Watchers

drowning by a black Labrador.”
    Nora remembered the beautiful black lab in the living room and wondered if it was actually a descendant of the animal that had saved Keene—or just a reminder of the great debt he owed to dogs.
    “All right,” Keene said, “you can stay.”
    “Thank you.” Travis’s voice cracked. “Thank you.”
    Freeing his hand from Travis, Keene said, “But it’ll be at least forty-eight hours before we can be at all confident that Einstein will survive. It’ll be a long haul.”
    “Forty-eight hours is nothing,” Travis said. “Two nights of sleeping on the floor. We can handle that.”
    Keene said, “I have a hunch that, for you two, forty-eight hours is going to be an eternity, under the circumstances.” He looked at his wristwatch and said, “Now, my assistant will arrive in about ten minutes, and shortly after that we’ll open the office for morning hours. I can’t have you underfoot in here while I’m seeing other patients. And you wouldn’t want to wait in the patient lounge with a bunch of other anxious owners and sick animals; that would only depress you. You can wait in the living room, and when the office is closed late this afternoon, you can return here to be with Einstein.”
    “Can we peek in on him during the day?” Travis asked.
    Smiling, Keene said, “All right. But just a peek.”
    Under Nora’s hand, Einstein finally stopped shivering. Some of the tension went out of him, and he relaxed, as if he had heard they would be allowed to remain close by, and was immensely comforted.
     
     
    The morning passed at an agonizingly slow pace. Dr. Keene’s living room had a television set, books, and magazines, but neither Nora nor Travis could get interested in TV or reading.
    Every half hour or so, they slipped down the hall, one at a time, and peeked in at Einstein. He never seemed worse, but he never seemed any better, either.
    Keene came in once and said, “By the way, feel free to use the bathroom. And there’s cold drinks in the refrigerator. Make coffee if you want.” He smiled down at the black lab at his side. “And this fella is Pooka. He’ll love you to death if you give him a chance.”
    Pooka was, indeed, one of the friendliest dogs Nora had ever seen. Without encouragement, he would roll over, play dead, sit up on his haunches, and then come snuffling around, tail wagging, to be rewarded with some petting and scratching.
    All morning, Travis ignored the dog’s pleas for affection, as if petting Pooka would in some way be a betrayal of Einstein and would insure Einstein’s death of distemper.
    However, Nora took comfort from the dog and gave it the attention it desired. She told herself that treating Pooka well would please the gods and that the gods would then look favorably upon Einstein. Her desperation produced in her a superstition just as fierce as—if different from—that which gripped her husband.
    Travis paced. He sat on the edge of a chair, head bowed, his face in his hands. For long periods, he stood at one of the windows, staring out, not seeing the street that lay out there but some dark vision of his own. He blamed himself for what had happened, and the truth of the situation (which Nora recalled for him) did nothing to lessen his irrational sense of guilt.
    Facing a window, hugging himself as if he were cold, Travis said quietly, “Do you think Keene saw the tattoo?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe not.”
    “Do you think there’s really been a description of Einstein circulated to vets? Will Keene know what the tattoo means?”
    “Maybe not,” she said. “Maybe we’re too paranoid about this.”
    But after hearing from Garrison and learning of the lengths to which the government had gone to prevent him from getting a warning to them, they knew that an enormous and urgent search for the dog must be still under way. So there was no such thing as being “too paranoid.”
     
     
    From noon until two, Dr. Keene closed the office for lunch. He invited Nora and Travis to eat with him in the big kitchen. He was a bachelor who knew how to take care of himself, and he had a freezer stocked with frozen entrées that he had prepared and packaged himself. He defrosted individually wrapped slabs of homemade lasagna and, with their help, made three salads. The food was good, but neither Nora nor Travis was able to eat much of it.
    The more Nora knew of James Keene, the more she liked him. He was lighthearted in spite of his morose