Your Robot Dog Will Die Read online

  “You aren’t very subtle, kid,” Ellie says to me. “Let’s go check on Jack. I bet he’s cute, too.”

  “No,” I say.

  “He’s not cute?”

  “Yeah,” says Wolf. “Do you not think our Jack is cute?”

  “Wolf, just go,” I say to him.

  He kisses me on the lips, for maybe like two hours, then walks off toward The Smiling Manatee. Ellie watches him.

  “He’s adorable,” she says to me. Then she asks where the bathroom is. I point out the public restrooms, just across the street, explaining they haven’t been cleaned yet but will be before the party tonight.

  “It’s fine,” she says. “I’ll be right back.”

  There she goes, clomping to and then into the bathroom. I drift off a little, while she’s there. I’m thinking about Donut, mostly. I try to search my mind, to figure out why I felt the need to take him. And in so doing, to create a massive, possibly devastating complication in my life. If we get caught . . . I don’t have an answer. I know it could be extremely bad. Then I think of his face, looking into mine. I think of his tail, wagging. I know it was the right thing to do.

  After a while, I realize it’s been a long time since Ellie went to the bathroom. Look, I get it, sometimes your stomach hurts. But maybe I should check on her. See if she needs me to get her something, like more toilet paper. (The public bathrooms are sparsely stocked, since TP is a hot commodity that frequently gets stolen for personal use. Dorothy likes to say that “toilet paper does grow on trees, but these magnificent creations of nature are in short supply, and they aren’t ours to cut down, depriving animals of their habitat.” We are encouraged to use a reusable cloth instead of the paper, and while some go along with this plan, many of us find it disgusting beyond measure.)

  She’s not in there. There are only two stalls, both are empty of Ellie (and of toilet paper).

  I search the beach, the Casino, the little main drag where perhaps she is taking a stroll, but no Ellie. “Where is she?” I ask my robot dog, who does not answer—it would be shocking if he did.

  Well, I think, I lost Marky Barky’s daughter, but it could be worse. Now at least I can go relieve Jack of his Donut duties for a bit, maybe make out with Wolf for a while. Spend time with the puppy, plot our next steps.

  Looking around to make sure no one’s watching, I walk up the cracked concrete steps, to The Smiling Manatee. At the top of the stairs, past the swinging door, there’s Jack and Mr. Chi-Chi Pants. There’s Wolf. There’s Donut.

  And crap on a spoon, there’s Ellie.

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  Chapter 6

  You have these moments. Something bad is happening, or just happened, or is about to happen. And your mind, rather than dealing with what is before you, starts imagining other scenarios, in which this bad thing is avoided.

  In this alternate scenario, I am imagining that Ellie did not come to Dog Island with her father, the movie star Marky Barky. I am imagining that we’d chosen a better place to hide out, with the puppy. Or that I went with Ellie to the bathroom and prevented her from entering The Smiling Manatee. Or even that she got run over by a GoPod and had to be AirVaxed to the hospital.

  But here we are.

  Donut’s sleeping next to Jack, who is sitting on the floor, watching all this with a distant look on his face. Ellie bends down and picks him up—Donut, not Jack. He yawns, yips, and licks her nose. I feel a little angry and confused; she’s not even wearing a dog suit.

  “This doesn’t seem well planned out you guys,” Ellie observes. “What are you planning to do, just live here in this empty tiki bar with the illegal dog?”

  She holds the puppy like a baby in her arms. He just lies there chewing on his own paws, as if this is normal, but none of it is normal.

  “But really. What is your plan?”

  We don’t answer. What could we say?

  “You guys, this is serious,” she says. “No shitting around. Unless the rules have changed, you are not supposed to have a puppy. And that’s why you are hiding in this filthy, disgusting tiki bar that appears not even to have any booze, which would have been its only redeeming feature?”

  “That’s more or less accurate,” I say.

