Sophie down for her nap, and a dark pile of hellhounds was napping by her crib - snoring great clouds of lemony-fresh dog breath into the air. It was probably part of Charlie's rising rascal nature, but he let Mrs. Korjev enter Sophie's room with only the warning that the little girl had a couple of new pets. He suppressed a snicker as the great Cossack grandmother backed out of the room swearing in Russian.
"Is giant dogs in there."
"Yes, there are."
"But not like normal giant dog. They are like extra-giant, black animal, they are - "
"Like bear?" Charlie suggested.
"No, I wasn't going to say 'bear,' Mr. Smart-Alec. Not like bear. Like volf, only bigger, stronger - "
"Like bear?" Charlie ventured.
"You make your mother ashamed when you are mean, Charlie Asher."
"Not like bear?" Charlie asked.
"Is not important now. I am just surprised. Vladlena is old woman with weak heart, but you go have good laugh and I will sit with Sophie and huge dogs."
"Thank you, Mrs. Korjev, their names are Alvin and Mohammed. It's on their collars."
"You have food for them?"
"There are some steaks in the freezer. Just give each one of them a couple and stand back."
"How they like steaks done?"
"I think frozen will be fine, they eat like - "
Mrs. Korjev raised a finger in warning; it lined it up with a large mole on the side of her nose and looked as if she was sighting down a weapon.
" - like horses. They eat like horses," Charlie said.
Mrs. Ling did not take her introduction to Alvin and Mohammed with quite the composure of her Russian neighbor. "Aiiiiieeeeeeeeee! Giant shiksas shitting," exclaimed Mrs. Ling as she ran down the hall after Charlie. "Come back! Shiksas shitting!"
Indeed, Charlie returned to the apartment to find great steaming baguettes of poo strewn about the living room. Alvin and Mohammed were flanking the door to Sophie's room like massive Chinese foo dogs at the temple gates, looking not so fierce as shamefaced and contrite.
"Bad dogs," Charlie said. "Scaring Mrs. Ling. Bad dogs." He considered for a moment trying to rub their noses in their offense, but short of bringing in a backhoe and chaining them to it, he wasn't sure that he could make that happen. "I mean it, you guys," he added, in an especially stern voice.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Ling," Charlie said to the diminutive matron. "These are Alvin and Mohammed. I should have been more specific when I said I'd gotten new pets for Sophie." Actually, he had been vague on purpose, hoping for some sort of hysterical reaction. Not that he really wanted to frighten the old lady, it's just that Beta Males are seldom ever in a position to frighten anyone physically, so when they get the opportunity, they sometimes lose their sense of judgment.
"Is okay," said Mrs. Ling, staring at the hellhounds. She seemed distracted, mainly because she was. Having recovered from the initial shock, she was doing the math in her head - a rapid-fire abacus clicking off the weight and volume of each pony-sized canine, and dividing him into chops, steaks, ribs, and packages of stew meat.
"You'll be all right, then?" Charlie asked.
"You not be late, okay?" said Mrs. Ling. "I want to go to Sears and look at chest freezer today. You have power saw I can borrow."
"Power saw? Well, no, but I'm sure Ray has one he can lend you. I'll be back in a couple of hours," Charlie said. "But let me clean this up first." He headed to the basement in hopes of finding the coal shovel that his father had once kept there.
As they parted ways that day, both Charlie and Mrs. Ling were counting on Sophie's history of high pet mortality to quickly solve their respective poop and soup problems. Such, however, was not to be the case.
When several weeks passed with no ill effects on the hellhounds, Charlie accepted the possibility that these might, indeed, be the only pets that could survive Sophie's attention. He was tempted, many times, to call Minty Fresh and ask his advice, but since his last call might have caused the hellhounds to appear in the first place, he resisted the urge.
Lily's research trips yielded little more:
"They talk about them all through time," Lily said, calling from the Berkeley library on her cell phone. "Mostly it's about how they like to chase blues singers, and evidently there's a German robot soccer team called the Hellhounds, but I don't think that's relevant. The thing that