Where Do I Start?

by Chase Taylor Hackett

  “It’s about time,” he said.

  I leaned my back against the doorframe and slid down to sit beside him—he scooched to the side a little, but we were still shoulder to shoulder, looking straight out, not at each other. I did notice he was wearing my sweatshirt. That had to mean something, right?

  “What are you doing here?” I said after a while.

  “You forgot your jacket.” He handed it to me.

  “Ah. Explains why I’m freezing. Thanks.” He leaned against me a little more. Body heat. “You came all the way to Brooklyn for that?”

  “And people say I’m not spontaneous.”

  We sat for a bit.

  “What did you think about Jeff’s—revelations?”

  “I’m so mad at him I can’t even talk about it.”

  “You’re not—mad at me? Or disappointed—or something?”

  “No! God no!”

  “I should have told you.”

  “I might have asked, too, but I didn’t. And it was fine.”

  “I’m glad you brought the dog.”

  “Me, too.”

  I reached across Roger and scratched the dog under his collar where he liked it, and Haggis tilted his head and leaned into my fingers. Man, I loved this dog.

  “I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again, Pup-sicle.”

  “Why would you say that?” Roger said.

  “I thought maybe you and Jeff—had planned that.”

  “No! How could you think I would ever—”

  “You didn’t say anything, you just let him go on, and I thought—”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry, I should have stopped him, but I thought you—And honestly, I never saw you so—Once you were gone, I tore into him.”

  “Yeah? I don’t suppose you…”

  “Broke up with him? Not yet.”

  “Too bad. But you’re thinking about it.”

  “None of your business, nosey!” But he was smiling when he said it. “But if it helps, I seem to remember calling him a prick.”

  “Dweeb, you didn’t!”

  “I did. Feel better?”

  “Much.”

  We settled back next to each other, and sat for a bit without saying anything, and I just enjoyed his warm shoulder against mine. And him.

  “And I know why you brought the dog, Dweeb.”

  “He doesn’t get out enough.”

  “Because you’re afraid of Brooklyn.”

  “Shut up.”

  Long pause.

  “I’m not supposed to call you Dweeb anymore. Sorry.”

  “You can call me Dweeb.”

  We sat there for a bit, and then he let his head fall over onto my shoulder. I leaned my head against his, and I felt those soft curls against my cheek again, after all this time. I closed my eyes.

  If that wasn’t enough, the dog put his head down next to Roger’s leg and sighed.

  All I could think was—I never want to move again.

  Chapter 31

  When the Gingham Dog Met the Calico Cat

  Roger

  I was sitting on the floor with Fletch in a hallway, and I did not want to think. I was through with thinking. I was just comfortable; I was where I wanted to be somehow. And I couldn’t think about that. Because if sitting on a floor in a hallway in Brooklyn, leaning against the strong, warm shoulder of my ex-boyfriend, was where I wanted to be, it was obviously rather telling, and what it was telling, I did not want to hear.

  Besides, I was too tired to think. I was too tired to stand even. I was certainly too tired to go back to Manhattan. But what then? Overnight here? With Fletch? Seriously? And what about Jeff?

  If I was really dumping Jeff, I should probably tell Jeff before I spend the night with somebody else. Because that’s what nice boys do, isn’t it? And was I really the kind of guy to hop from one bed to the next? Not that there had been much activity in bed with Jeff in the last weeks. And why was that? Oh-jeez.

  I definitely needed to stop thinking, I decided.

  Was I sure about Jeff?

  Okay, I should work this through, I thought. Was there any reason to keep Jeffrey around? I couldn’t think of any. I wasn’t in love with him, and I doubted he was in love with me. We had different interests, different goals, blah-blah-blah. And he threatened to drop-kick my dog.

  Yeah, definitely done with Jeff. That was decided.

  That just left—the other one.

  And? At one point I could have pushed the other one onto the subway tracks and whistled a cheery tune while I did it.

