The Dog Log

by Richard Lucas

  The Internet is an addictive outlet that sadistically offers a match light in the pit of despair. But it’s even less real than fantasy. I’ve got to block myself somehow.

  11:15 PM

  God, I love Stasya. She told me no note in the box but to get it sent. “You are the strong one. Be strong, Richard. You don’t need words. She knows what is in your heart.”

  She does know. No note. Sent the box.

  December 30, 10:00 AM

  Hit with a jolt this morning. My neighbor Jazmine had told me a few days ago that there’d be a moving truck in the driveway today. She’s found a guest house in Hancock Park, “It’s safer there.” But I’d forgotten. I’m happy for her, but the thought of a moving truck being here—it’s jarring. Time is passing. Change is happening. I’ve suddenly been here for ten years.

  I was woken up by the spinning squeaks of the dolly wheels as they passed by my window under the tremendous weight of Jazmine’s packed-up sequins. The movers are still here. They shout commands to one another in Spanish, Jazmine too. They sound so happy and enthusiastic. I can’t take it. The commotion is making Lauren freak out. I’m surrounded like Custer. Come on, Cheyenne. Come on, Arapaho. Stop all the mad shenanigans—just close the circle, and take me out already.

  God, I hope my rent check clears.

  Work is so slow. No chance for unemployment, because I’ve been self-employed. What a fucked-up system. Fucked-up credit. And my car’s too old to even sign up for a rideshare thing, plus any of those gigs jack your car insurance through the roof.

  This motionlessness of mine must end, one way or another. Dogs’ lives are motionless. But it’s OK; they don’t think about the future. I envy that.

  It’s forty feet from my door to Irene’s. Am I one wall away from the very picture of my own lonely future? How much of this is fate? Is suicide fate? On calls, Sheriff, every person you encounter is in a moment of whirling distress. How much of that is fate versus choices? You arrest people because of their actions—their choices—not their fate, right? It’s part of my fate that I am here, broke and alone. Irene is in the hospital, broke—broken—and alone. The mutts next door are dog-broke, not housebroken, and alone. How much of the world is the same?

  If what I’m feeling is my own self being destroyed, then how far does this have to go before it’s just done with? It’s over with Roxy. I’m just fucking stupid with everything. Over can be such an inviting word. You can’t run the distance, and nothingness will finally do—so over it is.

  My friend Stuart, a piano player, had written a wonderful musical called Family about a divorced man who wants to bring his family back together, full of lift and hope. The songs were big and melodic, made for Broadway. It never sold. Stuart eventually drank himself to death, vodka. It took him ten hard years to fight off life.

  The comedian Richard Jeni, a very successful man, several HBO specials, etc., shot himself in the head, forty-nine years old, in his condo just about five blocks from here. You may have even been in on that call, were you? Kurt Cobain is dead. Heath Ledger. Whitney Houston. Spalding Gray. Hunter S. Thompson. Soldiers—strong men and women—come back from the Middle East tormented, and it steals their will to live. The mind is everything devastating.

  Mark Twain, in his late twenties, wrote to his brother, “If I do not get out of debt in three months—pistols or poison for one—exit me.”

  Exit me.

  But how? Hamlet stages a scene where the king is killed quickly and peacefully by having poison poured into his ear as he slept. It’s a most merciful of murders. That’s how I’d want it. Doesn’t involve swallowing, pulling a trigger, no cutting—just drops. The poison is called hebenon. It isn’t real. Fuck. They think it was supposed to be hemlock, which is what Socrates used to kill himself in submitting to the Athenian execution order. But Plato called it pharmakon, which also doesn’t exist. So there, hemlock is just a sweet illusion.

  Socrates’s death crept along in a slow-moving paralysis that began in his feet and legs and worked up to his heart and mind. Plato writes that Socrates expressed no stress, because he didn’t fear death. Perhaps it’s something not to be feared, especially if it has a purpose. Can there be inspirational suicides? Well, it is in my blood—Dad’s mom, remember? Perhaps it shouldn’t be feared. Thanks, Grandma.

