My Boyfriends' Dogs

by Dandi Daley Mackall

  “Thanks again,” I told Larry as he tugged on Dotty’s collar. The sweet girl didn’t want to leave me.

  “You come back to the station and hang out with Dotty anytime you like,” Larry called over his shoulder.

  I stopped in to visit Dotty a couple of times after work. It helped me not miss Adam as much. Meanwhile, I tried to work on the dress-for-success part of my Bailey Boyfriend Plan. I didn’t have the cash to buy new clothes, and Amber’s didn’t fit me. But she taught me the power of accessories—belts, scarves, ties, jewelry. Thanks to her, I was growing into a semi-funky style all my own—part retro, part fun.

  The first Saturday I didn’t have to work at Grady’s, Amber had promised to watch Steve’s basketball game and go out with him afterward. “Are you sure you don’t want to come with us? ” she begged. “Or I could break my date with Steve, and you and I could do something. Steve would understand.”

  “You are too good for your own good,” I said, checking out my semi-funky self in the mirror—denim Capris with the perfect braided leather belt, two neon camis layered strategically under a V-necked, shirred black top, and a beret. “What do you think? ” I turned to Amber for fashion approval.

  Amber tilted her head and gave me two thumbs-up. “Funky. Love the high-tops, by the way.” Amber wasn’t afraid to tell me when I missed the fashion mark, so I knew she meant it. “You could at least go to the game with me.”

  I shook my head. “Not in the plan. I’ve decided I want a brooding, deep-thinking boyfriend who will challenge me intellectually, and not physically.” Amber laughed, but I ignored her. “So, I’m off to Beaman’s Musical Instruments store. I walk right by there after work all the time, but I’ve never gone in.”

  “Could it be because you don’t play a musical instrument? ” asked Amber the Smart Aleck.

  “Exactly. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like a boyfriend who does. I’ve always wanted to go with somebody who played the guitar, or maybe the sax.”

  “I played clarinet in middle school,” Amber offered.

  “Have fun with the bouncing-ball boys, Amber. I’m off to find a deep, sensitive boyfriend.” I tipped my beret and strolled to the music store. It was the perfect day for finding a gloomy boyfriend. A dark gray sky promised a rain that refused to fall. A few sun-dried leaves tumbled to the sidewalk, too eager to give up their lives to wait for autumn.

  I rounded the corner, straightened my beret, took a deep breath, and practiced my opening line in my head: Do you think the world will ever see another Lester Young? I really did listen to jazz, and I loved Young and Coltrane and Miles Davis. So I wasn’t being a fraud. I could hold my own in music conversations, even though I couldn’t play anything myself. So, one might ask, what was I doing in a store that sold musical instruments? I had my answers at the ready: I keep thinking I have to learn to play the guitar sooner or later, because I play it in my head constantly. Or I just like being around drums. Doesn’t everybody?

  I was crossing the street to Beaman’s when I saw the Dalmatian sitting out in front of the store. I walked over to her, and she wagged her spotted tail. “Dotty, what are you doing here? Where’s Larry?” Something about the big dog didn’t seem quite right. Maybe she was lost. Maybe it was the dark, threatening storm. “You wait here, Dotty.” She wagged her tail and danced around, ready to follow me. “Sit.” It always worked for Larry, but apparently not for me. “Stay?” I tried.

  I slipped inside the music shop and looked around for Larry or one of the other firemen. The store was crowded, and I couldn’t help noticing a nice array of guys scattered throughout the three rooms, and not a single girl in sight. “Larry?” I called.

  A few guys frowned over at me, then went back to stroking drums and guitars.

  I had to get Dotty back to the fire station fast and return to this boyfriend mecca. I dashed out of the music store as the owner was heading my way. The man probably thought I’d shop-lifted something, although I couldn’t imagine what.

  The Dalmatian greeted me heartily when I came out, almost knocking me down.

  “Come on, Dotty. I’ve got to get you home. Larry will be worried about you.” The dog trotted along beside me as I back-tracked up the street and finally down the little road to Fire Station 11. I took hold of her collar in case she decided she didn’t want to stay in the firehouse. Larry would have to start tying her if this kept up.

  “Larry!” I shouted as soon as we were inside the building. Still holding the dog’s collar, I shouted again. “Hey! Somebody! I found your lost dog.”

  Out of nowhere, in a blur of fur and spots, came another dog, another Dalmatian. She lunged at the one I was holding. They growled at each other. I let go of the collar. The dogs faced each other, teeth bared, low growls coming from both of them. Crouched with their front halves low and rear ends high, they were mirror images.

  “What the—?” Larry came running up behind me. Two of the other firemen followed him. “Where did that come from?” Larry demanded, pointing to the dog I’d led in.

  “I thought it was Dotty,” I confessed. “I kind of took her from the music store and brought her here.”

  “Well, you better kinda take her back, Bailey,” Larry said. “You just took the dog? Without telling anybody?”

  I nodded, panic seeping into my veins.

  A couple of the guys laughed, but I didn’t see anything funny. What if the owner was already reporting a stolen Dalmatian?

  Even Larry looked like he could burst into laughter at any minute. “I’m not kidding, Bailey. You’d better get this dog back to where you found her before they throw you in the clink for dog theft.” He turned back to his firemen buddies. “They don’t still hang people for dog thieving in this state, do they?”

  “That’s horse thieving, boss,” somebody answered.

  I knew they were just teasing me, but it didn’t help the panic ready to cut loose inside of me. I had just stolen somebody’s dog. “I didn’t mean to do it,” I said to Larry, or the guys, or maybe to this poor dog who wasn’t Dotty. “It was a case of mistaken identity.”

  3

  Without releasing my grip on the unidentified dog’s collar, I raced back to the music store. How could I have thought this dog was Dotty? True, it was sort of dark out. And the dogs’ bodies matched. But now that I’d seen them together, this one’s face was smooth, not like Dotty’s angular face.

  I half expected patrol cars and crime scene tape waiting for me at the music store, but everything was quiet. Normal.

  “Stay!” I commanded. Then I changed my mind. I couldn’t let go of this dog until I found her owner. Together, Mystery Dog and I stepped into the music store.

  “Nice dog,” said a guy at the drums, who looked like he’d have been more at home in a biker bar.

  “Thanks. I don’t suppose you’ve seen this dog around here before?” I ventured. Mystery Dog wanted to explore, and it was taking all of my strength to hang on to her collar and keep her wagging tail from knocking over the guitars.

  “No dogs!” The little man who’d tracked my exit earlier came charging at me. “You can’t bring your dog in here.”

  “She’s not mine.”

  “You can’t bring anybody’s dog in here.”

  “I know.” I switched my grip on the dog’s collar to my left hand. I couldn’t afford maiming my right. “Do you know whose dog this is?” I asked Angry Skinny Music Man.

  “Me? How should I know whose dog you bring into my music store? Get him out of here.”

  “It’s a female,” I corrected.

  “Out!” He pointed toward the door, just in case I hadn’t noticed where it was when I walked in through it.

  I glanced around the shop. “Hey! Does this dog belong to anybody?”

  “Out!” yelled Angry Skinny Music Man.

  “Anybody know whose dog this is?”

  “Out, out, out!” Angry Skinny Music Man made shooing motions with his long-fingered, bony hands. I bet he was a piano
player. Wagner, most likely.

  “Okay, okay. I’m going. Only if somebody comes looking for this dog . . .” I stopped. What? What if somebody did come looking for this dog? And what if nobody came? I couldn’t just leave the poor thing on the streets to starve. What if it stormed? Surely the owner would come back to look for her when he discovered his dog was no Lassie and hadn’t found her way home.

  “Go!” shouted Angry Skinny Music Man.

  “Right. I’m going. Only tell anybody who asks about the dog that they can find me in Jones Hall, fourth floor. Bailey Daley.” I gave him my phone number, but he didn’t write it down. He was too busy shooing Mystery Dog and me out of his store.

  “You won’t forget, right?” I asked from the front step as the door shut in my face. “Bailey Daley, fourth floor Jones.”

  It wasn’t easy sneaking Mystery Dog into the dorm. I waited at the back entrance until somebody came out. “Hold the door, please!” I shouted.