  But now? No, I was past that. How far past—that was another question. Another question for another day. I couldn’t think about that now. For now, I was content to nestle myself a little closer on the other one’s shoulder.

  I definitely needed to stop thinking.

  I should learn from Fletch. He wasn’t thinking. Somewhere along here he’d reached over and taken my hand, and I bet he hadn’t thought about it. And I had let him—without thinking. See, it wasn’t so bad. In fact, it was kinda nice.

  If you thought about it, not thinking was clearly the only intelligent thing to do. Particularly when you were overtired, emotionally drained, and leaning against a nice warm body. A nice warm, well-muscled body. In an outer borough.

  So there I was, sitting on the floor, too whatever to call myself a car and drag my tired little butt back to Chelsea. But seriously, what did I expect was going to happen if I stayed? Sleep with Fletch or just sleep with Fletch?

  If I didn’t want to go, what did I want?

  I wanted to stay. Obviously.

  I was terrified of staying. Just as obviously.

  And I wanted to stop all this thinking!

  I could just stay here, stay overnight, and it didn’t have to be sexual, did it? This wasn’t sexual, leaning against him like this, even holding hands. It was just nice. We could call Chinese. I bet they have Chinese in Brooklyn. We could watch an old movie and just curl up on each other like this. And no groping. All perfectly innocent, I swear. Mostly.

  And how long would perfectly innocent last? Certainly not until morning. I knew Fletch better than that.

  I shouldn’t try to kid anybody—I knew myself better than that.

  Is that why I brought the dog? So I could spend the night without feeling guilty? Without feeling guilty about the dog anyway?

  Did I want to sleep with Fletch? Of course not!

  Of course I did.

  I mean of course I did, but I didn’t.

  I mean, part of me did, for sure. A part of my psyche, I mean—not that part of me. Although yeah, that part of me seemed to be definitely voting yea on the motion. All in favor, please raise your…

  And a part of me was scared. Let’s face it—a part of me was always scared.

  And maybe I should be scared. This is Fletch we’re talking about, I reminded myself. What did I just realize about Fletch? You start to think he’s better than he is and wham-o. He will disappoint. So don’t go in with a lot of hopes jingling around in your pocket.

  Please place all expectations in the gray bins before proceeding.

  I should be more like Fletch. I should just let it happen. Maybe that’s what I wanted. Maybe I just wanted to stop thinking and to stop worrying and to stop being afraid.

  Maybe I just wanted to feel something.

  Of course, by this point, mostly what I felt were my left leg falling asleep and my bladder calling out for attention. When I started to stir, both Fletch and the dog picked their heads up, and the moment was over.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “We can’t sit out here forever.”

  He stood stiffly and helped pull me up.

  “I should warn you, though…” he said, turning the key in the door.

 
Oh God what new hell was this? What new revelation did Fletch have for me?

  “What?” I knew it. I just knew it. Here it comes …

  “I’m not just flat sitting.”

  Wham-o!

  “You’re not alone.”

  “Wait ’til you meet him, Dweeb—he’s really nice, and super cute. But I don’t know what he’s going to think about the little Pup-tart here.” I had already turned to go, but Fletch grabbed me and held me there. Damn, I’d forgotten how strong he was.

  “Tybalt?” Fletch called into the dark apartment.

  Tybalt? Fletch’s little live-in fuck-weasel was called Tybalt? Like the guy in Romeo and Juliet? What kind of precious, artsy-fartsy, pansy-ass poser calls himself Tybalt? Whatever, I was under no circumstances going to meet Fletch’s new sex toy who was apparently allergic to dogs. He was more than welcome to keep my ex, my cheap, slutty ex. I could feel the sting in my eyes, I was so mad. Damn him. And to think, two minutes before, I had actually been contemplating the possibility of—

  By now he had both arms around me to keep me there and I was still trying to wrench myself loose—when a large orange tabby came bounding to the door. He braked abruptly when he saw Haggis. His hackles rose up huge.

