Bellerophon

To be locked in mortal combat with a fabulous beast was, to a child
like me, the epitome of manhood. I suspect it was partly the fault of
an elderly primary school teacher who once taught me; while my
classmates were content to spear one another with rusty compasses, he
took great pleasure in nurturing my early fascination with the Greek
myths. Each time a new dull and demanding subject appeared in the
lesson plan, I was allowed out of the classroom to read about my
favourite heroes, on the condition that I produce a report at the end
of the year which would justify my independent studies. Thanks to a
heart condition my teacher was eventually advised to retire, and I was
a good six months behind my peers in my knowledge of algebra, but my
imagination had been stirred by those long afternoons spent alone in
the library.

Minotaurs and Chimeras were notably absent from my quiet surroundings,
and so I compensated by projecting my imaginary feats of heroism onto
two boyhood fears that lurked under the low bridges of my dreams-sharks
and dogs. While it was unlikely that I would encounter a Great White in
my suburban neighbourhood, the dangers of a sneak hound attack were all
too real for me. I was known to cross the road if I saw so much as a
Labrador approaching, and on one occasion I found myself trapped at the
top of a climbing frame while a small battalion of Jack Russell puppies
yapped at me, having relentlessly pursued me through the local park one
afternoon.

Although I wished no specific harm on any individual dog, I was steeled
against feeling sentimental whenever I heard of man's best friend
coming to an untimely end. Furthermore, I quietly glorified any man,
woman or child who was brave-or foolhardy enough-to grapple with those
snapping jaws I was so afraid of.

Such as my father. One day he was sitting with me in the doctor's
surgery as I waited to have my broken arm inspected. As a very
self-conscious child I had refused to let anybody sign their name on
the plaster cast, afraid that it would make me look like a boy who
enjoyed getting himself into trouble. The word 'graffiti' was still
pornography to me at that age.

The closest anybody came to vandalising my arm was when my mother, in a
fit of mischievous pique, scrawled a long line down the length of my
arm with a blue biro. I wailed and hid in my room for what felt like
hours while she laughed downstairs, and I spent the following days and
weeks feeling like a jailbird, feeling guilty every time I looked at my
defaced limb.

So there I sat in the surgery's waiting area, anxiously counting the
time away before the good doctor would look at my tattooed arm, cluck
his tongue gravely and mutter something about the younger generation's
criminal tendencies.

While I was busy wallowing at the nadir of this daydream, my father
suddenly leapt up and bolted for the front door. He was followed by a
couple of the other patients, the receptionist, and, finally, by the
doctor himself. I remained in my seat at first, the model of obedience,
but once I heard the commotion filter through the door I went to the
doorway to see what was going on.

A terrible, plug-faced monster had seized a little girl's leg in its
jaws, the head thrashing insanely from side to side while its owner
stood helplessly to one side. Despite the needles of blood that shot up
high into the air, the victim appeared to be dealing with her
predicament stoically. I was transfixed by the animal's hind-quarters;
they were so powerful, so muscular, the dog looked as though it had
been bred purely for battle, capable of running down and devouring any
child it liked the smell of.

Everybody was yelling and waving their hands while the dog's owner-a
kid himself-stood and watched dumbly, his lips moving without making
any sound.

It was my father who vanquished the beast, pouncing with an
explosiveness he had never revealed to me before. I screamed out "no!
Please! Don't!" afraid that he too could have his innards spilled on
the doorstep of the doctor's surgery before the day was done. The dog
could kill us all if he chose! In an instant I saw myself as a boy
without a father, another family broken. My contribution to this crisis
was to jump and down on the spot-my usual ineffectual reaction whenever
a loved one is faced with danger-watching the great hind legs on the
dog which pulsed every time he chewed hard on the little girl.

