“You bet. I’m here. You sound exhausted. You want me to pick you guys up?”
“I can make the drive.”
“I’ll throw something together. You just bring yourself and your dog.”
“I’ll see you soon. I love you.”
I realized it was the first time I’d said it to Lili. But after all I’d been through, I knew that I meant it.
“I love you too, Steve. And I’m very glad you’re all right.”
I hung up, then put Rochester’s leash on and we walked outside. A nice breeze had picked up, and the air was fresh with the smell of new-mown grass and humidity from the placid Delaware, just a few blocks away. Graduation was over and the campus had cleared out. My car was one of the few left in the parking lot.
Leighville was crowded with celebratory graduates, their families and their friends. I took a couple of side streets to reach Lili’s and was glad to snag a parking space only a block from her apartment.
Lili kissed me as soon as she opened her front door, then stepped back. “What happened to your forehead?” she asked.
I reached up. “I guess I bruised it when I went down after the dog.”
“After him how?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Well, come on in and sit down. Have something to eat, and then you can tell me.”
Lili had made us croque monsieurs, ham and cheese sandwiches grilled on thick slices of farm bread, which she served with thick potato chips and bottles of French orange soda. In between bites, I told her the whole story. “Poor Verri,” she said, when I was finished.
“I do feel bad for her,” I said. “She wasn’t a nice person, and neither was Rita Gaines. But both of them made contributions to Eastern, and neither of them deserved to be murdered.”
I drank some soda, and we were quiet for a while. “I do wish I’d been at graduation, though,” I said. “There were a couple of students I wanted to see graduate.”
“Good ones or bad ones? I know I had a couple I’m eager to see move on.”
I laughed. “I guess some of each.”
I leaned over to kiss her, and while I wasn’t paying attention, Rochester sat up and wolfed a couple of potato chips from my plate.
“Go on, help yourself, dog,” I said, sitting back and laughing. “You earned it.”
* * *
If you’ve come this far with Steve and Rochester, I hope you’ll want to continue with the next book in the series, DOG BLESS YOU. Here’s the opening chapter of that book:
1 – Roof and Kibble
“Rochester!” I said, skidding to a stop in the kitchen just before I stepped into a big pile of dog vomit.
My goofy golden retriever was sprawled on the tile a few feet beyond the mess, a sad expression on his usually cheerful face. “Why did you have to do this today, dog? I don’t have time to mess around.”
Normally in the mornings Rochester was a bundle of energy, ready to go for a long walk, then ride to work with me and spend the day sleeping in a sunny place in my office at Eastern College. He looked up at me with wide, apologetic eyes, and I reached down to pet the soft fur on the top of his head. “I’m sorry, puppy. I know you didn’t get sick on purpose.”
I stepped around the liquid mess, unrolled a few paper towels, and got to work cleaning up. Rochester was a friendly, happy dog but he had a tendency to snoop into everything and put a lot of crap in his mouth that didn’t belong there or in his digestive tract. When I finished I gave him an anti-diarrheal pill inside a piece of cheese. He gobbled the cheese and spit the pill out, then grinned at me.
“Fine, we’ll do it old school.” I pried open his jaw and dropped the pill into his mouth, massaging his throat until he swallowed. I watched him carefully to make sure he didn’t upchuck the pill, and when I was satisfied I hooked up his leash.
He scrambled to his feet and tugged me toward the front door, then down the driveway. It was a warm morning in mid-July, bright sunshine sparkling on the dew-soaked lawns, and the temperature promised to climb into the eighties. We’d had a lot of summer rain, and I had to drag Rochester past puddles of standing water and avoid a couple of lawns that were more mud than grass.
We lived in a townhouse community called River Bend, a mile north of the center of the small Bucks County, Pennsylvania town of Stewart’s Crossing, where I had grown up. It was built as the Soviet Union was collapsing, and all the streets bore names of Eastern European cities.
We walked down our street, Sarajevo Court, Rochester sniffing and peeing and me observing the neighborhood. The Camerons’ springer spaniel was whimpering in their gated courtyard, and one corner of the covering Bob Freehl kept over his vintage Porsche had come loose in the wind. Air conditioners hummed and in the distance I heard the whistle of a train.
I looked at my watch. Still plenty of time to get to work before my appointment with my boss, Mike MacCormac, the director of the college’s fund-raising campaign. I didn’t know what it was about; summer is a slow time in academia, and I was surprised over the weekend when he texted me with a request for a nine o’clock meeting. Had I done something wrong? Alienated a donor or a reporter? Forgotten about a deadline?
I was still obsessing as we rounded a curve in the street and I saw Phil and Marie Keely’s son Owen sitting on the low stone wall in front of their townhouse, smoking a cigarette. The Keelys were both in their sixties; Phil had the kind of flushed face I associated with habitual drinkers, and Marie had suffered a stroke that required her to use a walker. Owen had moved in with them about a month before.
