new dog—would be good growth for Seamus; you can even bring him to Karlovo náměstí if that helps your rotations; you can...; you can.... Can you? Please?

            "Let me ask my significant other," I replied. Then got up to go to the bathroom, filling in for the time a conversation like that might entail. I realized, having left the phone on the mattress, it would have been more polite to say, I'll call you back, but since that didn't happen, I upped the pace a bit. Flopping back down on the mattress, I inflected her name to see if she was still there. She was. "Green light from my end, and I'll leave the Mop here. Seamus will just have to grow without him." I could sense Tolliver eavesdropping as the call came to a close. "I may not spend every night there, mind you, but..."

            "No worries," she said, maybe loud enough for Tolliver to also be assured.

 

~23~

Shit...

or get off the toilet. Here goes:

 

            "Bedlam," she bellowed, "and Swarm!" to get into the car that would carry us—undoubtably eager, our tails like propellers, but also oblivious—to the pseudo-friendly house of pain. The moments there of thumbing our jowls and checking our teeth, cupping the base of our skulls with the familiar tone of "atta boy" could only lead to the stab of the thin and elusive stick—and the room darkened before I had properly scoped the environs. I suppose I dreamed about the car ride here, my eyes weary in the wind to register each juncture along the way until Swarm would inevitably joust his nose and seize control of the small opening. But curling to the contours of the humming floor was more than compensatory—its carpet more fragrant and quite unlike the one inside the house, beyond the doorway fence we'd learned to leap over. Looking up at Swarm's stretch to meet the airstream, I rather liked being closer to the ground, no matter how unseen it raced below. From the humming floor I could sense the route no worse than Swarm, anyway, and I'd be able to get out faster when the door finally opened. Or else, if abandoned in some parking lot, I could just stay put—something that crimped Swarm's style, barking beyond our endearment at every passer-by. The shopping carts, especially those with a toddler perched between plastic bags, infuriated him.

            Now, waking within the carpeted cradle, I saw that Swarm was unnaturally coiled in the space near the other door. I wanted to leap up to the seat, to take advantage of the free window and measure our distance home, but I was literally too tired to move. My odor was inexplicably putrid—a leap from the basin would compel an investigation; for the moment, however, I sunk into the warm vibrations of the journey and tried to identify the contrasting aromas beneath the front seat that bid me to sleep on, despite myself.

            David it was who now carried me, pitifully aware of whatever malady I had picked up. And to my droopy amazement, Swarm was in Mom's arms, knackered by the bug that got to him as well. I couldn't tell what looked stranger: Mom's nuzzling or my pugnacious brother's baby acquiescence. After all, it'd been several full moons since we had last been called pups.

            Decidedly we were adopted as such. There were plenty others more or less like us at the farm where we opened our eyelids for the first time. Our snouts had tracked the transfer in darkness from the concrete kennel where our mother remained to a platformed row of enclosures with a mesh-wire floor sparsely layered with straw. The front wall was low so that mother, routinely led in by the keeper and released of her leash, could step over in a measure of fatigue and obligation to feed us—an amusing spectacle for the choosers on their way to scout out more appealing pups. Usually the keeper stood guard, feigning patience while mother nudged and cleaned even the runtiest of us, aware of the inevitable. I thought about that when I watched her lift her legs more sluggishly over the barrier, pulled by the re-attached leash back to her quarters. Was she an escape risk (which would include an escape from the tedious band of us), I wondered, or was she a potential threat to the gawkers who could freely handle us except at feeding time?

            Because once when a self-confident chooser grasped Swarm from a teat closest to mother's neck, she snapped at the air in a double move to bite the hand and teach Swarm to do likewise. The keeper ran over, unsure of whom to punish, and, spotting that I was the only one not on a teat, settled the dilemma by picking me up to place me in the marauder's hands.

            We weren't selected that time. Some prospectors would want to take us out to the cold sunshine—never to the rain that we'd only imagine from heavier dander in air and pings upon the roof. One gushing couple watched us awhile through their round spectacles and arranged to have the whole litter out on the back meadow. Never had we romped in such thick grass and we were at a loss over what to do with this orchestrated liberation. All of us except Swarm, who raced along the fence line until the keeper managed to intercept him and hold him from the general play. The bespectacled couple kneeled and put their hands out to the rest of us, slightly bemused that none of us were responding with reciprocal interest; as Swarm had blazed the trail, we began to scramble for open territory like rays away from those round eyes. Sympathetically, I suppose, the keeper handed Swarm over to the forlorn man who broke into an instant grin; my squirming brother erased it, though, with a stream of spite (instead of fright) upon his fumbling hands.

            It wouldn't be Swarm to hit the earth hard—his determination not to be picked up ensured this. When, several days later and back in our motherless platform, a family with no glasses among them searched for one of us to take, I decided I didn't want to be picked up, either, placing myself behind a cluster of sleeping siblings. Only Swarm stirred as the girl of the family opened her mouth and eyes to lure him to her excitement. Some lucky pup today would become hers, and while the rest of the family moved on to boxers and shar-peis and border collies, she laid her hand low for Swarm to come; I watched from the shadows as Swarm sized her up and crawled over bodies, deeming her worth the effort to at least sniff her open palm.

            Of course there wouldn't be any food, as she might have suggested with such a gesture. Her scritches behind my brother's head were a prelude to pick him up, yet he was out of her grip before she could raise him to her modest height. Swarm still sparred with her hands as she tried to round him up again—this was his game, she knew, to run from the trap. And if they got him for just a moment—pinning him gently behind the neck, he relished the few strokes before he'd wiggle and gnaw his way out. "Dasha", the girl's father called from down the pike, "are you being a terrorist?" She ignored him and nearly tumbled into our platform, causing Swarm to dash to the back, rousing the others to get up for this pleasant siege. One of my sisters—a great wrestler who sometimes challenged Swarm's virility—romped over to Dasha, who accepted her as a consolation for losing Swarm. By now Dasha's brother had come over to pull her down the aisle where their parents were studying the more popular breeds—pups with coiled tails or wrinkled skin or bulging eyes and a pushed-in face. But then this brother, twice as tall, scanned the likes of us and, despite the proximity of my siblings beneath his folded fingers, squinted at me to uncover my invisibility.

            With little enticement, he caused me to crawl towards him; Swarm jealously jetted to intercept our line but the boy ignored him, reaching over to pick me up. We elevated together as he scrutinized my face some more, resting me upon his chest. I clawed my way to the space under his chin, then ventured to get to the flat of his shoulder, which he laughingly permitted. "Hey," he called over to his parents, "what about this one? He climbs like a monkey!" as I aimed for the top of his head—taller even than the keeper. Nothing alive seemed so high! The father responded in some fashion as his son reached to reign me in, and suddenly down the boy's backside I flew, unconcerned what I might feel from a force so benign as the ground.  Before impact I noticed the perplexed mug of my sister, the wrestler, hearing nothing but the gasp from above, which should have prepared my thoughts below, when—yow!—

            The sting of nothing I had ever imagined set off a yelping I could not control. As the boy's parents raced over, I panicked at what next might befall—while my tooth and nostrils were throbbing, I cried more for the overall chaos.

            "David, how could you?!" his father scolded.

            "Look—his nose is bleeding," Dasha added, while the boy frantically inspected my chattering jaws. "And his tooth!"

            "Oh, Jesus," his mother hissed, "put it back before someone comes and makes us buy the—" She stopped short and dug into her purse for a soft paper cloth to give her son, who then swabbed my muzzle while caressing the back of my neck.

            At length he said, "his skull is real smooth." His parents had scurried away in embarrassment, but Dasha remained, finally able to pet the taut body of Swarm, staring to see if I was okay.

            "But he's bruised," Dasha rasped, "—what good will a round head do him if his fang is knocked out?"

            David didn't answer her, but looked me in the eyes to read my mind. For my part, gathering that he and his sister had no guile, my whimpers subsided.

 

            'See,' I nodded to the bathroom walls, 'it's not so hard to start.' 

            I imagined the walls needing clarity: 'Start what?'  

            'The End of my Leash.... Don't know yet whether to include the The....'

            The walls shrugged ambivalence, the way they usually do.

 

~24~

 

            "So they're castrated?" was Tolliver's only question.

            I blanched at the designation. "Neutered, I think, would be the more humane way of putting it." Truth be told, there was no good way of putting it. 'Fixed' was even worse.

            Tolliver looked over to the Mop for apparent advice. "'Castrated' still keeps him a 'he'; medical terminology, is all. But if your story's gonna be accurate, Swarm and Bedlam would have plastic cones on their collars from the minute they woke up from the anesthesia. Otherwise, they'd be ripping the stitches out."

            Hmm. "I guess I didn't think about that."

            "Anyway, keep at it—you could be the next... ah..."

            I knew he didn't want to say 'Shakespeare' or anything too English. I wanted to supply Steinbeck's name—Travels with Charley—or even Čapek's, with his children's book Dášeňka. But I went back to the English "Conan Doyle, with his Hounds of the Baskervilles."

            "It's 'hound', dude, singular. But I can see why you wanna keep your pups together."

            "I'm not really sure what I want to do."

            Tolliver grunted to get himself up, having listened to my debut chapter flat on his back, staring at the ceiling. "Better to imagine stuff than to try your own hand at being Sherlock."

            "What d'ya mean?"

            "I hope you're dumping that dumbshit idea of little cameras on dog tags."

            As a matter of fact, I had been reviewing that plan in light of the Barrandov actress' offer. Why go through all the tech gymnastics when my own naked eyes could gather her patterns by just... being there. Don't get me wrong—I had no intention of rifling through her drawers or diary pages (I'm not that kind of guy); the camera was supposed to simulate my co-existence in the place—the same way Seamus already co-existed. Seamus, of course, never had a choice to move in with her, but, once in, he'd gauge how to act around her: when to play, when to leave her be, when to lick her face or bark a threat away.

            I'm sure I protested Tolliver's use of 'dumbshit' before letting the topic drop. I took out the Washburn and strummed a bit for an alternative to the constant din of television, and both Tolly and the Mop seemed appreciative. I roughly replicated the songs I played at Kampa before Grizzly Guy had driven me away. Which meant I played for Maruška in my mind.

            But by 'Here, There, and Everywhere', I couldn't recreate any of the loveliness. I cut it short to try a new riff and on-the-spot rhymes (with some fumbling):   

             

Maruško, I don't know 

     if we'll ever see roses again,

     if your Boeing's coming back and then

          we'd find a spaniel of our own...

 

Maruško, I don't know 

     if you hated calling this your home,

     if you needed to exist alone,

          I could do that with you too...

 

Because nevadí is cruel

     if the world spins out for you, 

     if the thread is there to pull me through,

          it's also prone to snap... 

 

Crap. Ended on a pent-up syllable. Tolliver asked about this "nevadí" business, and I joked, "it doesn't matter" like it didn't, which it did for Tolly at this moment. His face pretended to understand, to be ready to talk love-life through the night (it was pitch dark outside by now). The Mop had long ago hit the sack, and, saying something dismissive like "tomorrow waits for no one," I did up the futon and watched my forlorn friend drag himself to the air mattress.

            Seven in the morning was bright and easy to rise to. I shaved and showered, made as little noise as possible to let T and TM sleep in. I grabbed TW (the Washburn) on the prospect that I would, perhaps, like to spend bachelor nights in Barrandov. I tossed some light clothes and a couple books in the zippered pouch.

            The tram moved me like I was its prisoner, opening the accordion doors every four hundred meters or so—a tease to have me spring from my seat—before closing them into my predestination. To pass the time, I counted the jobs I had managed to contract in my life (this week being that) and decided I was contributing adequately to my twenty-seven years of leeching off the earth. Maybe I was even being a life-saver here and there: the Barrandov actress seemed not to have a 'plan B' in case I bailed. Or maybe I was already plan B or even C or D.... What did I know of her friends, neighbors, managers (accommodating or otherwise)?

            "You're early," she said through the intercom at the door. "Why?"

            Why? It didn't occur to me to ask when to show up. I thought 9amish would be right—by which time, all dogs need to pee. "I could... come back later—"

            She buzzed me in. I might have told you this already: hers was the only client domicile I had never entered—even if just to the stairwell door. I felt like Indiana Jones walking into the Incan cave, stupid as his bag of sand. But also in my element—trained to be here, following some dream, rolling the die to see what comes up. She opened the door and instantly hid behind it, evidently undoing the towel around her hair so she could wrap it around her torso. "I'm just getting dressed. Why don't you take Seamus out—it'll be his second walk this morning, but... why not?"

            "Why not," I repeated. "Can I leave my guitar inside?"

            She took the packed case without coming from behind the door. "It's heavy. You have a whole band in there?"

            "No, just me."

            She whistled Seamus to come and then had to push him out—almost (not quite) at the expense of her ad hoc toga. The Irish setter was understandably confused: I had never been this close to his domain, and while I was 'safe', I was also doing something strange in his mind. His leash wasn't yet on—the actress tossed that to me next—and I could sense the semblance of a growl in his throat as I hooked the unlooped end to his collar. I whispered that everything was fine,... routines were wise to include some morphisms once in a while... His human mother smiled agreement before she shut the door.

            We pulled ourselves outside, going through the motions of a walk that stood for killing time. I peregrinated to the bench where I had strummed the previous week, hoping to get back in the good graces which, I guess, I presently enjoyed. The Irish setter sat upright, looking toward his building, then at me. His tag was a gold disc with 'Šajmus' engraved and a nine-digit phone number. The spelling didn't seem right, but the decision was conscientious; a rescuer would have to put the creature at ease, and botching his name with an unseemly pronunciation wouldn't help. I talked with Seamus for a while: combination of how's it goin'? and here's what the immediate days should hold. Dogs understand a lot—more than what we think they don't. No doubt he knew his mom was prepping herself differently than for an average day.

            I hummed about a dozen rounds of 'Maruško', drawing a blank for any new lyrics. The temptation was to text her with a selfie-vid of the song or even just a simple how's it goin'? (and decidedly not here's what the immediate days should hold). But such texts—for me, at least—are always paralyzing calculations. For that matter, she could text me by now. But would I text me, shoe on the other foot? I'm adequate at reacting but bollocks (Tolly would smirk) at initiating. Maybe next life I'd strike a better balance.

            Seamus led the way back up the Incan cave. The door was open and the Barrandov actress dressed to slay whatever drama Bratislava would throw her way. She gave me the 'royal tour' with all practicalities in mind for how to operate the tv ("Seamus likes his nightly news"), the coffee maker, the washing machine ("the sheets on the bed are fresh, by the way"), the array of dry and canned food for the dog, the liquor cabinet for me ("as long as you don't drive, wink wink"), and other things I had no capacity to think about. She gave me a ring of spare keys and an envelope to incentivize my fullest commitment. She checked her phone to acknowledge that her Uber had arrived, then gave me a kiss on the cheek and Seamus a rocking hug. I felt the instant envy of wanting such gestures reversed.

            Or is it jealousy? I always forget.

 

~25~

            I promised myself (and you, if you’re with me) that I wouldn’t rummage through the drawers and other intimate spaces of the Barrandov actress’ apartment, and—innocent until proven guilty—my demeanor was stalwart. Besides, Seamus was watching me as much or more as I was dogsitting him, and it just wouldn’t feel right to have him see what amounts to psychological burglary: stealing not stuff but a shadow of somebody’s self. Along with my Strahov arrest, this prospect (if Seamus bore witness) could add to my record—the crimes and misdemeanors that as yet have slipped through the cracks. And if Woody Allen’s movie comes to mind, that piece of brilliance has also slipped into limbo, where the jury is out until the man’s dead.

            At any rate, the Barrandov actress had given me parameters enough to feel like a fief in one’s fiefdom, including an archive of all that has led to this aesthete’s ascent. She too often joked that a B-list actor was nothing more than a blister on the budget of the Ministry of Culture, but my riposte has been: at least you have such a ministry/culture. Where I come from, you’d have to scrape the barrel to find Fred Rogers pleading with Congress to fund his poor project in 1969. This actress, in her early 40s, hadn’t had to contend with communist flak in her profession—even as that phase amply featured among the  magnetic tape and digital discs. Instead of Netflixing this week, I planned to watch a film from before the Prague Spring (Forman’s Blondes in Love would do), another right in the throes (Menzel’s Capricious Summer of ’67), then to Normalizace (Chytilová’s Kalamita) and onward to those that might influence her in real time. She’d rub shoulders with Geislerová, eventually, and that fact made me long for Lenka—even toy with the idea that she could come by Barrandov and sponge in the atmosphere.

            Instead, I called her colleague. “Hey Tolly, how’s it hangin’?”

            “Boris? Well, y’know… it’s alright. Goldie is missing you, though.”

            “What makes you think so?”

            “Curls up on your futon, sniffs around a bit more. That sorta thing.”

            I didn’t want to broach the abandonment he must feel after Vladislava’s death; “he’s protecting the space, sizing up the nooks and crannies. How are the walks? Getting to know the neighborhood?”

            Tolliver guffawed. “I don’t even know the neighborhood, mate. But maybe, yeah… could do for some social interaction, for real.” He was silent for five seconds. “Won’t replace you, though. You know, I been giving thought about your dog tag plan—”

            “You have?”

“Naturally… haven’t you?”

            I hadn’t, but made my face look like I did (which only Seamus could appreciate). “I mean, part of the plan was to scope out the place itself, which I’m obviously doing with the naked eye…”

            “Yeah, but then when she comes back, you wanted to see her patterns.”

            “Probably more the patterns of the shih tzu mistress.”

            “Who zat again?”

            I'm sure he was pretending to forget. “I didn’t mention her? A more doable, if dicier, scenario. Anyway, what’s crossed your mind?”

            Tolliver seemed to suck in his cheeks. “Way I see it, the challenge is in the camera size—even with the cyber wires for medical use. The lens itself might be tiny enough, but the transmitter needs space. So—”

            “—could be on the back of the tag,” I interrupted, then, “Sorry, go on…”

            “Could be, yeah. But what I found online might be of interest. The collar, mate—you could do more tailoring with the collar!”

            I was circumspect. “Both these dogs have long hair—their collars are buried.”

            “But if there were pyramid spikes protruding, like the bulldog from Tom ’n Jerry, then inside one of them could be the camera, transmitter, kit ’n kaboodle.” He was pacing, evidently, by his quicker breathing. “And to your point about the long hair, the spike nearest to the tag—which by your original notion must hang free—could be the one to rig. And because a metal spike would encase the camera too much, I was thinking ‘what about macrame?’ Spikes or otherwise, you could weave it right in!”

            I glanced at Seamus, who was still staring at me as if aware of the topic. “You’ve, um, given this considerable thought, buddy.”

            “Damn straight. And could dust off my macrame skills from boarding school.”

            “You learned macrame at boarding school?”

            “From me gram, really. But came in handy many a lonely evening.”

            “But how would these owners just, I dunno, accept a new collar for their dog? I mean—they’d notice, if I just did a switcheroo during one of their walks, right?”

            Tolly had thought of that, too: “you wouldn’t sneak on the collar—that’d be bonkers! You’d present it as a gift, a ‘thank you for your patronage’. Which in itself would extend their trust.”

            “Trust that I’d be shredding, actually.”

            “Well, that’s your moral mountain to climb, innit?”

            “Sounds like it’s ours, if you’re this much part of the plan.”

            “Oh, I’m good with it, mate. Lookin’ out for you is what I’m doin’.”

            I switched the subject for a few minutes of nothing-talk, then we both gave leave to walk our respective canines. 

            The Barrandov actress called a few minutes later, as if she had eavesdropped on what Tolly and I were talking about. Fact is, she was being consistent, timing a daily call around Seamus’ early-evening walk. She wanted to know if I needed anything, if staying overnight was suiting me fine, if Seamus was behaving, a tak dále. I reciprocated in basically the same line of questions, replacing Seamus with her film crew. She laughed at the idea that the crew—or someone on it—wasn’t behaving. I would have followed with ‘so, then, are you behaving?’, but acting a flirt on the phone was never my thing. 

            The third night in, I was feeling restless. Strumming the Washburn in front of Seamus was succor for a half hour or so, if he was bored before my second song. No need for an audience anyway—I wasn’t playing to perform. Still, I packed the guitar in its case and headed out, trusting it would be a winnowing rod to get me to a gratifying location. Could be Stromovka, as tram 12 would breeze me there in a mere twenty-seven stops. Or maybe I’d jump off at Újezd and saunter down to Kampa (Grizzly Guy be damned). Or transfer there to tram 22 and, eventually, Gröbovka vineyard overlooking the Nusle valley. There were a couple dancing platforms there—one surrounded by a grotto of faux lava rock, the other beneath a capacious gazebo—and a wandering minstrel would generally add to the bouquet of bohemia sekt and the evening’s first, feel-the-rest-out stars.

            It was to the gazebo I’d go, for no other reason than a better view of Vyšehrad, the mystical lymph of Prague. The floor had no dancers (nor would my Washburn flip any such switch), but some couples cuddling into their public and personal desires. I sat on a rail and unzipped the instrument that would have to serve as my paramour or Linus blanket, waiting for the Great Pumpkin or something just as fanciful. Stream of consciousness, twenty-seven tramstops I traded for the transfer here, feeling older than I should and less mature, Kurt Cobain met my fingertips in his cover of Bowie’s ‘The Man Who Saved the World’—and now my cover of his, unplugged and seemingly at peace.

            A new couple glided in after I had finished and had begun my ‘Barbaloots’ song (sneaking in my bid for fame), and while I tried to keep playing, it was impossible not to notice Natálie, from malvíkCity. “Natálie?” I quavered, “from malvíkCity?”

            She leaned into her boyfriend, who flashed me a middle-minded look. “Boris? It’s you that’s playing? We were listening from the grass and…”

            “Wondered,” the boyfriend uttered in a Germanic accent.

            “It was Cobain, or Bowie rather…”

            “Oh. For baby showers?” Natálie flashed a little irony.

            “Well, not that one, but…”

            “Maybe you can play us something to inspire,” she cooed, then wrapped her arms around this Günter’s neck.

            I was at a loss. “Well,… babies like the key of D,” I strummed that chord, “major more than minor,” strumming the difference, then back to a Woody Guthrie riff where the D majors jump from the second fret to the seventh, back and forth. The rhythm wasn’t danceable, really, but they locked eyebrows anyway to my nervous singing: “Go to sleep, you weary hobo”—a G major trill to A: “let the towns drift slowly by…”

            A half-dozen more like that, attracting nobody else, including ‘Love Me Tender’ by their request. When finished, Natálie kissed me on the forehead. Her boyfriend put a banknote in my shirt pocket—100Kč, good for a couple beers. “Thank you, Boris. You might have a future after all.”

