Hal snatches a brochure from an outdoor shelf in Madcap Funland and whips it open flat. He lifts an end of the map close to his eye, and he rubs his index finger on the outside corner of that eye. Then Hal mangles the brochure into a ball and sits it onto the shelf. He taps the dog collar in his jean pocket.
A turkey leg stand bakes in the light coming off of the central lake of the park, and two newly-weds throw a boutique of flowers to their daughter who stares at the log flume ride that empties into the lake. Hal descends a narrow hill, an extension of the lake basin, from the sidewalk. As her service's webpage claims, Sariah stands on the grass here. Her fingers dance in a cloud left by the censer dangling from her wrist. Beside her feet, an orange tangle outlines and extends over some blue and black cosmic disc. It, too, reflects the contents of the website—the photo gallery page.
Hal sits on the grass. Some remote-controlled boats complete laps in a fenced cut of the lake.
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Hal remembers when, with Ian, he parked his bay boat in the Seamont Semi-annual Harbor Jamboree. Several dozens of
nautical crafts swept past one another in a musical number, the stage lights the reflection off beach suite
windows. He drank from a water bottle and scratched with four digits behind his golden retriever's ear.
A sign for fresh fruits and cocktails limped from the fishing line of a dual-console speedboat model. That boat's captain drank from a can of beer and talked to his son and friend. "We can't expect much for my good boy," Hal said, "but a banana won't hurt—half a banana. I'll eat the other half." Ian removed his upper body from the side of the wheel, splashed a paltry pool of water, and then brushed against Hal's legs.
Then the dual-console speedboat's captain dropped his empty can of beer into the harbor and returned to his wheel.
Hal said, "Fuck right off." He glanced at Ian and grinded his molars. "Say, Ian, how about we get something for the police?" The police should have first tracked the old man with the laser gun on West, and then they'd have returned to the litterers with any evidence; tampering the natural landscape is a felony in Seamont harbor. Ian panted and then barked. Hal reoriented his boat on the water and swept to the far left of the boat of litterers. He raised his smartphone from his pocket when he saw the boat's registration number.
The captain of the boat, after glancing with a stiff mouth at Hal and hopping on his pedal, steered at a sharp angle to scatter the top of the wave into mist. His vehicle's registration number dodged Hal's phone camera before it could take a snapshot of it. Hal shook his head and, planting his phone on the wheel with his palm, steered after the crew.
Ian placed his paws and head on the side of the cabin. Hal squinted from the sunshine. The littering captain laughed. The speedboats whipped around the faraway collection of bow riders, cuddy cabins, and a lone Catamaran. Sometimes a dog panted back at Ian, and Hal smiled at the bait-and-net families, the ball-cap congregations of partygoers. They were losing to the bigger engine and turns that were meant to be sharp. And after another stretch past the hub of the Jamboree, Hal waived the chase; they were lost in the crowd. He sighed, and he dialed his engine key to idle. He sat on the edge of the cabin beside Ian's ear.
The empty beer can from earlier flickered on the surface of the deep water. Hal picked it out with his pool net for such pollution occasions. He crushed the can of Rolling Rock beside Ian's nose and dropped it on the fiberglass floor. The can slid in the puddle of water. The dog barked. "Yeah?" Hal said. "Something, Ian?"
Ian had been able to track the cheap scent of Rolling Rock, so Hal and Ian picked more beer cans from the ocean surface until they happened across the litterers once more. They had parked their fruit vendor speedboat at the beach under Cobalt Pier; the captain slept under the shade of the boardwalk, and his son glared at Hal. Hal snapped a photo of the registration number, and he requested that the boy sell him a banana. The boy did, and he then issued a threat to Hal and Ian that should have been an empty reflection of the captain's will.
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Later, Hal hugged the pillow and the blanket. Olivia likes her house at sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit, the sort
of temperature back in his apartment where Ian would've nuzzled Hal's side. The gameshow contestant on the
television won a vacation to the Moon. Hal cried. Olivia frowned at Hal and told him that it would be fine. She
told him he was only slowing his recovery to weep about the past, the dead dog, and a banana, although she
pretensed these arguments with apologies about how miserable Hal felt. She also said he looked bad.
Hal doesn't remember how he met Olivia in Seamont High, but how they broke up is fresh enough. Hal had been in the dark evening of seven o'clock outside his apartment, walking back from a twenty-four-hour supermarket for a chicken roast, when Ian sauntered to him in the intersection. His coat of fur had bits of asphalt and the gray of mud, so Ian was invisible. Hal walked beside him, but Ian followed Hal. Ian then bit at the back of Hal's blue jeans—the lip above his ankle. Hal winced, leaned down, and fed a chicken leg behind him—that's what he could bargain with. Then Ian had drifted around Hal's ankles with a timid growl. Hal rubbed behind the dog's ears. Ian dropped the bone of the rotisserie's leg on the pavement. They went home together, and then Olivia screamed at Hal about the dirt on the carpet.
