Where Serpents Lie

Twenty-Nine

“I’m looking for a puppy for my daughter,” Hypok said to the animal control officer. “She’s four.”

The officer — a dour hag of perhaps thirty — told him where the puppy run was, and if he didn’t find one he liked there, he could try the kennels out back for a slightly older dog. Hypok knew the drill here, but he asked all the standard questions anyway. It had been six months or so since he’d hit them up for Moloch chow. The officer on duty today was one he’d never seen before, but it paid to be careful when your face — former face — was on a freeway billboard not two miles away. It was really kind of a thrill to glide through the world with a new look, but you didn’t want to press it.

Hypok thanked her and walked back to the puppy run. He tilted a little on his way in — all that cactus juice flowing — but it was a good tilt, kind of a personal slant on things. Part of the new look. He was fresh from a shower and change of clothes — khaki pants with pleats, an almost matching cotton long-sleeved shirt with plenty of outdoorsy, all-American looking pockets and epaulets on it, manly gray socks and a pair of work boots. He’d put a pen in the pocket of the shirt. He felt trustworthy and animal friendly, the kind of guy who ate granola and would be happy to let you touch the cute little pup he was walking. But his psoriasis was flaring up — it always did when he got close to a predation — and even the cool, clean cotton was a torment against his skin. He’d gotten a fresh tube of Lidex goop delivered by the pharmacy, though the new delivery bimbo was too dumb to just drop it in his mail slot as usual. But the Lidex helped. And the tequila helped, too.

The puppy room was small and square. It had cages on three levels, and it echoed with the whines and yelps of puppies and the cacophony of the big dogs outside, and the occasional metallic slamming of doors. It was surprisingly loud. It smelled of dog shit and piss. There were other puppy lookers there with him: a family of five with a chubby but rather sexy daughter who looked to be about three; and an elderly couple made up of a man who probably weighed a hundred and a fat woman who weighed at least twice that.

Hypok stepped to the cages and stopped eye to eye with a black puppy about the size and shape of a shoe-box. He looked mostly lab, with something smaller and curlier mixed in — cocker spaniel, probably. He had deep brown eyes, the brightest of white teeth and a little pup weenie with a whip of damp hair curving off it. The label said he was an “All American,” one of the shelter’s euphemisms for mutt. He was expected to weigh between thirty and fifty pounds as an adult. He licked Hypok’s finger through the bars. A very cute dog. There were three more just like him in the back of the cage asleep, neat as a row of socks. Next was a beagleish unit yapping quite loudly, paying Hypok no attention at all. Hypok wasn’t a fan of the beagle, though Moloch had eaten one about a year ago, a full-grown dog he’d gotten here for free. It had been a sullen thing, didn’t like Hypok, didn’t like the ride home in the then-red van, didn’t like the guest house or the “last supper” he was offered, didn’t like it at all when Hypok led him to the cage door in the back of Moloch’s world and tried to guide him in. The beagle had wheeled twice and bitten at him but Hypok remained in control. He kept the stubborn little hunter lined up with the open door and kicked it through. The dog had cowed in the corner a minute, then was tentatively exploring the front glass when Moloch hit him like a bolt from Olympus and ten minutes later the ungrateful hound was nothing more than a slow lump. Hypok moved down the row: golden ones, black ones, calico ones; furry coats, short coats, straight coats and curled coats. Even a Dalmatian mix — spots intact — which Hypok knew wouldn’t last long in this market The older, out-of-proportion couple seemed charmed by a Doberman — golden retriever mix with nice eyes and good confirmation. “You can tell he’s intelligent,” the huge woman noted. Her skinny mate muttered, “All dogs are dumb.” Hypok continued.

Then it was love at first sight. She was a tiny, furry little thing — a failed Lhasa apso, by the look of her — roughly the size and appearance of a fluffy bedroom slipper. He could hardly tell her face from her ass, her eyes just barely visible behind the sprouting brow hair, which was a direct mimic of the tail hair at the other end. A reversible dog, Hypok thought. Her whole tiny body wiggled as she wagged her tail and licked Hypok’s finger. The sign said Yorkie-Lhasa mix, but it could have said anything, because Hypok had made up his mind. He quickly toured the rest of the puppy room, then marched back to the front desk to register his claim.

