Gully's Travels Read online

  Cover

  Title Page

  A New Acquaintance

  Sunday in the Park with Rodney

  The Forty-eighth Floor

  Le Petit Café

  Home Sweet Home

  Queens

  First Faint

  Faint #2

  Wretched

  To Sleep . . .

  A Long Journey

  Numb

  The Canine Breast

  The Beach

  Delivered

  A Reunion

  An E-mail Attachment

  The Seine

  The Article

  A Longer Journey

  Home Sweet Home Again

  Books by Tor Seidler

  Copyright

  When Gulliver and Rodney first met, on a sunny Saturday in May, they didn’t give each other the usual thorough sniffing. They simply stopped and eyed each other. Both were quite reserved.

  Rodney was a couple of inches taller. He had a salt-and-pepper coat and a face even Gulliver found distinguished: long and square with thick eyebrows, a fine beard, and a mustache every bit as impressive as Gulliver’s own.

  “One of those German breeds?” Gulliver said.

  “Schnauzer,” said Rodney. “And you’re Tibetan?”

  “Lhasa apso,” Gulliver said proudly. “Though I was born right here in New York City.”

  “As was I.”

  “Miniature?”

  Rodney, who didn’t like this term, frowned.

  To redeem himself — and with luck get a compliment in return — Gulliver said, “Nice collar.”

  Contrary to common wisdom, dogs aren’t color-blind. Gulliver could see perfectly well that the schnauzer’s leather collar was a handsome forest green. But it paled in comparison with his salmon-pink one. Gulliver despised salmon (or any other fish) for dinner, but the color was irresistible. Furthermore, the collar was studded with pieces of turquoise set in silver.

  Striking as the collar looked against Gulliver’s honey coat, Rodney just lifted a thick eyebrow and said, “Yours is . . . Where on earth did you get it?”

  Gulliver rose to his full eleven inches and flicked a look at the blond, goateed man holding his leash. “He brought it back for me from one of his trips.”

  “Ah.”

  Ah what? Gulliver wondered, getting a little hot under the aforementioned collar. Normally dogs were as impressed by his collar as they were by his pure breeding and fine intelligence. “You must be new to the neighborhood,” he said, lifting his snout.

  “Oh, we don’t live around here.” Rodney surveyed Washington Square Park as if it were a slum. “There’s a food shop around the corner he likes.”

  The schnauzer indicated his leash holder, a man whose salt-and-pepper hair matched Rodney’s coat. In his leash hand the man was also holding a bag.

  “Is he a good cook?” Gulliver asked.

  “Gourmet.”

  “As is mine. Does he give you scraps?”

  “Of course.”

  “Mine, too.”

  “What’s your usual?” Rodney said.

  “Prime Premium.”

  “Really? Same here. What’s your favorite flavor?”

  “Beef and Liver Delight. You?”

  “Chicken and Cheese Surprise. How often do you go to the groomer?”

  “Once a month,” Gulliver said, tossing a silken lock out of his eyes.

  “Me, too.”

  “Groom-o-rama on Bank Street?”

  “Oh, heavens, no. Ours is on the Upper East Side.”

  Gulliver, who wasn’t used to dogs challenging his superiority, looked away coldly. They were in the corner of Washington Square Park where the outdoor chess tables are, and for a while he watched a pigeon debating the wisdom of dashing under one of the occupied tables for a piece of hot-dog bun. But in time his eyes returned warily to the schnauzer.

  “They seem to be getting along,” Rodney remarked.

  In big cities like New York, human strangers usually ignore each other. But if they’re walking dogs, even the most standoffish people will start chatting away. Topic number one is naturally the dogs themselves, but Gulliver’s and Rodney’s leash holders had already progressed to other things. They had a lot in common. Both were professors. Gulliver’s owner, Professor Rattigan, taught English literature at nearby New York University, while Rodney’s owner, Professor Moroni, taught modern art farther uptown, at Hunter College. Both men were single, Professor Rattigan having never married, Professor Moroni being divorced. Both were cultivated, both came from well-to-do families. Moreover, both men liked chess. In fact, the only reason Professor Moroni had detoured into the park was to check out the chess games.

