“Pardon, sir? Is this an emergency?”
“No, not for me. I just need to make a call, and when I started dialing, you answered.”
“Oh, I understand. You need an outside line. Hang up, then dial nine, wait for the dial tone, then dial your number.”
“I hate this fecking century.”
“I beg your pardon?”
I slam the phone down on the voice and pick it up again. There’s a dial tone, but I do what the man said and punch 9. The tone skips a beat, then continues. I try the number for the first hospital again, and this time it works.
Unfortunately, there’s no one registered under the name Sean Flanagan at Mount Sinai Hospital, so the call is a waste of time. I move on to the next number, St. Michael’s. The lady on the phone says, yes, Sean Flanagan is a patient there, but she can’t give me any more information unless I’m a family member. I hang up on her rather than argue. I’ll just go down there and see with me own eyes how he’s doing.
“Right, he’s at St. Michael’s.” Consulting the Google map, I notice it will take us a while to get there. “Looks like a bit of a walk. You need a walk anyway, don’t ye?” I ask the hound.
<Yes, a walk would be good right about now.>
“Anything ye need to bring? We won’t be coming back here, because I don’t have the key.”
<I’m supposed to be on a leash in the city, but that’s it. Everything else is Atticus’s stuff. Oh, wait! He left his sword here. It’s under the mattress. He’s going to want that.>
“I should imagine so.” I retrieve it, strap it to me back, leash the hound, and leave the rest. Down the stairs we go, past some rather shocked people in the lobby who didn’t know they made dogs in Oberon’s size.
Once he’s outside, Oberon informs me that he’s going to need to do some “urban fertilization.”
“Is that what ye call it?”
<Atticus says my waste helps plants. It’s science! Which is great, because I like peeing on them. I like to pee on streetlights and fire hydrants too, but it turns out that doesn’t help them like it helps plants.>
“And what do ye do when ye have to shite in the big city?”
<Well, you are never supposed to do that on the sidewalk, Owen. That’s rude.>
“Hey, I know that already, ye don’t have to tell me!”
<You hardly know how to use a phone or turn off a television, so obviously I can’t assume you know these things. Since you didn’t have sidewalks in your day, I thought maybe you weren’t aware that they are not for shitting.>
“Gods blast it, I was asking ye where you shite in the city, not where I should do it!” I might have said that a bit too loudly, because people on the sidewalk look at me out of the corners of their eyes and swerve away from the man talking to a giant dog about where to drop a pound. Maybe I should talk to him the way Siodhachan does, with me mind instead of me mouth. I can do it, but it doesn’t come naturally. I never bound myself to an animal this way.
<It depends on the city and the degree of my fecal urgency.>
“Fecal urgency? This is the strangest conversation I’ve ever had, and I’ve had some bloody strange ones lately.”
The hound eventually takes care of his business behind a hedge we’re passing and then brags about his discretion.
<Nobody will step in it there, and it will break down in a few weeks.>
“Well done,” says I, thinking for two whole seconds that I’m going to have some peace before the hound speaks again.
<I’m hungry, Owen.>
“That’s too bad. I don’t have any food on me.”
<But we’re passing all these restaurants and I can smell the good things inside. You can go in and buy something. Please?>
I start to object that I don’t have one of those credit cards that people always use to pay for things but then remember that Greta gave me the paper with the old lady on it, and something clicks. I pull it out and show it to the hound. “Hey, do you know if this is cash money?”
<Yeah, those are Canadian dollars! And you have a lot! You can buy plenty of food!>
“Who’s this lady with the beads, then?”
<I think that’s the queen. She was in The Naked Gun. Which means those aren’t beads. Those are pearls.>
I don’t understand all of that, but at least I learn that Canada is ruled by a queen.
“All right, where should I go to get food?”
<This place up ahead. I can smell the gravy.>
He stops in front of a small shop with a large glass window painted with red and white letters. POUTINERIE, it says.
“What is a poutinerie?” I asks him. It’s an unfamiliar word.
<I don’t know, but they have gravy. Just get something with gravy on it. I’ll wait here like I’m supposed to.>
There’s a small line inside and a menu posted near the ceiling. I can’t make any sense of it except that it sells all different kinds of whatever poutine is.