The Dog Log

by Richard Lucas

  Ha—you know, Roxy would make all this fun. Plus, she had her way of always putting things “out into the universe,” and here I have to make it scientific and mathematical. But we’re not thinking about Roxy right now.

  What I’m realizing is that to survive this, I’m going to have to clean Irene’s kitchen, and I’m going to have to get the dogs to learn to go outside. I guess I’ll have to get the dogs clean, too. There’s no getting around it. I can’t just maintain this mess and hand it off. I’ve been “just maintaining” the mess of my life, and that’s why I’m alone. I guess that’s what I was doing when I very first started this log—trying to solve a problem in my “field.” Now that problem has been swallowing me whole. I can’t let it. I have to rescue myself, or I’m going to end up sedated, lying in a bed in the room with Irene and the Nazi.

  That’s it. My mind is made up. I’m taking control of this. It’s the only way that I can feel in control, right?

  11:00 PM

  How much do you believe of what I wrote just before? Do you think it’s all bullshit? Are people products of their environment, or are the environments products of the people? Is my “fields” theory simply saying that people control their own fate, that life’s about choices and control of the will? It seems like an oversimplification, but when I stand in Irene’s apartment, it’s undeniable that something is evident of something. I just don’t know which. Are people victims of their environment or victims of themselves? Which is the extension of which?

  Do you believe I can change Irene’s apartment and Nelson and Lauren? And what about when Irene comes home?

  I haven’t even started to do anything over there yet. Do you think I’m looking forward to scrubbing that floor? I’ve barely been able to tolerate cleaning it in square inches. I’m lying in bed thinking about it instead of sleeping.

  Nietzsche said something about life being suffering, and surviving is about finding meaning in that suffering. But he also said that hope prolongs the torments of man. You know, I’ve always invested too much in hope and come up tormented.

  January 28, 9:10 AM

  So, Nietzsche himself tormented me in a dream last night: I saw him and Roxy out on a date. So—jealousy. Boom. Anyone smarter. Anyone slimmer. Anyone handsome enough. Anyone at all successful, as in, has a decent job that might interest her for conversation and offer stability, even Friedrich Nietzsche—an overopinionated, German agnostic philosopher from the 1800s with a mustache the size of a calico cat. Anyone who can make her laugh, or feel safe, or good about herself. Who next, nightmares? Constantine? Alexander the Great? Alexander Graham Bell? Dean Martin? Fred Astaire? A caveman with a buffalo carcass? How about you, real world? Anyone but me. Nietzsche’s dead though, so fuck him, his chances are the same as mine. And fuck him being in my dream. Fuck the meaning of dreams. Super-fuck writing them down. Fuck sleep.

  9:30 AM

  Fuck this entire thing. I’m going in to clean the whole rest of the kitchen floor. I’d love to get this all done in one shot. Like De Niro in The Deer Hunter: “One shot is what it’s all about. A deer’s gotta be taken with one shot.”

  12:15 PM

  Holy God, it was awful—I just took the longest, hottest shower of my life. I only got about a third of the way finished around the path that I’d already cleaned. It’s so encrusted that I have to wet and wipe away top layers with 409 and paper towels, then scrub the bottom layer with a brush, then 409 and paper towel that away, and then clean the scrub brush in the sink for the next round. It’s all hands-and-knees work. I can only hold my head up so high to keep it away from the rising fumes of blended waste and cleanser. When I think of the soles of Irene’s shoes, and the bottoms of those dogs’ feet . . . I had to take breaks every five minutes or so.

  I was ill prepared. I need a hazmat suit and that industrial spray that NASA used to use to clean off the astronauts when they returned from space. I need so many things. I ran out of paper towels in no time, and 409 is kids’ stuff against that floor. The bristles on the brush were leaping off like rats from the Lusitania. I need better equipment. I don’t have any spending cash, but a trip to the hardware store is a necessity. “One shot.” Right. I underestimated the monster-deer. I underestimated the sensitivity of the alarms in my immune system. I underestimated my intolerance for suffering vs. my ambition.

