“Muffin, he’s the terrier. I didn’t name him.”
“A terrier, that’s the little black and tan one? With the funny beard kinda?”
“Yeah,” Rae laughed. “That’s a terrier.”
“Cool,” I said.
King was bouncing up and down in a way I’d never seen him do. He was a bloodhound. Bloodhounds were supposed to be lazy. I think.
“Where are you friends?”
“No one could make it,” she said.
“Did things go alright, after the other night?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Well, alright enough. Irina’s gotta find some new trashy hipster to crush on, but I don’t think it’ll take her too long. Thanks again for taking care of that.”
“Both my job and my pleasure,” I said. “Not every day I get to throw a trashy hipster out of my, uh, trashy hipster bar.”
“It’s not a trashy hipster bar!” Rae protested. “I mean, unless it is? Shoot, does that make me a trashy hipster too?”
“Here I am with my foot sticking out of my mouth when I’m at the dog park on a gorgeous day with my dog and my new friend,” I said, hoping to defuse the situation. It seemed to work.
“How’s it going with King?”
“Good,” I said. “We went for a run the other day, even.”
“He was pulling ahead on you, just now. You know I trained him to heel, right?”
“You did what?”
“King!” she shouted. King looked up. “Come!” The dog bounded over to her, and she clipped him onto the leash. “Heel,” she said, and then she started walking.
I whistled in amazement. King was just trotting along, exactly at her side. No pulling, no hesitating, no stopping to sniff without permission.
She handed me the leash. “Heel!” I said, starting to walk around.
He heeled.
She knelt down, took the leash back off.
“Pound it,” she said, holding out her fist.
My dog lifted his paw and gave her a kind of doggie fist bump.
“Holy crap,” I told her. “You’re the dog whisperer.”
“Damn right,” she said.
I knelt down. “Pound it,” I said.
King pounded my fist. I had a dog that could pound my fist.
We found ourselves walking the perimeter of the park, and without being asked, Muffin and King started around with us. They got on like wildfire, those two.
“I bring Muffin here because the fence at home, it’s pretty beat up. Got gaps in it. Little dog like him just gets right through them cracks and wanders off if he gets bored while I’m working. So I gotta keep him inside unless I’m with him.”
“So who emasculated your poor little dog?”
“The vet,” she said.
It took me a minute to get the joke. I’m not the fastest. But then I started laughing, and she started laughing.
“Derek, my ex, he was the one who named him Muffin. I think he did it because he was jealous I had another man in my life, wanted to bring him down a peg.”
“Your ex got jealous over your dog?”
“Derek’s not the most un-jealous person around.”
“Idiot,” I said.
“You ever get jealous?”
“Nah,” I said. “Well, I mean, sometimes, when I’m being stupid. But then someone told me ‘jealousy is when someone else has something you don’t.’ So I never got jealous when Emily spent any time with the boys, because I got to spend time with her too, and I got to do more than that. No reason on this earth to be jealous.”
“Emily?”
I sure hadn’t meant to bring up Emily.
“My wife,” I said. “Well, she was my wife.”
“That’s right. You mentioned that.” Rae’s hand came up and squeezed my arm for a second, and then she did something I didn’t expect. She smiled, that dimple coming out high on her cheek. “I can tell she was real special, Luke. You were lucky to have her.”
“Damn right I was,” I said. I looked over at her. The sympathy was there, in her eyes, but it wasn’t pity or anything. I appreciated the way Rae never did that, never treated me like I was some hurt animal you had to feel sorry for.
“I’ve got no idea what that must be like. If you ever want to talk about that, you can.”
“Thank you,” I said. I meant it. “So this ex named your dog Muffin, you said?”
“That’s right,” she continued, kindly picking up where we’d left off. “I tried to call him Jacob for awhile but that little brat likes Muffin better, only responds to it. So that’s that.”
I smiled. She sure knew how to roll with the punches.
“What happened with him? With Derek.”
“Well, it’s kind of a long story.”
“I’m game,” I said.
We were over at the more populated corner of the park, and stopped to let our dogs play in a big pack for awhile.
“My parents split when I was little, ugly divorce, custody battle, all that. I grew up caught between them and knowing how much they hated each other.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It happens.” She shrugged. “So anyway, with their example to follow, I tend to find destructive relationships of my own. Derek was—still is, I think—a failed writer. I stayed with that son-of-a-bitch for three years. Twenty-one to twenty-four. Paid his way for everything, for three damn years. Waiting for him to get himself together. Giving him chance after chance after chance. Till I just couldn’t no more.”
“You left him?”
“I did more than leave him,” she said, and I noticed a muscle in her jaw tighten, her whole posture tensing. “By the end, I had to get a restraining order against him. Irina and Eric and Nicole, they’re the ones who helped me get up the courage.”
“I got a hell of a lot luckier than you, I guess,” I said. “Right from the start. I’ve got pretty great parents. Some of my friends, I see how their parents are, and I can’t even begin to figure out how I got so lucky with mine.”
“They’re still together?”
