Sleeping With Dogs and Other Lovers

by Julia Dumont

  “I turn into a schoolgirl?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Okay, so what is this magic understanding of which you speak, Professor Poontang?”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “I won’t care who you see and you won’t care who I see …as long as …are you listening?”

  “Listening.”

  “As long as WE DON’T SEE IT! It cannot be in the vicinity, in the neighborhood. It cannot be in my face or in your face. Got it?”

  “Sin, that’s beautiful. You’re right, it works. Not in your face and not in my face.”

  Cynthia stuck her head around the bathroom door and looked at Max, who was lounging totally nude on the bed, doing a crossword puzzle. In ink.

  “Agreed?” asked Cynthia.

  “Agreed,” said Max.

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  One more time for good measure. Cynthia was painfully aware that she should always require Max to double down when it came to any sort of commitment.

  “Max, I mean it. Do. You. Really. Truly. Promise?”

  “Yes, Sin, yes! I promise. Got it. Not in your face. I promise.”

  “Okay, me too,” said Cynthia, returning to the bathroom and burying her face in a 100% Egyptian cotton super-plush towel. This was the kind of terrycloth your face wants to live in long after it’s dry.

  BZZZZZ. Her phone, from the nightstand. It might be her crazy mother again, but it could also be Lolita or another client and she had to get it. She could handle this——being with Max, that is——and still keep her eye on the ball business-wise. She dashed into the main room, where Max was now standing, clutching the phone. BZZZZ. She grabbed for it, but he held it high out of reach and smiled. He gently pushed her away with the other hand, his thumb and pinky extended and expertly making contact with both of her nipples. He had quite the reach…he played the piano after all.

  “Max!” she cried, “You bastard!” slapping his hand away, pounding his chest, and leaping for the phone. This was exactly the kind of crap that drove her nuts about him. There’s a fine line between playfulness and all-out immaturity, and Max took perverse delight in teasing that edge. When it came to lovemaking, he had impeccable instincts in that regard…a knack for making her laugh just enough without it getting in the way of the sex. But as they say, after the loving, he never knew when to stop. He often erred on the side of slinging the kind of irritating bullshit that fits squarely into the blissfully moronic twelve-year-old boy category.

  “For god’s sake, Max!”

  “Sorry, Sin,” he laughed. “No phone calls in Sexville.” Beep! He sent the call straight to voicemail and the phone sailing across the room, bouncing off the couch, and onto the floor.

  “That’s my livelihood you’re messing with!” screamed Cynthia, literally kicking him in the ass, hard enough to actually hurt, she thought, but he just laughed, grabbed her by the ankle, and tipped her over and onto the bed. “I have a new business!”

  “C’mon, Sin,” he said. “Have you lost your sense of humor?”

  “I lost my mind momentarily,” she replied, rolling off the mattress and gathering her belongings, “but I just found it again.”

  “Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding,” Max sighed, falling onto his back, arms out, crucifixion-like, eyes shut, naked as a jay bird, in some kind of Jesus H. Playgirl centerfold pose. “So, what’s this new business, anyway?”

  “I thought you’d never ask. It’s called Second Acts Dating Service. Check out the website for further details. I gotta go.”

  “So, you’re gonna leave me again?”

  “Excuse me?” she gasped, hardly believing her ears. “So now I left you?” She remembered the scene vividly. “You informed me at dinner——at Musso and Frank, your favorite place. You said, ‘Did I mention that I’m moving to Brazil on Tuesday?’”

  “Exactly,” said Max, “and I begged you to come along.”

  “Begged? Are you serious? This was Monday! You asked me to drop everything——to give up my entire life. You knew I couldn’t come. My career was exploding.”

  “Yeah, right. Whatever. You didn’t come, so you left me.”

  Cynthia didn’t even reply. She just stared daggers at him with all her might.

  “Well, I suppose it was mutual,” he finally conceded. “But I was certainly the more devastated. I couldn’t eat for a week. I thought my penis had died. I was this close to holding a funeral for my penis. Picking out a burial plot. Writing a eulogy. Making a little coffin. Well, not that little.”

