UNITED STATES—I checked the bedroom for li’l Baby DeVille, and he was nowhere to be seen. Not in the bathroom was the short-haired Jack Russel Chihuahua mix to be found, not in the kitchen, nor under the coffee table. With each new perspective on his absence more and more concrete poured into me. It was ghastly, the absence of his perky presence.
And times like this all the assurances of the dog savvy people weren’t worth a hill of maggot-ridden beans. Wow, maybe Lupe had devoured him, Lupe being DeVille’s pit bull blended companion. Of course this was ludicrous, but in stressed-to-the point-of-breaking tension the series of validations that he had vanished dug a pit in my heart. What they say about dog’s being family is true.
Now with that pit of remorse filled with molten lead and growing fear. One Avenue suggested itself to my harried soul. I went for a walk.
In moments of crisis there can surge a knowledge of the vanity of distancing ourselves from our parents. I was becoming my dad, after the damage of the Loma Prieta World Series earthquake. It had shattered plate-glass windows, tumbled vials and bottles off the pharmacy shelves. The disappearance of DeVille was not comparable to that seismic event, yet the cumulative effects of disappearances like DeVille’s as well as Lupe’s surprise loving assaults, have contributed to a growing numbness, to be dreaded as much as the fear of beloved furry creatures fending for themselves on lonely and traffic-tortured streets. All my fault.
I went for a walk, alright, down past the city swimming pool, the construction site, the square framework of steel beams and concrete pillars, like some kind of rising Mayan palace, then to cross Santa Monica and watch out for drivers, themselves focused on the green light, on consigning to invisibility the presence of a sleepwalking pedestrian I was sleepwalking in the dread over never seeing DeVille again. I walked as for as the ramp by the old studio and the mailbox.
Heavy was the walk back. Lupe was in the yard. I went inside and saw again no sign of DeVille. Something possessed me to peer over the window side of the bed, and there he was propped between the window with a screen Leapin Lupe jumped through once when the window was raised.
DeVille was happy, trembling a bit and a little scared in the trough formed of a jumble of unwashed clothes and the bedframe. A small, comforting place where DeVille was hidden and put the very fear of the Almighty in me.
To be continued
