The Adventures of Spike the Wonder Dog Read online

  “Money give you ten thousand dollars for this badass dog right now.”

  Bud says, “No, sorry, can’t do it.”

  “Money give you ten thousand dollars and whole case of Money’s new Money cologne. Wear it, you smell like Money smells. We all wearin’ it.”

  “Yes, I couldn’t help but notice that,” Bud says.

  “What it smell like to you?” Money asks.

  Bud sniffs Money, then sniffs one of the girls. I’m wonderin’ if he’ll get it right, ’cause soon as they walked in I gave it a dog-sniff ID.

  “Smells like a combo of gardenias and overcooked peas,” Bud says.

  “He right, he right!” Money yells. “Money brew first batch in kitchen. We gonna make millions sayin’, ‘Women love you when you smell like Money.’”

  He looks down at me. “He bad! Money give you twenty thousand dollars, give you free Bunny Ranch loyalty card, and you take Cartier, Ra’sheed’duh? and my crew of butter girls home tonight. They butter girls ’cause their legs got that natural spread. They spend more time on their knees than San Francisco Forty-Niners. After a night with them, you’re gonna say, ‘My erectile tissue miss you.’”

  Money finally notices everybody in the room staring at him with their mouths wide open.

  “Oh yeah,” he says. “Oh yeah, I so bad…”

  One of his men whispers in Money Piles’ ear. “Shit yeah,” Money says. “And plus, for dog, Money Piles give you ground-floor franchise opportunity in Money’s new masturbation app, called Palm. It work twice as fast as ordinary masturbation apps, so you finish your business in half the time and you back to loungin’ around the house twice as sooner!”

  “Huh?” Bud says. “What?”

  “Explain that,” Willie asks, eyes twinkling.

  Money pulls out his Vertu phone to show them the app.

  “Money make Palm app use same blue and white color design as Calm app. So everybody think they buyin’ Calm, but they gettin’ Palm. Real quick they find Palm keepin’ them calmer than Calm. The franchise deal be like Tupperware parties with happy endings. Just give me that leash, man. I’m gonna party with this beast. He carry belt to ring next fight.”

  Money Piles is breathing hard, Bud’s staring at the cash, and the girls are looking at him like he’d be a big break from the usual nighttime routine with Money Piles.

  Bud says, “No sale, sorry.”

  Diana Lewis says, “Hey, Bud, Jimmy wants to meet you and Spike.”

  We don’t meet Jimmy Fallon; she just wants to get us outta there. She sits us in a room with no food and comes back later and tells Bud that Money Piles is trying to buy Willie’s guitar.

  Bud and Diana go over what we’re doing. Jimmy’s gonna show the video. Some iPhone stuff went viral, but ours was shot by Bud’s crew guy skating next to me on the ice. Bud and me are in the audience. Jimmy will show the clip, then we’re supposed to run up onstage and I do my trick—which is hanging by my jaws clamped to a big knot on a rope for two segments of the show, around fourteen minutes.

  Diana says they’re gonna have something on me called Jaw Cam so viewers can see me hangin’ there every once in a while when Willie’s on. Easy stuff. All Bud’s gotta do is lift me to the knot, which is five feet off the floor, ’cause my vertical leap is only four feet. It’ll take another year till I can maybe nail a full six-footer.

  Bud’s pacing around backstage hoping to meet Jimmy and introduce himself. No luck. He has to walk me, which is the low point of my life up till then, ’cause I’m takin’ a monstrous smoldering dump outside Rockefeller Center, with the entire Tonight Show audience standing in line cheering me and taking pictures. To make it worse, Bud has to scoop it up with two Cher Show Playbills he picks up off the sidewalk.

  We’re in the freezing-cold studio audience. Diana told us Jimmy likes the place cold as a meat locker. Jimmy tells Money Piles he’s the only guest he ever had who never used verbs. Bud thinks this is funny. Everybody in the audience has a self-satisfied look pasted on their face, ’cause they actually got in to see the show, so they’re roaring at everything, including a lot of crap that’s not close to funny. I’m relaxed, cool, and loosening my jaw for the big clamp.

  We’re up. They show the video with multiple slow-motion shots of me rippin’ off Donald’s head. He even has a short clip of the woman in traction lyin’ in her hospital bed tryin’ to wave a couple of fingers. The hospital shot gets the biggest laugh of the show so far. Diana said, “I knew this would work.” I’m wonderin’ how the little Donald Duck woman’s feeling about bein’ set up like that when Jimmy Fallon calls us up.

