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  — Well, you know where he fucking well lives and works, Stacie. Go and stalk him. Kendra shakes her head but she is satisfied that Stacie is too hollow to be hostile.

  — I’m not saying him. He is a little old. But as a general point.

  Stephanie yawns luxuriantly, her skin stretching translucent under the blue lighting. — They’re supposed to be a little, eh, light downstairs.

  This comment sparks Cressida into a rage. Her pale, longish face has taken on a marine-like taint. In it her small teeth are bared, and Kendra thinks she can almost see the anger rising up inside her and spilling through them. — That’s racist BS. Who makes that shit up? The black man is too big, the yellow man too small. Who, then, is just right? Who is the fucking norm? Three guesses, she sneers, and springs to her feet, heading for the bathroom.

  — Oh God, Stephanie gasps, her hand going to her mouth, — I’d forgotten all about her and that Myles guy. But I’m not a racist, how can I be? I work with members of the different species we share this planet with. If I can do that, how can I logically be opposed to different races within the same human species?

  Stacie’s brow furrows in response.

  — Ignore her, Kendra tuts. For some reason she always feels uncomfortable at signs of weakness in Stephanie that somebody other than herself has managed to induce. — All that Chicago Uni bullshit. She’s fucking some black professor and she can’t even be pleased that she’s getting some big tenured dick inside her. She still has to make herself out to be a victim. All this trust-fund guilt, identifying with minorities, it’s such a bore.

  Stacie realizes then that Kendra will never fuck a chef of any ethnicity unless he has his own show on television. She signals to the waitress. — I wanna chocolate Martini.

  — Gross, Kendra winces. — Gimme a Stoli and tonic.

  — Me too, Stephanie choruses, considering that a serious and intimidating waft comes from Cressida. You can never be totally relaxed in her company. Then she looks gravely at them and leans in. — And you’ll never guess what I’ve heard?

  They regard her, thin, plucked brows twisting in concentration. Kendra’s hand runs over her head to make sure that her ponytail is still tight on the crown.

  Stephanie bends in still closer to them, allowing them to catch a scent of her Allure. — Trent is apparently seeing, or fucking – you decide – Andrea Pallister.

  — My God, Stacie says. — Didn’t she flunk psychology at DePaul and have to change to, like, art or something?

  Kendra seethes quietly, aware that their eyes are on her. — She’s got cats, she squeaks in a petulant misery she can’t quite manage to repress. — I thought Trent liked dogs!

  Cressida returns, an air of serenity about her now, sitting down as the waitress comes over with the drinks. She orders a Stoli. Kendra stands up. — I’d better go to the restroom and moisturize. This is my second alcoholic drink.

  As they watch Kendra depart Stacie tells Cressida, — We’re talking Trent.

  — Oh, she says, then exchanges malicious grins with the others.

  As Kendra applies her tinted moisturizer she thinks about Andrea Pallister. How she would have thrown herself at Trent. How she didn’t realize that, yes, some men did appreciate neediness, but generally only in short fucks. Then in her mind’s eye she sees Trent’s face slightly reconfigured from its iron-jawed, luxuriantly quiffed perfection; the nose more bulbous than she’d admitted, the complexion carrying a little extra flush. Perhaps a certain lassitude about the eyes and the mouth. On the wrong drugs. And so she readies herself to face her friends.

  On her reappearance the conversation seems to strike up as if her presence has sent a signal, like an orchestera conductor waving a baton. — Never trust a guy who fucks a catwoman, Stephanie nods. — I mean, three cats! Her apartment smells so fucking gross. Who would tolerate that? Nobody but a closet slob.

  — There is something just a little too gauche about him, Cressida agrees.

  — That’s an interesting hypothesis, Kendra says icily, her composure restored. — You know what he once said about Toto? He said, ‘You could roll over and crush that little bastard and not even know it. I like dogs, but I prefer them big and robust. I wouldn’t want to live with something I could kill by mistake.’

  Stephanie contemplates her friends with that look of knowing evaluation they’ve witnessed her deploy since their first psychology seminar at DePaul. — Reading between the lines that means he’s a slob. Covered in cat furs. Yuk! I’ll bet his idea of a good day out is the bleachers at Wrigley Fields.