  I laid down newspapers. I’m sure Nelson will take care of those. We’re also almost halfway out of the newspapers.

  4:00 PM

  Back from Tashman’s Hardware on Santa Monica. I managed to keep it under thirty dollars. Got a thicker filter mask, kneepads, paper towels, a more robust scrubbing brush, and the strongest cleanser they had. I asked them what they would have recommended for Chernobyl. These are the tools of change. I’m going to get it done.

  January 29, 10:20 AM

  Took the dogs for a very long walk this morning. We went up Hayworth to Santa Monica then back down the other side of the block all the way to Waring, then west to Edinburgh, back up Edinburgh, then west again down Willoughby all the way to Crescent Heights, and then back again. Neither one of them peed. We went by six or seven sets of people walking their dogs. I stopped each time, trying to socialize these two. (I’m leaving the rubber gloves at home now.)

  People chat with me, and I find it pleasant, even though I hate being up this early. These dog owners have their acts together. They all automatically think we have something in common because we have dogs. I don’t “have” dogs.

  There’s a middle-aged French woman named Elise who adores these two. She owns a tired- and sad-looking pug named Omar. When she stops, Omar sits on his rear haunches and pants as if he’s just ended his first day of Moroccan desert training with the French Foreign Legion. His mouth is wider than his head. When his jaws are relaxed, he looks like a furry blowfish. His exhaustion makes him calm around the dum-dums.

  C’mon, Omar, teach these guys how to behave.

  Elise proudly tells me that she drinks a full bottle of wine every day.

  “I find your accent to be just as intoxicating.”

  She smiles. “It is good for you, for your health,” she promises in her soft minuet voice, “and for your happiness. It gives freedom to the mind.”

  I concur.

  She’s not looking too bad for a dedicated alcoholic. Whenever she sees us, she crouches down to pet the dogs. I cringe inside when people do this. I don’t know where my responsibility lies in telling people that the dogs are so polluted that the EPA should categorize them as walking hot zones. Elise must be able to tell, unless some of that daily bottle is getting tipped in place of coffee, too. Maybe animal lovers just don’t care, or maybe French people just don’t care. I always remind her that they’re not mine, they are Irene’s, so as to disembarrass myself.

  I try to do my best to disguise my distress. Sometimes the other dogs are friendly like Omar, and sometimes they go crazy. Nelson and Lauren usually jump around for several seconds before they decide if they’re going to get close or not. I’m trying to get them to smell other dogs to find a scent that they can get interested in and want to check out every day. That’s what Austen told me dogs do.

  12:45 PM

  I wonder if their olfactory receptors are so damaged by their own foul existence that they can no longer pull those other dogs’ scents up into their brains. I feel that way myself after spending time over there. I can’t smell my antiperspirant after I put it on anymore. Loss of smell is a sign of Alzheimer’s. What if I can’t tell if I’m smelling bad? There’s no way that Irene has any concept of how she smells. We all have moments of not caring, but it’s a whole other level to live beyond its self-detection. No wonder Lauren has no regular appetite. She has no interest in food because she can’t taste it. Then she gorges when she’s starving. That’s probably why she’s overweight.

  I couldn’t take any more time walking. We’d been out there for forty-five minutes. I’m so frustrated that they didn’t go. I guess I’ll have to keep taking th
em out all day, because I don’t want them to do it inside while I’m there. I lose it when they do it right in front of me.

  January 30, 5:25 PM

  It’s done. The floor is back to being a floor. It’s so clean you could, well, walk on it. Took all day with so many breaks outside. Walked the dogs a few times, but they’d been going on the living room rug. That rag has got to go, too. I get so angry when I see that they peed. They used to just scatter when I got angry, but now that they’ve gotten used to me, they stay in place and hunch up, and cower, and give me the sad orphan eyes. Lauren trembles like a puddle in a thunderstorm. It’s as if they know guilt, but I know they don’t. They’ve lived lives of pure guilt-free indulgence. But when they stay still and listen to me, I feel respected. Now I want them to develop self-respect, respect for their space and belongings. I gave them a speech titled “Why We Walk.” I’ve given them a clean kitchen floor. It’s a new lease on fresh-scented living. They have to take it.