            I assumed she was referring to the baby shower idea, but wanted to imagine otherwise.

 

~26~

 

            My day-job hadn’t ceased with this Barrandov TDY. Sure, the absence of Vladislava and the dachshund dysfunctionals as clients meant that I was down to the five fidos at Karlovo náměstí. A king’s life at beggar’s wages (better than vice versa, I suppose).

            I think the shih tzu mistress noticed my distracted aspect—she often did, to her python psychology. Coffee was just that this afternoon (she made it understood with a wink that said, ‘not kidding’), so I decided to speak a bit about my situation. “Lenka kicked me out," I began and paused out of instinct: what to say to sound interesting or less mundane?Instead of lying, I admitted our lifestyles weren’t very compatible. “She works hard and is going to heal countless people in this country. I… laze around and probably hurt people… Unintentionally, I mean.”

            “I wouldn’t think otherwise,” she responded, then sipped her coffee to encourage my elaboration.

            “Tolliver—I don’t think I’ve mentioned him before—is a buddy who’s taken me in. Well, me and that Mop of a mongrel you met the other day.”

            “Quite a gesture. But back to Lenka: what do you miss about her most?”

            I missed that she called out bullshit and expected adults to simply be adults. “She twirls a pencil from one hand to the other when she’s thinking of things to jot down, then tucks it into her hair, over her ear.”

            “Sounds dangerous.”

            “Pointy side in, so the eraser doesn’t kill a passing kiss.”

            “Why does she have so many things to jot down?”

            I shrugged. “Doctor’s rotations. Organizing memory. Maybe keeping the world honest.”

            “I bet she’s an ex-smoker.”

            “In fact, she is. Before I met her. Why?”

            “Restless fingers need something to do. Restless anything, I guess.”

            We talked more about other things—baby showers and feel-good cosmetics—and I brushed the shih tzu as an unconscious task of what might be a daily routine if I’d ever move in (not that I risked making such an impression). The risk I decided to take, though, was to ask about the dog’s collar: “has she had this a long time?”

            “I don’t know,” she calculated, “maybe three years? Why?”

            “Oh, just… Tolliver is into macrame and… asked if any of my clients would like a tailor-made collar.”

            “He’s into what?”

            Yikes. “Macrame. Like, crochet… -ish.”

            “No, I know what macrame is, but… Really?”

            “He’s a sweet guy. Just inquiring,” I bit my lip, “on his behalf.”

            I quit while I was behind—a stupid gambit to a plan that should have never had any oxygen to begin with. “You going to Barrandov?” she asked as a matter of routine.

            “Yeah,” but not to suggest the week’s arrangement. “I’d better get going.”

            And through the following hour, I prepare a silent poll with anyone who’ll listen (Seamus, barely). Do I love this shih tzu mistress? Or, channeling a high school dance: ‘do I like her?’ Do I love anybody, really? Do I love myself? Do I like myself? I certainly like a lot of people (even those I do not actually like). Seamus has intelligent eyes and seeming empathy for such quandaries. 

            “Do you know Heaney’s poem ‘The Otter’?” I asked him, lying at my stretched-out feet. “No? I adore the final lines, after the diving creature has performed, naturally, for the voyeur sitting ‘dry-throated on the warm stones’, probably envying the cool water in all this global heat.” Seamus opened his jaws to that suggestion, yawning an ironic endorsement to hear more. “And the otter is suddenly out, refreshed and ready for the world that is not water, if ‘printing the stones’ with what had just transpired. That’s it, Seamus. Even if the watermark evaporates, the print is everlasting to anyone who reads.”

            Why did you tell me this, the Irish Setter didn’t ask. I put in a DVD of ‘Tady hlídám já’ because the dog on the cover had the same long-haired look for Seamus’ interest and Jitka Ježková’s loose braids sufficed for mine. I fell asleep around the half-way point, Seamus far earlier. Still, the film did what it was supposed to do: deflect the worrisome introspections of the day.

            Tolliver texted me in the middle of the night: ‘At work, extending my shift cuz of a bus rollover. Mind walking Goldie?’ When he assumed I’d see this, I don’t know, but I decided to reply with a thumbs up (which I instantly regretted, due to the circumstances).

            Break of dawn, before the trams would cram for rush hour, I brought Seamus for whatever reason. I had to keep him on a leash of course, and theoretically apply a muzzle—the latter came off as soon as he spelunked under my seat for extra sleep. Tram 20 meant no transfers to Dejvická, and I ended up snoozing through that stop, nudged by the driver in his turnabout at Divoká Šárka. I could have waited the fifteen minutes or so for his break to end and head on back, but decided to take advantage of the early morning splendor of that wildest valley within Prague’s municipal zone. Seamus, too, seemed up for the adventure.

            We walked the rugged bluffs overlooking Džbán, with canoers and swimmers already in training before its public gates would open. Further in, the plateau curled along the stream a suicide leap below; not to celebrate the idea, the park’s namesake apparently threw herself from one of these promontories in a twist of jealousy. Šárka, the legend goes, had successfully led her women warriors to slaughter their male captors, commanded by Ctirad, after luring them to sleep with drugged wine. Ctirad survives and—another legend adds intrigue—makes romantic overtures to Šárka. Whatever happens with these frenemies is anybody’s guess, but generally the denouement is this: out of distrust or regret, Šárka (who could have easily killed the man), exits this stage of fools and cruel rewards, merging with the more eternal beauty that humans may manipulate but never truly control.

            The park spit us out at Červený Vrch, where we trammed back to Dejvická and dragged ourselves to Puškinovo náměstí. The Mop met us with due confusion but, having sniffed out Seamus before, modest happiness for the surprise visit. He must be still in mourning, I thought, as his tail wagged at quarter-speed. He didn’t indicate a need to get outside and, instead, slumped upon the futon to get back to his beauty sleep. Seamus did likewise on the rug. And (why not?) I followed their lead on Tolly’s mattress.

            He must have come home like a cat—quiet, then an instant draw to the dogs who bolted awake. Seamus’ growl was rather concerning, but I threw my body in harm’s way to whisper him down. The Mop licked Tolliver’s moonlike face to assure that everything had, to this point, passed the smell test. “Thanks, Goldie,” he grinned, “and good to see you, Boris, with…”

            “Seamus. Like the poet.”

            “Oh?”

            We brunched on Bohemia chips and Braník (dogfood and water) before heading out for a family walk through Stromovka. The ponds there glistened in the late summer sun and invited a dip, which at least the dogs could enjoy. Tolly suggested stripping to our undies, but (Strahov flashing a warning flag) I pointed out the range of youngsters, oldsters, those who’d call foul against those who wouldn’t care. Bad decisions make for good stories, I saw in his eyes, and I felt bad for letting him down.

            He perked up, though, when I asked about the macrame—without mentioning my little tester with the shih tzu mistress, of course. “Yeah, mate, I’m keen to give that a go,” he said. “And if you can undo Seamus’s collar, I’ll have a better idea of measurement.”

            At the apartment, I did so (despite a suspicious eye from Seamus). Tolly showed me his resource sites online, including where he could locally purchase this and that. We still weren’t sure about the camera—i.e., the whole point of the scheme. “I’m still pretty sure there is an app out there that kinda replicates FaceTime,” I speculated, the opposite of ‘pretty sure’.

            “I’ll get started on the soft spikes, anyway,” Tolliver assured. “It will be a proper decompressor after shifts.”

            “From syringes to knitting sticks—your hands will be knackered.”

            “Not knitting sticks, exactly, but no worries. I gave you my word on this, so…”

            And, on the way out to bring Seamus home, I gave Tolly my word that I’d be back in a couple days, when the Barrandov actress projected her return from Bratislava. I gave him a palm’s up handshake which he turned into an embrace. “Not supposed to do that,” I stupidly said, meaning our proximity at the threshold of the open door. “I mean—the Czechs want such greetings inside or out, not between.”

            “But then we aint Czech, innit?”

            

~27~

             

            However cultural affiliation is documented, I feel rather ‘Czech’ for the most part, ‘American’ only as a point of origin. Language suggests too much about how one identifies: was Kafka ever German in that regard? was he Czech? Jewish? a modern ancient mariner in land-locked circumstances? I’m not a mirror image of Kafka—don’t have the guts for that kind of angst—but share his sense of being integral to systems (insurance, artistic circles) and not less alienated as a result.

            I traded my fifth evening at Barrandov for an out-of-the-blue invite from my Ořech relatives who didn’t say their daughter was home from Olomouc, but… that had to be their rationale. When I explained on the phone I was dogsitting, they were happy to ‘set a plate’ for Seamus as well. While I was still living at Zlíchov with Lenka (“Lenka? She’s fine. Already left for her night shift”—probably true), the best way to Ořech was through Prokopské údolí to the Řeporyje train station, six kilometers from Hlubočepy at the valley’s midpoint between Barrandov and Zlíchov. From Řeporyje, they’d pick me up in their Trabant (not really, but just as clunky) and trundle across the beltway to their modest villa overlooking wheat fields and groves and an electric substation to service the southwest quadrant of Prague.

            They spoke in Czech, and I was instantly nostalgic for Vladislava. “Hezká, ne?” Uncle Jiří spread his arm to the view, and my elided affirmation—“’no” —allowed my silent comment that, no, the electrical monstrosity is not at all pretty. But ano, the rest is a golden get-away from the hustle and bustle.

            “Work keeping you busy?” Jiří continued in Czech, and I replied more or less. This baby shower idea had new legs, perhaps, so I went through the explanation of how I’d stumbled into malvíkCity, mistaking it for the pre-pandemic guitar store, and Natálie’s encouragement and my demo videos and…  

Aunt Helena and Cousin Amálka—a dozen times removed from me in terms of bloodlines—came out to the patio with beers and a bowl of water for Seamus, who became the topic of conversation for the next ten minutes, and then his owner for five (no one recalling any movie she’d been in). Amálka didn’t ask or say much, but followed everything with her dark brown eyes. I tried to sway the conversation to Olomouc, the masters in math she was working towards; she waited for her parents to frame their point of view—that math needed to be applied. ‘To what?’ Amálka only challenged with her eyes, which fueled Jiří on. “To, to,… have your pick: accounting, engineering, teaching at gymnasium—” He might have added ‘working toward a doctorate’ until she admitted having no heart for further academics. She was leaving Olomouc for—

“Hovno!” Helena exclaimed, throwing up her arms before ducking back into the house for the sausages they’d roast. Jiří, stoking the fire he had built in the stone ring, concurred with his wife, adding ‘cow’ and ‘sheep’ to the shit for specificity. I smiled stupidly to hear Amálka’s own version.

Indeed, manure removal from pastureland was going to be part of her internship at Pražká pastvina, a program protecting lands from the decay of communism to the free-for-all of privatization. “Just over there,” she pointed to the southern horizon, “this side of the limestone quarry, there is a butterfly preserve that would struggle without (ironically) humans to keep humans away.”

“Would you be clearing the manure butterflies make?”

She half-laughed at the notion. The sheep and cows and goats make a mess of fenced-in sections, she explained, but their grass-cutting is ideal for the ecosystem, provided the sections move around at the right times. An intensity of crap doesn’t help the balance—the reason that careless farms become as pollutant as many other industries.

“What do you do with the butterflies?”

“Nothing mathematical,” Jiří, spoke for her, “if that’s what you’re expecting.”

I wasn’t expecting anything, but wished he would butt out. As a consequence, I lost Amálka s brown eyes for a while.

Inevitably, the conversation would come round to Lenka, who had visited here once and Olomouc another time. “Are we going to hear wedding bells?” Helena begged. “It would be so nice to have a doctor in the family.”

“And little kids to take fishing,” added Jiří, “or netting butterflies, right? Then letting them go, of course.” Amálka went inside, if probably interested in what I would say.

“No plans. The baby shower idea isn’t… any personal hint. And medical school is, well, a long-term commitment in its own right. The fact is—”

My phone rang. The Barrandov actress wanting her chance to say good night to Seamus. But where was Seamus? “And where are you right now, Boris?” she pressed, as I eyeballed the open gate and flitted for the Irish setter. “I hear voices—are you… at home?”

I tried to explain and hem in my panic at the same time. “I’m, um, in Ořech… with my relatives and” (moment of truth) “wasn’t sure Seamus would want to come along.”

“Oh.” She was silent for a moment while I tried desperately to disguise my jog down the street.

“I mean,… I trust him… to be… with me for, um—”

“He doesn’t seem to be at home, Boris.”

Huh? I stopped. “Wh-what do you mean?”

“I’ve got an app that links to the camera in my hallway—you know, where his bedding is—and he’s not there.”

“You’re still in Bratislava and you can see inside your apartment?”

She uttered an incredulous sound. “I check him, like, several times a day.”

“Um… Do you have another camera? Maybe he’s in the living room.”

“No, I’m not so wired.” She left that notion linger while I gestured to an approaching Jiří to scope out another street. “I guess I’ll just check later. You’re probably right: he’s curled up on the couch like he knows he shouldn’t. I usually shut that door when I leave, by the way.”

“Ah—I’ll remember to do that when, um… when…”

“Are you okay, Boris? I didn’t spook you with the camera thing, did I?”

I hadn’t imagined, but had nothing to hide. When at her place, I was an A-plus guest. “I’m okay, thanks. Just… some anxiety with my relatives, that’s all.”

She bid me solace (“been there”) and good luck. “Back in a few days; I’ll call you tomorrow. Čau čau.”

Amálka ran up to me and implored, in Czech, whatever info I could give about Seamus. His vet? whether or not he’s castrated? history with other dogs?

I looked at the glow of my phone as if the Barrandov actress hadn’t hung up, wondering what buttons to press to either go back in time (close that frickin’ gate) or fast-forward to a safe find. “I don’t know if he’s castrated. Would he be seeking…”

“Fenka? Ano.” And still in Czech: “wouldn’t you?”

She said she knew of one dog in heat toward the middle of the village, and possibly another at the junkyard on the road going south. Jiří was already driving block by block and Helena would remain home, or more specifically at the gate, waving a sausage to lure him back.

Long after the streetlamps clicked on, the search was coming up empty. We would need to involve others: neighbors, the police, the owner…. 

Or—

 

~28~

            Choose your own adventure. Knock on every door of Ořech (already begun); search the internet for a replacement Irish setter (immediate delivery); pray for a change (and a miracle); think like an uncastrated dog (let the instinct lead); book a one-way ticket to NYC (isn’t helping, isn’t helping, isn’t…).

            Actually, besides Maruška being a sight for unworthy eyes, I could ply my trade of Big Apple dog-walking with greater legitimacy, if not the full endorsement of all my clients here. The shih tzu mistress would likely give me a character reference. The basset attorneys, too. The ghost of Vladislava would bless my transfer of the Mop into Tolliver’s hands. Tolliver, for his part, would weep and maybe kill the Barrandov actress to get me back.

            Amálka practically shook me from my stupor—not asleep, but slumped against the outside of the gate, the same old sausage Helena gave to me for bait. “I’ll trade places,” she suggested, “and Daddy has an idea.”

            “How are the odds?”

            “Of?”

            “Of a pampered pet surviving the night.”

            “Still summer; can’t be horrible.”

            “Yeah, but…”

            “You want me to calculate? Apply math to the hypotheticals?”

In the darkness I couldn’t see her physiognomy, except for the whites of her eyes. “What’s your father’s idea?”

“He’d drive you home, as close to the railroad tracks as possible.”

“Seamus wouldn’t have paid that close attention to our route!”

“You never know. Plus, it’s worth a shot. Mom and I would stay here, of course. And don’t worry: Seamus is somewhere—a hundred percent.”

Einstein’s theory of the conservation of mass: cadaver or otherwise, his molecule count would be the same. With this numbing thought I sat shotgun in Jiří’s Trabant (not really) while he drove as slowly as a dog might run. Just out of Ořech, I tried to kibosh this incipient effort: “how would Seamus decide to take the bridge over the beltway?” Jiří shrugged and reasoned that if the dog was paying attention to details, this would be one. Following that logic, would he then wait for a train to get on board? Stop at the MOL to buy a hostess bottle of wine?

The train tracks did not parallel the side streets of Řeporyje, but there were foot paths that every so often compelled me to jump out, flashlight probing where the headlights didn’t, and holler Seamus’ name. By the time we came to Prokopské údolí (which had pavement to support the vehicle but wasn’t a legal road) we didn’t need to stop—the path was always within a stone’s throw of the rails. And in fact, earlier in the week, I had walked Seamus through at least half of the length of the valley, so that familiarity hinted some hope.

Predictably, headlights from the opposite direction were that of a cop car, and Jiří fumbled through an explanation that officers found hard to believe. Neither of us had any ID and—far worse—any antidote for the whiff of the evening’s spirits. Instead of a breathalyzer, they had Jiří get out of the car, touch his nose, recall the name of the dog we were looking for, spell out exactly how we were relatives, a tak dále. And though I wasn’t the driver, they basically had me do the same, suspicious of my accent (especially botching a contrived pronunciation of 'Šajmus'). In a word, none of this was passing the smell test.

But, because God exists and/or Greek comedy, a Deus ex machina emerged from my last-ditch attempt to call out “Seamus,” correctly, “save us!” The sleek beast had indeed chosen the tracks instead of the paved path, fortunate that trains were only on the hour by this time of night. I had never been so ecstatic to see another creature, and the cops also must have had that ‘Lassie Come Home’ catharsis. Jiří was rather matter-of-fact, vindicated that his idea in the end wafted of wisdom. Promising to have his license hereafter, he thanked the officers for their understanding and continued to drive me and the runaway mutt to Barrandov. He offered to wait a few minutes in order to drive me to Zlíchov, say hello to Lenka (don’t be a stranger) and so forth. Appreciating all that, I said quite honestly I needed to settle Seamus in after such an ordeal.

            Not more than ninety seconds after entering the apartment, the Barrandov actress called me. “Now that you’re home, fellas, can I please speak to Seamus? I know at least he won’t deceive.”

            I was nonplussed. “You… you’ve been checking?” I looked at the ceiling corners to find a peek-a-boo camera, as if this place were harboring an ATM. “Are you seeing us right now?”

            “If I want to, yes. But what would you have to hide, anyway? Besides the truth of where Seamus was tonight?”

            Speaking to the camera and into the phone, I apologized. “I didn’t want you to worry. Of course I should’ve asked… It was a dinner invite and, well, that would have rushed the walk and, um, deprived…”

            “Deprived you of a trophy dog?”

            “My relatives did enjoy his company.”

            “And he, theirs?”

            I couldn’t really act in front of a true thespian. “Harder to say, really. He’s evidently happy to be home.”

            She accepted that and requested, in the immediate future, that I practice my candor. “Upřímnost,” she emphasized. “It resonates better in Czech.”

            Like being upright, sincere, reliable. “Slibuju,” I replied (easier by now than “I promise”).

            Stepping into the living room, the bedrooms, office and kitchen—even the bathrooms—I looked for cameras that apparently weren’t there. Or else expertly placed. I had nothing to hide and, logically, nothing to fear. As tired out as the evening made me, I wanted to dive back into the movie archive—maybe even want the actress to see me engaged with her profession. It was, after all, one of the joys of being with Lenka.

            Instead of her, Seamus joined me on the couch as I put in Capricious Summer. I allowed the dog this liberty even though I knew his owner wouldn’t. “Did you want to apologize?” I asked him (not stipulating the denotation of the word, modern or ancient Greek). ‘No,’ his eyes indicated, but he did lay his long throat across my thigh as a possible thanks for the evening, or at least the ride home.

            Menzel plays a role in his own movie as a tight-rope walker for a rag-tag circus. He blindfolds himself (without taking off his round spectacles, curiously) to heighten the stakes and even encases himself in a burlap sack as a way of reducing the freedom of limbs. His efforts succeed until a municipal bigwig has had enough of the caprice, the admiration of the petty crowd, and shakes the stanchion to bring Menzel down. The allegory is thick and thin at the same time, and I wondered how it would travel beyond the Prague Spring. Many conflate this ‘spring’ to its very crackdown by the Kremlin in late August, ’68. Fifty-four years ago—twice my lifespan. Nobody sees this film anymore; nobody will see the b-lister’s efforts, either, a half-century on, whether or not she’s contributed to allegories. They’re supposed to live on, though, causing the future to learn from the past.

            Practically too tall an ask: the present moves on, and futures have futures in mind.

 

~29~

 

            Despite my desire, after the Barrandov actress’ return, to keep the week going just as it had, I was unceremoniously thanked for my service and sent on my way—i.e., to Tolliver’s. He was quite happy and again gave me a hug at the threshold. The Mop also showed his enthusiasm along with evident hope I had Seamus in tow (which of course I didn’t). It was too in the day to do a ‘family walk’ in Stromovka, but we decided to get burritos down the street and eat them in a dark and deserted Puškinovo náměstí, testing the Mop off leash as I had encouraged Tolly to ‘trust your animal’ as you’d want him to trust you back. It was one of my better instincts as a dog walker: knowing when and what extent the least could come off. Obviously, the prospect was a gamble—Seamus, the other day, case in point.

            “Man, did you really find him as the cops were shakin’ you down?” Tolly was gadzooks about this story, which I really told to have him know about the app the actress was using for her in-house camera.

            “Yeah, Seamus was… on the whole an agreeable roommate. But I’d still wanna work with him on trust issues. Dog just can’t sneak off like that.”

            “But if he isn’t castrated, there’s little you can do.”

            “What about the Mop? I have no idea if he is.”

            Tolliver nodded his head, in contradiction to what he had ascertained: “Goldie” —to set his identity right—“is not castrated, as you can easily eyeball from his rounded scrotum.”

            “Not so easily,” I countered; “he’s not ‘the Mop’ for nothing. Seamus, also, is pretty cloaked in fur.”

            “What about the shih tzu?”

            “Well, she’s a she for one thing. But I don’t really know. And the few times I’ve taken her off leash, she stays right by my side. Some dogs like their leashes.”

            “Some humans, too,” Tolliver put on a pensive face (as much as I could see in the leafy occlusion of the park lamps). “Say, did you write a second chapter while you holed up?”

            “Of End of My Leash?”

            “What else? You had a lotta time to kill.”

