She started hunting right there in the living room by poking through throw pillows.
“Cold,” he said.
She looked behind books in the shelf.
“Totally cold.”
She searched through Earnest’s wicker toy chest.
“Icy.”
Jeff and Earnest followed her into the bedroom, where she reached into drawers, got on her hands and knees and checked under the bed, and searched coat pockets in the closet.
“Colder, colder, colder,” Jeff said until she walked into the den. “Warmer. Now you’re getting somewhere.”
Hidden at the back of a file-cabinet drawer, Anna finally found a cup exactly like the one she’d broken. On his lunch hour, Jeff had tracked it down in Seattle—a supremely considerate surprise.
Unlike his supremely inconsiderate surprise three weeks ago when he’d given her the shock of a lifetime, wrapped in betrayal and tied with a bow of deception, Anna thought as she tied her own red bow around the roses. Now Jeff ’s surprises were still coming in the form of demanding phone messages that she’d never expected from him. Every night he called and said that Earnest was his and he wanted him back, and she knew Jeff well enough to read his voice’s growing impatience. Now that her shop was open for business again, he might show up at any time and take Earnest away—and she couldn’t stop him. Lately, that prospect had provoked sweaty, bitter dread.
“Here you go.” Anna handed the bouquet to the hunk, whose credit card revealed the unhunkworthy name of Dudley Spitz. “I hope your friend likes the roses.”
“Oh, she will.”
As soon as he’d swaggered away, Anna found Mad Dog Horowitz’s number in her wallet. She picked up the phone.
CHAPTER 18
“Jeffrey? What’s going on? I called your condo, and Anna said you’d moved out. Is that true?”
Jeff closed his eyes. How to answer his mother, Madge? He’d intended to phone her, but he kept putting it off. He and Anna had been separated less than a month, and he wasn’t ready to talk about her with anyone. Though she was being impossible, he wasn’t ready to call it quits with her, either.
Perhaps his resistance to calling it quits—or to contacting Madge—stemmed from his parents’ divorce. It had bruised Jeff. He didn’t have a single memory of them happy together, and he’d sworn never to follow their footsteps into a bad relationship. Nevertheless, he wasn’t ready to accept or admit that his and Anna’s had failed. It was too soon for that.
“Yes, it’s true. I’m living in an apartment.” Jeff slumped back into Mr. Ripley’s plaid sofa.
“What happened?” Madge asked.
“A misunderstanding.”
“What kind of misunderstanding?”
“A dumb one.”
“Most are. Why was yours dumb?” Madge asked.
“Because it didn’t need to happen.”
His mother had a streak of battering ram that used to infuriate his father. She could pinch up her thin face, fire off questions like grapeshot, and make people squirm. She should have been a lawyer instead of a grocery-store checker—and now co-manager, with her boyfriend, of a Sun City, Arizona, video arcade. Her specialties would have been stomping over boundaries and assaulting people’s privacy.
“I don’t mean to be nosy. I respect your right not to talk about it,” she said, in retreat.
“Thanks,” Jeff said. “Talk’s a waste of words right now because I don’t know how things are going to shake out.”
“Are you okay where you’re living? Is it clean? Safe?”
“It’s got hot-pink walls.”
“I like that color. People magazine said that Oscar de la Renta designed hot-pink clothes. Even swimming suits.”
“I’ll bet he didn’t paint his walls hot pink.”
“You never know.”
Jeff heard a thunk, and then his mother came back on. “Sorry. Dropped the phone. Hard to talk and wash dishes at the same time,” she said. “Jeffrey, are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“Sure?”
“You don’t have to worry about me.”
“Anna was a nice girl.”
Was. He didn’t like the past tense.
Anna was a nice girl. Indeed. She was. She is.
Jeff had met her one Saturday morning after stepping out of the shower. He heard a knock on his door and grabbed his robe. Another knock. And another as he hurried, dripping, across the living room. He thought the person was impatient, rude.
When Jeff opened the door, a blonde with gorgeous blue-gray eyes was peering at him over the top of a fan-shaped spray of gladioli that seemed bigger than she was. His first thought was of a nightclub singer, prancing across a stage with a huge feather fan, but the legs of this woman were a little thin for that job.
“Sorry to beat on your door. I was afraid I’d drop this.” The gladiolus fan tilted to the right.
“Need some help?” Jeff straightened it so the water wouldn’t spill. “Let me hold it.” To give her arms a rest, he took it from her.
“Thanks.” Her smile was lovely. “Good luck tonight. I hope lots of people bid on my arrangement and your auction’s a big success.”
“I don’t know anything about an auction.”
“Not for the wildlife shelter?”
“No, and I didn’t order these flowers,” Jeff said.
“Aren’t you Eddie Baker? This is 203-C Erickson Avenue, right?”
“Right, but I’m not Eddie Baker.”
At the unexpected news, she widened her gorgeous eyes and reeled him in, hook, line, and sinker. When she got flustered—and looked adorable—she scraped off his scales, filleted him, and rolled him in cornmeal. Amazing for her to land on my doorstep. A gift out of the blue.
“There must be some mistake. I’m sorry,” she said.
“No problem. Why don’t you come in? We can look up Eddie Baker in my phone book.” Maybe that sounded like “come in and see my etchings,” but what was he supposed to do?
As she followed Jeff into the kitchen, he thought how vulnerable she was. For all she knew, he could be Charles Manson, and a machete could be stashed behind the stove.
He set the gladioli on the kitchen table. “You know, you shouldn’t be so trusting of men. There’s a lot of evil in the world.”
“I could tell in a second that you’re a good person.” Another smile. Those pretty teeth.
What a way to start a Saturday.
Suddenly, Jeff remembered he wasn’t dressed. Water from his hair was trickling down his neck, and he had nothing on under his robe. He grabbed its front to insure he didn’t flash this lovely woman. He, who prided himself on being calm, turned nervous.
He rummaged through a kitchen drawer. “I can’t remember where I left the phone book. It has to be around here somewhere.”
Eventually, he found it in the den, and Anna found out where Eddie Baker lived. And soon Jeff and Anna found out that they liked each other. A lot. Slowly, over time, their “like” tiptoed close to “love.”
On Valentine’s Day, near their seven-month anniversary, Jeff took Anna to the Seattle Aquarium. As little kids hung over the tide pool’s edge and splashed their hands in the water, Anna petted the limpets, hermit crabs, and sea stars. At the harbor seal display, one biologist tossed herring down the gullet of Alice, and another brushed the teeth of Humphrey. A boy in a Nemo sweatshirt begged, “Mommy, can we have a harbor seal?” Everybody in the bleachers laughed.
Jeff pulled Anna through the crowd to the giant Pacific octopus tanks. In one swam Delilah, her arms flowing behind her, graceful as a ballerina. In the other, Inky clung to his glass wall by his suckers, his eight arms spread out like a red sun’s rays. When Jeff and Anna moved close, he aimed his eyes straight at them as if he were making sure they hadn’t concealed a harpoon under their coats.
“Big things are happening here today,” said a docent, who looked like a school marm in a long flowered skirt. “The diver in Inky’s tank
is about to remove the passageway’s partition between him and Delilah. They’ve been yearning for each other for a long time, and now they can finally mate.”
“Imagine a hug with sixteen arms,” Anna whispered.
The diver slid away the partition, and the horny Inky picked up Delilah’s pheromones and came to life. He charged through the tunnel, sprang on her, and covered her with eager arms so no one could tell where he ended and she began. All anyone could see was writhing and swishing.
Love was definitely blooming. Sperm would join eggs, and babies, in the form of plankton, would be in Inky and Delilah’s future. At last, their longing satisfied, they could cohabit for a while.
Jeff led Anna past the otters, spinning and zooming through the water. In a quiet corner near the whale display, he put his arms around her as ardently as Inky’s around Delilah, and Anna wrapped hers around Jeff’s neck.
“I’ve been thinking we should move in together,” he said.
