12

And the Birthday Party’s End

Felix!… With that memory of his.

So many things happened all at once.

By luck I was the only one who’d been looking at Dooley. Or rather looking where Dooley had been. The coffee pot hung suspended a second—just floating in empty air—then crashed to the floor. Now all eyes turned to the mess of broken china and coffee spreading along the living-room rug.

But all ears went into the hall, where a wild barking had begun. Sam stumbled in, tottering, and collapsed—collapsed on all four legs. And if you think that a dog can’t look panic-stricken, just as much as a man, then you should have seen his eyes.

“Timothy!” Aunt Lucy couldn’t believe her own eyes. “Have you been concealing that dog?”

I was—flummoxed, dumfounded, speechless.

“Timothy—I want an answer! Has that dog been hidden in this apartment all this time?”

“Well—he’s been here part of the time—but—”

“Oh, Timothy—” She did a big betrayed routine, eyes lifting away from me, as if I were something that had just got broken—“I thought we were friends—that we both could be honest—”

“Aunt Lucy, we can, but—!”

Mr. Watkins looked down contemptuously at Sam, who was flattened out on the floor and whimpering pathetically. “I thought that mutt got gassed.”

“He looks pretty gassed to me,” Rose observed.

“Rose, where in this apartment—?”

“Miss Lucy—” Rose had a tone of voice that no one dared doubt—“I haven’t seen a hair of him.”

“And where is Dooley? Did he just—throw the coffee pot at me?”

Sam had recycled, back into a hound dog; Abdullah was trapped in his carpet again; and Aunt Lucy, too, was reverting into a short snobby lady, indignant over the loss of a china coffee pot in her posh apartment in Sutton Place.

“Let me have a look.” Rose went into the kitchen.

“Um—I guess the party’s breaking up.” Breaking up—it had been smashed into smithereens! But Madame Sosostris went on doing the best she could to fill up a silence when nobody else would talk. “Delicious dinner, Miss Farr—”

“So pleased you could come.” Aunt Lucy thinned out a smile at her.

“Miss Lucy—” Rose came back—“he’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“Vanished.” She was pretending to be only reporting the latest information, but her voice was hurt as well as puzzled.

Aunt Lucy sighed and brushed her forehead with weary fingertips. “There must be some disease peculiar to my chauffeurs.” Another confusion occurred to her. “And speaking of disappearing—where’s Sam?”

“He’s gone home!” I blurted, before anybody could guess or suspect. “I think.”

“And well he might! Behaving that way. Poor Henry—”

“I knew the chap was vicious the first day I laid eyes on him,” said Mr. Watkins, who by now had a genuine shiner blossoming on his face.

“Rose, did you cook all the beef?”

“’Fraid so, Miss Lucy. And I don’t think a slice of stroganoff would help that eye any.”

“This is not a time for levity.”

“Sorry, Miss Lucy…” But thank heaven someone still had a sense of humor.

We shuffled a little more in our talk, and then Madame Sosostris and Mr. Watkins went home.

“Just clean up as best you can for tonight,” Aunt Lucy said to Rose. She retired to her bedroom, with all kinds of exasperated sounds. “I’ve had as much as I can take for one day.”

So had I!

I collected Sam from the living-room rug and carried him into our bedroom. At first I thought I’d get the spell and pull everything back together again. But then I decided there already was so much chaos around, if everybody reappeared, it would only make things worse. One night in the carpet wouldn’t be too bad for Dooley, and one night in his box wouldn’t be too bad for Sam. In fact, he deserved it. I poured him out on his cushion, which I’d kept there for old times’ sake, and said, “Now just go to sleep,” and thought that was the end of my birthday party … It wasn’t.

The next end was, while I was dozing off, I heard Sam stir and pad into the hall, still weaving a little, toward Aunt Lucy’s room. I followed him. Her door was ajar, and he nosed it open and stood there, just looking.

She’d changed into pajamas and was sitting at her dressing table, wearing a housecoat with butterflies on it. She saw Sam watching. At first she was angry: her little features frowned, remembering all the broken bottles, I guess. But then, in spite of themselves, they relaxed. She patted her knee and said, “Come in, Sam.”

Sam approached her very carefully.

“Good old Sam,” she said. “I’m almost glad to see you again.”

Sam lifted one paw to her knee. Which she shook. And then ordered him gently, “Go on, now. Go back to Timmy’s room.”

He came into the hall—and found me watching. His head drooped down, ashamed … So did mine. I don’t like to eavesdrop. Even on dogs.

*   *   *

The next morning Sam was sure he was dying. He lay in his box making fatal sounds—low howls, whinings, and sighs of doggy despair—which I have to admit I thought were quite funny.

“Sam, it isn’t hydrophobia.” I tried to console him. “It’s only a hangover.”

With a little coaxing, he lapped up two aspirins from the palm of my hand. But you know how dogs are about pills. Even after some water they got stuck in his throat. He didn’t like the taste of them either and made me an angry face and gave a very disgruntled woof.

Then I thought an ice pack might help, so I got some ice cubes out of the freezer and tied them up in my face cloth. But the string came untied, and the ice fell all over his head.

Poor Sam … I was being mean, and laughing and having fun at his expense … The best thing was just to let him sleep it off.

At breakfast Rose was preoccupied. She hadn’t even asked me what I wanted the ice cubes for. I suspected her mood was because of Dooley—little wise guy that I was that day, but I was going to get what was coming to me—and I asked her, all fake innocence, if she’d heard from him yet this morning.

“No.” She stirred her coffee and made the cup rattle. “And we probably won’t.”

“Why not, Rose?”

“I think he’s just one of those rolling stones, that’s all. You heard him tell about all those places he’s been—swimming in the River Jordan. Probably in some place like Bangladesh right now!” She sipped her coffee, spilled some on her chin, and said, “Damn!”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if Dooley came back, Rose.” Little Mr. Fixit here—all I had to do was recite the spell.

“Well, I would!”

“You sort of liked him, didn’t you, Rose?”

“Oh, sure.” She could do some faking, too. “He was okay, I guess.”

“You liked him quite a lot—”

“Just finish your breakfast, nosey. And leave the psychologizing to Freud. You got troubles of your own! With that dog.”

*   *   *

But the funny thing was, I didn’t. At least not the troubles Rose was thinking of.

Aunt Lucy came into the kitchen, and before anybody could even offer “good morning,” she formally announced, “Timothy, I’ve decided that you can keep Sam.”

“I can keep him—?” Complications swarmed like bees in my head.

“Yes, dear. If you love him enough to have hidden him all this time—although I can’t imagine where. Probably right under our noses, Rose— Well, it’s cruel to want someone so much and then have him suddenly—”

“I’ll have to ask Sam—” I was thinking out loud.

“Ask Sam?”

“I mean—tell him. He’ll be happy. To be out in the open. At least, I think he will—”

She attributed my confusion to childish pleasure and surprise, and gave me a very auntlike smile. “You tell him then. And tell him that all is forgiven between us.”

“Between you and Sam? He’ll be glad to hear that.”

Aunt Lucy chuckled to Rose at my charming belief that Sam could understand what I said. But I was sure hoping he could—that enough of his understanding had lasted—because it was going to have to be his decision. Aunt Lucy was going out for the morning, and I left her and Rose in the kitchen, discussing what to have for lunch.

Sam was snoring in his box. “Wake up, Sam.” He likes to have me wake him up by scratching his neck.

“Woof,” he said sleepily. He still was bleary-eyed, but seemed much better than when I had left him.

“Aunt Lucy says I can keep you.”

“Woof?”

“I mean—keep you as a dog.”

“Woof!” He jumped out of his box. And he was understanding, all right. “Woofwoofwoofwoofwoof!”

“All right, all right, Sam. Cool it now.” There’s such a difference between a yes woof and a no. “But you acted very badly last night. You acted—like a dog.”

“Woof,” he apologized and hung his head.

“You might be happier—”

“Woof!”

“It’s hard being a man. You may not be up to it—”

“Woof!” he declared.

“—and I’d love you just as much—”

“Woof. Wooooooof—” he pleaded and laid his head on top of my foot.

“Well, all right. But this is your last chance. I’ll get the spell. I’ve got to get Dooley out of the carpet anyway.”

I pulled a chair over in front of the closet, to reach the top compartment. I was wondering if I could say it right there and Dooley would just appear in my bedroom—or whether a better idea would be to go back to—

The top shelf was empty … No bone, no Aztec bowl, not any of my special things. And no Good-Luck Devil from Borneo.

“It’s gone—” I said, but couldn’t believe.

