The Dog Log

by Richard Lucas

  Irene always says, “Your shower is flooding into my bedroom.”

  Isn’t that too bad? I’m glad to know it’s making a mess for her and her dogs. Maybe the overflow will accidentally bathe them all. You know what? Sophie barks—I trickle. That’s right, Sheriff. Bark—trickle—bark—trickle. It’s ecstasy to me.

  11:00 PM

  I lost my health insurance today, grace period expired. Can’t swing it anymore. If Roxy and I could get married, I’d be on her plan. I’d have more cash to throw at my debt. Teamwork. I’m thinking about getting a medical marijuana license. I have every reason to, except I don’t like pot, but maybe it’d help. I have a stabbing pain in my left shoulder and chest. Is this a heart attack?

  November 11, 11:30 AM

  My nutty sister says to me this morning, “I think you’re the one receiving karmic payback.”

  “So this is my fault? That’s what you’re suggesting?”

  “Not necessarily, but—first, Richard, you need to be more proactive about your life. You see life as things happening to you. Not good.”

  “Things aren’t happening to me?”

  “Yes, but you can make proactive choices in your current moments to protect yourself from future karmic redress,” she says as if it’s given fact.

  “So everyone has to be perfect, always, to avoid any pain or payback?”

  “Oh, come on,” she says. “That’s not possible, you know that. This is all part of being a human animal. Ebbs and flows.”

  “What about Irene’s karma then? She’s horrible.”

  “She’s an unfortunate woman in an unfortunate period, which may come back to her in her next life or thereafter, or it’s boomeranging back now from a different time before.”

  “She does hospice visits.”

  “She does? Well, there you go—proactive. She’ll be fine.”

  “Don’t my school teaching days count for some karma?”

  “That feels like a former you at this point. Calm down and try to understand what you can do in the here and now.”

  “So, all the crappy things ‘here and now’ are my doing or my not doing? I’m totally confused.”

  “I know you won’t do acupuncture, but you should at least go get a massage, get your qi unstagnated and moving into a positive flow.”

  “I don’t like strangers touching me.”

  “That’s anxiety, too.”

  “Ally—you’re nuts, but I love you.”

  “That’s good karma, see? More of that. But you’re way more nuts.”

  You don’t buy any of her BS, do you, Sheriff? Karma. At this point, I don’t even think I could get a self-fulfilling prophecy to come true.

  4:00 PM

  Plumber was here. No more trickle. Until next time . . .

  November 19, 11:30 AM

  Took a few days off from the log. Suppose I shouldn’t have. Sorry. Depressed. Sophie’s been barking all these days, in case you’re wondering. Still haven’t gotten paid for that True West design job. I only charged $300. I’ve written them two times about it. I also have some weird rash of tiny red blisters in lines going down my left arm. Burns like lit fuses. I can’t even get shirt sleeves on, and it’s freezing in here.

  November 20, 5:30 PM

  At the grocery store I got three calls from Casino but no messages. I figured he’d just wanted to borrow a parking pass or something. But when I got back on Hayworth, there were four fire trucks in the middle of the street. They’d just put out a fire at the building next to ours. A city crew was high up in a cherry picker working on a huge tree that’d been damaged. Everyone jumped back as a big branch came crashing down because they’d fucked up somehow. Luckily it landed in the grass in front of the neighbor’s building. That tree is so old and dried out. I never even look up at it, never even think about it. Strange to see a piece of it lying there. I asked Casino why he hadn’t left me a message, since our places might have burned to the ground and all. “Oh, I had a lot of calls to make,” he said. “I hate waiting for the message and the beep.”

  Sorry for the inconvenience.

  Irene’s eyes were alert as the reflection of the spinning red lights pulsed across the thin, translucent skin of her face. Her kitchen windows had been cracked by the heat. “They said the flames were licking the trees over our building. The firemen didn’t want to let me go back inside to get my dogs.” She handed me a key. “Here. If there’s a fire again, will you please go in and get Sophie and Nelson for me? I couldn’t live without them.”