  Cynthia shook her head and looked at Max. His eyes were still closed. He was such a child. A hypersexual, hyper-smart, hyper-fun man-child who just happened to rock her world more thoroughly than all of the other lovers she’d had combined. Even in this ridiculous situation——amid whining, cajoling, and unbelievably bratty behavior——she found him wildly attractive. It was all she could do not to leap on top of him and crank him up again. And his crank didn’t need much cranking. It was most certainly not dead. In fact, it was stirring, rising up, like it had a mind and mission of its own. She stared at it for a moment, mesmerized by its re-animating abilities. She really adored that thing.

  But she had to go. She had to focus on her new life and not let Max sidetrack her again. She quickly finished dressing, leaned over, kissed Max on the stomach—causing him to shiver and moan—and scooped up her phone. She stopped to look him over one more time. What a phenomenon. Countdown at Cape Canaveral. She grabbed one of his socks and slipped it over his boner like a loose rubber. She smiled and walked out the door.

  “See?” Max cried out like a wounded animal. “You’re leaving me again!”

  As she closed the door, she realized her purple panties were hooked on the handle like a do-not-disturb sign. She wondered if it was the kid or his parents who had hung it there. Either way was kind of weird. She stashed them in her purse and headed down the corridor.

  Max, Max, Max. He can’t get to me. I’m a little older and a lot wiser now. I’m Max-proof. Obviously, I’m ultimately looking for true love, but just as obviously, not from him. It’s all about expectations. He’s great for what he is. Perfect, in fact. If you don’t expect more, you can’t get burned. And, its not as if I have anyone else in my life today. Right? Damn! This reminds me I really have to tell Walter how I feel – or don’t feel.

  Chapter 7

  She moved briskly through the corridor, realizing she was probably very disheveled, but happy to be at least relatively clothed this time. She checked her phone.

  Eleven voice mails, thirty-seven new emails, and sixty-two texts. She hoped to god they weren’t all her mother. She deeply regretted tutoring her in technology. Why on Earth had she thought it was a wise move to provide her mother with new ways to drive her totally insane? People joked about the day when everyone would have communication devises implanted in their skulls, but Cynthia actually lived in mortal fear that the scientific know-how would arrive before her mother departed. Twenty-four/seven mother-daughter mind melding truly was the stuff from which Cynthia’s personal science fiction nightmares were made.

  She decided to find someplace to sit and go over the messages. That’s when she noticed it was dark outside. It was eight-thirty. Max always wreaked havoc with time. Cynthia realized she was incredibly hungry. She headed for the restaurant and asked for a table outside. She would enjoy the evening and the beach on her own. She didn’t need a man for that.

  It was a perfect night. Moonlight danced on the surf and the Santa Monica Mountains looked like the silhouette of a great sleeping dinosaur, its spine sloping westward and down into the sea at Malibu. Maybe she’d take Mulholland and drive that winding backbone home. She did it once in a while to remind herself of why she loved Los Angeles.

  She found it somewhat luxurious or even decadent to dine alone. She decided to treat herself and order something she hardly ever ate: a big fat, juicy steak, with a side salad to a
ssuage the inevitable guilt. She had been a vegetarian forever and never thought in a million years she’d ever return to even chicken and fish, much less massive slabs of flesh. But about a year ago she’d had a hamburger and that was it. She still rarely went for it, but when she did, she went for it rare. The bloodier the better. It somehow made her feel wild and independent. She was her own hunter and gatherer and provider. Another thing she didn’t need a man for. While she waited for the steak, she drank a mojito. That’s right, alone, goddamn it.

  She had seven separate messages from Lolita. The first was just a thanks-and-nice-to-meet-you bit of politeness, except your typical Miss Manners doesn’t usually hammer you with gratuitous sexual innuendo. Lolita definitely was in the swing of things, manhunt-wise.

  Great to meet you. I’ll get down to choosing my top five dicks as soon as I get off work. Hope you included measurements. I am definitely in the mood to have my bell rung, my clock cleaned, my muffin buttered.