  Just in case, I covered the entire floor with newspaper. It’s like a disposable floor.

  11:30 PM

  Maybe I’m high from the cleanser fumes—or maybe because I got a text from Roxy tonight saying hi, and that she thinks about me. We went back and forth a little, but I wasn’t saying much. I want her to say things at this point—not me. She said she’d like to see me. Part of me is ecstatic, but part of me is still spilling blood. Don’t know what to do. I’m excited though.

  Got very good news today. That anesthesia client’s “new ideas” work that went away shortly after the watch store has come back, some of it. That should give me some stability, if it stays, and if I can stretch everything out. Amazing how quickly things go and come.

  Took the dogs for a late walk. Lauren peed. She does that once in a while now. Got her treat. Poor Nelson—nothing.

  January 31, 11:00 AM

  No updates on Irene. I have Fay’s number in my phone now, so I could call, but I don’t feel like it. I don’t want to have to answer a lot of questions, and I don’t want Fay coming over here and finding out that I’ve been cleaning and then inflame Irene’s mental malaise. She might freak just that I touched her newspapers. Who knows?

  I wonder how Fay feels, being old herself, when she visits Irene in the convalescent home. It’s got to be frightening. As lonely as I am now, I fear those days more than anything, and the thought of being alone in my life at that time, the way my father was, makes me want to swallow a bottle of death vitamins right now. I think that’s what I’d do if it comes to that. I certainly don’t want to end up like Irene.

  Irene was a lawyer. Says she lived in Beverly Hills. I don’t know why she has absolutely nothing now, but, at this point in my life, I’m way behind where she was. I have debt, no savings, no 401k or retirement plan. I could end up entirely dependent on the government. Euthanasia comes from Greek, meaning “happy death.” There should be a word for “happy suicide” because I think sometimes people do it to be happier.

  2:45 PM

  Today a neighbor from a few doors up the street shouted out to me, “Hey, how’s that old lady doing? I don’t see her out here anymore, and I see you with the dogs.”

  The level of concern on his face surprises me, being that he doesn’t know Irene’s name.

  “Is she all right?” It’s Nathan. His voice is like rubbing two chalkboards together. Nathan is frail. He had a very rough go of it as a youngster, and ever since, really. He’s survived Hodgkin’s lymphoma. That battle left his heart weak, and he’s had two heart attacks without having yet turned thirty-five. He’s a very pleasant human being, not a touch of bitterness shows, but he keeps death very near in his thoughts, perhaps so as never to be surprised. He is the sweetest specter of the beyond that one could possibly have as a neighbor.

  He talks very openly about his poor health. That’s probably why he wants to know about Irene. In fact, everyone I meet on these walks leads with their current and/or chronic pains or diseases. I know people better by their health records than by their names.

  Nathan’s hair is long but very thin, the strands tied desperately into a ponytail. He wears a wiry goatee, and thick glasses sit at an angle atop the rugged terrain of what could be a former boxer’s nose, or the nose of someone who got beat up a lot as a kid. He’s freckly and sun-sensitive, as he shades his face with his hand, unfortunately leaving his hand vulnerable to more freckling.

  “I don’t really know how she is, but she’s fine” is how I usually begin my response to that question to everyone, and then I explain that her arm is broken, etc.

  “So, you’re taking care of the dogs?”

  I wondered at the suspicion in his tone. Does this look like some master scheme to take Irene for all her mismatched Tupperware?

  “What if she doesn’t come back?” he asked, as if I’d thought about any of this beyond each present, agonizing moment.

  “She’ll be fine. Her friend is visiting her,” I reassured him.

  “Old people just die. Accidents like this take them down,” he said. “They fall, then they get an infection, staph or something, and they croak,” he unassured me.

