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1                                                    Stephen King "L.T.'S THEORY OF PETS"
2
3  My friend L.T. hardly ever talks about how his wife disappeared, or how she's probably
4dead, just another victim of the Axe Man, but he likes to tell the story of how she
5walked out on him. He does it with just the right roll of the eyes, as if to say, "She
6fooled me, boys-right, good, and proper!" He'll sometimes tell the story to a bunch of
7men sitting on one of the loading docks behind the plant and eating their lunches, him
8eating his lunch, too, the one he fixed for himself - no Lulubelle back at home to do it
9for him these days. They usually laugh when he tells the story, which always ends with
10L.T.'s Theory of Pets. Hell, I usually laugh. It's a funny story, even if you do know
11how it turned out. Not that any of us do, not completely.
12
13  "I punched out at four, just like usual," L.T. will say, "then went down to Deb's Den
14for a couple of beers, just like most days. Had a game of pinball, then went home. That
15was where things stopped being just like usual. When a person gets up in the morning, he
16doesn't have the slightest idea how much may have changed in his life by the time he
17lays his head down again that night. 'Ye know not the day or the hour,' the Bible says.
18I believe that particular verse is about dying, but it fits everything else, boys.
19Everything else in this world. You just never know when you're going to bust a fiddle-
20string.
21
22  "When I turn into the driveway I see the garage door's open and the little Subaru she
23brought to the marriage is gone, but that doesn't strike me as immediately peculiar. She
24was always driving off someplace - to a yard sale or someplace - and leaving the goddam
25garage door open. I'd tell her, 'Lulu, if you keep doing that long enough, someone'll
26eventually take advantage of it. Come in and take a rake or a bag of peat moss or maybe
27even the power mower. Hell, even a Seventh Day Adventist fresh out of college and doing
28his merit badge rounds will steal if you put enough temptation in his way, and that's
29the worst kind of person to tempt, because they feel it more than the rest of us.'
30Anyway, she'd always say, 'I'll do better, L.T., try, anyway, I really will, honey.' And
31she did do better, just backslid from time to time like any ordinary sinner.
32
33  "I park off to the side so she'll be able to get her car in when she comes back from
34wherever, but I close the garage door. Then I go in by way of the kitchen. I cheek the
35mailbox, but it's empty, the mail inside on the counter, so she must have left after
36eleven, because he don't come until at least then. The mailman, I mean.
37
38  '"Well, Lucy's right there by the door, crying in that way Siamese have - I like that
39cry, think it's sort of cute, but Lulu always hated it, maybe because it sounds like a
40baby's cry and she didn't want anything to do with babies. 'What would I want with a
41rugmonkey?' she'd say.
42
43  "Lucy being at the door wasn't anything out of the ordinary, either. That cat loved my
44ass. Still does. She's two years old now. We got her at the start of the last year we
45were married. Right around. Seems impossible to believe Lulu's been gone a year, and we
46were only together three to start with. But Lulubelle was the type to make an impression
47on you. Lulubelle had what I have to call star quality. You know who she always reminded
48me of? Lucille Ball. Now that I think of it, I guess that's why I named the cat Lucy,
49although I don't remember thinking it at the time. It might have been what you'd call a
50subconscious association. She'd come into a room-Lulubelle, I mean, not the cat-and just
51light it up somehow. A person like that, when they're gone you can hardly believe it,
52and you keep expecting them to come back.
53
54  "Meanwhile, there's the cat. Her name was Lucy to start with, but Lulubelle hated the
55way she acted so much that she started calling her Screwlucy, and it kind of stuck. Lucy
56wasn't nuts, though, she only wanted to be loved. Wanted to be loved more than any other
57pet I ever had in my life, and I've had quite a few.
58
59  "Anyway, I come in the house and pick up the cat and pet her a little and she climbs
60up onto my shoulder and sits there, purring and talking her Siamese talk. I check the
61mail on the counter, put the bills in the basket, then go over to the fridge to get Lucy
62something to eat. I always keep a working can of cat food in there, with a piece of
63tinfoil over the top. Saves having Lucy get excited and digging her claws into my
64shoulder when she hears the can opener. Cats are smart, you know. Much smarter than
65dogs. They're different in other ways, too. It might be that the biggest division in the
66world isn't men and women but folks who like cats and folks who like dogs. Did any of
67you pork-packers ever think of that?
68
69  "Lulu bitched like hell about having an open can of cat food in the fridge, even one
70with a piece of foil over the top, said it made everything in there taste like old tuna,
71but I wouldn't give in on that one. On most stuff I did it her way, but that cat food
72business was one of the few places where I really stood up for my rights. It didn't have
73anything to do with the cat food, anyway. It had to do with the cat. She just didn't
74like Lucy, that was all. Lucy was her cat, but she didn't like it.
75
76  "Anyway, I go over to the fridge, and I see there's a note on it, stuck there with one
77of the vegetable magnets. It's from Lulubelle. Best as I can remember, it goes like
78this:
79
80  " 'Dear L.T. - I am leaving you, honey. Unless you come home early, I will be long
81gone by the time you get this note. I don't think you will get home early, you have
82never got home early in all the time we have been married, but at least I know you'll
83get this almost as soon as you get in the door, because the first thing you always do
84when you get home isn't to come see me and say, "Hi sweet girl I'm home" and give me a
85kiss but go to the fridge and get whatever's left of the last nasty can of Calo you put
86in there and feed Screwlucy. So at least I know you won't just go upstairs and get
87shocked when you see my Elvis Last Supper picture is gone and my half of the closet is
88mostly empty and think we had a burglar who likes ladies' dresses (unlike some who only
89care about what is under them).