“Yup,” I said. “I mean, most of the time. Well, they’re always together. Most of the time, they’re even still in love.”
“The rest of the time?”
“Rest of the time they just kind of ignore each other or whatever. My dad goes out fishing with my brother and me for a couple of days to get his head straight, my mom just disappears into her studio for twelve hours a day for three or four days, a few times a year. Paints still life. When she does that, my dad cooks for her and spends his time reading. Seems to work for them.”
“I can’t even imagine,” Rae said.
“Yeah, I got pretty lucky.”
“You religious?” she asked.
“Not really,” I said. If she’d asked me two years earlier, I would have told her different. But things had changed, and hell if I was going to lie to her. “Not so much.”
She just nodded at that. Couldn’t read her. If she’d been a customer on the other side of my bar, I would have known what she thought of what I just said.
We got back to walking over to our corner on the other side of the park. It suddenly occurred to me she might have set me up. The old “all my friends will be there. Just kidding, none of my friends will be there, and now we’re here alone together.” The thought made me smile.
We reached the shade and sat down on the park bench. She sat right next to me, and I turned to look at her. She was beautiful, her face close to mine. She opened her mouth, just that slightest bit, and I almost kissed her. But then I pulled back, pulled away from the question in her eyes.
“I’m not sure I’m ready to be with anyone,” I said. “I probably won’t be for awhile.” I thought about telling her about Maggie, then thought better of it. Too much to explain. Too much that I still didn’t understand, anyway.
“Alright,” she said. She scooted half an inch further from me, and her eyes on mine were steady. She was waiting, patiently. She wasn’t going to prod o
r pry, but I could tell she was curious. She wanted to know what I was thinking, and why.
To hell with it. She wasn’t going to judge me, not like everyone else had. And besides, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I liked her, I really did. I should let her know the whole of the truth. Before I had time to convince myself to keep my mouth shut, I found the words spilling out of me in a torrent I couldn’t have stopped if I’d tried. As if I’d been waiting all this time to talk about it, only I guess it had to be with someone who hadn’t asked. Ain’t that always the way.
“I married my high school sweetheart. We were married five years and it was everything I wanted. I thought my search was over, and I was ready to get on with everything else in my life. We were so sure. We had a house, my grandpa gave us his house, and we didn’t mind being poor. So I started a contractor business. It takes a couple years, more than a couple years, before you can get your own business up and running, when you’re building up your starting capital as you go. Emily and I, we lived paycheck to paycheck, didn’t have insurance.”
Her hand clasped mine, where it sat on my knee. I flinched, but didn’t pull it away.
“So yeah. She was sick, and we didn’t know, and she hid it because I guess that’s just what you do sometimes. She didn’t want me to worry. She didn’t want me to have to go and work for someone else, get some full-time job with benefits that would have kept me from doing what I wanted in life. By the time we knew how bad it was, wasn’t nothing we could do anymore.”
Rae was quiet a moment in that calm way of hers, taking it all in. “When’d she die?”
“A year ago,” I said. “A year and like a week.”
“Do you still have your business?”
“No,” I said. “Real life, man. Real life gets in the way.”
“It sure does,” she said.
We sat like that, contemplating, while the dogs ran around us for another minute or so.
“I’d like us to be friends,” Rae said. “You’re a good guy, I can tell. And sorry for saying so, but I bet you could stand to have someone in your corner every now and again.”
“Okay. I’d like that.” I meant it.
Rae nodded. “Hey, you know what? It’s my birthday in two days. My friends are coming over to my place. Will you come?”
“Yes,” I said.
She grinned.
“Let’s go find some cute dogs to pounce on,” she said. “Always cheers me up.”
I got home more exhausted than I’d been after humping lumber. It was a soul-tired, an exhaustion that went all the way to the marrow. I didn’t feel bad, it wasn’t that. Just exhausted.
I put on the TV, got a beer from the fridge, and laid down on the couch.
I called Warren at the bar, and he and I formalized that I’d be on two days a week, and that my shifts wouldn’t overlap with Maggie’s. He didn’t ask questions, and I appreciated it.
I looked at the clock. It was still early. There was no reason I couldn’t call Natalie. Except that I didn’t want to. I could call Emily’s parents, though. Her mom and dad had moved back in together after Emily and I got married. Well, her mom moved back out to the ranch where she and Em’s dad spent the time they weren’t on tour together. I could call them. Should call them. It’d be nice to hear their voices. Just check in on them, or something. That’s what I should do.
I turned on the TV, put the phone down. There wasn’t any hurry to do that. I wasn’t going to do them any good until I was better myself—I’d just be a drain on them, emotionally, until I was better myself. It didn’t even feel like an excuse, it felt true.
I didn’t have an excuse for why I wasn’t calling Natalie, though. Then I realized I didn’t need one.
The point of the letters was to start feeling better. Start healing. Move forward. Calling Emily’s sister had nothing to do with my progress. Nothing at all. I was the last person she’d likely want to hear from anyway, I knew that much for sure.
I took King for a long walk then, even though we were both tired enough. It was all I could think to do to clear my mind, but I still couldn’t shut up that voice telling me to call Natalie. When I got back I looked at my phone and then shoved it under a couch cushion.