  With that crack in the floodgate, Ellie asks more questions and more questions still. She draws the story out of us. I hear myself describing and defending what we’ve done, telling her how we saved Donut’s life, how they were going to kill him, how he’s not supposed to be alive at all, but look at him, look at him, his tail wags. It wags. It wags. Dog tails don’t do that, but his does.

  “I can see,” she says. “It’s pretty amazing. Like change-the-world amazing.”

  I feel excitement and dread at her words. Dread and anxiety at the next ones.

  “I think you should let me take him,” she says.

  “No. No chance,” Jack says, before I have a chance to say another word.

  Ellie smiles, in a way that doesn’t look exactly friendly. Her teeth are very white. She probably has more than just a tele-dentist and robot dental assistant giving her cleanings and checkups. “I could just take him. I don’t think there’s a lot you could do about it, frankly. But, guys, friends, let me try to convince you this is the better plan. There’s something I want to show you. Tonight, you’ll come with me. I think you will find it interesting. Besides, have you even ever been to Disney?”

  No, we haven’t. Because it shut down ten years ago, and even before then our families had no money, no way of getting there, and so on.

  “What are you even talking about?” Wolf says.

  “Just come. Bring Donut. Trust me. And even if you don’t trust me . . .”

  Ellie hands me Donut, then takes a picture of us with her phone, and snaps a couple more of the inside of The Smiling Manatee. Tells us to meet her at 9 p.m., at this park about three blocks from the Casino. She’ll have a PlaneCab waiting.

  “Bye!” she says, walking out, her boots loud on the tile, down the stairs.

  I guess “shell-shocked” might be the best word to describe how I feel. Jack, Wolf, and I confer. Our options, as we see them, aren’t fantastic, to put it mildly.

  Theoretically we could put Donut back in the Ruffuge, somehow, perhaps. Where, for sure, he’ll be picked up and killed when the dinner shift comes through, if he stays alive even that long. Another idea is for us to go and hide, with him. The downside to this is that there is literally no place on Dog Island where we could do that for the long term—and getting away isn’t so possible either, seeing as we have no boat or plane . . .

  “Maybe she’s right,” Wolf says. “She seems pretty nice. And she’s rich. So that’s good.”

  “The person who just blackmailed us? You think she seems nice?” Jack says.

  They start whisper-yelling at each other, back and forth and back and forth. Billy my robot dog stands close by.

  “Guys,” I finally say. “Guys! What can we do?”

  “End his suffering right now,” says Jack. “That’s what we could do. What we should have done in the first place.” He glares at the puppy, at us. I think he might be crying. I don’t know why he helped, if this is how he feels.

  We could go steal some Kinderend from my mom. Donut would be no worse off; he would be at peace. We probably couldn’t bring his body to the chapel because it would be noticeable if we light the furnace. So we could bury him or send him off to sea. Give him and ourselves peace. But I can’t. My heart hurts to think of it.

  “So how about
this,” I propose. “How about we get the Kinderend? We bring it with us, tonight. If things get bad, if we don’t like what’s happening . . .”

  “I already don’t like what’s happening,” says Jack. But he agrees. Wolf agrees. We all agree, except Donut, whose fate is entirely outside his own hands, or paws.

  We spend the day together, up in The Smiling Manatee. Sitting on the floor, me leaning against Wolf, Jack’s head in my lap, as he smokes so much weed. Donut sometimes sleeps against my leg, sometimes runs in circles around the room—his little nails clacking against the tile. My robot dog Billy watches, as if he is truly taking in what Donut is and what he is doing. If he had a brain, which he doesn’t, it would be odd for him to know that this puppy is what he was built to replace.

  Every once in a while one of us leaves to get more food and water for Donut, to check on what’s happening at the Casino, see if they need us, make sure Ellie isn’t there stirring up trouble. I see, on these visits, that she is spending the day sunbathing, as the fuss and stress goes on around her.

  I go home in the late afternoon to charge my phone, give myself a Sani-Fresh wipe down, and collect the Kinderend. It’s in the Parents’ Room, in a small safe that Mom thinks I don’t know the code to. Except it’s the same code she uses for everything: 7829, the numbers that correspond to RUBY, her name. She has five containers of Kinderend in the safe; I take just one.

  Then there’s the issue of what to wear. My clothes don’t really fit anymore, because of my newish boobs. I meant to print out a new dress but forgot to do it on time (and you always have to leave at least two hours to print out a new article of clothing since the printer gets jammed, you lose the Internet connection, etc. etc. etc.).

  I check Mom’s closet. Her dresses are dazzlingly bad—most accomplish the (you’d think) impossible feat of being flamboyant and dowdy at the same time. I’ve selected a dress that is made of a shiny silver material and floor-length on me. This one manages to both be a little too tight (in the chest) and to look like a sack (everywhere else). But it’s a pretty color and long enough that I can wear paw protectors instead of real shoes, and it has pockets, which I can slip the Kinderend into, so it will be close at hand.

  “Do I look all right?” I ask my robot dog Billy. He picks up a toy from the floor and holds it near my hands. We play a little tug-of-war, which is fun—it’s what I know people used to do with the Organic dogs, back when they had them as pets—but then I stop given how tight the dress is on my boobs; I’m worried about ripping this stupid dress.

  I sit on the bed a second, then lie down and look at the ceiling. It’s got water stains and a funky old ceiling fan that realistically could come crashing down any second. Billy hops up onto the bed with me and tries to rest his head on me. I should shove him away; I don’t want to get his “fur” on the dress. I feel like so much is out of my control, and I just want to look okay/nice at least. I rub his belly and he shakes his leg. I like this feature. People must have been sad when they couldn’t do this with the Organic dogs anymore.

  Mom and Dad come back to the house. They must not know I’m here because they are using their flirty “we’re all alone and in love” voices with each other.

  Dad to Mom: “Tell me the truth. Am I as handsome as Hot Bod?”

  Mom to Dad: “Even better. Your hiney is Oscar-worthy.” Then: “Oh Saul. I miss him so much.”

  Dad to Mom: “Please, Ruby. Not now. Can’t we focus on my tight buns, please?”

  Mom to Dad: “How about you get yourself out of those pants and I take a closer look?”

  I pop out of their room to interrupt before this conversation can proceed to a very woeful place.

  “I’m here,” I say.

  “My beautiful daughter!” Mom cries out. “Aren’t you a vision? And just look how that old dress of mine highlights your lovely bosom! I can’t believe how grown you are!” She takes my hands and stares at my chest. “Saul, can you believe we made this child? Two beautiful, perfect children.”

  Dad, thanks be to the Dogs, is quiet on this matter.

  Obviously I would love to go put on a different dress now. But—I finger what’s in my pocket. It would be hard to transfer the tube of Kinderend without anyone noticing. Also, there is no surfeit of less bosom-y dresses at my disposal. And third, maybe Wolf will like me in this dress. It’s possible. Weirder, much weirder, things have happened and are happening.

  I could tell Mom and Dad about these things. Right now. They could maybe help me get out of the trouble we’re in. But I think I know where that goes: it goes to Donut dying.

  “I’m going to head back over to the Casino,” I say. “See you there?”

  “Dog be with you!” trills Mom. She’s in such a good mood, I think a little bitterly. Does she even remember that it was just after the party last year that we lost Billy?

  I rush back to The Smiling Manatee. Jack is still there. He’s smoking more weed, he’s playing with Donut—holding out his hand, teasing the puppy, who lunges in for a bite then seems surprised when Jack quickly pulls his hand away.

  “We’ve been doing this for a couple of hours,” Jack tells me. “The vicious beastie doesn’t get tired of this game.”

  “Has he eaten?” I ask.

  Jack says yes, Wolf brought over some food not too long ago. Then he asks me if I “brought the stuff.”

  I pat my pocket, say yeah, and sit down on the dirty floor, no longer caring about the stupid dress.

  “I’ve been wanting to ask you something,” Jack says to me.

  “What?” I ask.

  He pauses. “Forget it. You know they’re taking Mr. Chi-Chi Pants tomorrow.”

