An Awkward Reunion

Here's Bingo at the completion of his mission in Arizona, giving me the eye with who-knows-what intent in that brain of his, after who-knows-what mission he may have just completed. They say that a soldier's eyes are never the same after combat. Well, a puppy can stare right into your soul and rip out your tender parts, metaphorically speaking.

In the meantime, Willow has been vacationing at an estate in the South, visiting with the king and queen of Cuba and mixing with society and eating from porcelain bowls and planning an expansion of her empire, which now, back in our simple routine, must seem very plain.

What had become clear a few weeks ago, before the Arizona trip, was that Willow, a mature lady at this point (to put it kindly), had fallen in love with a much younger Bingo, especially when you consider that in dog years she is nearly 70 and he only about 4 (still legal in Florida), though we all turn our heads and pretend not to see when she kisses him in plain sight and when he responds with awkward and determined and somewhat obscene advances of his own.

But something has happened to them both. Here they are, unable to even look at each other, possibly afraid to rekindle a flame that would, if re-ignited, be impossible to put out.

A Royal Flush

After we reached Arizona, we dropped Bingo off at his checkpoint and were told to wait in the lobby of this old slumpblock house that, on the outside, looked very near collapse, with brown clay bricks that had largely dissolved and washed out from the lattice-work of mortar, but on the inside the house had rich red carpets, antiques, shuttered windows and a large mahogony table that hosted a poker game in progress, with two chairs vacant.

Cheryl and I like a game of poker, so we didn't need much encouragement to sit down with these players that, we assumed, were like us--away from home on a mission for some secret purpose and playing the role of escort for some puppy, with nothing to do but wait while a drama played out elsewhere.

A Mississippi gambler sat stone-faced across the table, rarely speaking and playing a tight game--a hard man to read for sure. Cheryl sat to his left and was cruising on a streak of luck, so as a series of hearts flopped up, to match her two hearts in the hole, she pushed her hand with some confidence, but the gambler just grinned. On the river, Cheryl raised and the man re-raised. Since Cheryl had the 8, only the ace, queen and 9 would beat her--pretty good odds, and something about the man's attitude said he was bluffing. She raised again and the Mississipian did not hesitate (he's got the ace, I thought) with another re-raise. Cheryl called, and the man flipped over a royal flush like it was no big deal.

More later...

A Tight Spot for Bingo

Cheryl and I were all set for a quiet few days at home when we got the call. Our CIA-engineered puppy was needed in Arizona for an undisclosed assignment, ASAP. We got to the airport within an hour, but when we attempted to pass through the metal detector, our puppy's embedded electronics set off every alarm in the place, and in a flash Bingo and Cheryl were sequestered in a glass booth and surrounded by agents.

Normally the CIA has a security path cleared for us so that no questions are asked, but the wires got crossed somehow, and here was Bingo, a 7-month-old puppy with a bionic brain and a dynamic, downloadable intelligence that would allow him to teach a college physics course or fly a Cessna if necessary, sitting in a cubicle with unsuspecting airport security agents. Playing the role, Bingo jumped and licked and wagged his tail in a most silly manner.

'This is Bingo,' Cheryl repeated in a loud voice more than once, hoping that someone from Washington might be in earshot and would come in before the search went too far, while I stood helpless (and, I confess, a little amused) as the agents asked Cheryl to remove Bingo's blue service coat, which is a prototype protoplasmic cotton shield matrix that we keep in a special closet (the bat cave, we call it) along with his other special toys.

Just then I noticed a man, probably one of Bingo's handlers, in jeans on the other side of the booth and talking into a small device that was, I assumed, tuned into Bingo's neural net. Bingo then turned and looked me in the eyes with a twinkle, like light bouncing off a jewel, and somehow I knew what he wanted me to do. I knocked on the glass wall and the words 'If you're through with the dog, I'll take him now.' came out from my mouth. And the security guard, in an oddly similar tone of voice, said 'Yes, I'm through with him.' and then passed Bingo to me through the door even as the metal detectors continued to beep.

That was weird.

P1 and P2 Get Along

Like most normal humans, I am a collection of conflicted personalities. Two of these characters play the piano, and mostly they exist only when playing the piano, and mostly they do not get along with each other.

The first of these personalities (P1, for short) was born when I was in high school. P1 learned to play piano by ear (and in a most undisciplined manner) and got me into a band, which suited me fine at the time. P2 was born a few years later when I started taking piano lessons in college. He practiced hard, with hours and hours of exercises to strengthen my fingers, and this made P1 a better player. But reading music was such a struggle for P2 that he never really learned to play. In secret, P2 would get P1 to memorize his classical pieces and P1 would play them in recitals. It never really worked out well.

In the 15 or so years that followed, P1 and I played music in bars and nightclubs until I finally ditched him (a long story) and left town to get a real life.

A few years ago I found a nice piano and decided to wake up P2 and start where we left off. This time he is going through my music books, page after page, from top to bottom, in slow motion, never stopping to actually learn a piece because doing so sends the music into my memory, and this prompts P1 to take over (something I can't really control). P1 is always there waiting, saying for God's sake just let me play it. But I want P2 to play, not from memory but while looking at the music at the page.

While going through a book of Vince Guaraldi music, P2 suggested that we record one of the songs, just to let him finally play something. After a few attempts it was clear what needed to be done. We got P1 off the couch, sobered him up with some coffee and let him have a go at it (even though he's old and out of practice), and he soon transported himself back to some smokey club where nobody would notice or care about the bad notes. It's nice when we can all get along. Merry Christmas.

Mystery Alarm, Part 4

So there I stood on the top rungs of the ladder, struggling for oxygen from the thin atmosphere at that altitude, with an iron poker in one hand and ready to send its point into the nagging alarm on the ceiling. Except the alarm blinked innocently as if to say don't look at me. I paused, tried to assess the situation again, and now it seemed clear that the sound was not coming from the smoke alarm above but rather from somewhere below.

Sometimes it's difficult to remain open minded. Once we've identified something that offends us, we are often reluctant to take a second look, to re-evaluate the situation, to extend the benefit of doubt once again. The health care bill appears to be drowning in the Senate, and I'm under a lot of pressure to resolve everything. Having my hernia surgery really messed with my routine, and now the entire country may suffer because I can't keep up. I thought, maybe just this once, the system could work like it should without me telling everyone what to do. Anyway, if you're looking for someone to blame (the Republicans, the Liberals, the blue-dog Democrats, Joe Lieberman, etc.), don't bother, it's all my fault. Sorry. I should have a solution ready soon.

The alarm is not coming from up here, I said to Cheryl and came back down the ladder. Using an advanced deductive process that I learned in physics class, I moved my head this way and that and noted when the alarm seemed louder. In no time, we discovered that the sound was coming from under a table next to the fireplace, a place where we store several board games. Apparently the Taboo game has an obnoxious and powerful buzzer, and ours had gone rouge, bleating for no good reason.

I was very close to destroying our smoke detector. Now on to health care.

Mystery Alarm, Part 3

A few days ago an alarm went off in the house and we quickly reached a point of desperation about what to do and how to turn it off. Our security system here is wired into the smoke detectors, at least some of them--I'm still not sure how it works.

Once I left some popcorn in the microwave too long. It sent a cloud of smoke into the kitchen and then tripped the loudest alarm I've ever heard. In no more than 2 minutes a huge fire truck pulled up out front and several men in yellow coats descended on the house, big axes in hand and with a righteous sense of purpose, ready to smash everything to bits.

Those firemen had a particular gleam in their eyes--I'd seen the look before. Years ago, out in the remote woods of Arkansas, we staged a big party for about 100 normally benign individuals who began drinking before noon and who, by 7 p.m., were starving because the pig (which was being roasted in a pit nearby) was still not ready, and who then began to morph from modern human beings into their prehistorical ancestors, wandering through the woods with a glassy-eyed determination to eat raw strips of flesh (pig or human, alive or dead). A crisis was averted when my friend (the cook) was able to cut away a chunk of meat (pig) that was reasonably done.

The firemen at my house were in a similar state (fire: bad) and were not in a mood to talk or to even examine the burnt and smoldering bag of popcorn that I held up, even though it did seem to explain the situation. We've got to go inside, sir, the captain said to me without slowing down, glassy-eyed, holding his ax like a Celtic warrior descending on the Viking stronghold at Annagassan. OK, then. We looked around the house, no problem, and the spell was lifted. We all had a nice talk outside afterward.

But this alarm in the living room was not loud at all and no fire trucks were coming. I climbed one more step on the ladder and noticed that the alarm did not seem louder even as I approached it.

More later...