  — We’ve all done that one, baby, Stacie yelps in a guilty delight. The afternoon shift! And she notes two young men who are sitting at the next table. Hot, but obvious fags.

  Stephanie is nodding in the negative. — In emergencies only, and just to check out a new look on the salivating frat boys. We never went there to seriously pick up, not like some demented, desperate sluts. Tricia Hales, anybody?

  — A total SERB, Kendra scoffs.

  Stacie looks blank again, as Cressida shrugs and Stephanie nods in approval. — Self-Esteem Rock Bottom, she gleefully enlightens them.

  — She’s having a baby with that loser. In a condo, Kendra tersely observes.

  Stephanie’s eyes widen in horror. — They aren’t even getting a house? God, I bet her parents are proud of her.

  — You would really say that Trent’s a slob? Stacie asks.

  A beaming Stephanie turns to Kendra and Cressida in complicity. — Let’s face it, none of us are exactly novices when it comes to analyzing human nature.

  The young men at the next table are preparing to leave. As they go, one says too loudly to the other, — Oh my God, the DOGS are out tonight. The Desperate, Obsessive Girl Snobs of Lincoln Park!

  The girls are stunned and then outraged as they register this. Kendra reacts first, shouting, — Don’t acronym us, you faggots, nobody acronyms us!

  — Woof! Woof! the gay men bark back at the girls, who all, except for Stephanie, manage to smile.

  At closing time they walk out into the city night air, and the aroma of baking tar and concrete. Passing car headlights strobe them. Muscled and waxed young men, standing on street corners or under roadside trees, pay their thin bodies scant regard.

  — I guess we asked for that one, Kendra says, — but we have got to just own that title. DOGS. DOGS of Lincoln Park, she tries it out for size.

  — No we do nat, Stephanie insists. — These guys are misogynists. The sort of fags who blame their mothers for all the shit life has thrown at them.

  — Honey, Cressida responds, — everybody blames their mothers for all the shit life has thrown at them. That’s what mothers are for.

  Bickering starts up, as Kendra is aware that tiredness has just run over her. She turns and leaves them in the street with a limp, backhand wave and heads home up Halstead.

  When she gets to the stairs of her apartment block, Kendra realizes that the third Stoli was a mistake. Its charge makes her feel bare and lonely as she enters her home and the air con sucks the evening heat out of her. She presses the phone’s messaging system. The developer guy, Clint, hasn’t called. — Toto puppy, Kendra shouts. — Where’s my baby boy? Does he love his mommy? Yes he does! Yes he does!

  Strangely there is no sign of the dog. He is usually all over her. — Where are you hiding! Are you sick, baby? Kendra murmurs as she picks the handset from the coffee table and clicks on the television set. A date show flashes into her front room. The losers on parade make her happier to have come home alone. But it’s too quiet. Where was that little monster! She goes into one room, then another, feeling herself being breached by a sense of imminence. The apartment is silent and she can hear her own heart thump as she checks the cupboards, under the beds, all his hiding places.

  Nothing!

  The dog has gone. There is no trace of him. Sensing something evaporating inside her, Kendra sits down. Gathers her breath. Then she gets up and ventures outside. Had he s
omehow darted out when she’d opened the door? Unlikely. She surely would have noticed. She wasn’t that drunk. Down in the railed garden courtyard, she repeats his name over and over. — Toto. Toh-toh-oh-oh-oh.

  There is no sign of him as she walks down the sidewalk around her block. Kendra is tentative, as if she expects her dog to materialize out of the vaporous night air, like a furry, floppy-eared angel. She squats in the narrow deserted street and calls his name, as if to do so will launch him into her lap from behind some shrub or tree. Soon all she can do, though, is contemplate the designer rips, frays, and distressing on the knees and thighs of her blue jeans.

  Chef suddenly comes to mind. He might have seen Toto. She remembers that she had to take in a package for him from FedEx earlier; a long box. Retrieving it, she climbs up the stairs and bangs on the door. He answers, and he’s still in his whites. — This came for you, she tells him, his face glowing as she hands over the box. — You haven’t seen my dog around, have you?

  — No, he informs her, — not seen.

  — I just came back from a drink with some friends and now he’s gone, she finds herself sniffing to stifle a fretful rising inside her.

