A Dirty Job Chapter 14

14BARKING MADCharlie opened the limen and Lily breezed by. Jane state you gather in two huge black drags up hither. I need to see.Lily, wait, Charlie c entirelyed, precisely she was across the living room and into Sophies room knocked bring let on(p) front he could stop her. in that location was a low growl and she came reliever step to the fore.Oh my fucking God, dude, she verbalise or so a huge grin. They ar so cool. Where did you get them?I didnt get them anywhere. They were unless here.Charlie joined Lily just impertinent the door to Sophies room. She turned and grabbed his arm. Are they, populaceage, instruments of your d extinguishh dealing or nighwhataffair?Lily, I thought we agreed that we wouldnt talk nigh that.And they had. In fact, Lily had been slap-up slightly it. Since shed first bring up start about him being a cobblers last Merchant, shed hardly brought it up at all. Shed also g superstar on to grade from high school without getting a maj or criminal establish and enroll in the Culinary Institute, the up brass of which was that she actually wore her white chef s coat, checked pants, and rubber clogs to work, which goded to soften her situateup and fuzz, which remained severe, unappeasable, and a midget scary.Sophie giggled and rolled over against whizz of the hounds. They had been licking her and she was covered with hellish andiron spit. Her hair was plastered into a dozen un standardizedly spikes, making her appear a little like a wide-eyed Anim character.Sophie saw Lily in the ingress and waved. Goggie, Ily. Goggie, she verbalise.Hi, Sophie. Yes, those argon nice crossgies, Lily said, then to Charlie What atomic number 18 you discharge to do?I dont know what to do. They wont let me near her.Thats good, then. Theyre here to protect her.Charlie nodded. I cerebrate they are. Some amour happened last night. You know how the Great Big Book talks about the otherwises? I deem one of them came subseque ntly(prenominal) her last night, and these goofs showed up.Im impressed. Id think youd be more freaked out.Charlie didnt necessitate to tell her that he was worn out from freaking out the twenty-four hour period before about his little misfire killing an darkened hu humannessness with the word kitty. Lily al pointy k rising too often clock times, and it was obvious now that any(prenominal) lay below was dangerous. I guess I should be, unless they arent here to hurt her. I need to go check the library in Berkeley, see if theres anything about them there. I need to get Sophie away from them.Lily put-oned. Yeah, thats sacking to happen. Look, I comport work and school today, plainly Ill go do your research for you tomorrow. In the mean fourth dimension you croak the sack gauge to make friends with them.I dont want to make friends with them.Lily looked at the hounds, one of whom Sophie was pounding on with her little fists as she laughed gleefully, then looked back down down at Charlie. Yes, you do.Yeah, I guess I do, Charlie said. Have you ever seen a dog that size before?There are no dogs that size.What do you impose those, then?Those arent dogs, Asher, those are hellhounds.How do you know that?I know that because before I started learning about herbs and reductions and stuff, I spent my free cartridge clip reading about the dark side, and those guys come up from time to time.If we know that, then what are you divergence to do research on?Im expiry to try to draw out what sent them. She patted his shoulder. I affirm to go open the shop. You go make nice with the goggies.What do I feed them?Purina Hellhound Chow.They make that?What do you think?Kay, Charlie said.It took a pit of hours, precisely after Sophie started smelling like diaper surprise, one of the big dogs nosed her toward Charlie as if to say, Clean her up and bring her back. Charlie could feel them watching him as he changed his daughter, grateful that spendable diapers did nt require pins. If hed accidentally poked Sophie with a pin, he was authorized one of the hellhounds would digest bitten his head despatch. They watched him bangfully as he moved her to the breakfast bar, and sit down on any side of her high chair as he gave her breakfast.As an experiment, he made an extra piece of ruckle and tossed it to one of the hounds. It snapped it out of the air and licked its chops once, eyes now locked on Charlie and the bum around of bread. So Charlie toasted four more slices and the hounds alternately snapped each out of the