Could a dog with lots of bills leave Paris altogether and go back where she came from—back to the place Frida did remember, but not well, where there were plenty of trees and huge fields to run in, where there were pheasants and geese and partridge and deer, animals that were beautiful and inspiring and difficult to stalk? She hadn’t stalked any of them, because she was only a puppy, but her mother, and then the other dogs she knew as she got older, had talked all the time about ways to approach, how to go undetected, avoiding anything that would make a noise, like a fallen leaf or a twig. And then Jacques had taken her away (had he bought her or stolen her? She never knew) and brought her to Paris. With lots of bills, could she pay her way on the train and get back to a place like that, as Jacques had? A year ago, she and Jacques had taken the train to a city called Lyon, where Jacques had left her in a room alone almost all day and had also put his guitar away. Yes, they had had a bed to sleep in, but in the end, sleeping in a bed didn’t make up for those tight four walls that made both of them nervous. They had taken the train back, and even though the leaves were off the trees and the puddles were hard and cold, they had been quite happy when they returned. And they had made a lot of money, too—Jacques had had her sit in front of the dish without her wool coat on, and the shivering had upset the ladies passing by in their fur coats, and soon they’d have a pile of coins in the dish. It might be nice to go to a place where she didn’t have to pretend all day and all night that she had a right to be there when most of the humans she saw all around her did not think that she did have that right. But she had to admit to herself that she didn’t know how she would do that, even with lots of money.
* * *
PARAS UNDERSTOOD perfectly well that Frida was a dog. Dogs had their uses. Delphine had a dog in the stable yard—a small, bright, spotted dog named Assassin, a Jack Russell terrier, who spent all night and most of the day hunting rats, although she was willing to chase a ball and give the rats a rest around suppertime. Assassin and Paras had discussed the rats from time to time. Paras didn’t mind rats, and neither did most of the other horses. You always knew when a rat was around—they made a lot of noise and had a distinct odor, and if they ate a few morsels of grain or bits of hay, well, it wasn’t much, in the end. Assassin did not personally hate rats, either. But, as she explained to Paras, there was something about the way they moved—low and quick along the floor and then into a hole!—that just drew her like a magnet. She was good at rat killing, and the pleasure of the game had only increased of late, because, as she killed off more and more rats, the ones she hadn’t killed got to be the smart, fast ones. Whereas she had formerly gotten a rat every couple of days, now she was down to a rat a week, and more avid than ever. Assassin had a busier life than Paras did around the barn, and sometimes Paras envied her: she was not bored, ever. Paras gazed at the dog for a moment, then said, “Do you kill rats?”
“I hate rats.”
“Why?” Must be a dog thing, Paras thought.
“They taste very bitter.” In fact, she had only eaten one—already dead, in the street—just to try it.
“Why would you eat one?”
“Why else would you kill one?”
“Our dog at Maisons-Laffitte kills them all the time. She snaps their necks and drops them and walks away.”
Frida sniffed, then said, “Do they give her dog food, then?”
For some reason, Paras was embarrassed to say that they did. She said, “She doesn’t like it much.”
“Some dogs will eat anything,” said Frida.
After a moment, Paras said, “So—is that what dogs talk about all the time? Food?”
Frida put her nose to the ground, smelled a few fading plants and the damp soil, then said, “Yes. What do horses talk about?”
“Who won the last race. Who’s going to win the next race. A few spend all their time making excuses, but I don’t like to talk about that. Everybody talks about their relatives. Some horses won’t talk to you if you aren’t related to Northern Dancer, but other families aren’t as snobbish.” She thought for a moment, then said, “To tell the truth, the last day has been rather nice, no blah-blah-blah about Dad’s family and Mom’s family and brothers and sisters.” She thought for a moment. “We talk about the jockeys, too.”
“What are those?”
“When we run in races, the jockeys go along. Some stay with you better than others.”
“They run, too?”
“No, they ride us.”
The dog looked startled, then said, “That must slow you down.”
“It does, but, between you and me, not every horse knows the way, so they have their uses. A lot of horses won’t admit it, though. There’s a lot of complaining.”
“What are you chasing?”
Paras pondered this question, then said, “I don’t know.”
That seemed to end the conversation.
Paras went back to cropping the grass, but the morning was passing, and Frida knew that eventually the cafés would open and humans would show up, stalking their lunches. And they would certainly notice a horse and a dog by themselves in the Place du Trocadéro. How to solve this problem for Paras, Frida had no idea. It was one thing for a dog to position herself in an alert and friendly way here and there about the cafés and shops, but a horse was considerably bigger than a dog and expected to be attached to a carriage. At the same time, humans stalking their lunches in Paris sometimes didn’t notice what was going on around them. And there were a lot of statues all over the city—for example, way up there on a pedestal above them was a black horse that never moved, with a tail that appeared to be waving even when the wind wasn’t blowing. Frida had never seen anyone look at that.
The purse would catch the eyes of certain humans, though, and Frida did not want any human looking into the purse, so she went over to Paras and sat down in front of her, waited patiently for Paras to sniff a few more bits of grass and take another bite, then said, “You can stay here, if you’re quiet, but you”—she didn’t say “we”—“should hide the purse. It has…money in it.” Then she said, “Humans love money, and someone might take your money.”
“Does it taste good?”
“No.” Frida had actually tasted money from time to time, just out of curiosity. Then she said, “But if you are going to live in Paris, you need plenty of it.”
“What do you do with it?”
“You give some, a little, to humans and they give things back to you.”
“Like what?”
“Like…carrots and apples.”