* * *

Mack thinks about going, leaving the comfort of this way station; pointing his nose in the direction from which they came and walking home. Justine must be there. He has only two places he can picture her: here and home. But he’s not been given an opportunity to choose to do that. Every moment he’s been with these people, Alice and Ed, he’s been in their charge.

They don’t understand his basic request. All Mack wants is for them to open the door and let Justine in. Each time he goes to the door, they tie a piece of rope around his neck and walk him around the perimeter of the house. Every time Ed leaves the house and Mack whines to follow, the woman calls him back to sit with her. When she’s busy with her tasks, he stares out the sliding door into the empty backyard, glimpses of the local cat prowling the hedges the only entertainment. It isn’t his house, so he doesn’t bother sending up the alarm. He’s not here to protect their territory. He is a guest and he will behave like one. Grateful for the rather tasteless kibble poured into a bowl, happy to be allowed on the couch to sleep beside the woman. She isn’t Justine, but she is generous with the belly rubs.

She talks to him when the man isn’t there. Tells him all sorts of tongue-language things that Mack doesn’t interpret as particularly meaningful. Her language has some of the nuances of Justine’s, although the words are unfamiliar. The pitch is the same as when Justine chats to him, higher and softer than when people talk to other humans. Humans have this need to express themselves through their mouths, and he supposes that this is because they are so poor with their noses.

There was that moment when he followed her into a bedroom that did not hold much human scent in it; an overlay of cleaner like Justine used on her furniture, almost, but not quite, masking a vestigial odor of some other person. Not so much the scent of a human as of the objects belonging to that human, an old scent lingering beneath the chemical. If she’d opened the drawers, he could have gotten a clearer picture of the room’s absent human.

That’s when she said the only meaningful thing, when he followed her in there. She said it clearly and in words he understood: “Get out.”

14

“Let’s see how this fits.” Ed holds the collar out with both hands. The dog trots over to take a good sniff. “Can you sit?” The dog sits. Ed fastens the black collar.

“Make sure that it isn’t too tight, or too loose. We don’t know if he’ll walk without pulling, or if he’ll try to pull out of the collar. Clearly, he’s escaped once. How foolish would we look if he takes off on me?” Alice takes the new brush and smoothes the dog’s ruff over the collar so that it doesn’t show. “Let’s see the leash.”