The Mad and the MacAbre (10 page)

Patti bit her lip and said nothing.

"Throat or heart? Come on. It's not that
difficult of a decision."

Her voice became frantic. "I have a place
where you can stay. My parents own a cabin. Nobody will find you
there. I'll take you there right now if you let me go. I'll never
tell. I swear."

Charlie shook his head. "That won't work.
It's better than the threat, but it won't work. Heart or throat?
You can also think of it as slice or stab. Which do you want?"

"I--I don't..." Tears began to stream down
the sides of her face. "Which one hurts less?"

"I don't know. I think heart."

"Please don't kill me."

"We'll do heart."

Charlie raised the knife over Patti's chest.
Kutter began to whimper.

"What's wrong?" Charlie asked. The dog
continued to whine, clearly distressed.

What was wrong seemed pretty obvious: Kutter
didn't want him to stab her.

Great.

"It's okay, boy," Charlie assured him. "You
don't have to be scared."

He set the knife down on the table. Wow. He
never would've expected to interrupt killing his prey to avoid
traumatizing a dog.

"Kutter, upstairs. Come on." He whistled and
started up the stairs himself. Kutter didn't follow. Halfway up,
Charlie clapped his hands and whistled again. "Come on, boy!"

He spent another full minute trying to coax
the dog onto the stairs, then gave up and just picked Kutter up.
"It'll be fine," he said in a soothing voice. "Nothing bad's going
to happen to you." Kutter continued to whine as he carried him
upstairs into the kitchen. He closed the door behind them and set
Kutter on the floor. Kutter immediately started to scratch on the
basement door.

"Stop it," Charlie said. "You know better
than that."

Charlie decided that he might as well clean
up Kutter's mess before tending to the problem downstairs. Stupid
pukey dog. "It's not too late to take you to the animal shelter,"
Charlie said, even though he was considering no such thing.

By the time Charlie finished cleaning up the
couch, Kutter had fallen asleep on the floor and was snoring
softly. It felt weird to be sneaking around in his own house, but
Charlie crept into the kitchen and slowly opened the basement door.
He shut it behind him as he went down the stairs.

He walked over to the table and sighed with
frustration.

And then he slid the blade across Patti's
throat, receiving no pleasure from the sight of her gushing
blood.

- 10 -

The next evening, a policeman showed up at
his door. Charlie told him that a girl had indeed tried to sell him
a magazine subscription, and that he felt bad turning her down, but
that he couldn't bring himself to do anything that might encourage
further door-to-door solicitation. The officer seemed satisfied
with his response, gave Charlie his card, and asked him to call if
he thought of anything else that might be helpful. Charlie promised
him that he would.

* * *

"So are you coming?" Alicia asked, as
Charlie shut down his computer.

He'd decided that he wasn't. She'd only
asked him to join them as a way to be nice about turning down his
request for a date--not even a date, coffee as friends--and he
didn't particularly like the other people he worked with. He knew
their names and whether or not they had kids (mostly because they
talked about it so loudly in the aisles) but not much else, and
wasn't interested in knowing more.

"Nah."

"You really should."

"Okay, I'll go," he heard himself say.

"Great!"

Oh well. No big deal. He'd survive this.
Worst-case scenario, he'd have a miserable hour or so, and then
he'd go home and spend some quality time with Kutter. Wednesdays
were now Frisbee night--he'd stop at the toy store on the way home
and get the nicest plastic Frisbee they had.

* * *

Five of them sat around the table in the
restaurant. Mike, Gary, and Jessica had all expressed surprise that
Charlie was coming with them, and it looked like Jessica had
purposely picked a seat where she wouldn't be next to him, yet they
were all reasonably pleasant. Everybody ordered alcoholic beverages
except Charlie--Gary had pushed for him to get a beer, but Charlie
needed to remain in full control of his mental state. He'd never
been drunk, and could see no positive outcome to having too much to
drink and accidentally blurting out something like "Say, were you
aware that during my non-working hours I slaughter innocent
women?"