  A redhead who looked college, not high school, held the door for me. “Nice dog,” she said, as if we all had dogs in this dorm.

  “Thanks.” I had to pull the dog in with me. She obviously had never seen a dark stairwell before, and she didn’t like it. We didn’t pass anybody on the stairs. I shoved open the door to the fourth floor and peered down the hall. The coast was clear. “Come on, Mystery Dog.”

  The dog pranced along beside me, her toenails clicking on the hall floor. I had my door unlocked and had almost made it home free when the door across the hall opened and somebody said, “Is that a dog?”

  It was Yvonne, one of the girls who lived across the hall from Amber and me.

  “This?” I shoved Mystery Dog into my room. “Nah.”

  Yvonne and her roommate partied every night. We had no idea what summer school program they were supposed to be in, but I don’t think they ever went to class. Too hungover. I figured there was a good chance Yvonne might end up thinking that the spots before her eyes were in her imagination.

  Once safely hidden in my dorm room, Mystery Dog and I had a serious talk. “You’re too well fed to be a stray.” She wagged her tail. “I guess we could put up ‘Lost Dog’ signs with your picture on them.” She pawed my leg until I rubbed her chest. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you—your fifteen minutes of fame?”

  Mystery Dog and I hung out in the room until Amber got back. I loved having a dog around. When I sat on the floor and leaned against my bed to read over my French verbs, she curled next to me as if we did this every day.

  It was an hour before curfew when I heard a key in the lock. Then the door cracked open. “Thanks again, Steve. I had a wonderful time.” Amber’s dreamy voice sounded like she was telling the truth.

  “Me too,” Steve said, equally convincing.

  “I better call it a night, Steve. I’m going to early service in the morning. Besides, you’re going to miss your curfew if you don’t get—”

  Amber’s voice was interrupted by kissy noises. I scooted around for a better look. All I could see was Amber’s back, but it wasn’t an entirely bad view. Steve’s hands moved up and down my roommate’s back as they kissed.

  Amber and I didn’t kiss and tell—okay, I hadn’t even kissed since I’d become an almost-college coed. But I knew she and my mom still totally agreed about keeping sex in marriage. Steve, on the other hand, might have had other ideas, the way his hands were moving and—

  “Arf!”

  “Shush!” I scolded Mystery Dog.

  “Do you have a dog in there?” Steve asked.

  “No,” Amber insisted. “It did sound like a dog, though.” She opened the door a little wider and called in, “Bailey? What are you doing in here?”

  I scrunched behind the bed and pulled Mystery Dog with me. “I’m listening to a tape from Mom. She recorded Adam and some neighborhood dogs. I’ll be out in a minute.” It was the best I could come up with on such short notice.

  They both seemed to buy it. “Ah,” Amber called. “So that’s what the bark was.” She turned back to Steve. “Night, Steve. And thanks again.”

  The second Steve was gone, Amber stomped into the room. “Okay. Where’s the dog?”

  Mystery Dog broke loose and trotted over to my roommate.

  “Bailey! Do you want to get both of us both kicked off campus? They don’t even allow lizards and goldfish in this dorm. What do you think they’ll do if they find out you’re housing a dog? A big dog? A big spotted dog?”

  When she calmed down, I explained the whole case of mistaken identity to her. “So I didn’t even get to try out my boyfriend plan,” I said, winding it up and going for sympathy. “Instead, I come home with a dog.” I gazed at the Dalmatian stretched over my feet. “She’s sweet, though, isn’t she?”

  “Very,” Amber admitted. “But we can’t keep her, Bailey.”

  “I know. Maybe you could put an ad in the paper. Or we could make signs that—”

  There was a knock at the door. Amber and I stared at each other like we were surrounded by the FBI. I considered hiding under the bed.

  Amber got up. “I’ll get it. Nobody knows you have a dog in here, right?”

  I shrugged and threw my arms around Mystery Dog. They were going to have to go through me to get to this dog. No way I’d let them haul her off to the animal shelter.

