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The list of things he could do to entertain himself while Doc was out of the house was kinda shrinking.
Now that the novelty of it was passing, he was learning that there sometimes really was nothing good on TV. He’d listened to all the songs on the jukebox about a hundred times. Doc was always telling him to practice his reading, but it got old. He was over going out in the yard and looking for weird bugs. Einstein was, frequently, more interested in napping than playing. Going through Doc’s secret magazine stash and jerking off were activities reserved for days when he knew how long the old guy would be gone.
He was sitting up on the tiny kitchen counter, indulging in his newest hobby: eating stuff he wasn’t supposed to eat.
Instant mashed potatoes didn’t taste good, which didn’t surprise him. Neither did dry hot chocolate mix, which had taken him off-guard. Sugar was great on its own and so was jarred spaghetti sauce, but it turned out there was a reason Doc had stopped him from trying to eat peppercorns.
He considered the macaroni and cheese powder. It didn’t actually taste so bad, but he could tell why you weren’t supposed to eat it.
Roused at last from his nap, Einstein wandered over to sniff at his feet. “Here.” Marty offered his powdery hand. “You have it.”
Einie dutifully licked his fingers clean. “You don’t care if it feels weird in your mouth, huh?” Marty sighed. “You don’t care about anything.” He wiped his damp hand on his pants and reached into the packet for some of the macaroni. “Oh, boy, that’s crunchy,” he said, almost choking on it.
He was eating his third piece of macaroni and trying to decide if he liked it or not when the door rattled and his heart lifted.
He hopped down off the counter, glad he’d had the foresight to put everything away after his tasting session, and ambled across the garage. “Hey, Doc.”
“Oh – Marty,” said Doc, seemingly mildly surprised to see him. “Like he was gonna be anywhere else. He had his arms full with two big bags of what Marty was pretty sure was, disappointingly, weird science garbage and not groceries. “Would you –”
Marty shut the door for him. “Whatcha got there?”
“Nothing – just some bits and pieces,” Doc said, distracted, hefting his bags down on his workbench. Marty tried to peek inside one and got batted away. Science garbage, then. He shrugged and put another piece of macaroni in his mouth.
“You were gone a while,” he remarked.
“You weren’t worried, were you?” said Doc. Marty shrugged. “You get up to anything while I was out?”
“Uh.” Marty turned the question over in his head, trying to decide if Doc actually wanted to know what he’d been doing or if he just wanted to know if he might have broken anything. “I watched some TV,” he lied.
Lying was a new experience for him. It’d taken him a little while to figure out how to do it; it hadn’t occurred to him that he could just say whatever he wanted. When Doc asked questions like how are you or what are you thinking about or what did you do while I was gone he could say fine and nothing and watched TV even when the answers were kind of down, actually and what I’d do first if I could go outside and ate a bunch of cheese and especially when the answers were horny or girls’ asses or jacked off.
Doc crossed the room to unpack some more of his weird stuff into a drawer near the sink and Marty trailed after him.
“Anything good on?” said Doc.
It took Marty a second to remember what he meant. “Nah.”
“Hm,” said Doc, unpacking wires into a drawer. Marty ate another piece of macaroni. “What’s that – loud substance you’re eating?” Doc squinted at him. “What do you have?” Marty showed him and Doc squinted at the macaroni. “Is that dry macaroni? Why are you eating dry macaroni?”
Marty shrugged. “I wanted to see what it was like.”
“Oh?” Doc wavered over his bags. “And how is it?”
He looked down at his handful of dry noodles and made up his mind. “Honestly? Real bad.”
“I could’ve told you that,” said Doc. “Stop eating it, then.” Marty made to put it back in the packet. “Don’t do that!” Doc batted his hand away. “It’s got your germs all over it.”
Marty shoved the rest of the handful into his mouth, to Doc’s self-evident displeasure. All of it together was so crunchily loud that he didn’t hear the next part of the conversation.