            I guess I did. “No, I… practiced baby shower songs instead,” without mentioning the chance encounter with Natálie and her Günter. The question struck me, though, about the use of time that is on one hand receptive (like being an audience) and on the other hand productive (like being an author). Watching movies in Czech wasn’t a completely passive exercise, but also wasn’t requiring my response; going out to Ořech was definitely active, as was strumming at Gröbovka. I could play ‘Love Me Tender’ on autopilot the same as I could ‘The Barbaloots’—the difference being how I received the former and produced the latter. Baby shower songs would be largely in the receptive category: Kermit’s ‘Rainbow Connection’, Mozart’s ‘Twinkle, Twinkle’ leading to the babe’s eventually learning of the ABCs. I’d even throw in Prince’s ‘The Beautiful Ones’ for fun—“baby, baby, baby, what’s it gonna be?” And yeah, I’d make those Barbaloots fit, even though I authored that song with Dr Seuss’ environmental angst in mind.

            The morning woke me with a note from Tolliver wedged into the bathroom door: early shift, mate—can you do Goldie this morn? By ‘do’, I’d freshen up his love-in-Tokyo and take him on a decent walk to Letna, for a change. I had heard rumors that the city was thinking of deconstructing the huge metronome there, erected after communism fell and strategically on the same pedestal that posthumously honored Stalin for a spiteful seven years. The blowing up of the bad idea couldn’t bring its sculptor Otokar Švec back to life (suicide is merciless that way); it’s like the story of the Liverpool fan who hung himself in 2005, his team down 0-3 at halftime in the Champions League final, unable to imagine Liverpool equalizing and then winning on penalty kicks. I’m sure, like  

Švec, there was more to the Liverpudlian’s life than that.

            Indeed, the metronome was still there—Quora could have told me as much and kept my ass on the futon. But it couldn’t craft the conversation I had with a rollerblader taking a breather: he remembered Michael Jackson’s HIStory statue challenging the pedestal not just in ’96, when the enormity toured Europe, but in 2010, when fans wanted to give permanence to the pop. The city council approved, but defenders of the metronome had the greater ethos. Political campaigns, festivals, the visit of Pope John Paul II all made use of the plinth and the acreage of Letna plane (‘plan’ in Czech), lending credence to the back-and-forth of whose voice is the loudest in the room at any given time.

            The Mop was content to let the morning glide along this trajectory of benched reflection. When the rollerblader left, I asked the dog with my eyes whether we should head back home—possibly a raw concept, if he invariably thought of the home Vladislava had made for him. Tolliver’s use of the idiom ‘time to kill’ pried into my consciousness. Was this tacit exchange with the Mop such an example? Sitting at Letna instead of doing something more remarkable? Maybe Tolly was right: he’d be a reader of my unfolding novel if—a glaring if—I’d just write the damn thing.

            My outline was to have these castrated pups run free enough in the familiar circumstances of an American family—suburban Chicago, just for my own sense of geography (Bedlam, of course, would narrate in a different sense). Then, due to this and that, the family would have a sudden and enduring strain—something that would split the adults tectonically, as the mother and kids would leave not only the father but American altogether. To Prague, of course (you write what you know). And, as much as this dog-friendly city would avail them every creature comfort, it would still be a displacement and coup to their instincts.

            And by ‘their’ instincts, the brothers could lean on each other until—relentlessness of literature—another twist would render them to face another stage of life alone: no Swarm for Bedlam and vice versa. How this odyssey would end, with more instincts systematically lost, would depend on where Bedlam’s narration would take things. I’d still author the denouement, but not to railroad Bedlam’s own determination, whatever that might be.

            I’d empathize, I guess, if I had a Swarm in my life (Tolliver… doesn’t fit the bill). Then again, I wouldn’t want Bedlam to explain me, Swarm to stand for my alter ego, castration anxiety to propel a desperate grasp for Lenka or Maruška or or or or or. I wouldn’t want such a lack of mooring to crash me against the rocks of Bethlem Royal Hospital, London, or Bohnice psychiatrická nemocnice here. Perhaps Jiří and his family would swarm in to save me from myself.

            If Boris were Bedlam, which mustn’t be the way to read into an author’s soul. Are those Barbaloots me? Or, originally, a mirror image of Dr Seuss?

            On this note, and because the Mop had lifted himself to head us home (and in Tolliver’s direction, no less), I let the rest of the morning’s musing be at walking pace. I sang about those Barbaloots for the first time sans guitar, and if you’ll indulge that naked sound, here is how it goes:

 

The Barbaloots make a plan—

we hope they understand, 

and the humming fish join the jam—

but we know their gills are damned,

because the water won’t let ’em breathe—

and the skies make the Swomees leave,

as the Truffulas have to stay—

’til the Onceler’s had his way

with all that’s been—

and he’d do it again

 

’cause you know—how low how low how low this story goes,

and you know—we all live and die within its throes.

 

—And you know:

the Lorax picks himself up

when he’s through…

—Cause you know:

no one sees the downsides

like you do…

 

            The quarantine’s made a plan—

            to sorta join us by the hand,

            through the internet’s saving grace—

            how could we live any other way?

            because the wifi’s lettin’ us breathe—

            and sometimes we all need to seethe,           

            as we watch statistics grow—

            and we know and we know and we know

            with all that’s been—

            that we’d do it again

 

’cause you know—how low how low how low this story goes,

and you know—we all live and die within its throes.

 

—And you know:

the Lorax picks himself up

when he’s through…

—Cause you know:

no one sees the downsides

like you do…

 

~30~

  

With a little skip in my step, I went on with the rest of my workday—or workafternoon, to be more precise. The Karlovo náměstí five may have noticed my élan, founded I guess on that ‘get out of jail’ card that Jiří enabled and (to whatever degree) the Barrandov actress accepted. I’d be more careful in future about letting an unleashed dog go unwatched; then again, I wasn’t sure how much longer I’d want to be doing this gig. Like Amálka and her maths, I was encountering a bit of ennui with this routine.

            That’s the French for you (or in me)— élan to ennui undulating like a sine wave. But nevadí—I was happy today, and the shih tzu mistress spotted it like a barn owl.

            “What, did your girlfriend take you back?”

            “Huh? No. I doubt she’d…” The notion rather stumped me.

            “Then is it your new roomie? You look smitten.”

            “Smitten? With Tolliver?”
            “Well, I’d be with a man who can macrame. Then again, spinsters can’t be choosers.”

            “Spinster? You?”

            “No one’s tried to put my foot in a glass slipper.”

            “Hmm. That just means you’re not Cinderella’s step-sisters. I’d marry you,” I said too casually.

            The corners of her perfectly lip-sticked mouth curled a yeah, sure. Her eyes gleamed, though, to see how long I’d hold on to that declaration. Hedging her bet, however, she acknowledged before I chickened out: “I’m not bohemian enough for you, Boris. Have you ever seen me outside, for instance?”

            Not that I had to recall, I still wanted to seem like the question deserved a scan of all our interactions. “I suppose not. But you always may, of course. The lady at Barrandov sometimes comes with while I’m walking her setter.”

            The curls of her mouth dropped a bit. “Is she a spinster, too?”

            “Neither of you are,” I said with a British pronunciation for utmost sincerity. “And, frankly, I’d never dare have this kind of conversation with her.”

            “You wouldn’t propose to her in pity?”

            The shih tzu had already had her walk and likely wouldn’t handle another one. Nevertheless, I proposed—her word—that we take this conversation up at Náplavka, just a few blocks to the river. “There we could get a glass of wine, watch the swans—”

            “I know what Náplavka means. It means diving in, and,” she kissed my confused cheek, “I’m not dressed for the part.”

            Baffling. But I nodded an understanding of the metaphor. “Open invitation, then,”

I thought it fitting to say.

            The swans would have been a lovely topic, really. How they kind of own the place in an unassuming way. How they humor the tourists and really do have a song (if not a performance) before they die. How they live through their ugly duckling phase and get on marvelously without cosmetics or artifice—her trade or mine, to be fair.

            But what I really wanted was her opinion on inside cameras and outside apps. The Barrandov actress, who shrugged an assent to the return of my late-afternoon contract, had good reason to keep a security camera on her place, what with paparazzi and burglars who’d assume she had a Nicole Kidman fortune. But then again, wouldn’t Seamus rip the jugular from such invaders? Would a shih tzu do the same? I’d ask, figuring the answer wouldn’t surprise. Are cameras there to prevent a crime or lend evidence in court thereafter? And, if an app could detect suspicious activity, what would be the flowchart of intervention?

            In my mind, the conversation would have no raised eyebrows. Simple curiosity, that’s all. Invariably, the shih tzu mistress would wonder what my dendrites were up to (curiosity notwithstanding). And in segueing to swans, her wonder would only swell—if not to a level of concern, at least to yellow-flag my musings on other people’s privacy.

            Because I had an hour to kill before Barrandov, I strolled the Náplavka bank south to the iron bridge for trains and the odd pedestrian (me, in this case). It was here I witnessed a man on the Smíchov side wrestle a cob—I assume the swan was male—into a blanket he’d prepared beside the open trunk of his rusty Mercedes. He had lured the flotilla of seven or eight birds with chunks of bread, teasing the smaller ones with false throws and rewarding the alpha with the trust he was exhibiting, jutting closer and closer to the next breadcrumb (so to speak) until there was less water and more land under his massive webbed feet, black as his beady, greedy eyes. And while I watched from the gunwale of the iron bridge, I assumed only positive intent: the man was generous with his baked goods, engaged in nature, building relationships with a clear ‘other’, enjoying Babí léto as much as I was—October here as heavenly as you can imagine. If I were a spyglass on his actions, I was romanticized by what was unfolding and completely caught off-guard (as was the cob) for what would be the ensuing assault. From the agile clutch of the bassoon-like throat to the drag and bundling of the thrashing creature, the fifteen seconds seemed overtly rehearsed. I found my voice (Czenglish, I’m sure) only half-way through the escapade, and my mobile phone did not easily remind me to call 158 to notify the police. I witnessed as helplessly as the smaller swans and could only assume the worst—of the cob’s fate, of untested trust, of instincts so easily duped.

            This memory accompanied me all the way to Barrandov and compelled a retelling when the actress accompanied me and Seamus on our back-to-normal walk. “It was a Mercedes, you said?”

            “Yes,” I replied, “rusty and olive-colored.”

            “Hmm. Not the way a mafia boss would fill his private pond. Probably the guy was just hungry.”

            “For swan meat?”

            She had no further interest in the scenario and instead debriefed her Bratislava experience, on the whole favorable. I congratulated her and admitted that, given the chance this week, I hadn’t watched any of the movies she was in. She frowned when I itemized the DVDs I did play, including ‘Tady hlídám já’, saying she would have done better in the role of Lenka, the failed love interest of the leading man. Lenka. I had been so focused on Jitka Ježková’s role of Julie, the other names were rather a blur.

            “Anyway,” after a half-minute of silent walking, she asked, “do you want to watch one of mine?”

            Of course I would, and wondered if I should call Tolliver to not wait up for me. Better to do so from my end than receive his call mid-movie (or mid-something else). He reminded me, of all things, to ask about Seamus’ collar—whether it was due for an upgrade. I didn’t like such terminology, as if from the script of a used car salesman (selling a rusty, olive-colored Mercedes, no less). “Sure,” I lied, genially, as I vowed to myself not to complicate the evening unnecessarily.

            It was odd to sit on the other end of the couch—I had been on her preferred end all week, not that I’d know that. She opened a bottle of Cabernet and poured the right amount into the right kind of glass, clinking with a perfect glance that didn’t offer anything beyond an earnest na zdraví. The film itself was interesting—I’ll protect her identity by saying nothing substantial—and about an hour in she subtly dabbed a tear I hadn’t expected from the plot itself. While she had spoken about some filmic facts earlier on, we were watching at this point as if we were alone. I could have asked her to pause—fake like I needed the john, or sincerely honor that the film was doing a good job. But it was her house, her invite, her terms and pace. If she wanted to pause, she didn’t need my chivalrous suggestion.

            The film ended and we watched all the credits. Then I tried to dab a tear, as our roles had reversed.

 

~31~

 

             Maybe because the film had a ‘back-to-nature’ theme (bohemian-instinctive) and the weekend relieved me of the Karlovo náměstí five, I called up my cousin to see if she’d show me Pražká pastvina. I’d do any labor to account for my keep, and she laughed at that for some reason. She asked if I’d be bringing Seamus, which gave me an equal chance to laugh. “No,” I assured, “but how about my guitar?”

            “It’s better behaved? Won’t scare the sheep?”

            “Nor the butterflies—I’m practicing for baby showers.”

            Amálka, I should say, is quite ageless in her demeanor: a couple years younger than me but ambivalent in ways that would suggest she’s either lived through everything or nothing worth talking about. I think that is what motivated her study of math: the Golden Ratio, the Theory of Relativity (toward a theory of ‘everything’) promised a world that could cope with its entropy, yet ‘nothing’ that would necessarily compel people to be better to themselves or their environment. While I’m abbreviating here—she said things differently, in reticent fragments—an ability to work out algorithms could provide for her future (as her father had hoped) but not necessarily fulfill a sense of the present (let alone the past). Butterflies, like any creature, had eggs on their mind to leave as legacy; the minute they burst out of their cocoons, however, they seemed to relish the sunshine and breeze and pasturelands.

            I should also say, to assure myself as much as your proper suspicions: I was not angling for another love interest. Amálka’s dark brown eyes were immersible and her mannerisms lithe—a dream for somebody out there who’d need to share ageless ambivalence and natural care. I am not Rudy Giuliani (in a million ways) and would rather punch myself in the face than think of her other than purely my cousin, if far on the other side of whatever family tree we happened to share.

            She met me at Řeporyje to catch the 246 bus to Maškův mlýn—“be on time; it goes only once an hour”—and from that stop deep in a limestone valley, we hiked to the plateau top where the structures were as scant as a mini-maringotka, a shed, an open-sided tent and a table for cutting fruits and vegetables from stores that might display them one more day but have to dump them thereafter. In other words, ripe on the verge of rotten. 

            The sheep, drawn to routine, accepted my presence as an adjunct to Amálka, leading them from one electric fence fold to another, where buckets of food and fresh water awaited. We remained with them for a few minutes—counting and cooing to ensure everyone felt known—and then cleaned up their previous enclosure of manure that would dissuade certain varieties of butterflies. We coiled the fence and set it around another promontory of the plateau, ready for the following week. Then we had our own lunch of hummus and spinach sandwiches Amálka had packed and gorp I had bought from Dejvice.

            A siesta would allow for some strumming of songs: ‘Golden Slumbers’ to the sheep, ‘The Barbaloots’ to Amálka, who wanted to know more about this Onceler figure. “More him than the Lorax?” I asked.

            “The Lorax I get. It’s the Onceler’s motivation I need to crack.”

            “Like that Enigma machine.”

            “Yeah, sort of like that.”

            The afternoon had us doing lighter chores with the goats and cows spread out beyond the sight of the maringotka. The goats, especially, liked the scrubbier terrain where the yew trees grew, the gullies where butterflies might explore but not spread their wings, so to speak. The cows also wouldn’t need to move enclosures as often as the sheep, though you’d think so for the greater amount they grazed and shat.

            A drizzle deterred our attempt to net butterflies to record the species and location before setting them free. While we huddled beneath an old maple, the drizzle graduated to a deluge which forced us to run for the cover of the maringotka, where a shepherd could live for weeks without the touch of the outer world. Amálka (we joked as the namesake of this caravan) lit a fire in the iron stove for nettle tea and instant warmth. 

I woke up the Washburn from the nap it had been taking on the bare mattress and tried a few songs to see if they were fit for babies—or their awaiting parents, more to the point. ‘You Are My Sunshine’ may have been an invocation for the rain to end before the bus we planned to catch, and Amálka gave the song an iffy thumbs up. ‘Mother’, by Pink Floyd, got a thumbs down, even though I changed the “break my balls” to “make me crawl” (still had to rhyme with ‘wall’); fact is, I’d have to change “nightmares” and “fears” and a “dangerous” girlfriend—a complete heart transplant for the song.

“Play another one that you’ve composed, instead.”

So I did. No words to this one yet—"it’s about Ukraine and their endless Holodomor,” I said half-way through. The tone wasn’t completely minor and, in fact, gave over to the resilience and hope that gives homage to the Cossack spirit.

Amálka dispensed with a thumbed indication, rather saying, “I like this. For babies, though?”

            Good point. “I would hope their parents would raise them in truth. Show the struggles of this world as well as whatever ways to help them.”

            “At a baby shower,” she sort of questioned, “before they are born….”

            “Well,” I continued my naïve Czech, “the early bird gets the worm.” 

            “Huh? we say the early bird hops further.”

            “Yes, that’s more palatable—chutnější!”

            The rain discouraged a slippery run for the bus, so I called the Barrandov actress to explain the circumstances and come an hour later. She left that up to me—Seamus likely not wanting a walk in the rain, anyway. Or three minutes to do his business, which she could preside over. But again, “it’s up to you.”

            In the extra hour, Amálka explained more why she left Olomouc. In a word (but our lack of any rush restricted no word count, per se), she was being stalked to the point that whatever course she’d take—literally in terms of routes to her dorm room and what classes she was scheduled for—the surveillance was both nuanced and overt. It was a professor, no less, and her complaints fell on deaf ears: his, the security office, some students whom she had regarded as friends. He hadn’t touched her since an early-in-semester handshake that hadn’t seemed terribly inappropriate; he extended this in a lecture hall after the first multivariable analysis exam in which she scored highest, and said promising words about her ‘promise’. Covid protocols had been lifted, but handshakes or hugs for almost two years hadn’t been anything she’d yet seen, let alone experienced. She quickly realized he honored her publicly to justify whatever private meetings he insisted on having for mathematical research that would fast-track her academic career. These were creepy, Amálka relayed, partly for how much he didn’t manifest conventional and tell-tale signs—no ‘guiding her hand at the blackboard’, so to speak. Emails at a minimum and ‘innocent’ enough—they’d be easy to forward and stack as evidence. When she had spoken to her mom about her concerns, Helena advised her to surround herself with good people and, essentially, tough it out; a woman keeping safe in a man’s world is an education unto itself. Amálka, chagrined, decided not to ask Jiří’s advice, so he had no idea the politics of gender featured in her early exit.            “Surround yourself with good people,” Amálka repeated, “and here I am with sheep and goats… and cows… and butterflies.”

            I wanted to be an extension of those ellipsis, but knew I was unworthy. Not bad, like the professor, but not good, either. The sky outside the little window of the maringotka was steely gray—the rain wasn’t going to let up before the next bus, which we agreed we’d catch with due caution on the rocky path down. But there was still time to kill (awful expression) and, instead of sharing why I left Chicago, I played a couple songs from Beck’s Morning Phase, the most hopeful melancholy I could summon.

 

~32~

            Tolliver was pretty gung-ho about his macrame progress—he’d tried a variety of spikes to a half dozen collars he had bought, even though I only had the shih tzu mistress and the Barrandov actress in mind (and now had scruples about the whole enterprise). He didn’t want to hear about my scruples: “listen, mate, you’ve gotta match that app to cameras; I can filch a few microlenses from cardio, but they’d be bollocks if you can’t access their images.”

            I told him of my day with Amálka and, eventually, the reason she left Olomouc. The invasion of her privacy was incalculable—the theoretical nature of his calculus perhaps added to the professor’s lack of real perception. “I would be no better than that guy,” I lamented, and dismissed in advance what Tolliver was sure to but, but, but: “Tolly, the power dynamic is less the point than the duplicity—trust expects to be trusted, not twisted to its opposite. And if hidden cameras were only installed to see if they would pass my criteria for a roommate, shouldn’t they be able to test me the same way? And using dogs to do the dirty—that’s like using kids and all the innocence we should protect!”

            “Chill, chill, dude,” shushed Tolliver, as if he didn’t want the Mop to eavesdrop on this debate. “First of all,” he gathered my shoulders in his outstretched hands, “my heartfelt sympathy for your cousin—”

            “Thoughts and prayers?”

            “No, it’s no paste-over like that. Brits aint Americans, y’know.”

            “Fair enough. And second of all?”

            “Second of all,… I forget. But I’m sure it’s there—and another point beyond.”

            His night shift was coming up soon, and I expressed concern for his fatigued fingers (the macrame samples were painstakingly elaborate) and the Božkov that had evidently greased the wheels, so to speak. “I’ll look these over, Tolly,” I promised, “but meantime, get yourself an hour of shut-eye. You don’t want blurry-looking needles, do you?”
            He pooh-poohed the concern. “I tell ‘em to look away like I always do.”

            “You look away?”

            “Least what I tell ‘em,” and he wove himself a line to his mattress, nodding carelessly when I assured him I’d set an alarm for his need to spring ready for work.

            With some risk that he’d miss it, I used the oven timer so that I could go out to the Na Slamníku beer garden and brood. I probably would do better to set my phone alarm near his ear, the double benefit being that I wouldn’t scroll the damn thing as if I had important interactions with a cyber world that hadn’t changed the mojo of this medieval pub. I couldn’t Google Tolly’s forgotten points, but thought of them while thumbing mindless links:

            My situation was distinct from Amálka’s insofar as I wasn’t stalking per se, but verifying whether presented personalities had any clash with what was unpresented. The line from J. Alfred Prufrock comes to mind:

                        “There will be time, there will be time

                          To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;”

never mind the speaker’s aspirations to “murder and create” or simpler propositions (“dare to eat a peach?”)—all in hopes of faking our credentials from an erstwhile school of grace. Wouldn’t a woman who’d have an interest in J (or Alfred or Prufy—however names synthesize identity) want to know his naked, pre-prepped face? Wouldn’t J appreciate the candor, after all, in being selected for who he truly is?

            I ordered another ležák and decided on fried cheese for the evening’s entrée, mulling Amálka’s non-request to consider vegetarianism. Counting my cornflake breakfast, I was a full day accomplished in this regard.

            Onward to Tolly’s third argument (having agreed, I guess, with my imagination of his second): we are all under surveillance, like it or not. You don’t act the moron at a metro stop without being recorded as such; one hopes the security dudes in their one-way glass cubicles don’t ogle the average passengers, but one equally hopes they step in against a threat. I am not a threat—you know me well enough by now. The shih tzu mistress is not a threat—I think—and neither is the Barrandov actress. Yet the latter has invested already in guarding the safe space that is ‘home’, and in a preemptive way, I’d be doing the same. Once there as a bona fide roommate, I wouldn’t need to keep the camera rolling. The same way I didn’t want to sift through Barrandov drawers (and in fact kept them shut), I have nothing to search for. In other words, I wouldn’t be a detective to the murder of Body X; I’d be the one to get to know Miss Scarlett or Professor Plum before any hint of trouble. Do they use candlesticks correctly? Actually play billiards in that room (pool or snooker more likely with the pockets in the picture)? What might stoke their motivations? Who is Mr X in the first place? Maybe Plum or anyone else is simply practicing self-defense…

            Oh, so that’s what you are, Boris: a peeping Tom to practice self-defense.

