Emily & Einstein Read Online Free PDF

editorial meeting, but Blue called and said you were awake and something must be wrong because you wouldn’t stop howling. What is it, boy? Is the pain bad?”
    “Yes!” said as a sharp bark. Though the body pain was the least of my concerns.
    The greatest sense of frustration I had ever known hit me. My verbal skills had always been excellent, my quick wit and funny turns of phrase the foundation of my charm. The ratty old heart sank as my mind clarified the thought. Sandy was charming; Sandy had excellent verbal skills. Not the dog called Einstein.
    Another howl echoed against the cinder block walls and cement floor.
    “Oh, Einstein. I hate seeing you like this,” Emily said, touching my paw.
    Then of all things, she smiled at me. Granted, it was a strange yearning smile, but a smile nonetheless. She leaned close and cupped my head with her hands. “Can you believe it, E? You made it,” she whispered. “You didn’t die.”
    Her words shuddered down my spine with a clarity that I felt but didn’t understand, before the sensation evaporated when something occurred to me. Sure, this dog had survived. But if I, me, Sandy Portman, hadn’t survived, had died, my wife should be at home in anguish, distraught, unable to function. Hadn’t she been notified yet? Good God, had my body somehow ended up in the morgue as an unidentified John Doe?
    My mind staggered, emotion and canine pharmaceuticals finally too much for this dog’s body. I welcomed the relief that crept around the edges of consciousness like an inky black darkness, and I went under.
    *   *   *
    I woke again.
    I can’t say how long I was out, but for the next period of time my new little dog’s body and I existed in a vacuum broken up by visits from Emily, an intensity of smells that made me want to stuff cotton up my nose, and noise. Every sound from blocks away rang in my ears until I wanted to shudder against the racket. I could hear sirens and garbage trucks shifting gears, children laughing and screaming in the street. All of it was a din in this head, a quagmire of sound and smell, pain and anguish. I would have sunk back onto the unrelenting cage floor if the door hadn’t opened.
    “Einstein? How are you doing, boy?”
    Emily again.
    “I’m horrible,” I snapped at her, angry, frustrated.
    “Now, E, I know I promised to come back sooner. But a manuscript that was due ages ago came in and the production department needed it edited immediately. I read all afternoon and night. Hey, you didn’t eat your food. Einstein, you’ve got to eat to get your strength back.”
    “Hello! Why aren’t you upset over me, the man me, your husband?”
    I know I snapped again, but really, I was a dog. A miserable dog.
    “Einstein,” she admonished me. “You’re too much.”
    I was too much. This was too much. Then all of the sudden what equilibrium I had summoned deserted me and I started to cry. Me, crying.
    Of course it came out as that horrid howling, painful and filled with desolation. Emily sat back on her heels, drawing in a shuddering breath.
    One of the things I had always admired about her was the way she remained even-keeled, never crying. She wasn’t one to fall apart. Though I didn’t like it one bit now that her strength was employed in regards to me.
    But then she leaned forward, coming closer. I saw beyond the encouraging smile and realized that there was a haunted look in her eyes. I could actually feel her pain, sensed tears that threatened, but she held them back, her fingers curling into the grated edge around the door.
    Frustration snaked through me. When Emily finally threatened to fall apart in any way, why in the world was it because of a dog?
    “Oh, Einstein,” she said, her voice barely a whisper as she pressed her forehead against the cage. “I can’t believe Sandy’s gone.”

 
    emily
    For all her life, my mother was part adult, part child; equally as determined as impetuous. She fought against men who didn’t want