Free Emily & Einstein by Linda Francis Lee Page B

every member of the in-house sales team along with a Baby Ruth candy bar tied on top of each with a bow.
    It was a silly gesture, no question, but I prayed that if nothing else sales would get a smile out of the correlation, take pity on poor Ruth, and at least read the printed highlights as they ate the candy. My gut told me that if they took the book home over the weekend and read even the first sentence, they would fall in love.
    As I was turning off my computer to head home, Victoria strode into my office.
    “What is this I hear about you wasting everybody’s time by passing out ARCs of Ruth along with chocolate bars?” She smirked. “It’s going to take more than ninety-nine-cent bribes to get support for your little book.”
    “Maybe. But I looked over the pub list for the month and there’s nothing on it that has the kind of media appeal Ruth does. I mean, it’s a fictional version of what the author actually experienced saving her own son when he was dying. Ruth is perfect for morning news and talk shows. And I hardly think talk shows are a waste of time.”
    Victoria scoffed, but I didn’t let her get to me. And when I got on the subway and saw one of the sales guys sitting toward the front of the car eating the Baby Ruth and opening to the first page of the ARC, I felt sure my instinct was correct.

 
    einstein

chapter seven
    As long as I lived, I wasn’t sure that I would ever truly believe what had happened to me, not even when I turned back into a man.
    A shiver of unease raced down my spine, and my hackles rose. Every quivering strand of this little dog’s double helix DNA went still at the memory of my human body lying dead in the slush and snow. But I dismissed any hint of concern as ridiculous. There was no way I could spend the rest of my days as a dog. Things like that just didn’t happen. I mean, really, was it possible anyone could actually believe that little Fido next door was harboring the soul of a man? Or Rex down the street was really a Brooklyn-born tough? No, I assured myself. Sooner or later something would happen and poof, this nightmare would be over and I would wake up back in my body, back in my bed, back in my life as a man who had it all.
    Once I had gotten over the shock of the bizarre situation, I decided to look at my sojourn as a canine in the best possible light. I was a glass-half-full sort of fellow, after all. I might be a dog, but I wouldn’t think of it that way. I would think of it as being on vacation from being a man. Like going to St. Barts in winter or the South of France in spring—only smellier. The only snag in this plan was that dogs were dependent on their humans. No wonder Lassie was loyal. What choice did she have if she wanted to eat?
    Given my state of dependence, I had little choice but to depend on Emily. It’s not hard to imagine that I didn’t do, and had never done, dependence all that well. But rather than give in to frustration, I decided to look at her as, say, Julie on the Love Boat, my cruise director.
    Whatever the case, I found it easy enough to get her to do what I wanted. When I didn’t like the food, I refused to eat. Eventually I had her sharing her own dinner with me. When I wanted a scratch behind the ear, I nudged her hand. If I wanted a Mozart sonata played on my sound system, I trotted over to the CD changer and growled.
    When I wasn’t getting Emily to do my bidding I was sleeping. And when I wasn’t sleeping, I was lying in the sun. All in all, it was a somewhat acceptable interim situation, at least for me. It might not have been so great for my wife, but that hardly seemed like my problem.
    My head snapped back when I felt a zap to my flank. I jerked around, but no one was there. “Old man?” I growled.
    But nobody answered.
    Saturday morning I was pleasantly surprised when we headed across the street to Central Park, passing the line of park benches, the late winter sun catching on the small rectangular dedication