He swallowed. “Huh?”
Doc gave him a witheringly patient look. “I said,” he said. “Would you like macaroni for dinner or have you had enough?”
“Oh,” said Marty. It was a fair question. “I basically always want macaroni,” he offered.
“Well – good,” said Doc vaguely, opening a kitchen cupboard. “I haven’t been grocery shopping.”
“Yeah,” said Marty. “I figured.”
They ate macaroni and cheese. Afterwards Doc had him wash the dishes, which he did while thinking about how unfair it was that he had to wash the dishes the way kids on TV did but didn’t get to do anything else TV people did.
By the time he was done it was getting dark outside and Doc was on the couch watching the news. Feeling left out, he scrambled over the back of the couch and pushed his way under Doc’s arm.
Doc did a kind of – start, at being touched. It took him a couple of seconds to settle back down. Maybe it was just that he’d been absorbed in watching TV.
Lately he’d noticed Doc had a way of tensing up when he touched him. Sometimes he’d pull back – recoil, just a little. Kinda like Marty was a weird bug.
Once he’d said to Doc, do I bother you? and Doc had laughed and said yes – all the time – especially when I’m reading and Marty had pretended like that was what he’d meant cause he didn’t feel like explaining. Anyway, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.
Doc reached for the remote and flipped the channel away from the news, the way he usually did. Sometimes he’d say here – let’s find something you’ll like but tonight he just quietly went through the channels till he found something with a laugh track.
Marty’d got bored enough to watch the news with him a couple of times. He’d understood maybe half of it and had a lot of questions about the other half and he figured for one reason or another Doc didn’t want to repeat the experience.
He watched it sometimes while Doc was out the house. He still didn’t really understand it but he kinda liked knowing there was sports and politics and stuff going on elsewhere in the world. It was kinda nice seeing some stuff that was real on TV. Plus sometimes at the end they’d tell stories about talking parrots and people who could play the drums with their feet.
Einstein came to join the heap on the couch, snuffling against Marty’s leg. Marty ran a hand over his bristly head and considered him.
Einie had always struck him as a pretty smart dog. Even before he’d changed – inasmuch as he’d thought anything before he changed, he’d had a hazy sense Einie was smarter than him. He’d used to follow Einstein around the garage and do what he did.
Though maybe that wasn’t how it’d been at all. More and more it was kinda tough to remember what he had and hadn’t felt, before. Had he understood what it meant for someone to be smarter than him or know stuff he didn’t, or had it just been that Einstein was bigger than him?
He knew stuff Einstein didn’t, now. He knew a whole lot of stuff Einstein didn’t.
Sometimes, while Doc was out the house, he’d go to the bathroom and look at himself in the mirror. He’d study his new face for a long time and try to make sense of it. He’d try to figure out what he was, now.
He wasn’t a dog anymore. He’d watch the people on TV closely, trying to figure out if he was one of them. They all seemed to know how everything worked. They all seemed to know what they were doing.
He breathed out a long breath, fingers scrunched tight in the fur of Einstein’s neck, eyes on the TV screen but not really watching it.
Doc’s hand ran up and down his back. “What’s that sigh for, huh?”
“Nothing,” he lied. “Just sleepy, I guess.”
“Oh?” said Doc. “About time we put you to bed?”
He course corrected. “I’m not that sleepy.”
Doc huffed a laugh. His hand passed over Marty’s hair. “You wanna watch a movie?”
He shrugged against Doc’s lap. He was kinda over all their movies. “That’s okay.”
“Are you sure?” said Doc. “I got new movies today.”
That was news to him. He scrambled up into a sitting position. “You got new movies?”
“Sure,” said Doc lightly, like that wasn’t the best news he’d had all day. “I picked some out for you – want to choose one?”
It was one of those moments when it felt like maybe everything really would be okay, like Doc was always saying. His chest lightened. “Yeah,” he said. “I’d like that.”