"Where the hell?" Bruce wanted to know. "I mean where the hell is she?"
Maggie threw a shoe at him. "How the hell should I know?"
No one knew whose shoe it was or where it had come from. They'd just found it, just now, on the doorstep, like someone who was invisible except for one shoe was knocking on the door.
They got in the car, leaving the door to the house ajar, in case God came back. Their development was safe. A good place for children, the real estate agent had said, assuming they wanted children, which they didn't necessarily. It's not like you were only entitled to safety if you wanted children. Childless people were people too.
"Here, God," Maggie said, sticking her arm out the window but not her head. She was afraid they'd run into a pole and she'd get decapitated.
Bruce laid on the horn.
"What are you doing?" said Maggie. "Dogs don't respond to road rage."
"Here, God," she yelled. No one was out. It was hot. "Poor God," Maggie said, "she must need water."
"I just can't do this!" said Bruce out of nowhere.
On the corner of Florence and Abruzzo, Howard was watering his ground cover. Bruce slowed the car. Howard was the only neighbor they knew yet. He'd come over last night to welcome them. He'd brought a quiche.
"God," Maggie shouted, and Howard jumped, shooting water into the air. He dropped the hose without turning it off. Water ran down the driveway into the gutter. The cement looked healthy, wet like that. "Have you seen God?" Maggie called.
He came over to the car. "Please try to keep the noise down. You'll disturb the neighborhood."
"God's missing," Maggie said. Tears filled her head. Her brain was drowning. Tiny, helpless God.
"God?"
"Our dog. Our little dog."
"Your dog? When did this happen?"
"An hour," Maggie said. "We left the door open."
"I left it open, OK? I'm sorry, OK? I fucked up." Bruce punched the ceiling of the car. How was he supposed to remember everything, all the time? It's not like he was a computer, with automatic reminders. He'd gone out for the paper but delivery hadn't started yet. Their phone wasn't hooked up. Their furniture hadn't arrived.
"Let's see here." Howard prowled the area around his ground cover. There was no reason for him to do that. It's not like God would logically happen to be here, in Howard's yard.
"Maybe she's hiding somewhere," Maggie said. "Maybe it's a test."
"It's not a test," Bruce said. "The dog's not a fucking teacher."
"What we should do," Howard said, "is make a scent trail for her to follow home."
"She should follow her own scent," said Maggie.
"But maybe," Howard nudged the hose with his foot to water another section of driveway, "it's her own scent she's running from."
It sounded reasonable until you heard it.
"We can't make a trail for her to follow if we don't know where she is," Maggie said.
Bruce closed his eyes. He couldn't do this. He just couldn't do this anymore. This was a gated community. What good was a gated community if you still had to worry?
They left Howard prowling and drove to the guard booth. The guard saw them coming and opened the gate, and was puzzled when they didn't drive out of it. "Our dog ran away," Maggie said.
"Damn," said the guard, whose young skin was absurdly firm. "What's he look like?"
"Little," said Maggie. "Black. Like a dog but miniature."
"I'll keep an eye out. You're six-six Milan, right? Just moved in?"
"Very good," said Maggie. The streets in the development were all named after glamorous Italian locales. The development was called Ventura Villas.
"It's my job," said the guard. "What's his name?"
"Her," said Bruce. "Her name is God."
"We thought it would be funny to call, ’Here God, here God!’" Maggie felt the need to explain and knew that it was related to the guard's ripe skin, his smile like a bite out of an apple. "But it's not funny now."
"I think it's pretty funny," said the guard. "I mean, the name."
"Thank you," said Bruce, revving the engine. "Thanks for your help."
"You'll find him," said the guard. He closed the gate behind them and they were out of the development, gliding down the open street. Free, thought Bruce, though it wasn't like they'd been imprisoned.
Maggie put her hands to her face and was pleased by its firmness. Sometimes it surprised her, how young she was, how much life lay ahead of her. "Maybe God's waiting for us at home."
"How would God have any idea which of these goddamn identical houses is ours?"
"Not that house. Our old house. Dogs do that, I've heard."
