Free The Man in the Window by Jon Cohen, Nancy Pearl Page A

this time to spend on the telephone? It’s no wonder people are always dying in hospitals.”
    “Arnie, you’re a pain in the ass,” Iris said. A visitor frowned as he walked by, and she frowned back at him.
    “That’s why patients are dying, because nurses are talking dirty and spending all their time on telephones.”
    “You’re in rare form today, Arnie.”
    “Thank you. That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me in forty years.”
    “I’m thirty-seven.”
    “It seems like forty years,” Arnie muttered.
    “Listen, will you please. I forgot to feed the dog. Will—”
    “Need a dog!” Arnie shouted. “What the hell do we need another dog for, girl?”
    Oh Jesus. Iris slumped her head against the pay phone.
    Arnie’s pump was primed. “Another dog? Ain’t we got enough piss on the floor? You want two dogs pissing all over the place? And you know how much a can of dog food costs? Kal Kan went up to fifty-three cents, and you multiply that by two dogs, and that comes out to something like five million dollars a year for dog food. And they won’t eat the dry stuff you see taking up all that room in the stores. Fifty-pound bags. Who buys fifty-pound bags, and what do they use it for? Mulch? ’Cause no dog will eat it. Ours won’t, anyway, and if you think I’m going to take that from
two
dogs, you’re wrong, girl.”
    “Arnie. Arnie, I have to go now,” Iris said, restraining herself mightily.
    “Do you? Too bad. Enjoyed talking to you. Call anytime.”

CHAPTER THREE
    A RNIE HUNG up the phone. That’s a strange girl, he thought. How old she say she was? Thirty-seven? How’d she get to be thirty-seven? I thought I was thirty-seven.
    “Where’s the time go, eh, Duke?” Duke was Arnie’s dog, a big reddish-brown mutt he’d hit with his car on the way home from the grocery store five or six years ago. Arnie had stopped the car and gone over to the dog, and when the dog licked his hand, that added another layer to Arnie’s guilt, so he gathered him up and took him home. The dog’s recuperative powers were remarkable—all it took was one big bowl of Kal Kan, and he turned absolutely frisky. Arnie eyed him and decided he’d been had. The dog was probably an old pro at throwing himself in front of cars for a free meal. Arnie said to him, “Okay, Duke,” (he didn’t know why he called him Duke, the name just came out of him) “you’re welcome to stay as long as you pull your own weight.” Arnie wasn’t sure what he meant by that, since he had no sheep to herd or dogsleds that needed pulling, but he thought he’d better put his foot down, especially with a dog that made its living throwing itself in front of cars. Over the years Duke proved himself better at gaining weight than pulling his weight.
    “Where’s the time go?” Arnie said again. “Come over here and get your scratching, Mr. Duke.”
    Duke ambled across the kitchen to Arnie, then turned himself one hundred and eighty degrees and let out a kind of sigh. The scratching would begin at the base of his tail, then move up his spine, and leave him paralyzed with pleasure. Duke sighed again. Only Arnie could deliver this sort of scratching, which had less to do with technique than with equipment. Arnie had a metal hook where his right hand used to be—he’d lost his handtwenty years ago when an engine block from a Chevy Impala snapped a hoist chain and crushed it. The hook, with its opposable device for grasping, while something of an inconvenience on his job as a mechanic, was great for scaring children and even better for scratching dogs. Arnie gave Duke a long one. When he finished, the dog shuddered, then collapsed in ecstasy on the floor.
    Iris kept bugging him to “update your prosthesis. You don’t have to look like Captain Hook, you know. They got better things on the market these days. You’d have more freedom, and you wouldn’t be scaring the hell out of little kids anymore. You notice how the Girl Scouts avoid our