            And, while we’re speculating, why didn’t these practices go into your vetting of Lenka as a roommate? or Tolliver? Not that you had the luxury of time for the latter—being a sudden and unstudied refugee meant having faith in benevolent instincts, shared between host and guest.

            Camus, by the way, has a great short story on this theme. Even the title—“L’Hôte”—translates intriguingly to ‘The Host’ (who is Daru, a French citizen born in colonial Algeria) or ‘The Guest’ (a prisoner, actually, identified merely as “the Arab”). Daru is a teacher at a remote school where students are evidently on break, and whether as a favor or an obligation, he must host this ‘guest’ for a night and transfer him, bound at the wrists, to the next outpost toward his eventual trial. By the end of the story—no spoilers, I promise!—readers know a fair amount about what makes Daru tick, if not so much what’s on the Arab’s mind. The narration has established a hidden camera, of sorts, on the situation. We are voyeurs, basically, anytime we plunge into a book; we rarely wonder whether characters are reading into us, as well.

            But I digress—a third beer will do that—and more truly felt like scrapping the whole scheme in deference to “the better angels of our nature.” Technology had only a fraction to do with that nature; Lincoln had no cameras to aid his intelligence of the nationscape, let alone Ford’s theatre. Perhaps the stalker of Amálka had nothing 21^st century about his methods; perhaps she could even use a camera for her own advocacy and peace of mind.

            Rain returned to round out the day, and I poached a menu from Na Slamníku to serve as a mock-umbrella. Whatever swirl of rhythms and fluid memory caused me to hum ‘From a Distance’: i.e., “God is watching us,” in whatever hopes or harrows Bette Midler might have had in mind. Actually, the internet reminds, it’s Julie Gold who composed the piece—Midler being the middleman, middlewoman, midwife, as you like. Won a Grammy in ’91, four years before I was born. Might add it to my set. Babies (or their parents, really) would feel some comfort of such celestial guardianship. And malvíkCity would invariably sell more nursery cams for the notion, thank you very much.

 

~33~

 

             The rain was off and on for a couple days—přeháňky, as the pretty word in Czech—and that meant walks would be shorter and my downtime confined to the Florenc bistro, Shakespeare & Sons, even malvíkCity. I was careful not to overstep my bounds with Natálie in my effort to boost the baby shower promos: so far, most of my videos were simply prop-ups of my phone showing me strum a few chords of this song or that in the backdrop of Tolly’s unkempt flat, peddling a pitch that babies loved the key of D and (my guess at) prenatal harmony, and my own availability. My thumbs up to thumbs down ratio was rather embarrassing, so I didn’t even want to show what I had to Natálie (and her portly manager, it should be said—he’d need to sign off on any details that involved the store).

            But as September days promised a return of lovely weather, I’d step up these efforts with a more deliberate sense of production value. The Washburn would still do its modest magic, but there’d be more people involved, like happy couples pushing perambulators, friends getting their first ganders at the little life within, a choreographer, gaffer, best boy…. Perhaps counterhelp from malvíkCity to plug each to each? Natálie gave a ‘wait-and-see’ reply but offered (out of uniform) to act a part with her boyfriend—“maybe again at Gröbovka; it’s sexy there.”

            I wasn’t sure ‘sexy’ would be the suitable mood for a baby shower promo, but I didn’t disagree. Meanwhile, I acquainted myself with the store’s stock “for song ideas,” I said: crib mobiles, diaper-changing tables, pacifiers, swings for laughter and inducing naps, nursery cameras…. “Is this the smallest model you sell?”

            “Crib cams? It’s best if they’re mounted, out of reach. Most clients are using net reception, so all they need is something like this”—Natálie pulled a plastic rod the dimensions of a vibrator out of a sample box—“with the option to rotate at the head, all controlled through your iPhone.”

            I blushed: “well, not my iPhone, but someone expecting…”

            “I thought you said your girlfriend was…”

            Lenka. I don’t remember what I had said. “No. That’s, um, on pause for… a while.”

            Natálie projected an I’m sorry visage with a moment of wait-time in case I needed to say more, which I gently rejected with downcast eyes. She took another box from a shelf to return to the topic of camera size. “This one is embedded in the mobile, see? That means it doesn’t need to have a separate mount. The risk is, though, that eventually the baby grabs for mobiles and, you know, chokable parts can be a problem, so… I’m not a fan of this model.”

            “I had a friend in Chicago,” I imagined aloud, “who attached a GoPro to his dog’s collar—kind of like the brandy barrel of a St Bernard, which the dog wasn’t… not as big as that, but anyway—”

            Natálie screwed up her eyes: “brandy barrel?”

            An unnecessary distraction. “Not literally. But, like in Alpine rescue stories, the idea was for the dog to seek out the problem and, now trade brandy for a GoPro, and…” I was only making the image blurrier.

            “I’m not sure a dog would see into a crib,” Natálie reasoned, “or that a parent would rely on such a system. But it’s an interesting idea. Involves a lot a trust to have the dog just wander into the baby’s space unsupervised.”

            “For sure. You’d want a reliable relationship with your animal.”

            She didn’t blush: “not my animal. I wouldn’t have a dog and baby at the same time. Jealousy—hard to predict. I hear equal stories of heaven and hell when it comes to pets and newborns.”

            I quit the line of inquiry while I was behind. Still, to justify the time I’d taken from her day, I decided to purchase the mobile with embedded camera “for my friend… who is expecting.”

            “Will you do a baby shower for her?”

            By ‘friend’ I was thinking of Tolliver, so my reply had that extra complication to negotiate. “Him… and his partner”—now my dumb mind conjured up the Mop—“um, didn’t want to make such a big deal…. A bit gun shy, they are.”

            “Gun shy?”

            “Just shy. Cautious about too much attention.”

            Natálie understood. “That’s natural. But why do Americans put a ‘gun’ in everything?”

            Good question. I paid for my purchase and arranged to be Gröbovka when she and her boyfriend were free, adding me as a contact on her phone. She’d bring a baby buggy, she said, and I’d bring my Washburn. “And no dogs, I promise.”

            That said, on my jubilant journey to Barrandov, I thought that Tolliver would come to be the cameraman, and he’d naturally want to bring his Goldie. If he was free in the first place—I had no idea about his Motol rotations.

            To explain my baby mobile to the Barrandov actress entailed the same fabrication: “someone I know is expecting, and…” I could tell she didn’t believe me, but also that she didn’t care that much. It wasn’t her business anyway what errands I’d run before this rather late-in-day appointment with her dog. And while she let me keep the box in her corridor (where her camera could presumably keep an eye on it), she didn’t invite me in for another movie or anything else. She didn’t join me and Seamus for a walk, nor come up with a justification like memorizing lines from a script. Her demeanor was about the same with me as it was before Bratislava, which I could understand. Two steps forward, two steps backward.

            Seamus wasn’t overjoyed to be walking in today’s přeháňky, but he’d have intellectually agree that being bound all day inside was not healthy (as I intended eventually to convey to the shih tzu mistress), and there were enough trees in the area to serve as fair umbrellas. Despite the hijinks of the other day—cat & mouse, hide & seek, where-in-the-world is Seamus Sandiego—I unleashed him to underscore the trust I expected him to have of me and vice versa. Loyalty (instinctive to any Fido) was still reserved for his owner alone, and that was probably at root for his escape from Ořech. I still hadn’t established if he were castrated or not—Amálka’s question was worth the follow-up. Because loyalty to a human was one thing; satisfaction of hormones was another.

            “Would you identify more with Bedlam or Swarm?” I asked him. “I mean, both of them are castrated, but Swarm retains his wilder side, eventually bolting from human dysfunction altogether and becoming a stray.” Seamus looked up on the word ‘stray’—maybe mistaking it for the command ‘stay’ I sometimes used (though I’d more likely say zůstat). “Bedlam,” I continued in stride, “wants to handle that human dysfunction, test his resilience and ready himself for the jetsam he knew would come, not that he’d imagine such terms.” We decided to sit a few minutes under the shelter of Slavínského bus stop, where I put on his leash to be on the safe side. He was naturally confused, perhaps thinking I was going to dognap him again.

            Maybe the actress had the same suspicion, as she called me a minute later, wondering why we’d be out in the rain so long. “We’re not in the rain,” I corrected, and she wanted me to prove it over FaceTime. I complied and showed her the cheerfully dry interior to our shelter, plus the handsome (if confused) mug of Seamus.

            “Alright,” she conceded. “You’re the pro.”

            I couldn’t tell if that was sarcasm or an odd acknowledgement that I took my job seriously. Because—notwithstanding that kindergarten failure—I want to believe I have a fair work ethic. “We’ll be home soon,” I assured, conscious that such an expression sounded rather intimate. I think she had hung up, anyway (my eyes were on Seamus at the time). A bus came and unloaded a fraction of its cargo, expecting me and the dog to resupply, but I waved it off. And so, amidst these unknown Barrandov neighbors, I unleashed Seamus to have us all walk together the dreary last stretch of daylight. Of course my own equivalent wouldn’t end until I’d come through the door at Dejvická, gifting Tolly with a baby mobile to deconstruct.

            

~34~

 

             “Whoa, what is this?” Tolliver bubbled, a boy recalling Christmas mornings that may or may not have been so halcyon.

            It was, I explained, a tidy combination of my two foremost preoccupations toward solvency: the baby mobile to create some empathy for those that would also invest in a baby shower; the embedded camera to retrieve my residential legitimacy. I walked on eggshells there, as Tolly could read into my preference to live with someone else—whether sexually triggered or otherwise. The fact that both the shih tzu mistress and Barrandov actress were Czech made my potential change of address nonproblematic to the visa authorities at the Ministry of the Interior, known less affectionately as the ‘foreign police’. Tolliver’s address was on the up-and-up for him, despite his Brexit status, as the Motol medical school gave him a raison d’être in this country. But he’d have to be Czech (or EU, at least) to carve out living space for me. “Blowing that kindergarten job came with consequences,” I told him, maybe now for the tenth time.

            “Yeah, but now you’re going to earlier childcare. You think people will trust you with their babies?”

            “I’m not going to be a babysitter, Tols. Just a soothsayer to the delivery process.”

            “Kinda ob/gyn, heh?”

            I gestured like a tightrope walker: how adroit his analogy was and how stupid my own assumptions were. “Anyway, I could use you as cameraman [or gaffer, or best boy] in a promo video I’ll make with Natálie, if you’re up for it. She’ll bring her boyfriend to Gröbovka and a perambulator, and I’ll bring my guitar, of course…”

            “Can I bring Goldie? Round out the family, right?”

            “He’d have to behave,” I tongue-in-cheeked. “But meanwhile! The camera awaits our tinkering instincts. You think it might fit inside a macrame spike?”

            “With all these extra do-dads? Pff. Might as well make a collar as huge as one of them Dutch paintings, or our first feckin’ Queen Elizabeth.”

            “No, no—not the entire mobile! Just the camera. Like the pearl within an oyster.”

            “Or wart on witch’s nose.”

            “Hopefully not so conspicuous,” I appreciated his guarded imagination, as he wouldn’t want this plan to fail (despite a possible temptation to sabotage). “The advantage of this camera is that it links to a webpage for the livestream or 24-hour archive.”

            “Instead of an app? Are you sure you want to be on a webpage, mate? I mean, wouldn’t a babycam site expect images of… babies? There gotta be editors, keeping the site clean from kinky feeds, terrorist drills, stuff like that.”

            Good point. Plus, the site would invariably require a subscriber’s fee, and lack of cash was one of the factors for my present dilemmas (plural). I wondered about how such a company would handle privacy, though. I’d think the sign-in and PIN and whatnot would be equally protective of what the parents would want to protect and what the site could feasibly allow as usage. I mean, what if I bought this baby mobile not for a human baby but (spitballing here) my pet hamsters—mostly sleeping, needing stimulation like suspended things to swat, having unprotected sex, nosing up to the camera to see what could be so interesting about their little, caged-in lives. For that matter, what did the lab technicians use for recording their white rats?

            Tolly and I talked about these things as he rather surgically undid the plastic apparatus. Goldie—‘the Mop’, I must insist—inspected us for a while, as if eventually knowing he’d be the guinea pig (so to speak) for a macrame collar rigged with this brainchild. Though we probably should’ve stayed sober for the exercise, both in intent and our BAC, I ran to the mini-market to pick up several bottles of Braník (and one of Božkov) to keep us charged. This beat a couple hours of Netflix, anyway.

            In the end, through the paring of as much of the casing as possible, the problem came down to the oversized battery, and while Tolliver toyed with how to put the battery in a different macrame spike (or even craft a couple of ‘touching’ spikes), the apparatus was still too bulky. Goldie patiently modelled our ramshackle effort, but we couldn’t help admitting that his head sank a bit with the subtle weight of the contraption—or maybe his chagrin for this kind of experimentation, as if we should have outgrown it in our own, human puppyhood.

            I should say (though I don’t really want to) that my efforts to invite Tolly’s own life dynamics into the evening only circled back to mine. By no means did I press for his love life details, nor was this some sort of solipsistic ploy to have him speak to matters that ultimately edify me. For instance, a simple “how’s work going?” did not require him to recall the times Lenka crossed his path. Or, beyond such shoulder-bumping, I asked if “your training here is paving a lucrative return to England?”

            “Ah, too early to say, mate. I mean…. wouldn’t want to leave Goldie behind… or traumatize him by further displacement. But back to Lenka,” he persisted, “who was really interested in how you rescued him. All the hype you hear about blokes choosing a rescue dog like it’s a badge of honor; well, Lenka seemed impressed that you did so without self-interest. I mean, you couldn’t have fathomed his old lady would suddenly up and die?”

            “No,” I replied mechanically, “I hadn’t a clue. But why Lenka has anything—”

            “She found it cute that we were taking care of Goldie together. I didn’t mention that you were out all of last week, but…”

            “It’s no secret. The collar cam has to be under wraps, though.”

            “Oh, for sure. Didn’t mention that. But I did say you were working on baby songs, kinda to smooth over that suspicion she had about the calling card to—what was it, malvíkCity?”

            “Huh? Did that come up again?”

            “Not exactly. She was trying to connect your dots, I think. Like the idea that a couple thinking about having their first baby might start off with a puppy—y’know, practice on a pet as a litmus to how you’d do with a pint-sized kid.”

            “So… she figured you and I, with the Mop… were planning,” I didn’t know where I was going with this lame frame of a joke.

            “Ha! Maybe, mate.” Then, “he’s ‘Goldie’, by the way—yeah, see? He just perked up. Didn’t you, Goldie-Woldie? You’re not some mop, are you? Swabbin’ up the messes we make?”

            I took a bathroom break from the gadget lab (Tolly working it like Alfred Pennyworth, if I was certainly no Batman). While I cringed internally at every Lenka reference Tolliver felt compelled to make, it was all for good measure. She is a caring person; so is Tolly; so is Goldie (a tak dále). I’d like to say I am, too, but… 

            I had heard one time that Martin Luther—not Jr, though maybe he’d have an interesting take on this anecdote—was struggling with his pre-Reformation mindset: how to take on the enormity of a corrupt Vatican apparatus. Beyond the fact that he was in relatively humble circumstances, he wasn’t even sure he had enough of a moral compass to set the world ‘right’. He was a bumbler himself, he thought, prone to mess things up; what self-righteousness would have to kick in to act more like a mop? A hundred years later, Shakespeare will put these words in King Lear’s mouth: “I am a man more sinned against than sinning.” Martin Luther may have felt this way, but that wasn’t going to satisfy toward any kind of reformation, let alone the one with a capital ‘R’. So, legend goes, he takes a biological break from his catechetical drafts and sits dully in the shithouse until—voilà!—it hits him. Something of the grace of Christ that must precede our own faith, if we have any faith to begin with (and faith in what—that’s a whole ’nother question). Anyway, even agnostics can appreciate the epiphany: you’re in as shitty a mode, literally, as is our daily lot and here is where conscience can have its

due development. I can’t save myself, realizes Martin, and neither can a pope, a pedigree, a Good King Wenceslas (if Martin may have known the culture of his southern neighbors).

            Don’t ask me where I’m going with this; I’m just… taking a bathroom break.

 

~35~

 

            While the plan was in limbo until a smaller camera unit could be conceived, I almost tipped my hand a couple days later when the shih tzu mistress asked about progress on the macrame collar, “you know, from your manfriend.”

            “Tolliver? …is my friend. And, so happens, is a man—”

            “—yes, yes: don’t get touchy. I think it’s a sweet arrangement, no?”

            “Is that an ano or a ne?”

            “Well, that’s for you to say, I guess. Are you getting what you need?”

            Now, I’m not sarcastic by nature and (believe it or not) pretty good-hearted. The question of ‘getting what one needs’ is rarely asked in a vacuum, so to speak. We aren’t talking supply-side economics nor socialism handouts here. It seemed rich coming from a recluse: what someone from the world outside her apartment needs. In that spirit, I decided to turn tables: “What do you need?”

            She frowned. “I need my pooch to be taken very good care of. I need the internet to work on my terms. I need beauty to be understood as not only skin-deep, but healthy skin helps. And,” tapping my knee, “I need candid responses to questions I pose in the first place.”

            ““Upřímnost?”

            “Yes, if you want to practice your Czech. Are you getting what you need?”

            Let’s see. I don’t really have my own pooch to take care of, ironically enough. I don’t really care for the internet, not usually. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, even for the blind (one of my favorite songs is Stevie Wonder’s ‘Isn’t She Lovely’ about his baby girl—gonna need to dust that one off for at least some of my showers). I need to answer the question. “No, and I mean ne.”

            “I can tell.” She got up and went over to the window for no purpose I could discern. It may have been what educators encourage as ‘wait time’, not that I exhibited this skill when teaching kindergarteners. But whether she was waiting for me to elaborate or I was waiting for her to say why she could tell, I had no idea. So we both just swallowed a minute or so of ‘wait’.

            I lost this non-staring contest: “Not that I’m so needy a guy. And not that Tolliver is disagreeable to live with. Your impression (sight unseen) is correct—he’s a sweet guy. And should be someone’s manfriend, God willing.”

            “You believe in God?”

            I smiled and subtly altered my pronunciation: “’no. A ty?”

            “Ne. But I don’t disbelieve either. Sort of like guardian angel theory—most people don’t disbelieve that, especially when the occasion bears it out.”

            “Does your rendition of a guardian angel have to watch a person 24/7?” I asked with as pokery a face as I could, but wish I didn’t have an agenda here.

            “Hell, how would I know?” She moved away from the window to the liquor cabinet and pulled out a bottle of sherry. “Ice?” she presumed.

            While my contractual duties for the day were done—the Barrandov actress giving me the evening off for my need (to overuse that concept!) to film a baby shower video—I wasn’t sure if drinking would be wise. But, to keep the conversation going, “sure.” Ice would displace the amount I’d have to drink.

            “I think by definition an angel—or demon, for that matter—would have to be able to access a person at any time, or else something would have to tip them off. A cry for help maybe would do it. Like what do you guys have in America: nine-eleven?”

            “I think you mean 9-1-1, like the 1-1-2 here. Nine-eleven refers to—”

            “—yeah, I know. Odd how sequences work. Anyway, I doubt any angel or otherwise would care to stare at their assignment for like, forever. Most of the job would be like watching paint dry.”

            “I’d agree.”

            “Why do you ask, upřímně?”

            I gulped too much sherry and coughed like a teenager (but waved off a need for a pat between my shoulder blades). It may have provided the occasion for a change of topic, but I stuck with the question—her question of mine. “I only ask because… I’d hope people (not just angels) would be able to have a view into the lives of people they care for, even if that smacks of an invasion of privacy.”

            “Hmm.”

            “You value your privacy, yes?”

            “’No. And so?”

            “And so, what if you, I don’t know, fell unconscious or… even something less drastic—”

            “You’re asking whether I’d want someone to look in on me, as if I were that old lady who died and left her shaggy dog an instant orphan.”

            “Well…,” I hadn’t thought of Vladislava at all like that, but, “when you put it that way, it sounds kind of ageist.”

            “Listen,” and of course she knew I already was all ears, “I’m a vlogger, sometimes streaming live events, sometimes leading to individual consultations. Most of my day is dependent on computer cams that look into my life as I also see others in their naked-facedness. Is that a word?”

            “Facedness? Why not.” I was tempted to quote from Prufrock, but gestured her to continue.

            “And by ‘naked’, I don’t mean they’ve seen what, for instance, you’ve seen. Don’t blush—makes you look like you’re hiding something. Anyway, I’ve chosen work that puts me ‘out there’, and I suppose if days went by where my subscribers didn’t see me, unannounced, then there might be an intervention—a 1-1-2 or something like that.” She swigged her sherry and poured more, offering successfully to top me off. “And, not that I’ve told you much about my life, there are friends who drop in, my mom once in a while. My brother’s family. Not too often, but… Enough to qualify as guardian angels.”

            “So the concept of ‘guardian angel’ is actualized by human beings?”

            “Why not? If you weren’t gonna save that old lady, you became the guardian angel of her dog.”

            “Who is now Tolliver’s dog, really. He’s the angel, longer-term.”

            As I left Karlovo náměstí for Gröbovka, my head was humming, and not for the ice-diluted sherry. What else would I possibly need to know about this lovely vlogger? What would suggest that she’d want me for a roommate, anyhow, whether or not I had a ‘skinny’ for her private patterns? Why would I entertain the idea still, where the chance of getting caught far outweighed the phew, glad she didn’t notice! Even the notion of comparing the shih tzu mistress with the Barrandov actress felt slimy now, like I was a behind-the-scenes judge in one of these horrible Miss Galaxy contests. I could hear Tolliver’s voice in my confusion: “it’s for the feckin’ knowledge, mate—always better to know as much as you can.”

            Know thyself, says Socrates. The beginning of wisdom. Put the feckin’ collar on your own neck and see how it feels to be seen on the sly. In a way, the Barrandov actress had already done so, tracking my movements into and out of her apartment for a week. No harm, no foul—I really had nothing to hide. And if I did, she had every right to find that out (I was on her turf, after all). I can’t claim the same right, but still the principle should hold: if a future roommate had something to hide, I wouldn’t be out of order to discover it as soon as possible. Maybe the Barrandov actress juggles knives as she sleepwalks; the shih tzu mistress, maybe, is a paranoiac who shutters at an imagined invasion from the outer world. One or both could be conspiracy theorists or subtle cult recruiters. I mean—I’d handle most any challenge and chalk it up as ‘character building’, if a little foreshadowing would be welcome.

