9

Sam’s Pet Shop

That’s what the sign over the door said—in big beautiful letters that Dooley invented.

It was on Second Avenue, and Sam and Dooley had their apartments—floor-throughs—on the second and third floor above. On the top floor lived Mr. Cantarell. He was one of those Collier-brother-type recluses who don’t go out for anything except to get food. And right in the middle of the biggest, busiest city in the world! I met him in the hall once and I liked him, but he doesn’t have anything to do with anything—so there he still lives.

When I learned, the day after the nervous lunch, that Sam had his pet shop and that Dooley and he had acquired pads, coincidentally, in the very same building on Second Avenue, I began to worry about evaporated former tenants. But Dooley swore to me that he hadn’t done anything to anyone. It was kind of a rickety building, down in the twenties, and all vacant, except for Mr. Cantarell. They kept him on, at his same cheap rent, for charity, and because he liked animals.

The way they got it was, Dooley made money. And I mean he really made money! About twenty-five thousand dollars in one afternoon. (That’s another thing: if anybody should find some fake money around, hold on to it. It may be Dooley’s, and it’ll probably be very precious someday. There can’t be too much counterfeit in circulation that a genie himself created.)

But after the money they did it all themselves. That same business about not wasting magic on what you can do by hand. Once the building was bought, and the mortgage arranged—with some doctored credentials for Sam—they tore through the place like two hurricanes: painting, scrubbing, renovating. Every old building should be so lucky as to have two guys like Dooley and Sam in it. They even bought ladders and painted the outside, too. And the plumbing—all new pipes—everything … Believe me, it’s lucky that all of that work was really work! It lasted beyond the spell.

In two weeks Sam’s Pet Shop was ready. And the best time in my life began … We started to get the animals.

We decided right off that we wouldn’t specialize in just one type. We’d have dogs and cats and fishes and birds and monkeys—and every kind of animal that could possibly find a home in New York. And at that very first conference we also resolved that we’d have special kennels and pens for mongrels and other mixed-together things that the other pet shops might consider just throwaways … After all, Sam was no pureblood himself.

I wish it had taken months and months—the fun we had! We began in other pet shops, picking out the animals we liked. Sam would say something like, “I think I could be a friend to that cat.”

Or Dooley would say, “A most appealing guppy, master.”

Of course I agreed to everything.

But then, after we got the rare guys like the kinkajou and the one we called William Rhesus, we found that on the streets, despite the dogcatchers, cat catchers, and catchers of everything else, there are lots of animals walking around. Sam had the idea of going back to the Houston Street dog pound, to see if we could salvage any of his former friends. We picked up a couple of dogs down there, but I’m not sure whether they were part of Sam’s lot.

I found a stray kitten, and, to my surprise, I liked it very much—which shows it only takes a little exposure.

Then, alas, in only a week the shop was all stocked. Except for Felix.

And Felix I’ve got to tell you about. He was our parakeet.

Dooley came marching in one afternoon, with an especially gleeful grin, and perched on the shoulder of his green chauffeur’s uniform was this little green parakeet. “A new addition, gentlemen,” said Dooley, with his grin in his voice, too. “I believe we shall call him Felix.”

Now “cute” is a word I really hate, but this just had to be the cutest little bird in the world. But with a wicked sense of humor! Felix took one look at Sam, and the feathers on the back of his neck stood up; he leaned forward warily and squawked, “You can teach an old dog new tricks.”

That was the beginning of it. Felix ribbed Sam about his—his past, shall we say—all summer long. I’m sure Dooley taught him what to say; some of it was only repetition. But he also kept coming up with things that could only have been implanted by magic. Dooley never would admit it, though. Whenever Felix came out with one of his cracks, Dooley would only raise his eyebrows and say something like, “By the Wizard’s beard!—what a perceptive bird.”

For instance, there was the first time Sam got up the courage to ask Aunt Lucy to come around and see his pet shop. Aunt Lucy was doing all the right things—she was “ooing” and “ahing” and stroking the kittens and making a fuss about the puppies—and Sam was just lapping it up, when all of a sudden Felix burst out singing, “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog!”

Now how could a parakeet have learned a very old song like that unless a genie had taught it to him?

Then there was the incident of the lady who couldn’t decide which dog biscuits to buy. (I forgot to tell you—we sold food for animals, too.) And Sam forgot himself, as he sometimes did, and said, “Personally, I prefer this brand. It tastes much bet—” He remembered then and blushed.

But Felix wouldn’t let him get away with it. Up on his perch he shrieked indignantly, “Why, Sam!—you old dog, you! Aw haw!”

