In the beginning was the ad.

Larry was always amused by the way dogs and their owners

appeared as a perfect match. They could look astonishingly

alike, as if identical twins were manifesting in different

forms—like a Mozart symphony and a perfect sunset. He wondered

if they started out so—people unconsciously drawn to

themselves in their pets—or if animal and human found common

ground over time as their relationship deepened.

He also wondered if others could see how much he and Zeus

had in common. Zeus was a genetic marvel—part everything. He

was a shade too big for a border collie, but nowhere near the size

of a German shepherd. He had the hunting instincts of a springer

spaniel and the intelligence of a French poodle. He was part all

of them—and probably more. The vet declared him as decidedly

“something else” and said the dog definitely would not win best

of breed in any AKC event, although he could probably be

entered in at least four categories, maybe six.

Larry had had absolutely no intention of getting a dog; the

idea had never crossed his mind. Even in retrospect, he couldn’t

fully rationalize the improbable series of events that brought

them together. The odds must have been a billion to one. But in

fact the outcome had already been determined; Zeus and Larry

were destined to be together. In a very real sense, the fate of the

world depended on it.

CHAPTER 1

In the Beginning

Was the Ad

On the third of May, 1999, a freak tornado tore through the

Wistful Willows trailer park some thirty miles southwest of

Norman, Oklahoma, leaving several people dead, over eighteen

mobile homes destroyed, and a litter of three six-week-old puppies

stranded with no mother. The pups were rescued by Lucille

Douglas, a volunteer emergency medical technician assigned to

the team serving Norman Regional Hospital. She was at home

glued to the TV set, like almost everyone else within a hundredmile

radius, when she took the call from the EMT team. It was

well into the early hours of Tuesday morning. The call came as

no surprise, as both KFOR and KWTV had been broadcasting

tornado watch warnings and preliminary damage reports for the

past twelve hours. Luckily, most people in the storm’s path had

plenty of advance notice and were able to get out of harm’s way.

But not everyone escaped what was later classified as the most

damaging twister in U.S. history.

It rated an F5 on the Fujita scale, with truck-mounted

Doppler radar clocking wind speeds of 318 miles per hour—the

highest ever documented anywhere on earth! Several days later,

after James Lee Witt, head of the Federal Emergency

Management Agency, declared eleven surrounding counties eligible

for federal aid, the local officials began finalizing the tallies:

over thirty dead, more than three thousand homes severely damaged

or destroyed, and losses exceeding 1.5 billion dollars.

Lucy threw on her EMT overalls and drove the short distance

down Porter Street to Norman Regional to join one of the

ambulance crews assigned to the disaster scene. Bridge Creek

was less than sixteen miles from the hospital. The drive down I-

35 to OK-9 should have taken no more than forty-five minutes.

This trip, even with the flashing lights and sirens clearing the

way, took the team over an hour and a half. The state police and

sheriff’s department had their hands full providing access to the

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disaster scene for the highway maintenance, phone, power, and

emergency vehicles while keeping the press, curious onlookers,

and distraught relatives at bay.

Lucy thought herself lucky to be on a team with Roger

Thornton, widely acknowledged as the state’s most experienced

disaster specialist. Roger was also well-versed on tornadoes and

gave the group an insider’s view of these quirky weather patterns

as they picked their way along rubble-strewn roads. He was

obviously concerned about the storm-chasing “tourists” whose

only training, he surmised, was viewing the movie Twister.

“These idiots will get themselves killed for the chance of having

one of their homemade videos make the six o’clock news. They

not only risk their own lives, they put the real pros in jeopardy

by clogging up the roads.” On the other hand, he couldn’t heap

enough praise on the way the people at the Storm Prediction

Center and the press were handling information dissemination.

Thanks to their cool professionalism, he estimated, hundreds—if

not thousands—of lives were saved.

The last stretch of road leading to Bridge Creek off OK-9

was ironically called Lovers’ Lane. The current scene of tangled

debris and fallen branches made a mockery of the twisted road

sign—a biting reminder of gentler times. Roger’s calm voice provided

welcome assurance. His last piece of advice concerning the

“four P’s” of emergency evacuation turned out to be prophetic.