90
91  " 'I get irritated with you sometimes, honey, but I still think you re sweet and kind
92and nice, you will always be my little maple duff and sugar dumpling, no matter where
93our paths may lead. It's just that I have decided I was never cut out to be a Spam-
94packer's wife. I don t mean that in any conceited way, either. I even called the Psychic
95Hotline last week as I struggled with this decision, lying awake night after night (and
96listening to you snore, boy, I don't mean to hurt your feelings but have you ever got a
97snore on you), and I was given this message: "A broken spoon may become a fork." I
98didn't understand that at first, but I didn't give up on it. I am not smart like some
99people (or like some people think they are smart), but I work at things. The best mill
100grinds slow but exceedingly fine, my mother used to say, and I ground away at this like
101a pepper mill in a Chinese restaurant, thinking late at night while you snored and no
102doubt dreamed of how many pork-snouts you could get in a can of Spam. And it came to me
103that saying about how a broken spoon can become a fork is a beautiful thing to behold.
104Because a fork has tines. And those tines may have to separate, like you and me must now
105have to separate, but still they have the same handle. So do we. We are both human
106beings, L.T., capable of loving and respecting one another. Look at all the fights we
107had about Frank and Screwlucy, and still, we mostly managed to get along. Yet the time
108has now come for me to seek my fortune along different lines from yours, and to poke
109into the great roast of life with a different point from yours. Besides, I miss my
110mother."'
111
112  (I can't say for sure if all this stuff was really in the note L.T. found on his
113fridge; it doesn't seem entirely likely, I must admit, but the men listening to his
114story would be rolling in the aisles by this point - or around on the loading dock, at
115least-and it did sound like Lulubelle, that I can testify to.)
116
117  " 'Please do not try to follow me, L.T., and although I'll be at MY mother's and I
118know you have that number, I would appreciate you not calling but waiting for me to call
119you. In time I will, but in the meanwhile I have a lot of thinking to do, and although I
120have gotten on a fair way with it, I'm not "out of the fog" yet. I suppose I will be
121asking you for a divorce eventually, and think it is only fair to tell you SO. I have
122never been one to hold out false hope, believing it better to tell the truth and smoke
123out the devil." Please remember that what I do I do in love, not in hatred and
124resentment. And please remember what was told to me and what I now tell to you: a broken
125spoon may be a fork in disguise. All my love, Lulubelle Simms.' "
126
127  L.T. would pause there, letting them digest the fact that she had gone back to her
128maiden name, and giving his eyes a few of those patented L.T. DeWitt rolls. Then he'd
129tell them the P.S. she'd tacked on the note.
130
131  " 'I have taken Frank with me and left Screwlucy for you. I thought this would
132probably be the way you'd want it. Love, Lulu.' "
133  If the DeWitt family was a fork, Screwlucy and Frank were the other two tines on it.
134If there wasn't a fork (and speaking for myself, I've always felt marriage was more like
135a knife - the dangerous kind with two sharp edges), Screwlucy and Frank could still be
136said to sum up everything that went wrong in the marriage of L.T. and Lulubelle.
137Because, think of it - although Lulubelle bought Frank for L.T. (first wedding
138anniversary) and L.T. bought Lucy, soon to be Screwlucy, for Lulubelle (second wedding
139anniversary), they each wound up with the other. one's pets when Lulu walked out on the
140marriage.
141
142  "She got me that dog because I liked the one on Frasier," L.T. would say. "That kind
143of dog's a terrier, but I don't remember now what they call that kind. A Jack something.
144Jack Sprat? Jack Robinson? Jack Shit? You know how a thing like that gets on the tip of
145your tongue?"
146
147  Somebody would tell him that Frasier's dog was a Jack Russell terrier and L.T. would
148nod emphatically.
149
150  "That's right!" he'd exclaim. "Sure! Exactly! That's what Frank was, all right, a Jack
151Russell terrier. But you want to know the cold hard truth? An hour from now, that will
152have slipped away from me again - it'll be there in my brain, but like something behind
153a rock. An hour from now, I'll be going to myself, 'What did that guy say Frank was? A
154Jack Handle terrier? A Jack Rabbit terrier? That's close, I know that's close. . .'And
155so on. Why? I think because I just hated that little fuck so much. That barking rat.
156That fur-covered shit machine. I hated it from the first time I laid eyes on it. There.
157It's out and I'm glad. And do you know what? Frank felt the same about me. It was hate
158at first sight.
159
160  "You know how some men train their dog to bring them their slippers? Frank wouldn't
161bring me my slippers, but he'd puke in them. Yes. The first time he did it, I stuck my
162right foot right into it. It was like sticking your foot into warm tapioca with extra
163big lumps in it. Although I didn't see him, my theory is that he waited outside the
164bedroom door until he saw me coming - fucking lurked outside the bedroom door - then
165went in, unloaded in my right slipper, then hid under the bed to watch the fun. I deduce
166that on the basis of how it was still warm. Fucking dog. Man's best friend, my ass. I
167wanted to take it to the pound after that, had the leash out and everything, but Lulu
168threw an absolute shit fit. You would have thought she'd come into the kitchen and
169caught me trying to give the dog a drain-cleaner enema.
