A Girl's Best Friend
by
George Pollock, Jr.
I think I like the girl the most.
Yeah … of all these characters, I'd have to say she's my favorite.
And the thing is, the rest of the characters took forever to realize she is a girl, in the first
place. Which shows you what a pack of rocket scientists they are ...
OK, so they're not rocket scientists. They're bounty hunters, traveling through the solar
system, looking for fugitives with prices on their heads. Their spaceship can also float on
water, which I never really fully understood. I mean, what's the point there? To me, that
made about as much sense as — oh, I don't know — a passenger train that can fly into
space.
… OK, bad example …
Anyway …
I call the guy who's sort of in charge "Metal Man." He has a mechanical arm and metal
plates all over his boots. He tends bonsai trees, but in a way, he's like a gruff old dog, and
I can relate to that, kind of.
I call the other guy "Lumpy." That's because despite a nice suit, he wears these lumpy
shoes. They're almost like work shoes. And he won't button his shirt or hike up his tie to
save his life.
And then there's this … woman. Oh, yeah …
She wears these light-colored ankle boots, so I call her "Bootsie." Rarely wears
anything but this halter-and-hot-pants combo, with a jacket draped around her elbows. I
always see her and can't help but think, "Hey, sister, here's a fashion flash! If you don't
want to look like you're walkin' the streets, put the jacket over your shoulders!"
Like she would have listened … Trust me: She can glare at you, then growl. And it's
scary, friend. Damned scary.
Oh, well …
At least there's the girl. As I said, these clowns didn't even know she was a girl, at first.
But I knew. I knew right away. And I liked her — a lot.
There was this one adventure they had: They've run out of food on their ship, which is
traveling through space when it's hit by another ship. Turns out it was a hit-and-run.
Their ship is knocked off course and crashes on the Jovian moon of Io. (Remember that
it's 2071 and that Mars, some asteroids and the Galilean moons of Jupiter have been
terraformed and settled.)
So their ship ends up in semiarid grassland, and Metal Man tries to fix the ship. What
exactly Lumpy and Bootsie are doing at this point, I don't know. The girl, on the other
hand, heads off toward the nearest town to find some food for everyone.
I have to tell you: The kid's quite a character. To make the trip more interesting, she
covers a lot of ground doing forward rolls. Then she spends some time absolutely fixated
on a cactus. (I think it was a saguaro.) Sometimes, I think she's missing a few cards from
her deck. But that's part of why I like her. A lot.
Finally, she meets a guy selling watermelons out of the back of his pickup truck. Well,
he's not selling to her; she doesn't have any money. That's when a car pulls up, and a
black woman steps out. (Ever watch old movies? Know the one called "Cleopatra
Jones"? The woman looks a little like her.) She tells the vendor she's a bounty hunter and
is looking for someone. At that, she buys a watermelon and drives off — not knowing
that the girl is now hiding in the car's trunk.
A little while later, the trunk is opened. The noise from the ensuing scuffle among two
cops and the black woman — who honestly doesn't know how the girl got here —
awakens the girl, who then slips away into town.
Once there, the girl sees a guy I can describe only as a fat Rastafarian, eating a hot dog
and carrying an old satchel. Another black man comes up, dragging a light-colored coffin
down the street. (You think that's strange? The guy says his name is "Shaft." With him,
Cleopatra Jones and Rasta Man, I thought some kind of convention was in town.)
Well, Shaft and Rasta Man get into an argument. Seems that Shaft blames Rasta Man
for the food-poisoning death of Shaft's brother. The coffin, Shaft says, is for Rasta Man.
While they're arguing, a truck runs over the coffin, and Shaft is so distraught, Rasta Man
takes the opportunity to cut out. He leaves so abruptly, some mushrooms spill out of the
satchel. The girl sees this, remembers that she's supposed to get food for the crew and
takes the mushrooms back to the ship.