“This is probably the hardest hit area of the most devastating

storm ever recorded in Oklahoma, if not the entire United

States. I understand the trailer park’s been hit pretty hard. From

what the sheriff’s people reported, it won’t be a pretty sight. The

good news is we’re not the first on the scene, but we’re going to

have our hands full. Hope for the best and be ready for the

worst, and don’t forget to take care of the four P’s, the possessions

that people value most: pets, pictures, pills, and PCs.”

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Lucy subsequently told Larry that she heard the puppies long

before she saw them and that the gut-wrenching pain caused by

their cries will stay etched in her body memory forever. She followed

the shrill sounds to three little bodies huddled against each

other, pressed into the lifeless form of their mother who had

birthed and nurtured them in a shallow furrow beneath a tangle

of brush under a black willow tree, some thirty yards from the

nearest structure. Mama would probably have been fine except

for the unlikely shard of glass embedded deep in her neck. In

Lucy’s mind, she died saving her litter, and that made her a super

mom and each of her puppies one of destiny’s chosen children.

That thought—and Lucy’s flair for the dramatic—explained

the rather strange ad Larry saw in Sunday’s paper, less than one

week after the tragedy:

PHOENIX RISING! Three miracle puppy survivors of

the WW disaster, ascending out of the ashes to help us

embrace the winds of change. Each will be placed in the

partnership/care of an equally special human. You will

know. Reply by e-mail only: PhoenixPups@aol.com.

Everything about the ad was strange. It appeared under

“Employment Opportunities,” sandwiched between job offers

for a paralegal and a plumber’s assistant. It made no mention of

breed. It contained none of the usual clichés like cute, adorable,

needs a good home, loves children, and the like. It almost challenged

response by providing no contact information beyond the

e-mail address.

Larry was hooked the instant he read it, even though every

part of his rational mind yelled at him to turn the page. Even

from the vantage point of 20/20 hindsight, he never understood

what made him notice Lucy’s ad in the first place. Larry had

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started that particular morning as he had begun each day during

the eighteen months since his divorce became final. He retrieved

the paper from wherever it was tossed, poured a glass of rubyred

grapefruit juice, and scanned the sports pages.

This mini ritual was simply a prelude to the real business at

hand—matching wits with the grand master expert play in the

bridge column and doing the daily crossword puzzle. Every so

often, for reasons Larry could never understand, he was drawn

to the horoscope on the facing page—almost as if there was a

secret message waiting. Today was one of those occasions. “Now

that spring is on the descendant, it is time for you to clean house

like never before. Summon the resolve and courage to surrender

the old and emerge like the Phoenix, from the ashes of your past.

Prepare for great adventures. Your time has come.”

The horoscope reminded Larry briefly of Marianne, and

without bitterness he wished her well. Their seven years together

had opened like a heart-stopping Disney A-ride and gradually

faded into two people conversing in different languages across a

widening chasm. They both deserved better. Unlike Larry,

Marianne knew exactly what she wanted out of life, and her

meteoric career as a clinical psychologist eloquently confirmed

her ability to get it. Her many articles in women’s magazines and

regular talk-show guest slots had made her a minor celebrity,

caught in the whirlwind of her own success.

All Larry knew with any degree of certainty at the time of

their divorce was that he was somewhere between his thirty-seventh

and thirty-eighth birthdays and his life wasn’t working. His

partnership with Cresswell, Timmons, and Baker paid well but

offered little else. There was the little cabin in Idyllwild, two cars,

a substantial investment portfolio, no children, and a community

property state. Although he and Marianne still loved each other,

both knew it was time to move on. This made the mechanics of

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the divorce relatively easy. It was completed almost before it

began; Marianne never missed a beat, and Larry lost his codependent

crutch. The last eighteen months had been, as he liked

to call it, a prolonged time of healing.

The horoscope hit home. He briefly toyed with the idea that

it was a plant, paid for by Mark Marston or one of the other

goofballs from the Poker, Drinking, and Quipping Society—a

group of intelligent, successful, and otherwise dignified men who

met monthly on the first Thursday after the full moon to relive

college memories of their misspent youth.