I had to go into the bathroom in back and laugh myself out. The lady was gone when I got back—thinking Lord knows what!—but Sam was still furious and bawling Felix out. Felix didn’t care a darn. He just made his feathers stand up and squawked in that parroty voice of his, “Aw haw! His bark is worse than his bite.”

Felix and I established a very good relationship. Of course it wasn’t as good as Sam’s relationship to all the other animals—because that was something absolutely wonderful. Whenever a puppy had a stomachache or a kitten was teething, Sam knew it instinctively. That, I suppose, was to be expected. But he even related to the fish! And when it came time for shots for someone, Sam would give an injection and not cause a whimper. The little guys were scared of the needle, and Sam remembered how it was … Apart from the fun we had in those days, I remember the most beautiful thing of all was the way Sam loved and tended his animals.

But Felix and I had a great friendship, too. I think we were about as tight together as a bird and a boy can get. At first Sam was sort of growly and jealous when Felix and I would fool around. But then he adjusted to it all right. He knew that even as a man he still came first with me.

After days and days of cajoling and coaxing, I got Felix so trusting that he’d sit on my shoulder. Dooley was the only other one that he’d do that for. And Dooley wasn’t around all that much after he, Sam, and I had gotten the pet shop in working order. I thought it was just that Aunt Lucy was wasting his time by having him drive her around. He was her chauffeur, after all. Though I don’t think she really wanted a chauffeur—it was one of those habits left over from Grampa Lorenzo. But there was a lot more to it than Dooley and the Cadillac (which he had learned to drive by now), as I found out shortly, to my sorrow.

In the meantime, Felix trusted me enough to sit on my shoulder. And Sam refused to sell him. One day a man came in the shop, when Felix happened to be singing opera, and offered a very extravagant price for him. Sam took one look at my face and said politely, “I’m sorry, that bird is not for sale.”

I thought it was very sweet of him, but Felix, with his sense of humor, had to scream out, “A man’s best friend is—!”

“Shut up, you green fiend,” muttered Sam.

We unloaded a couple of middle-aged canaries on that customer. (They were very melodious.) The man that sold them to us said they’d always been together, so we wouldn’t separate them.

With Felix the best day came when I went out to the delicatessen to buy some roast-beef sandwiches for Sam and me. (By now you can see that I was spending all day, every day, in the shop.) Felix was sitting on my shoulder, clucking and muttering in parakeet talk, and not even planning what I was doing, I risked it: I walked out the door with him still sitting next to my ear.

He didn’t budge. He was good as gold. The fun of it was to walk down Second Avenue, with this dapper green parakeet perched up there, and pretend there was nothing unusual. I kept a dopey normal face and made believe nothing was happening. But the stares, and the grins, and the laughs we got!

In the delicatessen, before I could even say a word, Felix spouted out, “Two roast-beef sandwiches. One on rye with lettuce and mayo.”

That was what Sam had said. (I hadn’t decided, when we’d left the shop.) Another thing about that parakeet: his memory was phenomenal.

It was kind of a turning point between Felix and me, that walk in the street to get those sandwiches. On the way back, for no reason at all, he moved over close to my ear and whispered—if a parakeet can whisper—“Hello there! Hello there, Tim.”

It’s really amazing—how animals know what you want to hear. Or feel. When Sam was a dog, when I was down, he’d know it right away and come and put his head in my lap. And Felix knew, on that walk back to the shop, with all the people gawking at us, that I wanted him to talk to me personally.

*   *   *

I began to take him back to the apartment in Sutton Place with me. Aunt Lucy was pretty jittery the first time I walked in with Felix on my shoulder, but she still was feeling guilt-ridden about Sam—not that she’d admit it, of course—so she jittered herself into accepting my new pet. I bought a perch and spread newspapers under it, and Felix just eased himself into the family.

I needed his company, too. You’ve only heard the good times of the opening-pet-shop weeks, but there were some bad things happening in the background, too, which I tried, unsuccessfully, to ignore.

The worst was my testing. Aunt Lucy and Mr. Watkins couldn’t decide which grade I belonged in, and I wasn’t about to help them make up their minds. So I got tested … Did I ever get tested! For one whole morning I answered questions—written, which I didn’t mind, and oral—to this guy who I think was a psychiatrist. To me he looked like a dogcatcher for people.

It turned out that I did extremely well in reading and pretty well in math, but I flunked social studies. The psychiatrist decided that I didn’t relate to “my peer group” at all—that means kids my own age—and it’s completely untrue. (The only reason that Jimmy Libovski and Irving Siesel don’t come into what happened is that they had no part in it.) The shrink recommended a dose of summer camp … This was still only July, and I had all of August to learn how to relate.