I’d be fine.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Thing about birthdays is, after you hit eighteen, they’re not so good anymore. That’s what Emily used to tell me, she says it’s what her dad used to say. The reason you have a party is that on your birthday you are looking your mortality right in its face. You need all the help you can get, when you’re staring right into the march of time. You’re going to just get older and older until one day, you die.
That’s what Emily used to tell me on my birthday. She had the weirdest sense of humor.
When it came time for her birthday in turn, though, I mostly said sweet things.
Someone like Rae, I had no idea what to say on her birthday. Thankfully, society gives us a script: you just say happy birthday, congratulations. All that nonsense.
That script doesn’t tell us what to buy a 24-year-old you barely know, though.
I knew she liked dogs, so I went to the pet store. Then I realized, she knows everything about dogs and I don’t know the tail from the ears. So I bought her a terrier bobblehead for her dashboard.
I even wrapped it up in a small box with a ribbon around it, because I figured that’s what you’re supposed to do. By the time I got home, though, I realized she was probably as sick of getting dog-themed nonsense as Emily had been of getting horse-themed nonsense.
I stressed about it for a minute, then remembered that was a waste of time. Called my mom, got her advice on a twenty-dollar bottle of red wine, ignored her questions about who it was for. Picked up the bottle from the store, tied a ribbon around it, and headed off to Rae’s.
Buying presents for adults is a hell of a lot easier than buying presents for kids.
There wasn’t time to get stressed out by the wine, though, because I had to hurry up and stress about walking into a house full of strangers. I drove past her house. All sedans and hatchbacks and station wagons, parked out front, visible in the streetlight. No trucks.
I parked about halfway down the block, walked up.
It was a little ranch house, right at the top of north Kansas City. A nice enough place. A little run-down, and she was right, the fence was no good. She probably rented from some cheapskate.
Rang the bell.
Best not to think about it, I told myself. Best not to think about all them people inside or what they’d make of me. Since when did I care what people thought?
I was in my casual best. Clean jeans, clean shirt. The weather was good, my flannel was open. I hadn’t shaved, but if I’m being honest I think it looks good on me when I let it go a day or two. I’ll never be the kind of guy who looks good in a tie, neither. I looked my best when I looked like what I was—a man just that little bit happier when he’s outside, a man who drinks cheap American beer and keeps in shape on the job instead of in the gym. Someone would either like me like that, or they wouldn’t like me at all.
Not that I was there to impress anyone. Rae and I, we were just friends.
Rae opened the door, and she was dressed casual too. So were her friends. Thank God.
“Hey, everyone,” she said, as we walked in together. “This is Luke. Luke, this is everyone.”
Irina, Eric, and Nicole I remembered from the bar. No sign of John Deere, thankfully. There were about a dozen folks more than that. Muffin was ambling from paper plate to paper plate in time to be shooed off by everyone at the party, and I was glad I’d figured right that I shouldn’t bring King.
I wasn’t sure I had a thing in common with a soul in the place, though. I hate to jump to conclusions like that, but I could feel it by the way they were eying me up and down. About half the guys were wearing polo shirts, and I was definitely the only person there in a ball cap. It took me a moment to remember that half the world seems to think a cap is onl
y for kids. The other half knows what a damn good idea it is to have something that keeps the sun out of your face, the hair out of your eyes, and the need for a comb out of your hair.
I wasn’t going let it get to me. A lot of my brother’s friends were like that. Some of them were even nice to me. Some of them were even decent guys.
I handed Rae the bottle of wine, the ribbon still around it, fully aware of everyone looking me over. “Happy birthday,” I said.
“Thanks,” she said. She untied the ribbon, pretending like she didn’t know what she was holding. “Ooh, a bottle of wine!” she said when the ribbon was off. “How’d you know?”
That got laughs from about two of her friends, and me. I guess her sense of humor wasn’t for everyone.
She was the host, though, and couldn’t really keep me company. She had to flutter about the room. I had two options: go for the people I tangentially knew and stick my head into their conversation, or go for the snack table.
I went for the snack table.
“Madison,” a fellow said, walking up to me, drink in hand. “My name’s Madison.”
“Luke,” I said. He seemed like a decent enough guy.
“You know Rae from school?” he asked.
“Huh?” I said. “No, I met her at the shelter.”
“Oh,” he said, like it all made sense.
“How about you?”
“We used to work together,” he said. “Before she went freelance with the technical writing. Before uh, before she was laid off.”
“Sure. What do you do?” I asked. I could small talk. My dad had raised me alright. Didn’t love it, but I could do it.
“I’m a PM,” he said. I must have been staring blankly. “A project manager.”
He proceeded to tell me about his job, and I nodded because I was supposed to, but try as I might I couldn’t summon a lick of interest.
“I bet that’s hard work,” I said, when he’d finished. “Keeping track of everything like that, that seems hard. Like when you’re building a house, keeping all those parts together in your head, remembering who’s going to do what, where you’re going to get parts, all of that.”
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