"That's not home. That's home," Bruce said, thumbing behind him.
Maggie looked hard out the window. She kept her eyes open but Bruce was afraid of not seeing God, or of seeing her smushed on the side of the road. He looked straight ahead.
"We should have waited," Bruce said. "We shouldn't have gotten a dog before we moved. We should have waited. That was stupid."
"We couldn't wait. We found her. You don't find a dog and then say, 'Wait here for a month, until we move.'"
At their old house Maggie got out of the car and looked sadly at the front windows. She could see the back of an unfamiliar couch. God used to jump on the couch whenever she heard a car door slam, wagging frantically, hoping her owners had returned, even if her owners were already home. There was a Land Rover in the driveway, with cheetah-print covers on the front seats and a baby seat in back.
A woman answered the door. She was renting. Maggie and Bruce had rented, too. Now they owned. They'd finally made it.
Maggie said, "We rented here before you."
"Good for you," said the woman.
"We've lost our dog," Bruce said. "We thought maybe she still thought this was home."
The woman was skinny, knobby-shouldered. She didn't look like the sort of woman who'd have a Land Rover and a baby. "Haven't seen no dog," she said, her voice dull and final, like a cul-de-sac.
"OK. But if you do?" Maggie didn't have paper. The woman dragged herself inside to get some. Maggie and Bruce strained to see what had become of their house. It smelled different. Creepily clean. Like nothing. It was strange, knowing so intimately another person's living space. Bruce had the urge to give advice. To say here, here is the best spot to drink coffee in the morning, because the sun slants close but doesn't get in your eyes. To say, can I sit for a while? Pretend again that it's mine?
She came back with a tiny pad of paper that was printed with Anabel across the top, and dolphins all along the edges. Maggie hardly knew where to write their names and cell numbers. "She's little and black. Her name's God," Maggie said.
"Come again?"
"God," Bruce said. "Our dog's name. Dog backwards."
"Is this some kind of sick joke?" Everything the woman said sounded like something out of a detective movie. She should've been wearing shoulder pads instead of jean shorts.
"No," said Bruce. "It's our dog."
"God is not dog backwards. God is God. You two, what. You're some kind of Hollywood? What, you moved up in the world? What, north of the boulevard? Come here asking if I've seen God?"
"OK," said Bruce, and turned and walked away. Maggie held out the paper but the woman wouldn't take it.
"It's just a name," Maggie said. "I don't even think of it as God. It's just my dog's name. Say it's Lulu. It doesn't matter."
The woman took the paper. She tore it into four pieces and threw them at Maggie and they fluttered to the ground. "God is not an it," the woman said. "God is not a she. God is not just a name. God is not 'just' anything. God is God."
She stared at Maggie until Maggie turned and followed in Bruce's footsteps.
At the gate to Ventura Villas, the guard told them the movers were here. "I let them in," the guard said. "It's S.O.P. They showed me your contract."
They'd splurged on movers because they could. For the first time in their lives, they didn't have to move their own things. The movers went in and out. Bruce and Maggie sat out of the way on the lawn, resisting urges to ask if the movers needed help.
"Maybe," said Maggie, holding up the mysterious shoe she'd thrown, "this is God."
"What?"
"Maybe God transformed into this shoe."
"No," said Bruce. "No way."
"But it's weird," Maggie said, "that the shoe shows up and God disappears. When you think about it."
"No," Bruce said. That would be worse than death: being eternally a shoe.
"Here, God."
"It's not like she can hear you," Bruce said. "It's not like your voice is going to reach all the way to wherever she is."
Once the movers were gone, the first thing was to hook up the printer and make fliers. They used a picture of God sitting in a saucepan. "Remember the day we found her?" Maggie said.
"Yes."
Bruce held while Maggie taped, all around the development. "Are we allowed to tape things to the telephone poles?" Maggie asked.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"The regulations. Like we're not allowed to paint the outside of our house, or plant orange flowers. Did you read them? They're kind of interesting."
Maggie was using too much tape per flier. They'd have to buy more. They never bought tape except for around Christmas.