            All this presupposes I’d be embraced as a new roommate (with even a tenth of the enthusiasm that Tolliver had shown). If I were them, would I want to live with myself? Wouldn’t I constantly wonder what my modus operandi was? Would I want to get hold of the surveillance footage of my own, naïve behavior? The answer seemed rather clear: ’no. 

            Then again, that could have been my guardian angel talking…

 

~36~

 

             The grotto at Gröbovka was our meeting point. I arrived early enough to warm up the Washburn and make the introductions: Tolly coming right on time, Günter (or whatever his name was) a few minutes later, loosening his businessman tie. He was checking his phone to relay that Natálie would be a little late. “Women, heh?”

            “Huh? Oh, well,” I assured, “we aren’t in any hurry.”

            “How do you know my schedule?” Günter asked. “And by the way, I’m allergic to dogs, so if you can just, ah—”

            Tolliver took a second to realize his Goldie was the object of allergy, and gently pulled the leash behind his butt, his body now a barrier between Günter and the Mop. “He’s showered up, though, for the occasion,” Tolly beamed, but then turned an inquiring eye to me: “if he’s in the script, I hope.”

            “Well,” I admitted, “the script is not so set in stone. I mean, I can do some of the informational bits as a voiceover and some scenes won’t need everybody aboard.”

            “Some scenes?” Günter raised his slick eyebrows. “Like a mini-movie? I mean, you’re just trying to capture a romantic couple, yes? A little kissing, cuddling, right? Not actually making a baby, step-by-step…”

            I looked at Tolliver for his take. “I mean, the assumption is—and maybe the director here can weigh in—that the baby is already conceived. And now the happy couple is planning a celebratory shower.”

            “Yeah,” Tolly nodded, “just strollin’ and, y’know, planning a shower.”

            Günter let out a belittling snicker. “We take a shower together—what, in this fountain?”

            Admittedly, I chose this part of the park because of its ambiance, the option to include the fountain, the stone parquet that could inspire a dance, the hug of the natural surround. “The term ‘shower’ is more like a reveal party or… come celebrate our joy sort of thing. No one literally showers for it—”

            “Goldie has!” Tolliver reminded, to be funny. 

            “Where’s Natálie by now?” Günter checked his phone.

            Yeesh. I’d say ‘take five’ but we’d only been here a minute or so and accomplished nothing productive. Was I reading Günter right that he wanted to make out with Natálie as footage to capture? And would we ball up a sweater to ask her to look six months pregnant? Would the Mop behave and keep his distance from this intolerant businessman? “I brought some champagne,” Tolliver announced, out of the blue. “I thought it might make for a good prop,” pulling it out of his haversack. “To kill the time, though, we can open it now…”

            “Maybe yeah,” I added, “because Natálie, being pregnant, wouldn’t be taking a swig of it anyway.”

            “Oh,” Tolly made a face, “hadn’t thought o’ that. More for us, I guess.”

            “Unless you brought cups,” Günter asserted, “I’m not drinking from the bottle.”

            “Of course I brought flutes (we call ‘em), plastic for safety. You don’t want broken glass to blemish a baby shower, innit?”

            We listlessly popped the cork and poured into the flutes Tolliver produced from his haversack, probably stuffed with a white rabbit as well. We drank in silence, ranging from Günter’s sullen look to my second thoughts about the arrangement to Tolly’s genuine glee at being included. We practically didn’t notice Natálie’s entrance, pushing a pram perhaps all the way from Pankrác. “Don’t let me break up the party, pánové,” she uttered, visibly tired.

            “Oh, let me help you with that,” Tolliver running with the gentleman reference. “I’m Tolliver, by the way, cameraman.”

            “I’m Natálie, single mother,” casting some fire at Günter, “maybe never again. The cobblestones coming down from náměstí Míru are a real…”

            “Bitch?” Günter pointed at the Mop. “You didn’t tell me there’d be dogs at this thing, Natálie.”

            Tolliver answered for her: “technically, Goldie is male, so not a… what you said.”

            “You could have helped me with this, if you’re training to be a daddy.”

            “You could have texted.”

            “Not easy to do when you’ve got a baby to look after.”

            “You don’t have an actual baby in there, so…”

            “You don’t have an imagination, then.”

            Not going how I imagined, at any rate. “Why don’t we, um,” I didn’t really have a plan. “Why don’t we sit over here, by the fountain.”

            “Where the shower’s going to take place.”

            “Well, the whole venue. I mean, a good baby shower would assemble some twenty, thirty people, all happy to purchase items for the expectant couple,” I presumed (never having been to a baby shower myself).

            “But your vid,” Günter eager to disparage, “will only have a lonely couple,” then, laughing and pointing at the pram, “who have already had the baby, maybe scaring away their friends.”

            “What?” Natálie was nonplussed. “Have you been drinking all afternoon?”

            Tolliver blushed. “I shouldn’t have brought the booze. Forgot you’d be pregnant.”

            “It’s champagne, not booze,” Günter clarified, “and if anything, I should have had a few beers before this… whatever this is.”

            The Mop had been tugging toward the grass, and Tolly decided to let him loose. I was rather impressed he had come this far as a new dog-owner; unleashing a pet requires trust and some regard for the lay of the land (or ‘reading the room’ or other such idioms of intuition). Without the dog to bother Günter’s allergies, we talked through what might be a scenario: a couple sitting by the fountain, whispering sweet nothings (about family planning, but Tolly’s camera—which was simply his iPhone Günter wouldn’t pick up on their actual phrasing), then I’d stroll in like a troubadour strumming something like ‘Rainbow Connection’ which would elicit their collective brainstorm. Through pantomime, we thought, the couple would point to my guitar and Natálie’s belly and Günter’s wallet, which, when opened would be empty. Then, because Tolly couldn’t be filming and in the scene at the same time, he’d kick the buggy toward us as if it had just drifted in from nowhere. The couple would instantly understand this beautiful stray gift to be theirs—not yet harboring an infant but ready upon delivery. I’d nod my head like a game show host to indicate, ‘yes, the price is right! All yours’, and the slack-jawed couple would turn to me and themselves and the empty pram and the heavens (Tolly wanted to capture the fullness of the grotto) and… end scene.

            It took unGermanic patience to get Günter to play along, but by take #3 the plot was at least palatable. Now, Tolly directed, “we can iron out the wrinkles. By the way, it’s good to have a couple angles so I can splice the best ones together. So if this time you can kinda turn toward—”

             He was instantly aghast at what was happening behind the pregnant couple, about forty meters into the open lawn. The Mop was being humped by what looked like a wolfhound (more likely a Český fousek, to add national insult to injury). Tolly dropped his phone and sprinted toward what couldn’t be consensual, yelling “Goldie!” for the entire park to take notice.

            “I thought he said his dog was a ‘he’,” Günter thought it important to say. “Not that an animal can’t be gay.”

            Natálie pushed him from leaning into her. “Gay or straight is a relational, human designation. What’s happening there is just… instinct.”

            I didn’t want to comment further, but since I had been thinking about my novel, suggested that “instinct in discrete ways—and by ‘discrete’ I mean the ‘e-t-e’ ending, where they’re in separate mindsets.”

            “What other way would you mean the word?” Günter challenged.

            “Discreet with an ‘e-e-t’ ending, like secretive or using discretion. Which at least the steely grey canine isn’t demonstrating.”

            “Ugh,” Natálie expressed, watching Tolly’s rodeo clown gestures, “sort of wrecks the mood of what we’re here for.”

            “Sex is messy,” grunted her boyfriend, “like a baby’s diaper.”

            She slapped him and made a beeline to Tolliver, to ensure he wasn’t going to face the fallout alone. In Czech she called for some owner of the rapacious mongrel, and eventually some hipster ran from the gazebo, yelling also in Czech some command that probably had been screamed dozens of times, by the looks of it.

            I had, then, just a half-minute or so to say anything to Günter ‘off the record’ (so to speak), but couldn’t pull the trigger (so to speak). If you love Natálie you gotta respect her. Being business-savvy may not translate to baby-readiness. There are enough dicks in this world. There aren’t enough true ‘pánové. 

            Goldie—I should be more respectful myself to his named identity—didn’t appear too traumatized when he loped back to the grotto with Tolly and Natálie. In fact, Tolliver got some decent stills (miracle that his phone hadn’t smashed upon impact) of dog and expectant mother hugging it out more affectionately than she’d been with Günter, who naturally kept his distance. We managed to get a couple more takes—killing off the champagne to fuel the final efforts.

            Tolliver, recovered by now to his previous humor, wrapped the one-and-only session with the truism that “to make an omelet you gotta break some eggs.” Günter and Natálie debated which direction they’d go (discretely or discreetly) and how the perambulator would get back to Pankrác. Begrudgingly, Günter took the cue and the handle to wheel it up the hill, through the cobblestone streets to náměstí Míru and the metro transfer thereafter. Natálie gave me a ‘call me’ sign behind her boyfriend’s back and, to add to my juvenile jealousy, ran back to give Tolly a kiss and Goldie a final snuggle.

            Then, like a family already familiar with such rough and tumble, the three of us trudged home to Dejvická. The dog didn’t need a leash and, until we caught a tram, we didn’t click it on (more crucially, Tolly had ‘forgotten’ the muzzle required for public transit, admitting how he hated the idea of muzzling anyone). Neither of us had to hold the human end of the leash—Goldie lying peacefully at our feet—but we took turns anyway. It’s like there was a life energy in it, like some scenes in the movie Avatar. Or, to bring it closer to the day’s objective, like an umbilical cord. A little gritty, but nonetheless… miraculous.

 

~37~

           

            Now, to prove my serendipity isn’t just a self-indulgent vacuum (not that you might have thought so), I feel responsible to represent the times more broadly in this environment of safe, central Europe. Putin’s mindless war continues to rage less than two thousand kilometers east, if the threat in spring had been less than a thousand. Ukrainian forces have reclaimed Snake Island, famous for the radioed response, “Russian warship, go fuck yourself.” Too remote for civilian inhabitation—no source for fresh water, for instance (so even snakes would go thirsty)—ancient sailors had established a temple to Achilles, equal symbol of strength and vulnerability, if the latter becomes an open secret. One wonders if, in the four months of its futile take-over, Russian soldiers prayed to that demigod. Or at least swapped notes.

            Kyiv, which I managed to visit between Covid lockdowns, is operational despite the chance that it would have been this generation’s version of Leningrad or Sarajevo under relentless siege. I didn’t make it further east to Kharkiv or south to Odessa, but (knock on wood) imagine their fortitude in staring down the 11-time zone Bear. Kyiv, among other points of existential reflection, maintains a monument to Babi Yar, where Nazis killed more Jews in the compression of two days than anywhere else the record shows—though who knows? Zelenskyy himself would never have been born if his ancestors had lived in Kyiv; many died anyway in other Nazi roundups.

            With eyes up, I was walking down Dlouhá street in Old Town; a new sculpture was reported to be hanging by wires from the top of Roxy theatre to the less-descript building on the other side. ‘Vinok’, created by Veronika Psotková, floats like Remedios the Beauty or Jesus, even, on Ascension Day. The dense chicken wire that composes her flows freely from her legless dress to her wreathlike headdress, from which her name derives. Her face is rather devoid of features, but not of care. Her hands are more distinct, open to whomever may be running toward her guardianship. If Ukrainian women still don a vinok for courtship purposes, at least for cultural effect, the symbol of a florid, peaceful helmet has resonated more and more since the Maidan Revolution of 2014. Nine years earlier, the Orange Revolution had been effectively led by Yulia Tymoshenko, who braided her long blonde hair into a virtual vinok—not to court a sex-obsessed media, but to garner the strength of the indigenous spirit of Cossacks, and to remind us they were not only male. She became Ukraine’s prime minister thereafter and still wields influence in her nation’s defense.

            Refugees from this war are mostly women and children, and while the Slavic language bond facilitates aspects of their migration, they do need open arms and doors by which at least this phase of the war is livable. For the most part, Czechs have been welcoming—the empathy of hostile occupation not recent, but undeniable.

            I talked with the Barrandov actress about this, admitting my own guilt in wanting a better living arrangement than the refuge Tolliver has gladly given. She apparently didn’t know I was dangling a hint there: beyond any success of the collar cam, I’d still need to ‘get on one knee’, so to speak, and request residential co-existence. The Barrandov actress, who (unlike the shih tzu mistress) had never extended intimacy with me, clearly sympathized with the plight of Ukrainians yet also admitted her guilt in not offering up her spare room. “I could make valid excuses,” she said, “but… in the scheme of common dignity, they’re not really valid.”

            “I think families—even empty-nesters—are more easily set up to host.”

            “What is this… ‘empty-nester’?”

            “Parents that have waved their adult children goodbye. Like Jiří and Helena in Ořech thought was their reality when daughter Amálka left for Olomouc.”

            “So she’s like a bird in this analogy.”

            “Yeah, or a butterfly.”

            “Butterfly nest?”

            I grinned stupidly. “Just that she works with butterflies now.”

            “In Olomouc?”

            “Actually, near Ořech—she moved back in with her parents. Olomouc, ah… didn’t work out.”

            We’d been walking Seamus together, and sometimes (like now) the Barrandov actress would point to a bench for a chance to sit. “Then they’re not an empty nest anymore.”

            “Correct.” I fiddled with Seamus leash and, upon his owner’s gesture, released him for the chance to sniff around at his own discretion.

            “Will they take in Ukrainians?”

            “I didn’t ask. It’s on my mind today because of the Vinok sculpture. Wasn’t when I visited them.”

            “With Seamus.”

            “Yes, with Seamus.” 

             Seamus turned from thirty meters away, unsure if he were being beckoned. A gorgeous dog, really, without a worry in the world where he’d lay his head or get his next meal. Perhaps his adventure on the railway tracks was to challenge those assumptions a bit, play Huck Finn for a couple hours. Eventually, I promised my silent self, I’d tell this anecdote to the Barrandov actress to come clean with the totality of risk that night (and the grace of safe return). But it wouldn’t—couldn’t—be any time soon.

            “There was another aspect to Bratislava I didn’t tell you about,” she said after apparent thought not to. I subtly inclined my nearest ear. “There’s a man there I’ve known since high school. An actor who actually recommended me to the casting director for this film. I didn’t know he did that until he said so last week.”

            My ear sort of nodded. I had nothing to say—nothing that wouldn’t sound too ‘filler’—but ventured to guess: “a favor.”

            “More than a favor, as it turns out.” She turned to me abruptly with hands up, not unlike Vinok but with a different tone: “I’m not looking for your advice, by the way.”

            “None will be given, then.”

            “No, that sounded bad. You’re not prohibited, just not obliged.”

            “Distinction noted.”

            “He’s, you know… how to say?...”

            I shrugged, “I don’t know. What do you want to say?”

            “He’s a friend. He’s been more than a friend.”

            “Like last week?”

            “Yes. But he’s also… a player.”

            “A fellow actor, as you said.”

            She thought I was joking, so lightly punched my teasing (which it wasn’t). “No, like a play boy. Unreliable with relationships. He doesn’t brag about this but also doesn’t deny it.”

            “Okay. So he’s not an angel, but also not a dick.”

            “What is it with this stupid word?”

            “Angel?”

            She hit me again, this time deservedly. “I don’t need to be telling you this.”

            “I’m sorry—I wasn’t trying to be funny. He’s being honest with what sometimes is relational dishonesty, yes?”

            “We didn’t really get into relationships. But, to cut to the… matter, is it?”

            “Chase. If that’s the idiom you want: ‘cut to the chase’.”

            “Chase, yes. Another stupid word, but… He wants to move to Prague.”

            “Woah! Sounds like a commitment.”

            “He didn’t say only for me—he has a job offer here and isn’t sure it’s better than what he has there. In fact, he has an excellent penthouse overlooking the Danube, and the friends you’d expect that enjoy parties there. If he sold it and lived here, he wouldn’t afford a place half its size.”

            “You have a nice view of the river,” I didn’t have to remind her. Where we were presently sitting, the view was even better, from the lush bluffs on each side and serene flow of water going north—under the iron bridge with a coterie of swans, past Vyšehrad’s stone arch to allow for trams and slow traffic, through Palackého, Jiráskův, Legií and Karlův bridges, confidently en route to Germany and the North Sea. His would go to another side of the world: through Budapest, Bucharest, a wild delta and eventually merging with the waters around Snake Island. “I’d never trade this.”

            “There’d be no trade on my part—I have no interest in living in Bratislava. But I’m also not sure about letting him that much into my life here. I mean, if he were still just a friend, he could stay in my guest room.”

            “Like a Ukranian refugee,” I carelessly added.

            “No. Of course that would be different.”

            “Of course.” Seamus came over to suggest our time out here was starting to drag. “Is he good with dogs?”

            “I haven’t asked him. He’s never met Seamus, but… Why?”
            “Just that a guy at Gröbovka yesterday was allergic to Goldie.”

            “The Mop?”

            “Well, Tolliver insists I call him ‘Goldie’, and…”

            She nuzzled up to Seamus, as if he understood our conversation. “I wouldn’t let this guy [i.e., Seamus] go for anything.”

            We talked more, but not worth narrating here. I thought she might offer another movie, another bottle of Cabernet. I thought of offering her dinner—not a lot of restaurants on this hill, though I took note of one the other day at the bus stop, in the rain…. But no: quit while you’re ahead, Boris, even when you’re just treading water.

 

~38~

 

            When I told Tolly about this—the prospect that the Barrandov actress would not have a place for me—he reminded me (unnecessarily) that I had the shih tzu mistress as a plan B. Then I reminded him (necessarily) that I didn’t want to think of them in ranking order; more to the point, I’d be thankful that either one might be willing to have or even tolerate me. And now that Barrandov seemed unavailable, I wouldn’t need to continue with the camera comparison. I knew the patterns of the shih tzu mistress by now and rather liked her brown recluse mystery—immune, perhaps, to her involuntary venom. I picked up a macrame collar and pursed my lips. “So, Tols, appreciating all your efforts, I don’t think we’ll go forward with the surveillance.”

            His eyes doubled in diameter. “We’ll not go what? Seriously, Bo—you’re a high-maintenance bloke! I’ve busted my arse makin’ these and—haven’t had a chance to tell you yet—a friend in Manchester said he found an app that caters to a cyber lens, and moreover, a flat transmitter that I can weave in behind the spike—”

            “You’ve been talking to somebody about this stuff? That would be rippling the risk! All the more reason to pull the plug on the plan.”

            “No, no—Nigel, in Manchester, is a committed geek and trusty chum from boarding school. We’re pretty tight and he’d like nothing more than to test his tech instincts.”

            “It aint a game, Tolly—that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I care about these women and absolutely wouldn’t want their lives compromised by… by anything.”

            “Their lives (or one of ‘em) can be enhanced if you’re a good roommate,” Tolliver reasoned. “I mean, you’ve enhanced mine.”

            Jesus, he’s gonna get soppy. “Thanks, and it’s reciprocal.” Not quite a lie, but I’d have to think quickly and craftily why such enhancement should surcease. “I mean, if I could pay half the rent here—”

            “Ah, get stuffed with that nonsense.”

            “—and, more critically, register this address to the Foreign Police, who’ll be breathing down my neck when they figure out I’ve been fired by the kindergarten—”

            “Well,…”

            “—then I’d happily stay. Like your boarding school buddies.”

            “Most of them were jerks, honestly. Nigel wasn’t, but… doesn’t hold a candle to your personality, mate.”

            I could tell he didn’t want me to respond to that, so I didn’t. I whistled for the Mop to come over and try on the bigger collar—the one that had been meant for Seamus. While I was dog-whispering to ease the strapping, buckling, adjusting for the Mop’s comfort, I tried to imagine everything from another perspective than my own (or mine and Tolliver’s, if indeed we were a collaborative team). How would the dog feel with the extra weight, for instance? And by weight, would he or she—Seamus or the shih tzu—understand that term beyond the physics? Like the metaphysical weight of abetting a crime? But are we really criminals? Haven’t we justified that ‘guardian angel’ argument? Angels could never be criminals, right? The dog is there to protect, and the collar-cam is just more of that: benign protection. I mean, if Amálka had a dog in Olomouc (with or without a collar-cam), wouldn’t that possibly deter her professor? Then the dog would be proud to bear the weight, add another tool to the owner’s defense. 

            “Listen, Tolly,” I decided to say, “we might not go through with the plan as planned. I mean, I’ve been thinking about invasions lately, be it from Putin or some tenured professor.”

            “You got no evil bones in your body, Boris. Maybe an unfortunate name to cause suspicions lately, but… rest assured: you aint a megalomaniac or creep.”

            I wasn’t rest assured. “Thanks, but it’s all pretty relative.” I continued to pet the Mop through his dreadlock fur, beyond the need to observe how he wore his new neckwear. Something triggered a memory of Suzanne Vega’s ‘Luka’, a song I’ve played once in a while to somber reception. “You know that song ‘Luka’?”

            Tolly scratched his head. “Is that about the kid who lives on the seventh floor?”
            “Second floor, technically. But do you remember the chorus?”

            “No. Rouse my recall, mate.”

            “Luka—in the voice of the singer, who’s female, by the way—”

            “Maybe Luka’s a girl, innit?”

            “Hmm. Hadn’t thought of that. But it shouldn’t matter. Luka asks the listener to ‘just don’t ask me what it was’ when he (or she) describes all the bumps and tussles that happen upstairs.”

            “The listener is the downstairs neighbor, right?”

            “Apparently. But could be anyone. Could be someone bugging his (or her) apartment.”

            “Oh, I see where you’re going with this. So we’re the ones Luka might be confessing to… about the bad shit going down in her apartment.”

            “Hers or his—really the ownership of the abusive parent. And it’s gotta be a cry for help, right? ‘Just don’t ask me what it was’ has got to mean: ‘please intervene.’ It’s not the fault of the kid, of course, but the kid is trying to cover up the internal nightmare. But at a certain point, Luka’s private situation cannot remain private. It needs external purview.”

            “It needs a dog-cam, what you’re sayin’. So you think these macrame miracles of mine are better suited to discover domestic abuse? Instead of how or how often your lady friends masturbate?”

            “Don’t be crude, Tolly. I’m not sure what I’m thinking. Only that the effort shouldn’t detract from dignity.”

            I took the collar off the Mop and handed it over to its craftsman, who received it with a forlorn look. “I guess I’ll tell Nigel we’re pulling the plug.”

            Gulp. I got up to fetch the Braník bottle from the fridge and two mugs in the drying rack near the sink. The whole Alfred Pennyworth boost to Batman’s arsenal—to do good things for Gotham, mind you, and restore dignity to the victimized—churned in my conflicted imagination. “You know,” I paused to pour a mug for Tolly.