The old hag gave him the standard lecture and made him fill out the standard forms. He used his Warren Witt fake California driver’s license with a picture from years ago. It showed him with the short dark hair but no Vandyke or mustaches. The animal control officer seemed to somehow disapprove of it, or him, or something. Maybe it was his breath that she didn’t like, though the tequila and cinnamon drops seemed to be keeping his outlandish inner smells from coming out his mouth. He coughed quietly into his hand and waited for the results: not really that bad at all. The cost for the pup was $47, which included a $25 “altering deposit” that he would get back when he had the thing sterilized. Fat chance of that. He remembered a dog pound back in Missouri — or was it the one in Arkansas? — where they’d give you a puppy and a can of dog food for five bucks. He paid cash, breaking one of the nice hundreds delivered to him by the Friendlies from Naughty Naughton, then dumped the change into a donation bottle.

He named her Loretta. It was the kind of name he liked — kind of country/traditional — not like the sadly ambitious names that girls have now. She sat on the bucket seat next to his, not really scared, lifting her small buttish face to the air conditioner breeze that parted the long strands of her eyebrows to reveal her BB-sized eyes. Her face was kind of smashed in — from what you could see of it — but her white-and-tan-splotched hair was gay. The grim crone of an animal control officer had offered to tie a bow around the dog’s neck, and Hypok had chosen white with black paw prints. “What’s your daughter’s name?” the officer demanded.

“Nan,” he’d said with a proud smile.

Now he was heading back out the 22 toward the 55, giving serious thought to where he should start. He took a generous gulp of tequila and held up the clear plastic bottle: one-third left. It was 5:45 P.M. Friday, with all sorts of good possibilities at the malls because working moms like to pick up their daughters at day care after work and go spend money on Fridays. The amusement parks were always good. The supermarkets would be good, too. The beach would be okay but not great because it wasn’t quite warm enough yet. Same for the public swimming facilities, though the one down in Mission Viejo had showers and was active last spring. The parks were always good, especially if you liked Latins, which Hypok neither liked nor disliked more than any other ethnic brand. Obviously, it was too late in the day for schools or bus stops. The trick was to be where the kids were numerous and the parents lax. A lot of it was just luck, too, though. The tequila consolidated him in a wonderful way, compressing him into a single, purposeful unit of acquisition. He was back in the hunt. The first order of business was to stop at a pet store and get a leash and a little collar, and maybe some of those little poopie tissues that come in the round plastic eggs like the rubber snakes in the vending machines used to. He had once purchased a realistic rubber coral snake for a quarter.

“You girls can get expensive,” he remarked to the dog.

Loretta yawned, then looked at him and wagged her tail.

Hypok looked out at the traffic-swelled County of Orange as he crept down the 55. It wasn’t his idea of a good place to live, really, because it was expensive, fast paced and filled with successful, hardworking, narrow-minded people. They wanted it all, and believed they deserved it. Real consumers, reeking of entitlement. One of the upsides was that there was plenty of work if you needed it. The other upside was that these “master-planned communities” were dandy breeding pens for middle-class human beings, who tended to produce attractive, healthy offspring. So, it was a trade-off. But compared to Missouri or Arkansas or Georgia or Florida or Texas, Orange County was pretty good. The parents here were a lot more careless than you might think, which he attributed to a general arrogance in baby boom adults who were themselves just older, privileged children. They thought they owned the whole fucking world. He thought about his next place, wondering if a more rural but growing metropolitan area — like Portland, Oregon, or Denver, Colorado — might give him the sense of nature that he really liked, along with a suitable population base for successful work. He briefly entertained an old fantasy: sell house and most belongings, buy big pickup with camper on it, buy small trailer to tow behind the pickup and go around the states taking choice Items into the camper bed, allowing them to enjoy his company, then letting them have free run of the trailer for as long as they could until they met up with Moloch — the full-time tenant of the trailer. He loved the idea — it was the RV lifestyle they were always talking about on the radio, with a wrinkle. But he knew he’d miss the comforts of a true home. That’s why he’d retracted Collette’s listing, because of the comforts of Wytton Street. But the current fact of the matter was that the heat was on here in OC, and he’d either have to move, quit or get caught. His days of carefree anonymity were over. Another Item or two collected, and that would be about it. There was no reason to press something when the odds were growing against you. But that was easy to say and harder to do, when every cell, nerve and corpuscle in your body was screaming out for the same thing: love, touch, release.

Hypok continued down the 55 to the 405, heading for Fashion Island, an outdoor mall in Newport Beach that had a pet store. He could kill two birds with one stone: get Loretta outfitted properly, and troll for Items right there in the mall until security threw him out for having a dog. If he explained he just bought the dog at the store, it might buy him a little leeway. Fashion Island was a ritzy place, not as crowded with kids and moms as a run-of-the-mill suburban mall, but it had some things going for it: (1) parking places very close to some of the store entrances, (2) dozens of entrances/exits as opposed to the limited number — usually four to six — found in an indoor mall, (3) the pet store, (4) an outdoor, relaxed, adult-oriented atmosphere that distracted parents with products and made them lax, (5) healthy, nutritionally advantaged Items, and (6) plenty of single guys around for cover. This time of day wasn’t a good one for Fashion Island, Hypok conceded, but if he didn’t have any luck by six-thirty, the movie theaters, amusement parks, stadiums and entertainment arenas would be heating up by then, as well as all those wonderful fast-food restaurants that featured playgrounds for the kiddies.

He cruised the parking lot near the Robinson’s/May store, a prime place to be if he got lucky. Circling the two best rows for the third time, Hypok suddenly felt a jolt of anger passing through him: a tensing of his muscles, a dimming of his vision, a huge desire to strike or throttle something living — the dog next to him, for instance — then it was gone as quick as it came on and he calmed himself with another swig of warm tequila as he waited for a fat-assed Japanese luxury sedan to vacate a space so he could pull in.

He ran a tender hand over Loretta’s tiny hairy head. She shivered. He licked his finger and offered it to her. Lick, lick. Ohhh...

Out of the van, lock the door, Loretta held to his side like a football. Just a few steps and he was into the sensual cloister of the mall, all perfume and product and groomed human beings, corporate America pandering to the bored and prosperous, Hypok’s natural instincts isolating the blonde with the stroller; the frizzy-haired brunette with a daughter on each hand checking the curios in the From Russia with Love booth; the portly third-world nanny guiding a young son and daughter behind a speeding mother who was already through the doors of the Express store offering 33 percent off swimwear and a buy-two-get-one-at-half-price deal on “summer casuals.” Hypok noted the five-year-old Item (red dress, ribbon in hair) nearly a hundred yards ahead of him; the seven-year-old (pink shorts, pink blouse) trailing its father into a department store; the four-year-old (denim pants and matching oversize jacket) standing alone by the leather sandal booth and looking very enticing indeed. He approached. He stopped about ten feet behind it. He set down Loretta and started cooing at her. She wiggled, jumped up to lick him, then began to wander away with a precarious sideways puppy canter that brought a smile to Hypok’s face.

“Loretta!” he ordered calmly. “Come back here, little girl!”

The four-year-old turned as if on command — they often responded to a masculine voice at that age, especially if their parents were already divorced — and it looked quickly at Hypok, then at Loretta. Its face broke into a smile bright and warm as a Death Valley sunrise. It slapped over to Loretta in its little sandaled feet and bent down, oversized jacket covering most of its pale, chubby legs. Dinosaur Band-Aid, lower right calf, freshly applied, no peripheral dirt buildup yet. Loretta was jumping up to lick the Item. Her tail wagged over her back. Hypok sighed and walked over to them, taking a knee a few feet away to watch the precious Item/canine encounter. He looked directly at them from behind his sunglasses, showing no interest at all in who — if anyone — might be the Item’s keeper. Loretta sprang up and down like a ball attached to a rubber band attached to a paddle. She scooted away. The Item lunged after her and fell to its knees: white thighs, a flash of something whiter between them. Loretta wiggled toward it. Hypok knelt on one knee with his left elbow resting on his kneecap and a hard, ferocious heat annealing his guts. Something of Valeen and Collette in this one, he thought, in the way its eyes shine. He doubted if this Item had the unabashed carnal curiosities of his older sisters at age, say, ten, but that was hardly the point. There were ways around that little problem. Then, the almost inevitable happened. Hypok sensed it before he saw or heard it, and he knew exactly what it was. Suddenly, a large intrusive figure barged into his field of vision and squatted down next to the Item and Loretta. It was like a dark cloud passing over the sun. Human male: forty-something, polo shirt, shorts and deck shoes, no socks, one of those come-late-to-familihood dads who were a whole lot more vigilant about their brood than the twenty-something kids who started early. He was actually gray haired. He looked at Hypok with a neutral expression, nodded, then reached out to the puppy. Loretta dropped her flag of a tail and cowed, then approached him reverently. He pet her. She peed. Hypok moved up and forward and swept the still dribbling Loretta up into his arms. He smiled down at father and Item.

“Be careful of the wee-wee,” he said. He expected security to lock onto him at this point. Things felt wrong.

“Come on, Lauren,” said the old gray-haired, idiotically dressed daddy boy.

Hypok moved toward the pet store. Another Lauren, he thought. Chloe, Lauren, Jessica, Joy, Tiffany, Charlie: when will Americans stop naming their daughters after perfumes?

On to the pet store now, Hypok carrying Loretta under his left arm, scanning the shoppers for Items — a little redheaded siren by the bookstore; a plump temptress walking with its plump mother, same chunky legs, a miniature version of the physical mold it’d come from; a sultry, pouting Item of perhaps twelve — too old, but that looked brazenly at him as he passed by and he caught the aroma of perfume and shampoo coming off it. Into the store, a brief notification of the clerk concerning his intentions, then to the collar rack, way down at the bottom where the smallest ones hung upon display hooks and he brought out a pink, a yellow and a blue for Loretta to sniff as if the tiny fool really cared what color she wore. He picked a light blue one that sort of fit, though a long piece of it protruded beyond the buckle when it was snug enough not to slip over and off Loretta’s head. He picked a leash to match it. In the food section he found a small box of puppy treats for very small dogs. At the cash register he paid with one of the twenties given to him by the harpy at the animal shelter, the bill a limp but direct descendant of the crisp hundreds paid to him by a perverted cop who couldn’t live without pictures of himself and girls not yet into puberty. What a world. The woman at the checkout counter was big and horsy looking, perhaps nineteen. When she smiled she looked like John Elway with long hair. She pet Loretta with an enormous freckled hand.

“She’s so cute.”

“For my daughter, Nan.”

The Denver QB stared hard at him. Ready to call an audible at the line, Hypok imagined.

“Are you on TV?” she asked Hypok.

“No, I’m in advertising. Billboards, actually.”

“You look like someone I know.”

“And you look like someone I know, too, but I can’t think who.”

“Probably that football player,” she said, smiling and looking down. “That’s what all the guys say, anyway.”

“Say good-bye, Loretta.”

“Loretta! That’s my mom’s name. ’Bye, Loretta!”

Back into the evening now, the darkness complete, the lights of the shops bright and alluring as diamonds, the dog collared and leashed, flouncing back and forth in front of him. Past the gleaming storefronts and the central courtyard, past the benches and the planters and the fish pond, through the booths again, winding through Fashion Island like a snake on a prowl, alert to danger and opportunity, attuned to every odor on the breeze and every nuance from the bodies of the mammals all around him, Hypok himself the head of the serpent, the ultraviolet eye, the heat pit sensor, the aroma-gathering tongue, the collating brain in a secret hunt among the privileged and prosperous, the harried and the careless, the vain and the ignorant, the innocent and the pure.

He stopped at the intermittent fountain, a kid pleaser at all times of the day and night. His brain panted.

Hypok receiving: two twelve-year-olds unattended and perilously brash looked his way with admiring eyes, old as they were it sent a ripple of electricity up his back. A tandem stroller for two-year-old twins in pink, just a hair too young. A petite Indian girl in a sari, dark and mysterious as the Ganges of which Hypok was reminded, picturing crocodiles taking down Hindu bathers in diapers and turbans.

Then, his senses all ratcheted up a full degree and his breathing shortened as a five-year-old pigtailed seductress in overalls and black tennies spotted Loretta and angled straight toward her, its hair tawny brown in the lights, its arms thin, its face a littoral of light and shadow but a mask of pure happiness to be sure, white teeth and red lips and eyes dark as tidepools at midnight — an Item so absolutely perfect and compelling that Hypok’s breath shallowed out to almost nothing, snagging against his throat like a skiff on a Key West flat, and he breathed in deeply now and fumbled for his cinnamon drops as he knelt and fed out leash so Loretta could wobble out to greet this radiant, approaching Item.

