Cormac: The Tale of a Dog Gone Missing by Sonny Brewer Read Free Book Online

“Do you mean what you’ve got written here?”
    “You know I do,” I said.
    Scott draped the T-shirt over the crook of his arm while he pulled off his own white oxford and dropped it on the floor. Bare-chested, he pushed out his chest and curled his arms into a muscle-man pose, then pulled the T-shirt over his head.
    Betty looked at me. “You want him back?” Scott and I had once been partners in a small publishing concern. Cormac, in the meantime, had grabbed the shirt on the floor and made off with it, dragging it to his spot behind the counter. Sostie trailed him, hopping along on her one front leg. Scott went after them, patting Betty’s shoulder as he went past.
    “Haven’t you got something you could sell?” Betty asked.
    “Everything I’ve got is mortgaged for more than it’s worth.” I told Betty and Scott that I thought I should schedule an appointment with a bankruptcy lawyer. “Just to discuss my options, you know.”
    “Oh, my God!” Betty said. “You can’t be serious.”
    “Completely, I’m afraid.” I told them the money I had in my store checking account could cover overhead for two more months.
    “Does Diana know this?”
    I told Betty she knew about the store’s cash flow drying up. “But we didn’t talk about meeting with a lawyer.”
    “Good,” Betty said. “We’ve got to talk some sense into you.” She got up and paced back and forth. She stopped and faced me. “What about the novel you’ve been working on? Why don’t you sell that?” Her question surprised me.
    “I don’t think anybody would buy that book,” I said. “And I still lack a hundred pages or so to finish it.
    “How do you know no one will buy it?” she replied. “I sold my last three books on proposal. If you’ve got a good start, and they like it, they’ll offer you a contract to complete it.”
    “What have you got to lose?” Scott chimed in.
    “I will use my considerable influence in New York to get the manuscript read,” she offered, completely serious.
    Cormac pranced and capered, following Scott back to the middle of the room. Sostie came along as well. Scott said, “Betty can get this done. Her agent will read it right away and tell us what she thinks.”
    Cormac stood, put his muzzle on my thigh, and rolled his eyes upward at me. He did this more and more these days, and each time he parked his face there the world seemed a little less with me. This must be the part of being near a dog that’s been shown to lower old people’s blood pressure in assisted living places and such. I reached out my hand and rubbed his head. He wagged his tail. “Cormac thinks it’s a good idea,” I said, smiling.
    “What more validation do you want?” Betty asked.
    “It’s a long shot, you have to admit,” I said, wanting to bring some reality to the fantastical notion that a publisher would buy my book.
    “Sure it is,” Betty said. “But you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don’t take.”
    “It beats sitting for the life insurance underwriter’s exam,” Scott said. I agreed and said I’d think about it. They said they had to get rolling to Tallahassee. As I walked them to the door, I wondered how Cormac would behave as Sostie left the building. Had she smitten this young dog with her beauty? It seemed no. Cormac only walked as far as the front door. At the threshold he turned and went back to his place behind the counter, curling down for a nap.
    I stepped onto the sidewalk to watch my friends walk away and felt the first drops of rain. Several parking spaces on the street were empty and I saw no pedestrians. This damp, gray day could be well-spent at home relaxed in my leather chair, my sock feet propped on the hassock. Since I was fantasizing, I took it further, imagined my laptop on my knees, coffee on a tray table beside me as I worked on the great American novel. It was not a picture I could bring into clear focus.
    I went back inside. It was 10:30. An hour and a half into a