  Thanks,

  Lolita

  Cynthia had to admit she was a little surprised at Lolita’s language, but certainly not shocked. She took it as a welcome sign that this girl was not messing around. Or, more precisely, that she wanted desperately to be messing around.

  Lolita’s next email was her top five. And she knew how to pick ‘em. Five of Cynthia’s favorites:

  Robert

  Elliot

  Dylan

  Diego

  Antoine

  Okay, this was great. This was going to be fun. There were a couple of guys on that list who Cynthia was sort of interested in herself. Guys who seemed like they might deliver like Max, but without the little-boy baloney.

  Lolita’s remaining emails were just follow-ups, increasingly impatient. The first contained a single question mark. The next, ten question marks. By the seventh email:

  ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

  ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

  ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

  ???????????????????????????????????????

  Cynthia had to scroll through what felt like miles of redundant punctuation to see if Lolita had implanted any other pertinent information in there. She had, way down at the bottom:

  I’m home, I’m horny, and I’m beginning to wonder what I’m paying you for.

  Cynthia, for her part, was wondering how Second Acts Dating Service had suddenly become Second Acts Escort Service for Sex-starved Floozies and Hot and Bothered Hussies. There were at least ten emails from potential new clients, who she would have to meet in person before adding them to her service. Some seemed to be searching for true love and others for something a little more carnal. Or a lot more carnal. But this was a judgment-free zone, especially after her own lost afternoon. In any case, it was obvious Cynthia had her work cut out for her.

  Chapter 8

  Lolita sat on her red leather couch, staring at the headshots and bios of shockingly attractive men spread out like a game of Go Fish on a large glass coffee table. She was wearing a pair of black terrycloth gym shorts and a lime-green sports bra. She tapped her bare thighs nervously with all ten fingertips. She’d had a heavy bag installed in her apartment the year before and although she’d stopped the boxing lessons, she still loved unleashing her aggression on this hundred and twenty pound sack of sand from time to time. Plus, the bag matched the couch.

  Max, the wolfhound version that is, sat next to her. He was licking out the corners of a casserole dish with the kind of frantic tongue action usually reserved for anteaters and cunnilingus enthusiasts. King, the Dane, was stretched out on the hardwood floor. His chin rested on one of Lolita’s bare feet. Wilfredo, the tiniest of toy Chihuahuas, sat still as a statue between two actual statues——some kind of quasi-cubist depiction of, you guessed it, regal canines—on a long table near a picture window. The room was decorated in the austere fashion of a modernist film studio’s waiting room…all black and red angles. But it was the huge Judgment at Nuremburg poster that dominated the room: Maximilian Schell in uniform … obviously. Lolita hadn’t seen him in twenty-five years, but he was still a kind of dream-lover father figure against whom she measured all men. And who watched over her in her humble abode.

  It didn’t look like the home of your run-of-the-mill dog groomer, but then, Lolita was no run-of-the-mill anything. Like almost everyone in her zip code who worked in close proximity to movie folk, she thought of herself as being in the business herself.

  She studied each of the photos again, and realized that her finger drumming had transitioned unconsciously into a sensual stroking of her inner thighs. Her thumbs circled in closer under the terrycloth. She shut her eyes and savored that warmth for a beat.

  She stood up, walked over to the heavy bag, punched it three times, and returned to the couch. She was tired of waiting on this Cynthia woman. She looked at King and then sent another impatient text. This one featured everybody’s favorite four-letter word for fornicate, followed by lots and lots of exclamation points. Then she flicked the phone high into the air and caught it like an expert juggler, except angrier.

  She hooked her arm around King’s large head and pulled him close. She let him lick her ear and neck and whispered to him, pushing her forehead against his. They engaged in what seemed a lot like a cheesy sci-fi mind-melding maneuver for a moment. More than a moment.

  “Uh-huh,” Lolita murmured, nodding against King’s furry face with her nose and cheeks. “I know, I know, I agree. And I like Miss Second Acts too. You’re right… we’ll give her a little more time.” She inhaled deeply.