He watched the Item sit cross-legged, with Loretta climbing all over its lap. The Item grabbed the puppy’s head gently, steadied it while looking into Loretta’s face, then kissed her on the nose.

“You smell good!”

Its voice was thin and high and very clear, made you feel like you were breathing mountain air, or amyl nitrite poppers.

“Her name’s Loretta,” he managed.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Expand lungs. Relax.

The Item looked at him for the first time, and Hypok knew that its first reaction to him would make it gettable or not. He waited like a disciple for a miracle, or a revelation from his master. Then, an ocean of warm optimism rolled through him when it smiled and said, “Mine’s Ruth.”

Ruth! A genuine name! The Book of Ruth!

“Here,” he said, “you can offer her a reward.”

“What did she do?”

“She’s being nice to you.”

Hypok cracked open the box of doggie treats and held one — shaped like a tiny hot dog — out toward the Item. It leaned forward, still sitting, still smiling, and took the biscuit.

Loretta got a whiff of it and jumped toward the Item’s hand, then tried to climb its arm.

“She’s hungry!”

“Hold the treat over her head, tell her to sit, and tug gently on the leash.” Hypok felt the warm, surging seas inside him starting to settle and solidify. The breeze against his ears suddenly felt cool and instructional: get it to the van. “Tug gently on the leash.”

When Loretta felt the tug, she wheeled left, then right, trying to locate her torment. Then she stopped, looked up at the Item’s lowering hand and leaped, snatching the treat midair and dropping it to the ground. She whirled around, trying to find it through all her hair.

“Ohhh!”

“That’s all right, Ruth. She’s got a lot to learn. Just like her brothers and sisters.”

“How many puppies do you have?”

“Well, there’s Mommy, Daddy and five others. Loretta is the happy one, because she knows she’s staying with me and her parents. The others are sad. So I left them in my car.”

“Sad why?”

“I’m taking them to the shelter. Hopefully, they’ll find homes, but you never know. Puppies understand that kind of thing. They understand when they’re safe and when they’re not.”

“Ohhh. That’s sad.”

“It’s very sad. It breaks my heart, actually. So I stopped here to get a box of treats for them all. I’m just looking for excuses not to drive to that animal shelter.”

“I wish I could take them.”

“I doubt your parents would be very happy about that.”

“No. We have a cat.”

“Where are your mom and dad, by the way?”

Ruth looked at him, then turned and pointed to a crowded restaurant lobby. The place was packed — people standing outside, inside, everywhere. “Getting dinner to go.”

It looked like a long wait.

“Which ones?” he asked.

“Oh, they’re in there somewhere. We do this every Friday. They let me watch the fountain because it takes so long, and Daddy can have wine, but he can’t bring it down here.”

Loretta had rolled onto her back while the Item scratched the dog’s hairy little belly.

“You know, I’ll bring the box out, and you and your mom and dad can at least look at the others,” he said. “No harm in that, I guess. Who knows?”

The Item smiled again, lifting Loretta up into its arms and staring into her hidden puppy face. “Could I have this one?”

“She’s mine! But I’ll let you see the others. All right?”

“Great!”

Hypok stood and walked toward the Item, bending down to take Loretta.

“Can’t she wait with me?”

“Well, I should keep her in my sight.”

“But I’ll watch her.”

“No... I really can’t let her be away from me like that. Let’s see... why don’t you... you know, my car is just right over there, so if you want to take the leash and walk her for me, that would be okay.”

“Can’t leave the fountain, Dad says.”

“Well, that’s understandable,” he said, softly.

Hypok set Loretta down and held the leash. The Item looked sadly at the puppy. He said nothing for a long, punishing moment.

“Actually, I won’t be able to bring them out, I guess, because I have to carry the box, too. Someone else would have to take Loretta.”

He smiled, then offered his most contrite and penitent expression. It was good enough to make God believe him. He held out the leash.

“It’s right over there. We’ll probably be back before your dad even gets his wine.”

The Item smiled too, and stood, then scampered toward his outstretched hand, reaching for the leash.

“Let’s go fast now,” he said.

“Come on.”

“I’m right behind you.”

A quick pivot of scaled head toward the restaurant lobby: a chaos of happy, hungry humans, the smell of food, white lights against the blue-black springtime sky of Southern California.

Ruth!