Waiting

Gus knew Roby was late before the light reached the kitchen.

Roby was the pack leader, which meant that he controlled the doors, the food bin, the car, and the place where the leash hung. Gus had accepted the arrangement years ago, but there were mornings when leadership required assistance, and today was one of them.

The room was still dark except for the green numbers beside the bed. 6:12. Gus did not know what they meant. He knew a truck had already passed outside, pipes had made noises inside the walls, and a bird had landed on the railing, shaken rain from its feathers, and left. Morning had started but Roby had not.

He remained under the blankets with only the top of his head showing, breathing slowly as though the day might wait for him.

Gus stood beside the bed and watched. Waiting often worked, so he gave Roby some time before putting his chin on the mattress and breathing into his face.

Roby turned away. “Gus. Your breath stinks.”

The voice was enough. Gus wagged his tail once and stepped toward the bedroom door, satisfied that morning had begun. Roby took longer to reach the kitchen, so Gus checked the back door, returned to the hall, stood beneath the leash for a while, and came back to find him drinking water from a glass. This remained one of Roby’s stranger habits. Water was available in the bowl at all times, yet Roby regularly poured it into smaller containers and carried it around the house.

Eventually Roby put the glass down and looked at the glowing thing in his hand. He frowned at it, rubbed one hand over his face, and went to the hall. The leash came down from its hook and he put his shoes on. This was encouraging. Then he reached for the blue coat.

The blue coat belonged to a different kind of morning. There were coats for rain and coats for cold, and there was an old green one that carried the smells of grass, creek water, and the bench at the park. The blue coat smelled of streets, buildings, the inside of the car, and places where Gus did not usually go. Still, Roby had the leash. For the moment, that mattered more.

Outside, the air was full of information. Gus stepped through the door first and waited for Roby to follow, breathing in wet pavement, old leaves, gasoline, bread from somewhere down the block, and the thin mineral smell of rainwater gathered along the curb. Beneath all of it was the brown dog from down the street.

At the tree, Gus confirmed that the brown dog had been there early and had said something foolish. Rain had softened the bark and loosened older smells underneath, so yesterday remained beneath this morning and, farther down, several days before that. Gus took his time sorting through it all while Roby shifted from one foot to the other.

Gus lifted his leg and answered the brown dog.

“Big morning?”

Roby often asked questions after the answer had already been given.

They continued toward the corner. A woman crossed the street in fast shoes with a cup of coffee in her hand. She looked straight ahead and did not once check the wind. Humans did that a lot.

At the corner, Roby slowed, and Gus felt the change through the leash. On good mornings they turned left, toward the alley with the cans and the long fence where a cat sometimes sat above reach and pretended not to notice him. If Roby had time, there was another block after that, and on the best mornings they continued all the way to the park. Roby’s feet, however, pointed right.

Home.

Gus sat down.

“No,” Roby said. “Don’t start.”

Gus had not started anything. He was waiting for the correct turn. Roby looked at the glowing thing again, then toward the left-hand street, and for a moment Gus thought the matter had been reconsidered. Instead, Roby crouched and scratched between his ears.

“I know, you want to go chase the cat.”

Gus leaned into the hand. The hand was sorry, but the feet were still pointed home, so he stood and they went back the way they had come.

The return walk was shorter but not useless. A bird had stood in the strip of grass beside a parked car. Rainwater near one tire smelled of oil and something sweet that might once have been food, and a drain deserved investigation until Roby said his name twice, the second time in the voice that meant the investigation had ended. At the front steps Gus paused long enough to smell the door. Nothing unexpected had happened inside while they were gone.

In the kitchen, Roby filled the water bowl first, although the water was already water, then opened the food bin. Kibble struck the metal bowl with the proper sound. Gus waited until Roby stepped back before eating. Permission was not exactly the issue. Mornings simply worked better when things happened in order.

After checking the floor around his bowl, Gus returned to the hall. The blue coat was still on. The leash had gone back to its hook, but Roby’s shoes had not come off. A moment later Roby picked up the hard bag that smelled of paper, rain, and other people’s hands.

Gus stepped between him and the door. This had worked before, once. Not completely, but Roby had stopped for almost a minute, which made it worth trying again.

“Gus, I have to go.”

That was the leaving voice.

The keys made their sharp little sound in Roby’s hand. Gus stayed where he was until Roby stepped around him. Roby had the door hands, and that made most arguments difficult. At the threshold he bent down and said, “Be good.”

