The Animal Girl by John Fulton Page B

played with. He’s here for a specific reason. He’s to be fed. He’s to be treated with respect. But he is not a pet. He is the subject of an experiment.”
    â€œI know,” Leah said.
    â€œHe belongs to the lab. We can’t let you have him.”
    â€œI don’t want him,” Leah said. She felt something go cold in her. She felt something reckless and compulsive, something she’d felt too often lately, something that made her want to strike quickly and do damage before she could reflect enough to stop herself. Max didn’t understand her. He didn’t understand her the least bit. “We need a dog this afternoon, don’t we?” Leah said. Max nodded. “We can use Ten Bucks. It’s fine with me.” She looked down at the dog, who was again licking her shoe with that unbearable gaze of affection and dependence trained on her. It angered her. At that moment, everything did.
    â€œDon’t call him that, Leah.” She thought she saw Max squirm, inwardly shiver. Leah herself felt woozy, off-kilter.
I’m sorry,
she wanted to say. But she was determined not to. “Put him back in his cage now.”
    She called the dog to the cage, opened it, and he readily—too damn readily—complied, though once she closed and latched the door, he looked at her from the other side with muted injury, with a few simple questions:
Why? What next?
    Max crossed his arms. “I take it you’re protesting what we do here. I take it you’re not willing to work by our rules. Perhaps you don’t really want to be at the lab with us.”
    â€œNo,” Leah said. “That’s not it. I want to be at the lab.” And she did. She couldn’t even begin to imagine the summer without her job. “I want to be here,” she said again.
    â€œThen what’s the point?”
    â€œThe point is,” Leah said, “that I’m not a baby. I don’t fall in lovewith dogs and sheep. I can handle it. It doesn’t bother me. What you do here doesn’t bother me.”
    Max looked down at his old tennis shoes and seemed to consider Leah’s words. From the back of the room, a sheep bleated. The radio began to play an old Chicago tune with a horn section that made the dogs begin to howl and yip so loudly that Leah had to turn the music off. “All right,” Max finally said. “You can take it. I get your point. That doesn’t mean that you can play with these animals. They’re not toys, Leah.”
    Leah put her head down. “OK,” she said.
    â€œThe dogs stay in their cages.”
    She nodded, and Max left her basement.
    When he returned that afternoon and asked Leah to bring a dog, something terrible, if not altogether unexpected, happened. Ten Bucks, a name she could not take away, could not now disassociate from him, stepped out of the cage first. She had no one to blame but herself. She’d made herself his master and caretaker, he’d accepted, and now here he was, wagging his tail and wanting—she saw this in his eyes—to be her dog. So he volunteered himself. And when Leah pushed him back into his cage, into safety, the dog lunged forward again and was free. Had Max not been at the door waiting for them, had he not said, in his very concerned way, “Are you sure you don’t want to start with one of the others?” Leah might have saved him, at least for a few more days.
    â€œHe’s got to go eventually, doesn’t he?” Leah asked.
    She put Ten Bucks on a leash, though it wasn’t necessary. He heeled perfectly, his head at her knee all the way down the hall. As usual, Max held the rubber ball and was ready to play with the dog as soon as he saw it become fearful. But Ten Bucks wasn’t aware of any danger. It was dumbfounding: the trust of this creature, the strange, boundless faith it placed in Leah, of all people, and in Max and now in Diana, a complete stranger,