The Dog That Talked to God

by Jim Kraus

  The horror, I know.

  So, there I am, in my mid-twenties. