IN the beginning, he was always on time. But it had been a long time since the beginning, longer than either Doughnut or Danish could remember.
“I don’t get it,” complained Danish. “Isn’t it time?”
“It’s time,” answered Doughnut.
“It feels like it’s time.”
“It’s time.”
Danish paced anxiously back and forth. Of course it was time! He knew it was time! He didn’t need Doughnut to tell him that it was time!
“So where is he then?” asked Danish. “If it’s time, then where is he? I don’t understand. Either he knows that it’s time or he doesn’t. Does he know thatit’s time?”
Doughnut sat curled up inside their cold, empty feeding bowl, focused intently on the doorknob of the apartment front door, believing with all of his heart that at any moment the doorknob would turn, the door would open and Joe would appear.
“We cannot pretend to think that we know what Joe knows and what Joe doesn’t know,” pronounced Doughnut with a sharp twitch of his nose, “we must only believe with all of our heart that Joe knows.”
“I bet he doesn’t know!” said Danish. He rose upon his hind legs and flailed uselessly at the glass walls until he became exhausted. Breathing heavily, he lumbered over to the water bottle that hung in the far corner and drew a few drops into his mouth.
“You nonbelievers are all the same,” scoffed Doughnut. He pushed some dry cedar chips into a small, comfortable mound and settled down upon it. “As if you were the first hamster to ever doubt him!” he said. “The first rodent to ever think, really. Who else but you—with your keen intellect, your contrarian insight, your moral bravery and conviction—who else could possibly come up with, ‘What if Joe doesn’t?’ ‘What if Joe can’t?’ Clotheyour fear as integrity, Danish, but Joe knows whobelieves and Joe knows who doesn’t. Joe is here, Joe is there, Joe is simply everywhere.‘What if he nevercomes back! What if he’s forgotten us! What if he’s died!’You look around at all your plastic tube highways, and your fabulous Habitrail and think you arespecial. But do ants not build anthills? Do bees notbuild hives? It is not what we build that makes us unique, it is what we believe; it is that we believe at all! Doubt, my dear Danish, is no great achievement; it is faith that sets us apart. Besides,” added Doughnut, “he left his wallet on the front table. He’s got to come back.”
“He did?” asked Danish.
He stood up on his back legs and squinted through the glass. “Where?”
Doughnut walked over and stood beside Danish.
“There, on the table.”
“Where?”
“There!”
“That?”
“Yes!”
“That’s not a wallet, you idiot.”
“Of course it’s a wallet.”
“It’s a book,” said Danish.
“It’s not a book.”
“Sure it is,” said Danish. “I can read the spine. Along Came a Spider, by James Patterson.” Hedropped down and shook his head. “Oh, no, he does not.”
Doughnut squinted a moment longer.
Damn.
It was a paperback.
Why would Joe abandon them? Why would he leave a sign for them right there on the foyer table, and then make it not a sign? And why James Patterson? What did it all mean?
“He does not read James Fucking Patterson!” cried Danish. “Our Salvation! Our Provider! We must be out of our minds.”
“It’s a test,” Doughnut said, as he curled back up inbed. “He’s testing our faith.”
Danish stood on his hind legs and flailed uselessly at the glass wall until he became exhausted. He took a drink of water, climbed up into the plastic tree house and curled into a tight, angry ball.
“I happen to find Patterson thought-provoking and suspenseful,” Doughnut said after a moment.
“You what?” asked Danish. “Did you just say you find James Patterson thought-provoking and suspensful? Jesus Christ. Open your eyes, Doughnut. Don’t you see what he’s doing to us? Holding our food over our heads like this? Dangling our fate before us like a banana-raisin-nut bar tied to the end of a stick? Look at you, Doughnut. Are you so desperate to believe in Joe that you’re actually defending James Patterson?!!”
“Cat and Mouse was a taut psychological thriller,” said Doughnut.
“Oh, bullshit,” said Danish.
Doughnut closed his eyes. Hunger stabbed sharply at his stomach, but he would never admit it to Danish.
Where the hell was Joe?
Danish rummaged frantically through the seed shells and shavings that covered the floor of their transparent little world. “He isn’t coming!” he said, looking for even a sliver of a husk of a shell of a seed. “He isn’t coming.”
Doughnut nestled deeper into his bed, eyes shut tight in fervent concentration.
“May he who has fed us yesterday,” he prayed, “feed us again today and tomorrow and forever. Amen.”