  The only question Jimmy asks Bud is, “Are we safe, or is he going to grow more?” Bud says I’ll get bigger and add fifteen more pounds of muscle, which is happy news to me. Bud bends down to lift me to the rope’s knot, and on the way up I hear this crunching sound and a muffled screech from Bud. I guess sitting in that freezing-cold audience tightened up his back. And I know the back’s been outta whack for a day or two, ’cause he’s been goin’ at it heavy with his latest, Rhonda, who’s working her way through rabbinical school as an aerial dancer at the Taboo Gentlemen’s Club in Greensboro.

  I’m hanging by my jaw lookin’ down at Bud, who’s squirming in pain on the floor. Jimmy Fallon’s playing this like it’s part of the act and getting big laughs. I could let go of the rope and drag Bud offstage, but I know Bud wants me to stay with the clamp trick. I hold on and watch him try to crawl off while The Roots play Sly Stone’s “Stand.”

  Diana gives Bud some heavy-duty Vicodin pain pills, and for a few days he’s very happy and doesn’t care that he never actually met Jimmy.

  3

  Celebrity

  We get back to High Point, and Bud’s now got a bug up his ass to get his own show in New York. I’ve had a bug up my ass; it’s horrible. I figure this New York thing is ’cause of the pain pills. Bud’s always a dynamo of energy—one of the reasons Lombardo hired him—but with the pills he’s having delusions of grandeur about what he can do. The pills are makin’ some of his “stoned ideas”—like painting my doghouse orange to match sunsets—look like Supreme Court decisions.

  He’s talkin’ about getting hobbies, like being a trapeze artist, when the guy can’t stand on one foot to put on a loafer. Anyway, he runs outta pills, is a zombie for a day, but he’s still talking “New York, New York” in his sleep.

  Meanwhile Lombardo, who’d be the sharpest pup in any litter, is promotin’ the Fallon spot like Bud won a combo Academy Award and Nobel Peace Prize. He’s telling every little station in the South that Southern Exposure is the hottest local show in America. Seems the idea of a host like Bud in a tiny market like High Point doing The Tonight Show is some kind of media miracle. Lombardo’s makin’ it out like Bud can walk on water; forget the fact that he fell on his ass and Diana Lewis had to drag him offstage.

  Before Jimmy Fallon, before I came on yawnin’ that day, Bud was doin’ just great. He was beating the Today show every day, and Lombardo was happy. But now Lombardo blows us up into a syndicated six-market morning show that scores double Today’s ratings and is raking in wads of cash for all concerned.

  Bud gets a raise, and life is better than ever, except he’s still playing that damn “New York, New York” song by Frank Sinatra ten times a day. For a while he was playing the Liza Minnelli version till I bit the CD in half.

  He rents a way nicer house down the road in Thomasville, where we’ve been livin’. So I get a bigger fenced-in yard, and the Budster gets a pool, and with it, his long-awaited chance to study string bikini theory.

  Of course, neither of us knows I can’t swim. First weekend at the new place, it’s hot. Bud’s retreated to the house with Alicia, who’s in med school at Duke and may or may not work at The Geyser massage parlor.

  I figure they went in to get beers and they’re not inside boinkin’ away at it, ’cause Bud’s pack of Burt Reynolds Longest Yard Condoms is on the table from last night when Rhonda dr
opped by to surprise him. Anyway, I’m boilin’ hot, and I got these gnats flyin’ around my eyes, so I figure I’ll jump in the pool like Bud’s been doing. I’m just planning to paddle around for a little while to cool off.

  I’ve seen Lassie forging rivers on his show. Spuds had a pool party in a Super Bowl commercial, so why not? In I go, and I sink like a bowling ball. Paddling the legs, sinking. Paddling, sinking, paddling, sinking. Next I’m standing on the bottom like a hippo. Then I’m walking. Yeah, like I’m strollin’ down Main Street, ’cept I’m eight feet underwater and my chest is pounding like it’s gonna explode. I’m not seeing any white light with my mother barking at the end of a tunnel, but this must be what dyin’ is.

  Next thing I know, Bud’s pounding the hell outta my back, and I’m real dizzy but OK. Turns out he was comin’ out of the house for the condoms when he spotted me. Thank you, Bud. Thank you, Alicia. Just sorry I missed the sight of Bud divin’ into the pool usin’ his big woody as a rudder.