  Napoleon swallowed poison while in exile at Elba, but it didn’t work. What hell that must be. Dying in one’s sleep is the dream, and here I am—can’t even sleep. It’s so punishing, dysfunctioning. The battleships go out of line, and the fight turns to spinning chaos on the battering waves. How do men sleep in prison? Can exhaustion finally carry the wretched to rest?

  I’m beaten. But I am still functioning—at least enough to check in on the dogs again and clean another few square inches. I still get some work done. Regardless of sleep, I drag myself to the front room and engage the computer and try to fulfill client requests.

  Self-pity. I don’t care, it feels good. It’s satisfying. Fuck you. That’s the trouble with all this writing what’s in my head and heart. It’s too much reflection. Too much time in the mirror—threads of indulgence weave upon themselves until it becomes the only way you think.

  December 31, 10:35 AM

  I apologize for the rambling last night. Those dogs are getting to me. And the end of a year. I’m in a bad place right now. I have so much to sort out. It’s late morning already. Have to go over there and feed them.

  10:55 AM

  Man, they are not house-trained at all. Behind the door is a minefield of wet dog mush, barely discernible against the sullied, browned carpet but for the morning light that glances off its newer moisture. I tiptoe to avoid what’s fresh from what’s permanent. The rug, bounteously threadbare, looks to have been some sort of fancy Asian carpet—ornate blue base with exotic florals woven in pink and white with vines (I think those were the colors). It’s like a tapestry. Was. Now it’s a crapestry, a huge biomass obstruction like so much used Charmin.

  And I know there will be a second new mess in the kitchen or bedroom, too, waiting for me as their expected guest. Those dogs have no shame. They go in different places. And who knows which is doing what where, and when?

  The plastic Ralphs bags wrapping my shoes weep their soft crackle as I carefully navigate the muddy Straits of Dog Doo. My feet sweat. My hands sweat in the gloves, and my nose sweats from the hot fog of my own carbon dioxide trapped within the mask.

  The dogs dart from room to room. They separate and run around, hair flipping wildly, then find one another again to bump noses. Then they run in opposite directions again. They must be frightened of me, especially considering this semisurgical/alien-just-landed outfit. Most of my face is covered—and will remain that way—so my voice comes to them from nowhere.

  I clean their dishes and give them fresh food and water. Nelson’s tongue beats at the water as if it owes him money. The long hair around his face falls into the bowl and then gets lapped up into his mouth. They can’t keep it out of their mouths when they eat, and then it stays there, soaked, caked, and nested for the day.

  In the living room, a color catches my eye. High up, there’s a collection of blue-and-white drawn-on-style vases collecting dust on top of a bookcase. They look like something Chinese, something someone would collect. I notice a Chinese theme. There’s a series of small mirrors with Chinese figures painted on them above the bookcases near the ceiling, too high for me to get to. So hard to imagine that she once decorated, like an entirely different person. But the air is squeezing me out.

  I hadn’t mentioned the bookcases, Sheriff, had I? They go around three walls in the front room, from the floor to the ceiling. It’s an impressive library collection crammed into a tiny space, mostly hardcover classics, though now tainted and untouchable. Books about dogs. Damn Yorkies. Lots of classic literature. Some art books. Two walls of books, actually. One of the walls of shelves is filled mostly with videocassettes. Easily over a thousand of them—the canon of film, all the
greats, some amazing film noir. I wonder if the tumor affected her ability to read? What a difference if so, books to videotape.

  January

  January 1, 11:30 AM

  Ally had suggested to me that I write down my dreams. I haven’t been doing it because they’re all bad, and, by the way, I’m already doing a log about the stuff when I’m awake. But last night the new year rumbled in with some real choice nocturnal pain: Roxy and I got married. The full wedding shebang: the rehearsal dinner, everyone there—friends, old and new, family—the ceremony itself, my brother as best man, a brunch celebration the next morning, nicely detailed even with the appropriate hangovers.