  The sound of a chainsaw shot through the haze. I don’t want Irene’s key. I don’t want to rescue her dogs. I don’t want to die rescuing her dogs.

  “OK,” I said. “I’m sure it won’t be necessary though.” I took the key and put it in my pocket. “Maybe you should teach Nelson how to work a fire extinguisher, just in case.”

  “Poor Nelson can’t even bark if he smells smoke,” she said.

  That’s what’s going to happen, Sheriff—there’ll be a fire, and Sophie will pull me down with her into eternal perdition engulfed by actual flames.

  10:30 PM

  It feels like everything is squeezing in on me. I’m getting night sweats. Every night now around 3:00 AM, the start of the witching hour, I wake up in a pool of my own thoughts. It’s not enough that my arm is killing me. My sheets are soaked, my hair, my pillow. It’s sleep without rest.

  In a few hours, it’s the four-year anniversary of the morning my mom died, back in Pennsylvania. That afternoon, I remember I got the most wonderful hug from Irene—a long and warm embrace that calmed me, contained me, and gave me a needed pause. She patted me on the back and told me that she was sure that my mom loved me very much. Before that I hadn’t realized that they, Irene and my mom, are two similar women, physically—their soft, older, round shape and stature. Irene felt like my mom in my arms. She gave me something that I didn’t know I needed or had on a very, very difficult day. I can’t believe I’m thinking of that now.

  November 23, 1:00 PM

  It’s over! It’s OVER!—OVER!!—I’m actually happy! Remember Scrooge in the last scene of A Christmas Carol? Well, Sheriff, I’m telling you right now to please go out and buy us the fattest, sweetest, greasiest, most gluttonous goose you can find! It’s time to celebrate!

  I saw Irene by her front door this morning and said hello, before I saw what might have been a tear on her cheek. Then, “Do you have any plans for Thanksgiving?” I said, accidentally stepping into whatever cloudy reasons old people have for being weepy around holidays.

  “Sophie died today,” she said, with the naive expectation of sympathy from me.

  Alas, Sophie has finally gone to hell in her very own handbasket, I thought. “What? Dead? She’s . . . gone? Are you . . . sure?” I asked, needing absolute, indisputable, incontrovertible confirmation.

  “Yes, I put her in my freezer until I can afford to have her cremated.”

  Confirmation enough. And creepy enough. You mean this is not going to be another “winter of my discontent”? My heart leapt with joy and release, the level of which could only be understood by Nelson Mandela. We should have her cremated right away, I thought. What if she could be unfrozen one day like Walt Disney?

  And there, just as the weight of the world had been unlatched from my yoke, Irene whispered a tearful, faltering, “I’m heartbroken.”

  Somehow, this evil woman and her evil dog were able to form a malevolent bond that led to something akin to emotions, evil ones. Only they could have loved one another. Unfortunately, none of the joy in my heart could be used to support her recovery. I gave her a moment of quiet while I wrestled with the image of the dead Sophie coolly petrifying in the freezer, her unblinking eyes ablaze, mouth open, fangs out, tongue curled in a final roar of unstoppable rage at a world that had made her what she was. On to your next incarnation, you bloodless wretch, I thought.

  “Well—how much do cremations cost?” I asked. “Maybe you should take her to the vet—”
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  “I have all of my dogs cremated. I like to keep their ashes.”

  Sophie’s ashes wouldn’t amount to more than a thimbleful, I calculated.

  “I’ll be able to do it when my next check comes,” she said.

  I hope those checks come frequently.

  “There’s no other food in your freezer, right?” I stammered, staggered by the image of Sophie’s freezing corpse, stalactites of dripping, icy rancor forming below her foaming mouth. “Is it OK to have her in there?” I hated myself for this flash of pragmatism, because I’d asked a question that I didn’t want answered.