Aunt Lucy was only too glad to hear her worst suspicions confirmed. Ever since I’d been living with her, she’d been beefing—no, fidgeting—about my not having any friends my own age. Well, it’s true. Since I’d moved up to Sutton Place, my friends were a very good singer who was earning money as a cook, a genie disguised as a chauffeur, a medium in Greenwich Village, a man who used to be my dog, and a parakeet with a sharp sense of humor … In my opinion, these were friends enough.

The worst was the testing, but more subtle and more dangerous were those duets.

They began one sweltering day—this must have been about three weeks ago—when Dooley came back from having deposited Aunt Lucy at some very important civic gathering. He was sweating like a horse, and despite all the air conditioning, which there’s plenty of in our apartment, Rose suggested that he take a shower.

“A most comfortable idea,” said Dooley, and he did a little bow … He was always doing things, like bowing, or calling her “Rose of the petal lips,” that turned her on, although she didn’t know what to make of them.

So off Dooley went to Rose’s bathroom. But he didn’t take a shower—he took a bath. You know what a bathtub does for a voice: if you sound good in the living room, you’ll sound like the Met in the tub. And if that happens to a man, you can just imagine what happens to a genie’s voice.

He was singing a song that I think was in Arabic. As soon as Rose and I, who were just about to have lunch, heard the sounds that were coming from that throat, we put down our sandwiches quietly, not wanting to chew, and just blinked at each other. He definitely was a baritone, but he had a tenor’s top and the luscious low notes of a bass … Music is one of the very few ways that magic gets into humanity. When you hear a great voice, you almost want to stop breathing, to listen.

He came back in a few minutes, looking refreshed but as if nothing at all had happened. Rose was gawking up at him, and she said, “Man, have you got a voice! Where did you learn to sing like that?”

Dooley looked surprised. Sometimes he didn’t know where his gifts really were. “But, Mistress Rose, all things beneath the sun love to sing.”

“Well, all things beneath the sun don’t sing like that! You know any spirituals?”

“Spirituals?”

“Sure. They always want us to sing spirituals—until we can prove that we really know how to sing.”

“Then sing me a spiritual,” said Dooley, with his voice inviting, and ingratiating, and sly.

Rose launched into “Deep River”—“Deep river, my soul lies over Jordan”—et cetera. It’s my favorite. I’d heard her practicing it for weeks, but she knew that she was in front of a master now, and she sang it especially well.

But Dooley had to do some teasing. “Oh, Mistress Rose,” he scoffed, “that river—the Jordan—’tis not so deep. I’ve swum in it—”

Rose exploded. “I don’t care if you’ve swum in it. Can you sing it?—that’s all.”

He’d only heard it that once, but Dooley straight off sang a rendition of “Deep River” the like of which couldn’t have been heard in many kitchens in Sutton Place before.

“Man—!” Rose was absolutely goggle-eyed by now. “You’re wasting your time in that chauffeur’s uniform! I’m taking you straight to my teacher—”

Which she did … And that was the beginning of Dooley’s singing lessons … Also those duets. Rose’s vocalizing had a baritone accompaniment to it now.

*   *   *

I was so happy during all of those weeks I forgot to think. If I’d put everything together—especially what Dooley said the first night that I conjured him—I could have expected the coming catastrophe. But no. There I was, drifting along in bliss in Sam’s pet shop, having a ball every day, and totally unaware of how thin the ice of magic is. Especially when it comes up against something as strong as the longings of human nature.

It began to happen, the disaster did, one Friday afternoon. Sam was dithering around, the way he always dithered when Aunt Lucy was coming to visit—which she did more and more often these days.

Felix wasn’t helping much. Whenever Sam would nervously ask me if I thought the puppies’ cages were clean enough, Felix would laugh—“Aw haw!”—and rasp out something like, “There’s a dog in this manger.”

“Felix, if you don’t shut up—!”

“Now, now, Sam.” I tried to soothe his hackles down. I felt them there, underneath his collar, even though they weren’t as obvious as when he was a dog. “You just keep on cleaning—I’ll take care of Felix.”

“You better!” Sam growled. “Because I’m gonna bust him one—”

“Distemper! That’s what it is!” shrieked Felix. “Get the vet,” he ordered gloomily. “It may be contagious.”

I got him, finally, to shut his beak by giving him a cracker. Although he never would stoop to that dopey pollywannacracker routine.

Aunt Lucy arrived—looking a lot more spiffy than she needed to, just visiting a friend in his pet shop.

“Hi, Lucy!” Sam grinned sheepishly.

“Hi, Sam.” Aunt Lucy grinned right back. And the squirrel in her giggled.

“I’ve got the carrots all ready—”

“Fun! Let’s start.”

It seems that Aunt Lucy had developed a passion for the rabbits. She just loved to come over every afternoon and give them their supper. Believe me, rabbits are not bright animals. They’re lovable, but unobservant, and they don’t know the difference between a Bergdorf Goodman suit and a pair of overalls.