  She never stopped smiling, shining with joy and grace. Exchanging those vows with her induced the most “right” feeling I’d ever experienced. When I woke up, I was happy, calm, secure, confident, proud—everything good that I don’t get to really feel. It drops me into the body of a brazen bull, the ancient Greek bronze torture device, to be cooked alive by the tyranny of my own disappointment. Last night, the first New Year’s Eve in a long time passed without a midnight kiss for love and luck.

  I finally have a night without a bad dream, and this good dream makes it worse. If I can’t control my mind any longer—if it’s not the heartache, it’s the finances, the dream death, the barking. The failure of controlling my own cerebral cineplex—pictures and scenes so vivid. I want it to stop, everything.

  5:15 PM

  Dinnertime. The dogs don’t have collars on. They have no tags or licenses, or anything hanging around their necks. Aren’t they supposed to be registered, like guns, or a sex offender? What if one of them got out? This amazes me. If I had a dog, I’d be in constant fear of that. Everyone talks so much about dogs and loyalty. All they want to do is get out the door and run away. When I was young, I saw my oldest brother’s dog, Pete, get hit by a car. My brother’d rescued the sad, black, rib-showing, gangly street urchin from an alleyway behind a bar after he’d seen someone pour a pitcher of beer over the poor thing’s head. I saw Pete run right out the screen door, down the stairs and into the street, no comprehension of danger. Then SLAM, and Pete was dying. I’ll never understand dog owners who walk their dogs with no leash. This is a busy town. Makes no sense to me.

  It’s been several days since Irene fell. I’ve decided to try to take the dogs outside for some real air. The only leashes I’d found in the apartment were these thin rope things with a noose at the end that tightens with a plastic slider. They’re like piano wire. If the dogs pull at all—which they will—they’ll slice themselves into pieces. So, I went over to Tailwaggers on Fairfax and bought two regular leashes and two harness-type collars. Modern gender identity debates aside, I got a pink set for Lauren and royal blue for Nelson. They wrap around and underneath each of their front legs and then up over their shoulders and backs. I’d strap them in like fighter pilots.

  When I got into Irene’s apartment, I used my teacher authority voice to tell them that they were going outside and that they were going to behave.

  “One leg at a time into the harness, Nelson—one, right, then two, left. You’ll get used to the system.”

  There were several, “Come here”s, a few “Stop it”s, some “Nelson!”s, a couple “Don’t be a baby, Lauren!”s, but we got through it. Harnesses on and leashes hooked, I patted each one on the head, and we were ready to go. It surprised me how they responded to my touch with calm. Maybe they like latex? Their eyes squinted at me a little bit, as if I were shining a flashlight at them.

  As we walked to the door, my heart raced. Once I get them outside, if something happens to one of them, it’s my fault.

  When I open the door, they both suddenly dart straight out to the two stairs. Lauren’s leash slips from my hand and I kneel down and grab it. I am now intimately involved in Irene’s living room rug sludge, right at one of their favorite spots to go by the door. Before I can say, “Oh . . . FUCK,” squeals belt through the air outside. Lauren is dangling off of the first step, the one that’d tripped up Sophie before her. To them, it’s like a three-story building.

  “Hey, you dum-dums!” I yelled as I got up. “Those are steps! You have to wait for me. I’m in charge here, not you.”

  The two faces of fear looked up at me—Nelson, afraid of my anger, and Lauren, having just cleared a near-death experience, the fear of the “undiscover’d country.” My face was probably not much different. This is a big mistake. One or both of these dogs is going to die out here. The rubber of the gloves helps me grip the leashes tightly as I wrap them around my wrists, and I tell myself that we have to go forward. If I turn back now, then these dum-dums win. They’re pulling full force at the leashes. They want to go for a walk, or they want to get away from me. I’m sweating, and my shirt’s damp with the seasoned slime that’d splashed up from the rug. The painter’s mask hangs below my chin, and its rubber band pinches the fuzz on the back of my neck like a family of wasps.

