Page 93 of The Best Trick

“Just an alert I set up.” He grabbed my hand. “Come on!”

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“A little mission.”

We ran back to the car. Odin got behind the wheel and poured on the speed, racing up the surface streets, breaking laws, passing illegally over my very extreme protests. Twenty minutes later we were getting out at Venice Beach.

“You're gonna get the car towed,” I said pointing out that we were parked illegally.

Odin grabbed my hand. “Come on!”

“I don't understand,” I said. “Did you just really hate the other beach?” I asked. “It’s not that different from this one.”

We were out near the boardwalk now. Odin pulled something silver from his pocket and blew into it.

“Is that the dog whistle?” I asked.

He nodded and ran up the beach blowing the whistle every few yards with me running after him. Dogs all around us began barking like crazy.

What was he doing?

He kept running on and on toward Santa Monica, running and blowing the whistle. I could hardly keep up, but I felt like I needed to. I was a little worried about this new behavior, frankly. We weren't in our proper disguises—hats and sunglasses only. It was not a good time to be drawing attention to ourselves.

“Odin, slow down!” I pleaded, running after him.

He wouldn’t slow. He was a man on a mission.

Suddenly I saw a grey blur, barreling toward Odin from the north.

Doris.

She had something yellow and black in her mouth—it looked like their tackle bag toy that they were incessantly playing with. But where had it come from? Where had Doris come from?

Odin reached Doris first. He collapsed to his knees, hugging her, petting her.

The tackle bag was in the sand next to them. For a second my mind didn't make sense of it. It looked like the tackle bag they played with all the time, but this one was a lot newer.

No scuffs. No tears. No drool spots.

When Odin looked back up at me, there were tears in his eyes. “Get that in your purse. We have to get out of here!” he said.

With shaking hands, I picked it up. It was heavy. Full of stuff. This wasn’t the toy at all. Not at all.

“This is the real thing.” I said.

“Sure fucking-g is, goddess.”

We raced back to the car, which miraculously was still there.

I got into the back with Doris, petting her and keeping her distracted as we headed back to the bungalow, not an easy feat, because all Doris wanted to do was lick Odin's face, which, to be fair, I could definitely relate to.

“Can I look inside?” I asked.

“We’ll all look at it together,” Odin said. “We need to get off of the road fast. Let's concentrate on that.”

“This is so exciting!” I said to Doris in my most exciting voice.

Doris panted.

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