While Aunt Lucy was squealing her joy at “how the bunnies love to nibble,” and Sam was standing there, passing her carrots obediently, Felix and I went over to visit with William Rhesus. At that point the company of a monkey felt very refreshing. We talked to him for a while, and I think he understood. But you never can tell with monkeys. They’re tricky, being almost up to man.

Then we drifted over to the puppy cage, which is where we usually end up. It’s my favorite place in the shop. Everybody recognized me, jumped up on their hind legs, forepaws on the screen, and started barking. I love that shrill little pitiful bark that puppies have.

Sam came over with Lucy and said to the puppies, “Now settle down, men—settle down.”

“I wasn’t doing anything to upset them, Sam,” I said.

“I know, Tim. Those are just love barks. But they get too excited.”

“You ought to know!” Felix muttered under his breath.

“A parakeet can be fricasseed, too!” growled Sam, under his.

Aunt Lucy cooed at the puppies awhile. Then her face got this curious rueful expression. “Why look, Timmy,” she said. “That brown and white one—over in the corner—he looks just like—”

It was true. And Aunt Lucy had noticed it even before I had. In the new batch there was one little mongrel guy who had exactly Sam’s coloring. I think there was basset in him somewhere, too. He looked so forlorn and intimidated, meeting all those new strange people and dogs—this was his very first day, after all—that I had to reach in and pick him up. Sam looked at the puppy sympathetically and then took him in his own arms.

“Who does he look like, Lucy?” said Sam in a very quiet voice.

She hesitated, glanced fidgetily at me—we hadn’t talked about it in the open yet, since that first day of Sam’s being a man—and said, “Tim had this dog who couldn’t adapt to life with us in Sutton Place—and Timmy bravely gave him up. You have been good about that, too, dear!” She gave my hand a squeeze—which felt like a squeeze this time.

“Um—well—Aunt Lucy,” I hemmed and didn’t know what to say. So I hawed, “It hasn’t been too hard.”

“You’ve been a help there, Sam,” said Aunt Lucy. “You’ve been such a friend to my nephew.”

“A man’s best friend—” began Felix ominously.

“Quiet!” I commanded him. He’ll obey me, although he won’t Sam.

“You didn’t like him at all?” Sam asked sadly, in a voice unlike his usual happy-go-lucky human woofing, which bore a resemblance to his dog voice.

“You know,” Aunt Lucy admitted, after a minute, “I really did. I’d grown quite fond of Sam. He was terribly clumsy, though—”

Right here—and wouldn’t you know he’d do it?—Sam leaned against the puppies’ cage and knocked it over. Nobody was hurt, but all of them scattered like furry drops of rain around the shop.

When we’d rounded them up, Aunt Lucy continued, enjoying her nostalgia now that there was no work involved: “Yes, I had grown fond of Sam. He’d stare at me with such feeling in that woebegone face—!”

Sam stared at the floor, to hide his woebegone. “He must have liked you an awful lot.”

Then it happened.

I could see Sam was losing control—and did my nerves ever tighten me up!—but I was expecting, if anything, that he’d lick her hand or lift his paws—I mean, his hands—to her shoulders and start to bark rhapsodically. But it was worse than either one.

He howled.

I think he meant to say something fairly icky, but instead of words, this pitiful canine howl came out. A man’s voice is one of his very most human characteristics, and when Sam started to relapse, his voice went first. He stared at me, terrified. Aunt Lucy couldn’t believe her ears and looked down in the puppy cage, thinking the sound must have come from there.

Sam cleared his throat and tried to say something. But now he only halfheartedly woofed. His eyes got big as they pleaded with me—to make it stop, or at least explain what was happening. And Aunt Lucy knew by this time that Sam was making those noises. But naturally—and thank God!—not knowing the truth, she expected some rational explanation.

I came up with the only one I could find. And pretty idiotic, too. I said, “Sam, some of that puppy’s fur must have gotten into your throat.” He was still holding his duplicate. “You’re coughing badly. Better put him down. And try not to speak for a while!”

Sam’s eyes understood, and he put the puppy back into the cage, tapping his throat all the while and smiling at Aunt Lucy, as if it were all very natural … Natural!

“We’d better be getting back, Aunt Lucy,” I said unhurriedly.

“Well, but if Sam’s not well—”

“Oh, it happens all the time when you own a pet shop. Doesn’t it, Sam?”

He nodded as cheerfully as he could, over his panic, and motioned us hopefully toward the door.

After a few more Sutton Place pleasantries, I managed to get Aunt Lucy out.

We took a cab back home—where I meant to ask that genie just exactly what was happening!