  “Easy, Tybalt,” Fletch said over my shoulder. “Don’t wig out on me here.”

  He finally let me pull free.

  “That’s your roommate?”

  “Cat sitting,” Fletch explained. “Meet Tybalt.”

  What a monumental ass. He had deliberately let me think… I punched him hard in the arm.

  “What? What?” he asked, so innocently, grinning. Then he saw me push a tear off my cheek. “Oh, hey, Dweeb!” And he pulled me into a hug. “Don’t—I’m sorry, Dweeb—”

  I wiped my eyes on his shirt, and then I pushed him away.

  “That’s Tybalt?”

  We turned our attention to the animals at our feet.

  Haggis had never really been around cats. He saw them at the vet occasionally, where they had a couple cats that wandered loose, but I had no idea how he’d respond to an enormous tabby, all up close and personal.

  Apparently I had even less of an idea how the cat would respond to his first contact with a Scottish terrier.

  The cat slowly arched his back, a low growl came out of his chest, and he hissed once. And did my little dog turn into a bloody killer? Did he suddenly direct the famous Scottish terrier ferocity on the poor, defenseless pussycat? No. He wagged his tail a little nervously, which, in case you don’t know, is dog-speak for “please don’t bite me.”

  Lesson of the day (among soooo many others):

  Cats do not understand dog-speak.

  In music there’s this thing when you have a particularly nasty page turn, and you have like maybe a bar rest to flip the page and get your bow back on the strings—there’ll be this little v.s. at the bottom of the page. The v.s. is for volta subito. (It can also be rendered as volta stupido, depending on the mood of your violin teacher at the time.) Italian for “jump fast.”

  I didn’t.

  The only one who did was the defenseless little pussycat, who volta’d molto subito onto the back of my Scotty. He landed, snarling and screaming. It was horrific, nightmarish. There was a ball of raging orange fur and black fur, with terrible guttural noises coming out of the cat and screams of pain from my fearsome terrier. I was frozen.

  Whatever else you might say about Fletch, he’s useful in a crisis. I don’t think he’s afraid of anything. He shoved both hands in to pull the two apart, and it was over in a few seconds. He turned around and carried the still-growling cat by the scruff of the neck, and he tossed the demon tabby—not so super cute after all, if you asked me—into the bedroom, and pulled the door shut.

  “Fuck.” It was not my day to be articulate. I crouched down to my dog to see how badly he was hurt.

  “Is he okay?” Fletch asked.

  “He seems—fine.” I was as much surprised as I was relieved. After all of that, it seemed like somebody should be disemboweled or something. “I was mostly worried about—but no, he’s still got two shiny black eyes, thank God. And otherwise—I don’t see anything. I guess this awful coat is good for something after all.”

  “I’m glad.”

  There was still some orange cat hair floating around.

  “How’s the…” I asked.

  “Tybalt? I’ll check on him, but I didn’t see any marks on him.”

  “Tybalt?”

  “Shakespeare. Cat belongs to an actress, remember?”

  I was still crouched down with the dog, when I saw the blood on the floor and looked around for the source.

  “Oh my God, Fletch,” I said.

  The source was a steady drip coming from a huge wound on the back of Fletch’s left hand. He had definitely gotten the worst end of the fight. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, and both forearms were scratched. The right one had a particularly nasty scratch that ran almost the length of the inside of his wrist to his elbow. But his left hand—that was no cat scratch.

  Haggis had bitten him. But good.

  “Oh, yeah,” Fletch said, looking at his bloody hand. “Ouch.”

  I ran to the little kitchen and grabbed a dish towel and got it underneath his hand.

  It’s not likely that you’ve ever seen the inside of the mouth of a Scottish terrier. It’s a truly scary thing. Cute little Scotties have the teeth of a much bigger dog, with enormous canines. A lapdog with the teeth of a German shepherd. I stood and carefully looked to see just how bad it was. I got as far as seeing that there was a large flap of flesh that was partly torn away from the back of his hand—and ohmysweetfuckingjesus, you could see something underneath. Was that tendon? Or bone? I fell back against the wall behind me.