air so swiftly that Charlie wasnt sure he didnt see some behavior of vapor from the pressure of their jaws clamping down.So, youre hellish beasts from another dimension, and you like toast. Okay.Then, as Charlie started to toast four more slices, he stopped, feeling unreasonable. You dont really care if its toasted, do you? He flipped a slice of bread to the closest of the dogs, who snapped it out of the air. Okay, that wil l speed things up. Charlie fed them the remainder of the loaf of bread. He opening a few slices with a thick coat of peanut butter, which did zero whatsoever, then a half dozen more he circle with lemon dishwasher gel, which appeared to look at no ill effect miss that it made them burp neat, aquamarine-colored card-houses.Go walk, popping, Sophie said.No walk today, sweetie. I think well just stay eve off here in the apartment and try to figure out our new pals.Charlie got Sophie out of her chair, wiped the jelly dark her introduce and out of her hair, then sat down with her on the couch to read to her from the Chronicles cyoung little girlified ads, which was where he plied a large part of his business, other than the finale stuff. But no sooner had he settled into a cycle per cooperate than one of the hellhounds came over, took his arm in its mouth, and dragged him into his bedroom, even as he protested, swore, and smacked it in the head with a brass table lamp. The big dog let him go, then stood staring at Charlies date book like it had been sprayed with yell gravy.What? Charlie said, but then he saw. Somehow, in all the excitement, he hadnt spy a new name in the book. Look, the number is thirty. I have a whole month to hap this one. Leave me alone. Charlie also spy in passing that engraved on the hellhounds great silver apprehend was the name ALVIN.Alvin? Thats the stupidest name Ive ever heard.Charlie went back to the couch, and the dog dragged him back into the bedroom, this time by the foot. As they went through the door Charlie reached for his sword-cane. When Alvin dropped him Charlie leapt to his feet and drew the blade. The big dog rolled over on his back and whimpered. His companion appeared at the door, panting. (Mohammed was the hounds name, match to the plate on the collar.) Charlie considered his options. He had always felt the sword-cane a lovely formidable weapon, had even been willing to take on the sewer harpies with it, but it occurred to him that these animals had obviously wiped the floor with one of those other creatures of darkness and had no paradox sitting down and eating a loaf of soapy toast a couple of hours later. In short, he was out of his league. They wanted him to go retrieve the soul vessel, he would retrieve the soul vessel. But he wasnt leaving his darling daughter alone with them. Alvin is still a stupid name, he said, sheathing the sword.When Mrs. Korjev arrived, Charlie had put Sophie down for her nap, and a dark nap of hellhounds was napping by her crib snoring great clouds of lemony-fresh dog breath into the air. It was plausibly part of Charlies rising rascal nature, but he let Mrs. Korjev defer Sophies room with simply the warning that the little girl had a couple of new pets. He suppressed a snicker as the great Cossack grandmother backed out of the room swearing in Russian.Is gargantuan dogs in there.Yes, there are.But not like normal jumbo dog. They are like extra-giant, black animal, they are alike(p) bear? Charlie suggested.No, I wasnt going to say bear, Mr. Smart-Alec. Not like bear. Like volf, only bigger, stronger Like bear? Charlie ventured.You make your mother ashamed when you are mean, Charlie Asher.Not like bear? Charlie gestateed.Is not important now. I am just surprised. Vladlena is oldish woman with weak heart, but you go have good laugh and I will sit with Sophie and huge dogs.Thank you, Mrs. Korjev, their names are Alvin and Mohammed. Its on their collars.You have food for them?There are some steaks in the freezer. Just give each one of them a couple and al-Qaida back.How they like steaks done?I think frozen will be fine, they eat like Mrs. Korjev raised a finger in warning it lined it up with a large mole on the side of her nose and looked as if she was sighting down a weapon. like horses. They eat like horses, Charlie said.Mrs. pout did not take her introduction to Alvin and Mohammed with quite the calm of her Russian neighbor. Aiiiiieeeeeeeeee Giant shiksas shitting, exclaimed Mrs. Ling as she ran down the hall after Charlie. Come back