  “It’s all right,” she said.

  Not sure how to interpret that, I decided to leave awful enough alone. “Well, I’m, uh . . . I’m sorry about—about Sophie,” I said with the sincerity of a blackjack dealer scooping up someone’s chips.

  “Thank you. She was such a wonderful dog,” she said. “I’m going to miss her so much.” And with that, she turned to go into her apartment, now left with just the one mute dog, Nelson, and nothing to do but think about the loss of Sophie and to tend to her icy, makeshift morgue.

  2:00 PM

  I called Roxy to come over and celebrate. I picked up some champagne, and we raised a glass to the deceased Barking Yorkie of North Hayworth Avenue and her quick transfer into the netherworld: May she, at long last, rest in PEACE. A worthy foe you were, you miserable little bitch.

  Roxy said, “It’s so nice to see you smiling.” She kissed me. It was warm and slow. Then her leg peeked out from the slit in her skirt and wrapped around mine. Her legs are my weakness. She stayed the night. It was so good to have her here. She had to scramble in the morning for a yoga class.

  November 24, 9:00 AM

  Is this the end of the log? I guess it is. I certainly won’t be needing it. A fitting finish: Sophie dies, and I don’t even turn it in. It evaporates into space and time, and all things go back to as they were. Of all the large and wondrous things for which I’ve worked and prayed—this is the one that comes true? Sophie’s gone.

  This is odd. It’s great, but . . . sitting at my desk, there’s quiet at the wall where Sophie sounds should be bouncing through. No, I don’t miss her. But every time I jump for joy, I land in the freshly dug grave of Irene’s bleeding portrait of misery. Sophie was the fulcrum of happiness and anguish between Irene and me. When she was alive, Sophie contented Irene while she was destroying me, and now that she’s gone, that’s turned around. Irene still has Nelson the Mute; maybe she’ll give her attention to him. Two dogs had proven more than she could handle. Long live Nelson.

  4:00 PM

  This really is it, isn’t it? Funny, the deputy said it might not need to go six months. And at least one problem of mine was solved, though I didn’t really solve it, nor did this log, because unbeknownst to us, Sophie’s barks were numbered. Karma? Maybe my negative energy killed her, so it was a productive suffering. I’ll accept congratulations.

  The toughest part is saying good-bye to you, Sheriff. It’s been so helpful not having this voice clamped up inside my own head but to speak to someone real about it. Well, you’re real and not. Some real person would have read this, might have. I have no idea who you are, yet you helped me. For that I thank you sincerely, and I wish you nothing but the best. Be safe.

  November 27, 11:30 PM

  Fuck the silence. Fuck this solitary confinement. I have a confession: Roxy actually broke up with me two months ago. The things I said about her being here—she wasn’t. Not at that time at least. But those were conversations we’d had, moments that are still bouncing around in my head. I’m sorry. She didn’t come here the night Sophie died. We didn’t drink champagne and kiss. I guess I was dreaming out loud. I almost ripped that page out of this log. I feel pathetic—pretending I wasn’t alone, trying to paint a picture of my life that was better than it is. But it’s not. And now I’m tortured by the quiet, this new absence of everything. So I’m in this log again, which no one will read. I’d actually started this thing as a way to try to solve one of my life’s many problems. But it hasn’t helped, really. And why should I have mentioned to you that I was so sad? It didn’t seem relevant. But I can’t stop thinking about her.

  What happened was she’d called and said she wanted to talk, but when she got here she just ended it. Seven years. She’d brought my stuff over in two bags and set them down by the door. I saw them and, like a fool, only thought she’d been shopping. But most of my belongings from her place were in there. Breakup bags. Instant. She was done. Her face was a death mask.

  “I feel like this isn’t going anywhere anymore,” she said.

  “Of course it is. It’s right here. We have—”

  “No, you don’t seem to want any more than this. You’ve drifted out to sea with no way back.”