"The entire world puts missing pet fliers up on telephone poles," said Bruce. "It's universal. It's what you do."
"I'm so sad," Maggie said.
Bruce pressed a flier up to the pole. "So sad," Maggie said, taping. A kid rode up on his bike and made a big deal of being able to sit on the bike without falling over. "Hey," he said. "What's that?"
"We lost our dog," Maggie said. Bruce remembered being a kid. He felt lame, taping fliers in his big adult body. He wanted to hop on a bike and ride, lightning fast.
The kid tilted his head and made a big deal of studying the flier. "God?" he said. "Your dog's name is God?" He whistled. "Here, God, here, Goddy Goddy God!"
Maggie turned the flier around and clutched it to her chest. Who was this kid? "Hey kid," Bruce said. "You ever lost a pet?"
"Sure."
"OK then, get lost."
The kid wavered on his bike. "You live here?"
"Get lost," Maggie said, shooing him with her thin pile of fliers.
"Like God?" said the kid, and rode off.
They took glasses of vodka and lemonade to the backyard and drank on a towel spread over their little patch of grass. It was four in the afternoon. They both had the week off work, to settle in.
Maggie smiled at the sky and then stopped smiling. "I'm so sad."
Bruce got up to check the time so they wouldn't be sitting there when the sprinklers turned on. While he was inside, his cell phone rang. "Hello," said Bruce.
"Hi, are you looking for God?" The caller was young and male.
"Yes, yes we are," Bruce said, glancing out the window at Maggie.
"I know where God is."
"You're kidding. You do?" He'd tell Maggie he was going to run out and photocopy another batch of fliers, but actually he'd go pick up God and surprise her. She'd be so happy. They'd celebrate with sparkling wine.
"Sure. God's nowhere. He doesn't exist!"
Bruce pressed End. He wished his phone were a landline so he could slam it down, over and over. Outside, Maggie's cell phone rang. "Are you looking for God?" said the caller.
"Yes," Maggie said.
"Haven't you heard?"
Maggie's heart paused. "Heard what?"
Solemnly said the voice, "God is dead."
Maggie threw her phone to the other side of the grass without pressing End. The sprinklers came on and Maggie got all wet. She closed her eyes and pretended it was rain.
In the morning she woke up smiling. She looked at Bruce's sleeping profile and thought that his face was a cliff and she was very small, about to scale it. Then she stopped smiling. Bruce woke up. Maggie said, "I was happy when I woke up and then I remembered that I'm sad."
Bruce pulled her close so that her head was on his chest. He smelled warm. He made her want fresh bread, even though she tried not to eat bread if she could help it. "You don't have to be sad. It's not like we really know anything."
"I wish we were in Hawaii," Maggie said. "And God was in a kennel."
Bruce sighed. Her head rode the wave of his breathing chest. "She's not even such good company," Maggie said.
Bruce laughed.
"It's not like she tells jokes or mixes drinks. And she pees too much."
Bruce closed his eyes. There were times when listening to Maggie was like having someone stroke your back forever.
"And she barks for no reason, and won't heel," Maggie said. "Why are we even looking for her?"
Bruce laughed. Maggie's head rose, fell, rose, fell.
"Remember yesterday?" Maggie said. "I liked the house without furniture. It was like being the only people on a planet."
Bruce nodded. His chin scraped back and forth across her hair. The summer sun glowed but didn't quite make its way inside. It was Sunday but only eight o'clock because they'd forgotten how to sleep late. One of Bruce's arms embraced Maggie and he held the other one straight up and made a fist. He spread his fingers wide. "Why are we sad, ever?" said Maggie. She meant we as in everyone in the world, and suddenly she couldn't understand why anyone would ever be sad. Sadness didn't exist. It couldn't, if she wasn't. It was summer.
Bruce floated his hand on the air. He could hold his arm up like this forever. For all time. Once he got into a contest with an ex-girlfriend's grandmother where they tried to see who could hold their arms out longest. It had been so hard! His arms had burned. The grandmother had won. But that must be a false memory because look at him now, arm raised.