170
171  " 'If you take Frank to the pound, you might as well take me to the pound,' she says,
172starting to cry. 'That's all you think of him, and that's all you think of me. Honey,
173all we are to you is nuisances you'd like to be rid of. That's the cold hard truth.' I
174mean, oh my bleeding piles, on and on.
175
176  " 'He puked in my slipper,' I says.
177
178  `The dog puked in his slipper so off with his head,' she says. 'Oh, sugarpie, if only
179you could hear yourself!'
180
181  " 'Hey,' I say, 'you try sticking your bare foot into a slipper filled with dog puke
182and see how you like it.' Getting mad by then, you know.
183
184  "Except getting mad at Lulu never did any good. Most times, if you had the king, she
185had the ace. If you had the ace, she had a trump. Also, the woman would fucking
186escalate. If something happened and I got irritated, she'd get pissed. If I got pissed,
187she'd get mad. If I got mad, she'd go fucking Red Alert Defcon I and empty the missile
188silos. I'm talking scorched flicking earth. Mostly it wasn't worth it. Except almost
189every time we'd get into a fight, I'd forget that.
190
191  "She goes, 'Oh dear. Maple duff stuck his wittle footie in a wittle spit-up.' I tried
192to get in there, tell her that wasn't right, spit-up is like drool, spit-up doesn't have
193these big flicking chunks in it, but she won't let me get a word out. By then she's over
194in the passing lane and cruising, all pumped up and ready to teach school.
195
196  'Let me tell you something, honey,' she goes, 'a little drool in your slipper is very
197minor stuff. You men slay me. Try being a woman sometimes, okay? Try always being the
198one that ends up laying with the small of your back in that come-spot, or the one that
199goes to the toilet in the middle of the night and the guy's left the goddam ring up and
200you splash your can right down into this cold water. Little midnight skindiving. The
201toilet probably hasn't been flushed, either, men think the Urine Fairy comes by around
202two a.m. and takes care of that, and there you are, sitting crack-deep in piss, and all
203at once you realize your feet're in it, too, you're paddling around in Lemon Squirt
204because, although guys think they're dead-eye Dick with that thing, most can't shoot for
205shit, drunk or sober they gotta wash the goddam floor all around the toilet before they
206can even start the main event. All my life I've been living with this, honey - a father,
207four brothers, one ex-husband, plus a few roommates that are none of your business at
208this late date-and you're ready to send poor Frank off to the gas factory because just
209one time he happened to reflux a little drool into your slipper.'
210
211  " 'My fur-lined slipper,' I tell her, but it's just a little shot back over my
212shoulder. One thing about living with Lulu, and maybe to my credit, I always knew when I
213was beat. When I lost, it was fucking decisive. One thing I certainly wasn't going to
214tell her even though I knew it for a fact was that the dog puked in my slipper on
215purpose, the same way that he peed on my underwear on purpose if I forgot to put it in
216the hamper before I went off to work. She could leave her bras and pants scattered
217around from hell to Harvard - and did - but if I left so much as a pair of athletic
218socks in the corner, I'd come home and find that fucking Jack Shit terrier had given it
219a lemonade shower. But tell her that? She would have been booking me time with a
220psychiatrist. She would have been doing that even though she knew it was true. Because
221then she might have had to take the stuff I was saying seriously, and she didn't want
222to. She loved Frank, you see, and Frank loved her. They were like Romeo and Juliet or
223Rocky and Adrian.
224
225  "Frank would come to her chair while we were watching TV, lie down on the floor beside
226her, and put his muzzle on her shoe. Just lie there like that all night, looking up at
227her, all soulful and loving and with his butt pointed in my direction so if he should
228have to blow a little gas, I'd get the full benefit of it. He loved her and she loved
229him. Why? Christ knows. Love's a mystery to everyone except the poets, I guess, and
230nobody sane can understand a thing they write about it. I don't think most of them can
231understand it themselves on the rare occasions when they wake up and smell the coffee.
232
233  "But Lulubelle never gave me that dog so she could have it, let's get that one thing
234straight. I know that some people do stuff like that - a guy'll give his wife a trip to
235Miami because he wants to go there, or a wife'll give her husband a NordicTrack because
236she thinks he ought to do something about his gut - but this wasn't that kind of deal.
237We were crazy in love with each other at the beginning; I know I was with her, and I'd
238stake my life she was with me. No, she bought that dog for me because I always laughed
239so hard at the one on Frasier. She wanted to make me happy, that's all. She didn't know
240Frank was going to take a shine to her, or her to him, no more than she knew the dog was
241going to dislike me so much that throwing up in one of my slippers or chewing the
242bottoms of the curtains on my side of the bed would be the high point of his day."
243
244  L.T. would look around at the grinning men, not grinning himself, but he'd give his
245eyes that knowing, long - suffering roll, and they'd laugh again, in anticipation. Me
246too, likely as not, in spite of what I knew about the Axe Man.
