Joint Custody

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  The bartender pushed our drinks across the bar at us before we’d even sat down, which we did, swiveling to scope out the room.

  “Oops!” The Man said. “In all the excitement, I forgot to do something.”

  I tilted my head, questioning.

  “I have to see a man about a dog.”

  I tilted my head harder.

  “I, uh,” The Man said, embarrassed, “I have to take a pee.”

  Ahhhh, euphemisms.

  Spare me your literary devices, human, and call a pee a pee. Everyone does it and we all gotta go sometime. We’re only humans. And dogs.

  “Come on,” he said, insisting I come with.

  You’d think he’d be willing to trust me on my own for a few minutes, but I knew where he was coming from. It wasn’t me he didn’t trust; it was all the other people. Who knew what sort of nefarious person might try to take me home with them if they saw me sitting there all by my handsome lonesome?

  I leaped down off my stool.

  Not much more than a minute later, we were side by side in front of the urinal, him standing, me wagging my tail encouragingly at his feet; The Man can sometimes get uncomfortable with public urination. So while The Man was doing his business, I was simply offering moral support.

  The bathroom was pretty seedy, with real characters moving in and out around us. There was also a heck of a lot of graffiti everywhere. On the back wall behind the urinal, in classic black Sharpie, someone had written: For a good time, call Hannah. Whoever wrote it had even helpfully provided a phone number.

  The Man zipped up his pants, turning to me with a wide grin.

  “Whatddya think, Gatz? We like a good time and we’re supposed to be celebrating.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Should I call Hannah?”

  I tried to get into it. Really, I did.

  I thumped my tail, I let my tongue hang, I even attempted a leer. In short, I did all the elbow-elbow/nudge-nudge things one would expect from a good wingdog. But here’s the thing: it was all feigned. My heart just wasn’t in it.

  Whatever enthusiasm I’d had for meaningless affairs was gone.

  A memory came to me then, a memory of a scene I’d imagined just a week ago.

  New Man and The Woman open a bottle of wine, talk over books and writing, someone lets their hand linger on the bottle too long. They both stare at the bottle. They both stare at each other.

  OK, so maybe it involved a lot of just staring, and maybe the bottle thing was kind of weird, but that had more romance in it than this.

  Even if The Man was obviously kidding about calling Hannah.

  As had happened so many times before, because we are that close, The Man must’ve read my mind. OK, maybe not all the finer details, but he definitely got the gist.

  He let out a sigh, not a happy one.

  “I think I’ve been deluding myself,” The Man said.

  I looked down at my paws, back up at The Man. For his part, he looked over the writing on the wall, and from the way his eyes were going, I’d bet anything his mind was moving quickly.

  “I need something more than this.”

  And, just like that, I was in panic mode.

  Oh no! Not you too!

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  That same night . . .

  We arrived home, both in our own heads, each occupied with our own thoughts.

  The Man moved toward the window, taking in his own view of the city. It was much smaller than New Man’s, but it still had beauty.

  Me, I headed straight for the bathroom. Once inside, I shook my booty at the door, slamming it behind me. I then proceeded to pace up and down the tiny bathroom, still panicked.

  Why was I so panicked? you may well ask. Well, it went something like this:

  What am I gonna do, what am I gonna do, WHAT am I gonna do? First, The Woman meets someone new, and I think I’m doing a fine enough job of keeping them apart, come to find out they’ve been TOGETHER PRACTICALLY THIS WHOLE TIME WITHOUT MY KNOWLEDGE! Then, I FINALLY get her to see that he’s not The Man, I FINALLY get her away from him, and The Man hits me with this. He needs something more than meaningless? MORE than MEANINGLESS? How much longer can I realistically keep them from other people? He is not allowed to find a New Woman. They both want more, so how can I keep them from—

  I froze in my tracks.

  Wait . . . He’s single . . . SHE’S single . . .

  I bounded toward the living room, intending to exit the bathroom but completely forgetting the door stood between me and it because I’d slammed it. I therefore crashed into the door, which was not ideal, causing myself to tumble over backward. Thankfully, the power of my energetic bound had popped the door open from its flimsy old-fashioned frame and I was able to leave with no further ado.

  Not taking the time to pause to perform a concussion protocol, I leaped into the living room.

  The Man was still deep into his contemplative state, which I easily disrupted with my loud entrance. He looked up to see me crashing across the room toward him.

  “What’s up, buddy?” he asked.

  I jumped over the couch, soaring across the remaining feet that separated us and crash-landing into the wall next to the stereo.

  Still not bothering to run a concussion protocol.

  The Man came over to see what I was up to, but I ignored him for the moment, all my attention focused on manipulating the stereo buttons.

  I’m not going to lie and say I got it right the first time. That would be too hard to believe.

  So maybe it took me a few shuffles, but through trial and error, I eventually found exactly the song I was looking for: “When I Was Your Man” by Bruno Mars.

  When in doubt, I always reach for Bruno Mars. Bruno is my jam.

  As the opening bars blasted out, I bored my eyes into The Man, begging him to get the message.