“Morning, Owen,” I said as Rochester stopped to sniff the base of an oak tree in front of the house.
“Good morning, sir.” I found it weird that Owen was so formal, when I was probably only about fifteen years older than he was. I figured it was some vestige of the military.
He had close-cropped dark blond hair and a thin mustache in the same color. His upper arms were covered in colorful tattoos, and he wore sleeveless T-shirts to show them off. He was in his late twenties, the youngest of three kids, and I wondered what chain of events had brought him back to his parents’ house.
“Hey, boy,” he said, getting up and approaching Rochester. “How’s the puppy?”
Rochester backed away from him. “It’s okay, boy,” Owen said quietly. He held his hand out palm up for Rochester to sniff, but my dog wasn’t interested.
“Sorry,” I said. “He’s not feeling so good this morning.”
Owen shrugged. “Not a problem. I had a dog over in Afghanistan just about his color, though more like a lab mix.”
“A military dog?”
He shook his head. “Just a mutt that attached itself to my unit. But he always liked me best.” He smiled. “He’s still back there, my buddy says. Hanging around, scrounging food, looking for a belly rub now and then.”
Rochester tugged me forward. “Have a good day,” I said.
Owen took a drag on his cigarette and sat back down on the wall. Ahead of us, an old Thunderbird with big patches of primer cruised slowly down the street. The driver passed us, then beeped his horn.
I turned around to see Owen stub out his cigarette in the driveway and then get into the T-bird, which accelerated away.
Most people in River Bend are friendly. I knew the dogs Rochester played with by name, as well as some of their affiliated humans. Kids played ball in the street and ran in and out of their friends’ houses. It was a lot like the suburban neighborhood a few miles away where I had grown up.
But that morning was the first time I’d had a conversation with Owen Keely. I guessed it was hard for him, coming back from the war, living with his parents again. I wished Rochester had been nicer to him.
Half a block later, the dog let loose a stinky stream of diarrhea. “I guess you really don’t feel well, boy,” I said, leaning down to pat his head. “We’ll go see Dr. Horz and get you fixed up.” I struggled to pick up what I could in a plastic bag, and hoped that a rain shower wou
ld wash the rest away.
I hadn’t always been a dog lover. Rochester and I first met soon after my next-door neighbor, Caroline Kelly, had adopted him. When Caroline was murdered a few months later, I took the big goof in for a couple of days, leading to a permanent love affair.
Back at the house, I wiped his butt and placed an emergency call to the vet’s. Then I laid towels on the passenger seat of my elderly BMW sedan and loaded the dog in. Usually Rochester loves riding with me, sitting up on his haunches and sticking his head out the window. But that July morning he curled up on the seat with his head resting on my lap.
I put another towel between his head and my leg, and drove as quickly as I could to the vet’s. The Beemer was one of the last vestiges of my old life; I had bought it new when I was a successful executive in Silicon Valley, and a friend had kept it for me while I was a guest of the California state prison system for a relatively minor computer hacking offense. By the time I got out, I was nearly broke and couldn’t afford to buy anything else. It had survived the drive across country, though it had developed a rattle under the hood which needed a mechanic’s attention.
We walked into the vet’s waiting room, which smelled like wet dog and disinfectant. “Steve Levitan with Rochester,” I said to the receptionist, and then we found ourselves a spot across from a yippy Yorkie and a baleful basset. One of the morning shows was playing on the TV in the corner, a young blonde with her frowny face on, talking about the poor state of the economy.
The Yorkie across from us launched into paroxysms of barking at the entrance of a skinny, demonic-looking Papillon, whose pointy ears stuck out of its head like antennae. I rubbed my sweet dog under the chin. “You feeling any better, boy?” I asked.
Rochester looked at me and I thought he smiled. Then he dry-heaved as Elysia, the vet tech, approached.
“Somebody’s not feeling well, huh?” she asked, kneeling down to the dog’s level. She was a round-faced older woman with an Italian accent, and usually Rochester loved to see her, but he put his head down instead of licking her face. “Poor baby. We’ll get you into a room so Dr. Horz can see you.”
I stood up and took Rochester’s leash, and we followed Elysia inside to the floor-mounted scale, which looked more like a treadmill to me. I tried to get Rochester to step up on it but he planted his big paws on the tile floor and wouldn’t move.
“Go on, you big goof.” I pushed against his hindquarters and he looked at me woefully. But he wouldn’t move, no matter how I tugged. Was he remembering a bad experience there? The vet and her techs had always been so good to him. Or was he just being difficult?
I lifted his front paws onto the scale, and reluctantly he stepped forward. “Eighty pounds,” Elysia said approvingly. “Good boy.” Then she led us to the first examining room, the one with illustrated posters of canine digestive and respiratory systems.
“I know, you don’t like this,” Elysia said, squatting on the floor next to Rochester, who had sprawled out on his stomach. “But I need your temperature.”