247
248  "I haven't ever been hated before," he'd say, "not by man or beast, and it unsettled
249me a lot. It unsettled me bigtime. I tried to make friends with Frank - first for my
250sake, then for the sake of her that gave him to me - but it didn't work. For all I know,
251he might've tried to make friends with me ... with a dog, who can tell? If he did, it
252didn't work for him, either. Since then I've read-in 'Dear Abby,' I think it was - that
253a pet is just about the worst present you can give a person, and I agree. I mean, even
254if you like the animal and the animal likes you, think about what that kind of gift
255says. 'Say, darling, I'm giving you this wonderful present, it's a machine that eats at
256one end and shits out the other, it's going to run for fifteen years, give or take,
257merry fucking Christmas.' But that's the kind of thing you only think about after, more
258often than not. You know what I mean?
259
260  "I think we did try to do our best, Frank and I. After all, even though we hated each
261other's guts, we both loved Lulubelle. That's why, I think, that although he'd sometimes
262growl at me if I sat down next to her on the couch during Murphy Brown or a movie or
263something, he never actually bit. Still, it used to drive me crazy. Just the fucking
264nerve of it, that little bag of hair and eyes daring to growl at me. 'Listen to him,'
265I'd say, 'he's growling at me.'
266  "She'd stroke his head the way she hardly ever stroked mine, unless she'd had a few,
267and say it was really just a dog's version of purring. That he was just happy to be with
268us, having a quiet evening at home. I'll tell you something, though, I never tried
269patting him when she wasn't around. I'd feed him sometimes, and I never gave him a kick
270(although I was tempted a few times, I'd be a liar if I said different), but I never
271tried patting him. I think he would have snapped at me, and then we would have gotten
272into it. Like two guys living with the same pretty girl, almost. Menage a trois is what
273they call it in the Penthouse Forum. Both of us love her and she loves both of us, but
274as time goes by, I start realizing that the scales are tipping and she's starting to
275love Frank a little more than me. Maybe because Frank never talks back and never pukes
276in her slippers and with Frank the goddam toilet ring is never an issue, because he goes
277outside. Unless, that is, I forget and leave a pair of my shorts in the corner or under
278the bed."
279
280  At this point L.T. would likely finish off the iced coffee in his thermos, crack his
281knuckles, or both. It was his way of saying the first act was over and Act Two was about
282to commence.
283
284  "So then    one day, a Saturday, Lulu and I are out to the mall. just walking around,
285like people    do. You know. And we go by Pet Notions, up by J.C. Penney, and there's a
286whole crowd   of people in front of the display window. 'Oh, let's see,' Lulu says, so we
287go over and   work our way to the front.
288
289  "It's a fake tree with bare branches and fake grass - Astroturf all around it. And
290there are these Siamese kittens, half a dozen of them chasing each other around,
291climbing the tree, batting each other's ears.
292
293  'Oh ain' dey jus' da key-youtes ones!' Lulu says. 'Oh ain't dey jus' the key-youtest
294wittle babies! Look, honey, look!'
295
296  'I'm lookin',' I says, and what I'm thinking is that I just found what I wanted to get
297Lulu for our anniversary. And that was a relief. I wanted it to be something extra
298special, something that would really bowl her over, because things had been quite a bit
299short of great between us during the last year. I thought about Frank, but I wasn't too
300worried about him; cats and dogs always fight in the cartoons, but in real life they
301usually get along, that's been my experience. They usually get along better than people
302do. Especially when it's cold outside.
303
304  "To make a long story just a little bit shorter, I bought one of them and gave it to
305her on our anniversary. Got it a velvet collar, and tucked a little card under it.
306'HELLO, I am LUCY! the card said. 'I come with love from L.T.! Happy second
307anniversary!'
308
309  "You probably know what I'm going to tell you now, don't you? Sure. It was just like
310goddarn Frank the terrier all over again, only in reverse. At first I was as happy as a
311pig in shit with Frank, and Lulubelle was as happy as a pig in shit with Lucy at first.
312Held her up over her head, talking that baby-talk to her, 'Oh yookit you, oh yookit my
313wittle pwecious, she so key-yout,' and so on and so on ... until Lucy let out a yowl and
314batted at the end of Lulubelle's nose. With her claws out, too. Then she ran away and
315hid under the kitchen table. Lulu laughed it off, like it was the funniest thing she'd
316ever had happen to her, and as key-yout as anything else a little kitten might do, but I
317could see she was miffed.
318
319  "Right then Frank came in. He'd been sleeping up in our room-at the foot of her side
320of the bed-but Lulu'd let out a little shriek when the kitten batted her nose, so he
321came down to see what the fuss was about.
322
323  "He spotted Lucy under the table right away and walked toward heir, sniffing the
324linoleum where she'd been.
325
326  'Stop them, honey, stop them, L.T., they're going to get into it,' Lulubelle says.
327'Frank'll kill her.'
328
329  'Just let them alone a minute,' I says. 'See what happens.'
330
331  Lucy humped up her back the way cats do, but stood her ground and', watched him come.
332Lulu started forward, wanting to get in between them in spite of what I'd said
333(listening up wasn't exactly one of Lulu's strong points), but I took her wrist and held
334her back. It's best to let them work it out between them, if you can. Always best. It's
335quicker.
336
337  "Well, Frank got to the edge of the table, poked his nose under, and started this low
338rumbling way back in his throat. 'Let me go, L.T. I got to get her,' Lulubelle says,
339'Frank's growling at her.'
340
341  'No, he's not,' I say, 'he's just purring. I recognize it from all the times he's
342purred at me.'