Any one of the PDQ Society’s six members could have paid

the newspaper to load Gemini with secret messages for a year.

But they hadn’t. Nor had they paid off Ming’s Chinese Palace to

give Larry a rigged fortune cookie the night before that read:

“Good fortune, like Phoenix, arise in proper time.” Larry briefly

cultivated the notion that the world was covertly run by the

Peking Noodle Company, whose clandestine messages were

delivered by undercover agents, disguised as Chinese waiters,

informing us on a need-to-know basis. Last night he had added

the fortune to a small collection of 5/8”x 25/8” coated white papers

inscribed with Chinese wisdom that he kept in a beige suede

pouch along with Indian sacred objects from Taos in his desk’s

top right-hand drawer. After reading the horoscope and the classified

ad, he got up to check. Sure enough. Last night’s Phoenix

message was still there.

Larry was keenly aware that for the third time in twenty-four

hours the word “Phoenix” had played a prominent role in his

consciousness. If it was a conspiracy, it had to involve a lot of

people, including whoever had caused America’s most devastating

tornado to trigger the events culminating in the appearance

of the four-line ad in the Los Angeles Times. The instant he read

it, Larry knew the ad was meant only for him.

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He went to his laptop and composed the first of many emails

to Lucy:

Dear Phoenix Pups,

I too am an arising Phoenix preparing for the next

phase of my adventure. I have been waiting for this transformation

and your arrival for thirty-seven years. Please

let me know when we can meet. Reply by e-mail at earliest

convenience.

A slew of e-mails followed, in which the two shared thoughts

on life, philosophies, favorite foods, movies, and the wackiest

political moments throughout history. Over the next few days,

Larry confided more to Lucy about his personal life than he had

to close acquaintances. Somehow, the anonymity of electronic

mail and the sincerity of Lucy’s perceptions made it easier. Lucy

also learned much more than the facts Larry chose to share. She

delighted in his offbeat sense of humor, his display of tenacity

and flexibility in playing her “take-away” e-mail game, and,

above all, his genuine desire to make a difference on this planet.

What Lucy didn’t share with Larry was that she was reading

his e-mails alongside those from other respondents. She

explained later that she had been “informed” by some inner

voice to keep one of the puppies for herself and give away the

other two to “special people” who were waiting for them on

either coast. Lucy claimed this inner voice had directed her to

place the same Phoenix Rising notice in the “Employment” section—

once only, and definitely not under “Pets”—in the May 9

Sunday edition of the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, the

Seattle Times, and the Savannah Morning News.

She must allow the puppies to choose their own partners.

This, she was told, especially applied to the puppy she was

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eventually to keep for herself. Her next task was to name them.

Because of the unprecedented magnitude of the tornado that had

torn through their collective lives, Lucy was inspired to give each

the name of a god. The sole female in the litter—the one that ultimately

became hers—Lucy named Sekhmet after the Egyptian

goddess of fire, who has the body of a woman and the head of a

lioness and is typically portrayed seated on a throne. The two

males she named Rama, to honor the attributes of the Indian

warrior god who conquered the demonic Ravana; and Zeus,

who ruled Olympus as the Greeks’ supreme god of the sky and

was thus directly responsible for the terrible twisters that had

begun this improbable chain of events.

As e-mail responses arrived from the four cities, Lucy felt like

the International Olympic Committee accepting bids for future

venues. Any doubts or concerns were swiftly allayed by some

higher awareness deftly instructing every aspect of the process.

Lucy was comfortable surrendering herself to this higher knowing.

She was too intuitive to allow her ego to override the

extraordinary flow of events sweeping her along.

At Lucy’s suggestion, her final communication with Larry,

nine days after the ad appeared, was by telephone. By the time

Larry learned that Lucy and the pups were half way across the

continent, he was too far gone to care. He would gladly have

traveled to Panama if that was part of the deal. Lucy also laid out

for him three final “challenges”—a mini version of the trials of

Hercules, as she laughingly likened them—that would prove,

mostly to himself, his degree of commitment.

