Teaching the Dog to Read by Jonathan Carroll Page A

Fischman, barely nodded his assent. All three men disappeared.
    A few moments after they were gone Lena took a cell phone out of her purse and called a number on the phone’s speed dial. The whole time she waited for it to connect, she stared at Tony and kept wiping her eyes with her free hand.
    Her head snapped up when the other person answered. She said only “I need your help,” then paused and sucked in her lower lip while listening to the answer. She nodded assertively at something that was said. “Yes. Yes, I’m sure. I wouldn’t ask for your help if I wasn’t sure. He is the one but there’s a problem now. Only you can help me.” She listened and kept nodding at what she heard.
    A minute later she disconnected the phone without saying anything more. Dropping it back into her purse she reached in for something else: a pad of paper and a black roller ball pen. She put the purse on the floor next to her chair, the pad and pen in her lap. She looked at Tony. She wasn’t ready to begin yet and needed to see him before she did. Twice Lena picked up the pad only to put it down again. She dropped her chin to her chest and closed her eyes. An idea came and she smiled for the first time since hearing the bad news about him earlier at work. Picking up her purse she rummaged around inside it until she found the can opener he’d left on her desk what seemed like a long time ago. Taking hold of both sides of the tool, she opened and closed them several times. Once she held it up as if to show him what she was doing—open closed open closed… As if he could see. If only he could see now.
    “I love this thing so much, Tony. You have no idea what it means to me.”
    She put the opener back in her purse, zipped it closed, took a deep breath and picking up the pen and pad, began to draw.
    One look at her work was all that was needed to tell Lena Schabort was a terrible artist. She drew a head as round as a balloon that looked like something a young child would draw. She put ears on this ‘head’ that looked like handles on a teacup rather than human ears. The eyes she drew were ridiculous, as was the nose and mouth. Again, when she finished the sketch it resembled something a six or seven year old might draw in kindergarten with a thick crayon.
    A nurse came into the room, checked the chart at the foot of the bed and the glowing yellow numbers on the complicated looking machine Tony was connected to via multiple wires. Lena asked if there had been any change in his condition since he was admitted. The nurse gave a small tight smile and said she didn’t think so, but Lena should ask the doctor when she made her rounds in the next half hour. Lena thanked her and said she would.
    After the nurse left Lena tore the sketch out of the notebook, dropped it into her purse and began another. By the time the doctor arrived almost an hour later, she had completed seven and was working on an eighth. The difference between her first drawing and the latest one was astounding. If the first looked like the work of an untalented child, the eighth looked like the highly polished and professional product of a very good street portrait artist. Anyone who knew Tony and saw this drawing would have immediately said it was him to a tee. What’s more, it was a portrait that caught something ineffable and strikingly intimate about him despite the fact it was a simple black and white drawing.
    The emergency room doctor entered Anthony Areal’s room with the pompous, l’etat c’est moi -drama of a famous opera star making her first appearance on stage to a richly-deserved ovation at the beginning of a performance. Doctor Mukherjee was good at her job but nowhere near as good as she thought she was. Privately the nurses called her “Dr. Legend” as in ‘she’s a legend in her own mind.’
    When she saw the woman sitting by the side of the patient’s bed drawing, the doctor did an instant assessment of her (face, hair, clothes, purse…) and