  Why am I here? Why am I doing this? Why are they so wild? How does Irene do this?

  I hold them still as I turn to lock the door behind us. The last thing I need is someone walking in and snooping around while we’re gone. Of course, God bless anyone who wants to burgle that residence. The only thing to steal would be a pulmonary infection. Still, I look at those blue and white vases and think maybe they have some value to her. They’re not going to be stolen while I’m in charge.

  Screw it. You know what, Sheriff? I didn’t lock the door. I didn’t because I walked back inside. I panicked. I thought, If one of the dogs got away, I’d be totally screwed—for trying to help. They pulled against me as I yanked them back in. I’ve been cleaning up their messes every day anyhow. I might as well get used to it until Irene gets back.

  This was just walking dogs for God’s sake. But these two aren’t predictable—and it’s two against one.

  I don’t know why I wanted to do it in the first place.

  I need to get outside, too, Sheriff, but I have nowhere to go. Being around people is punishing. I don’t understand their happiness.

  You know, this dog garbage would be just the kind of thing that Roxy would have loved hearing about. We spent so much time talking about the tiniest details of our everyday lives. Discussing, analyzing, laughing. God, that was fun—and fun all the time. The silly minutiae. Do you realize how many embarrassing things you actually do every day? I miss having that with someone. Might be what I miss most. I could live with almost all the rest of the typical companionship difficulties if I still had that simple, dumb, everyday stuff with her. Maybe we should have spent more time talking about the big stuff. I’m all for talking about the big stuff now if she’d be open to it.

  As pathetic as me not walking the dogs today was, she’d find a way to get a kick out of it. That positive life energy. But she broke up with me, so there’s nothing I can do. I don’t know if she thinks about those things, misses it. I shouldn’t even think about her. She liked my weaknesses, at least for a while. I guess that’s the period when love is blind—all the weaknesses and quirks are charming. Maybe women want to change men, or anyone wants to change anyone at least a little in a developing romance, but I didn’t change for the better. She once said she loved me “not because I was perfect, but because of the things that made me not perfect.” Maybe that was just in a card and she never actually said it, but it’s stuck in my head as if it were an oath. I should go find it—no, that would be dumb. It’s just a stock cliché. She probably never said it. If she did, I guess she never meant it.

  The filth-filtered doses of air I suck in at Irene’s apartment are the chemical opposite of a laughing gas, and it’s getting to me—a depressing gas that makes you sad and lethargic, and a bad decision maker.

  9:00 PM

  I’ve opened Pandora’s shoebox. I reached to grab a blanket in the back of my closet, and then—boom—that orange Nike box: letters, notes, cards. Wow, Roxy and I wrote to each other a lot in that first year, even though we saw each other a
t work almost every day. Writing by hand—we’ve lost it to e-mails and texts, and with it . . . permanence.

  I shouldn’t have looked at any of it. We sure were concerned about each other’s feelings then, every thought. I found a funny one she wrote a few days after the first time I’d given her a tape with a couple of my songs on it. She hadn’t said anything yet, and I was worried that she didn’t like them. She handed me a card and asked me to read it later when I was alone. In it, she apologized for being selfish, but that hearing lyrics about another woman tossed her “like a rag doll in a clothes dryer,” and her jealousy embarrassed her. It was very sweet. I knew we were in love. She did end up liking the songs, by the way. I wonder what she’d think if she read this thing.

  In that box there were also letters from former students. The good-byes of every June were always sad. One kid, Sara, wrote, “Even though sometimes you were very conceited and too serious, you were the best teacher I ever had.” Ha. I couldn’t hide my true nature, I guess. She eventually became a teacher herself, first grade. She e-mailed me a photo of her desk at school a few years ago. She had my picture on it as her “inspiration.” And she wonders why I was conceited?