Carll says a publisher’s asked if I’ve “a book in me.” The condition sounds uncomfortable even if one were grown-up size which I’m not. The inquiry both tickles and rankles massah Carll. More than fifty years he’s been scribbling and have publishers ever beat a path to his door? On the other hand, he tousles me, I might become a “profit center” and my expenses “tax deductible.” A profit center – I had to look it up – is “a part of an organization with assignable revenues and costs and hence ascertainable profitability.” Sounds sweet, right? Puts the phrase “billing and cooing” in a whole new light. “But think of posterity!” Carll persists. “You could be as famous as Rin-Tin-Tin – or Lassie – or Fido, if there was one!” (There was – at least one – President Lincoln’s – a yellow mongrel, what today we’d call a rescue dog, which the Lincoln family adopted in 1855. Seems fitting that Lincoln should name a dog “I keep faith, I trust.” Fido was stabbed to death in 1866, a year after his big guy met a like fate. This whole aside moves me unaccountably, pardon the interruption. Carll says, reading the headlines, he mourns Lincoln every day. Saying this gets him warm and quivery, so I guess he means it.)

I don’t want to be a profit center – or tax-deductible – or famous. These are human baubles, I guess, like comparative adjectives. Would I eat better? Enjoy more playtime? Might my enhanced status improve relations with Carll and Jane? (Please say no.) What additional delights do I desire? Are celebrities happier? The more you have, the less, from what I read. Trappings are traps.

Besides, who needs another book, even by me? Let’s concede, for argument’s sake, my book’s superior to the rest, so what? Do books change anything? Smart humans have been repeating the same advice to themselves for millennia and what good has it done? Have words made humans wiser, kinder, gentler? They’re clever, humans, got to give them that, they call the shots, but at what cost? Smarting, it seems, is the price of smarts. Thinking’s sinking – into that celebrated “slough of despond,” a uniquely human hazard. I know little of life but I can see from watching Carll that being human hurts. Joys brim, sure, levitate, but with highs you get lows. “To be or not to be?” I mean, really! Existence, any fool can see, is a fact, not a choice. The meaning of meaning? I ask you! Significance is the quicksand of cerebration: down, down, you’re sucked with your sighs and sobs.

Besides (another besides), making a book sounds like work, which I’m against. “Play is the work of childhood,” wrote child psychologist Jean Piaget. Count me in. I exist to exuberate my moment. (Yes, exuberate can be used transitively, per the OED, though it’s a stretch.) Bookmaking exfoliates into deadlines, storylines, plot lines, contracts, editors – plus platitudinous PR if you get that far. My book jacket bio? “Henry’s a dog – born May 10, 2023 – lives with Jane and Carll.” Whom to hit up for blurbs? Rin-Tin-Tin? That Biden pooch – who bites?

On the other hand (or paw), bookmaking would mandate more time with Carll, because I can’t do it without him. I crave nothing more than his and Jane’s attention, never too much. For love then! “Our legend,” wept Donne,