  I gazed with wistful longing toward the bedroom, hoping he got the point about the same bed feeling bigger without the one you love to share it with you.

  “Gatz, what do you—”

  I turned toward the stereo, shaking my head sorrowfully at the sheer pain of it all. What must it be like to hear your song—your song, the one that you chose together—playing once she’s gone?

  “Buddy, I don’t understand what—”

  The pain of hearing friends talking about the person you broke up with, after the fact.

  OK, so maybe they didn’t have any friends in common, never had, but not every line can correspond in a one-to-one relationship with an individual’s pain and heartbreak. Even Bruno Mars isn’t enough of a magician to pull that off. Still, I made the most of it, going with it as best I could. I nodded knowingly; I gazed heartbroken at the heavens.

  “Is there something going on in your life that I should know about?” The Man asked.

  Your life, you idiot! Doesn’t your heart break a little every time you hear The Woman’s name?

  I looked straight at The Man, back to full wistful.

  And now we were at the part of the song where Bruno is almost howling.

  “Gatz—”

  Taking my cue, I jumped into the famous prelude to the chorus, throwing back my head and letting loose with an accompanying anguished howl of “OOH-OOH-OOHOOH-OOOOOOOH!”

  “OK,” The Man said. “Sure.”

  You’re not all that young, and you really should have brought her flowers, dude!

  I became less theatrical in my, um, theatrics. Instead, I let my eyes do the talking, dog to man.

  After a beat, so long it made me begin to doubt his intelligence, I saw the light dawn in his eyes as the chorus played through.

  Because you’re an idiot, she had to go dancing with someone else!

  “But that’s just it, Gatz. She’s with another man.” He sighed. “It’s over.”

 
As the music continued, I vehemently shook my head no. If I was going to succeed in getting one thing through that thick beautiful skull of his, it had to be that, no, she was no longer with New Man. They were kaput. Finito.

  “What do you mean, no?”

  Thank you, Jesus.

  “Gatz, she’s with that famous author, that guy who’s always on the stupid Times bestseller list. I know because—”

  I shook my head again. Between me and Bruno, we were doing our best here. Could he not get a clue?

  “I know because the craziest thing happened. An email came through on the contact form of my website.”

  Seriously? We were going to talk about his fan mail at a time like this? But I thought we already established that he doesn’t really get any. It was probably just another author, asking for a blurb. Or spam, in which case: just delete!

  “The email said that the two of them were a couple. The writer, who didn’t sign it, seemed to expect me to do something about it. But what was I supposed to do? We weren’t together anymore. But when I tried to reply, to inform the anonymous writer of that fact, it bounced back as undeliverable. I told myself it was just some crazy prank, because I wanted to believe she hadn’t moved on, but then I saw the two of them together in a coffee shop one day when I went out to get the papers while you were still sleeping and, well, I could just tell.” He paused. “Remember that commercial fiction bestseller’s book she gave me on our first Hanukkah together?”

  For once, he didn’t wait for my response.

  “It’s that guy. And, damn! His author pic? That guy’s so handsome! Why’d he have to be so handsome?”

  I shook my head again, so hard this time, I thought it might fly right off my body.

  “She . . . She’s not with him anymore?”

  More headshaking, but a little less vigorous this time. It was time I exercised some caution. The old noggin was taking a heck of a beating.

  Thankfully, my level of vigor proved sufficient. I could see that The Man was processing what I was telling him, beginning to doubt what he thought he knew.

  “But that . . . But that doesn’t mean she’d want to be with me again . . .”

  Bruno was getting ready to wail again, and I was right there with him.

  “OOH-OOH-OOHOOH-OOOOOOOH!” I joined in again.

  “I don’t know what that means,” The Man said.

  Stop being so dumb! You’re not that young!

  I moved in front of the stereo, jabbing my snout at him repeatedly to indicate the words were about The Man.

  Flowers, hand-holding—you need to put in the work if you want to have a relationship, dude!

  I looked into The Man, and I could see he was really getting it now: more flowers, more hand-holding, less being a douche. OK, I added that last one, but come on, you know it’s true. And anyway, it’s implied.

  But now that The Man was finally getting it, his defenses were wearing down and he just looked so sad and lonely.

  Well, I guess it can’t be easy, realizing you’ve been acting like a douche.

  You should’ve spent more time focusing on her. When you had the chance, that’s what you should’ve been doing.

  The Man had started shrinking into himself. As depressed as he’d been since last Hanukkah and Christmas, this was worse, seeing that he’d missed his best shot at that brassiest of brass rings: True Love.

  You should’ve taken her to every party she ever wanted to go to. All she wanted to do was dance!

  The Man’s head went up as he finally grasped the true wisdom of Bruno Mars.

  Aha!

  The Light Bulb Moment.

  “Dancing . . .” The Man mused.

  Suddenly, it was like his whole face was suffused with energy, and I started leaping up and down, nodding vehemently all the while.

  “I could take her dancing,” The Man said.