343
344  "She gave me a look that would just about have boiled water, but didn't say anything.
345The only times in the three years we were married that I got the last word, it was
346always about Frank and Screwlucy. Strange but true. Any other subject, Lulu could talk
347rings around me. But when it came to the pets, it seemed she was always fresh out of
348comebacks. Used to drive her crazy.
349
350  "Frank poked his head under the table a little farther, and Lucy batted his nose the
351way she'd batted Lulubelle's - only when she batted Frank, she did it without popping
352her claws. I had an idea Frank would go for her, but he didn't. He just kind of whoofed
353and turned away. Not scared, more like he's thinking, 'Oh, okay, so that's what that's
354about.' Went back into the living room and laid down in front of the TV.
355
356  "And that was all the confrontation there ever was between them. They divvied up the
357territory pretty much the way that Lulu and I divvied it up that last year we spent
358together, when things were getting bad; the bedroom belonged to Frank and Lulu, the
359kitchen belonged to me and Lucy - only by Christmas, Lulubelle was calling her Screwlucy
360- and the living room was neutral territory. The four of us spent a lot of evenings
361there that last year, Screwlucy on my lap, Frank with his muzzle on Lulu's shoe, us
362humans on the couch, Lulubelle reading a book and me watching Wheel of Fortune or
363Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, which Lulubelle always called Lifestyles of the Rich
364and Topless.
365
366  "The cat wouldn't have a thing to do with her, not from day one. Frank, every now and
367then you could get the idea Frank was at least trying to get along with me. His nature
368would always get the better of him in the end and he'd chew up one of my sneakers or
369take another leak on my underwear, but every now and then it did seem like he was
370putting forth an effort. Lap my hand, maybe give me a grin. Usually if I had a plate of
371something he wanted a bite of.
372
373  "Cats are different, though. A cat won't curry favor even if it's in their best
374interests to do so. A cat can't be a hypocrite. If more preachers were like cats, this
375would be a religious country again. If a cat likes you, you know. If she doesn't, you
376know that, too. Screwlucy never liked Lulu, not one whit, and she made it clear from the
377start. If I was getting ready to feed her, Lucy'd rub around my legs, purring, while I
378spooned it up and dumped it in her dish. If Lulu fed her, Luey'd sit all the way across
379the kitchen, in front of the fridge, watching her. And wouldn't go to the dish until
380Lulu had cleared off. It drove Lulu crazy. 'That cat thinks she's the Queen of Sheba,'
381she'd say. By then she'd given up the baby-talk. Given up picking Lucy up, too. If she
382did, she'd get her wrist scratched, more often than not.
383
384  "Now, I tried to pretend I liked Frank and Lulu tried to pretend she liked Lucy, but
385Lulu gave up pretending a lot sooner than I did. I guess maybe neither one of them, the
386cat or the woman, could stand being a hypocrite. I don't think Lucy was the only reason
387Lulu left hell, I know it wasn't - but I'm sure Lucy helped Lulubelle make her final
388decision. Pets can live a long time, you know. So the present I got her for our second
389was really the straw that broke the camel's back. Tell that to 'Dear Abby'!
390
391  "The cat's talking was maybe the worst, as far as Lulu was concerned. She couldn't
392stand it. One night Lulubelle says to me, 'If that cat doesn't stop yowling, L.T., I
393think I'm going to hit it with an encyclopedia.'
394
395  " 'That's not yowling,' I said, 'that's chatting.'
396
397  " 'Well,' Lulu says, - 'I wish it would stop chatting.'
398
399  "And right about then, Lucy jumped up into my lap and she did shut up. She always did,
400except for a little low purring, way back in her throat. Purring that really was
401purring. I scratched her between her ears like she likes, and I happened to look up.
402Lulu turned her eyes back down on her book, but before she did, what I saw was real
403hate. Not for me. For Screwlucy. Throw an encyclopedia at it? She looked like she'd like
404to stick the cat between two encyclopedias and just kind of clap it to death.
405
406  Sometimes Lulu would come into the kitchen and catch the cat up on the table and swat
407it off. I asked her once if she'd ever seen me swat Frank off the bed that way - he'd
408get up on it, you know, always on her side, and leave these nasty tangles of white hair.
409When I said that, Lulu gave me a kind of grin. Her teeth were showing, anyway. 'If you
410ever tried, you'd find yourself a finger or three shy, most likely,' she says.
411
412  "Sometimes Lucy really was Screwlucy. Cats are moody, and sometimes they get manic;
413anyone who's ever had one will tell you that. Their eyes get big and kind of glary,
414their tails bush out, they go racing around the house; sometimes they'll rear right up
415on their back legs and prance, boxing at the air, like they're fighting with something
416they can see but human beings can't. Lucy got into a mood like that one night when she
417was about a year old - couldn't have been more than three weeks from the day when I come
418home and found Lulubelle gone.
419
420  "Anyway, Lucy came pelting in from the kitchen, did a kind of racing slide on the wood
421floor, jumped over Frank, and went skittering up the living room drapes, paw over paw.
422Left some pretty good holes in them, with threads hanging down. Then she just perched at
423the top on the rod, staring around the room with her blue eyes all big and wild and the
424tip of her tail snapping back and forth.
425
426  "Frank only jumped a little and then put his muzzle back on Lulubelle's shoe, but the
427cat scared the hell out of Lulubelle, who was deep in her book, and when she looked up
428at the cat, I could see that outright hate in her eyes again.