“I’ve been thinking you should be the one to bring it up.”
“I’m bringing it up. Want to get a condo?”
“I’m so glad you asked.”
As Jeff kissed Anna’s smile of agreement, Roman candles showered silver stars inside his heart. “I love you, Anna.”
“I love you too.”
Their two years of living together had been the happiest of Jeff’s life. No pleasure could compare with waking up each morning and finding Anna beside him. Jeff could not understand how a love so deep could have gone so wrong. Their breakup was ridiculous. Somehow he had to get that through to her. He had to try one more time.
He would call Anna again and leave her another message, and this time he would not mention that he wanted Earnest. Jeff would tell her that he was going to sit in front of their condo door till she opened it and let him in to talk—and, if necessary, he would go on a hunger strike. She had to let him explain his side, he’d say. Then if she still wanted to break up with him, he’d reluctantly agree. He was a man of his word, he would remind her. He would be honorable. When they first met, she’d said he was a good person.
Before hanging up, he’d tell her that he loved her.
CHAPTER 19
Anna had expected Sheldon “Mad Dog” Horowitz to remind her of a pit bull, or at least a Rottweiler. He’d be muscular and menacing. He’d foam at the mouth and lunge at throats.
But what she met across the broad expanse of his oak desk was a Chihuahua of a man—short, slight, skittish. He had a small snub nose and translucent ears; from the window behind him, the sun shone through his ears and exposed small veins.
This is Mad Dog? Is Joy crazy? The dissonance between his name and appearance jolted Anna. Nevertheless, she poured out her fears about Jeff ’s demanding phone messages. “I’ll do anything for custody of Earnest,” she said. She’d brought him so that Mad Dog could understand why this fight was so important.
Earnest had stationed himself at the door in his tripod posture, his front legs propping up his torso, the easier to bolt and run. The tension he picked up from Anna had put a grim look in his eyes. His preliminary verdict of this meeting was unmistakable: Get me out of here. I have no wish to consort with a Chihuahua.
Mad Dog stopped taking notes and tossed his gold fountain pen on his yellow legal pad. “We need to talk about what could happen with a case like this,” he said. “First, tell me, where did you and Jeff get Earnest?”
“We adopted him from Seattle’s Second Chance Shelter.”
“Do you remember in whose name?”
“Jeff filled out the form, so I guess it was his.”
“He also paid the fee?”
“Yes.”
Mad Dog seemed to prick his translucent ears at this information. “That could be a problem.”
“Problem” jangled Anna’s nerves. “Jeff earns more than I do so he usually paid for extra things like that.”
“Hmmm.” Mad Dog leaned back in his leather chair, which swallowed up his small frame. “If Jeff signed and paid for the adoption, he’s got ownership papers. They make your case more complicated. If you get a judge who views Earnest as personal property, like a sofa, he could rule that legally he’s Jeff ’s dog.”
At this shattering news, Anna’s heart drooped like a parched prayer plant. “It didn’t occur to me that we should adopt Earnest together. I never dreamed Jeff and I would break up.”
“Most couples say that. It’s why lawyers recommend a prenup for pets. Sadly, dogs and cats outlive the average relationship, which is only about two years and nine months.”
About the length of Jeff’s and mine. Anna shrank back in her chair. “Doesn’t it count for anything that Earnest comes to work with me every day? I’m the one who feeds him. I bathe and brush and walk him. He’s nearly always with me. He’s like my child.”
“Who pays his vet bills?”
“I do once in a while, but mostly Jeff.”
“What about food?”
“We feed Earnest the most expensive kibble and canned food. So Jeff always buys it.”
Mad Dog made a quick note on his pad. “Okay. You’re responsible for Earnest’s care, and you spend more time with him. But Jeff’s responsible for him financially. A judge could conclude you’re equally important to him.”
Back to the prayer plant droop. “I guess you could put it that way.”
“Let me tell you how things work.” Mad Dog pressed his fingertips together, forming a peak. “If you go to court, a lot depends on what judge you get. They’re all over the map with pet-custody cases. Judges who see dogs as property could rule that you have to sell Earnest and divide the proceeds.
“Some judges acknowledge a dog’s emotional value. Some consider what’s best for the dog. A few hate these lawsuits and rule as quickly as they can, in which case Jeff ’s adoption papers would give him an advantage. But more sympathetic judges might rule in your favor as Earnest’s main caretaker. Or they could make you and Jeff share custody.”
Anna’s feathers ruffled. “I’ll never let Jeff have Earnest, and I won’t share him.”
As she made this angry decree, she glanced at Earnest, and his feelings were as visible as the veins in Mad Dog’s ears. He was pressing his body against the door as far as he could get from the unsavory Chihuahua. The ridges in Earnest’s forehead said he’d been listening to the consultation, and it had upset him: Do not sell me! I want fresh air. Take me to the dog park!
“How do we know what judge we’d get?” Anna spoke quietly so as not to stress Earnest more.
“We don’t know. And the hearing isn’t always pretty,” Mad Dog said. “One judge I know makes the dog come into court, has the parties call it, and rules in favor of the one it goes to. A poodle got so scared it went to the judge. Could be difficult for a dog.”
And a nightmare for Earnest, who tries so hard to do the right thing. “I could never put Earnest through that. Maybe I should forget custody.”
“Absolutely not! We’ll handle whatever comes up. That’s what I’m here for.” Mad Dog seemed to puff up into a Doberman. He jutted out his jaw, and a vicious glint shone in his eyes. When he smiled, he exposed teeth too large for his face—strong, pugilistic teeth—snatchers, rippers, and grinders.
“I’d like to take on Jeff. You can’t let a former boyfriend push you around. We can win!” he said.
“So there’s hope?”
“Certainly, there’s hope!” Mad Dog barked. “You said Earnest was like your child?”
“Yes.”
“I’d argue that he’s your child substitute, and he should be considered according to child custody laws. As his major caretaker, you’re his mother!”
“But maybe that’s not enough to counter Jeff ’s adoption papers.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll get around them,” Mad Dog said.
Anna wound her fingers around Earnest’s leash, lying in her lap. “If we went to court, how much would it cost?”
“Depends on how long and hard we ha
ve to fight. Litigation’s not cheap,” Mad Dog said.
“Do you have a ballpark number?”
“I can give you an example. Ten years ago a Phoenix couple spent over a hundred grand. They called in animal behaviorists to testify. The husband commissioned a study on canine bonding, and the wife hired a camera crew for a video of her walking and playing with the dog. It was the Cadillac of pet-custody trials, but you get the picture.”
Yes, Anna got the picture. The astronomical expense was as far out of her reach as the top of a hundred-year-old fir tree—if a termite were giving her a leg up.
Her expression must have revealed her dismay, because Mad Dog tucked his killer teeth behind his lips and disguised himself again as a Chihuahua. “You’d better think about this. Going into litigation is a big decision. Clients have told me that fighting over their dog emotionally drained them more than fighting over their kids.”
“I don’t want anything to upset Earnest,” Anna said.
Apparently, Mad Dog’s lust for combat had disturbed Earnest. He’d turned his back to them and pressed his nose against the door. His body said in the starkest terms, You can’t trust a Chihuahua. This is unseemly. I want to go home.
“Is there anything you can do to keep Jeff from calling me all the time?” Anna asked.
“He is the one who signed the adoption papers.” Mad Dog hung the threat over her like Damocles’s sword.
“You can’t make him back off? File a restraining order?”
“I’ll write him a nastygram. It’ll take some of the starch out of him.” Mad Dog chuckled, the glint back in his eyes. “Some bushwhacking will soften him up before we close in for the kill.”
CHAPTER 20
Over the phone, Randy Grabowski sounded like the imperious despot of an inconsequential country. “You have to do a more detailed traffic impact study,” he said.
“Why?” Jeff asked.
“Because cars will turn off Rainier to park behind your building. They could hit pedestrians.”
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