When Maggie got up, the absence of her head's weight made Bruce feel like his chest had vanished. While she threw on clothes, Bruce struggled to a sitting position and pressed Power on the remote. On CNN a reporter with a British accent said, "Village after village, scorched. Victims flee their homes, fearful of much worse. A young man had his eyes poked out, hacked, then burned to death."
Maggie watched the footage of a burning village. She'd forgotten about Kenya. She'd forgotten about Iraq and Israel. Bruce was holding his arm out. It was much harder than it had been when he was lying down, holding his arm straight up. Now there was gravity.
They drove to Ralph's to stock up on provisions. Rolling the cart up and down the aisles, Maggie didn't believe that sadness didn't exist and she didn't believe she ever had believed it, not this morning or ever. Kenya was burning. Bruce tossed white bread into the cart. It was so far the only thing in the cart. He said, "It's not like we're stocking up for a disaster."
"I like carts," Maggie said.
They bought a packet of bologna. Mayonnaise and pickles and Kettle Chips. Coca-Cola, which they never drank. In line Maggie said, "This cart reminds me of the world."
Bruce stopped looking at the photographs of Britney Spears. He turned to Maggie, ready to laugh. Maggie said, "Full of crap."
When they came back Howard was waiting for them, standing at attention at the head of the driveway. He was holding one of the fliers. They'd had them printed in various colors, attention-getting. In this one God was neon pink. "You can't do fliers," he said, proffering the flier like he'd done with the quiche.
"Damn it," Maggie said. "Bruce, we can't do fliers."
Bruce came up behind her with the grocery bag. "Our dog's lost. It's what you do when you lost a dog. You do fliers."
"I'm sorry," Howard said. He sounded sorry. He was wearing a pink polo shirt that made him look burned by the worst rays. "Also." He bent and picked up the weird shoe from yesterday. "We like to keep our yards clean."
"It's not ours," Maggie said.
Howard looked at the shoe, smiling faintly, and back at Maggie.
"It's not ours. Somebody left it."
Bruce took the flier from Howard. "It's a fucking flier."
"You can use the list-serv. Send me an email and I'll send out the announcement with Monday's list-serv."
"List-serv," Bruce muttered.
"We found the shoe, actually, around the time God disappeared." Bruce didn't know why Maggie was explaining. It's not like anybody ever listened.
"So possibly a clue," Howard said.
"Or somebody's crappy shoe," Bruce said. "I'm going inside."
Howard watched him go with a wise expression, like he could say many things but was refraining. "I was thinking it might be a sign," Maggie said in a low voice.
"It must belong to someone in the Villas," Howard said. "No one gets past the guard. Alan Nesbitt wears shoes like this. It could belong to Alan Nesbitt."
"Ah," Maggie said. "So maybe Alan Nesbitt has God?"
Howard handed her the shoe and she took it. "Everyone in the Villas is carefully screened. Alan's not a dog robber. If it's Alan's shoe there's a reason."
They emailed their announcement for the list-serv and then retraced yesterday's steps, taking down the fliers. Some of the tape stuck and Maggie worried they'd be fined. Then they went to visit the Nesbitts. Howard had told them the Nesbitts lived at four-two Chianti.
"Why do they say the numbers like that?" said Bruce. The development was scorching. All pinkish concrete and trees not yet grown, strapped to wooden posts. "Six-six. Four-two. Why not sixty-six. Forty-two."
"I don't know," said Maggie, exhausted.
Alan Nesbitt answered the door and looked at them suspiciously, as if they might have snuck into the development. "We live over on Milan," said Bruce. "Just moved in. We found this shoe and Howard said it might be yours."
"Why would it be mine?"
Maggie was holding the shoe. She held it like a shiny, laced-up hope. "Also, our dog's missing. Have you seen a missing dog?"
"You live here?"
"Six-six Milan," Bruce said.
Alan shook his head. "I tell my wife, we should get a gate. A gate around our house. The gate around the development isn't enough. We're always getting neighbors. Have you seen this? Do you want that? Dinner? Drinks? Jump start?"
