"Uh...," I said. "Oh, what the hey. I'll be there."

"Tom, I could just kiss you," Michelle said.

"Let's not try to ruin our client-agent relationship," I said. Michelle giggled. I cringed inwardly and changed the subject. "Miranda tells me you called earlier with a problem with the Earth Resurrected folks. Something about a latex mask?"

"Oh, that," Michelle said. "Tom, they want to pour latex on my head so they can make a stand-in dummy, or something. I don't want to do it."

"Michelle, it's not that bad. They have to make those masks so they can get shots of your head doing things it doesn't normally do, like having veins pop out or your eyes explode. Things like that. All the great action stars have to have them made. Arnold Schwarzenegger has done it. Really, you're not an action star until you have one made."

"But they pour goo on your head, and then you sit there for hours." Michelle said. "How do you breathe through that?"

"As I understand it, they stick straws up your nose," I said.

"No way," Michelle said.

There was a scratching at the back door. I looked over and saw Ralph the retriever standing on the other side of the door.

"Michelle, hold on a second, I have to let my dog in," I said.

"Tom, I can't do the latex mask thing," Michelle said. "I don't want straws in my nose. What if I have a cold? What if they fall out? How am I going to breathe?"

"Michelle, let me just, oh, just hold on a sec." I placed the phone down, ran over the door and slid it open. I ran back to the phone. Ralph walked through the door.

"Michelle, you still there?" I asked.

"I'm not going to do it, Tom," she said again. "I'm claustrophobic. I can't even put a blanket over my head without freaking out. I don't care if they fire me or not."

"Don't say that," I said. "Listen, when are you supposed to have your mask made?"

"A week from today," she said. "3 in the afternoon. I have to go to Pomona."

"Damn," I said. "That's the same day as your reading."

"Well, then," Michelle said. "I can't get the mask made."

Ralph walked over to me and sat. I started knuckling his head, absently. "How about this," I said. "I'll go with you to both. I'll pick you up, we'll go to the reading. Once the reading is done, we'll go to have the mask made, and I'll make sure the straws stay in place. Okay?"

"Tom...," Michelle began.

"Come on, Michelle," I said. "We'll go to Mondo Chicken afterwards. I'm buying."

"Oh, all right," Michelle said. "You always know the right thing to say, Tom."

"That's why you love me, Michelle," I said. I hung up, set the phone down, and knelt down to rub Ralph's ears and coat.

"Hey, there, Ralph," I said, in the goo-goo voice you use with dogs,."Where's your little friend Joshua? Yeah? Your little friend? The one that I'm gonna kill for heading off into the woods when I told him not to go? Huh? Where is the little bastard, Ralphie?"

"Why the hell are you asking me?" Ralph said. "I'm just a dog."

I screamed for a really long time.

"Eeyow," Ralph said, after I stopped hollering. "That hurt. I would have been happy with a simple 'Welcome back.'"

"Joshua?" I asked.

"Of course," Ralph/Joshua said. "But I'm also Ralph now, too. Ralphua. Joshualph. Take your pick."

"Joshua," I said, "What have you done?"

"Tom, snap out of it," Joshua said, irritably. "It's obvious what I've done. Look, I'm a dog!" Joshua barked. "Convinced? Or do you want me to hump your leg?"

I know what you are," I said. "Now I want to know why you did it. I thought you liked Ralph. I thought he was your friend, Joshua. And now look what you've done." I gesticulated, looking for the right words. None came. I used the next best. "You ate him, Joshua!"

Joshua laughed, which sounded unbelievably bizarre coming from a dog. "I'm sorry, Tom," he said, finally. "Now I know what you're getting at. You make it sound like I was waiting for the right moment to body-snatch Ralph. It didn't happen that way. I told you before that the Yherajk don't do that sort of thing. Tom, Ralph was dying. And this was the only way to save him."

"I don't understand," I said.

"Well, if you promise not to yell at me anymore, I'll tell you. All right?"

"All right," I said.

"Good," Joshua said. Let's go into the living room. Could you do me the favor of getting me a beer?"

"What?"

"A beer, Tom. You know. A brew. Oat soda. Suds. I don't have any tendrils to open things with anymore. And just because I'm a dog doesn't mean I couldn't use a drink every now and then. I'll meet you in the living room." He padded out. I went to get him a beer, a bowl to drink it out of, and a couple of aspirin for myself, and then joined him in the living room, taking a seat in my lounger.

I downed the aspirin, took a slug of the beer to chase them down, and put the rest of it in the bowl. Joshua lapped it up. I reached over to pet him, but then I stopped. It didn't seem appropriate anymore. You don't pet thinking things.

"That's better," Joshua said. "Thanks, Tom."

"You're welcome," I said. "Now, what happened out there?"

"Ralph had a heart attack," Joshua said, and I watched his mouth as he spoke. His mouth hung open as the words came out — it was like he had swallowed a radio. "We were a couple of miles from here, going up a hillside. Ralph had been fine up until then. But on the way up the hill, I heard him give a little whimper. I looked back and he had collapsed. I went back to see if there was anything wrong, but I didn't see any cuts or bone breaks. So that's when I entered his brain, and found out he had a heart attack."

"How could you tell?"

"I could read where he was feeling pain," Joshua said. "His whole chest felt like it was being squeezed. Ralph was confused, of course; he's just a dog, after all. He didn't know what was going on."

"Why didn't you call me then?" I asked. "I would have come back and taken Ralph to the vet."

"Think about it, Tom," Joshua said. "You were in Venice Beach at the time, remember? By the time you got back here and hiked out to where we were, Ralph would have been long gone. And even if you had got back in time and had taken him to a vet, the vet would've just told you there was nothing to be done. And besides, he's not really your dog. You couldn't have done anything."

That stung. Joshua must have picked up on it. "I don't mean to imply that you had done anything wrong, Tom," he said, gently. "Just that there wasn't time. Even if there was, this was a better way. Ralph deserved better than to die on a vet table with strangers over him."

"So Ralph had a heart attack," I said, my voice slightly husky. "What did you do then?"

"The first thing I did was I cut off the pain," Joshua said. "I didn't want him feeling any pain. I also cut off his motor control, so he wouldn't go bounding off because he was feeling better. Then I sent a tendril into his chest to see how bad it was, and whether or not we could make it back to the house. As it turned out, it was pretty bad. Ralph was old and his heart was in bad shape.

"By this time, Ralph was pretty much out of it — his little brain was blipping all over the place, Tom. I didn't want him to die, so I did two things. First I called your assistant and told her that we'd be late. And then I inhabited Ralph."

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"Well, look at me," Joshua said.

"I mean, how it that different from Ralph just dying?" I said. "After all, it's not Ralph in there, Joshua. It's you."

"Not quite accurate," Joshua said. "All of Ralph's memories and feelings are still here. I distinctly remember being a dog and doing doggie things."