The Wee Small Hours

The dog’s name was Frank and he was 14 in human years, which translated to something like 98 in dog years, and he liked to listen to Sinatra whenever Nate was gone from the apartment. The funny thing is, his name was Frank long before he acquired the taste for Sinatra. Nate would put the CD player on repeat so that the music would play again, and again, and again, and Frank would hop up onto the sofa, lay down on top of the pillows that Kami had bought a long time ago, and if it was winter Nate would cover Frank with a blanket. Frank always knew when Nate was leaving and would be gone for a long time because he watched him pack his laptop into the shoulder bag and check his pockets two or three times for God knows what, then go out the door, and then come back in for his cell or his cigarettes or whatever it might be that he had forgotten that day. Nate was getting old too, in people years, and Frank always thought, Just be glad you’re not a dog, man.

When Kami had lived in the apartment they had listened to things other than Sinatra and sometimes they had watched movies on the DVD player and Nate did not leave so often or for so long. Frank remembered that Kami was a good cook and there had been more food when she was around and she used to curl up with him on the sofa and fall asleep with her head on top of his rump, and Frank would put up with it because he liked her.

He missed Kami now and sometimes he thought about it, he remembered it and it made him wonder for a minute. He had liked the way she smelled. It was a warm, soft, sweatery,
wooly, soapy sort of smell. Kami was a different color than Nate, that was easy to see, although sometimes people say that dogs are color blind. Nonetheless, this was as clear to Frank as night and day, and he liked that about her too. He considered variety to be the spice of life.

And that was another thing – they used to go for long walks – not just down the street by the transit center, or down the other way by the next apartment building with its little poverty stricken patches of dying, excessively peed on bushes and roses – but no, they would go to the big grassy places with the honest-to-God trees and there would be other dogs and other people and children even and Frank would feel like staying there all the livelong day, and it seemed like Nate and Kami would feel the same way.

Ever since then Nate had been working on something he called The Great American Novel, and that was why he would get up so early every morning and pack up his lap top and walk over to the internet café and stay there so long while Frank listened to Sinatra. Nate was a creature of habit, as was Frank. He had his times and his seasons, his appointed comings and goings, and Frank liked that about Nate. He was as predictable as rain in April. Frank loved Nate, but he just worried sometimes. Dog’s can sense things, as they say.

Frank liked the young Sinatra, the crooner, the guy who started out with Tommy Dorsey, and Nate liked the older Sinatra, the gravely voiced Sinatra who stuck to an easy range, smoked cigarettes while he performed and sang songs about empty bar rooms at 3 in the morning and the girl who got away. There was one cut from a Christmas album, a slow, gasping, dying version of Silent Night, that Nate played all the year round because he said it was the saddest song he had ever heard.

There were times when Nate would leave at night, too, and Frank especially disliked those times. Frank could always tell when it was coming because Nate seemed nervous, different, and would start pacing and would turn the music up and it seemed like he would become very thirsty, turning to the refrigerator again and again for more and more, singing along with the music, Bang, bang . . . she shot me down . . . bang, bang . . . I hit the ground, and so on and so forth. Those times Nate hardly noticed Frank, and it made Frank fell mighty low and so he would retreat to the bedroom and go to sleep.

Some time later Nate would come home. It varied. There were even times when Nate brought a woman home, but it wasn’t Kami or anybody else Frank knew, and she didn’t seem very friendly and as it turned out she never stayed very long at all. Frank couldn’t see why Nate would bring these women instead of Kami. He liked Kami a lot because she cooked chicken innards and had made him a sweater and she would jump up on Nate’s hips and ride around the house and Frank would follow them, wagging, barking, jumping. It seemed like all these other girls wanted to do was to shut the bedroom door.

Once Frank dreamed of chicken hearts, fried in oil and stored in a little bottomless plastic container. Frank ate his fill and then some until he woke up and looked around for Nate.

And one time Frank dreamed of a man he knew a long time ago, maybe 56 years ago in dog years, and it wasn’t Nate at all but almost someone else altogether. He was younger, kind of like the young Sinatra, and laughed a lot more and had a lot more hair and had a spring to his step, and so did Frank, and they were running and chasing something, and Kami was there too. Frank had awakened from that dream and crept up to the pillow where Nate’s head lay, eyes closed, dead to the world, deep, deep in his own dream, and Frank just sat and wondered and stared and stared. He did not lick his face, nor whimper nor whine. Nate was sleeping on the very edge, and there was so much room on the bed that Frank was not sure where to go. Nate always left a lot of room. Finally Frank got tired of staring and forgot why he was doing it in the first place. He turned a couple circles then settled himself into the heart of the man.

In the wee small hours of the morning, Frank lay awake, and never even thought of counting sheep.