429
430  All right,' she said, 'that's enough. Everybody out of the goddam pool. We're going to
431find a good home for that little blue-eyed bitch, and if we're not smart enough to find
432a home for a purebred Siamese, we're going to take her to the animal shelter. I've had
433enough.'
434
435  " 'What do you mean?' I ask her.
436
437  " 'Are you blind?' she asks. 'Look what she did to my drapes I They're full of holes!'
438
439  'You want to see drapes with holes in them,' I say, 'why don't you go upstairs and
440look at the ones on my side of the bed. The bottoms are all ragged. Because he chews
441them.'
442
443  'That's different,' she says, glaring at me. 'That's different and you know it.'
444
445  "Well, I wasn't going to let that lie. No way I was going to let that one lie. 'The
446only reason you think it's different is because you like the dog you gave me and you
447don't like the cat I gave you,' I says. 'But I'll tell you one thing, Mrs. DeWitt: you
448take the cat to the animal shelter for clawing the living room drapes on Tuesday, I
449guarantee you I'll take the dog to the animal shelter for chewing the bedroom drapes on
450Wednesday. You got that?'
451
452  "She looked at me and started to cry. She threw her book at me and called me a
453bastard. A mean bastard. I tried to grab hold of her, make her stay long enough for me
454to at least try to make up - if there was a way to make up without backing down, which I
455didn't mean to do that time - but she pulled her arm out of my hand and ran out of the
456room. Frank ran out after her. They went upstairs and the bedroom door slammed.
457
458  "I gave her half an hour or so to cool off, then I went upstairs myself. The bedroom
459door was still shut, and when I started to open it, I was pushing against Frank. I could
460move him, but it was slow work with him sliding across the floor, and also noisy work.
461He was growling. And I mean growling, my friends; that was no fucking purr. If I'd gone
462in there, I believe he would have tried his solemn best to bite my manhood off. I slept
463on the couch that night. First time.
464
465  "A month later, give or take, she was gone."
466  If L.T. had timed his story right (most times he did; practice makes perfect), the
467bell signaling back to work at the W.S. Hepperton Processed Meats Plant of Ames, Iowa,
468would ring just about then, sparing him any questions from the new men (the old hands
469knew. . . and knew better than to ask) about whether or not L.T. and Lulubelle had
470reconciled, or if he knew where she was today, or - the all-time sixty-four-thousand-
471dollar question - if she and Frank were still together. There's nothing like the back-
472to-work bell to close off life's more embarrassing questions.
473
474  "Well," L.T. would say, putting away his thermos and then standing up and giving a
475stretch, "it has all led me to create what I call L.T. DeWitt's Theory of Pets."
476
477  They'd look at him expectantly, just as I had the first time I heard him use that
478grand phrase, but they would always end up feeling let down, just as I always had; a
479story that good deserved a better punchline, but L.T.'s never changed.
480
481  "If your dog and cat are getting along better than you and your wife," he'd say, "you
482better expect to come home some night and find a Dear John note on your refrigerator
483door."
484
485  He told that story a lot, as I've said, and one night when he came to my house for
486dinner, he told it for my wife and my wife's sister. My wife had invited Holly, who had
487been divorced almost two years, so the boys and the girls would balance up. I'm sure
488that's all it was, because Roslyn never liked L.T. DeWitt. Most people do, most people
489take to him like hands take to warm water, but Roslyn has never been most people. She
490didn't like the story of the note on the fridge and the pets, either - I could tell she
491didn't, although she chuckled in the right places. Holly ... shit, I don't know. I've
492never been able to tell what that girl's thinking. Mostly just sits there with her hands
493in her lap, smiling like Mona Lisa. It was my fault that time, though, and I admit it.
494L.T. didn't want to tell it, but I kind of egged him on because it was so quiet around
495the dinner table, just the click of silverware and the clink of glasses, and I could
496almost feel my wife disliking L.T. It seemed to be coming off her in waves. And if L.T.
497had been able to feel that little Jack Russell terrier disliking him, he would probably
498be able to feel my wife doing the same. That's what I figured, anyhow.
499
500  So he told it, mostly to please me, I suppose, and he rolled his eyeballs in all the
501right places, as if saying "Gosh, she fooled me right and proper, didn't she?" and my
502wife chuckled here and there - they sounded as phony to me as Monopoly money looks - and
503Holly smiled her little Mona Lisa smile with her eyes downcast. Otherwise the dinner
504went off all right, and when it was over L.T. told Roslyn that he thanked her for "a
505sportin-fine meal" (whatever that is) and she told him to come any time, she and I liked
506to see his face in the place. That was a lie on her part, but I doubt there was ever a
507dinner party in this history of the world where a few lies weren't told. So it went off
508all right, at least until I was driving him home. L.T. started to talk about how it
509would be a year Lulubelle had been gone in just another week or so, their fourth
510anniversary, which is flowers if you're old-fashioned and electrical appliances if
511you're newfangled. Then he said as how Lulubelle's mother - at whose house Lulubelle had
512never shown up - was going to put up a marker with Lulubelle's name on it at the local
513cemetery. "Mrs. Simms says we have to consider her as one dead," L.T. said, and then he
514began to bawl. I was so shocked I nearly ran off the goddam road.
515
516  He cried so hard that when I was done being shocked, I began to be afraid all that
517pent-up grief might kill him with a stroke or a burst blood vessel or something. He
518rocked back and forth in the seat and slammed his open hands down on the dashboard. It
519was like there was a twister loose inside him. Finally I pulled over to the side of the
520road and began patting his shoulder. I could feel the heat of his skin right through his
521shirt, so hot it was baking.
522
523  "Come on, L.T.," I said. "That's enough."
524
525  "I just miss her," he said in a voice so thick with tears I could barely understand
526what he was saying. "Just so goddam much. I come home and there's no one but the cat,
527crying and crying, and pretty soon I'm crying, too, both of us crying while I fill up
528her dish with that goddam muck she eats."
529
530  He turned his flushed, streaming face full on me. Looking back into it was almost more
531than I could take, but I did take it; felt I had to take it. Who had gotten him telling
532the story about Lucy and Frank and the note on the refrigerator that night, after all?
533It hadn't been Mike Wallace, or Dan Rather, that was for sure. So I looked back at him.
534I didn't quite dare hug him, in case that twister should somehow jump from him to me,
535but I kept patting his arm.
536
537  "I think she's alive somewhere, that's what I think," he said. His voice was still
538thick and wavery, but there was a kind of pitiful weak defiance in it as well. He wasn't
539telling me what he believed, but what he wished he could believe. I'm pretty sure of
540that.
541
542  "Well," I said, "you can believe that. No law against it, is there? And it isn't as if
543they found her body, or anything."
544
545  "I like to think of her out there in Nevada singing in some little casino hotel," he
546said. "Not in Vegas or Reno, she couldn't make it in one of the big towns, but in
547Winnemucca or Ely I'm pretty sure she could get by. Some place like that. She just saw a
548Singer Wanted sign and give up her idea of going home to her mother. Hell, the two of
549them never got on worth a shit anyway, that's what Lu used to say. And she could sing,
550you know. I don't know if you ever heard her, but she could. I don't guess she was
551great, but she was good. The first time I saw her, she was singing in the lounge of the
552Marriott Hotel. In Columbus, Ohio, that was. Or, another possibility..."
553
554  He hesitated, then went on in a lower voice.
555
556  "Prostitution is legal out there in Nevada, you know. Not in all the counties, but in
557most of them. She could be working one of them Green Lantern trailers or the Mustang
558Ranch. Lots of women have got a streak of whore in them. Lu had one. I don't mean she
559stepped around on me, or slept around on me, so I can't say how I know, but I do. She
560... yes, she could be in one of those places."
561
562  He stopped, eyes distant, maybe imagining Lulubelle on a bed in the back room of a
563Nevada trailer whorehouse, Lulubelle wearing nothing but stockings, washing off some
564unknown cowboy's stiff cock while from the other room came the sound of Steve Earle and
565the Dukes singing "Six Days on the Road" or a TV playing Hollywood Squares. Lulubelle
566whoring but not dead, the car by the side of the road - the little Subaru she had
567brought to the marriage - meaning nothing. The way an animal's look, so seemingly
568attentive, usually means nothing.
569
570  "I can believe that if I want," he said, swiping his swollen eyes with insides of his
571wrists.
572
573  "Sure," I said. "You bet, L.T." Wondering what the grinning men who listened to his
574story while they ate their lunches would make of this L.T., this shaking man with his
575pale cheeks and red eyes and hot skin.
576
577  "Hell," he said, I do believe that." He hesitated, then said it again: "I do believe
578that."
579
580  When I got back, Roslyn was in bed with a book in her hand and the covers pulled up to
581her breasts. Holly had gone home while I was driving L.T. back to his house. Roslyn was
582in a bad mood, and I found out why soon enough. The woman behind the Mona Lisa smile had
583been quite taken with my friend. Smitten by him, maybe. And my wife most definitely did
584not approve.
585
586  "How did he lose his license?" she asked, and before I could answer: "Drinking, wasn't
587it?"
588
589  "Drinking, yes. OUM' I sat down on my side of the bed and slipped off my shoes. "But
590that was nearly six months ago, and if he keeps his nose clean another two months, he
591gets it back. I think he will. He goes to AA, you know."
592
593  My wife grunted, clearly not impressed. I took off my shirt, sniffed the armpits, hung
594it back in the closet. I'd only worn it an hour or two, just for dinner.
595
596  "You know," my wife said, I think it's a wonder the police didn't look a little more
597closely at him after his wife disappeared."
598
599  "They asked him some questions," I said, "but only to get as much information as they
600could. There was never any question of him doing it, Ros. They were never suspicious of
601him."
602
603  "Oh, you're so sure."
604
605  "As a matter of fact, I am. I know some stuff. Lulubelle called her mother from a
606hotel in eastern Colorado the day she left, and called her again from Salt Lake City the
607next day. She was fine then. Those were both weekdays, and L.T. was at the plant. He was
608at the plant the day they found her car parked off that ranch road near Caliente as
609well. Unless he can magically transport himself from place to place in the blink of an
610eye, he didn't kill her. Besides, he wouldn't. He loved her."