One: He could not fly. He had to make the 1,350 mile journey

by car, driving alone. Certain processes—Lucy used a few

new-age buzz words like “reprogramming,” “frequency tuning,”

and “downloading”—needed to take place during the journey to

attune Larry and his partner to their new relationship.

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Two: He and his pet must first see each other within twelve

hours of the full moon, which would occur in Norman,

Oklahoma at precisely 6:40 a.m. on Sunday, the thirtieth of May.

By Larry’s calculations, then, he had to arrive at Lucy’s house

some time between 6:40 p.m. on Saturday and 6:40 p.m. Sunday.

Three: The final selection process was up to neither Lucy nor

Larry. If one of the puppies did not clearly select him, the deal

was off and he would have to return home alone.

Larry arranged his work schedule so he could take extra

vacation time, padding the long Memorial Day weekend into a

six-day trip. He decided to allow two days for the journey east,

one day to visit Lucy and pick up his new companion, and three

days to return home. If some arcane force was tampering with

his inner circuitry while he navigated the endless ribbon of concrete

interstates constantly receding before him, he wasn’t aware

of it. All he knew was that the smooth jazz of 94.7 FM was soon

replaced by country music and stayed that way until he reached

his destination. He made a mental note to stock CDs on his next

trip.

Lucy appeared pretty much as she had described herself: in

her late forties, pleasant-looking, with a trim, athletic build and

strawberry blonde hair that she kept in a pony tail. However,

certain qualities transcended her physical appearance and spoke

volumes about who she really was. Her eyes were grayish-green,

and when she looked at Larry, he felt he could trust her implicitly.

She managed to convey a highly improbable mix of guilelessness

and impeccable discernment. Her smile could turn an

iceberg into a gentle puddle.

The two liked each other instantly. It appeared both had been

completely honest in their communications, and they were comfortable

dealing at a level of trust uncommon in the first twenty

years of a “normal” relationship. Perhaps the fact that they conx

In the Beginning Was the Ad x

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x

nected only at the level of the Phoenix Pups, with no innuendo

of personal relationship, helped.

Their get-to-know-each-other cup of coffee was interrupted

by the sound of scratching at the back door. “Ah, the time has

come,” Lucy said, “to meet the brood. Apparently your arrival

has not gone unnoticed, and one of the puppies appears to be

anxious to meet you firsthand.” With that she opened the door

to her back yard and a little ball of fur scampered in, jumped up

on the couch, and began licking Larry’s face.

“Well, I guess that takes care of the third condition. Larry,

meet Zeus. Zeus, it seems you already know Larry. I had a feeling

the two of you were destined to be together. I’m glad I was

right.”

Larry was introduced to the other two members of the litter,

who, however, seemed more interested in playing with a blue ball

that jangled as it rolled. Zeus, on the other hand, never left his

side. The three spent the rest of the day driving out to Bridge

Creek, tracing the route Lucy had covered with her EMT team

nearly four weeks earlier. The roads had been cleared of broken

branches and downed power lines, but visible reminders of the

devastation were everywhere. The badly bent pole with the hanging

road sign identifying Lovers’ Lane was exactly as Lucy

recalled it. So was the Wistful Willows trailer park.

Unfortunately, not one of the graceful thirty-year-old trees for

which the lower-income community was named remained

undamaged. Jagged, broken trunks provided poignant proof of

the F5 twister.

They walked through the remnants of destroyed lives in reverent

silence. Zeus quietly left Larry’s side and disappeared

behind a pile of twisted rubble. When they found him, he was sitting

next to what was left of the black willow tree where Lucy

had discovered the litter. He didn’t move a muscle. He sat mutely,

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doing whatever dogs do when they know the exquisite sadness of

losing the one presence they loved most.

They left the little puppy there alone, allowing him whatever

he needed to create closure. Somehow, Zeus seemed to know his

life was about to move in a decidedly different direction and he

would never return here again. The three exited the trailer park

without saying a word.

It struck Larry when he first met this funny-looking little

puppy that he was no ordinary dog. It would take almost two

and a half years to discover how much of an understatement

this was.

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