Gus pressed his nose into the blue coat and found soap and the quick restless smell that came into Roby’s hands when he thought he was late. Then the outside came in around his shoes—cold air, wet pavement, street—and the door shut.

Gus listened as Roby went down the steps. The gate opened with a long scrape. A car door closed, then the familiar engine woke at the curb. He went to the front window and put his paws on the sill. Roby did not like for him to do this, but Roby was not there to object.

The car moved away. At the corner, its red lights showed once between the bare branches before they disappeared.

7:18 a.m.

Gus stayed at the window because sometimes Roby came back. He had forgotten things before: the little black object that glowed, the cup with the bitter smell, once a bundle of papers that made him drive away and return almost immediately. That time Roby had laughed when Gus met him at the door, and for several minutes everything had gone back to normal.

The corner stayed empty.

After a while Gus climbed down and went to the front door, where Roby was still present in the crack beneath it, mixed with rain, shoe rubber, and the hurry that had been on his hands. Gus lowered himself to the floor and rested his nose near the gap. A truck passed with a heavy rattle. Footsteps crossed the pavement. The brown dog barked twice somewhere down the block, which required brief attention but nothing more.

Perhaps Roby had gone to the park. Gus raised his head at that.

Roby did not smell the ground properly, missed squirrels, and walked straight past the low places near the fence where rain gathered news from three different paths. Without Gus, most of the park would go completely unexamined. Roby knew this or should have.

There were other places Roby could go. The building with the glass doors, where Roby sometimes took Gus as far as the entrance and told him to wait before disappearing inside. The place with the carts. The place where food came out in bags and Gus was expected to believe none of it belonged to him. The building where people touched his ears, looked into his mouth, and put cold things against his chest.

Humans had many places with strange rules.

Gus stayed near the door until the smell beneath it became faint enough that he went looking for a better one.

10:46 a.m.

The bedroom still held Roby everywhere. He was in the pillow, the blankets, yesterday’s shirt hanging over the back of a chair, and the shoes shoved partly beneath it. Gus stood beside the bed and breathed everything in. For a moment the smell was strong enough that some part of him expected Roby to be under the blankets again, failing at morning.

But the bed was flat.

Gus jumped up anyway, turned twice, and settled where Roby’s legs had been. The blankets were cool now, but they still smelled right, and that was enough for a while. He slept until a sound from somewhere in the building brought his head up.

Nothing followed it.

When he returned to the hall, sunlight had reached the floor near the window. Gus lay in the warm patch and rested his head on his paws while the building made its ordinary sounds around him. Pipes knocked in the wall. The refrigerator started humming in the kitchen. Someone upstairs dragged something across the floor and stopped. These were familiar noises and did not need investigation.

The warm patch moved. Gus moved with it.

A woman from upstairs came down in hard shoes, talking quietly. Gus got to his feet before he knew whether the footsteps mattered, listened until the outside door closed, then returned to the sunlight. Her smell remained briefly in the hall: perfume, wool, something sweet from breakfast.

He slept again, though never deeply. The first few times a car slowed outside, his ears lifted. Once he woke already standing, unsure what had called him there. He went to the door, listened to the quiet building, and after a while returned to the window.

By then the sunlight had moved beyond the chair. Gus lay partly in the warmth and partly out of it because getting up again did not seem worthwhile.

1:37 p.m.

The mail slot snapped open, and Gus barked before the paper reached the floor. Something had entered the house without permission. He approached it carefully and smelled it: paper, street, several human hands, something faintly chemical.

It remained where it had fallen.

The house was different in the middle of the day. Morning had emptied out of it. Fewer people hurried along the pavement, and the sounds that remained came from farther away. Gus drank from his bowl, stood for a while listening to water mutter somewhere inside the wall, then walked through the rooms.

The kitchen smelled faintly of his breakfast and Roby’s coffee. In the bedroom, the blanket smell had flattened. At the window, a pigeon walked along the opposite railing and stayed just long enough to be insulting. Gus watched it leave, then went back into the hall.

At the toy basket he stopped.

The old rope lay partly beneath the yellow ball. Roby liked the rope. When he held one end, he made a low growling sound as though there were any possibility he might win. Gus answered with the better sound and pulled until Roby’s arm moved. Sometimes Roby laughed. Sometimes he cheated by letting go without warning.