She lifted his tail and inserted the thermometer. I sat on the floor next to Rochester and scratched behind his ears, and told him what a good boy he was. Then I held his head as Elysia retrieved a stool sample. Not for the first time, I was glad my parents had pushed me to go to college so I could get a job that didn’t involve investigating dog poop.
Oh, wait. I got up close and personal with it every day—for free.
Elysia left us in the room. Rochester rolled on his side and snoozed. I paced around the room, trying to figure out what Mike wanted to talk to me about. Eastern College was my alma mater, “a very good small college,” nestled in the countryside halfway between Philadelphia and New York, focused on teaching and making students feel unique. The campus was in Leighville, a half hour north of Stewart’s Crossing.
It had been a hectic couple of months. I lucked into the job in January, after spending a semester as an adjunct instructor in the English department. I had been immediately plunged into the launch of the college’s capital campaign in the winter, then kept busy with graduation festivities. But as the semester ended, it was hard to keep the publicity momentum going when many of the faculty left town.
I looked at my watch and realized I wasn’t going to be able to make my nine o’clock meeting. I hoped Mike wasn’t too angry with me; I knew he had a busy schedule and a short temper and wouldn’t like postponing the appointment.
I pulled out my cell phone to call him as Dr. Horz came in. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said. “But we’re busy this morning. We’ve got a St. Bernard in the back whelping her twelfth puppy.” She was a small, slim woman with prematurely gray hair. I slipped my phone back in my pocket as she knelt down next to Rochester and said, “Good morning to you, handsome. What’s the matter?”
He looked up at her with the kind of doggy adoration he usually reserved for me. She gave him a thorough physical, and then Elysia brought in the results of the stool sample. “No evidence of bacterial infection,” Dr. Horz said, after she glanced at them. “Probably just ate something outdoors that didn’t agree with him. I’ll have Elysia come in with some pills to calm his tummy down, and if he’s not a hundred percent in a couple of days, bring him back.”
As we were waiting, my phone buzzed with the five-minute reminder of my meeting. “Shit,” I said, looking down.
I dialed Mike and was relieved when he answered right away.
“Sorry, puppy emergency,” I said. “Rochester ate something that disagreed with him and I had to bring him to the vet. Can I push back our meeting an hour?”
Mike was a dog lover himself, with a pair of Rottweilers. “My boys do that once or twice a year. Rochester will be right as rain in no time.”
“That’s what the vet said. I’m waiting for some pills now.”
“I’ve got to head out to meet with a prospect,” Mike said. “I was hoping to give you this news face to face, but Babson wants to talk to you at eleven, and I don’t want you to go in there unprepared.”
That made me nervous. John William Babson was the college president, and the ultimate micro-manager. He had his finger in everything that went on, from faculty hiring to the choice of new outdoor trash receptacles. I met with him whenever he had a brilliant idea he wanted to pass along to me. But the meetings were always scheduled by his secretary, not by Mike. He hesitated and my bad feeling intensified.
“Babson’s happy with all the publicity you got for the campaign launch. But now that we’re moving along, he wants to consolidate all public relations activities.”
I’d worked cooperatively with the News Bureau, which tracked the College’s media exposure and provided journalists with access to faculty experts. Ruta del Camion, a recent Eastern graduate who was the department’s sole employee, was struggling to keep up with those activities. I had used my background in database development to reorganize our digital alumni records, and my writing skills to develop stories about faculty research and student achievements, which I passed on to reporters.
I’d always known my job was going to be a temporary one, but I’d thought I would have at least another few months of full-time work before I was back on the job market. I was still following up on a couple of stories about graduating seniors with stellar accomplishments, and developing a series focused on incoming freshmen with quirky backgrounds.
“I’m sorry, Steve,” Mike said. “I wish I could keep you on, because there’s a lot more that you could contribute. But once Babson gets his mind set there’s no changing it.”
Crap. I thought that Babson liked me and would keep me around. I said, “I appreciate the opportunity you gave me. Do you know how long—”
He interrupted me. “Sorry, I’ve got a call on the other line. We’ll talk again this afternoon after I get back.”
The cell phone went dead against my ear. Crap and double crap. I was losing my job. And that was going to screw up my life twelve ways to Tuesday.
Since returnin
g to Stewart’s Crossing from California, I had begun to rebuild my life—adopting Rochester, worming my way into the Eastern administration, even meeting a woman I had begun to care about a lot. But I had little financial cushion; between paying restitution to California for my crimes, and my basic household expenses, I was skating on the financial edge.
My life was coming back together. But would one loss lead to another, and another, the way I’d lost my wife, my job and my freedom in the past?
When Elysia came back with Rochester’s pills and a copy of the bland diet Dr. Horz had promised, she found me sitting on the floor with my dog’s head in my lap as I stroked his soft, golden fur. I didn’t know what I was going to do without a job, but I knew that whatever happened to me I was determined to take care of him.
To read more, you can buy the book here from Amazon.
Thanks from me, Steve and Rochester!
Three Dogs in a Row Page 74