Worlds from the Word's End by Joanna Walsh

Author:Joanna Walsh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: And Other Stories Publishing
Published: 2017-04-10T11:02:32+00:00

‌

‌The Suitcase Dog

(For the first Ben.)

‘Pets up to 25 lbs are allowed to check into

your room with you and stay by your side.’

THE ACE HOTEL

I am the suitcase dog. My head fits through a hole. I am portable.

My jaws snap shut on hinges. In the hotel there is no postman. In the hotel there is no letterbox. My jaws snap shut on nothing. What I defend is not my territory.

Objects, Food, Rooms. My life goes up and down. In the service elevator I am descended. I walk through the front door. I walk through the back door onto the cobbles where the kitcheners smoke where strange smells are renewed daily. I may not pee on the carpet. I may not pee in the flowerpot.

I am walked up and down the corridor. I am walked up and down the lobby. I am walked up. I am walked down.

I am walked but, also, I am walking.

Wait.

What if I walked without being walked. Where would I (who would I) walk?

I slip the leash.

I go howling down the long red tongue, hear something, chase nothing. It still goes. I stop. I find myself at a loss.

And I am lost.

I am shut out of something. I position myself, as always, in front of a door, but now on the outside, which is the wrong way round – or I am. In any case, no one comes when I whine. No one comes when I scratch. So I walk.

I walk on things that hear me differently: something hard on which each nail hits separately till I am twenty dogs – then something soft (I disappear). I listen for the way. Somewhere else a cleaner hums. I hear the carpet fibres pulled upright.

Then I try down and, after so many downs, I go sit in a bush in this indoor landscape. It is like the places I have waited before, but the earth beneath it is not brown. Still, all substances are like earth. All can be dug through – blanket, chair, floor – to find the centre. And there is a centre to everything; I am sure of that.

It tinkles, the water on glass in the little arrangement in which I sit. And there are people. So I am somewhere. In a dining room? That is what this hush is: chatter.

Legs pass – not the right legs, I care for no above-the-knee – for a long time. Until.

I am frightened. Really, what isn’t?

Wait.

This one isn’t.

I will bite the diners’ heads off!

There is nothing so little, so little because I am nothing little, not here, not so little as you would think, eh?

By which time I am on a plate, not sure if I am pet or meat, or altogether meat on the outside, meat on the inside. But. (Bark!) Be less timid, please. Don’t be upset. (Wags.)

However.

A dog is not a nail of any kind, and I can be removed, taken to lost property, four-wheeled, at my back a pull-out handle, until my owner claims me, wheels me.

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