“We’re going home, old guy,” Todd murmured to him, as he carried him down the steps into the street and round to the little parking lot behind the building, where Marco was backing out the car. “I know you didn’t like it in there. All those people you didn’t know with needles and shit. Well, fuck them.” He put his nose into the cushion of baby fur behind Dempsey’s ear, which always smelled sweetest. “We’re going home.”
For the next few hours Dempsey slept in the quilt, which Todd had put on his big bed. Todd stayed beside him, though the need for sleep caught up with him several times, and he’d slide away into a few minutes of dreamland: fragments of things he’d seen from his bench in the waiting room, mostly. The box containing the dead guinea pig, that absurd poodle, nipping its own backside bloody; all just pieces of the day, coming and going. Then he’d wake and stroke Dempsey for a little while, talk to him, tell him everything was going to be okay.
There was a sudden rally in Dempsey’s energies about four o’clock, which was when he was usually fed, so Todd had Marco prepare a sick-bed version of his usual meal, with chicken instead of the chopped horse-flesh or whatever the hell it was in the cans, and some good gravy. Dempsey ate it all, though he had to be held up to do so, since his legs were unreliable. He then drank a full bowl of water.
“Good, good,” Todd said.
Dempsey attempted to wag his tail, but it had no more power in it than his legs had.
Todd carried him outside so he could shit and piss. A slight drizzle was coming down; not cool, but refreshing. He held onto the dog, waiting for the urge to take Dempsey, and he turned his face up to the rain, offering a quiet little prayer.
“Please don’t take him from me. He’s just a smelly old dog. You don’t need him and I do. Do you hear me? Please … hear me. Don’t take him.”
He looked back at Dempsey to find that the dog was looking back at him, apparently paying attention to every word. His ears were half-pricked, his eyes half-open.
“Do you think anyone’s listening?” Todd said.
By way of reply, Dempsey looked away from him, his head bobbing uneasily on his neck. Then he made a nasty sound deep in his belly and his whole body convulsed. Todd had never seen the term projectile vomit displayed with such force. A stream of chewed chicken, dog mix and water squirted out. As soon as it stopped, the dog began to make little whining sounds. Then ten seconds later, Dempsey repeated the whole spectacle, until every piece of nourishment and every drop of water he’d been given had been comprehensively ejected.
After the second burst of vomiting he didn’t even have the strength to whine. Todd wrapped the quilt around him and carried him back into the house. He had Marco bring some towels and dried him off where the rain had caught him.
“I don’t suppose you care what’s been going on all day, do you?” Marco said.
“Anything important?”
“Great foreign numbers on Gallows, particularly in France. Huge hit in France, apparently. Maxine wants to know if you’d like to do a piece about Dempsey’s health crisis for one of the woman’s magazines.”
“No.”
“That’s what I told her. She said they’d eat it up, but I said — ”
“No! Fuck. Will these people never stop? No!”
“You got a call from Walter at Dreamworks about some charity thing he’s arranging, I told him you’d be back in circulation tomorrow.”
“That’s the phone.”
“Yeah. It is.”
Marco went to the nearest phone, which was in the master bathroom, while Todd went back to finish drying the dog.
“It’s Andrea Otis. From the hospital. I think it’s the nervous young woman you saw this morning.”
“Stay with him,” Todd said to Marco.
He went into the bathroom, which was cold. Picked up the phone.
“Mr. Pickett?”
“Yes.”
“First, I want to say I owe you an apology for this morning — “