It had been so long since I’d felt the comfort of another’s warmth that I wasn’t sure what to do. Not that I hadn’t had visitors. Mack had been in my domain, of course, and many other keepers. I’d seen my share of rats zip past, and the occasional wayward sparrow had fluttered in through a hole in my ceiling.
But they never stayed long.
I didn’t move all night, for fear of waking Bob.
wild
Once I asked Bob why he didn’t want a home. Humans, I’d noticed, seem to be irrationally fond of dogs, and I could see why a puppy would be easier to cuddle with than, say, a gorilla.
“Everywhere is my home,” Bob answered. “I am a wild beast, my friend: untamed and undaunted.”
I told Bob he could work in the shows like Snickers, the poodle who rides Stella.
Bob said Snickers sleeps on a pink pillow in Mack’s office. He said she eats foul-smelling meat from a can.
He made a face. His lips curled, revealing tiny needles of teeth.
“Poodles,” he said, “are parasites.”
picasso
Mack gives me a fresh crayon, a yellow one, and ten pieces of paper. “Time to earn your keep, Picasso,” he mutters.
I wonder who this Picasso is. Does he have a tire swing like me? Does he ever eat his crayons?
I know I have lost my magic, so I try my very best. I clutch the crayon and think.
I scan my domain. What is yellow?
A banana.
I draw a banana. The paper tears, but only a little.
I lean back, and Mack picks up the drawing. “Another day, another scribble,” he says. “One down, nine to go.”
What else is yellow? I wonder, scanning my domain.
I draw another banana. And then I draw eight more.
three visitors
Three visitors are here: a woman, a boy, a girl.
I strut across my domain for them. I dangle from my tire swing. I eat three banana peels in a row.
The boy spits at my window. The girl throws a handful of pebbles.
Sometimes I’m glad the glass is there.
my visitors return
After the show, the spit-pebble children come back.
I display my impressive teeth. I splash in my filthy pool. I grunt and hoot. I eat and eat and eat some more.
The children pound their pathetic chests. They toss more pebbles.
“Slimy chimps,” I mutter. I throw a me-ball at them.
Sometimes I wish the glass were not there.
sorry
I’m sorry I called those children slimy chimps.
My mother would be ashamed of me.
julia
Like the spit-pebble children, Julia is a child, but that, after all, is not her fault.
While her father, George, cleans the mall each night, Julia sits by my domain. She could sit anywhere she wants: by the carousel, in the empty food court, on the bleachers coated in sawdust. But I am not bragging when I say that she always chooses to sit with me.
I think it’s because we both love to draw.
Sara, Julia’s mother, used to help clean the mall. But when she got sick and grew pale and stooped, Sara stopped coming. Every night Julia offers to help George, and every night he says firmly, “Homework, Julia. The floors will just get dirty again.”
Homework, I have discovered, involves a sharp pencil and thick books and long sighs.
I enjoy chewing pencils. I am sure I would excel at homework.
Sometimes Julia dozes off, and sometimes she reads her books, but mostly she draws pictures and talks about her day.
I don’t know why people talk to me, but they often do. Perhaps it’s because they think I can’t understand them.
Or perhaps it’s because I can’t talk back.
Julia likes science and art. She doesn’t like Lila Burpee, who teases her because her clothes are old, and she does like Deshawn Williams, who teases her too, but in a nice way, and she would like to be a famous artist when she grows up.
Sometimes Julia draws me. I am an elegant fellow in her pictures, with my silver back gleaming like moon on moss. I never look angry, the way I do on the fading billboard by the highway.
I always look a bit sad, though.
drawing bob
I love Julia’s pictures of Bob.
She draws him flying across the page, a blur of feet and fur. She draws him motionless, peeking out from behind a trash can or the soft hill of my belly. Sometimes in her drawings, Julia gives Bob wings or a lion’s mane. Once she gave him a tortoise shell.
But the best thing she ever gave him wasn’t a drawing. Julia gave Bob his name.
For a long time no one knew what to call Bob. Now and then a mall worker would try to approach him with a tidbit. “Here, doggie,” they’d call, holding out a French fry. “Come on, pooch,” they’d say. “How about a little piece of sandwich?”
But he would always vanish into the shadows before anyone could get too close.
One afternoon, Julia decided to draw the little dog curled up in the corner of my domain. First she watched him for a long time, chewing on her thumbnail. I could tell she was looking at him the way an artist looks at the world when she’s trying to understand it.
Finally she grabbed her pencil and set to work. When she was finished, she held up the page.
There he was, the tiny, big-eared dog. He was smart and cunning, but his gaze was wistful.
Under the picture were three bold, confident marks, circled in black. I was pretty certain it was a word, even though I couldn’t read it.
Julia’s father peered over her shoulder. “That’s him exactly,” he said, nodding. He pointed to the circled marks. “I didn’t realize his name was Bob,” he said.
“Me either,” said Julia. She smiled. “I had to draw him first.”
bob and julia
Bob will not let humans touch him. He says their scent upsets his digestion.
But every now and then I see him sitting at Julia’s feet. Her fingers move gently, just behind his right ear.
mack
Usually Mack leaves after the last show, but tonight he is in his office working late. When he’s done, he stops by my domain and stares at me for a long time while he drinks from a brown bottle.
George joins him, broom in hand, and Mack says the things he always says: “How about that game last night?” and “Business has been slow, but it’ll get better, you’ll see,” and “Don’t forget to empty the trash.”
Mack glances over at the picture Julia is drawing. “What’re you making?” he asks.
“It’s for my mom,” Julia says. “It’s a flying dog.” She holds up her drawing, eyeing it critically. “She likes airplanes. And dogs.”