            “I don’t know,” he replied with an effort to restrain his enthusiasm (less for the beer, which he’d rather trade for Božkov, than the prospect of buddying up further over drinks).

            “The guy that’s coming to Barrandov.”

            “Yeah? From Bratislava?”

            “That guy. I can’t shake the way she described him, inadvertently perhaps.”

            “Like how?”

            “Like that Günter dude the other day at Gröbovka.”

            “A royal prick, y’mean.”

            I grinned at the British use of ‘royal’, quicksanding in Prince Andrew scandals and muffled racism when Harry’s babies don’t litmus as white enough. “Royal, plebeian, what you will: he can’t be good for her.”

            “Free world, mate. Natálie could kick him to the curb.”

            “True. And so can my friend in Barrandov.”

            Tolly gaped in realization. “Ah! I get it now: you wanna see if the Bratislava bloke is up to code. Proper. Not a prick.”

            “I mean, Seamus would chomp him if it came to abuse, but… yeah, I guess it would still be…”

            “Interesting.”

            “I was aiming for ‘justified’.”

            Tolliver had drained his mug and beckoned for the bottle for a refill, which I poured for him. Before quaffing, he chuckled. “Man, Bogo, you’re a piece of work. Green light, red light, Nigel’s in, Nigel’s out.” He raised his eyebrows after swallowing. “Nigel’s back in, I assume?”

            “‘When we assume’,” I quoted an episode of ‘The Odd Couple’, where Tony Randall argues his defense in a small claim court case, “‘you make an ass of u and me.’”

            “Huh?”

            “Never mind—a stupid sit-com reference. But yeah, get Nigel’s gizmos. I’ll pay the courier fee, of course.”

            “Don’t be daft,” said Tolly, as jolly as I’d ever seen him. “You’ve given everything so far. I am proud to ante in.”

            “Because it’s a gamble, innit?” I sloshed my best Bri’ish.

            “Damn straight. And we’re playin’ with house money.”

 

~39~

             Don’t ask me how we actually put it all together (times two), but in a word: the tiny package from a ghostly Nigel arrived and Tolliver knit the apparatus as efficiently as a surgeon—perhaps the only operation he’d ever do, given his sloppiness otherwise. The Mop was steadfast on our various tests and the app was working like a FaceTime call. The camera resolution was sketchy, as they were made to travel through arteries instead of the outer world; disengaging the flashlight element cut down on the weight. Baby cams would have worked better, but a) they just wouldn’t fit the collars and b) babies weren’t the object here. Then again, neither were the ladies’ cardiovascular systems.

            Indeed, that’s more than a word, but the difficulty was more in the swirling psychology—the unrelenting ’no and ne of ethical rationale. Tolliver sometimes entertained my scruples (mostly making fun of the term, as if it were ‘shingles’ or ‘crumpets’—between the ghastly and gourmet, at least in his estimation).

            Applying the finished product onto each canine was the next trick, and you can imagine how that went. The shih tzu mistress had already asked an update about Tolliver’s macrame—I guess it had been clever to drop that hint—and so she was rather chuffed (Tolly’s word, when I described to him her reaction). I handed the collar over for her inspection and she toyed with the soft-yet-stiff little spikes. “Going goth, are we?” she laughed. “This will be a hit on my vlog!”

            “You feature the dog on your videos?”

            “Sure. And live-streams too. Once in a while; I don’t want to overuse an asset.”

            I really should watch more of her stuff online. In fact, comparing her public presentation on screen with what this app would show may amplify the research (and the same could be said of viewing the Barrandov actress’ films, which I curiously haven’t done yet). I took the shih tzu on her usual walk and tested the app, which picked up the butts of the four other dogs that always pulled ahead, plus a fair panorama of Karlovo náměstí, at dog-level, of course.

            Upon returning, the shih tzu mistress held the ‘old’ collar in her hand and a smirk on her hard-to-read face. “You forgot to transfer the tags, Boris.”

            “Oh…, well, I wasn’t sure (I guess) that you were sold on the goth look yet, so…”

            “She shouldn’t go outside with her tags. You know that, I’d expect.”

            “Of course,” and I took the macrame collar off to ease the tags into their new home, sealing the deal of this enterprise. Then she reattached the collar and kissed her slightly panting dog on the nose. She did likewise to me (kiss, not collar) before I left for Barrandov.

            Onward and upward, with a fibrillating heart. Thrice on public transit I checked the app and twice braced for a heart attack, witnessing the mistress brushing shih tzu’s fur and jiggling the collar. I panicked that the device might emit some kind of sound—an operating buzz or hum. But then we’d tested that, Tolly and I, to ensure imperceptibility; after all, the point of a spy is not to be spied out as one. Before stepping off at the Geologická tram stop, I breathed easy at the image of shadowy floor between the shih tzu’s front legs—the slothful pose she would assume ninety-five percent of the time.

            With Seamus, I decided not to even go through the rigamarole of including the actress in the exchange. She hadn’t had the song and dance of Tolly’s macrame, for one, and was less inclined to brush the setter and spend eternal hours inside to take much notice (a fair assumption,… and a way a criminal has to think). Seamus didn’t sit as patiently as the shih tzu in the collar fitting, and, because I forgot to reassign the tags, I had to do the procedure a second time. I tested the app then and there during the walk, a little surreal seeing on my phone what Seamus was looking at: a trusted guy with a furled forehead checking his phone, as if reading some awfully bad news about Ukraine or Maruška—the span of my universe. I tried to ‘put on a face’ for Seamus, to smile for the camera, but he wandered off for better fish to fry. The joy of being unleashed.

            My conundrum, you might imagine, was what to do with the original collar. For now, I just pocketed the thing like a used handkerchief. I thought of fraying its edges around the buckle—the collar was rather old, anyway—as a future excuse for why I made the change: fearing the fray would get worse, I’d tell her, I took the initiative of finding a new one. Stylish, yes? And then I’d go down the road of Tolliver’s macrame hobby and interest in soft goth, a beautiful maroon to match Seamus’ gorgeous coat.

            On the other hand, I suddenly conjectured, the inclusion of Tolly’s role could backfire: if caught, I’d want the whole blame to fall on my head, without accomplices. I mean, I’m already deportable for the lack of a work permit, but Tolly is legit and has everything to gain from a successful medical internship (and everything to lose from latching onto me). I’m sure we talked about this—he and I—if over Braníks and Božkov and the blur of some vampire show on Netflix. I think he said something like, “hey, you’ve given me Goldie, and as long as he’d walk the plank to England with me, I’ll be happy.”

            “But maybe instead of deportation, they’d throw us in jail.”

            “Nah. This aint some South American jungle. We’re not really hurting anyone.”

            Yada, yada. The ship has now sailed—or flotilla, really—as I left Barrandov with barely a farewell (the actress was on the phone, but she had previously given me the body language not to expect any more movie nights, perhaps in preparation for her Bratislava beau). I played around with the app on my return to Dejvická, which allowed for multiple cameras and even a slight zoom in, perhaps with better effect if the lenses were fit for the outer world instead of probing plasma.

            Naturally (I know, I know—nothing here is natural), Tolly wanted a peak or two. And while it would make a nominal difference how long we looked inside the apartments at Karlovo and Barrandov—the app charged by the quarter hour, like rental bikes—I didn’t like the voyeurism energizing his gaze. The point is not to be a peeping Tom, I’m sure I told him at one point or another. At least not in a creepy sense. If the dog followed the owner into the bathroom, I’d click off the app, as already happened. Really—I shit you not (and apologize, in the Greek sense of the term;).

            I’ll be discreet and discrete: nothing worth telling, I won’t relay the living patterns of either woman. I swear I didn’t spend hours over the next few days on the app, notwithstanding the price that would accrue. I wouldn’t even for free.

            An aside about the dogs themselves, as they shouldn’t be viewed as drug mules, so to speak. Seamus is the more active one and so the camera would shake quite a bit as he cleaned his undersides and scratched his head with his back claws. He also liked his ‘místo’ near the main door, where the actress’ camera fixed a view on the entire corridor. Sometimes, through the app, I even saw that camera if Seamus’ head rose above his general bedding slouch. If the actress were home, she wouldn’t be looking through that fixed camera (through her app), but one time, when I knew she was away, I caught Seamus looking up and wondered if our apps were watching each other, like dueling banjos at a mirthless festival.

            The shih tzu had a more stable way of trotting room to room, but her long fur often made the world of the apartment look like the unlogged parts of the Amazon. The mistress fed her a lot of kibbles and bits (probably not that brand, but…) and spent a predictable length of time at her laptop, from desk to kitchen counter to actual lap. I liked the way she spoke into the machine—practiced, ad hoc, engaged and evidently engaging. She was good at her job. Beautiful, in fact. And the dog acted as her willing assistant once in a while. I even saw, via the collar, the somewhat pixelated image of a Zoom session and, unlike the Barrandov banjos, this felt more like a festival should. I didn’t have a sound option—the app provided for that but there was no way a microphone would fit into the spike arrangement, as much as Tolliver had worked hours on the possibility. The cardio-cam didn’t require sound, so adding a mic would necessitate its own transmitter, battery, the kitchen sink… And, I argued, I didn’t want to be so intrusive. “Yeah, right,” Tolly responded at the time, ambiguously.

            If the analogy is not too weird, the first four days off-and-on the app, along with my natural rotations of walking the dogs, felt like how the baby app was supposed to operate. Babies are innocent and so (we hope) are their parents; the surveillance is only to safeguard—a practical extension of love. If trouble entered the room, the camera would help douse the fire, so to speak. A guardian angel that, otherwise, would just as well let the baby be. And, as time would spin this new thread of life, the need would not exceed the sanction of the nursery. God forbid, for instance, parents would ever install a teenage-cam.

            Which only aggravates my apologetics, already in tatters (assuming you would never attempt the odyssey I’ve willing embarked upon). To quote Luther again, “here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God.” Blasphemy, probably, but… amen.

            

~40~

             While I had no plan B on this sketchy plan to begin with, Tolliver encouraged me to take heart in the prospect of baby showers; he hung up his macrame equipment to dedicate focus on video edits, hoping to do another shoot soon. “Maybe at that maternity ward below Vyšehrad—Podolí, I think they call it.”

            “Yeah, well… the point is to get that baby shower in before the delivery. But,” glad he’s on this, “the association is aesthetic. The setting there is magical. Babies opening their eyes on the prettiest part of Prague.”

            “Especially if we can get Goldie in the frame again, standing at the ramparts, kinda like an Aslan figure.”

            “Hmm. I guess he does have that look a little bit.”

            “A lotta bit. He can be the face of the business.”

            “Well, Tolly, I’ll leave that up to you. If this idea ever makes money, it’s all yours—the rent I owe you, the friendship…”

            “Stuff it, mate—you’re makin’ it sound like a last will and testament.”

            Truth be told, the past couple weeks have felt like a stage 3 diagnosis of something, if that analogy isn’t too irreverent to anyone actually afflicted. Getting the heave-ho from Lenka and meeting Maru just moments before she’d vaporize to America couldn’t really be equivalent to stage 1 or 2. The specter of deportation, though, felt cancerous. And here I was, metaphorically smoking away my best chances of recovery.

            On the other hand, the days were more upbeat with occasional check-ins (not too many) and a growing appreciation for friends. I know it doesn’t pass the smell test for me to consider the shih tzu mistress or Barrandov ‘friends’—or, more accurately, they wouldn’t consider me a friend with any inkling of this surveillance. But I liked them, they liked me. I’d bring the Washburn every other day to strum, sometimes to sing. A little tongue in cheek, I learned the Czech lyrics to an Olympic song of the early ’80s—i.e., when the country was equally entrenched and sick of communism. ‘Okno mé lásky’ translates to ‘Window of my love’ and has this wicked opening:

 

Kdo tě líbá, když ne já (Who kisses you, if not me),                       

kdo tě hlídá, když ne já (who is watching you, if not me),

 

and so on, nary a question mark. Both ladies in their environments—indoors at Karlovo, outdoors at Barrandov—sang along; Bohemians know hundreds of songs by heart, as evident at almost any campfire. It made no difference that this song was made when the actress was a baby and a dozen years before me and the shih tzu mistress were born. Pushing the envelope a little, I wondered aloud (twice) whether this song was remotely subversive: communists watching citizens’ every move, insisting on a mutual love that could have sprung from Masaryk’s ‘Good Neighbor’ policy even if his bourgeoise First Republic had no endorsement from post-WWII leadership.

            When Seamus or the shih tzu watched us sing and laugh, I wondered what they/their cameras picked up. The app, by the way, did not record and archive (at least for my access), and so I’d never be able to rewind and see myself within the frame—unless, absurdly, I clicked it open while in front of a dog (as I had tested on the Mop). I suppose there’d be more expensive apps out there that would allow review, but beyond my shoestring budget, I really didn’t want that much insight. I wasn’t obsessed, just casually curious. If I’d detect anything repulsive or untoward, the collar would be ditched the next day and, of course, I’d abandon the potential request to move in. That was the point: only a vetting process that would reduce the chances of a bad fit.

            Drama was minimal at Karlovo. Once, the mistress bent to her shih tzu, rubbing overtly against her leg. I was lazing on the couch with the Washburn, but bounced up immediately when she queried, “Boris, what’s this?” Her fingers were hooked under the collar around ‘spike #3’, which harbored the transistor.

            “Uh,” I raced for an answer but tried to sound slow, “what’s what?”

            “This bump? Come over and feel it.”

            “Bump? It’s just part of the macrame, I’m sure.”

            She pursed her lips. “No, not on the collar! Below, on her neck…”

            Oh. Indeed, the dog had taken on a tick, bloated with a greedy amount of blood. I took off the collar as the mistress went for some vinegar, and as a team we twirled out the parasite and flushed it down the toilet. I thought to ask, while regothing the animal, if an aromatic anti-tick collar would be wise; the mistress said, “I’ll ask the vet next week—we already had scheduled a check-up.”

            “So you do get out of this apartment sometimes.”

            She didn’t at all like the implication. “Maybe the vet makes house calls. Maybe I don’t tell you the truth.”

            Later that day, I viewed through the shih tzu’s camera at Tolly’s place (but never when he’d be present—we agreed that he wouldn’t ‘go there’ for the sake of propriety). All was normal: the dog calm and apparently happy to be rid of the tick, vlogging going on by the looks of it (no volume, of course). But then an earthquake of activity as I realized—through the jungle of shih tzu fur—that someone was at the front door. My heart raced—equally for her and how expected or not the visit might be, and for me and how much I craved knowledge of her unspoken life. Indeed, whatever was spoken at the door (or even barked by the jiggling dog), I could only imagine. A lover? Her mom or brother? The vet?!

            Alas, as the exchange lasted less than a minute, she gathered two bags that must have been labelled ‘rohlik.cz’; to punctuate—perhaps intuiting that I was her audience—she took out a bread roll (literally the logo of this grocery delivery) and played circus master for the shih tzu to sit up on her haunches, clap her front paws, do other such tricks by the blur of the digital resolution until staying still: the mistress shushing with an index finger at her beautifully glossed lips, then placing the roll in the shih tzu’s mouth (I assume—above the camera’s frame, at least). Then, I gathered through the dog’s in-and-out interest, she put the other groceries away and went back to her vlog.

             On the other front, drama was as predictable as a Barrandov actress’ life might imply, though I felt a rather captive audience (in the wrong sense of the term). Politely, she had been curtailing conversations about her immediate future: this Bratislava dude was on his way and, as much as I didn’t press for any details, she made it clear that perhaps she had told me too much already. I didn’t step into her apartment as was natural the week before. If she joined me and Seamus on a walk, we talked generally and impersonally—about communist-era music, for instance. She still hadn’t noticed (or hadn’t noted, I wasn’t sure) the spiked collar, and since she didn’t groom Seamus or check for ticks, perhaps she’d never know. I kept the frayed collar in my pocket, at any rate, for the ready alibi.

            When the dude finally (and too soon) arrived, the tension was tangible. I didn’t see much from Seamus’ camera—perhaps there had been some ‘atta boy’ type of interaction, but Seamus didn’t appear to want much of anything to do with him. In fact, most of the time I checked the app, the picture was pitch black—Seamus slumped in fatigue that sort of characterized a dog his size (a shih tzu, for instance, typically has more alacrity), but I surmised a measure of doggy depression.

            Neither here nor there, not my business anyway, nothing to write home about: what happens in Barrandov stays in Barrandov, even through a Bratislava incursion. I tried to stretch my 6pm appointments with lengthy walks to get a gander of this guy, but he was either out on the town shopping up his image or burrowed in the actress’ bed, leaving her to hand me Seamus’ leash and be on our forlorn way. Just days into this domestic overhaul, the actress looked like Patty Hearst—Stockholm syndrome in her very home. The camera couldn’t capture the earmarks of her angst, and if things would ever come to a head, I’d expect the protective instincts of Seamus to kick in. But so far, the setting was as dull as the Ishtar desert.

            And then it struck me.

 

~41~

 

            She—especially as someone trained in audience reception—was projecting a different version of herself: a melancholy behind the cheer, a barb within the glint in her irises. For years, perhaps, she hadn’t had to factor another human in her cycles from the fridge to the couch to the bathroom to the stereo to play, say, Billy Idol’s ‘Dancing with Myself’.

            He—also an actor—also had his role(s) and experience when to ad lib or stick to script, ostensibly. While I hadn’t seen him yet, I could imagine: a wrap-around when she was stirring coffee, a ‘you gotta see this’ at his laptop, a toilet lid that never thought of future use, a surprise dish of ice cream, a form of sex not tried in Bratislava, a tolerance, at best, for the decor.

            Seamus, as part of that backdrop, was decidedly not an actor. That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t improvise according to the circumstances. A couple days into this arrangement, I returned him after a long walk and he was dragging his behind up the stairs to the point that the leash—unnecessary, otherwise—had to tow him like a defeated rock climber. The actress met us at the door with a raised eye, as if I had been derelict in my duties (she never quite forgave the Ořech incident, as little of the story she actually knew). I asked if I could come in, perhaps check Seamus for something caught in a paw, but she said she’d take care of it—we’ll take care of it, implying the Bratislava dude, still somewhere in the shadows.

            I drained a half hour of app viewing on the tram ride to Dejvická until I caught said shadow, evidently arguing with his host. Seamus remained in the corridor—so rarely venturing to the living room like before—and the dude was stomping around in a way that would vibrate my phone’s speaker, had we opted for the audio (as Nigel advised: a sting operation without sound is practically useless. “But Nigel,” Tolly reminded on the conference call, “Boris isn’t out to sting anyone.” “You never know,” Nigel replied like he knew).

            I jumped out at the next stop and flagged down a taxi—something I’d only done once before in this city, as trams and metros almost always beat the other traffic. But the urgency eclipsed all rationale, including what I’d say as a pretext for coming back. Fuck it—I didn’t need pretext. “How’s Seamus?” I demanded from the doorbell speaker when the actress answered in bewilderment.

            “Boris? Why… are you here? This isn’t—”

            “I didn’t like the way Seamus looked—only in the final minute of our walk, by the way. It’s like he—”

            And like a lightning strike, the dude’s voice emerged in a Slovak-accented Czech, with enough ty vole slurs to shut me down, sight unseen. While I could translate, it wouldn’t matter because the actress rushed to say, in English, “you should have phoned, Boris, as this isn’t…” Her syntax dangled at the apparent distraction of whatever the dude was doing.

            “Are you okay?” I whispered.

            Instead of answering, she suggested I could look at the setter’s foot, “or whatever you think it might be.” Then some muffled shuffling before she buzzed me in.

            Though I stayed within the confines of Seamus’ room—the chodba, as all Czechs have, inside the doorway—I glanced into as much as I could gather of the living room. The dude had disappeared, but his effect was present. A painting on the wall was angled wrong, contributing to its querulous content:  burgundy, bloodlike colors surrounded an elliptical ochre head that lassoed many faces—conspicuously not masks, but little combinations of eyes and nose and mouth around the larger, single stare of eyes that must have mothered all these other moles. I had asked the actress last week about the origin story of this piece, and while she was cryptic, she implied it was the work of a significant other. Perhaps an obligation to hang it, clashing with the warmer ambience, otherwise.

            I checked Seamus meaningfully, between each toe for any thorn, around his ears and neck and tummy for ticks, into his averted eyes for clues we already knew, but weren’t saying. “Changes are tough for pets,” I relayed the obvious, and the actress simply nodded. Her body language wanted more a conversation, but instead she turned to her purse on the coat rack and fished out a light green note featuring Božena Němcová, the face of Bohemian nostalgia. “I couldn’t,” pushing the 2000Kč away—in excess of the biweekly wage she had already paid.

            “Shush,” she demonstrated, slapping back my hand. “It’s for the house call. Just,” looking behind her shoulder, “text in advance next time.”

            When I got home (the app on the whole way, but Seamus smothering the view), Tolliver was there and curious about the day. As I had mentioned, there never was a kiss-and-tell aspect to such debriefs, and indeed there were no kisses at all in the day. But I did broach my concern over the way Barrandov had changed and the cryptic way the actress had forced a bonus into my hand.

            “Wait, wait, wait,” Tolly seemed on to something. “You say she didn’t acknowledge the new collar yet? At all?”

            “It hasn’t come up. I mean, the frayed one remains in my pocket, so—”

            “That’s immaterial,” Tolly insisted, pacing the floor like Sherlock Holmes. “Bro, you know why she showed such appreciation on your return?”

            “I don’t think it was appreciation; perhaps the opposite—a message to butt out of her life.”

            “The way you described it, she was glad you stepped in. Like you knew there was trouble.”

            “I did nothing on that front. Never saw any actual abuse.”

            “But she put two an’ two together, mate. She sensed you could see her plight.”

            I gasped at where this deduction was going. “You think she knows about the camera? That I swooped in from the cues it was picking up?”
            “Could be. And that future ‘house calls’ would be welcome—that’s the incentive, innit?”

            “And would the Bratislava dude be in the dark about this?”

            “Haven’t a clue. But I bet she trusts you more than him.”

            Trusts me to spy on her? I didn’t want to probe any further, so I went into the kitchen to make a tuna pasta salad for the three of us, the Mop included. Exhausted from screens, I used the rest of the evening to fiddle around in my notebook for plotlines concerning Bedlam and Swarm. 

