The Alhambra Covenant

By Oz Hardwick

The theater was built by children, their small hands towering bricks with unlikely precision. The design came from a competition on a TV show that was popular at the time, though no one remembers it now, on which there was a weekly segment with a talking dog. The dog headlined the theatre’s opening night, groomed beyond perfection as it spoke of the way that we — the kids who crowded the plush auditorium — were the future, and that the arts, as much as putting a man on the Moon (it must have been the 60s) would shape a world, and possibly a whole Space Federation, in which every one of us would be happy forever. It was the first time in my life that I cried for joy. And it was my first — and so far only — brush with celebrity as, later that evening, I bumped into the dog along the seafront, sniffing around outside the penny arcade. He gave me an inky pawprint in my autograph book, and he gave me the sort of look that humans can only aspire to, as he assured me that every word he’d said was true.
Of course, he’s long gone and forgotten, the arcade’s boarded up, and the theatre’s falling down; but I read the papers, I watch the News, I doom scroll through worsening catastrophes, and I know who I’d rather believe.