Taking It by Michael Cadnum

terrible news and still make his little laugh: An earthquake— heh —has destroyed Los Angeles.
    Mr. Dean found a rope under the house, a big gray rope like something you might use to tie up a bull. The rope had been under the house awhile and was dirty with dead moths and what looked like daddy longlegs legs. Mr. Dean worked the big rope through the loop in the choke collar and tied Lincoln to a tree.
    â€œIs that what we need, Lincoln?” said Mr. Dean. “A whale rope?” He gave Lincoln his orange dish full of water, and Lincoln gave us all a kind look, as though the dog understood our limitations.
    Mrs. Dean was in Spokane on business, and Mr. Dean and Maureen heated some Sara Lee cherry strudel. We sat there in the dining room. Maureen looked pink-cheeked from her run, and everyone was happy, now that Lincoln was back safe. Mr. Dean told a story about a dog he used to know that would slink away whenever you put your hands up to your eyes like you were holding binoculars.
    â€œOr like this,” said Mr. Dean, curving his forefingers, like someone pretending to wear glasses. “The poor dog would hate it when people did that. He hid behind the couch.”
    â€œWe had a parakeet who would fall off his perch when I wore a baseball cap,” said Maureen.
    â€œBirds panic,” said Mr. Dean. Mr. Dean wears the same suit every day, a gray business suit with a vest. He was wearing it today, with a bow tie, the bicycle clips he uses on his pantlegs beside his coffee cup.
    I couldn’t believe that Maureen could be sitting here talking to her father so cheerfully. Maybe they hadn’t discussed the shattered vase. Maybe Mr. Dean didn’t know about it, and I even turned to look at the bare space on the shelf, wondering if Maureen had sneaked another art object into its place. She hadn’t.
    Sometimes I am so sure I know what a person or an animal is feeling. Other times I can’t tell what people are thinking, as though they have taken a sudden off-ramp and I’m rolling along alone, no one else in sight.
    Walking past a row of clay objects, I thought I might start breaking them one by one, starting with the blue frog.

13
    There are very few pets in Petland, just a few yellow-green parakeets sitting in their cages with their black eyes looking around at nothing. There are sacks of songbird seed and great bunches of millet, and pigs’ ears in a big basket, Smoke-flavored — dogs love ’em .
    Maureen hefted a bright chain and let it fall to the counter. We were the first customers of the day. The cash register had to be unlocked with a little key on one of those coiled plastic springs people wear to keep lucky charms and keys right at their hip. There was only one clerk, and she didn’t even bother to glance my way. A shop like this would be easy, if you wanted to steal catnip mice.
    â€œYou told him,” I said.
    â€œYeah, I told him,” said Maureen, counting out some money.
    Maureen didn’t take a bag. She wrapped the chain around her arm like a gladiator.
    â€œWhat did he say?” I asked when we were outside.
    â€œHe said it was an accident.”
    The chain slipped from her arm, glittering, and fell to the sidewalk. She picked it up.
    â€œI’m going to pay him back for it,” she said.
    I thought about this. “How much did it cost?” I asked, but Maureen just looked at me with a smile that meant: I didn’t get the point.
    When Maureen is happy, she makes everyone around her happy. She swung the new dog chain and danced a little as we made our way up Colusa. Maureen is one of those people who can hear music in their heads, listening to songs they remember without even humming, even dancing to those tunes if she feels like it. For some reason I was suddenly sick of her.
    â€œYou don’t even know how to walk,” I said.
    â€œShut up.” Nice, too happy to take me seriously.
    â€œLook at you, all over the