Olivia also told him, nodding at the vacation package details, that he could resurrect the dog instead of mope about it.
Hal lifted the pillow against his cheek and said to the television, "I don't know where they are. The people that do that." The gameshow dissolved into commercial. Hal could no longer hear himself. He brushed his bare feet together against the hard, empty, opposing end of the couch. "It's weird." While Olivia said something, Hal grabbed his smartphone hidden between the cushions. It glared on his face as he scrolled for entries from small-business necromancers, namely addresses. The internet was slow.
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Some boaters chart the open water from Seamont Harbor. Hal, with his speedboat, had only traveled into the open
ocean once before. His father had suggested they take a trip together to see his uncle, which resulted in four
days out to sea, sunburns that were almost purple, and an entourage of sandwich artistry. This time, Hal decided
he could meander and enjoy the trip to Madcap Funland. He ate at a Burger Buoy. It had an enchanting view of a
circle of green, grassy overhangs and white, static sand below their shadows. Hal placed Ian's collar on the table
and played with the latch.
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In front of the park's lake and to the right of the stairs with the log plume, Sariah swirls her hands as if her
index fingers struggle in a finger trap. Hal stands from the grass as some girl with pigtails and a blue sweater,
no older than six, flips from below Sariah's cosmic disc—and consequently, from below the earth. As soon as she
comes into being, Sariah flips the disc once more. The girl slides off the rotating disc and back under the earth,
and a swarm of wasps—from the other side of the disk as it exposes itself to the air—fly away. Sariah repeats this
several times, producing new persons, creatures, and items while, at the same time, flushing others below. She
brushes her coat and adjusts her beanie whenever something liquid sprays from the gateway. Sometimes, she summons
nothing.
Hal says, "I came about my dog, Ian. I'll pay you the two-hundred dollars if you can get my dog back." Sariah folds her arms together. He continues, "And why you are here? Do you like rollercoasters or something?" Hal thumbs through two-hundred dollars in cash for Sariah and then stows it again in his wallet.
Sariah steps over the disc and lifts the bouncy ball left from it, hugging it between three black nails. "Someone I know does," She says, "But I can get your dog." She walks off the disc and tosses the ball under Hal. "His name was Ian?" She breathes in and whirls her hands. The cycling of her dimensional disc begins again. A few results are dogs. A labradoodle, a pug, and a Chihuahua with a collar encrusted with enough unique jewels to dip its neck.
Hal rubs his chin with the stubble of travel negligence. He waits for a while. He suggests that he should learn to accept the loss of his loved one instead, perhaps, to which Sariah dismisses. The woman glances at Hal when she produces a dog with a similar description to Ian's, but Hal shakes his head every time—except for the last. Hal springs his arms forward and flails. "Wait! Hold on." Hal steps beyond the orange barrier of legend, whipping the dog, Ian, into his arms. Sariah parts her lips. This Ian is a yipper—fractional to the scale Ian is—and yet it's Ian. Hal searches for the familiar crook he could rub behind Ian's ears. Ian barks a lot and squirms. Hal wipes under his eyelash with the back of his thumb and steps off the disc. He says, "What did you do?—What did you do to him? Sariah?"
She drops her spellbound fingers and grabs the upset dog too. "I didn't do anything. This isn't the right Ian. So stay with me a little longer and I'll get you the right Ian. Hand me him."
Hal staggers backwards and kicks at her ankle. "No, you witch." Ian thrashes.
"'Ian doesn't even know who you are yet." She winces. "'Ian' might not be the same dog you met anyway. You're just upsetting the dog!"
The other people with park tickets lock into stares at Ian, Sariah, and him. Hal shakes his head. A young woman screams from the log flume drop. "No. Shut up, please." He says, "Never mind. I'm just going to go with him. Thank you."
Sariah kicks the grass at the outline of the gateway, collapsing the disc into a point.
Hal, heavy, gathers into a bathroom with the dog and locks himself in the stall. The dog whining is the whistle of a broken water boiler.
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Hal lies on a thirty-five dollar towel from the gift shop. Madcap Funland resumes operation underneath a deep
purple sky over the farthest tree canopy from Hal's boat on the shore. Sariah sits beside her censer with her eyes
closed and her legs folded, her hands stroking down the tops of her bare shoulders once and once again. She'd
taken off her jacket to make this comfortable.
Hal says, "Can you be honest with me? I'll never see Ian again, right?—Actual Ian."
Sariah shrugs. "I'm bad at giving up."
"What?"
"I haven't gotten sick of the turkey legs yet."
Hal digs into his jean pocket for Ian's collar. He stares at it, and then he tosses it into the lake where it sinks besides a rotten picture frame.
END