  “Hey!” said Fletch, catching me as best he could with his right arm. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m okay,” I said, pulling myself together. “You aren’t, though. God, Fletch, I’m-so-sorry-I’m-so-sorry-I’m-so-sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “It’s my dog that bit you!”

  “It’s not his fault either! Who knew the cat would go all kamikaze batshit?”

  “You need to see a doctor.”

  “Is your vet open late?”

  “Ha. Ha.” I asked the voice in my phone for the nearest emergency room. She gave me the answer.

  “I’ll be fine,” he said. “I’m always fine.”

  “What? Is that gaping chunk of meat hanging off your hand going to heal on its own? I don’t think so. And I’m not stitching that back together. Are we going to find a cab out here?” To me the outer boroughs were a completely foreign country. And not a nice foreign country like France, but a scary third-world, watch-your-wallet-and-don’t-drink-the-water foreign country that there was no good reason to visit. Fletch was, of course, right. He knows I’m uncomfortable out here, and yes, I’d brought the Haggis along for just that reason. Combination security dog and security blanket. Pathetic, I know, but there it is.

  I wasn’t more comfortable now that it was night.

  I had one of those Uber accounts that I never used, and I used it now. I ordered two cars, one to take Fletch to Wyckoff Heights Medical Center—in my entire life I had never even heard of Wyckoff Heights—and one to take me and Haggis home.

  “Are you in a lot of pain?”

  “It doesn’t feel nice—but I’ll survive.”

  “I’m-so-sorry-I’m-so-sorry.”

  “Stop saying that.”

  “Sorry.” He scowled. I went to pee finally, thank God, while Fletch took a look at the cat, who was still surly but was apparently unhurt. I helped Fletch get his right arm into the jacket I’d brought, and I draped the rest of it over his left shoulder.

  Fletch grabbed a library book from his shoulder bag.


  “It’s not a gunshot wound,” he explained. “This could take some time.”

  We went down to the street to wait for our cars.

  My car arrived first, but I made him wait until Fletch’s car was also there. Fletch’s driver took one look at Haggis and started to make noises. He wasn’t going to have a dog in his car. I told him not to worry. My driver, Lord love him, liked dogs.

  I loaded Fletch into the back seat of the terrier-free car—while I allowed my dog, unclean as he was, to piss contentedly on a rear tire.

  “Okay,” I said before I closed the car door, “I’m going to run Haggis home and turn right around and find you at the hospital.”

  “You don’t have to do that. That’s crazy.”

  “Of course I don’t have to, but I’m going to anyway. Call me if you think of anything you need.”

  “Roger—” He wanted to argue some more.

  “I’ll see you as soon as I can.” I closed the car door, and he drove off.

  Haggis and I got in the other car.

  As we were going over the bridge, I noticed that one of Haggis’s ears had a bloody scratch on the inside. I flipped through his coat and found a couple other small spots that were already scabbing. Nothing serious.

  Just poor Fletch.

  Chapter 32

  Paging Dr. Scruff

  Fletch

  At the hospital, I checked in at a desk at the emergency entrance. I was told to wait and to fill out my entire medical history. Great. With my bloody left hand wrapped in a dish towel, while I tried to hold the clipboard on my lap with my left forearm, I could barely write my name, but sure, no problem. Fortunately my medical history was mostly limited to checking “no” in about a thousand little boxes. There’s just no end to the diseases I’ve never had. Did they really need all this, or was this just to cheer you up? I was sitting there, gushing blood into a dishtowel with sunflowers on it, my left hand felt like somebody was whacking it with a rubber mallet with every heartbeat, but—Hey! At least I didn’t have dengue fever!

  And there was a section about family medical history. Parents, still living or not.

  Father:

  Ha. Don’t know, don’t care.