611
612  She grunted. It's this hateful sound of skepticism she makes sometimes. After almost
613thirty years of marriage, that sound still makes me want to turn on her and yell at her
614to stop it, to shit or get off the pot, either say what she means or keep quiet. This
615time I thought about telling her how L.T. had cried; how it had been like there was a
616cyclone inside of him, tearing loose everything that wasn't nailed down. I thought about
617it, but I didn't. Women don't trust tears from men. They may say different, but down
618deep they don't trust tears from men.
619
620  "Maybe you ought to call the police yourself," I said. "Offer them a little of your
621expert help. Point out the stuff they missed, just like Angela Lansbury on Murder, She
622Wrote"
623
624  I swung my legs into bed. She turned off the light. We lay there in darkness. When she
625spoke again, her tone was gentler.
626
627  "I don't like him. That's all. I don't, and I never have."
628
629  "Yeah," I said. I guess that's clear."
630
631  "And I didn't like the way he looked at Holly."
632
633  Which meant, as I found out eventually, that she hadn't liked the way Holly looked at
634him. When she wasn't looking down at her plate, that is.
635
636  "I'd prefer you didn't ask him back to dinner," she said.
637
638  I kept quiet. It was late. I was tired. It had been a hard day, a harder evening, and
639I was tired. The last thing I wanted was to have an argument with my wife when I was
640tired and she was worried. That's the sort of argument where one of you ends up spending
641the night on the couch. And the only way to stop an argument like that is to be quiet.
642In a marriage, words are like rain. And the land of a marriage is filled with dry washes
643and arroyos that can become raging rivers in almost the wink of an eye. The therapists
644believe in talk, but most of them are either divorced or queer. It's silence that is a
645marriage's best friend.
646
647  Silence.
648
649  After a while, my best friend rolled over on her side, away from me and into the place
650where she goes when she finally gives up the day. I lay awake a little while longer,
651thinking of a dusty little car, perhaps once white, parked nose-down in the ditch beside
652a ranch road out in the Nevada desert not too far from Caliente. The driver's side door
653standing open, the rearview mirror torn off its post and lying on the floor, the front
654seat sodden with blood and tracked over by the animals that had come in to investigate,
655perhaps to sample.
656
657  There was a man - they assumed he was a man, it almost always is - who had butchered
658five women out in that part of the world, five in three years, mostly during the time
659L.T. had been living with Lulubelle. Four of the women were transients. He would get
660them to stop somehow, then pull them out of their cars, rape them, dismember them with
661an axe, leave them a rise or two away for the buzzards and crows and weasels. The fifth
662one was an elderly rancher's wife. The police call this killer the Axe Man. As I write
663this, the Axe Man has not been captured. Nor has he killed again; if Cynthia Lulubelle
664Simms DeWitt was the Axe Man's sixth victim, she was also his last, at least so far.
665There is still some question, however, as to whether or not she was his sixth victim. If
666not in most minds' that question exists in the part of L.T.'s mind which is still
667allowed to hope.
668
669  The blood on the seat wasn't human blood, you see; it didn't take the Nevada State
670Forensics Unit five hours to determine that. The ranch hand who found Lulubelle's Subaru
671saw a cloud of circling birds half a mile away, and when he reached them, he found not a
672dismembered woman but a dismembered dog. Little was left but bones and teeth; the
673predators and scavengers had had their day, and there's not much meat on a Jack Russell
674terrier to begin with. The Axe Man most definitely got Frank; Lulubelle's fate is
675probable, but far from certain.
676
677  Perhaps, I thought, she is alive. Singing "Tie a Yellow Ribbon" at The Jailhouse in
678Ely or "Take a Message to Michael" at The Rose of Santa Fe in Hawthorne. Backed up by a
679three-piece combo. Old men trying to look young in red vests and black string ties. Or
680maybe she's blowing GM cowboys in Austin or Wendover - bending forward until her breasts
681press flat on her thighs beneath a calendar showing tulips in Holland; gripping set
682after set of flabby buttocks in her hands and thinking about what to watch on TV that
683night, when her shift is done. Perhaps she just pulled over to the side of the road and
684walked away. People do that. I know it, and probably you do, too. Sometimes people just
685say fuck it and walk away. Maybe she left Frank behind, thinking someone would come
686along and give him a good home, only it was the Axe Man who came along, and...
687
688  But no. I met Lulubelle, and for the life of me I can't see her leaving a dog to most
689likely roast to death or starve to death in the barrens. Especially not a dog she loved
690the way she loved Frank. No, L.T. hadn't been exaggerating about that; I saw them
691together, and I know.
692
693  She could still be alive somewhere. Technically speaking, at least, L.T.'s right about
694that. Just because I can't think of a scenario that would lead from that car with the
695door hanging open and the rearview mirror lying on the floor and the dog lying dead and
696crow-picked two rises away, just because I can't think of a scenario that would lead
697from that place near Caliente to some other place where Lulubelle Simms sings or sews or
698blows truckers, safe and unknown, well, that doesn't mean that no such scenario exists.
699As I told L.T., it isn't as if they found her body; they just found her car, and the
700remains of the dog a little way from the car. Lulubelle herself could be anywhere. You
701can see that.
702
703  I couldn't sleep and I felt thirsty. I got out of bed, went into the bathroom, and
704took the toothbrushes out of the glass we keep by the sink. I filled the glass with
705water. Then I sat down on the closed lid of the toilet and drank the water and thought
706about the sound that Siamese cats make, that weird crying, how it must sound good if you
707love them, how it must sound like coming home.
708