My dad managed to get the dog into a half-nelson, thereby freeing the
girl's leg from its jaws, and they rolled into the road, bringing the
traffic to a halt. Motorists got out of their cars, some of them to
watch, others to try and help this crazy fool who had dared to wrestle
with what might as well have been Cerberus himself. In an instant the
dog had him pinned firmly to the kerb, its teeth now sunken fully into
his leg. An involuntary, ghastly cry came from m belly, and now I felt
truly afraid. "He's killing him! He's killing him!" I cried.

And then swiftly, brutally, it was over. With a brick in his hand, the
doctor had stepped forward and delivered a clinical blow to the back of
the dog's head, which split open and covered my father's jeans in a
black slick of muck. A collective sigh rose up from the spectators and
it was only now that the teenage owner came back to life, and we both
ran to our respective companions, each of us jumping up and down on the
spot in fear.

After the little girl was delivered to the local hospital, my father
strode purposefully through the surgery's reception room where the
doctor stitched up his wound and applied a stinging tetanus shot into
his buttocks. Covered in grime, his hair matted with sweat, I saw my
father stand taller than I had ever seen him stand before, far greater
to me that day than any of the heroes I may have read of in The
Iliad.

* * *

I am a twenty-three year old university graduate working in a call
centre. It is a cavernous, carpeted room, split down the middle by a
soft cardboard wall. On one side the operators receive incoming calls
from customers who are having problems with their cable television
service. On the other side the operators make outbound telephone calls,
trying to sell the same cable service to prospective customers. Thanks
to a gigantic unseen wreath of fibre-optic wires, the right customer
will always speak to the right operator, "thereby optimising consumer
aspiration margins." I am fortunate at this stage in my career to only
have to deal with incoming calls. I'm not asked to interrupt family
dinners and I don't have to pretend to be interested in the product. My
defined to role is to sympathise, not to inspire.

My work address can be traced to a large building in a busy coastal
town. Although there are no windows in the office, at lunchtime you are
allowed to go up onto the roof, where you can enjoy a nice view of the
sea. I spend, on average, an hour and a half each morning stuck in
traffic to reach that view. It's always parents driving their children
to school who create the jams, their big jeeps acting like stoppers in
bottles of wine. Involuntarily, I find myself choking up every time I
see a purple and black blazer-clad child step daintily down to the
ground from a Range Rover, its nose in the air.

At work, both sides of the partition are unified by a single electronic
display, the likes of which you might find in an airport, or at a train
station. We cannot see our counterparts on the other side, but we know
each other's statistics-how many calls are being dealt with, how many
are waiting, and-crucially-how many have disconnected themselves from
the sheer frustration at being made to wait. It says how many sales
have been finalised, and what the targets for that shift are. An e-mail
is sent to my computer at the end of the day, instructing me on how the
company as a whole did, and what is expected of the staff the next day.
I send it to my junk folder after I'm finished reading it.

There was, at some point-I think-somebody that I did this for. A girl I
lost touch with some time ago. Now it's habit. My father has begin
telling me to move back home.

* * *

There is a month where it rains continuously, save for one morning. In
this window of time it is dazzlingly bright, and I have pull down the
visor in my car as I drive past the park on my way to work. This is my
favourite part of the journey, even though I can probably walk faster
than the crawl my car is travelling at. Big oak trees stand up on
either side of the road, and the sunlight is broken by the interlacing
branches overhead. Most of their leaves are lying on the ground now,
and although the rains have turned them into clotted fudge, the route
still makes me think of a prestigious American college. Putting the car
into neutral, I coast slowly and I allow myself to idle over the
thought of hurrying importantly from one faculty building to another;
now I'm on my early morning run, fitter than I have ever been in my
life, wearing a grey hooded sweatshirt, while my amorous, raven-haired
lover makes breakfast back at the apartment, which I'll eat while
reading The New York Times from cover to cover, front to back, inside
to out, effortlessly marshalling penetrative insights into my series of
innovative seminars on the nature of language and-

I nearly hit a woman as I'm driving to work, down there by the park.
She's jogging slowly in the road, and I have to squeeze the brake pedal
and curve the car around her. I assume that this woman, her blue
tracksuit the only detail that my lower brain registers, must be one of
those crack-heads who spend their days on park benches under the trees.
I don't bother sounding the horn. I just drive on and try to resume
thinking about my post-doctoral future, but by now that train has
departed. I'm approaching the large private school where most of this
traffic will stop for a while before turning around and going home
again. No need to dream anymore-the people I'm going to drive past will
be taking care of all that for me. They're the ones who do read the
newspapers in their entirety.