Gus took the rope from the basket and carried it into the hall. He left it beside the door, turned once, and lay down.

The position was not quite right. After a while he stood, picked up the rope again, and placed it closer to where Roby’s shoes usually landed. Then he returned to the floor.

When Roby came back, the rope would already be there.

Sometime later Gus slept.

4:22 p.m.

By late afternoon the warm places had disappeared from the floor, and the street had begun to sound different. Gus did not know anything about four twenty-two. He knew people were coming back.

A car stopped next door. A door opened upstairs. Children went past the window, making the high excited noises they made when no adult had convinced them to walk properly. Somewhere nearby onions began cooking, followed by meat, and a few minutes later another smell joined them that Gus could not place but would have been willing to investigate.

He went to the window.

Engines came onto the street and stayed. Gates opened. Footsteps climbed stairs with the heavier rhythm of humans who had gone somewhere and were finished going. Each arrival held his attention for a few seconds, though most could be dismissed quickly. The car with the loose piece underneath was not Roby’s. The small loud engine farther down the street was wrong too. A delivery truck stopped outside, idled, and left.

Gus went back to the door, then returned to the window when another car slowed. The rope still lay where he had placed it. On his next trip through the hall he moved it a few inches closer to the entrance.

The bedroom still smelled of Roby, but by then it was the smell from before. The crack beneath the door had almost nothing left. From the window, Gus could see the corner where the red lights had disappeared that morning.

He stood there for a while as the light thinned outside. More people came home. Someone laughed on the sidewalk. A child ran up the steps next door. The smell of food grew stronger through the walls.

Eventually Gus returned to the door and lay down beside the rope with one paw resting over it.

5:41 p.m.

The sound was buried under everything else at first. Traffic moved on the larger road, tires passed through shallow water, and a truck changed gears somewhere beyond the corner. Gus lifted his head because underneath it all was something he knew.

The sound disappeared behind another engine, then returned. Low and familiar. Gus stood so quickly the rug moved beneath him.

By the time he reached the window, the car had turned onto the street. He knew the engine among all the others and the small change it made when Roby slowed near the house. The familiar car passed behind the bare branches and stopped beside the curb.

Gus ran to the door. He backed away because the door needed room, then moved forward again because room had become difficult to remember. Outside came the car door, followed by Roby’s steps on the pavement. One foot always landed a little heavier than the other. The gate scraped, the steps climbed, and the key entered the lock.

The door opened, and Roby stood there in the blue coat, tired and real. Gus looked at him for half a second before pushing into his legs hard enough that Roby caught the wall with one hand.

“Gus.”

The voice was tired, but it was not the leaving voice.

Roby dropped the bag and crouched. Gus pressed himself into whatever part of him was closest—hands, chest, coat, knees. His tail struck the wall, his back feet slipped on the floor, and Roby laughed while trying to keep his balance.

“All right. All right. I missed you too.”

Then Roby stopped laughing and sat down on the floor with his back against the wall.

Gus stopped moving. Roby kept one hand on the side of his neck and leaned his forehead against Gus’s head. His breathing slowed. He smelled of the outside, other people, the bitter drink, and the inside of the car. Beneath those were the familiar smells that belonged only to Roby, along with the tired smell Gus knew from evenings when Roby came home and sat down before taking off his shoes.

They stayed there for a little while.

Gus did not know what had happened wherever Roby had been. He knew the blue coat had brought him home tired. He knew Roby’s hand remained on his neck longer than usual.

When Roby finally lifted his head, Gus inspected him more carefully. There was no park in the coat, no grass on his shoes, and no squirrel anywhere Gus could find.

Roby scratched behind his ear and noticed the rope beside the door.

“You’ve been waiting?”

Gus pushed his nose into Roby’s hand.

Roby reached for the rope and picked it up. He did not stand. He held one end from where he sat against the wall and made the low growling sound. Gus took the other end, planted his feet, and answered properly.

Roby laughed again, quieter this time.

They played until Roby let go.

A few minutes later the blue coat came off and the shoes stayed by the door. The hard bag went down where it belonged. In the kitchen, Roby stood with one hand on the counter for a moment before opening a cabinet. Gus waited beside him, close enough that Roby’s leg touched his shoulder.

Outside, the last light disappeared from the street. Someone upstairs turned on music. Water moved through the pipes again, and somewhere beyond the kitchen window a dog barked once into the evening.

Roby opened the food bin.

Gus followed him.

Now the house was right.