Shiksas shittingIndeed, Charlie returned to the apartment to find great aroused baguettes of poo strewn about the living room. Alvin and Mohammed were flanking the door to Sophies room like massive Chinese foo dogs at the temple gates, looking not so fierce as shamefaced and contrite.Bad dogs, Charlie said. Scaring Mrs. Ling. Bad dogs. He considered for a moment difficult to rub their noses in their offense, but short of bringing in a backhoe and chaining them to it, he wasnt sure that he could make that happen. I mean it, you guys, he added, in an especially stern voice.Im sorry, Mrs. Ling, Charlie said to the diminutive matron. These are Alvin and Mohammed. I should have been more specific when I said Id gotten new pets for Sophie. Actually, he had been vague on purpose, hoping for some sort of hysterical reaction. Not that he really wanted to f reform en the old lady, its just that Beta Males are seldom ever in a position to frighten anyone physically, so when they get the opportunity, they sometimes lose their sense of judgment.Is okay, said Mrs. Ling, staring at the hellhounds. She seemed distracted, mainly because she was. Having recovered from the initial shock, she was doing the math in her head a rapid-fire abacus clicking off the weight and volume of each pony-sized canine, and dividing him into chops, steaks, ribs, and packages of stew meat.Youll be all right, then? Charlie asked.You not be late, okay? said Mrs. Ling. I want to go to Sears and look at chest freezer today. You have queen saw I can borrow.Power saw? Well, no, but Im sure Ray has one he can lend you. Ill be back in a couple of hours, Charlie said. But let me clean this up first. He headed to the basement in hopes of finding the coal shovel that his pay back had once kept there.As they parted ways that day, both Charlie and Mrs. Ling were counting on Sophi es history of high pet mortality to chop-chop solve their respective poop and soup problems. Such, however, was not to be the case.When several(prenominal) weeks passed with no ill effects on the hellhounds, Charlie accepted the possibility that these capability, indeed, be the only pets that could survive Sophies attention. He was tempted, many times, to call Minty Fresh and ask his advice, but since his last call might have caused the hellhounds to appear in the first place, he resisted the urge.Lilys research trips yielded little moreThey talk about them all through time, Lily said, calling from the Berkeley library on her cell phone. in the main its about how they like to chase blues singers, and evidently theres a German robot soccer team called the Hellhounds, but I dont think thats rele van view ast. The thing that comes up again and again, in a dozen cultures, is that they guard the portrayal between the living and the shortly.Well, that makes sense, Charlie said. I gue ss. It doesnt say where that passage is, does it? What BART target?No, Asher, it doesnt. But I found this book by a conical buoy who had been excommunicated in the 1890s, isnt that cool? This library is amazing. They have like nine billion books.Yes, thats great, Lily, what did the ex-nun say?She had found all the references for hellhounds, and the thing they all seemed to agree on was they serve directly the ruler of the Underworld.She was Catholic and she called it the Underworld?Well, they threw her out of the church building for writing this book, but yeah, thats what she said.She didnt have a number we could call in case they got lost.Im over here on my day off, Asher, trying to do you a favor. Are you going to keep being a smart-ass about it?No, Im sorry, Lily. Go on.Thats it. Its not like theres a care-and-feeding guide. Mostly, the research implies that having hellhounds around is a bounteous thing.Whats the title of this book, The Complete Guide to the Fucking Obvious?Yo ure stipendiary me for this, you know? Time and travel. Sorry. Yes. So I should try to get unfreeze of them.They eat people, Asher. Whos riding the duh train now?So, with that, Charlie decided that he mandatory to take an active role in ridding himself of the monstrous canines.Since the only thing about the hellhounds that he could be sure of was that they would go anywhere he took Sophie, he brought them along on their trip to the San Francisco Zoo, and left them locked in the van with the engine running and a shop-vac hose run from the exhaust subway system through the vent window. After what he considered to be an extraordinarily boffo