I see something else running with the flow of the traffic, right up
ahead in the road, and I realise that it's not a cat, but a dog. Just a
little sandy-coloured spaniel. I'm not scared of the things anymore,
but I still don't love dogs, or any animals for that matter. It's a
personal thing, I tell people, who look at me as though I'm sick. It's
okay. If I had to choose between them all, though, spaniels wouldn't be
at the top of my list. Maybe a collie-they're family pets at least. But
this dog in the road is pleasant enough, and if it isn't careful the
thing is going to get run over by an SUV sooner or later.

Now it's no excuse, but it is early in the morning, and I drive past
the dog not thinking too much about it; but then my sleepy brain
absorbs what my eyes have just taken in and I realise that the dog, of
course, belongs to the woman I had assumed was a junkie, who is by now
nothing more than a little blur in my rear view mirror. I pull into the
side of the road, much to the chagrin of the cavalcade behind me,
themselves having to arc around an obstacle which, by rights, shouldn't
be inconveniencing them. I wait for the coast to clear before opening
my car door, and step out in time to see the dog trot happily by. I
think I was expecting it to leap gratefully into my car.

Okay, I think, this dog's being playful. But an hour's pay will be
docked if I'm more than ten minutes late for work.

I drive on and shoot past the mutt, and it's still bounding along like
it doesn't belong to anybody in the world. I crash my car to a halt,
not thinking about anybody else on the road now, and a big BMV behind
me flashes its lights angrily as it just misses my back bumper. I get
out and crouch down near the floor, watching the dog run towards me, my
arms out in front of me and I look like a crab waiting for lunch to
crawl past. It will jump joyously into my arms and lick my face.
Instead, it looks at me, cocks its head and without missing a beat
drifts into the path of the oncoming traffic, and the cars refuse to
slow down or even move out of the way. I close my eyes and wait for the
inevitable dying yelp, but I open them and-thank you!-the little thing
has managed to weave between the oncoming cars, and now I'm chasing it
all over the place, directing the traffic with my arms. The processions
stops, and I can see purple and black in every car, and nothing much
else except a lot of eyes looking at me. I expect some of them to get
out of their cars and join in the fun, but it's obvious from their
looks that they all wish me a terrible death. I hurry the dog to the
other side of the road and it's running away from me, and I'm trying to
keep up, and my car's engine is still running, and the keys are still
in the ignition, and it isn't a nice area either, and anybody could
stop and take whatever they want, so I stop running and watch the dog
get away from me. Nobody stops to help. They must have enough worries
with pets of their own.

My face is red, and the cars move on, refusing to let me cross back
over the road. They rev their big engines for my benefit and glare as
they drive past. Even when I'm safely behind the wheel, no one stops to
let me out, not even with my indicator ticking the seconds, reminding
me that the dog is running further and further away. No one slows down
to let me get back into the chase. I just see more purple and black and
more people glaring at me. I look out for the owner, figuring she must
be close now and that I can help her with the search. All I can see in
the rear view mirror is more traffic.

I crawl past every turning and peer down each side road, squinting my
eyes for any sign of the dog. It's somewhere, but I can't see it. I
punch the steering wheel with my left hand and swear and turn up my car
stereo so loud that the children front turn around in their seats and
stare at me for a while, the same disgust written into their faces that
must have been absorbed at an early age.

When I get to work I sit in the car park, panting as though I've just
run a marathon. Then I start punching the steering wheel, and after
I've finished I can see the imprints my knuckles have made in the
rubber, but in time they fade and I don't see any marks at all.