Jan. 11, 2009: The Red Pillow

The Red Pillow

(A Max and George dog story)


Max was a miniature schnauzer with a full beard and a large heart. His best friend and next door neighbor was George, a slender mixed-breed dog with soft brown eyes. They lived in mythical Gladport on the western coast of a peninsular land to which drifted old people and dreamers.
Max's owner was a psychologist named Tondelayo Flemleich. One day, out of love and a penchant for buying things, she purchased a red pillow for Max. It was oblong, three inches thick, and decorated with white hearts, thoroughly in keeping with the baroque intricacies of the Bauhaus design school in the land from which Max's ancestors were born and bred, or at least from which his breed title - schnauzer - derived. Who knows?
Delighted with the new red pillow, Max sniffed it for three seconds before climbing aboard it, marveling at the velvet lining on top and the cushiony sensation that caressed his virtually hairless belly region as he sprawled his nine-pound carcass across the oblongity of the pillow.
A bark sounded at Max's back door. Tondelayo opened the door and admitted George to her house. She said to both dogs, "Farewell, I am gone to download some neuroses from my penniless clients, the loveable wretches." She departed.
George entered Max's living room and gave witness to his pal ensconced on the new red pillow. "Hut's happening, Max?
"It is a gift from my owner, a splendid woman whose only concern is my comfort." "It's a beaut. Can I try it out?"
Max said, "Perhaps, one day, after I have thoroughly trammeled and scrunched it, imbuing it with my dander and the subtle imprints of my body's contours, causing the pillow's contents to shift into appropriate sub-sections, the better to allow me to nestle and cuddle, if you will."
George said, "If I will what? I swear to God, Max, sometimes you can speak the silliest twaddle of any dog, or human, I've ever known."
"You're just jealous," Max said. "You wish you had a similar pillow. Admit it."
"Okay, I admit it. Now can we get out of the house and seek some adventure?"
"No, I think not. I intend to stay here on my pillow. You must fend for yourself."
At this supercilious remark, George entered the Pistoff Zone, named for the brilliant Russian anger-management researcher, Vladimir Pistoff. Inwardly seething at Max's self-absorption, George left the house through the dog exit-entry flap constructed by one of Tondelayo's assorted boy friends. As he descended the back porch steps, George muttered, "Fend, must I? I'll show the little kraut some fend."
George scoured the adjoining back yards for some avocadoes, which fell with regularity from the jungle-like network of trees and bushes of the 'hood. Within a few minutes he found a semi-rotten avocado and transported it to Max's porch. Then he entered his own home, which was deserted at the time.
George went to the living room telephone and pushed the receiver off the hook. Using his right front paw, he dialed the number of Max's home. When Max answered, George shouted into the telephone, "Max, I just saw some would-be burglars skulking, about three hundred yards up the back alley. Get your butt out here and help me clear them out!"
From his kitchen window George saw Max erupt from his house, yapping like a Wagnerian diva with strep throat. When Max disappeared up the alley, George went to the semi-rotten avocado and, grasping it in his teeth, took it inside Max's house. He approached Max's gleaming red pillow. His scheme was almost complete.
Ten minutes later, Max returned from his false and futile search for the non-existent burglars. He entered his living room. Surveying the scene from the sofa was George.
Max said, "You no-good, mendacious....!!" Then he looked at his precious new red pillow, pristine, unsullied. A few inches away, beside it, moist with semi-fermented ooze of the most rank nature, was the rotten avocado. George said, "I could have plunked it right in the middle of your prized possession, but I didn't. I guess I'm not as rotten as the avocado. Or you."
Max found himself overwhelmed by a wash of painful awareness. He slumped to the floor and lay pondering.
After a time, he rose and said to George, "I'll take the stinky fruit outside and get rid of it. While I'm gone - and any other time you like - the pillow is yours. We still pals?"
George said, "Still pals." Max went outside. George approached the red pillow, sniffed it, nudged it. Then he climbed aboard and claimed its velvety dimensions. A few seconds later a thought came: "This sucker's not big enough for me. But I'm damned if I'll tell that to Max."

(Copyright 2009 by B and E Books.)