  They head back downstairs in the garden, where Chef, a flashlight in his hand, helps her to search again for signs of Toto. They shine the beam up to where a window is open in her apartment. It’s in the back spare room, but there is no way the dog could have survived had he fallen from that height and there is nothing in the garden to suggest he had.

  Back in her apartment, Kendra sits on the couch all of a sudden aware that heavy sobs are bubbling up through her. She hears the chef’s voice through her muffled confusion; insistent, instructing, and she gets up and follows him up the stairs, without being fully aware why. The pufferfish in the tank pout in scandalized outrage at her. As Chef goes into the kitchen, she says softly to them, — I’m sorry I ate your friend. Please bring Toto back.

  Chef comes through with two glasses of Scotch in cut-glass tumblers. Kendra thinks briefly this isn’t what she needs, then she tries to work out what it is she does need, and can’t, so lets the proffered glass fill the void. Then he makes her eat something, a noodle concoction.

  As she forces down the food and drink, Chef opens the box she has brought and is delighted with the sword he takes out. Unlike the other one it has a straight blade. — Ninja sword, by Paul Chen, one of best makes, Chef explains. — Ninja sword always straight, no like Shinto katana. He points at the one they used yesterday. Chef swings the sword as Kendra half-heartedly munches her way through the small supper.

  — As a chef, knives very important. A good set of knives is everything. Always must respect things that cut flesh, he says.

  Kendra is not so fascinated this time, in fact she feels a little sick. She can’t help thinking about the danger such a weapon would be to Toto. He was so frail and small. How could anybody hurt something so defenceless? But there was evil in this world. She shakes off her melancholy thoughts. With the Scotch, the food comforts her a little and she regains some composure. — Thank you for being so kind. You like Scotch in Japan, yes?

  The chef nods lightly with a dumb smile, like he doesn’t quite understand her.

  — Japan, it seems so mystical, Kendra continues, feeling foolish as she recalls that Chef’s restaurant is called the Mystic East. — Eh, whereabouts in Japan do you come from?

  — Korean, Chef points to himself. — Only came Japan study cooking. To Tokyo. But born and raise in Korea.

  Korea.

  And something thin and dark in the chef’s smile – something that does not lend itself easily to definition – disturbs Kendra greatly. Excusing herself she heads downstairs to her apartment. Cranking up the air con, she undresses quickly and tumbles into bed. An exhausted, alcoholic sleep claims her, and she feels herself fighting in the night against its terrors. Rattling sounds fill the bedroom. She can hear Toto whining miserably, as if entombed in the walls. She rises, aware that somebody is in the apartment. Chef stands in the doorway, naked. His body is sinewy and yellow in the light. He has an outsized penis, its tip almost at his knees. The samurai sword is in his hand, hanging losely by his side. Kendra screams.

  She is back in her bed. Something warm lies next to her; her heartbeat races and dips, as she sees it’s just her pillow. The room is silent, save for the soft whirr of the air con.

  The Saturday morning dawns muggy, the chirping of the birds in the oak tree outside particularly bellicose as Kendra wakes up, blinking in the striped sunlight pouring through the blinds. The bolt of fear surfaces in her. Toto, oh Toto. She rises and pulls on a Chicago Bears T-shirt, her dressing gown spilling, like so many other garments, from the wicker laundry basket to the floor. The desperate chaos of her apartment, clothes strewn everywhere, is hurtful to her, and it has been thrown into further disarray in the frantic search for Toto. Picturing the parental home at Highland Park, the stucco, the timbered gables, the electric green lawn, airy and swollen like a comforter (if only the earth really swallowed you up in that way), a sour alcoholic burping sob rises nauseously in her chest. She is supposed to work this Saturday morning but calls in, leaving a message on the answering machine. — It’s Kendra. I won’t be in this morning. My … she hesitates about telling the truth, — … my sister Karla … my baby sister, she says, choking with emotion as she recalls a young bathing-suited Karla with her on a lakeside beach, before an image of a galloping Toto with something in his mouth supplants it, — … was in a road-traffic accident … I just pray … I’m going there right now, and she puts the phone down.

