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Einstein growled, hesitated for a moment, and then he was running forward, his ears flying like flags, the rain on his back like a saddle of sequins. He scampered to the corner of the street and cocked his leg against a sack of rubbish.
Charlie huddled miserably in the doorway. And then he spotted the old man. He was dressed in nothing but pyjamas and a pair of woollen slippers. The rain sprayed his face. Water spurted from his sleeves. He was standing alone in the middle of the street, his head thrown back and his mad eyes fixed on the rooftops. He looked wild. He looked crazy. He looked like he’d just seen a flying saucer. He was smiling, smiling, and his face was shining with a bright, unholy light.
‘Did you see it?’ he shouted, when he caught sight of Charlie. He staggered forward, stopped and turned his face to the sky. ‘What happened?’ Charlie said, from the safety of the doorway. He peered up and down the empty street. There was nothing but rain and the rumble of drains.
‘There!’ the old man shrieked. ‘There!’ He raised his fist and stabbed with a bony finger at heaven. He began to laugh.
Charlie squinted into the sky, hidden by a curtain of sodium light. He shook his head and shrugged. What? What had happened? But the old man wouldn’t wait for him. He was splashing away down the street, shouting and laughing into the rain.
Charlie caught Einstein, took him back to the safety of the apartment and dropped him into his basket. It was twenty minutes past midnight. The dog sneezed and grinned.
‘Sleep!’ Charlie said.
Einstein shook himself and turned three circles before he settled into the basket. Steam curled from the top of his head. His wet coat leaked a comforting stink.
Beside Charlie’s chair a bag of peanuts spilled on a varnished coffee table. Beneath the table an old dog moaned and snuffled in a troubled sleep. His whiskers twitched and he paddled his paws. The dog was called Einstein. He must have been dreaming of Instant Gourmet microwave dinners.
Charlie didn’t know that a stranger had landed on the roof. In a few hours the intruder would be stepping through the shower curtains like the Jolly Green Giant and Charlie would be screaming and his entire life would be rushing before his eyes. But now he was eating salted peanuts and watching a woman dance with a pig while Einstein snored and the rain came hissing against the window.
At midnight Einstein woke up and cracked his head against the table, spilling peanuts over the floor.
‘It’s raining,’ Charlie said, as he watched the dog trot towards the door. ‘Can’t you wait until morning?’
Einstein grinned and scratched the carpet. He looked like a child’s drawing of a dog: a square body and a cone for a head, his tail a dash and his nose a squiggle. His coat was white, his ears and feet black, one eye was green and one eye was yellow. He wore the cordial expression of the violently insane. He was a small mongrel with a loaded bladder.
‘You’ve got to stop drinking at night, Charlie grumbled as he struggled into his overcoat.
It was cold in the passage. The walls gave out a damp, sour smell. Above their heads a small bulb flickered in a chipped glass shade. He locked the apartment and followed the dog down six flights of stairs to the windswept street.
At the entrance to the building they paused, breathless, bracing themselves against the freezing darkness. ‘You’ve got three minutes,’ Charlie shivered. ‘Three minutes or you stay here till morning.’
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