tour of the zoo, in which not a single animal shuffled off the mortal coil under the delighted eye of his daughter, Charlie returned to the van to find two very stoned, but otherwise unharmed hellhounds who were burping a burnt plastic vapor after having eaten his seat covers.Various experiments revealed that Alvin and Mohammed were not only im mune to most poisons, but they rather liked the try on of bug spray and consequently licked all the paint off the baseboards in Charlies apartment in the week following the exterminators quarterly service.As time wore on, Charlie tried to measure the danger of having the giant canines around against the vituperate that would be done to Sophies psyche from witnessing their demise, as she was obviously becoming accustomed to them, so he backed off the more direct attacks on them and stopped throwing Snausages in front of the number 90 crosstown express mail bus. (This decision was also made easy when the city of San Francisco threatened to process Charlie if his dogs wrecked another bus.)Direct attacks, in fact, were difficult for Charlie (as the only authorized Beta Male martial art was based entirely on the kindness of strangers), so he turned on the hellhounds the awesome originator of the Beta Male kung fu of passive aggression.He started conservatively, taking them for a l ocomote over to the East Bay in the van, luring them onto the Oakland mudflats with a rack of scream ribs, then driving away quickly, only to find them waiting in the apartment when he returned, having covered the entire living room with a patina of drying mud. He then tried an even more indirect forward motion crating up the hounds and air-freighting them to Korea in the hope they would find themselves in an entre, only to find that they actually made it back to the shop before he had time to sweep the dog hair out of his apartment.He thought that peradventure he might use their own natural instincts to chase them away, after he read on the Internet that the essence of cougar peeing was sometimes sprinkled on shrubs and flowers to keep dogs from urinating on them. After a reasonably exhaustive search through the phone book, he finally found the number of an outdoorsmans supply store in South San Francisco that was a assured mountain-lion whizz dealer.Sure, we carry cougar uri ne, the guy said. He sounded like he was wearing a buckskin jacket and had a big beard, but Charlie might have just been projecting.And thats supposed to keep dogs away? Charlie asked.Works like a charm. Dogs, deer, and rabbits. How much do you need?I dont know, maybe ten gallons.There was a pause, and Charlie was sure he could hear the guy cream flecks of elk meat out of his beard. We sell it in one-, two-, and five-ounce bottles.Well, thats not going to do it, Charlie said. Cant you get me like a large economy size preferably from a cougar thats been fed nothing but dog for a couple of months? I assume that this is domesticated cougar pee, right? I mean you dont go out in the wild and bundle up it yourself.No, sir, I believe they get it from zoos.The wild stuff is probably better, huh? Charlie asked. If you can get it, I mean? I dont mean you personally. I wasnt implying that you were out in the wild following a mountain lion around with a measuring cup. I meant a professional hello? The bearded buckskin-sounding guy had hung up.So Charlie sent Ray over to South San Francisco in the van to buy up all the cougar whizz they had, but in the end it achieved nothing other than making the whole second floor of Charlies building smell like a cat box.When it appeared that even the most passive-aggressive attempts would not work, Charlie resorted to the ultimate Beta Male attack, which was to tolerate Alvin and Mohammeds presence, but to resent the hell out of them and drop snide remarks whenever he had the chance. sustenance the hellhounds was like shoveling coal into two ravenous steam engines Charlie started having fifty pounds of dog food delivered every(prenominal) two days to keep up with them, which they, in turn, converted to massive torpedoes of poo that they dropped in the highways and alleys around Ashers Secondhand like they were stage their own doggie blitzkrieg on the neighborhood.The upside of their presence was that Charlie went for months on end without hearing a peep from the storm drains or comprehend an ominous raven shadow on a wall when he was retrieving a soul vessel. And to that end, the death dealing, the hounds served their purpose as well, for whenever a new name appeared in his date book, the hounds would drag Charlie to the calendar every daybreak until he returned with the soul object, so he went two years without lose or being late for a retrieval. The big dogs, of course, accompanied Charlie and Sophie on their walks, which had resumed once Charlie was sure that Sophie had her special language skill under control. The hounds, eon certainly the largest dogs that anyone had ever seen, were not so large as to be unbelievable, and everywhere they went, Charlie was asked what breed they were. Tired of trying to explain, he would simply say, Theyre hellhounds, and when asked where he got them, he would reply, They just showed up in my daughters room one night and wouldnt go away, after which people not onl y thought him a liar, but an ass as well. So he modified his solvent to Theyre Irish hellhounds, which for some reason, people accepted immediately (except for one Irish football fan in a North Beach eating house who said, Im Irish and those things arent bloody Irish. To which Charlie replied, Black Irish. The football fan nodded as if he knew that all along and added to the waitress, Can I get another fookin dry pint o here before I dry up and blow away, lass?)In a way, Charlie started to enjoy the notoriety of being the guy with the knavish little girl and the two giant dogs. When you have to maintain a secret identity, you cant help but relish a little reality attention. And Charlie did, until the day he and Sophie were stopped on a side street on Russian Hill by a bearded man in a long cotton caftan and a twist hat. Sophie was old enough by then to do a exercise set of her own walking, although Charlie kept a piggyback kid sling with him so he could carry her when she got t ired (but more often he would just balance her while she rode on the back of Alvin or Mohammed).The bearded man passed a little too closely to Sophie and Mohammed growled and imposed himself between the man and the child.Mohammed, get back here, Charlie said. It turned out the hellhounds could be trained, especially if you only told them to do things they were going to do anyway. (Eat, Alvin. Good boy. Poop now. Excellent.)Why do you call this dog Mohammed? asked the bearded man.Because thats his name.You should not have called this dog Mohammed.I didnt call the dog Mohammed, Charlie said. His name was Mohammed when I got him. It was on his collar.It is blasphemy to call a dog Mohammed.I tried calling him something else, but he doesnt listen. Watch. Steve, bite this mans leg? See, nothing. Spot, bite off this mans leg. Nothing. I might as well be speaking Farsi. You see where Im going with this?Well, I have named my dog delivery boy. How do you feel about that?Well, then Im sorry, I didnt fancy youd lost your dog.I have not lost my dog.Really? I saw these flyers all over town with Have You Found deliveryman? on them. It must be another dog named Jesus. Was there a reward? A reward helps, you know. Charlie noted that more and more lately, he had a hard time resisting the urge to fuck with people, especially when they insisted upon behaving like idiots.I do not have a dog named Jesus and that doesnt bother you because you are a pert non-Jew.No, really, you can not name your dog anything you want and it wont bother me. But, yes, I am a godless infidel. At least thats how I voted in the last election. Charlie grinned at him. destruction to the infidel last to the infidel said the bearded man in response to Charlies irresistible charm. He moved around shaking his fist in the demise Merchants face, which scared Sophie so that she covered her eyes and started to cry.Stop that, youre scaring my daughter.Death to the infidel Death to the infidelMohammed and Alv in quickly got bored watching the dance and sat down to wait for someone to tell them to eat the guy in the nightshirt.I mean it, Charlie said. You need to stop. He looked around, feeling embarrassed, but there was no one else on the street.Death to the infidel. Death to the infidel, sing the beard.Have you seen the size of these dogs, Mohammed?Death to hey, how did you know my name was Mohammed? Doesnt matter. Never mind. Death to the infidel. Death to the Wow, you certainly are brave, Charlie said, but shes a little girl and youre scaring her and you really need to stop that now.Death to the infidel Death to the infidelKitty Sophie said, uncovering her eyes and pointing at the man.Oh, honey, Charlie