  Amber opened the door to a guy I’d never seen before. He had dark, sunken eyes and a handsome face carved with lines that must have come from pain. Square chin, broad forehead, wavy brown hair pulled back in a ponytail that worked for him. This guy was fine.

  “I hear you’ve got my dog,” he said, sticking his hands deep into the pockets of his baggy pants. He wore a white T-shirt under a flannel shirt a couple of sizes too large for him, but he was a good-sized guy and could look Amber in the eyes. “Are you Bailey?”

  I stood up. “I’m Bailey.”

  His Dalmatian trotted over to him, and he squatted down to pet the dog. “Hey, Eve. What’s up, girl?”

  “Eve?” I asked. “You named her Eve?”

  He stood up and locked me with those coal black eyes of his. “Eve,” he repeated in a voice that was mellow and melancholy at the same time. “The first woman. The first cause. Anyway, what’s in a name?” His eyes were deep-set, like bullets shot into his face. I couldn’t look away.

  Amber slid past him out the door. “I’m going downstairs for a soda. You guys can work this one out without me.” She left us alone.

  The dog came trotting back to me. I walked to the door, and Mystery Dog—Eve—stayed behind me. “How do I know you’re this dog’s owner?” I asked, crossing my arms in front of me. I didn’t really doubt that he was the owner. The dog seemed to know and like him. I just didn’t want either of them to go yet. “I mean, anyone could walk in here and claim this dog belonged to them, right? Why didn’t you look harder for her when you didn’t see her at the music store?” I had a hundred other questions for him, like if he played the guitar or the drums, if he went to Mizzou, if he had a girlfriend.

  The guy studied me. His brow furrowed, and I could see how those pain lines must have formed. “I don’t own Eve.”

  “You don’t?” Now I really was confused.

  “Nobody really owns anybody or any thing,” he explained. “If we all got that, really got that, there’d be no war or starvation in the world. The classes wouldn’t be divided into the medieval feudal system we have in America, with oil companies on top.”

  He was blowing me away, this guy. I’d had boyfriends who didn’t even know what medieval was.

  He looked at his dog. “If Eve chooses to live somewhere else, who am I to stop her? I mean, when you get down to it, we all own everything and everything owns us.”

  I wasn’t sure I got it, but I knew I’d never met anybody like this. I grinned at him, but I think the state of the world weighed too heavily on him for him to grin back. “I’m Bailey.” I didn’t stick out my hand or anything so mundane. “You want to come in?”

  “Mitc
h,” he said, walking over and sitting on Amber’s bed. The name fit so perfectly, he could have made it up.

  I had an idea that conversation starters were going to have to come from me. “Are you a student at Mizzou?”

  “Summer school,” he answered.

  We both petted Eve to fill the silence, or at least I did. I had a feeling that none of my prepackaged sports questions would work with this guy.

  “And they let you keep your dog in your dorm room?” I was already trying to figure out how I could sneak Adam to my room.

  Mitch shook his head. “I’m living off campus. Above a bakery. It’s better for my work.”

  “You work at a bakery?”

  “No. My real work. The theater.”

  “Cool.”

  Silence again. Long and awkward.

  “So are you taking AP acting classes this summer?” I tried.

  He made his frowny face, deepening those pain lines. He looked so cute I wanted to kiss him and make him smile. “Not acting. I would never act. The passion of film originates behind the camera. Directing. That’s where change can begin.”

  “Really?” I imagined e-mailing Mom about my boyfriend, the director. We’d go to galas and openings. He’d work on location, and I’d always go along because he couldn’t do his best work without me. “And they have directing classes here?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Have you gotten to . . . to direct anything?” My questions were getting dumber and dumber.

  “I’ve done some directing, although nothing you would have seen.”

  “Ah.” I wasn’t sure if that was a slam on me—as in, nothing you would have seen because you obviously only go to Disney movies. Or maybe he was opening up to me, admitting that he hadn’t done work anybody ever watches.

  “Did you always want to be a director?” I asked, as if the most hated question on campus weren’t the two hundredth time someone asked for your major and if you’d always wanted it.

  “Last summer settled things.”

  I was afraid that was all I was going to get. I was right. “So, what’s your directing class like?”