            As I had outlined, those ridgeback brothers would divide in Prague: Bedlam to stay with the household (as broken as that had become), Swarm to try his life as a stray. Logistically, they’d have trouble keeping an eye on each other; spiritually, they’d still have some connection. Other dogs might be their go-between. A beagle named Sally, in particular, would meet Bedlam randomly on walks but then run off from her under-supervised back yard against the northern slope of Vyšehrad—the fortress wall, ironically, provided enough pawholds to jump in and out. As castrated as Swarm was, he'd often hang around the gates and elbows of these castle ruins for Sally, who had not been neutered and perhaps knew as much. Bedlam, by less volition of his own, might also guide his leash this way—depending on who would bother taking him for a walk—and thus the brothers would sometimes see each other. Swarm would have to stay in the shadows, of course, at risk of being corralled back into captivity. Sally seemed to understand and brought kisses one to the other.

            The novel (in my mind) comes to a dramatic turn at Vyšehrad, but I won’t spoil it. For that matter, I won’t actually know myself how things go down (or up) until I put pen to page—I’m contriving this, see, as I go. Or it’s contriving me. At any rate, the various narratives on everyone’s minds may reflect what they practically have to do with themselves: trudge to the cubicle at work, process the paperwork for others so their own taxes and such will also pass inspection, fantasize about how the evening might go and then, with effort or otherwise, experience the reality. Often the narratives are co-opted by George R. R. Martin and the likes, stretching us beyond time and place. To a degree, such ventures aren’t bad: we all have a modicum of Miniver Cheevy in our souls, who “sighed for what was not” and “cursed the commonplace” and “kept on thinking”, whether firm or flaccid as he “kept on drinking.”

            I’m not Bedlam (I’m repeating to be sure) nor Swarm nor Sally nor Miniver. To some degree, however, they are partly me.

 

~42~

 

            While the next couple days I watched Barrandov in deliberative increments (and walked Seamus a little longer than usual—the actress not telling me to but lending a strained grin at my appearance), I rarely checked the app on the shih tzu mistress. Her ‘naked facedness’ expression plumbed my conscience and appealed to the aesthetic of her whole being. Her grin at my appearance was that of a genuine friend: a siesta from the hours she put into her internet work and a skip in her step when opening the door for the duty of the dog and otherwise. I loved the stretched hours at Karlovo and the owners of the basset, elkhound, etc, also seemed to appreciate my élan, unaware, of course, about anything of its origins.

            They wouldn’t know my worries about the Bratislava dude or my cousin’s exile from Olomouc, the mists of melancholy that attended recollections of Lenka and Maruška, among the lovely people who chanced to love me back. They wouldn’t know the simple complexities of Tolliver and why I would assign him to another kind of ‘lovely people’—why I’d discriminate, doctor the evidence of what constitutes a loyal relationship. I liked Tolly and imagined whiling away the time in our seventies, maybe with Nigel in some Manchester pub, not contained to the shenanigans of our twenties in Prague. At the same time, my imagination of leaving Tolliver and the Mop (as soon as I could) loomed larger.

            Routines naturally altered in the newness of being a shy spy. I read less often—slogging through The Tale of a Dog by Lars Gustafsson in about four times the rate I would have more innocently perused. I stopped bringing the Washburn with me into the afternoon; sad to say, it couldn’t compete with my greater attention to what my phone was showing, even if that was generally the darkness of Seamus’ slumped energy in the Barrandov chodba. To save some money from the avaricious app, I scrolled stories and articles about nursery cams, home security, protocols concerning cops and the dangers they encounter and, at times, exacerbate. I wasn’t inserting myself into the roles of loving parent, ding-dong ditcher, Officer Friendly or Stranger Danger. But I was cognizant that whatever I (and by fading measures Tolly, Nigel, the Oz behind the app) was up to, it might feature in the panoply of literature—as banal as a court transcript or as edifying as Pulitzer journalism.

            As forementioned, I let the shih tzu camera be less attended to; the picture in my un-apped mind was wonderful enough, and seeing into the apartment (or the darkness of the doggy bed) without the chance to talk, to drink sherry, to model eye-liner (longing a little for a re-do of that escapade), to appreciate a beauty beyond the eye of any biased beholder. So I usually tapped her side of the app reluctantly and only for a minute, just to juice up the anticipation that I’d be there soon, flesh and blood and ambience that didn’t need the maskings of perfume, cologne, dog shampoo—our own aromas agreeable one to another.

            One morning, though, around 7:30, I opened the app and nearly slid off the futon in shock. The shih tzu—and/or her collar—was outside! I panicked at the prospect she had escaped the apartment for absolutely no good reason or, worse, that someone was kidnapping her before my very eyes. Maybe the mistress had another dog-walker for mornings (insert sad emoji); the other Karlovo dogs naturally would have another walk each day beyond what I’d provide, so why wouldn’t the shih tzu?

            It took some minutes to realize that, indeed, the mistress was behind the leash. Hazy as everything was—testing the limits of a cardio cam—the shih tzu bounced along the familiar paths of the náměstí and once in a while looked toward the sky and the woman I had never seen outdoors. She was herself: calmly composed, looking with love into the eyes of her dog, smooching from the meter they were apart, taking that spirit into the strides they kept when the eye contact met the broader landscape (I’d say the ‘neighborhood’, but somehow want for evidence of that kind of feel). They stopped at a bench I had often used for reading, people-watching, contemplating life. Now the shih tzu’s gaze was more constant on her mistress, who was telling her dulcet things, I imagined. Again came to mind the debate Tolly and I had about weaving in a microphone to one of the spikes of the collar; he was for the optimal gathering of intelligence, while I was for the least amount of weight on the dog’s neck. More than that, however, was the manner in which I’d imagine the narratives within the Karlovo and Barrandov apartments, or (in this case) the environments in which each dog might venture.

            As they recommenced their walk, which included pooper-scoop detail (I imagined by the pause; the shih tzu herself waiting like an aristocrat), I couldn’t for the life of me understand where they were going—certainly not in the direction of their building. Though the morning was sunny, the screen did not relay that clarity, especially when they crossed a street and entered a cavernous set of doors (one open, the other closed). It took me a minute to figure out that this was the St Ignác church, across from the park and, on the north side, a medical faculty much smaller than Lenka’s at Motol. 

            I had been in this church once or twice (really, Boris? We’ve been over this: anyone should remember between ‘once’ or ‘twice’), if not so early in the morning. A modest mass, by the blurry looks of it, was happening at the altar end of the checkerboard aisle, and it occurred to me that the ochre color of the dark squares would be more defined in my eye (via the camera) than in the shih tzu’s (via natural selection of rods and cones). These disappeared, though, when the camera darkened to the apparent retreat of a pew nearer to the narthex. I assumed that the mistress wouldn’t want to traipse too far in on account of the dog—not typical for a church, even in a dog-loving country—or her own disavowal of God (not to earmark that discussion overmuch). At any rate, she didn’t stay more than fifteen minutes and left as discreetly as she’d entered.

            I kept the app going all the way home—hers, of course, but I like the ring of it for the prospect that I could also return and kick off the shoes, curl in with the same comfort.

            Tolly, by this time, had gotten up and monkeyed around in the kitchenette, perhaps respecting my private glow with whatever my phone was delivering. When I clicked off the app, he timed his “coffee fer ya, mate?” as a way of inviting himself in.

            “Yeah, could do.”

            He wanted me to say more than that. Ask him advice. Give wing to the probably evident butterflies in my belly. I’ve been in love a couple times (won’t say ‘once or twice’) and, the older I get, try to fight the feeling as if it’s what puppies do, or teens compensating for the boredom of math class. I was in love ten, twelve years ago with someone not in math class but many barriers away. In AP English Lit we were reading Dickens’ Great Expectations and my teacher (worth a novel in her own right) treated our efforts by showing the 1946 black-and-white film rendition. While some of my classmates—many of whom hadn’t creased the spine—wanted the sexier 1998 version, I wanted neither and told my teacher why: my mind’s play of it had become so intricate, I didn’t want a Brit Pip in Anthony Wager nor a Hollywood Estella in Gwyneth Paltrow to thwart my imagination. With my teacher’s bemused assent, I buried my head in my arms and tried not to weep as I had in the saline staining of certain pages of the book. My Estella didn’t have to match anyone’s—not someone cast for the role or someone I’d meet in the flesh. My Pip didn’t have to be me. I had no expectations on how others weighed in or crafted the narrative; I didn’t even care if Dickens himself tossed and turned in his sleep, artist of art he’d have to jettison with the passing of years he couldn’t control.

            “Um,” Tolliver hated to break into my reverie, “here’s your… java jo.”

            My dad’s name was Joe. “What?”

            “Isn’t that what you Yanks call it? Cup o’ jo?”

            “I’m not really a Yank, to tell you the truth.”

            He frowned at his presumption. Hesitated. Handed over the mug with space enough for me to grab the handle. “You, uh, slept okay?”

            I had, thanks. But, “Tolly, from your point of view, does falling in love differentiate between teenage years or older, like our age?”

            He wasn’t prepared for the question, but wanted to roll with it. “From my point of view? Like, as a medical intern?”

            Hmm. “Okay, yeah—that would be interesting.”

            “Or from my seat in the peanut gallery?”

            “What’s that supposed to mean? Falling in love doesn’t mean—”

            “—being a lover? A Casanova?”

            I regretted the gambit. “Anyone can… maybe should fall in love, don’t you think?”

            “Yeah, but a tad bit experience prolly does wonders.”

            The coffee was good. “I guess my question is whether a love relationship at our age requires a practical arrangement, as distinct from youngsters who are at liberty to just… dream.”

            Tolliver whistled for his Goldie to stroke. “I don’t know, mate. Practicalities count for something at any age.” He lay his head on top of the dog’s. “So do liberties.”

 

~43~

             We talked the morning long, as Tolly’s shift wouldn’t start until the afternoon. Though the Mop had grown up lazily, he had quickly learned to appreciate longer walks like our present one through Stromovka, across the pedestrian bridge to Troja and the hem between the zoo and botanical gardens. While both places allowed for dogs on their leash, we didn’t want to be so formalized; the cafés in the area were quite busy with customers spanning a hundred years in age, so we walked down the river to the Trojský kůň, a fair replica of what Odysseus built to signal loss but surreptitiously gamble for a victory. As anxious as those hours within the horse may have been, they were basic training for the years that would follow.

            It was too early in the day for a beer, but we had a couple anyway. The Mop enjoyed an ice cream cone that Tolly promised wouldn’t be an everyday indulgence (a cue toward our amicable divorce and the uncontested custody of the dog). Neither of us wanted to project what might happen in the coming week or two—whether all came down to fuzzy data from these cameras, or nothing mattered if the door to my proposal (to live with, not to wed) was slammed shut, times two. Barrandov was most certainly shut, if the Bratislava dude was there to stay; Karlovo was impossible to guess, but more intriguing to imagine. The presumptions were preposterous, I knew, but not to try would get me nowhere—or, to the stark reality, would get me rather fast-tracked on the deportation train.

            And that’s where Tolly underscored his hope for me: to stay in touch across the city, to partner up when baby showers could use a cameraman, to keep the Mop from yet another loss, to bide the time until Lenka might take me back (my lessons learned… or not). His pep talk did exactly that, and, having paid the bill, I hugged a Trojan leg for letting us spell out our universe through these portals of Prague and pivo.

            “Just a sec, Tols,” I said while pulling out the phone. I wanted to see through the shih tzu but instinct compelled me to press the button for Barrandov. It opened to the Bratislava dude’s inspecting eye, which nearly knocked me down.

            “What up? You alright there, Bogo? Need CPR?”

            When I could find my voice, I stammered, “this can’t be good. Look at his glare—”

            “Who is he, mate? Maybe like the vet?”

            “No, it was the shih tzu who had an appointment with the vet; this is Seamus’ camera—the Irish setter, seemingly held hostage.” As if the dog could hear me, he turned his head to look into the Barrandov living room. The painting on the wall had been returned to its non-tilted position, and the actress was pacing into view. Hard to know the force of grip the man had on the collar, but certainly he wanted to assert control.

            “That’s the actress?” Tolly asked, never having seen her (or the shih tzu mistress, for that matter).

            “Yes. And her new roommate from Bratislava, quicker on the draw than me.”

            “Shit! You sure?”

            “I’ve never seen him before, but… it’s him.” He sported a mustache—much like Kevin Kline in A Fish Called Wanda—and eyebrows that intensified his consternation at what he had discovered (or what’s discovering him). The actress’ visage was smaller for the fact she stood behind him; more than that, she seemed to sink inside herself and wonder where to take the next few minutes, hours, days or more with this self-imposed affliction suddenly in her life. Again, I risked lapsing into presumption, but… this was clearly what I saw.

            “He’s pissed—like how you Americans mean it.”

            “Maybe also in the British sense. I gather he’s an angry drunk, the way I saw that painting—see? on that wall above her head—tilted like an earthquake struck.”

            “And she fancies him? Instead of you?”

            “An old flame, she suggested. And as for my chances with her, well… I haven’t made any… overtures,” I said, cringing at my diction.

            Tolly laughed off my need for such. “You just do you, man—your eyebrows alone are overtures enough!” He mumbled some other shite that would befit a bromance, aware of (and perhaps buoyed by) the fact I wanted no such flattery. I managed to segue the rest of our talk to baby showers and the Mop’s prospects as the corporate face. “We could call it ‘Goldie Showers’,” Tolly gushed, “and—”

            “Are you serious? We’d be getting clients like Trump at a Moscow hotel.”

            Putting it together, Tolly frowned at the lost prospect. “Oh, yeah—good point.”

            The topic was a welcome distraction from the app and espionage. I decided to swing by malvíkCity before my Karlovo clients and touch base with Natálie, if she’d be there. I had nothing in particular to ask or say—nothing to text message (on a phone that I was beginning to fear). I practiced in my head how I could bring up Günter to gauge how she really felt about him—subtly, of course—and then how we could leave him in the rhetorical garbage dump to move on with the showers and, yes, incorporate the Mop, if she thought that idea had wheels.

            So I brought the Washburn and strummed it on the tram, which is rather unheard of behavior (and possibly illegal). Partly, I was just in that kind of mood; more psychologically, I was trying—like a teenager, maybe—to wean from my phone, and the guitar served a suitable fix.  

            No Natálie on duty, and the portly manager didn’t encourage my chance to reacquaint him with the idea. While an endorsement from the store would naturally boost the word-of-mouth aspect of the venture, I’d rather have Natálie on board as a freelancer, anyway. My mind was seeking ways not to sign contracts, show credentials, ‘mainstream’ myself in the legal limbo I was already in.

            With the extra time on my hands, I stepped into St Ignác for its quietude—no mass going on at this hour—and my unapped imagination of the shih tzu mistress’ presence here a quarter turn of the earth ago. A few others were sitting or kneeling in dispersed isolation, maybe worshipping as poorly as I was (probably with better practice). Churches—mosques, temples, the like—should have such open doors, zero prerequisites. Sure, some would fall asleep and, otherwise, not seem religious, but a re-ligamentation of any human being to any sense of the divine shouldn’t have to get another human being’s approval, IMHO.

            I would have loved to dialogue with the shih tzu mistress on this topic, on the atmosphere of St Ignác itself, but that would feel fishy. For that matter, I wouldn’t want any future topic with her to react—even tacitly—to what the app would show from the shih tzu’s perspective. Replace these collars, a voice (maybe mine, maybe an angel’s) beseeched in my head—for all concerned. Not just to prevent discovery. In fact, to discover in mutual transparency. Respect. All that Mr Rogers shouldn’t have to reinforce, God bless him for doing so.

            Instead, when I returned the shih tzu from the communal walk, I fibbed the following way: “do you think Tolliver could, uh, make an adjustment on the collar? Just for the evening…”

            “Huh?” The mistress was preoccupied with something on her laptop, having put an empty tumbler in my hand and pointing to the liquor cabinet to substitute for her further hospitality. “Collar’s great as is—what would he want to change?”

            My face could feel the blush that comes with an emerging lie, so I abdicated with, “forget it—I wasn’t, um, really listening to Tolly when, ah…”

            “You alright, Boris?”

            Of course I wasn’t, and hoped to honor her intuition. “I just, I don’t know,… am preoccupied about my living arrangement, residency visa,… adult stuff.” Truth! The blush was in retreat.

            But, as caring as she was, this wasn’t going to be the time to jockey for actionable change. I left after a fuzzy navel with ice and no further reference to Tolliver or the collar. She had encouraged me to make amends with Lenka (as little as she knew of her), maybe give another kindergarten a shot. She scowled a bit at the ‘Goldie Showers’ idea (which of course I didn’t call it, if almost). Essentially, though, she was distracted by her own day’s work. “Hate to be so glued to the screen sometimes, but… I guess we were raised wrong in that regard.”

            It reminded me that I hadn’t checked Seamus’ camera since the Trojský kůň. What I saw upon the click was beyond heart-attackable: evidently the Bratislava dude had taken off the collar and written this message on a beer coaster tilted against a countertop: ‘fuck of and die’—the actress, I’m sure, would have spelled it correctly. Whether or not she knew or even approved this message was, well, something I was going to have to face.

            The mistress, I think, sensed my buried burden. At the door, she kissed me without asking anything, then, foregoing any eye contact, suggested that maybe tomorrow we could go to Náplavka for a drink, “when I won’t have as much work to do.” I kissed her back.

            While on the way to Barrandov, checking the app only festered things—the message static, like a moray eel waiting in the reef for a clown fish. I wanted to avoid clicking into the shih tzu’s camera, but couldn’t resist. After a few minutes of torpor, the dog waddled toward her mama, who was still laptopping, and sat patiently for the beautiful hand to curl around her ears, jiggling the collar as incidental contact. I smiled for the first time since St Ignác, despite the adder’s nest I was about to enter—or the dove’s nest invaded by an adder.

 

~44~

 

            In the interest of the kid who lives in all of us—impressionable to the shit-show that sometimes comes with adult behavior—I’ll spare you the blow-by-blow of likely the last Barrandov visit I’ll ever have. A precis may suffice, especially if Tolliver is listening (with divided attention, swabbing whatever home-brewed ointment around my blackened eye):

            “This wasn’t his first punch. On opening the door, the actress tried to keep me in the landing of the stairs, as if this semi-public territory would salvage some decorum. But then Seamus barked from the living room, and she dashed to his angst; I followed at more of an amble until bam!—a haymaker chopped me to the floor. The Bratislava dude had been behind the door and now was on top of me, yelling like that drum instructor in Whiplash.”

            “J. K. Simmons? Bald and bulgy-eyed?”

            “Well, he had a sufficient coif. And I didn’t look into his eyes—I was more concerned about his captives. I mean psychologically: Seamus, I’m sure, would not just sit back to let this stranger tear the place apart.”

            “Then why,” Tolliver implored, “didn’t the dog protect you from this shiner?”

            Hmm. I must’ve responded eventually, but in my mind (and keeping still for Tolly’s continued dabs), I crawled through the labyrinth of what any faithful dog must go through on a daily basis: radar the room, discern the friend or foe, react, reflect, react again, defer to… what, exactly? The owner’s voice, yes, but what if the owner isn’t asserting anything? Or even commanding some contrast to the self-evident. ‘Seamus, stay put!’—as if the dog were in the wrong. Why would humans do this to their protectors? And who is supposed to step in as a second line of defense? 

            Evidently not me. The actress didn’t say anything when she traded rooms with the Bratislava dude. She fished the collar from her pocket, though, as I did the old, artificially frayed one from mine. We exchanged them as if captured spies passing on a Cold War bridge, returning to the lands of pre-intrigue.

            I didn’t want to tell Tolliver this—not yet, anyway. I saw that the camera was still in the macrame spike; in fact, the app still showed its working condition as I pointed the collar to my face and, with the other hand, pushed the button on my phone to satellite my image into outer space and back again. The modern ways we mirror ourselves, letting ‘data’ in on the game. But I digress…

            Tolliver would be disappointed that the Barrandov camera was so short-lived. By contrast, I was mostly relieved—I heard the dude in Slovak slur the threat that he’d call the police to deport my ass (when, in fact, he was just as much an alien to this state). I wished the camera could still inform an intervention, but the actress could call me conventionally, if needed. She hadn’t fired me from the daily walks, for that matter, and I’d need to wait for her articulation of where that contract stood—and, if renewed, debate whether to keep it going under the glare of the Bratislava dude.

            So while I’m saying all this shite to you instead of Tolly (no offense to both y’all), I pined for someone else to talk to. Couldn’t be the shih tzu mistress for obvious reasons—the details about the collar cam were too integral to the situation. Couldn’t be Natálie for the sake of business trust, if indeed Goldie Showers had a chance. Couldn’t be Amálka, who’d intellectually see the difference between my innocent spying and the stalking she had escaped from Olomouc, but… God, I’m such an ass!... Couldn’t be Lenka, who warned me after Strahov not to do illegal things. Couldn’t be my nonexistent friends from America, except…

            Maruška. But I couldn’t just call her out of the blue. Time zones, for one—she’d still be on the job, whatever exactly that would be. Lack of invitation, for two—she hadn’t called or messaged me since leaving Prague, cutting it (and me) like an umbilical cord. The thought brought on an instant nausea, and even though Tolliver advised I keep a bag of frozen peas on my face for the evening, I had to take a walk—unleased, as it were. “Want anything from the mini-mart?” I asked as a pretext. Probably Tolly did want something, but forlornly shook his head and waved his practiced paw. With his other he fondled the love-in-Tokyo atop the Mop’s head; probably, the dog also disapproved of my going out in my condition.

            On route to Na Slamníku, I practiced how the texting might unfold:

                        Ahoj, Maru. Jak se máš?

                                                                                    Jakž takž. A ty?

                        Well, got beat up again.

                                                                                    Kampa?

                        No, Barrandov.

                                                                                    Why?

The telegramming wouldn’t suffice.

                        Can I call you?

The silently drumming dots would already indicate an answer.

                                                                                    No.

So I wouldn’t supply my own dots.

                                                                                    The reason I haven’t texted

                        Is because?

                                                                                    The reason I haven’t texted

In other words, Boris, don’t ask. Still,

                        At least he didn’t smash my new guitar.

with a toothy emoji.

            And maybe, by Na Slamníku, this was the real exchange, unrehearsed. I haven’t decided everything to tell, or to what measure of verity. What you can believe is that I was missing Maruška ineffably.

            I thought I’d bring that feeling into the fresh and sulking suds of Úněticka, but to my astonishment I saw Jiří sitting a couple tables down, enjoying the company of his peers. He lifted his eyes before I could decide to catch his attention, and in a smooth movement came over to the spot I had just claimed. We spoke in Czech and, beyond the volley of what-are-you-doing-here, we kind of caught up. Twice I reminded him that he had abandoned his buddies and our little visit could recommence in Ořech in the near future, but he gestured a nevadí.