They started by talking about tedious
job-related stuff that Charlie had no interest in. He didn't care
about the whispered rumors about possible mergers or layoffs in
other departments or suspected affairs between bosses and their
administrative assistants. Charlie did his own job as well as he
possibly could, and expected others around him to do their jobs
correctly, but outside of his area, he didn't much care what was
happening. None of this conversation affected him personally or
professionally. What a waste of time that he could be using to
choose the perfect color of Frisbee. His thought was blue, if they
had it, though dark green might also work.

"So, Charlie," said Alicia. "Tell everybody
about your new dog."

Charlie's stomach clenched up. He hated
being the center of attention, even in a small group. "Kutter," he
said.

"What kind of dog is it?" Mike asked.

"Boston terrier."

"Oh, I love those!" said Jessica. "Those
cute little faces. You didn't get him from a puppy mill, did
you?"

"No."

"Charlie found him under a park bench, badly
hurt," said Alicia.

"Not badly hurt."

"I thought you said he was hurt."

"He just had some scratches. But he was
freezing to death, I think."

"So you saved his life."

"I think so. Yeah."

"I had no idea you were a heroic
puppy-saver," said Mike. Charlie couldn't tell if he was being
sarcastic or not. Then Mike smiled, and Charlie decided that he
wasn't.

"He isn't a puppy," Charlie explained.

Charlie noticed Jessica rolling her eyes. He
was screwing this up. He never should've agreed to this
torture.

"I just meant that if he was a puppy I
probably wouldn't have been able to save him. It's good that he had
grown up."

Charlie wasn't sure if that explanation
helped things or not.

"Why the name Kutter?" asked Gary.

"It's my grandfather's name," Charlie lied,
as he'd planned in case anybody ever asked him.

"Kutter Stanlon?"

"Yes."

"That's a pretty bad-ass name."

"Thanks." Charlie took a long drink of his
Cherry Coke, and then checked his watch. Alicia kicked him gently
under the table. He thought he'd been more subtle.

"Do you have a picture?" asked Alicia.

"Not with me." Charlie did have to admit to
himself that he appreciated the way Alicia was trying to keep him
involved in the conversation. Yeah, he'd rather be at home, but all
things considered, this really wasn't so bad. If nothing else, this
place knew how to make a good Cherry Coke--he hated the weak ones.
He couldn't see himself joining his co-workers every single
week...but perhaps once a month, just to be nice.

Maybe he'd try something new. Something he
couldn't remember ever having tried before in his adult life. Maybe
he'd ask somebody about themselves without any motive except to
hear the answer.

"Do any of you own dogs?" he asked.

Mike owned a golden retriever named Zak who
carried around a teddy bear, and a parakeet named Twitter who said
three different phrases in German. Gary was allergic to dogs but
owned goldfish, which he flushed and replaced on a regular basis so
as not to disturb his daughter, who tended to overfeed them.
Jessica desperately wanted a puppy, something that would stay
small, but her apartment complex didn't allow pets. And Alicia had
three cats, Wilson, Puffs, and Jagged Edge, each named by one of
her children. Charlie hadn't known that she had children.

Three kids. Wow. Charlie had never expected
to love a dog, but the idea of having a girlfriend with three kids
was almost inconceivable. He was really glad that she'd declined
his offer for coffee. He smiled to himself, thinking that this had
been a productive social outing after all.

They stayed for another hour, with Charlie
successfully carrying his fifth of the conversational load. Gary
was the first to excuse himself, and everybody else simultaneously
agreed that it was time to head home.

"Did you enjoy yourself?" Alicia asked, as
they walked out of the restaurant and headed for their
vehicles.

"Yeah," said Charlie, surprised that he
didn't have to lie.

"Join us next week?"

"I might."

She didn't give him a kiss or a hug or any
of the things that Charlie would've originally considered the only
possible benefit from going out with the group--just a friendly pat
on the arm. And Charlie was fine with that.

* * *

He picked out three Frisbees: a light blue
one, a dark blue one, and a glow-in-the-dark green one. That way
he'd have extras if any of them got lost or Kutter chewed them up
to the point where it impacted their aerodynamics. When he got
home, he let Kutter out of the basement, put on his leash, and ran
with him to the park, at least for the first couple of blocks,
after which Charlie walked fast while Kutter tugged on his leash
and stopped occasionally to smell things.

