The Greatness of Gletsby

Saucer eyed, Jeanine stared, her stomach sinking as it filled with a mix of apprehension, butterflies, and just a sprinkle of despair. To her right was the display of the taxidermied body of Gletsby's most famous racing greyhound, Harlequin's Dancer. To her left, no longer attached to its haunches, was Harlequin's Dancer's head. She bit her lower lip as mild panic began to set in and her gaze bounced back and forth between the two parts of the celebrated animal. Her first thought was that it must not have been attached all that well to have come off so easily. Her eyes flicked to her right hand and the hammer which had inflicted the wound. 

Jeanine turned, and walked away from the scene of the crime, through the three rooms that made up the Gletsby Provincial Museum, and into the office of the Manager, Curator, and Janitor, a tripartite role in which she occupied all three parts. She sat down at her desk, put the hammer down in front of her, and pulled out her phone. She hesitated for a moment before tapping the icon on the home screen for Erica, her on and off (though unfortunately right now off) partner in life and opened their ongoing chat conversation. 

Help! Museum, please come now! she tapped, and then sat back and stared. It was late, she thought, Erica might be in bed. Or, god forbid, on a date or something. Jeanine didn't know what else to do, so she sat, stared, and wished that the three pulsing dots indicating that Erica was typing would appear. Erica's little face icon slid down the chat to locate itself under her message. Jeanine chewed her lower lip again and waited for the dots.

The dots appeared! Jeanine hunched forward and hoped. Then they disappeared again. Then they came back. And then disappeared again. What is she typing?! thought Jeanine, and why is it taking so long? Then, Erica's face icon slid back to the last message. Did she just mark it unread? Then the phone rang, and Jeanine bounced in momentary surprise before gathering herself. Erica - Cell her screen announced. Jeanine slid the green answer icon out immediately and put the phone to her ear.

"Jeanine?" said Erica's voice, instantly recognisable with its southern accent and a hint of crunchy vocal fry, "what's going on?"

"E," replied Jeanine, slipping back into her shortened familiar mode of address without thinking about it, "you know I wouldn't ask for something if it wasn't important… can you?"

"Sure, of course," said Erica, a slight strain in her tone, "but, it's ten on a Tuesday night, can't it wait 'til tomorrow?"

"No, it really can't, can you come now?"

An exasperated sigh followed. "Sure, I'll be there in 15, I just need to get dressed."

The call ended abruptly, giving Jeanine something else to worry about. Erica was annoyed. Still, that was the least of her concerns if she couldn't solve the problem with Harlequin's Dancer. Jeanine stood, and went to stand outside to wait. It was a warm evening at least, late summer, and the sun had only gone down recently. 

Finally, after what seemed like forever, Erica's profoundly sensible ageing blue Honda Civic pulled up, and she, just as profoundly sensible in blue denim jeans and a white T-shirt, stepped out. 

"Now will you tell me what's going on?" asked Erica, exasperation even more evident in person than on the phone.

Jeanine gestured for her to follow back into the Museum without explanation. Moments later the two of them stood, looking at the scene.

"So, wait, how did this happen?" probed Erica, the frustration from her voice now replaced with bewildered curiosity.

"Well," started Jeanine, "I was repairing the barrier, and I sort of, missed, and it just sort of popped off." She mimed the motion of using the hammer as she explained.

They stood still, continuing to stare.

"Can't have been very well attached," said Erica.

"No, probably not," agreed Jeanine dryly.

"Flipping heck," said Erica, "you're going to have to leave town. I mean, the dog is basically sacred around here. Philip will have a field day — he never wanted you to have the job, and now he'll just say this proves it. Head doesn't look too good either, that's a pretty sizable dent in it — how hard did you hit it?"

Both of them jumped as a cheerful "Bing-Bong" sounded, indicating that someone had rung the doorbell of the Museum house. 

"Fuck," said Jeanine briefly, remembering her earlier commitments, "that'll be James, he's supposed to bring by his new painting to hang in the entrance hall. I said we could put it there for him with a for sale sign." 

They heard the door swing open (Jeanine wished that she had thought to lock it), and James's cheerful footsteps came into the museum, turned the corner (evidently looking for her), and walked into the "Greatness of Gletsby" gallery in which Harlequin's Dancer stood, as well as photos of other town luminaries.

