As Dog Is My Witness by JEFFREY COHEN Read Free Book Online

told you this was an old house)
and took off five or six layers of clothing to look more like
myself and less like the Michelin Man.
    Mahoney took a long sip from his jumbo coffee cup
while I put water on the stove to make my favorite cold-weather
companion, fat-free hot chocolate (French Vanilla). I know, it’s
hard to have confidence in a grown man who drinks something called
“Swiss Miss,” but trust me, I’m macho as all get-out.
    “Okay, I give up. How come I have to follow you, and
where am I following you to?” Warren came in, intimidated by the
large guest, but curious. Mahoney, without thinking, put down a
hand for the dog to sniff, and within seconds was, as usual,
Warren’s best friend. He scratched behind Warren’s ridiculously
long ears.”
    Somebody’s sabotaging my work,” he said with a
straight face.
    Warren and I stared at him. “Your work?” I finally
said. “You fix rental cars that break down on the highway. How can
somebody sabotage your work?”
    We walked into my office, which is right near the
kitchen, an unfortunate coincidence that has helped make me the man
I am today—the one who carries around an extra ten or fifteen
pounds. I sat in the big swivel chair in front of my desk, and
Mahoney paced next to what I laughingly refer to as the “client’s
chair,” an old dining room chair we don’t have room for anywhere
else in the house.
    “For the past three weeks, after I’m finished with a
repair, someone has been tampering with the cars so that the repair
is undone. They’re making it look like I didn’t do the work, and
they’re screwing up my batting average.” Mahoney believes that the
number of cars he repairs, and how well the job is done, appears in
a box score in the newspaper every morning. He is determined to be
the best at what he does, and thinks the rest of the world is
hanging breathlessly on each repair he performs. It’s how he got to
be the way he is, which is worth being.
    “Wait a minute,” I said. “I don’t understand the
process. You get a call from your company that a renter’s car has
broken down. Is the customer there when you arrive?”
    “No,” Mahoney shook his head. “Usually, somebody at
the company drives out with a replacement car, picks the renter up,
then flags the original rental car so I can see it. Most often,
there’s a rental agency near where the car has broken down, or at
least nearer than I am, so the replacement car has arrived, and the
customer has left, before I get there.”
    The teapot began to whistle, so I got up and we moved
back into the kitchen. I took the hot chocolate box out of the
cabinet after I turned off the water, and started to create a
40-calorie drink that would take my mind off how drafty and cold
the house gets no matter what you do. I noticed that Mahoney didn’t
make a withering crack about the hot chocolate, which was not an
encouraging sign.
    “So how does the car get back after you repair it?
You drive up in the van and fix the car. You can’t drive both the
van and the car back.”
    “That’s right,” Mahoney said as I stirred my drink.
Exhausted after the long trip from my office, I sat at the kitchen
table instead of going back inside. Besides, once I spilled the hot
chocolate, I could mop it up much easier in the kitchen. You have
to plan ahead. “I call the office when I’m done, and they send out
a car with two guys in it. One of them drives the car back. If the
car needs a part I don’t have, I call a tow truck, and they tow it
away.”
    I thought about that as Warren walked to Mahoney for
another pat, and got it. “Do you stay with the car until the driver
arrives, or is there a time when it’s repaired, but you’re already
gone?”
    Mahoney stroked Warren’s head and the dog, in his
quest to make people do all they can for him, lay down, forcing
Mahoney to bend over and rub the dog’s belly. “That’s how it
works,” he said. “There’s a short time when the car is there