"OK," said Bruce, turning to go.
"Fuck you, Alan Nesbitt," Maggie said.
Bruce turned to see what Alan would do. Alan shook his head and went inside and closed the door. Maggie threw the shoe at the closed door. Then she picked it up and marched past Bruce, to the sidewalk, and turned left, which was the wrong way but he didn't tell her. The development was circular. They'd get back eventually.
Their moving-in week diminished. Day by day shrinking. Then it was over. The next day was Sunday and then Monday and they'd go to work as always, except they'd be leaving a new house behind. They couldn't bring themselves to unpack. To clutter their new house with furniture and personal articles. It was better blank and white. Bruce lay on the carpet, looking at the cottage-cheese ceiling.
"One week," he said. "It was around this time that God got out."
"Every week it will have been another week," Maggie said. She was at the front window, looking out at their teeny lawn and the curving sidewalk and broad streets of the development. The list-serv had gone out on Monday, amid announcements of a neighborhood watch meeting and a bake sale at the local elementary school. Someone had Replied to All and said, "I don't know who thinks it's funny to tell everyone that God's lost, but knock it off. I've got more important things to read about."
Then someone else had Replied to All and said, "Please don't Reply to All just to whine. I get enough whining from my kids. LOL."
Bruce had wanted to block everyone on the list using the Gmail filter but Maggie hadn't let him.
"If we hadn't named her God would it be this way? If we'd named her Muffy or Nutmeg. Would we feel this empty?"
"Yes," Maggie said.
"But reflecting like this. On where she's gone, whether it's happened for some reason we can't understand. Maybe we'd just figure, Oh yeah, Muffy ran away. Stupid Muffy."
"I can see her," Maggie said. Bruce opened his eyes wider. "I just see her. I think it's impossible that I won't turn around and she'll be there, wagging. Then I think it's impossible that I'll ever see her again. Everything seems impossible. The world is huge. I hate it."
"It will get easier," Bruce said.
"That doesn't help."
Bruce closed his eyes. The house was silent and serene. The air conditioning hovered like a cold, nonmoving breeze. Maggie tapped on the glass. Her tapping made a plastic sound. She went to the front door and opened it. "Hello?"
Bruce sat up.
"Hello, can I help you?"
Bruce joined her at the door. A man stood like a lawn ornament in the middle of the lawn, angled toward the street. He was old and gaunt, in shorts and a grayed white t-shirt and black socks pulled to his knees. His hair stood out from his head like the flame beneath a chafing dish. He looked like a an evil apparition but he wasn't. No one got let into the gated community unless they lived there, or were known.
"Who's that?" Bruce said to Maggie.
"Hello?" Maggie said. "Sir? Have you come for your shoe?"
He was wearing one white Ked. The other white Ked was in his hand. He turned, slowly. Bruce was afraid the other half of his face, turning toward them, would be a skull. It wasn't. It was a regular very old man's face.
"Excuse me, do you live here?" Bruce called.
"That's always the question," said the man. "Do you live here? Do you live here?" His voice did not sound so old. It sounded surprisingly reasonable. "This is God's earth. You think God created the earth and said, 'Now multiply and erect gates?'"
"OK," Bruce said.
"You're right," Maggie said. "You're totally right."
"This was my house. Six-six. Six-six Milan. Stupid. This isn't a city in Italy." He made a sweeping gesture with his arms, like a child pantomiming the arc of a day. "It's a street. It isn't a…"
He fell silent. Bruce waited for Maggie to turn so they could exchange a weirded-out look, but she didn't.
The old man said, "My wife died six months ago and I started leaving things on the lawn. I let the house go to shit. Paint peeling. Leaves accumulating. I planted orange flowers. You know what they did?"
"They kicked you out," Maggie said, feeling as though something were dawning. Oh it was hot out here. Relentless.
The old man pointed at her with the toe of his Ked. "You want to revisit your old house, you can't. There's a gate. The guard says, 'I'm sorry, do you live here?' I say 'I did.' He says no. It's not enough. The past doesn't count. If you don't live here now, you don't exist."
