Watchers

animal?” Nora asked.
    Yes.
    Travis stared hard at the photograph of the demon, at its thick brow and deeply set yellow eyes, at its deformed snoutlike nose and mouth bristling with teeth. At last he said, “Was it an experiment . . . that went wrong?”
    Yes and no, Einstein said.
    Now at a peak of agitation, the dog crossed the living room to the front window, jumped up and braced his forepaws on the sill, and peered out at the Santa Barbara evening.
    Nora and Travis sat on the floor among the opened magazines and books, happy with the progress they had made, beginning to feel the exhaustion that their excitement had masked—and frowning at each other in puzzlement.
    She spoke softly. “Do you think Einstein’s capable of lying, making up wild stories like children do?”
    “I don’t know. Can dogs lie, or is that just a human skill?” He laughed at
    the absurdity of his own question. “Can dogs lie? Can a moose be elected to the presidency? Can cows sing?”
    Nora laughed, too, and very prettily. “Can ducks tap-dance?”
    In a fit of silliness that was a reaction to the difficulty of dealing intellectually and emotionally with the whole idea of a dog as smart as Einstein, Travis said, “I once saw a duck tap-dancing.”
    “Oh, yeah?”
    “Yeah. In Vegas.”
    Laughing, she said, “What hotel was he performing at?”
    “Caesar’s Palace. He could sing, too.”
    “The duck?”
    “Yeah. Ask me his name.”
    “What was his name?”
    “Sammy Davis Duck, Jr.,” Travis said, and they laughed again. “He was such a big star they didn’t even have to put his entire name on the marquee for people to know who was performing there.”
    “They just put ‘Sammy,’ huh?”
    “No. Just ‘Jr.’
    Einstein returned from the window and stood watching them, his head cocked, trying to figure out why they were acting so peculiar.
    The puzzled expression on the retriever’s face struck both Travis and Nora as the most comical thing they had ever seen. They leaned on each other, held each other, and laughed like fools.
    With a snort of derision, the retriever went back to the window.
    As they gradually regained control of themselves and as their laughter subsided, Travis became aware that he was holding Nora, that her head was on his shoulder, that the physical contact between them was greater than any they had allowed themselves before. Her hair smelled clean, fresh. He could feel the body heat pouring off her. Suddenly, he wanted her desperately, and he knew he was going to kiss her when she raised her head from his shoulder. A moment later she looked up, and he did what he knew he’d do—he kissed her—and she kissed him. For a second or two, she did not seem to realize what was happening, what it meant; briefly, it was without significance, sweet and utterly innocent, not a kiss of passion but of friendship and great affection. Then the kiss changed, and her mouth softened. She began to breathe faster, and her hand tightened on his arm, and she tried to pull him closer. A low murmur of need escaped her—and the sound of her own voice brought her to her senses. Abruptly, she stiffened with complete awareness of him as a man, and her beautiful eyes were wide with wonder—and fear—at what had almost happened. Travis instantly drew back because he knew instinctively that the time was not right, not yet perfect. When at last they did make love, it must be exactly right, without hesitation or distraction, because for the rest of their lives they would always remember their first time, and the memory Should be all bright and joyous, worth taking out and examining a thousand times as they grew old together. Although it was not quite time to put their
    future into words and confirm it with vows, Travis had no doubt that he and Nora Devon would be spending their lives with each other, and he realized that, subconsciously, he’d been aware of this inevitability for at least the past few days.
    After a moment of awkwardness, as they drew apart and tried to decide whether to comment on the sudden change in their relationship, Nora finally said, “He’s still at the window.”
    Einstein pressed his nose to the glass, staring out at the night.
    “Could he be telling the truth?” Nora wondered. “Could there have been something else that escaped from the lab, something that bizarre?”
    “If they had a dog as smart as him, I guess they might have had other things even more peculiar. And there was something