  Of course, he wasn’t wrong. My mother died of a deep vein thrombosis after a two-night hospital stay for some chest congestion, just a clot that had loosened from within her leg and shot up to her lung because her legs hadn’t been moved enough while she lay there in bed. And I told you about Roxy’s dad.

  “I’m positive that nothing bad will happen to her, and she’ll be home soon.” That felt like lies.

  “These dogs are going to be yours someday,” he said with a sinister, sandpaper laugh.

  That felt like . . . Nope. Nope. Nope.

  February

  February 1, 9:00 PM

  Roxy called, left me a message that she wants to see me, that we should talk. God, I don’t want to get broken up with all over again. But I need to see her. I called her back. We set something up for Wednesday here. It gives me a reason to straighten up.

  February 2, 1:00 PM

  One of the big problems that mucks up these dogs is all that hair. It’s so long under their bodies that it drags along the floor. Plus, hair grows out of their faces, keeps growing and growing. Now that the floor is clean, I want to get them clean too. Might be bath time.

  Started straightening up my own place, too.

  February 3, 10:20 AM

  I guess it was true about those hospice visits. Fay called this morning to give me an update. Nothing’s changed. Irene sees the doctor once a week, and he appears and says, “You’re doing fine. It’ll be a little while,” and then leaves. The Nazi in her room still doesn’t like Jews. She’s been trying to sneak out at night, apparently setting off some kind of hidden mattress alarm again and again every time she gets out of bed.

  Fay explained to me how she and Irene met. Fay’s husband had been diagnosed with stage four lung cancer and was in hospice. At the time, Fay still worked as a floor supervisor at Macy’s, and she could only be home in the evenings. “It was an awful time,” she explained.

  One day as she arrived in her husband’s room, Irene was there at his bedside holding his hand, talking with him, and they were laughing.

  “I hadn’t seen Henry laugh in quite a while,” she said.

  It turned out that Irene had been visiting him every afternoon as a hospice volunteer.

  “It just meant the world to me to find that out,” Fay said. “And Irene being such a kind and intelligent person, it felt as if an angel had been given to us.” She said it relieved her of some of the guilt that she couldn’t leave work on so many days. “That’s always one of the most difficult parts of this for families, but when you experience it yourself, that you can’t control your schedule in such a hard time, it’s terrible.”

  Fay said she’s forever grateful for what Irene did for her Henry.

  So all the while that Sophie was barking when Irene wasn’t home, and I was sitting here writing this log, she might have been at Henry’s bedside
. Or someone like Fay’s Henry.

  February 4, 11:45 PM

  I’m nervous about Roxy coming over tomorrow. I don’t know what to think. I am weakness.

  February 5, 9:10 PM

  Roxy was here. When I opened the door, she stood stiff as a Secret Service agent. She smiled and said hello, but it had all the warmth of a stack of cinder blocks.

  We’re already broken up, I thought. This can’t go anywhere but up. Think, or at least act, positive, you idiot. Wait, I countered to myself, what if this is the establishment of the friend zone? Confidence gone.

  She wore a white cotton top and a long, light brown cotton skirt, more like a stiff burlap, that refused to define her hips. I miss them. She could have just stepped off of a Conestoga wagon. She’d pinned her hair back very tightly, along with every fiber of her sex appeal. If she could have, I think she would’ve left her long legs entirely in the car before coming in.

  Before even a word was spoken, I already couldn’t reach my sinking heart. Nietzsche said that for a man to just be friends with a woman he must be “assisted by a little physical apathy.” She was, consciously or not, trying to give that apathy a forceful push. But I didn’t care about the Little House on the Prairie outfit—turns out my heart had only sunk as low as my pants. Her beauty eviscerates me. The only eyes I ever want to see. I trembled like Lauren during a scolding. Roxy’s rejection of me was, in part, a scolding for not having my shit together. It still isn’t together. Fear mixed with attraction in a gust of adrenaline. The achievement of her love was all that mattered again. Her loving me gave me existence. She’s here, so I exist.