Wolf Willett remembered too late that Flaps had always had a cold nose. Now it found the back of his neck, and with a girlish shriek, Wolf sat bolt upright in bed and regarded her with bleary eyes. There was only a faint glow of daylight from outside.
"Got me again, didn't you?" he said to her.
Flaps grinned. This grin had always been one of her great charms, and it did not fail to do its work now.
Wolf melted. "Time to get up, huh?"
Flaps laid her head in his lap and grinned again, looking up at him with big brown eyes.
"Right now?" he asked, teasing her.
Right now, she replied, thumping her tail against the bed for emphasis.
"All right, all right." He moaned and swung his legs over the side of the bed.
Flaps celebrated her triumph with a little golden retriever dance, throwing in a couple of squeals of happiness.
"Okay," Wolf said, standing up, "but me first." He headed for the bathroom, but somehow one leg seemed shorter than the other; he missed the bathroom door and bumped into the wall. "Whoof," he said to Flaps. "What did I have to drink last night?" He shook his head and stretched his eyes wide open, but the dizziness, not an unpleasant sensation, remained. He groped his way into the bathroom, using the walls for support, and peed, holding on to the toilet with one hand.
Flaps rewarded him with a little kiss on the ass.
"Jesus!" he screamed, jumping away and grabbing the sink for support. "You really know how to wake a guy up, don't you?"
Flaps grinned and did her little dance.
"Just a minute, all right?" He splashed some water on his face, brushed his teeth too quickly, and tossed down a couple of vitamin C's with a glass of very cold water from the tap. He grabbed a bathrobe from the hook on the door and headed back to the bedroom in search of slippers. He was navigating better now, but as he proceeded out of the bedroom and across the living room he found himself moving slightly sideways, crablike, in order to maintain his course. Light was creeping across the valley below the house, across the suburbs of Santa Fe, but the interior of the house was still dimly lit, and in the kitchen he turned on the lights, squinting against the glare.
Flaps waited impatiently for him to get coffee started, then watched, rapt, as he poured her a dish of dry dog food. She ate daintily, as befitted her gender, while he got an English muffin into the toaster and rounded up butter and jam. He drank directly from a plastic container of fresh orange juice and returned it to the refrigerator, sighing as the sweet juice made its way down.
"Want to go out now?" he asked her.
To his surprise, she trotted across the room and scratched on the door that led to the guest wing of the house.
"That's not the back door, dummy," he railed at her, shaking his head. "It's this way, remember? The way you've gone out every day of your life?"
She scratched on the guest wing door again.
Wolf kept that part of the house closed and unheated until a guest arrived. "I think you must be as hung over as I am this morning." He slapped his thigh and whistled softly.
Reluctantly, Flaps followed him to the outside kitchen door and, when he opened it, bounded outside.
Wolf left her to roam the hillside, sniffing for coyote markings among the pi¤ons, and returned to his breakfast. He ate slowly and with a nearly blank mind. He did not think of the night before, did not try to remember what he drank, did not think of anything much until he remembered that he had to go to Los Angeles this morning. He looked at the clock on the microwave: just after seven. He calculated the time to the airport, time for the trip, time for the ride to the office. He'd be in L.A. by eleven...