  Kendra doesn’t quite trust herself to drive and calls a cab, instructing the driver to head to the city dog pound at Western Avenue, on the South Side, going towards Cicero. In her emotional state, the guilt at using Karla in such an underhand way kicks in, and she fires off a prayer of forgiveness and one of salvation for Toto. On the journey paranoia is tearing from her. It takes them an age to get onto the Kennedy Expressway, and when they get to the South Side, it’s clear that the Indian driver doesn’t know the city. — You do nat stay on 55, Kendra screeches, her nerves shredded, — No Stevenson Expressway! No, no! You come off on Damon. Then you turn on to Western!

  Now her overheated mind half recalls a recent case of a Chicago Police lieutenant’s dog being euthanized when it was supposed to be held for a ten-day rabies observation. The staff at the dog pound had tried to cover up the mistake and the authorities raided the facility. What if they had done the same thing with poor Toto?

  Western Avenue is a desolate enough street on the North Side, but this far down Kendra finds the neighborhood positively sinister: run-down, empty, and with an ominous air of threat. Although it’s broad daylight, she is still happy to complete the short walk from the car to the building. But the dog pound merely distresses her further. Inside, all those uncared-for and abandoned animals. But a search reveals that Toto isn’t one of them. — I’m sorry, a chunky Hispanic woman tells her.

  She dials a cab on her cell, waits twenty wretched minutes before it comes to ferry her back over to the North Side, away from all the happy poor people, reunited with their loved pets. On the way back, the pop-up downtown area drawing closer, she can’t stop thinking about Chef. Who was he really, and what did she know about him? His love of Asian cuisine and samurai swords, his keeping of pufferfish in the tanks to be consumed fresh. That sword. She suddenly shudders in her seat as she thinks of it cutting her beloved Toto in two pieces like the watermelon, his existence – and all that love – snuffed out in one sharp yelp. The cab is so hot inside and to stop her neck burning on the leather headrest, Kendra has to undo her ponytail and let her long hair fan out and act like a cover.

  When she gets home, Kendra goes online, searching for ‘Korean’ and ‘dog meat’.

  Her heart pounds as she reads:

  Consuming dog meat is an ancient Korean custom, its advocates maintaining that the only difference between slaughtering a dog for food and slaughtering a
cow or a pig is the culture in which it is done.

  But the average Korean does not consume dog meat, as it is generally considered a medicinal dish (either to promote male virility or to combat the heat in summer).

  Even more upsetting is a subsequent passage:

  The dogs are often beaten to death by clubs, as a way of tenderizing the meat. Some vendors claim they put the dog through considerable pain and torment during the slaughter, as this is thought to increase levels of adrenalin and thereby improve the value of the meat as a source of added virility.

  So the lesson is, if you have a dog with you in Korea, lock it up and keep it inside. It may be stolen, as dog meat is very profitable.

  Kendra prints off some of the papers, then heads out into the street. Walking for a bit, she passes one blue police patrol car, then another, until they thicken, spilling out into the adjoining streets like casino chips toward their concentration in one parking lot at the side of a building that sits imposingly on the corner of a city block. It bears the sign: CITY OF CHICAGO POLICE DEPARTMENT.

  The desk officer is munching takeout and drinking coffee from Dunkin Donuts. As Kendra walks in, her untied hair swinging wildly, he licks his lips. — Yes, miss? he says obsequiously, his eyes going straight to her cleavage.

  — My dog has gone missing.

  — That’s too bad. Well, we got a little form for you to fill out with some of the details. He smiles broadly, pulling some paperwork from a box in a unit of slated pigeonholes.

  — No need for that. I know where he is. I have a neighbor, she blurts out. — He’s a chef. And he’s always cooking!

  The cop chuckles lightly to himself. — Guess that sounds about right.

  — No, Kendra snaps in irritation, — he’s Korean!

  The desk officer looks pointedly at her. — And what has this to do with your dog?

  — A chef? Korean? Hello! Her eyes go as big as eight balls on a pool table.

  The policeman laughs in her face, and she can even feel some of his spittle hitting her. She rubs it with her hand. The officer looks dumbly at her in some vague lame apology, then steels himself, moving into pompous official mode. — We cannot go harassing members of the city’s Korean population every time somebody’s dog goes missing.