  Even more than before, Lombardo takes Bud under his wing. Warning him all about gettin’ famous and its pitfalls—like winning Best in Show, I figure.

  “You’re a nice guy, Bud,” Lombard says. “Maybe too nice. In show business you gotta cultivate the ability to say ‘fuck you’ with clarity and precision. And remember what Ailes used to say: ‘In this business you can never be too paranoid.’” With all the pot Bud’s smokin’, I figure he’s got that one covered.

  Then Lombardo says somethin’ that hits me. “And remember, Bud, you never get a second chance to make a first impression.” I realize a lotta times when I’m meeting people I’m staring off into space not thinking about much except the next meal or that I’ll never see my brothers and sisters again. One day you’re an eight-week-old havin’ fun wrestlin’ around with ’em, and then someone reaches in the pen and your sister is gone. Kinda haunts me.

  So now to make an impression I pant, smile, show a little tongue, and wag like I’m trying to go airborne using my tail. I worked on havin’ a gleam in my eye like Bud does when he’s meetin’ somebody, but I was scaring people by looking demonic.

  The show’s more work now, so Lombardo gets Buffy McQueen to handle mail and help get guests. Buffy’s cute, blonde, freckles. She’s Bud’s type. But sometimes I think any babe with fresh lipstick and personal lubricant in her handbag is Bud’s type. Lombardo tells Bud, “Don’t get your meat where you get your potatoes,” as some kind of food warning to keep things business between them.

  Not sure what that really means, but anyway, every day piles of mail are comin’ in to Bud. People are sending him books, sweaters, photos of their dogs—which Buffy always shows me. I saw a couple cute bitches there I’d like to snuggle up with on a rainy afternoon. But more than anything else, we’re getting Bibles—stacks and stacks of Bibles. “This is the Bible Belt,” Buffy says. And that’s where I get Bud in trouble.

  One morning, I’m lyin’ around chewing on one of the Bibles piled on the floor while studying Buffy’s shoes. Don’t know where she bought ’em, but not from Shoe Town like everybody else in High Point. Got a dog? Guarantee you they possess a profound knowledge of footwear.

  I’ve been lyin’ there for a while and all of a sudden, I’m in the mood for one of my sprints around the block. Took Bud a while to adjust to this, but I go out the revolving door and run around the block as fast as I can and come back quite refreshed. So I set out with the Bible in my mouth, ’cause I like carryin’ something when I run—good for the neck muscles. But the Bible’s not heavy enough, so I circle back to the office and dig out a long plastic thing—it’s like a bumpy, veiny bone—from a box of stuff from some sex therapist that’s tryin’ to get on the show.

  I’m out the door and chargin’ around the block havin’ big fun, ’cause the bone thing’s vibrating and tickling my mouth. I stop to take a leak on a couple of rocks on the curb, and this guy with a white collar on backward starts screaming at me to give him the Bible. I spot a big cross dangling from his neck and figure he’s a minister, not some wacko going to a Halloween party. Then he sees the bone thing and yells, “Oh my God, that’s a dildo!”

  He’s trying to get the Bible away from the dildo, and I’m thinkin’, “Padre, you and your ten disciples aren’t gonna pry open these jaws today.” He’s screamin’ and yankin’ and yankin’ at the Bible. A crowd’s gathering and a cop’s pointing a gun at me like if I don’t drop the Bible, he’s gonna do his civic duty as a cop and blast me off the face of the earth. Someone yells, “Don’t shoot him; that’s The Wonder Dog,” so a kid runs to get Bud.

  A reporter and crew from channel three, the rival station across the street, shows up to video the hunched-over minister wrestling me for the Bible. Bud comes charging in. I drop the mangled Bible as the dildo goes into overdrive, twisting like a giant pink eel. The minister snatches the Bible and reads, “Dear Bud, care for this holy book. My beloved aunt Marie served in the Sacred Order of the La Leche Sisters. She read this every night in the nunnery. May it also help you fight temptation by remaining celibate.”

  Bud’s got the wriggling dildo in one hand, and he grabs the Bible with the other as the reporter asks, “Well, Bud, what do you have to say about this?”

  The station across the street is a CBS affiliate that’ll do anything to beat us in news ratings. They even spent a ton of money on a custom-made Scott Pelly anchorman robot. The thing’s good—actually, it’s way more lifelike than Scott Pelly, which caught the attention of network brass, so they’re secretly working on a virtual Walter Cronkite.

  They run the story big. The Pelly robot covers the Bible-dildo incident like ISIS invaded the High Point furniture market and set up base camp in the Raymour & Flanigan showroom.

  Because of this caper, I’m now a problematic topic, and Lombard’s nervous.

  “That dog could get us in big trouble,” he says. He won’t take me off the show ’cause of my considerable fan base. He decides to make me an employee at ten dollars a week, so I’m covered by liability insurance. I never see a penny of that money, by the way.

  Lombardo says to Bud, “What are you going to do about this? Minister Jordon and his congregation can’t get the picture outta their heads of you with a Bible in one hand; a writhing, half-chewed dildo in the other; and your dog grinning manically into the camera. They want you fired. Whadda you say?”

  “Fuck you with clarity and precision.”

  “What?” Lombardo screams.

  “Kidding, Boss, kidding.”

  “This is no joke, Bud.”

  So Bud says he’ll calm the waters of the Bible thumpers at the minister’s church by going Sunday morning to offer a complete apology. This’ll be the first time Bud’s been to church since he was twelve and got flunked outta vacation Bible school for answering that Mel Brooks was the “King of the Jews,” not Jesus. So the Budster takes this challenge real serious. Saturday night he’s not at Pierre’s for a wine-soaked dinner with some babe. He’s home at his little desk workin’ on his speech, telling me, “This is gonna be great!”

  Sunday morning Bud sets out to deliver the goods. He’s tall and handsome and lookin’ sharp in his black suit, white shirt, and black knit tie. The George Clooney look, he calls it.

  He gets up there in the pulpit with that big smile and slowly starts reading some lyrics from Stevie Wonder’s song “As.” This stuns the congregation into realizing this is as close as they’ll ever get to black gospel music. The nickname for the place is “Church of the Redeeming Albino.” The congregation’s so lily white, they don’t even get tans in summer.

  He transforms from TV Bud into evangelist Bud. He quotes his favorite George Carlin line on religion: “As we all well know, ‘There’s an invisible man who lives in the sky…who sees everything you do…’”

  “Amen, he’s staring down at me now!” someone yells.

  “He saw me do laundry yesterday!” a woman in the first row screams.

  “Does he watch me when I poo?” a little bo
y cries out.

  “Not if you flush,” his father tells him.

  Bud quiets the crowd and begins preaching about the power of forgiveness and launches into his love of small-town life.

  Somehow he’s making sense touching on the connected spiritual merits of raising the minimum wage, medical marijuana, organic farming, gay rights, Ram Dass, the legacy of President Eisenhower, and the value of saying “you’re welcome” instead of “no problem.”

  He begs everybody to put down their cell phones and connect with their loved ones. “Would Jesus use a selfie stick?” he asks, which makes no sense, but people are yellin’ “amen!” He closes with an a cappella version of some old Broadway song, “You Gotta Have Heart,” the same one he sang to win an eighth-grade singing contest.

  The whole congregation is gapin’ wide-eyed at Bud. They’re ready to elect him president of Liberty University. Problem is, they want more, so for the next couple of weeks he’s fighting hangovers while deliverin’ Sunday morning sermons. He always includes some inspirational show tune. But after he sings “I Am What I Am,” about a cross-dresser from La Cage aux Folles, he’s not invited back.

  Before our big TV success, there was never much payin’ attention to us on the streets of High Point, except the summer when Bud was dating Margaret, the engineering major and bathing suit model who wore Edith Lances projection bras under white tank tops. Lotta gawkin’ at us then. Had something to do with something Bud called “thrust.”

  It used to be a wave, a “Hi, Bud.” But now people are starin’ at him like he’s an eye chart. They always glance at me—’cause I’m bright white, built like a statue, and have a certain charisma. I may get petted a little more, but it’s not interruptin’ my daily routine.

  Now, Bud’s bein’ stopped all the time, accosted by oddballs who think he’s got nothin’ to do all day but chatter about all manner of drivel, like their collection of limited-edition wet-wipes plastic containers or the wind velocity on the Outer Banks, or how long the fish live in their pond. Pure crap that Bud listens to with his usual rectitude, like they’re reciting verse from The Great Gatsby. They want him to meet their grandmother at a pie supper, join a bowling team, or get them tickets to the Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall.