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If there is anyone out there who really enjoys the process of uprooting an entire life and relocating everything to some other spot, one hundreds of miles away, I wish they had been around this last week when Fuzz and I moved back to the city where I had spent the first thirty years of my life, Denver. This was new territory to my Chihuahua chum, he being born and bred in the Beehive State some four years ago. But I was a native of the Queen City of the Plains, and they say part of a person never really leaves the old homestead. Hence, when the small inheritance came to me in the form of two houses and one narrow, two-story brick building in what was an aged and now newly gentrified part of downtown, I got Washington and Oregon out of the way, patched and packed myself back up, and went home to Colorado. As it turned out, there was another surprise for me at the little building, but I didn't know about it at the time since it was not mentioned in the will, only waiting for me to find it and remember. Everything I owned was crammed by two burly hired hulks into the rented cookie-wagon style van. In fact, once I convinced myself that clothing that had not been worn in nine years, shoes that gave me blisters, pots and pans used once and immediately buried, chairs that were rump-sprung -- and other such detritus any self-respecting packrat would scorn --could be left at the curb, it didn't take all that much cramming. We fortunately didn't have to hook a vehicle to the hitch behind us since Mercedes, my battered greenish Toyota of ancient vintage, had gone to the great junkyard in the sky, suddenly squatting in the middle of the road on our trip back from Shearwater Beach, Oregon and refusing to move again. Ever. I had to have her put down. She was a faithful old reprobate. But I will no doubt replace her with something a little more cool, having spent some time getting spoiled in a Beamer on the case in Oregon. Fuzz wasn't the only one to have become accustomed to the regal comfort and splendor of a car with pretensions, the leased BMW 850Ci we had enjoyed on the last job. "Sorry, little friend, I can't get you another BMW to be chauffeured around in, but we'll sure as hell beat this. How about a Jeep?" Fuzz disdained any reply. Yeah, they weren't overly opulent, either. Well, something would come along. By the time we hit the short stretch of connecting road between Fort Collins and the Interstate, it was night, we were ready for dinner and sack time, and my butt was virtually broken! I manhandled the van into a large complex of motel/restaurant/station just short of the highway, and we checked in. I always lie, when questioned, regarding having a pet. In the first place, Fuzz is not technically a pet. In fact, he doesn't like to be patted; being cuddled, rubbed, stroked, scratched he finds most welcome. But patting per se makes his eyes wobble in his head, that being only a tad larger than a tennis ball in size. He is inclined to mumble and move out of your reach, casting reproachful looks over his retreating hind end. This, of course, is sophistry of the meanest sort. Of course, he is a dog, an animal, and that's what they mean when inquiring about a "pet," not what you do with your hand to its head. But I have no guilty twinges whatever when looking any nosy interrogator straight in the eye while saying "No, no pets." The mere idea of putting my boon companion, my best friend, in one of those cages out at the rear of the motel, in the dark, surrounded by Great Danes, Rottweilers and Dalmatians -- horrible! It will never happen, not in this lifetime! Since Fuzz does not bark -- his own decision, no part of mine -- it is always safe to deposit him in a rented room anywhere, having been smuggled in either in my pocket or handbag, and leaving him there while I do whatever needs to be done. If anyone should enter, he or she will not find him for Fuzz will be safely in whatever hide we have found for him, the first thing we do on entering. So having found his spot behind a low chair in the corner of the one big room, I took a quick shower, put on fresh jeans, shirt and jacket and went to dinner in the surprisingly good motel restaurant. After the gum-snapping waitress took my order, I idly looked around the dining room, starting a bit on seeing the back of a vigorous head of gray hair on a broad-shouldered, tall man in a corner booth. George? Nah, it couldn't be! I was right, it wasn't George. When this fellow turned his head to thank the boy with fresh coffee, he had a nose -- well, suffice it to say, his chin would never get wet in the most persistent downpour which was not driven by gale-force winds. Thinking of George, my new . . . well, it remained to be seen what he might become -- new friend, I guess -- was way back there in Portland, still about a year from retirement. I had asked him how many years he had in, and he answered he was a twenty-four-and-fifty, meaning he was fifty years old and had spent almost half of his life doing law enforcement work. One more long year would see him retired. I was eight years his junior, and after twenty with the Denver Police had gone on to private investigation work, looking a lot more suited to mufti than I ever had to a stiff official uniform. George had one more annual leave coming sometime this summer, and he had assured me he would gallop out to Denver to spend it with me. We'll see. Absence doesn't always make the heart grow fonder, sometimes it makes the heart forget. It astonished me to realize that thought really concerned me -- the "forget" part, that is. When I settled the bill and returned to the room, Fuzz was more than ready for one of his rip-top containers of the obscenely expensive dog-food he preferred. Of course, at his size, he still didn't cost much to feed. He gulped away at his dinner, gratefully accepting the ensuing tidbit from my steak in lieu of dessert. Popping the little fellow into my jacket pocket, his lead bunched up in the other one, we walked out into the darkness alongside the motel in search of the doggy version of a pitstop. While Fuzz was into his ritual of sniffing every single blade of grass and leafy bush until he found the one and only correct spot, I listened with half an ear to the scattered hum from the highway of vehicles tearing north and south, maybe like me changing their lives once again. Even at this ungodly hour there was quite a bit of going and coming on the arterial just to the east. Whenever I check into a room, I don't do what is usual: I do not bounce my fanny up and down on the mattress for I know damned well it will be what I term "orthopedic concrete." Some man, probably with about as much hips as a rake handle, once said that a FIRM mattress was absolutely essential, preferably one that would make an hardwood floor seem downright mushy in comparison. Motel owners near and far were positively ecstatic at this pronouncement, I'm sure, because something made from cement just has to outlast anything created with creature comfort in mind. I don't really want to know all that when I first arrive for it will surely depress me. Time enough to learn it when I am so tired I could even sleep on the sidewalk, and that's about the way it will feel. It did. Fuzz turned tight little circles about six times, apparently trying to soften up the spot on which I had spread his pint-size afghan. With a mighty sigh, he threw down his six pounds and we both slept -- fitfully, to be sure, but still enough to knit up at least part of the storied sleeve. As I drifted off the last time, I thought of the absolute neighborhoods of Victorian homes in Denver, the sight of which would give old Fort Meriwether apologists the vapors. While such residences are considered quaint and much to be desired by communities that find them in short supply, cities such as Denver -- virtually crawling in some areas with them -- mostly consider them to be simply old houses, drafty, hard to heat, musty, termite-ridden, equipped with a niggardly supply of bathrooms, and generally budget-busters to renovate and keep up. That's not to say that many in Denver aren't treasured and lovingly restored and maintained. It simply means that every single house built during the reign of Victoria isn't by that solitary fact a national heritage. Some of them should find us all averting our eyes and allowing them to go quietly to their reward, the sooner the better. |