Now …
… let me tell you about these 'shrooms …
They're trippin'. I mean, TRIPPIN'. I mean, "eat-one-and-you-go-bouncin'-down-the-
street-while-you're-yippin' " trippin'. The girl finds reason to suspect that, so — good
news — she's sharp enough to check them out.
Bad news — she decides to check them out on the crew. She leaves a 'shroom on a
plate and watches as each of the others comes by and eats it.
Then she … observes ...
Lumpy ends up raising and lowering his feet in place on a step on some stairs. Just
stands there, raising and lowering his feet. Finally, he lets out this piquant observation:
"Obnoxious little frog …"
OK …
Bootsie stands in a restroom for a long time, then she starts doing swim strokes. Rather
good ones.
OOH-KAAAAY …
Metal Man pets his bonsais and talks to them. Yes, he's talking to trees …
Actually … that made some sense to me: About a hundred years ago, some people
believed that talking to plants would help them grow better. I just don't think that even
they thought the plants could talk back. Which Metal Man apparently thought.
OOH-KAAAAY …
After all this, the girl comes to the inevitable conclusion that the 'shrooms must not be
good to eat. To which, I thought, "REALLY, Einstein? What gave you the clue? Dancing
with frogs? Synchronized swimming in the can? Secrets of the universe from six-inch
cedars?"
Hey, she's a brilliant computer hacker, but no one ever said she was a rocket scientist.
But to be fair …
… Einstein wasn't a rocket scientist, either …
Later, she's watching TV and sees that Rasta Man is wanted for selling illegal
'shrooms. The girl decides to catch him, get the bounty and buy food for the crew.
So off with a backpack she goes, on a motorized scooter. On her way into town, she
sees the hit-and-run spaceship that struck her ship. She goes in and sees Rasta Man
plucking mushrooms off boards in the hold. He's surprised to see that she's able to just
walk right in, but he's more stunned when she pulls twin guns from the backpack.
"Stinky gas!" she yells and pulls the triggers. A noxious gas shoots out from the guns.
Well, it's so stinky, it overpowers her — and Rasta Man takes the opportunity to cut out
with a satchel of 'shrooms. (He does that a lot, I noticed. By the way: If a dog thinks that
something is stinky, it's really stinky. Trust me on this. )
She sets off after him on the scooter, and at a nearby railroad crossing, he jumps a
passing train. When the train clears, guess who's standing on the other side of the tracks?
Shaft! He points in surprise at the girl, but she just points at the departing train — and at
Rasta Man climbing up the back car. And she's off again on the scooter. For his part,
Shaft hijacks a pickup truck waiting at the crossing, starts chasing the train and when he
catches up, he jumps from the truck onto a boxcar's ladder.
Then, from out of nowhere, a convertible races onto the tracks. It's driven by Cleopatra
Jones! (How she got away from the cops, I don't know. I can't be everywhere at once,
OK?) The girl on the scooter catches up to the car, jumps onto the trunk lid, steps on
Cleopatra's head and leaps onto the boxcar at the end of the train.
Well, a lot of shooting follows. The upshot — pardon the pun — is that Shaft falls off
the train into Cleopatra's car, which flips, throws them out and crashes. On the train, the
girl corners Rasta Man and makes scary faces and gestures at him. (Believe me: When
the girl wants to scare you, she can get really frightening. Trust me on this.)
Now, it turns out there's a cow on the tracks ahead. The engineer slams on the brakes,
which stops the train just next to the cow. The forward momentum causes Rasta Man and
the girl to tumble onto the track, with Rasta Man on his back and the girl straddling his
waist. At this point, Rasta Man is so freaked out by this kid, he begs the girl to take the
satchel of 'shrooms if she'll just let him go — and leave him alone. She remembers —
again — that she was supposed to get food for the crew, so she agrees and takes the
'shrooms.
That's when I …
… walk over to the cow …
… and I say …
… "Thank you."
