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I don’t hate you because, after all, you are human, too, and therefore have limitations of your own Perhaps you are hoood, deaf or iven to despair or to self-hatred, or perhaps you are unusually fearful of Death himself We all have burdens On the other hand, if you are better-looking and smarter than I am, blessed with five sharp senses, even more optimistic than I am, with plenty of self-esteem, and if you also share my refusal to be humbled by the Reaper…well, then I could almost hate you if I didn’t know that, like all of us in this imperfect world, you also have a haunted heart and a e against XP, I regard it as a blessing My passage through life is unique

For one thing, I have a singular faht I know the world between dusk and dawn as no one else can know it, for I aer I ae than you es can coe of consent is not uncommon for those with XP Survival far into adulthood isn’t a reasonable expectation--at least not without progressive neurological disorders, such as tre loss, slurred speech, even mental impairment

Thus far I have tweaked Death’s cold nose without retribution I’ve also been spared all the physical infir predicted

I a on borrowed time would be not merely a cliché but also an understateed enterprise

But so is yours Eventual foreclosure awaits all of us More likely than not, I’ll receive h yours, too, is in the mail

Nevertheless, until the postman comes, be happy There is no other rational response but happiness Despair is a foolish squandering of precious ti hour but with dawn still far away, chasing ’s survival, I cycled along eh a park where Orson did not pause to sniff a single tree, past the high school, onto lower streets He led me eventually to the Santa Rosita River, which bisects our town frohts to the bay

In this part of California, where annual rainfall averages a mere fourteen inches, rivers and streams are parched most of the year The recent rainy season had been no wetter than usual, and this riverbed was entirely exposed: a broad expanse of powdery silt, pale and slightly lustrous in the lunar light It was as smooth as a bedsheet except for scattered knots of dark driftwood like sleeping hohth it was sixty to seventy feet wide, the Santa Rosita looked less like a real river than like a e channel or canal As part of an elaborate federal project to control the flash floods that could swell suddenly out of the steep hills and narrow canyons at the back door of Moonlight Bay, these riverbanks had been raised and stabilized ide concrete levees from one end of town to the other

Orson trotted off the street, across a barren strip of land, to the levee

Following hins, sets of which alternated with each other for the entire length of the watercourse The first declared that public access to the river was restricted and that anti-trespassing ordinances would be enforced The second, directed at those lawless citizens ere undeterred by the first sign, warned that high water at a stor that it would overwhelm anyone who dared to venture into it

In spite of all the warnings, in spite of the obvious turbulence of the treacherous currents and the well-known tragic history of the Santa Rosita, a thrill seeker with a hos--is swept to his death every few years In a single winter, not long ago, three drowned

Huor, their God-given right to be stupid

Orson stood on the levee, burly head raised, gazing east toward the Pacific Coast Highway and the serried hills beyond He was stiff with tension, and a thin whine escaped hi the h of a breeze slipped off the Pacific even to stir a dust ghost from the silt

I checked the radiant dial of ’s last--if, indeed, he was still alive--I nudged Orson: "What is it?"

He didn’t acknowledge my question Instead, he pricked his ears, sniffed the becalht almost daintily, and seemed to be transfixed by emanations of one kind or another from some quarry farther up the arid river

As usual, I was uncannily attuned to Orson’s h I possessed only an ordinary nose and mere human senses--but, to be fair to myself, a superior wardrobe and bank account--I could almost detect those sa and man I am not his master I am his friend, his brother

When I said earlier that I aer, I was speaking figuratively When I say I’, however, Ithe riverbed as it cli you?"

Orson glanced up In his ebony eyes floated twin reflections of the moon, which at first I mistook for me, but my face is neither that round nor that mysterious

Nor that pale I ah the sun has rarely touched uage of dogs to interpret his preciseestion that he could be so easily spooked

Indeed, Orson is eventhe more than two and a half years that I’ve known hihtened of only one thing: monkeys

"Monkeys?" I asked

He chuffed, which I interpreted as no

Not monkeys this time

Not yet

Orson trotted to a wide concrete access ra the levee wall to the Santa Rosita In June and July, dump trucks and excavators would use this route when maintenance crews removed a year’s worth of accu a flood-preventing depth to the dry watercourse before the next rainy season