  I looked up at him with all the joy and love in the world.

  Yes.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Same night; so late, it’s practically a new day . . .

  The Man gulped as he hit #1 on speed dial on his cell phone and placed it to his ear.

  See? Even after all these months, even though they’d broken up, she was still #1 on his speed dial. She’d always be his #1.

  He looked to me for support, and if I could’ve, I would’ve given him a thumbs-up right then. Instead, I settled for jumping up and down until he got the message, turning on speakerphone.

  Hey, I’d architected this whole thing. The least he could do was let me hear both sides and not have to rely on his secondhand report of the She Said part of things later. Secondhand reports can be so unreliable. You almost never get all the nuance.

  I tried to picture what things would look like in her apartment. I pictured her being ecstatic at being finally rid of New Man, but then I remembered the pain in her voice after they’d split up, and I knew that was just wishful thinking on my part. What was more likely? The Woman would be lounging across her bed reading a book, in cozy yet chic clothes. She’d be looking fairly downcast, having trouble concentrating on the text.

  Yeah, that sounded about right.

  Then her cell phone would start to ring, and she’d pick it up, concern washing over her face when she saw the number on caller ID. Sure enough . . .

  “Is everything OK?” were the first words out of her mouth.

  Not exactly the reaction The Man had been expecting, made evident when he responded with, “Um, hi to you too?”

  “You only phone, instead of texting, when something’s wrong with Gatz. What happened? Is Gatz in trouble? Did he eat something? Is he lost?”

  “Oh no! Gatz . . . Gatz is fine!”

  I pictured her shoulders relaxing at that news, relieved if not a little annoyed that he hadn’t opened with that.

  “Oh, OK,” she said. “Well, good.”

  “He’s fine, maybe a little depressed and anxious lately, but largely he’s OK.”

  “Oh, um, OK.”

  “Yeah, I think he’s OK.”

  “That’s great.” Long, expectant pause, but when no more was forthcoming: “So, why did you call tonight?”

  The Man froze. Still not able to master the thumbs-up thing, I nodded at him for moral support.

  “We should get together,” The Man said abruptly.

  “What?”

  “Yeah, I thought we could . . .”

  I looked at him encouragingly, but The Man, frozen in fear, could only shrug back, like: Eh. He got nothing.

  “You thought we could what?” The Woman prompted.

  I gestured with my snout toward the stereo, hard—one, two, three times. Come on, dude, just get it already. Don’t make me put on Bruno Mars again!

  And . . . epiphany.

  “DANCING!” The Man practically shouted. Way too loud and way too awkward, but we’d just have to find a way to work with it.

  I pictured The Woman pulling the phone away from her ear, wincing at the volume.

  “What?” she said.

  “YES! DANCING!” Clearly, he was still having trouble with the volume. Thankfully, he modulated it as he continued with an enthusiastic, “You and me. We should go dancing! . . . Dinner and dancing!”

  I really wished I could see her face for real right then. Was she charmed? Amused? Had she missed his frantic awkward energy and was now recalling it with a fond smile?

  “You never wanted to take me dancing before,” she said.

  “Well, I do now.”

  This time, even though I couldn’t see it, I could hear the smile spread across her face.

  “OK, yes,” she said simply. “Why not? That would be great.”

  “Great! Yeah!”

  Me, I was beating my tail against the hardwood floor, ecstatic.

 
“When did you want this dancing to occur?” she asked.

  “Um . . . tonight! How’s tonight? No time like the present.”

  “To-tonight?”

  “Sure! Why not?”

  “Well, it is almost midnight . . .”

  “Midnight, schmidnight! This is the City That Never Sleeps! The Big Apple! We can sleep when we’re dead! Buried six feet under!”

  “No time like the present”? And “the City That Never Sleeps”? For a literary writer of his stature, respected in highbrow circles throughout the world even if his royalty checks never reflected that high level of respect, he sure was trotting out all the old clichés tonight. The next thing you know, he’d be telling her, “the night is still young” and “you only live once.” Well, just so long as he didn’t abbreviate it to YOLO. Because then I’d know the guy had really gone off the deep end.

  Still, I couldn’t really fault the guy. It must be bizarre to have believed you’d lost the love of your life forever only to see that maybe, maybe, you had a second chance. So no one should fault the guy for failing to break out the Flaubert.

  But if The Woman didn’t fault him for that, she did have an objection to raise.

  “I have to be up for work in six hours,” she said.

  “Right, right, work, uhh . . .”

  “How about Friday?” she suggested.

  “Friday. Friday? Friday! Friday would be perfect!”

  “OK,” she said, laughing softly. “I’ll see you Friday.”

  Who cared if what he’d said had been riddled with clichés? And that he’d said “Friday” too much? It was working!

  “I’ll see you Friday,” he said.

  She hung up the phone then. I’d bet anything she was smiling shyly to herself.

  The Man disconnected his end too, and then we just looked at each other for the longest time, wonder in our eyes.

  We could barely contain ourselves.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Four days later . . .

  The Man was frantically preparing for his date.