“Yes!” Danish suddenly shouted. “Ya ha!” He pulled a brown chunk of apple from beneath a small mound at the back of the cage and raised it victoriously overhead. Without even stopping to knock off the stray bits of cedar and pine needle that stuck to its sides, Danish opened his mouth wide and dropped it in. He made quite a show of chewing it, mmming and ohhing and ahhhing, finally swallowing it with a loud, dramatic gulp. He smiled, patted his stomach and burped, a deep, long belch of satisfaction. “Aah.” He washed it down with a few drops of water and slid down to the floor with a contented sigh.
Doughnut watched Danish, a sour mix of jealousy and disdain on his face. His stomach groaned.
Where the hell was Joe?
Doughnut stood up and stomped over to Danish, who looked up at him lazily.
“Well?” demanded Doughnut.
“Well what?”
“Well, maybe you could give a little thanks,” said Doughnut.
“Thanks?” asked Danish. “To who?”
“To Joe, Danish. To Joe.”
“For what?”
“For the apple he gave you.”
“The apple he gave me?” asked Danish. “I found that apple myself.”
“Do you think the apple just grew there?” Doughnut shouted. “How did the apple get there, Danish? We searched this cage a thousand times and never found a thing. That apple was a miracle! A gift! Joe heard my prayers, and he brought forth upon this cage a holy apple.”
His stomach grumbled.
Danish belched again, and rubbed his belly with pride. “Except, Doughnut, that you didn’t get any food. You asked, I received. Seems like a strange system to me.” He sucked a piece of apple rind out from between his teeth. “Mmm, not that I’m complaining. Next time ask him for a carrot. I simply must start getting more fiber.”
“Joe grants food to those who need it most,” replied Doughnut bitterly.
Danish tired quickly of Doughnut’s lectures, particularlywhen he was hungry, which he suddenlywas.
Again.
He got back up and began searching again through the rough cedar chips that covered the floor.
Doughnut dragged himself wearily back to his bed. The miracle of the apple had made him ravenous.
Doughnut would never admit it—he was ashamed to even think it—but lately he’d begun to doubt.
Lately, Joe and his mysterious ways were beginning to piss him off. It was the same thing with him every damn day: begging, thanks, begging. Verse, chorus, verse.
“Why me?” wondered Doughnut.
It must have been his own fault.
He must have sinned.
He must have angered Joe.
Just last week he had questioned why their litter wasn’t changed more frequently.
“Perhaps there’s a cedar shortage?” he’d askedDanish sarcastically. “It is a hardwood, you know.”
He had even complained aloud that their cage was too small.
The chutzpah!
Some hamsters don’t even have a cage, let alone a Habitrail and an exercise wheel! How could he have been so ungrateful? He barely even used the blessed exercise wheel. A beautiful exercise wheel that any hamster would love, and Doughnut had only ever used it once.
He was ashamed of himself.
No wonder there wasn’t any food!
Why should Joe give him anything more, if he couldn’t even appreciate what he had already been given?
Doughnut closed his eyes and silently thanked Joe for starving him in order to show him the error of his ways.
“Forgive me,” he prayed.
And with that Doughnut hurried out of his bed and climbed onto the exercise wheel. He ran as fast as he could, huffing andpuffing, regret and retributionnipping at his heels.
Danish, meanwhile, was going mad. He’d been tricked. Tricked by Joe! He was even hungrier now than he’d been before he had eaten Joe’s cursed apple.
“Oh, yes, very good, Joe, yes, quite witty!” shouted Danish. “Well done, old boy! Touché!”
Back on the exercise wheel, Doughnut could run no more. He stumbled back to bed.
Danish stood on his hind legs and flailed uselessly at the glass walls until he became exhausted.
Doughnut prayed.
And behold, suddenly, the doorknob did turn.
The apartment door did open.
And Joe did appear.
Danish peed in excitement.
Doughnut shat in fear.
Joe was thin and pale, and he wore a rumpled brown suit and a horizontal-striped clip-on tie. The badge hanging from his chest pocket read MAIL-ROOM. There was a woman with him, too, a woman Danish and Doughnut had never seen before. She was unattractive, with thin hair and thick glasses, and she and Joe wrestled their way through the doorway as one, groping and feeling and rubbing each other as if each had somehow lost the keys in the other’s pants pockets. Joe groaned and tore open her blouse.
Danish and Doughnut pressed their noses to the glass.
“There better be apples in there,” said Danish.
“Forgive me, Joe, for doubting you,” prayed Doughnut.
Joe lifted the woman into his arms. “To hell with dinner!” he whispered lustfully. She threw her head back and laughed, and as they headed down the hallway toward his bedroom, Joe switched the living room lights off with his elbow.
Darkness.
Doughnut looked at Danish.
Danish looked at Doughnut.
“We have brought this upon ourselves,” said Doughnut.
Danish stood on his hind legs and flailed uselessly at the glass walls until he became exhausted.
Doughnut prayed.