  “King,” she said, “I love the smell of dog in the evening. It doesn’t exactly smell like victory, though. Smells more like home.” She glanced at King, then Wilfredo, then back to King, and whispered even more softly. “You know, King, I prefer most dogs to most people. And I prefer you three to all other dogs.”

  King sighed deeply, seeming to appreciate that.

  “But,” she continued, looking up at the gargantuan Maximilian Schell, his head nearly five feet across, “a gal needs a male of her own species sometimes.” Schell was fifty when she knew him, and eighty now, wherever he was. But she always thought of him as the age he was in that movie, thirty years old and the most beautiful man she’d ever laid eyes on. Some might say it’s shallow——and many certainly did——but until you’ve tried it, you can never know just how good it feels to get made love to by a big movie star in a big beautiful mansion on a hill.

  Bzzzz.

  Lolita quickly reached for the phone and answered it before that first buzz ended.

  “Cynthia,” she said, deliberately deadpan.

  “Lolita. I’m sorry I was slow getting back to you. I had sort of a family emergency.”

  “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah. I went to my grandmother’s funeral.” Cynthia felt a twinge of guilt. She hadn’t gone with the my-grandmother-died fib in years, decades. She had worked at a horrible Italian restaurant during college where she’d used it three times in one month and then had to conjure a step-grandmother out of thin air when her boss called her on it. That led to inventing a whole divorce-remarriage scenario that became her official false history among coworkers for that entire school year. A few well-meaning good listeners looking for detailed heart-to-hearts got full-blown cock-and-bull stories of contentious joint custodies, cruel step-siblings torturing her endlessly, and holidays full of driving marathons between far-flung residences in three states. She had step-siblings who were triplets. One girl was in prison. Another had Tourette’s. The boy had a sex change and then changed back. And then back again. Glen or Glenda or Glen. Cynthia had always had a fertile imagination. Needless to say, she felt relieved when she quit the restaurant job. She got tired of weaving that particular tangled web.

  “Cynthia?” said Lolita.

  “Yes?”

  “Did you just lie to me about your grandmoth
er dying?”

  “Shit,” said Cynthia. “As a matter of fact, I did.”

  “You can’t kid a kidder and you can’t kid a granny killer either. I’ve killed off an army of grannies in my day. Grandpas too. A lot of Gammy and Poppy carnage in my wake.”

  Cynthia was really starting to like Lolita. “Yeah, well, sorry. That was dumb. I have no idea why I did that. It won’t happen again. So…any further thoughts guy-wise?”

  “Damn straight, lady,” said Lolita, lifting up one of the photos to share it with King, who looked on with an expression of pure boredom. “Hook me up with Diego immediately, if not sooner. He reminds me of someone.” She gazed up at the poster and considered the striking resemblance between Diego somebody and Maximilian Schell. “And the dogs approve, except for King, but he never approves of my dates.”

  “The dogs?”

  “That’s right,” she said, “I run everything by them.”

  “Oh, okay,” said Cynthia. She was beginning to wonder about Lolita and whether she is some sort of dog whisperer. “Then Diego it is.”

  “Good,” said Lolita, “He seems like a guy I could fall in love with. Plus I want to bleep his brains out.”

  Chapter 9

  Cynthia was relieved that a different valet dude was stationed at the little podium. She handed the new guy her ticket and called her mother.

  “So are we on for Thursday?!” squawked Margie Amas, over the yipping and yapping. She continued their previous conversation like they’d never hung up. “I just know you’re going to love my new doctor. Besides, we can double team him.”

  “Double team him? Mother, have you lost your mind? You’re even more looney tunes than I thought.”

  “Good god, no, Cindy!” gasped her mother. “I’m just talking about double-teaming Dr. Willowby at his office, and then, hopefully, at dinner. You’re on your own after that, dear. For god’s sake, that’s just sick. What is wrong with you? I mean that’s illegal, isn’t it? Maybe if we were in Arkansas or something.”