  They focused on a game being waged between an elderly Japanese man and a pallid, blue-eyed boy.

  “The boy’s trying to sucker him with his bishop,” Professor Moroni whispered.

  “Mm,” Professor Rattigan whispered back. “Seems to be working, doesn’t it?”

  Eventually Professor Rattigan nodded at a vacant table and asked Professor Moroni if he would like to try a game sometime.

  “Love to,” Professor Moroni said.

  “Tomorrow afternoon?”

  “Fine. I’ll bring a set.”

  “I’ll bring a timer — unless you object.”

  “Not at all! If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s people who agonize over their moves for fifteen minutes.”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more,” Professor Rattigan said. “Shall we say two o’clock?”

  “Providing it’s not raining.”

  Dogs pick up only occasional scraps of human speech, but both Gulliver and Rodney noted the friendly way the men shook hands.

  “It looks as if we may be seeing each other again,” Rodney commented.

  “Mm,” Gulliver said. “À bientôt.”

  He was about to explain that this was the French way of saying “See you soon” when Rodney said:

  “Gotten Grog.”

  Gulliver and his professor lived just north of Washington Square at one of the most fashionable addresses in Manhattan: One Fifth Avenue. Their apartment occupied fully half of the seventeenth floor, and Gulliver considered it heaven. The faded rugs and brown leather sofas and chairs were as comfortable as they were tasteful. The antiques were of the highest quality. The paneling on the walls was of the finest oak. The windows, facing north, east, and west, were framed in dark, heavy drapes that reached all the way to the floor, creating ideal hiding places. And everywhere you looked, bookshelves burst with books that contained, Gulliver was quite sure, the wisdom of the entire world.

  His professor’s choice of footwear was reddish-brown, tasseled loafers, a half dozen pairs of which, all with a glossy shine, were lined up along a wall of the master bedroom. Beyond these was Gulliver’s bed. It was so cozy, with its flowery chintz cushion, that he sometimes hated leaving it, but he always got up in the morning along with his professor. Loyalty is the hallmark of the well-bred dog — especially the Lhasa apso.

  That next day, however, was Sunday, and on Sundays they slept in. And when his professor finally did get up, he didn’t guzzle a cup of coffee, take him for a quick walk, then rush off to a class or his office. They took a leisurely stroll around the neighborhood, picked up the Sunday Times, and returned home for a real breakfast. As a treat his professor cooked two extra strips of bacon to mix in with Gulliver’s morning half can of Prime Premium.

  After breakfast, in the elegant, high-ceilinged living room, Professor Rattigan put on a German opera
and sat reading the paper. Gulliver, curled up beside him on the sofa, hadn’t had much use for newspapers since his housebreaking days, but opera was another matter. As a puppy he’d thought it sounded like sick cats wailing at the moon, but over time the Italian operas had grown on him, and now that he was a mature dog he even enjoyed the German ones.

  Not today, though. Today he ground his canine teeth through all three discs. For although he could tell German from Italian, he couldn’t understand a word of it. And Gotten Grog , he was convinced, was German. Could that distinguished-looking Rodney be a more refined and sophisticated dog than he was?

  At around one o’clock they went out again. As usual, his professor didn’t attach the leash till they stepped from the elevator into the building’s checkerboard marble lobby.

  “Hey, Dr. Rattigan,” said Carlos the doorman, opening the door for them. “Hey, Gully.”

  Distasteful as it was having his name shortened that way, Carlos was so cheerful that Gulliver never snarled at him.

  He and his professor proceeded to a dog-friendly sandwich shop on Waverly Place. Gulliver prided himself on sitting politely under tables in restaurants and cafés without moving or making a peep, and today he got his usual reward: a corner of the professor’s smoked turkey and Brie sandwich.

