The Accidental Tourist

"The point is," Macon said, "I'm really at the end of my rope with Edward here, and I was wondering if you might be able to help me."

"Sure I can help!"

"Oh, that's wonderful," Macon said.

"I can do anything," Muriel told him. "Search and alert, search and rescue, bombs, narcotics-"

"Narcotics?"

"Guard training, attack training, poison-proofing, kennelosis-"

"Wait, I don't even know what some of those things are," Macon said.

"I can even teach split personality."

"What's split personality?"

"Where your dog is, like, nice to you but kills all others."

"You know, I think I may be over my head here," Macon said.

"No, no! Don't say that!"

"But this is just the simplest problem. His only fault is, he wants to protect me."

"You can take protection too far," Muriel told him.

Macon tried a little joke. " 'It's a jungle out there,' he's saying.

That's what he's trying to say. T know better than you do, Macon.' "

"Oh?" Muriel said. "You let him call you by your first name?"

"Well-"

"He needs to learn respect," she said. "Five or six times a week I'll come out, for however long it takes. I'll start with the basics; you always do that: sitting, heeling . . . My charge is five dollars a lesson. You're getting a bargain. Most I charge ten."

Macon tightened his hold on the receiver. "Then why not ten for me?" he asked.

"Oh, no! You're a friend."

He felt confused. He gave her his address and arranged a time with the nagging sense that something was slipping out of his control. "But look," he said, "about the fee, now-"

"See you tomorrow!" she said. She hung up.

At supper that night when he told the others, he thought they did a kind of double take. Porter said, "You actually called?" Macon said, "Yes, why not?"-acting very offhand-and so the others took their cue and dropped the subject at once.

When I was a little girl," Muriel said, "I didn't like dogs at all or any other kinds of animals either. I thought they could read my mind. My folks gave me a puppy for my birthday and he would, like, cock his head, you know how they do? Cock his head and fix me with these bright round eyes and I said, 'Ooh! Get him away from me! You know I can't stand to be stared at.'"

She had a voice that wandered too far in all directions. It screeched upward; then it dropped to a raspy growl. "They had to take him back. Had to give him to a neighbor boy and buy me a whole different present, a beauty-parlor permanent which is what I'd set my heart on all along."

She and Macon were standing in the entrance hall. She still had her coat on-a bulky-shouldered, three-quarter length, nubby black affair of a type last seen in the 1940s. Edward sat in front of her as he'd been ordered.

He had met her at the door with his usual display, leaping and snarling, but she'd more or less walked right through him and pointed at his rump and told him to sit. He'd gaped at her. She had reached over and poked his rear end down with a long, sharp index finger.

"Now you kind of cluck your tongue," she'd told Macon, demonstrating.

"They get to know a cluck means praise. And when I hold my hand out-see?

That means he has to stay."

Edward stayed, but a yelp erupted from him every few seconds, reminding Macon of the periodic bloops from a percolator. Muriel hadn't seemed to hear. She'd started discussing her lesson plan and then for no apparent reason had veered to her autobiography. But shouldn't Edward be allowed to get up now? How long did she expect him to sit there?

"I guess you're wondering why I'd want a permanent when this hair of mine is so frizzy," she said. "Old mop! But I'll be honest, this is not natural. My natural hair is real straight and lanky. Times I've just despaired of it. It was blond when I was a baby, can you believe that?

Blond as a fairy-tale princess. People told my mother I'd look like Shirley Temple if she would just curl my hair, and so she did, she rolled my hair on orange juice tins. I had blue eyes, too, and they stayed that way for a long long time, a whole lot longer than most babies' do. People thought I'd look that way forever and they talked about me going into the movies. Seriously! My mother arranged for tap-dance school when I wasn't much more than a toddler. No one ever dreamed my hair would turn on me."

Edward moaned. Muriel looked past Macon, into the glass of a picture that hung behind him. She cupped a hand beneath the ends of her hair, as if testing its weight. "Think what it must feel like," she said, "waking up one morning and finding you've gone dark. It near about killed my mother, I can tell you. Ordinary dull old Muriel, muddy brown eyes and hair as black as dirt."

Macon sensed he was supposed to offer some argument, but he was too anxious about Edward. "Oh, well . . ." he said. Then he said, "Shouldn't we be letting him up now?"

"Up? Oh, the dog. In a minute," she said. "So anyway. The reason it's so frizzy is, I got this thing called a body perm. You ever heard of those?