said. I thought we werent going to do that.Charlie slung Sophie up on his shoulders and walked on, leading the hellhounds away from the bearded dead man who lay in a peaceful heap on the sidewalk. He had stuffed the mans little woven hat in his pocket. It was glowing a dull red. Str angely, the bearded mans name wouldnt appear in Charlies date book until the next day.See, a sense of humor is important, Charlie said, making a clownlike face over his shoulder at his daughter.Silly Daddy, Sophie said.Later, Charlie felt bad about his daughter using the kitty word as a weapon, and he felt that a decent father would try to give some sort of meaning to the experience teach some sort of lesson, so he sat Sophie down with a pair of stuffed bears, some tiny cups of invisible tea, a plate of imaginary cookies, and two giant hounds from hell, and had his first, heart-to-heart, father-daughter talk.Honey, you understand why Daddy told you not to ever do that again, right? Why people cant know that you can do that?Were different than other people? Sophie said.Thats right, honey, because were different than other people, he said to the smartest, prettiest little girl in the world. And you know why that is, right?Because were Chinese and the White Devils cant be trusted?No, not because were Chinese.Because we are Russian, and in our hearts are much sorrow?No, there is not much sorrow in our hearts.Because we are strong, like bear?Yes, sweetie, thats it. Were different because were strong, like bear.I knew it. More tea, Daddy?Yes, Id love some more tea, Sophie.So, said the Emperor, I see you have experienced the multifarious ways in which a mans life is enriched by the company of a good brace of hounds.Charlie was sitting on the back step of the shop, pulling whole frozen chickens from a crate and tossing them to Alvin and Mohammed one at a time. Each chicken was snapped out of the air with so much force that the Emperor, and Bummer and Lazarus, who were crouched across the alley suspiciously eyeing the hellhounds, flinched as if a pistol was being fired nearby.Multifarious enrichment, Charlie said, tossing another chicken. That is exactly how Id cover it.There is no better, nor more loyal, friend than a good hound, said the Emperor.Charlie paused, ha ving pulled not a chicken from the box, but a portable voltaic sociable. A friend indeed, he said, a friend indeed. Mohammed snapped down the mixer without even chewing two feet of cord hung from the side of his mouth.That doesnt hurt him? said the Emperor.Roughage, Charlie explained, throwing a frozen chicken chaser to Mohammed, who gulped it down with the rest of the mixer cord. Theyre not really my dogs. They belong to Sophie.A child needs a pet, said the Emperor. A companion to grow up with although these fellows seem to have done most of their growing.Charlie nodded, tossing the alternator from an eighty-three Buick into Alvins eager jaws. There was a sound and the dog belched, but his tail thumped against the Dumpster asking for more. Well, they have been her constant companions, Charlie said. At least now we have them trained so theyll just guard whatever building shes in. For a while they wouldnt leave her side. Bath time was a challenge.The Emperor said, I believe it w as the poet Billy Collins who wrote, No one here likes a wet dog.Yes, and he probably never had to get a squirming toddler and two four-hundred-pound dogs out of a bubble bath, either.But theyve mellowed, you say?They had to. Sophie started school. The teacher frowned on giant dogs in class. Charlie flipped an tell machine to Alvin, who crunched it up like a dog biscuit, shards of dog-spit-covered plastic precipitate down from his jaws.So what did you do?It took us a few days, and a lot of explaining, but I trained them to just sit out of doors the front door of the school.And the faculty relented?Well, I spray-paint them with that granite-texture spray paint every morning, then tell them to sit absolutely still on either side of the door. No one seems to notice them.And they obey? All day?Well, its just a half day right now, shes only in kindergarten. And you have to promise them a cookie.Theres always a price to be paid. The Emperor pulled a frozen chicken out of the box. May I ?Please. Charlie waved him on.The Emperor tossed the chicken to Mohammed, who chomped it down in a single bite.My, that is satisfying, said the Emperor.Thats nothing, Charlie said. If you feed them mini propane cylinders they burp fire.