The cow looks at me with her big, dark, vacuous eyes, and she says — completely
oblivious to her near-death — "Oh, it's no problem …"
WHOOOOOOA …
Legally BOVINE …
Oooh, yeaaaah …
To make a long story short at this point, suffice it to say that thanks to the girl, a lot of
shiitake went down on her ship after that. Some really heavy shiitake, man …
But that's another reason I like the girl: In her own off-the-wall, left-field, cross-wired
way, she got food. Which was more than those other clowns on the ship did. Of course,
as I said, those losers didn't even know she was a girl when she first came aboard.
Know what it took for them to find out? The girl wears a loose, oversized light-colored
T-shirt over dark — well, I guess you'd call them biking shorts. That's an old term for
them. Anyway, when the others decided to let the girl stay on the ship, she was floating in
zero-G, and to celebrate, she did a cartwheel. Between her movements and zero-G, the T-
shirt ended up bunched around her armpits. And she wasn't wearing anything underneath.
So — from what I understand about these things — you could then tell, without a
doubt, that the girl was, in fact, female.
I'll never forget Bootsie's line at that moment: "HEY! You're a GIRL!"
Well, DUH …
I knew that already. The first time the girl ever saw me — long before the cartwheel —
I walked over to her. I stood up. Then I rested my face just below her waist.
And I inhaled …
About 80 years ago, there was a movie about a blind man who could tell when a
woman was nearby by the perfume she wore. In fact, he got so good at it, he could
identify their perfumes by name.
And that's what I thought about when my face lay just below the girl's waist and I took
that deep breath:
Ah …
… Scent of a woman …
For her part, the girl looked down at me, with her wild hair billowing above her big
eyes. I don't know what color her eyes are. Hell, I don't even know what color my eyes
are. I've been colorblind from birth.
The girl grinned. And her grin seemed to fill half her young, pretty face.
Then she said …
"…DOGGIE!!"
And from that moment on, I knew …
… we were going to be golden …
Woof.
by
George Pollock, Jr.
I think I like the girl the most.
Yeah … of all these characters, I'd have to say she's my favorite.
And the thing is, the rest of the characters took forever to realize she is a girl, in the first
place. Which shows you what a pack of rocket scientists they are ...
OK, so they're not rocket scientists. They're bounty hunters, traveling through the solar
system, looking for fugitives with prices on their heads. Their spaceship can also float on
water, which I never really fully understood. I mean, what's the point there? To me, that
made about as much sense as — oh, I don't know — a passenger train that can fly into
space.
… OK, bad example …
Anyway …
I call the guy who's sort of in charge "Metal Man." He has a mechanical arm and metal
plates all over his boots. He tends bonsai trees, but in a way, he's like a gruff old dog, and
I can relate to that, kind of.
I call the other guy "Lumpy." That's because despite a nice suit, he wears these lumpy
shoes. They're almost like work shoes. And he won't button his shirt or hike up his tie to
save his life.
And then there's this … woman. Oh, yeah …
She wears these light-colored ankle boots, so I call her "Bootsie." Rarely wears
anything but this halter-and-hot-pants combo, with a jacket draped around her elbows. I
always see her and can't help but think, "Hey, sister, here's a fashion flash! If you don't
want to look like you're walkin' the streets, put the jacket over your shoulders!"
Like she would have listened … Trust me: She can glare at you, then growl. And it's
scary, friend. Damned scary.
Oh, well …
At least there's the girl. As I said, these clowns didn't even know she was a girl, at first.
But I knew. I knew right away. And I liked her — a lot.
There was this one adventure they had: They've run out of food on their ship, which is
traveling through space when it's hit by another ship. Turns out it was a hit-and-run.
Their ship is knocked off course and crashes on the Jovian moon of Io. (Remember that
it's 2071 and that Mars, some asteroids and the Galilean moons of Jupiter have been
terraformed and settled.)