  From there they moved on to Washington Square. The little park was appallingly crowded. There were young people tossing frisbees by the fountain and old people on benches holding their faces to the sun. There were steel drummers, Italian-ice vendors, hot-dog vendors, skate-boarders, Rollerbladers, NYU students on break from studying for finals, artists doing cheap portraits of tourists, jugglers, folk singers, pantomimes, countless dog walkers — and, waiting by the chess tables in the southwest corner, Rodney and his professor.

  The very first thing out of Rodney’s mouth was:

  “It never gets this bad uptown.”

  “This is highly unusual,” Gulliver said stiffly. “On weekdays it’s very civilized.”

  Things only went downhill from there. As soon as one of the chess tables opened up, Professor Moroni suggested putting the dogs in the nearby fenced-in dog run.

  “More fun for them than having to sit,” he said.

  Never in his life had Gulliver been stuck in the dog run. On some days it might have been tolerable, but this afternoon it was full of mutts — a fact Rodney didn’t fail to point out. “We have very few mutts uptown,” he murmured.

  If this wasn’t aggravating enough, the first non-mutt they encountered was a female greyhound with about as much conversation as a squirrel. Then came a female Pekingese who giggled idiotically at whatever they said. Then a basset hound who drooled while bragging about a kennel club show he’d seen on TV.

  “We don’t have a TV in the apartment,” Rodney murmured when they got rid of the basset.

  “Neither do we!” Gulliver almost shouted.

  Gulliver fought the impulse, but eventually he couldn’t resist asking if Rodney spoke German. Rodney nodded his well-shaped head — though of course he didn’t really speak the language. He’d made up Gotten Grog on the spur of the moment, the German sound of it having sprung magically from the distant German roots of the schnauzer breed.

  “French?” Gulliver asked uneasily.

  “Gourmet,” said Rodney.

  “Excuse me?”

  “‘Gourmet’ is a French word.”

  “Is that all you know?”

  In fact, it was. Rodney looked away, as if distracted by a squirrel racing around a tree trunk.

  “Quel dommage,” Gulliver murmured.

  From the sound of it, Rodney figured this meant “What a pity.” He murmured back:

  “Kurten Zog.”

  Poor Gulliver. Now he was at a total loss.

  “Look at those fools,” Rodney said, pointing his snout at a gaggle of people admiring the work of one of the sidewalk portrait painters. “They think that’s art. They should see our collection.”

  Gulliver didn’t take the bait and ask about it, but this didn’t stop Rodney.

  “It’s pretty spectacular. Mostly modern. Though, to tell you the truth, my personal favorite’s this old print in the bathroom. Riding to the Hounds, it’s called. It has three people in it, three horses, and twenty-seven dogs.”

  Gulliver couldn’t top this. But just as he was about to throw in the towel on the conversation, a faint rumble drew his eyes skyward. High overhead a jet plane was leaving behind a trail of exhaust as white and fluffy as . . .

  “Chloe,” he murmured.

  “Excuse me?” said Rodney.

  “Oh, I was just daydreaming about Chloe. Do you fly much?”

  “Fly? I’m a dog, not a duck!”

  “I mean in jets.”

  “Oh. Well, one time we flew to a place called Maine. We rented a house there. Ocean view.”

  Gulliver rose to his full height. “We fly to Paris every July.”

  “Paris?”

  “France.”

  “Really?”

  “We swap apartments with a French professor every July.”

  At this, Rodney’s impressive mustache finally drooped a bit. You couldn’t live with an art history professor without knowing what Paris was.

  Gulliver was suddenly perking up. But just as he started to gloat, up shot the schnauzer’s snout again.

  “How long’s the flight?”

  “About seven hours going, over eight coming back.”

  “Poor you.”

  “Poor me?”