The glow-in-the-dark Frisbee didn't glow
worth crap, but Kutter was still able to catch it. Charlie tried to
keep track of how many times he threw the Frisbees, until he lost
count around twenty-eight and decided that it didn't really matter.
This time, Charlie was amused to find that Kutter ran out of energy
before him, although to be fair, Kutter was doing the vast majority
of the running.

* * *

As Charlie lay in bed, with Kutter asleep at
his feet, he suddenly realized that he'd forgotten to worry about
the police returning based on new evidence against him. Odds were,
he'd gotten away with his impulse kill. Though he never planned to
do anything even remotely that reckless again, it was kind of nice
to know that even when he had a huge lapse in his better judgment,
he could evade arrest.

He got a great night's sleep, and dreamt
about working in a dog biscuit factory.

* * *

The next evening, it was finally time for
their steak dinner celebration. Charlie dragged his rarely used
grill out into his backyard, applied a generous helping of lighter
fluid because he enjoyed the whoosh of the fireball, and tossed a
match onto the pile of charcoal. When the coals were ready, he
brought out two thick New York strip steaks and tossed them on the
grill. He liked his steaks medium rare. In the cartoons, dogs
always ate raw steaks, but Charlie didn't want to risk Kutter
getting worms, so he cooked the dog's steak medium rare as
well.

Kutter whined and twitched and licked his
chops over and over as Charlie cut his steak into small pieces.
"Chill out," Charlie told him. "I don't want you to choke."

The dog, clearly unconcerned with the
potential choking hazard, let out an impatient bark.

Charlie set Kutter's bowl on the floor,
watching as the dog proceeded to gobble the steak down so quickly
that it might as well have been a bowl of Alpo, considering how
little time the food spent in contact with Kutter's tongue. Charlie
elected to savor his own meal in a much more leisurely manner, and
also enjoyed a side dish of a fully loaded baked potato. Because he
was in a really good mood, and it was a celebration dinner, Charlie
gave Kutter the last third of his steak.

* * *

"Shake! Come on, buddy, shake! Shake
hands!"

Kutter never resisted when he shook his paw
manually, but Charlie could never get the dog to put up his paw on
his own.

"Shake hands, Kutter! Shake!"

He took Kutter's paw and shook it again, to
demonstrate what the dog was supposed to do. "Shake," he said,
looking into the dog's eyes. "This is called shake."

He let go of Kutter's paw, but kept his hand
out. "Shake, Kutter! Shake!"

Kutter preferred face licking over paw
shaking as a means of greeting, but Charlie refused to give up. He
didn't expect the dog to leap through flaming hoops (although that
would be pretty cool) but sometime before the end of this year
Kutter was going to learn how to shake!

"Shake, Kutter! Shake! Shake!"

Kutter lifted his paw. Charlie grabbed it
and shook it. "Good dog! Good doggie!"

Next up: Rolling over.

* * *

Charlie found himself speaking to Mike,
Gary, and Jessica about non-work-related matters. Only brief,
trivial conversations about pets, television shows, and prior
night's meals, yet he enjoyed the contact. The next Wednesday, he
went along for drinks, even though Alicia couldn't go because of a
prior engagement. They talked about their favorite movies, and
Charlie made a list of things he needed to rent on DVD.

* * *

A month later, Alicia announced that she was
engaged. Charlie wished her the best, and meant it. Then he joined
his co-workers in speculating about whether or not the ridiculously
short time frame between meeting the guy and agreeing to marry him
was somehow related to an unexpected pregnancy.

When she brought him to their next
gathering, Charlie decided that no, they were simply in love.

* * *

On a lark, Charlie entered Kutter in a small
local dog show. They were eliminated in the first round, though at
least Charlie was pretty sure that their scores were better than
the bulldog that took a dump in front of the judges. They didn't
get a trophy, but Charlie gave Kutter lots of treats.