  “Yeah,” I say. My last moments with Derrick are right there with me, in a flash. “We’re so special. Don’t you feel special?”

  He reaches over and takes my hand. I feel a jolt, like I did at the fence, but pull it away.

  “Wolf . . .” I say.

  “Wolf,” he repeats. “Sure. Of course.”

  Just then, the actual Wolf appears, as if we’d conjured him. He is wearing a Hawaiian shirt with some perma-cotton pants. His hair looks freshly combed.

  “You look like crap,” Wolf says to Jack. “Go home and wash your face.”

  “Aye, aye, asshole,” Jack says. He has a bit of a hard time lifting himself up off the floor, but makes it, and shakes his legs out.

  “We’re finally alone,” Wolf says, once Jack is gone. I smile. Not quite alone, I point out, nodding toward Donut, who is looking quizzically up at us.

  We can hear from here that the band is getting started over at the Casino. The Dog Island Coco-Nuts; they play at every party. Oldies and rock, mostly—stuff that was out-of-date even when these musicians were growing up. They’re playing “Hard to Handle” now, which will be followed by “I Will Survive” because it always is. The set list never changes.

  I bend down, scoop up Donut. Wolf puts his arms around the two of us. Sways back and forth a little. My dog, I will miss this, this thing that is so new and precious. I want to preserve it in amber, to put it behind glass. I want to keep living it and feeling it forever.

  Jack returns. He’s spruced up a little. His hair is quite crispy.

  “It’s time to go over,” he says. “Almost seven.”

  We settle on half-hour shifts. Me first, here. The two guys leave. Donut and I stay back. I watch them go; I can see the sun setting over the horizon. It’s so beautiful and over so quickly. Wolf comes to relieve me of my duties, in no time.

  I head across the street to the Casino. The party is underway, with everyone in their loud, skin-baring fancy clothes, already getting buzzy on this year’s signature drink.

  Dad invented it: the Dog-quiri. The recipe calls for coconut, sugar, and lime, blended with almost-ice and a generous amount of rum, and topped with a dog-printed umbrella. Once he’d experimente
d with the boozy possibilities for months and settled on this cocktail for the event, Mom pointed out to him that this drink is just a regular daiquiri, but with the dog-printed umbrella.

  “Classic!” Dad exclaimed, and it was so good to see him feeling enthusiastic about something that, sure, Mom mocked him for his lack of creativity for fifteen or twenty minutes more, but you could tell her heart wasn’t in it.

  She held his hand, after a bit, and said, “I’m sure they’ll be a big success. Even if they are terribly derivative.” Dad smiled.

  I’m looking around for Jack but don’t see him. People say hello to me on their way to and from the bar, or outside to the beach to smoke. I spot Ellie on the other side of the room. She’s with her dad, the movie star Marky Barky, both of them mobbed. They both look so gorgeous. He is in a tuxedo with a dog-print tie and cummerbund. She’s in a bright green dress. They are both smiling. How can she smile right now? I can’t imagine. I can’t imagine blackmailing a group of people, threatening the things that mean the most to them, then putting on a pretty dress and being bright and shiny at a party. I feel so angry all of a sudden.

  Dorothy’s voice comes over the loudspeaker: “Please be seated, Dog Islanders! You are about to be entertained, enthralled, impressed! You will not want to miss a single second!”

  She has a magnificent voice. Raspy and a tiny bit wry, with a touch of a babyish lisp. Wise and fresh at the same time. People are always surprised the first time they hear Dorothy speak. Then they want to hear every single thing she has to say.

  There’s no official assigned seating here, but we all basically sit in the same places every event, every year. Same crowd, same chatter, usually I love it.

  The lights go dim. Dorothy’s voice comes back over the loudspeaker. “Reach under your seats,” she orders.

  I feel around, wondering what surprise is in store. There’s a soft little sack down there. Seems to be attached by Velcro. I tear it away.

  Inside are a pair of glasses and some headphones. I slip them on. Everyone around me is doing the same.