  “Stuck in a carrying case all that time. It must be hellish.”

  What was hellish was having this schnauzer pity him for getting to fly off to Paris every summer! Never had Gulliver been so irritated.

  “You wouldn’t say that if you knew Chloe,” he said. “Maltese. Eyes black as raisins. Cutest little nose you’ve ever seen. Lives with Madame Courgette, owner of Le Petit Café.”

  Rodney found Malteses adorable, so this shut him up for a minute. Nor did his mood improve when he looked through the chicken-wire fence at the chess tables. His professor was playing the white pieces, and Gulliver’s professor had captured more white than his had black.

  “Mine’s a little rusty,” Rodney said when Professor Moroni’s king was toppled. “He hasn’t played in ages.”

  “Neither has mine,” Gulliver said. “But he’s rustproof.”

  Gulliver had to eat a bit of crow when Professor Moroni won the next game. But Professor Rattigan won the third, and then the fourth, too.

  After this the professors yielded the table to a pair of waiting players and collected the dogs.

  “Would you have time for a cup of tea?” Professor Rattigan asked.

  “That would be nice,” said Professor Moroni.

  On their way across the square a glorious thing happened. A man in a saffron robe caught sight of Gulliver and bowed low, holding his hands together in prayer. This had happened a few times before, but in front of Rodney it was particularly gratifying.

  “What in the name of dog was that about?” Rodney asked.

  Gulliver couldn’t help smiling at this expression, which he’d never heard before. “We’re considered sacred,” he said.

  Rodney’s eyes widened in spite of himself.

  “In Tibet it’s believed that when our human companion dies,” Gulliver said, “his soul enters our body.”

  “It can get in through all that hair?”

  Gulliver rose above this remark.

  “Hey, Dr. Rattigan,” Carlos said, opening the brass door of One Fifth Avenue for them. “Hey, Gully, see you’ve got a friend.”

  “Gully?” Rodney murmured, smirking.

  “He doesn’t know any better,” Gulliver said as they crossed the cool lobby. “He’s only a doorman.”

  Rodney let this drop, for th
e doorman at his building had been known to call him Rod. But when they got out of the elevator he said, “What floor is this?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “That’s all?”

  “What do you mean?” Gulliver said.

  “We’re on forty-eight. The penthouse.”

  And as soon as they stepped into the living room, Rodney looked around and said, “My goodness, how old-fashioned.”

  “Everything you see is a valuable antique,” Gulliver snapped.

  “Really. We believe in ‘Out with the old, in with the new.’”

  Professor Rattigan went into the kitchen to make tea, giving Professor Moroni a chance to look over the library.

  “Nearly all first editions,” Gulliver told Rodney in an undertone.

  “But where are your art books?” Rodney asked.

  “We like literature.”

  From the books, Professor Moroni moved on to four small oil paintings hanging over the mantelpiece. Rodney commented that they were awfully conservative.

  “You think so?” Gulliver said. “Two are by genuine Old Masters.”

  “Which ones?” Rodney asked sharply.

  To be honest, Gulliver had no idea. But he knew that if you sound definite,dogs generally believe you.

  “The landscape and the still life.”

  “Hmph,” Rodney said.“How many rooms do you have here, anyway?”

  “Five, not counting the kitchen and the foyer. What about you?”

  “We have six.”

  Along with the tea Professor Rattigan brought out a plate of cookies and a Genoa salami, and both professors slipped their dogs a slice of the salami. But Gulliver barely touched his. The thought that Rodney lived in a six-room penthouse on the forty-eighth floor, while he lived in a five-room apartment on the seventeenth, spoiled his appetite.

  When the professors were saying their goodbyes at the door, Professor Moroni suggested a rematch.

  “Never have to wait for a table at my place,” he said. “Though I’m afraid home-field advantage won’t help much against you. Shall we say next Saturday at three?”

  “Perfect,” Professor Rattigan said.