Sam started barking hysterically. No conversational woofing now—just pure canine panic at the thought that he might be trapped in himself for the rest of his life.

“Hush up, Sam!” I tried to put a plug in the volcano of fright that was erupting in my chest, too. “Rose may have only moved things around—”

But in the kitchen she shot down any hope I had. “That junk in the closet?”

“Yes, Rose. That junk.”

“You remember the day, a month or so ago, when you stayed out so late at night?”

“Yes—”

“Well, next morning, when you were gone, your aunt said there were going to be some changes made around here. And the first one was, I should throw out all those creepy things you lugged up from the Village.”

“Did you—?”

“Right down the incinerator.”

“But the statuette—with the hollow eyes—”

“That little old ugly idol?—it went down first of all.”

“Oh, my gosh!”

“What’s wrong with that animal?”

“Easy, Sam.” I tried to soothe him and stroked his head. “I have to think.”

*   *   *

All I could think of to do was go back to Lorenzo’s diaries. (I looked through the last couple of pages I’d taken from them. Instead of putting them in the closet, I’d just tucked them in my copy of The Hobbit. Save time, I thought.)

In the cab Sam was whining pitifully. The driver, who was a nice man, thought I was taking him to the veterinarian and kindly asked, “What’s wrong with your pooch?”

“Mister,” I said, “if I even tried to tell you, you’d take us both straight to the psycho ward at Bellevue.”

I kept petting Sam’s head, although it felt funny—knowing it had been a man’s head only yesterday.

We barged into the shop, which luckily was empty except for Madame S. But every browser in Greenwich Village couldn’t have stopped Sam or me that day. “Madame Sosostris, we’ve got to find—”

“Hi, Tim. And Sam—!”

“—that genie spell again!”

“When did Sam get back?”

“Never mind! Please help me, Madame S. You don’t know how important this is—”

“I don’t see why.” She shrugged. “That spell’s a bust.”

“No, it’s not!” There was nothing else to do. To help me she’d have to know the truth. “You know Dooley—?”

“Sure. Your aunt’s—”

“He’s a genie,” I said as factually as I could.

“And he moonlights as a chauffeur on the side?” She treated herself to a little chuckle.

“Don’t joke! This is critical. That’s how I smuggled him into the house. He came from a rug that’s up in the National Museum, and he got returned there last night—by that one word ‘Allah’—and it’s horrible for him. Because he’s already been in there a thousand years. But it’s even worse for Sam. I mean, Mr. Bassinger—”

“Mr. Bassinger?”

“Yes. Mr. Bassinger is Sam. That is—Sam is Mr. Bassinger. I mean—they were going to exterminate Sam, so my genie turned him into a man, and—”

“Timothy—” Madame Sosostris put her hand on my shoulder—“I’m going to fix you an Alka-Seltzer with some soothing nightshade—”

“Oh, I knew nobody would ever believe me!” I had to find some proof—and I did. “Madame Sosostris, you remember your last séance with the Willy sisters?”

“The best I ever—”

“Dooley did that. The Fiendish Laughter—impersonating Nelly Willy—everything. Has anything like that happened since?”

She thought for a minute and admitted, “No—”

“I don’t mean to put you down, Madame S.—sooner or later I’m certain you’ll have your breakthrough—but it was Dooley who did all that. And last night—the bracelet trick, with all those extra scarves. And since when have you been able to carry a marble egg as big as a dinosaur’s inside that turban of yours?”

The beautiful thing about Madame Sosostris is how quickly she believes.

One minute more and she held out her hand. “Put ’er there.” We shook. “To conjure a genie—wow!”

“So you see that we’ve got to find that spell.”

She rolled up the sleeves of her blouse. “Let’s go!”

And we ransacked those books like bandits …

But nothing … Absolutely nothing … No way … Lorenzo had left England a few days after the last entry about Al-Hazred. And he hadn’t gone back to the British Museum again … Oh, why hadn’t I made a copy?…

“We’re licked,” I admitted into a silence that was crushing us like iron.

Sam was lying on the floor, crying. He was crying, too, although most dogs don’t cry—their eyes just water to wash out the junk. A last bit of Sam’s humanity left over, I suppose. As his smile had been its beginning.

“What a way to celebrate your thirteenth birthday.” Madame Sosostris sighed. “But then, it’s always been an evil number.”

“I should have stayed twelve forever,” I said.

My birthday party was really over now.