Hadn’t he? He couldn’t remember exactly.
“Fuck,” Zé sighed, glancing down. Not sure what was happening to him. That’s when he saw them. Three pairs of eyes, staring at him. Just staring.
“What?” he asked and the three dogs’ heads tilted to the side. “What are you staring at?”
Not surprisingly they didn’t reply, so Zé focused on how he would get down from where he was—on this china cabinet? How the hell did he get on a china cabinet?—without breaking his neck.
As he studied the distance to the nearest windowsill and the dining room table, debating which could hold his weight, two men appeared from another room. They were both ridiculously large and tall and . . . twins? They had to be. They looked exactly alike. Especially the way they loped by, both eating delicious-looking buns.
As they passed, their heads turned toward him and, as one, they both nodded and kept going. As if a nearly naked man on top of a china cabinet was something one saw every day.
A few moments later, Zé heard female voices coming from behind him and, seconds after, two women appeared. One was blond and white; slight, with barely any meat on her. She was barefoot and wearing a very loose sundress. The other was Asian, short but powerfully built. Her hair was dyed purple and she wore jeans and a pair of bright orange Converse basketball sneakers.
Zé narrowed his gaze on the Asian woman. He knew her! From . . . from . . . ? Somewhere! He knew her from somewhere!
“Answer me,” the blonde insisted.
“No.”
“Answer me.”
“No.”
“Answer me.”
The purple-haired woman stopped and spun to face the blonde. The pair stared hard at each other. Then, abruptly, they bent a little at the knees and . . . hissed? Did they really? Did two grown women just hiss at each other nowadays? Was this due to the damage of social media?
Zé rubbed his eyes. Looked again. Did he also see fangs? Why did he think he saw fangs? That was crazy, right? Human beings didn’t have actual fangs. Especially mouths full of fangs. Not vampire fangs but an entire mouth of fangs.
“Do not bare fangs at each other!” a female voice yelled from another room. “I mean it,” she added after another second. “Don’t make me come out there.”
The two women relaxed until the blonde pushed again, “Just tell me.”
Rolling her eyes, the other began to turn away but she spotted the three dogs staring up at Zé. She dramatically gestured to them with both arms.
“Again?” she demanded. “First the cat, now this?”
“The cat is your fault.”
“That cat starts it.”
The blonde pointed at the dogs. “What are they staring at?”
Both women looked right at Zé. They gazed at him for several moments, their mouths open.
The blonde was the first to speak, turning to the other woman and demanding, “Why won’t you just tell me where you’ve been?”
“I don’t have to tell you anything!” she snapped, walking away; the blonde followed.
Which, Zé had to admit, wasn’t what he expected. Were they not going to question a nearly naked man sitting on top of their china cabinet? If nothing else, he expected them to at least help him down. But they went off, still arguing.
When the arguing became louder, another woman appeared beside the china cabinet. This one was taller and African American. Her curly brown hair reached to large shoulders that fairly burst out of the red sleeveless T-shirt she wore. And the cutoff shorts nicely showed her long brown legs. But those huge feet . . . eesh. He’d hate to get kicked with those.
She faced in the direction the bickering voices came from and Zé assumed she was about to yell at the pair again, but she caught sight of the dogs first.
“Hello, you guys,” she greeted. “And who is your little friend here?”
The smallest dog, at about fifteen or twenty pounds, ran up to her, sniffed her bare feet, then went up on its hind legs, front paws waving wildly.
Grinning, she picked the dog up and cuddled it close. Something Zé wouldn’t do because that dog didn’t look like it had been bathed in ages. The thing was probably infested with fleas and ticks but the woman didn’t seem to care.
“You are just so cute!” she cooed at the dog. “Are you just visiting?”
“Do you really expect it to answer?” Zé had to ask. Because he’d never understood people who actually spoke to dogs.
Still holding the animal, she looked up at Zé. “What are you doing?” she asked instead of answering him.
“Honestly, I have no idea.”
She let out a breath, briefly closing her eyes. Then, with a very healthy bellow, “Max!”
“It’s not my fault!” was the reply.
“I swear . . .” the woman muttered before she yelled out again, “Who is this person on the china cabinet?”
“That’s a cat,” was yelled back. “I rescued him!”
“I thought we agreed. No more strays!”
“Are you keeping that dog I see you holding?”
“He . . .” She lifted the dog with both hands, confirmed its lower bits, and finished with, “He is just visiting.”
“Well, so is the cat!”
Rolling her eyes, the woman looked at Zé again. “I’m Charlie,” she said.
“Zé.”
“Hi, Zé. Do you need help getting down from there?”
“Yes. I thought maybe I could make it to the dining table but it’s got that glass top . . .”
“Yeah. Don’t do that.” She frowned a little. “Are you naked, Zé?”
“Except for this towel . . . yes. Not sure how I got this way, though.”
“Let’s not think about it. You just stay there—I’ll be right back.” She put the dog down and went back the way she’d come. When she returned, the dogs were still staring at him and now she had the two large men with her.
“I’m getting cats out of trees now?” one of the men asked Charlie.
“That’s a cabinet and yes. Could you please get him down from there?”
“How did he get up there in the first place?”
“Why do you ask me questions we both know I don’t have the answers to? Why are you making this difficult? Is it because he’s naked?”
“Well, that’s not helping.”
“So you want me to help him down while he’s naked?”
“No, no,” the man hurriedly replied, stepping closer to the cabinet with what Zé assumed was his twin.
“All right . . . come on,” the man said to Zé. But Zé couldn’t stop staring at the pair. He really hadn’t noticed exactly how tall they were. Now that they were standing so close he realized they were taller than the cabinet he was on. Like two giants.
“Are you going to move or what?” the man barked at Zé, which just annoyed Zé.
It annoyed him a lot, which was why he ordered, “Carry me,” and held his arms out for them to do so. It was something he used to say to his grandfather when he was little. And, on more than one occasion, he still said it to his grandfather because it annoyed the man and Zé was at least six inches taller. Which was why he was saying it now—to annoy.