Hypok stepped to the cages and stopped eye to eye with a black puppy about the size and shape of a shoe-box. He looked mostly lab, with something smaller and curlier mixed in — cocker spaniel, probably. He had deep brown eyes, the brightest of white teeth and a little pup weenie with a whip of damp hair curving off it. The label said he was an “All American,” one of the shelter’s euphemisms for mutt. He was expected to weigh between thirty and fifty pounds as an adult. He licked Hypok’s finger through the bars. A very cute dog. There were three more just like him in the back of the cage asleep, neat as a row of socks. Next was a beagleish unit yapping quite loudly, paying Hypok no attention at all. Hypok wasn’t a fan of the beagle, though Moloch had eaten one about a year ago, a full-grown dog he’d gotten here for free. It had been a sullen thing, didn’t like Hypok, didn’t like the ride home in the then-red van, didn’t like the guest house or the “last supper” he was offered, didn’t like it at all when Hypok led him to the cage door in the back of Moloch’s world and tried to guide him in. The beagle had wheeled twice and bitten at him but Hypok remained in control. He kept the stubborn little hunter lined up with the open door and kicked it through. The dog had cowed in the corner a minute, then was tentatively exploring the front glass when Moloch hit him like a bolt from Olympus and ten minutes later the ungrateful hound was nothing more than a slow lump. Hypok moved down the row: golden ones, black ones, calico ones; furry coats, short coats, straight coats and curled coats. Even a Dalmatian mix — spots intact — which Hypok knew wouldn’t last long in this market The older, out-of-proportion couple seemed charmed by a Doberman — golden retriever mix with nice eyes and good confirmation. “You can tell he’s intelligent,” the huge woman noted. Her skinny mate muttered, “All dogs are dumb.” Hypok continued.
Then it was love at first sight. She was a tiny, furry little thing — a failed Lhasa apso, by the look of her — roughly the size and appearance of a fluffy bedroom slipper. He could hardly tell her face from her ass, her eyes just barely visible behind the sprouting brow hair, which was a direct mimic of the tail hair at the other end. A reversible dog, Hypok thought. Her whole tiny body wiggled as she wagged her tail and licked Hypok’s finger. The sign said Yorkie-Lhasa mix, but it could have said anything, because Hypok had made up his mind. He quickly toured the rest of the puppy room, then marched back to the front desk to register his claim.
The old hag gave him the standard lecture and made him fill out the standard forms. He used his Warren Witt fake California driver’s license with a picture from years ago. It showed him with the short dark hair but no Vandyke or mustaches. The animal control officer seemed to somehow disapprove of it, or him, or something. Maybe it was his breath that she didn’t like, though the tequila and cinnamon drops seemed to be keeping his outlandish inner smells from coming out his mouth. He coughed quietly into his hand and waited for the results: not really that bad at all. The cost for the pup was $47, which included a $25 “altering deposit” that he would get back when he had the thing sterilized. Fat chance of that. He remembered a dog pound back in Missouri — or was it the one in Arkansas? — where they’d give you a puppy and a can of dog food for five bucks. He paid cash, breaking one of the nice hundreds delivered to him by the Friendlies from Naughty Naughton, then dumped the change into a donation bottle.
He named her Loretta. It was the kind of name he liked — kind of country/traditional — not like the sadly ambitious names that girls have now. She sat on the bucket seat next to his, not really scared, lifting her small buttish face to the air conditioner breeze that parted the long strands of her eyebrows to reveal her BB-sized eyes. Her face was kind of smashed in — from what you could see of it — but her white-and-tan-splotched hair was gay. The grim crone of an animal control officer had offered to tie a bow around the dog’s neck, and Hypok had chosen white with black paw prints. “What’s your daughter’s name?” the officer demanded.
“Nan,” he’d said with a proud smile.
Now he was heading back out the 22 toward the 55, giving serious thought to where he should start. He took a generous gulp of tequila and held up the clear plastic bottle: one-third left. It was 5:45 P.M. Friday, with all sorts of good possibilities at the malls because working moms like to pick up their daughters at day care after work and go spend money on Fridays. The amusement parks were always good. The supermarkets would be good, too. The beach would be okay but not great because it wasn’t quite warm enough yet. Same for the public swimming facilities, though the one down in Mission Viejo had showers and was active last spring. The parks were always good, especially if you liked Latins, which Hypok neither liked nor disliked more than any other ethnic brand. Obviously, it was too late in the day for schools or bus stops. The trick was to be where the kids were numerous and the parents lax. A lot of it was just luck, too, though. The tequila consolidated him in a wonderful way, compressing him into a single, purposeful unit of acquisition. He was back in the hunt. The first order of business was to stop at a pet store and get a leash and a little collar, and maybe some of those little poopie tissues that come in the round plastic eggs like the rubber snakes in the vending machines used to. He had once purchased a realistic rubber coral snake for a quarter.
“You girls can get expensive,” he remarked to the dog.
Loretta yawned, then looked at him and wagged her tail.
Hypok looked out at the traffic-swelled County of Orange as he crept down the 55. It wasn’t his idea of a good place to live, really, because it was expensive, fast paced and filled with successful, hardworking, narrow-minded people. They wanted it all, and believed they deserved it. Real consumers, reeking of entitlement. One of the upsides was that there was plenty of work if you needed it. The other upside was that these “master-planned communities” were dandy breeding pens for middle-class human beings, who tended to produce attractive, healthy offspring. So, it was a trade-off. But compared to Missouri or Arkansas or Georgia or Florida or Texas, Orange County was pretty good. The parents here were a lot more careless than you might think, which he attributed to a general arrogance in baby boom adults who were themselves just older, privileged children. They thought they owned the whole fucking world. He thought about his next place, wondering if a more rural but growing metropolitan area — like Portland, Oregon, or Denver, Colorado — might give him the sense of nature that he really liked, along with a suitable population base for successful work. He briefly entertained an old fantasy: sell house and most belongings, buy big pickup with camper on it, buy small trailer to tow behind the pickup and go around the states taking choice Items into the camper bed, allowing them to enjoy his company, then letting them have free run of the trailer for as long as they could until they met up with Moloch — the full-time tenant of the trailer. He loved the idea — it was the RV lifestyle they were always talking about on the radio, with a wrinkle. But he knew he’d miss the comforts of a true home. That’s why he’d retracted Collette’s listing, because of the comforts of Wytton Street. But the current fact of the matter was that the heat was on here in OC, and he’d either have to move, quit or get caught. His days of carefree anonymity were over. Another Item or two collected, and that would be about it. There was no reason to press something when the odds were growing against you. But that was easy to say and harder to do, when every cell, nerve and corpuscle in your body was screaming out for the same thing: love, touch, release.