            “They’ll stay until closing time, with more volume of words and less to say.”

            “Must be nice.”

            “Oh, you know. Permission to drink. Not setting the world on fire. Having a witness to vouch for your whereabouts. Where’s yours, by the way?”

            “My… witness?”

            “Drinking buddy. Or holka—Lenka, is it?”

            I’m pretty sure he’d have remembered her name, beers in his system or not. I nodded my head that he was right, then told him the truth: “we broke up—even before I last saw you.”

            “That so? I’m sorry. She was… nice.”

            “Yeah, I’m sorry, too. I liked what you said about teaching a grandkid to fish… and, I guess, I wanted to believe that Lenka and I could get back together.”

            “More fish in the sea, as they say.”

            I didn’t want to agree, but did anyway. I started to contextualize my new living arrangement, and by chance Tolly rang me in some worry—the mini-mart equating to a 7-minute trip, tops. Jiří looked self-conscious in his effort not to eavesdrop on the muffled male voice and swung to skulk back to his table. I wouldn’t have minded if he had done so, but the fact is, Tolly had hung up after his “no worries, mate,” maybe guessing that I needed a little more ‘me’ time.

            And maybe Jiří wished for the same. He spoke about Amálka and their ongoing chagrin—“love having her back home, but… it’s not what she wanted, ’least as far as me ’n Helena can tell.”

            I wouldn’t betray what Amálka had confided while we were in that maringotka, waiting out the rain. It wouldn’t be a breach to say she liked the butterfly work, so I did utter that, wagging my head at Jiří’s yeah, not enough. “It’s like my friend Maruška who left for New York, hoping for a ‘grass is greener’ type of thing.”

            “Isn’t it? And is that another fish that got away?”

            “No and yes—in that order.”

            We talked another tankard through before returning to the evening’s original plan. And if you believe I really encountered Jiří by such dumb luck, well, I guess you can take to heart everything else. I know I have to, at least once in a while.

 

~45~

             A couple days passed, bez Barrandova (that is, without the drama there; also a pretty good title for a Czech film, one may imagine). I made my modest rounds and traded the Barrandov time for reading and guitar—sometimes both together. Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, for instance, does that trick and opened up some conversation at Kampa, which didn’t have the group including Grizzly Guy but other passers-by, charmed by the guessing game of other songs to inspire belles lettres. 

            You’d be good at this, too, I’m sure: the tinkling of A major on the fourteenth fret sliding to F on the tenth, then E and C sharp, then the tinniest voice you can muster: “Out of the wily, windy moors we’d roll and”—right! Wuthering Heights. Or—switch gears: beat a sluggish C sharp into a pliant G sharp into grinding F sharp to a resolving E, then groove your voice to the “shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather” and… (more wait time? not your scene?)… Venus in Furs. Thought that’d be easy. Then this one you’ll get: fiddle around with A minors from the eighth fret up, as mandolin-like as possible; words can come in leisurely… “the Queen of Light took her bow and then she turned to go”—not exactly Tolkien’s title, but indeed—The Battle for Evermore. Yeesh, Boris! Do you have anything from this century? Well, sure, but you wouldn’t probably be familiar with Elephanz’ version of The Catcher in the Rye. Here’s my uninspired cover….

            I needed Kampa these days, beyond the short nostalgia of Lennon’s Wall and Maru’s kiss. The weather being perfect, everyone should spend an extra hour or two outside (and in winks and shoulder slides, I tried to get the shih tzu mistress to broach again her Náplavka notion; my gestures, however, fell on deaf ears). I wasn’t going to belittle her predilection for the confines of her apartment, but hoped she’d want a friend, occasionally, to amble toward Ignác, or even—like the Barrandov actress liked to do—walk the dog together, family-like.

            At an early age, I was bluntly told to ‘read the room’. My parents were hosting a dinner party that, for whatever reason, rankled me as much or more than I rankled it—snarky six-year-old at odds against the world. Given warnings, a conventional time-out, I was eventually ear-pinched to my room by one parent (won’t say which) to remove my ill effect and then visited by the other (don’t have to ‘won’t say which’) with a fraction of the supper I had missed. “You have to read the room, Boris,” was the greater thing to masticate; novice reader of The Berenstain Bears, I didn’t understand the idiom. How does one peruse a room?

            A couple decades later, I haven’t learned much. A room can just as likely be a womb or tomb—empty, peopled, blessed by a monk, cursed by a prisoner—cells that may not care about what they contain. Indeed, I need a basic cell to keep me in this country, or else I’d have to face Chicago and my childhood again (neither hell nor purgatory, but also not their opposites).

            I decided I’d come to Karlovo with a house gift in hand—“something to brighten the room,” I’d say, but then retract insofar as “brightness is already and always in your eyes,” to which the mistress would flex her upper lip in disapproval and, maybe, kiss me anyway. As you know, I don’t have much money or instincts for interior design; flowers would be too forward and—even worse—temporal for my purposes. A book like the Tokarczuk I failed to give Maruška?… No. Not yet, anyway.

             Something like the lantern of an angler fish lured me to a pet store that still sold water turtles (still illegal) and a bunch of species that had no good reason to be in a home, if indeed scorpions liked the nooks of pantries and closets and shoes. Don’t worry—I had no intention of getting her a creepy crawler. But a canary in a cage about the size of, well, a canary cage caught my eye. “Do you have another?” I asked the single worker in this store, and he said he’d have to look in the storage room, as if creatures there were not on his feeding or cleaning rotations. He returned a minute later with a box that he opened against the sliding door of the cage. “Have to see if these will get along,” he said in Czech, “because…” He trailed off, the logic being obvious.

            As I made the purchase, he asserted that new birds usually do better in boxes going from the pet store to a new home; as a compromise—I had the Washburn and limited carrying capacity—we rigged up a cage cover out of an empty bag of dogfood so as to not spook the canaries (or get them in the mood of going to the coal mine). I bought some seeds, of course, and a few trinkets to entertain them from their perch.

            “Boris, what the hell?” the shih tzu mistress expressed in expected surprise. I gave her my rehearsed ‘brighten up the room to match your brightened eyes’, which she ignored as drivel. She set the cage upon the living room table and watched them jitter on their perch, adjusting to the relative light of the usually dimmed apartment. “Not that I’m going to accept this—or these—but… why did you think I would?”

            “Just, I don’t know,” I replied with easy sincerity, “the world is often bleak, but a bit of nature every day is a welcome antidote.”

            “You wanted to say, “the outer world, didn’t you? Like I don’t get outside to feed the pigeons or smell the roses or any other crap.”

            I tried to calculate a response but came up with nothing more than “maybe.”

            “Well maybe I’ll set these wild things free, because I’m not here to recruit anyone to my inner world.”

            “They know no other reality than the pet store. They’re not like indigenous to this climactic zone.”

            “Not like sykorky? Those ‘tits’ I think you call them?”

            “I know dog breeds, not so much the names of birds.” Then, to assure her this wasn’t meant to send the wrong message, “I can take them to Tolliver if you really don’t want them.”

            “Why, is he also nature-deprived?”

            “Well… I know he’ll be lonelier when I move out.”

            She had heard this general plan before, but now I think she was figuring out my tacit desire to move in with her. I could only speculate, however—to ask overtly would risk the door being shut or even slammed (the birds an awful way to attempt leverage). Since I had to walk the dogs by now, we didn’t discuss anything more than how to feed the creatures, whether they’d live here or with Tolly. In other words, she promised not to open her window to coax them to escape.

            The shih tzu had been patient through this sudden, subtle invasion. I wanted to see how she would perceive the creatures so, when her mistress was answering some beep on her computer, I tapped my app to the only remaining camera (having deleted the one to scope Barrandov). The view from on my phone was not really revealing, of course—the shih tzu wasn’t tall enough to look into the cage, let alone the black beads of the creatures’ eyes. But still, imagination ran rampant from the realms of aves, canine, human and superhuman (if technology can be so termed). The birds began to sing a bit, and though I’d be a little late to the other four clients in the neighborhood, I decided to take out the Washburn and strum to try to match their ditty.

            The mistress returned to push me along—“they’ll wait for your kum-ba-ya, but the dogs won’t wait to take their afternoon shits, if I can be so blunt.”

            “You can,” I laughed, then waved at the canaries. “Behave, you two!”

            “Three, with me,” the mistress said, and playfully pushed me out the door.

            The walk was ebullient, like a birthday party for kindergarteners on and off their figurative leashes—I, their Ronald McDonald host for the faithful enthusiasm to traverse the same routes around Karlovo náměstí. I wanted to drag the moment out—no Barrandov appointment to factor anymore—but also felt anxious to get back to the canaries, the mistress they’d also be smitten by, the beauty that never needed cosmetics, the vlogging that voiced that same sentiment (if also celebrating what cosmetics could do). I’d wait a few days before asking if I could move in—not to presume she’d affirm, but to hope that the canaries weren’t some kind of cynical ploy.

            Consistent to routine, I dropped all the other dogs off first. Then bounding the steps to an open door, I entered with immediate confusion. Her face showed the marks of a sustained cry as she held up the phone I only now recognized as my own. Because the app was still on, she didn’t need to password the thing. I tried to utter something coherent: an apology (not at all in the Greek sense), a confession of love, head over heels and blind as if dazzled by an eclipse.

            But she wasn’t buying it, and after her leveled ‘let me get this straight’, the proverbial shih tzu hit the fan….

~46~

 

            Keeping it real, I had to consult with what Lincoln approximated as ‘the better angels of our nature’, when in fact my own part of our could not pass anybody’s smell test. All respect for Tolliver, I could not tolerate (to play upon his name) the easy pats he’d allocate my back, the ‘you’re a good man, Charlie Brown’ kind of platitudes that suck, in every sense of the term.

            I went instead to Ořech, unannounced, to read the room of my relatives—how

Jiří, Helena, or Amálka might understand my situation. I wasn’t going to outright ask for help; family ties, naturally, would facilitate a residence visa, but then they’d be responsible for me. And why would anyone want to babysit a twenty-seven-year-old grifter? While the Barrandov actress delivered me the evidence of my crime, the shih tzu mistress decidedly kept the goth collar and almost even my phone. I could be arrested upon my very registration of an Ořech address, and more—my relatives could be suspected of collaboration.

            But I had to give some reason for my presence. “I miss Lenka,” I asserted honestly, “and I’m kind of lost without her.”

            Helena stopped cutting a roll of knedlíky to fetch another from the freezer. A second jar of sauerkraut joined it from the pantry. “Want me to call her, invite her for dinner? I could even lie about your presence—make it a surprise.”

            Jiří nodded at the idea. “I could drive her here.”

            “No,” Amálka answered on my behalf. “Not tonight, anyway. Let’s let Boris pace things out. Unless,” she turned to me, “that is what you’d want.”

            I couldn’t say what I’d want. I grimaced for a moment and shrugged to change the subject. “How are the butterflies?”

            “The butterflies?” She did a double-take. “They’ve disappeared. Too late in the season.”

            “Oh. Do they migrate? Are they enjoying Italy by now?”

            “No, they stay here. Go into diapause.”

            “Diapause?”

            “Sort of like hibernation. Maybe some are clinging to the ceiling of the maringotka, comatose, if you wanna come with me to check.”

            The afternoon was gilded to combat my gloom, and while she didn’t have duties—sheep, goats, cows having had their fodder—she had it in mind to return for a book she left out upon a fence pole, vulnerable to the forecast of midnight rain.

            “What book?” I asked as we walked the two kilometers to the pastvina.

            “Slepota.”

            “Blindness? by… oh my gosh, I’m forgetting—and I’ve wanted to read it to compare with the movie.”

            “Saramago wrote it, and I didn’t see the movie. But I think it would be pretty hard to pull off—the narration going into all these idioms and adages. In Portuguese, originally; the Czech translation adds its own color—or grayness, as it were.”

            “From what I remember, the contagion is a ‘white’ blindness.” I closed my eyes to imagine. “Like looking into the sun or something?”

            “The sun doesn’t feature much, as far as I’ve read. The group just got out of a mental ward for their quarantine, and now they’re groping their way through a rainstorm. Maybe like a Noah’s ark type of thing, if a rainbow is on the horizon.”

            “You’re hoping for a happy ending…”

            “Naturally,” she said, “and of course you won’t spoil it.”

            “Of course,” I smiled. “I couldn’t spoil what I haven’t really read.”

            We stopped to inspect the goats—larger and less rotund than what you’d see at petting zoos, because, as Amálka pointed out, they roamed a greater range and ate better than the arbitrary pellets people would palm for their own gratification. We walked further to the smaller sheep and the book balancing faithfully on their perimeter. “Saramago is a good shepherd,” Amálka imagined out loud.

            “Isn’t that Jesus’ claim?”

            “Anybody who owns it, I suppose. Isn’t that the point of Jesus?”

            “Someone said his point was to ‘save us from ourselves’… like we become our own worst enemy.” I blushed at my attempt to keep this theoretical, unable to extricate the evil I’d done to the shih tzu mistress.

             Amálka didn’t respond, busying herself with an adjustment on the electric fencing. She gestured to the book as a way of encouraging me to browse to bide the time. I kept a finger in the page that already had its face-down strain on the book’s spine, then flipped ahead to see if the movie’s end did fealty to the novel. A part about the eyes being merely lenses to the brain’s way of seeing—this translated into Czech—made me wonder about the lids and squints of dendrites, what the brain was ‘looking for’, from pink elephants to prescription medicine.

            At the maringotka, we found no butterflies in diapause—it would have to happen after a first frost, even after Babí léto, when the tuck of autumn would be tangible. Amálka fired up the little stove for some tea, but more to broach the real reason I had come to visit. “It’s not Lenka,” she guessed, “if you pardon my presumption.”

            I nodded. “Pardon is for others to grant, not me.”

            “Why?”

            “I’m bad beyond your knowing, cousin, especially in the trust department.”

            “What do you mean?”

            And I described the whole thing, occasionally in reverse order. The Bratislava dude, for instance, came before the night that Seamus had escaped Ořech. The beauty vlogger’s isolation came after the glimpse inside St Ignác. Nigel’s role seemed more important to relay than Tolly’s macrame. Throughout my narrative/confession (I wasn’t sure which), Amálka asked questions and made observations, like this one: the notion that the actress and vlogger built their professions in front of a camera didn’t justify what I was doing, of course, but certainly added a twist.

            But mainly I just rambled on, neglecting to factor in Amálka’s own trauma at Olomouc. When that connection finally dawned, I slapped my forehead: “fuck! I’m as horrible as any stalker—you should order me to Olomouc to kill him before I kill myself…, seriously!”

            She broke off eye contact, which had been sympathetic all this while. At last, she said, “you will not kill anybody, Boris. You will write up everything as a cautionary tale—cautionary to everyone, no ranking of sinners and saints. You’ll go to the crossroads, like Sonya compels Raskolnikov, and fall on your knees, and whatever else happens in that book…”

            “Crime and Punishment?”

            “I had to read it for Maturita. Forgot exactly how it ended.”

            “In Siberia.”

            “Well, don’t go there,” she decided to laugh, despite her consequent curse of Putin. She refreshed her tea and mine to encourage another half hour here, as dark as the path back to Ořech would be by then. “And—” kicking my shin far too lightly for punishment, “your situation is way different than the professor’s.”

            “Worse to worst—no moral relativism should make one better than the other.”

            “He was looking to rape—the motive already makes it so—and, if my instincts about you aren’t wrong, you did not intend to abuse these women.”

            “Abuse, no. But I was exploiting their privacy with a hope to gain my own advantage.”

            “Sex? or a residency visa?”
            “Yes,” I wavered, “but consensually. I mean, heart of hearts, I’m not a sneak…”

            “Spying so as not to sneak? You’re rather rich, Boris.”

            “I care for them both…. But I guess abusers could make the same claim.”

            She stiffened her face, maybe as a message not to speculate on what Olomouc might claim. I wouldn’t do so, anyway—motives of the Darth Vaders of this world don’t interest me much. Instead, I wanted to return to her thought on writing up narrative accounts—cautionary tales, math proofs, butterfly behavior, the adventures of Bedlam and Swarm—with or without a veritable audience to peruse and critique. 

            Not that either of us felt we had to fill any stretch of silence, my phone rang as if seizing the moment. Tolliver, again, keeping me on his tether. I won’t relay the ‘hey-ho, mate, where you hiding’ line of nagging you can imagine. I told him the truth, though, that I was on a butterfly excursion and—assuring my cousin as much as him—I’d be coming home soon (if that’s what Tolly’s apartment could remain for the short haul). I knew, upon hanging up, that Amálka would encourage my option of the guest room over Jiří’s boozy willingness to drive me back into the city; she indeed extended that hospitality, then acceded that the ancient Greek intension of ‘parasite’—a positive host/guest relationship—didn’t resonate naturally in Czech culture. And the last thing I wanted was to be a parasite in the modern sense of the term. I’d take my chances in the Trabant.

            We walked through the dusk by the light of her phone, as my battery was low. Not low enough, however, to see a final prong to the context of my problem: she asked if she could see how the app really worked (whether it really felt like a baby-cam, or…). I was apprehensive to check for myself, wanting the awful enterprise to be over, but mechanically I clicked open my dual-cam account—Barrandov disabled, Karlovo still active. I pushed the only one available and braced for the reveal. While the frame from the rest of the app glowed angel-white, the view was precisely that of Malevich’s square, black like the inside of a coffin. Sure, the shih tzu could have been sleeping with the camera spike pressed against the bedding; more likely, her mistress had taken off the collar and tossed it into a drawer. Something like putting electrical tape over the camera of a laptop (which, as host of many livestreams and vlog instalments, she would rarely—if ever—do).

            “Hmm,” reacted Amálka, perhaps relieved for the lack of any remote complicity.

            “Yeah, it’s strange,” I concurred. “A view to some afterlife.”

            She demurred. “That sounds too creepy.”

            Which I didn’t intend. I turned it off and we walked in silence for several minutes. My mind went back to that parasitical design—symbiotic or otherwise. Camus wrote a lot to obfuscate such stuff. Sisyphus and simpletons, we often find ourselves, vying for relief.

 

~47~

            The next day (after Gregor Samsa dreams) I showed up to Karlovo náměstí to honor the four other contracts, hopeless about the one that really mattered. When I rang the shih tzu’s bell—rehearsing my hundredth apology (giving a damn how Greek or not)—the lack of any response didn’t surprise me. I wouldn’t open the door to me, either.

            After dutifully returning the basset, elkhound, et al, I was tempted to try the app one last time—you would be right to say that sounds like the bargaining logic of an alcoholic. But just as my thumb was hovering over my menu of apps, a message pinged. To preserve my own privacy, I shouldn’t say who it was, but….

            It was blurring fast in a lachrymose fear of losing sudden joy. Not that the phrasing intimated that I should feel joy: ‘At Náplavka now with dog’—then followed by another ping: ‘As if you haven’t seen’.

            ‘No!’ I messaged back, ‘I’m cancelling that app forever’ (the participle made me pause—wouldn’t ‘cancelled’ sound better, as if I already had done so? But to the truth, Boris! This is an effing process, after all). Then, ‘Can I join you?’

            The three dots drummed the wisdom or lack thereof. I started walking there on faith, promising to turn away if a response told me to. On the other hand, I pocketed the damn phone and let my arms swing free to match the near jog of my strides.

            She had found a bench that had an unhindered view of the river—some were obscured by anchored barges—and the company of swans expecting something from her empty hands. The shih tzu was leashed to the southern leg of the bench, and both looked toward the iron bridge and (by coincidence, I’d guess) the distant bluff that supported the Barrandov neighborhood. 

            “Didn’t they have any?” she asked after my shy hello.

            “Any what?”

            “Frankovka—boxed. At the mini-mart.”

            “I didn’t…”

            “—have fifty crowns?” She patted the north side of the bench for me to sit down.

            “I didn’t check my phone.” I went around the bench to greet the dog (still a gleeful goth) before taking a seat. “If you can believe that.” I took out the flat brick and saw indeed her request for red wine.

            “Nevadí,” she mumbled in the same way Maruška had, all those eons ago. “Just means we’ll have to do this sober. And in the public eye.”

             ‘Do what?’ I’m sure my eyebrows indicated; instead, I uttered half-phrases like, “good pick this time of day” and “you look lovely” and “how are—”

            “—the canaries? Annoying. They don’t shut up.” There wasn’t a sarcastic hint in her voice, so I frowned my regret at having given them to her. “But perhaps little collars would help—giving an electric jolt when the decibels get too much. Do you think your, um, guyfriend can macrame a couple of those?”

            Now I had to smile. “Tolly is… my friend and, for the record, he never looked at, well, your camera.”

            “My camera? Couldn’t be further from the truth! And do you mean there were others? Boris?”

             I started from the day I got kicked out of kindergarten—“I mean teaching the thing, not as a 5-year-old…”

            She elbowed me non-flirtatiously. “You’ve got about four minutes to explain yourself. Gold stars in kindergarten aren’t going to score you any points now.”

            “Believe me, I earned no stars at all as a teacher here. My work permit expired, cash dried up—forcing me to walk dogs and busk for unofficial income, and then when Lenka booted me out,”

            “—wait: you couldn’t get another legit job? Here in English-crazy Prague?”

            “My CV is an empty wreck. Getting fired doesn’t grease the rails to something else. Besides, what else can I be, anyway—a carpenter?”

            “Oh yeah—Jesus Christ Superstar. Updated to today’s voyeuristic world. You could busk a whole new overture,” she sniped, “a cover of ‘Every Breath You Take’!”

             I fought back a frown. Jesus Christ Superstar. That musical, for whatever reason in a country of many atheists, has had the longest run of any shows in Výstaviště, Prague’s exhibition grounds. I still hadn’t seen it, so chanced a request to go with her, which spurred a ‘you’re not forgiven yet’ from her glowering, gorgeous irises.

            And frankly, I did not desire forgiveness—or a ‘pardon’, more to the point. I wanted here to be as happy as I think she was before the Karlovo walks ever began. I could disappear like Maru did—no harm, no foul, no fear of being followed. For that matter, good kindergarten teachers (not me, but the Mr Rogers types) also disappear. We’re all about as temporal as caged canaries, and when one escapes or passes on, the other must be pretty devastated.

            She tapped my jittering knee with the difference of gentleness. “So what have you learned, Boris?” I churned some artifice in my mind to make a clever reply, but she balked at that. “No, really,” she insisted, with whispered decibels, “what have you learned?”

~the end~

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken

(September 19, 2021-

September 19, 2022)

dedicated to

Joshua Paul Vold Lamken,

sharing the novel’s birthday