  “You’re my. . . . We’re looking at apartments. We have a whole list.”

  “We haven’t looked for five weeks. You don’t even realize it. And you’re right, we were looking at apartments, not for an apartment. You’re never going to fully commit to anything in your life, are you?” she said. “You have to get your shit together.”

  I floundered through explanations, but I had no evidence that would hold. I moved out here to be a musician, and that didn’t take. Left teaching. Ended up in debt. Now everything is over. Except, Sheriff, that her last words to me as she was getting into her car were “I love you, Richard.”

  I said, “I love you, too. That’s why I want us to work on this.” I pleaded for time, a chance. But she buckled up, looked at me, forced a slight smile on her lips, then turned the ignition and drove off. Her eyes are so beautiful, even when I think about that moment. My head is still spinning about it. I do think she loves me. I do. But I also think that she can’t love me because of who I’ve turned out to be. Look at the weak, angry bozo in this log, for Pete’s sake. We haven’t spoken since.

  “You have to get your shit together.” I can’t shake that because it sounds so solvable, as in if she sees my shit together, she’ll come back, right? So stupid—I thought if I could get the dog to stop barking, I could prove something. I wonder if Roxy somehow got a look at my Chase credit card statement. I don’t think she knows how often I’ve had to use it to live off of recently. It’s rough just finding a way to make the minimum payment, hovering near $500 a month like a drone circling a terrorist. I don’t know.

  November 28, 3:45 PM

  This afternoon I saw Irene standing at the end of the driveway, her head drooped toward the sidewalk, her eyes seeming to stare through the concrete toward the secrets of the spinning earth. Nelson the Mute was lying there at the end of his rope, now a lone dog, panting in the hot sun, which gave his body comfort on the warm stone. Irene’s arms were fallen and empty, defeated by the heavy despair of loss. I watched her from behind my screen door. I’d gasped for air while struggling to be silent, and a tear dampened my eye. Everything that was sad about her was sad about me—her Sophie, my Roxy—trying to understand why things end, how they end, how joy can be so here but must be so temporary, always, or it would be unrecognizable. I stepped outside. “Hi, Irene, how are you doing today, a little better?”

  “Terrible.” Nelson got up from his lounging spot.

  “Nelson is here,” I said. “He seems like a good boy.”

  “Nelson is my entire heart and soul,” she said. “He’s everything to me. He doesn’t like being alone now.”

  I walked toward them, and Nelson tried to bark. He does the whole motion of a bark, like he’s trying to chomp on an invisible hamburger that’s hovering like the fruit of Tantalus just above his head—but no bark, only a pale sound as if he’s clearing his throat through his nose. It’s actually kind of cute—only because it’s nearly inaudible.

  Irene wore her grief more sadly than her stained housedress. It’ll take some time to wash them both out.

  “Where’s Roxy?” she asked. “I haven’t seen her car around.”

  I almost said, “She�
��s buried in my freezer until I can save enough money to have her cremated,” but laughter was an entire solar system away. “She’s not around right now” was all I mumbled. If I’d explained any more of our situation, I’d be staring at the sidewalk just like Irene.

  “Oh, I won’t ask,” she said, after having asked.

  “Thank you. I don’t know what’s going to happen, so it’s not worth talking about right now.”

  “I understand about relationships,” she said. Nelson had settled back by now. I reached down to pat him on the head, but his horrifying hair of encrusted crud kept me from going all the way. I smiled and came back inside. Maybe she’d only wanted to deflect her mind into someone else’s sadness for a moment, but we’d had an actual conversation there—absent of conflict.

  9:20 PM

  Today was Thanksgiving, by the way. I didn’t go anywhere. Don’t want anyone sitting next to me but Roxy. Thanksgiving was the first holiday we’d spent together. She told me later on that she’d been watching me from across the kitchen that day, and she’d caught herself thinking, That is my husband standing there.