"So how'd you get in?" Maggie asked. She'd stepped outside now and was on the bottom step. Bruce stood in the doorway. He felt near vomiting. Shaking. Some kind of attack.
The man nodded.
"How'd you get in," said Bruce.
The man shook his head.
"Our dog's missing," Maggie said.
The man set his Ked on the lawn.
"Howard thought your shoe might be a clue. It appeared when God disappeared. Howard's our neighbor."
"Howard's an idiot. My shoe's my shoe. Next week who knows what I'll leave. A shirt. A finger. Maybe I'll dismantle myself little by little, leaving pieces for you to find."
"OK," said Bruce, tugging on Maggie's arm. "We're going inside now."
Maggie resisted. Her arm was thin but determined. "There are reasons for gates," Bruce said. "For Christ's sake."
"Our dog's name is God," Maggie said. "They made us take the fliers down."
"Mother of..." said the man. "What about her collar."
Maggie covered her face. She couldn't say it. Bruce said it. "She's not wearing a collar. We take it off at night because it drives us crazy. Rattling. Jingling."
Maggie took the deepest of breaths.
"Ah," said the man. "Too bad."
Maggie uncovered her face. "You think we would have found her otherwise?"
"I don't know."
"It's been a week. We might still find her."
The man tilted his head. "Follow me," he said, and walked, one-shoed, off the lawn. Maggie followed without looking back at Bruce, who closed his eyes briefly and followed, too. Neither Maggie nor Bruce had on shoes. The pavement was hot, so hot, although because it was beige it did not truly absorb the heat. They marched to the corner and turned right and headed for the guard booth. The guard wasn't the one who'd been there a week ago. "Henry," said the old man to the guard, "can I borrow your megaphone, please."
"Shit," said Henry, and disappeared beneath the window of the guard booth. It was a tiny booth. He appeared at the booth door and handed the old man a megaphone.
"This is Henry," said the old man. "The Friday-night guard. He sees the gates as a way in, not a way out. A dying breed." He didn't seem at all worried that Bruce and Maggie would snitch. Not that they would.
"Not a breed," Henry said. "Just dying."
The old man held the megaphone to his lips and said, "Thanks, Henry." It came out loud through the megaphone. Crackling, like a voice from far away. He led Bruce and Maggie back into the heart of the development. "Here, God," he said, his voice sucked into the megaphone and disseminated. "Here, God. God, can you hear me? Come home, God."
"Oh Christ," said Bruce.
"God. God? Oh God, if you're out there, hear me." Faces appeared at windows. Someone poked a head out of a front door. The old man handed the megaphone to Bruce, but Maggie grabbed it.
"I'm sorry, God," she said. "We should have been more careful. We shouldn't have moved to this place."
They were nearing Howard's house now. Howard was watering his ground cover. Bruce put his hand up to shield his face from view. He literally did. Howard said something but compared to the megaphone his voice was tiny. An ant's voice. Bruce dropped his hand.
"Give me the thing," he whispered to Maggie, who relinquished it reluctantly. The old man was walking backwards now, like a tour guide.
"God," Bruce said. His voice didn't come through as loud as he'd expected. "Oh God." Everyone was hearing him. He sounded so foolish. Why hadn't they named her Truffle? Something multisyllabic? Maggie put her hand at the base of his back, bolstering. "God," he called, his voice wavering. "God. God, where are you?"
The old man stepped on a rock with his shoeless foot. How had a rock like that gotten into the development? A sharp, random rock. He hopped and grimaced and then his face settled, fierce, determined. Maggie looked sad but peaceful, her eyes cast toward the smoggy morning sky. Bruce mustered force and hurled his voice through the cone. "God, we know you're out there," he bellowed, his voice spreading, unfurling over the development, multiplied. His anxiety settled. For the first time in weeks, he was steady and sure. Isn't this what they'd wanted all along? Isn't this why they'd named her God in the first place? For the chance to call, "Here, God. God, we're here. Don't leave us, God." A heavenly chorus. Meaning it. Not laughing at all.
© 2010 Kristin Kearns