The pair of women heard, rather than saw, James's immediate reaction to the situation, when the painting he was carrying crashed to the ground and he exclaimed "Holy Shit!" loudly.

"Fuuuck!" moaned Jeanine again, sighing and looking to the ceiling as James walked over to stand beside the two of them, "what am I gonna do?!"

"Errr… what happened to the dog?" asked James.

"Blunt-force trauma," replied Erica unhelpfully.

"Look, James," said Jeanine turning to him, "this is an accident, but it's obviously a bad one. D'you think it can be fixed?"

James snorted, a laugh half escaping his lips. "I mean, first, I'm a painter and handyman, not a taxidermist, and second, why would you want to fix it? That dog's an abomination. You've done a service to us tonight Jeanine! That macabre statuette is just an idol to an inhumane sport that exists only to…"

"Alright, alright!" interrupted Jeanine, who, although usually quite enjoying James's animal rights rhetoric, had no patience for it tonight, "I forgot how you feel about Harlequin's Dancer, but the rest of the town is going to crucify me!" 

Erica looked at the dog in silence, raised her hand, and fiddled with her thick rimmed glasses, deep in thought.

"You're quiet," said James, who was intimidated by silence and also by Erica, who he had always had a thing for, despite her profound and evident lack of interest.

"I'm thinking," she replied, "what if… what if we stole it? If it was stolen then no-one would need to know you'd brutally decapitated it with a hammer."

Jeanine shot Erica a sidelong glance as James snorted again. Then, considering her lack of other obvious options, she nodded. "Yeah, that might work. James, are you up for helping, and also willing to never speak a word of this to anyone else?"

James shrugged, "yeah, absolutely. Sounds like a riot. Better way to spend a Tuesday than what I had in mind."

The three partners in grand theft canine walked over to Harlequin's Dancer's body and stood around it. Jeanine knelt beside it, and tried to lift it. Harlequin's Dancer didn't budge. Unthinking, James reached under the dog from the other side and gave it a hefty tug, just as Erica inhaled sharply and tried to say "stop!" Unfortunately, her interjection came a moment too late, and Harlequin's Dancer's left paw was irrevocably damaged by the nail holding it to the wooden platform on which it sat. 

"Ooops," said James gingerly, "why would it be nailed down?"

Erica glared at him and said "presumably because other people have tried to pick it up over the years. Jeanine, do you still have that hammer? We've got to get the nails out before this dog is going anywhere." 

Jeanine, a little morosely, walked back to the Managerial/Curatorial/Janitorial office, picked up the hammer, and returned. James, somewhat contrite, set to work using the back of the hammer to lever the nails out of Harlequin's Dancer's paws while the two women walked back into the Museum kitchen to wait.

"Cuppa?" asked Jeanine.

Erica nodded, so Jeanine filled the electric kettle and switched it on, mentally reminding herself that she would need to check on it, as it took too long to boil and had a bad habit of not automatically switching off. Then she turned back to her sometimes girlfriend to make smalltalk. 

"So," began Jeanine awkwardly, "no other plans this evening?"

Erica sighed and gave her head a little shake, her frizzy hair bobbing to add emphasis. "No," she said, "it's a Tuesday and I've got to work in the morning. And before you ask, no, I'm not dating anyone. I notice that I'm still the first person you texted when you managed to irreparably damage the town mascot."

Jeanine, smiling a chagrined smile, nodded sheepishly. "Yeah," she said, "I didn't know who else to call." 

She was about to tell Erica she missed her when James came into the kitchen and cut in cheerfully, "you could have called me! I'm always happy to do a little light vandalism and get rid of an icon of historical brutality. There, done, no more nails, Let's get this puppy out of here."

The three of them walked back to the "Greatness of Gletsby" gallery to collect Harlequin's Dancer. Jeanine approached and picked up the sad looking body of the dog. James grabbed the head which he tossed in the air once like a ball, before the two women gave him a look and he looked suitably shamefaced, and the three of them walked to the main door. Before they stepped out, Jeanine edged the door open to glance outside.