So their ship ends up in semiarid grassland, and Metal Man tries to fix the ship. What
exactly Lumpy and Bootsie are doing at this point, I don't know. The girl, on the other
hand, heads off toward the nearest town to find some food for everyone.
I have to tell you: The kid's quite a character. To make the trip more interesting, she
covers a lot of ground doing forward rolls. Then she spends some time absolutely fixated
on a cactus. (I think it was a saguaro.) Sometimes, I think she's missing a few cards from
her deck. But that's part of why I like her. A lot.
Finally, she meets a guy selling watermelons out of the back of his pickup truck. Well,
he's not selling to her; she doesn't have any money. That's when a car pulls up, and a
black woman steps out. (Ever watch old movies? Know the one called "Cleopatra
Jones"? The woman looks a little like her.) She tells the vendor she's a bounty hunter and
is looking for someone. At that, she buys a watermelon and drives off — not knowing
that the girl is now hiding in the car's trunk.
A little while later, the trunk is opened. The noise from the ensuing scuffle among two
cops and the black woman — who honestly doesn't know how the girl got here —
awakens the girl, who then slips away into town.
Once there, the girl sees a guy I can describe only as a fat Rastafarian, eating a hot dog
and carrying an old satchel. Another black man comes up, dragging a light-colored coffin
down the street. (You think that's strange? The guy says his name is "Shaft." With him,
Cleopatra Jones and Rasta Man, I thought some kind of convention was in town.)
Well, Shaft and Rasta Man get into an argument. Seems that Shaft blames Rasta Man
for the food-poisoning death of Shaft's brother. The coffin, Shaft says, is for Rasta Man.
While they're arguing, a truck runs over the coffin, and Shaft is so distraught, Rasta Man
takes the opportunity to cut out. He leaves so abruptly, some mushrooms spill out of the
satchel. The girl sees this, remembers that she's supposed to get food for the crew and
takes the mushrooms back to the ship.
Now …
… let me tell you about these 'shrooms …
They're trippin'. I mean, TRIPPIN'. I mean, "eat-one-and-you-go-bouncin'-down-the-
street-while-you're-yippin' " trippin'. The girl finds reason to suspect that, so — good
news — she's sharp enough to check them out.
Bad news — she decides to check them out on the crew. She leaves a 'shroom on a
plate and watches as each of the others comes by and eats it.
Then she … observes ...
Lumpy ends up raising and lowering his feet in place on a step on some stairs. Just
stands there, raising and lowering his feet. Finally, he lets out this piquant observation:
"Obnoxious little frog …"
OK …
Bootsie stands in a restroom for a long time, then she starts doing swim strokes. Rather
good ones.
OOH-KAAAAY …
Metal Man pets his bonsais and talks to them. Yes, he's talking to trees …
Actually … that made some sense to me: About a hundred years ago, some people
believed that talking to plants would help them grow better. I just don't think that even
they thought the plants could talk back. Which Metal Man apparently thought.
OOH-KAAAAY …
After all this, the girl comes to the inevitable conclusion that the 'shrooms must not be
good to eat. To which, I thought, "REALLY, Einstein? What gave you the clue? Dancing
with frogs? Synchronized swimming in the can? Secrets of the universe from six-inch
cedars?"
Hey, she's a brilliant computer hacker, but no one ever said she was a rocket scientist.
But to be fair …
… Einstein wasn't a rocket scientist, either …
Later, she's watching TV and sees that Rasta Man is wanted for selling illegal
'shrooms. The girl decides to catch him, get the bounty and buy food for the crew.
So off with a backpack she goes, on a motorized scooter. On her way into town, she
sees the hit-and-run spaceship that struck her ship. She goes in and sees Rasta Man
plucking mushrooms off boards in the hold. He's surprised to see that she's able to just
walk right in, but he's more stunned when she pulls twin guns from the backpack.
"Stinky gas!" she yells and pulls the triggers. A noxious gas shoots out from the guns.
Well, it's so stinky, it overpowers her — and Rasta Man takes the opportunity to cut out
with a satchel of 'shrooms. (He does that a lot, I noticed. By the way: If a dog thinks that
something is stinky, it's really stinky. Trust me on this. )
She sets off after him on the scooter, and at a nearby railroad crossing, he jumps a
passing train. When the train clears, guess who's standing on the other side of the tracks?
Shaft! He points in surprise at the girl, but she just points at the departing train — and at
Rasta Man climbing up the back car. And she's off again on the scooter. For his part,
Shaft hijacks a pickup truck waiting at the crossing, starts chasing the train and when he
catches up, he jumps from the truck onto a boxcar's ladder.
Then, from out of nowhere, a convertible races onto the tracks. It's driven by Cleopatra
Jones! (How she got away from the cops, I don't know. I can't be everywhere at once,
OK?) The girl on the scooter catches up to the car, jumps onto the trunk lid, steps on
Cleopatra's head and leaps onto the boxcar at the end of the train.
Well, a lot of shooting follows. The upshot — pardon the pun — is that Shaft falls off
the train into Cleopatra's car, which flips, throws them out and crashes. On the train, the
girl corners Rasta Man and makes scary faces and gestures at him. (Believe me: When
the girl wants to scare you, she can get really frightening. Trust me on this.)
Now, it turns out there's a cow on the tracks ahead. The engineer slams on the brakes,
which stops the train just next to the cow. The forward momentum causes Rasta Man and
the girl to tumble onto the track, with Rasta Man on his back and the girl straddling his
waist. At this point, Rasta Man is so freaked out by this kid, he begs the girl to take the
satchel of 'shrooms if she'll just let him go — and leave him alone. She remembers —
again — that she was supposed to get food for the crew, so she agrees and takes the
'shrooms.
That's when I …
… walk over to the cow …
… and I say …
… "Thank you."
The cow looks at me with her big, dark, vacuous eyes, and she says — completely
oblivious to her near-death — "Oh, it's no problem …"
WHOOOOOOA …
Legally BOVINE …
Oooh, yeaaaah …
To make a long story short at this point, suffice it to say that thanks to the girl, a lot of
shiitake went down on her ship after that. Some really heavy shiitake, man …
But that's another reason I like the girl: In her own off-the-wall, left-field, cross-wired
way, she got food. Which was more than those other clowns on the ship did. Of course,
as I said, those losers didn't even know she was a girl when she first came aboard.
Know what it took for them to find out? The girl wears a loose, oversized light-colored
T-shirt over dark — well, I guess you'd call them biking shorts. That's an old term for
them. Anyway, when the others decided to let the girl stay on the ship, she was floating in
zero-G, and to celebrate, she did a cartwheel. Between her movements and zero-G, the T-
shirt ended up bunched around her armpits. And she wasn't wearing anything underneath.
So — from what I understand about these things — you could then tell, without a
doubt, that the girl was, in fact, female.
I'll never forget Bootsie's line at that moment: "HEY! You're a GIRL!"
Well, DUH …
I knew that already. The first time the girl ever saw me — long before the cartwheel —
I walked over to her. I stood up. Then I rested my face just below her waist.
And I inhaled …
About 80 years ago, there was a movie about a blind man who could tell when a
woman was nearby by the perfume she wore. In fact, he got so good at it, he could
identify their perfumes by name.
And that's what I thought about when my face lay just below the girl's waist and I took
that deep breath:
Ah …
… Scent of a woman …
For her part, the girl looked down at me, with her wild hair billowing above her big
eyes. I don't know what color her eyes are. Hell, I don't even know what color my eyes
are. I've been colorblind from birth.
The girl grinned. And her grin seemed to fill half her young, pretty face.
Then she said …
"…DOGGIE!!"
And from that moment on, I knew …
… we were going to be golden …
Woof.