Teaching the Dog to Read by Jonathan Carroll Read Free Book Online Page A

coffee first, the words were barely out of her mouth when she remembered he didn’t drink coffee, which made her sound like a complete ditz.
    “Hey, I’m the tea guy, remember? I’ll see you later.”
     

     
    Later she stood by the side of his office desk holding a can opener in her hand wondering where the hell he was because if he didn’t show up soon she felt she’d pop.
     

     
    It must have been something he ate. But he hadn’t eaten anything since the night before and that was only a burger and fries—nothing special or especially volcanic to cause the disturbing hot solid tightness in the middle of his chest that blossomed as he was walking in to work. It sat stolidly there like a fat woman on a bus taking up most of the room on the seat. He’d had heartburn before but nothing like this.
    Tony had lied to Lena earlier about needing his laptop. He left her apartment after showering so he could go to a hardware store and buy the can opener. Then get to the office and leave it on her desk before she arrived. He was able to do all that, but now this chest-thing became so dominant and worrying that he finally stood up and walked to the bathroom, hoping some physical movement would calm it or maybe even make it go away.
    No luck. The fat woman inside his chest stayed right where she was. While washing his hands at the bathroom sink, he remembered the warning signs of a heart attack were exactly what were happening to him at that moment: tightness in the chest, a heat radiating up to below his chin, shortness of breath…
    Uncle Bob. His Uncle Bob had died of a sudden heart attack. Oh God! Once that thought appeared he panicked. Without another word Tony Areal left the bathroom, left the office without a word to anyone, got in his car and drove fast to the hospital. He was terrified he’d die on the way over, minutes away from being saved. Please please, not that. Wait, I’m almost there. Please!
    He didn’t call Lena because on the drive over, the tightness in his chest increased and fear swallowed him. Not now! Not this! He was young, his health was good, and he had no real bad habits. All he could think about was sweet Uncle Bob and then dead Uncle Bob and he tried to breathe deep and normally but nothing did what he wanted. His breath came and went in short doggy pants. Then a thin wire of silvery pain slid down his left arm into his hand. He took that hand off the steering wheel and shaking it told it to wait, please wait till we get there.
    He made it to the hospital. Driving straight up to the ambulance entrance, he got out of the Porsche, waved at an orderly on the other side of the glass doors to come, and collapsed. By the time they got him on a stretcher and were racing him through hospital corridors while pounding him on the chest, Tony Areal had no pulse.
     

     
    “What the hell did you do ?”
    “ Nothing ; I did nothing!”
    “I warned you about the chest pains.”
    “You did not! I would have done something if I knew. Do you think I’m stupid? Do you think I want to die?”
    “Looks like it’s too late for that now.”
    Tony Night looked at Tony Day with disgust. “Why are you giving up so easily? You don’t know if we’re going to die. We’ve got things to live for. At least I do, I don’t know about you.”
    The two Tonys sat in flimsy white plastic chairs on either side of the bed where the comatose body of their host Anthony Areal lay. The chairs were so low both men had to crane their necks to see over the body when they wanted to make eye contact with each other.
    “So what the hell happened, you keeled over?”
    “Yeah, as soon as I got out of the car it knocked me flat. Thank God I got as far as the hospital. What if I were still driving and crashed into something?”
    “Yeah well, it looks like you did crash into something—death.”
    Annoyed, Tony Night shook his head. How was he supposed to have known about the bum heart? Tony Day had never brought anything about a