It’s Saturday afternoon, and there are odd noises coming from downstairs: furniture scraping, strange bumps and crashes. It’s as if we’re moving out and no one told me. I stay in my office, figuring I’ll be informed where to go when the time comes.
“Your dog is looking for you,” my wife says when I finally go downstairs.
The old dog wanders into the hall, and then walks past me into the kitchen. “Not me,” I say.
I follow the dog into the kitchen, where I find the back door open, a chair on its side and water all over the floor. It looks as if we’ve been robbed, but nothing obvious is missing. My wife comes in, the little dog at her heels.
“Why is it like this?” I say.
“Dunno,” she says, “but instead of standing there doing nothing, you could take the dogs out.” The little dog rises into its begging posture.
“Don’t do that,” I say. “I hate that.”
In the park, I let both dogs off the lead. A couple pass by in the dark, and the old dog turns and follows them back out of the gate.
“Where are you going?” I say, catching it up and reattaching the lead.
Back in the park, the old dog walks in tight, aimless circles, while the little dog looks on, bewildered. After five minutes, I give up and head for home.
“Something’s gone wrong with this dog,” I say.
“With its back legs again?” my wife asks.
“No,” I say. “With its brain.”
We watch as the old dog circles the ground floor. It bumps into furniture and treads in its freshly refilled bowl, spilling water everywhere: the burglary explained. The first time it attempts the two steps up from the kitchen, it misses. Thereafter, I position myself on the threshold, to lift it up and down each time it passes.
“I can’t keep doing this,” I say. “Should we, meaning you, call the vet?”
“We were at the vet yesterday,” my wife says. “To get new medication.”
“So this dog is high?” I say, lifting it down.
“I don’t even pick up the new medicine until Monday,” she says.
The next day brings a partial recovery. I watch from the window as my wife takes the dogs over the road: progress is slow, but straight.
“I think we need to prepare ourselves for the fact that this dog may die soon,” my wife says on her return.
“I think you need to prepare yourself for the possibility of this dog not dying,” I say. “We may have to buy it wheels.”
That night I am woken at 4am by scraping and creaking, sounds progressing from room to room. I open one eye and see my wife staring down at me. Wordlessly, she turns and walks out of the bedroom door. On the ground floor, I hear claws on wood. Someone walks halfway down the stairs, then stops. I shut my eyes. The next time I open them, my wife is in bed. The next time I open them, she is not.
I sleep fitfully, haunted by noises and concerned that some contagion is at large – a form of infectious peripatesis. I suppose one always imagines the zombie apocalypse starting at somebody else’s house.
Suddenly, the lights snap on. My wife looms somewhere beyond the dazzling whiteness.
“What are you doing?” I say.
“I need to read,” she says. “But my bedside light is broken!”
“What do you expect me to do about that?” I say.
“Swap places with me,” she says.
I take my alarm clock with me to the other side, so I can lie awake counting the minutes until morning.