Erica grabbed her arm and said, "wait, we should put it in something. Do you have a large trash bag?"

Jeanine stopped, looked back at Erica seriously, and nodded. As she walked back to the office of the Janitor/Manager/Curator she reflected that if you were going to dispose of a body you should probably do it properly, and in every representation she had ever seen on television a point had been made of bagging the cadaver. Once there she opened the large cupboard with cleaning supplies and grabbed one of the largest black plastic sacks the museum owned before returning to her compatriots. Harlequin's Dancer didn't go into the bag very elegantly, but the body fit, and James was happy to drop the head in after. Jeanine once again edged the door open to look outside.

"Coast's clear," she stated, "so, which car should we take him… it… him… in?"

Erica made a large x symbol with her arms indicating her Civic had no desire to double as a hearse, and James just gestured at his bicycle. It had a pannier rack over which his painting had been tied, but it was clearly not up to the task of discreetly getting rid of a pretty obviously misshapen black rubbish bag late on a Tuesday night. 

"OK, fine," said Jeanine, "it's my crime, I'll take it. Are either of you up for helping me bury him somewhere?" Erica sighed and nodded grudgingly, while James gave a thumbs up and broad grin to indicate that he alone was having a great time. Jeanine checked her watch, it was 11PM, and no-one else would be coming this way until morning. The Museum was a solitary building on a country lane. She locked the door, and said "we'll come back to get your things and make it look more convincingly like a breakin. Let's go." 

The trio piled into her car and drove the relatively short distance to her house to get a couple of shovels, and then a considerably longer distance to get away from the village of Gletsby, until they arrived at a scenic forest walk with considerable areas of disturbed wet ground. "Better than a field," said Erica approvingly as she got out of Jeanine's car, "no-ones going to dig this place up any time soon."

It took the better part of half an hour to dig a hole deep enough to safely cover Harlequin's Dancer, and then the same again to cover it up and move things around to make it look like the rest of the area, and the three stood, muddy and tired, looking at their handiwork. 

"Should someone say something?" asked Jeanine.

"Like a eulogy?" said Erica, incredulous.

"Well… yeah," said Jeanine. 

James gave a third unhelpful snort, and Jeanine decided that yes, someone should say something over the Museum's most prized possession.

"Here lies Harlequin's Dancer," she said, "he died forty years ago after winning more races than any dog from Gletsby had any right to do. He is survived by a town that will always remember his commitment to running quickly."

"And the glassy eyed stare he always had that scared all the children," added James.

"James!" exclaimed Jeanine.

"Right, now that's finished, let's go have that cuppa you offered me earlier," said Erica, unaffected by the speech.

"A cuppa," said Jeanine haltingly, "fuck, a cuppa. Oh no."

Erica turned slowly to look at her and inquired, "Jeanine, what now?"

"In the car, now!" cried Jeanine, and the three got in hurriedly, to rush back to the Museum as fast as Jeanine dared drive, and considerably faster than she would have usually considered reasonable. As they drove Jeanine explained and watched the minutes tick by. It was 1 AM. She wondered if they'd get there fast enough.

As they pulled up to the Museum, now very evidently in flames, it was clear that no, they had not managed to outrun the kettle that took too long to boil and had a bad habit of not automatically switching off. 

"Holy shit," said James for the second time that night as they all got out of the car and stared at the inferno, "makes burying the dog seem kind of pointless doesn't it."

Jeanine took two steps forward and stared, saucer eyed, her stomach sinking with a mix of apprehension, butterflies, and just a sprinkle of despair. She leaned heavily on her car and took some very deep breaths, as a more severe version of the panic she had been controlling all evening set in. No-one was likely to even notice the burning museum until morning she told herself — the roads around here would be deserted until near 5, when the earliest of local residents would start moving around in preparation for the day. 

Erica's voice and hand on her shoulder pierced her near fugue state. "Wow," she said, "I didn't really think it could get much worse. Come on, let's go get that cuppa. At mine?"

Jeanine turned back to her familiar smile, eyes damp with gratitude and an overflowing of too many emotions, too fast, over too little time. James was already heading to his bike as she hugged Erica, and replied simply, "Yes, I think so."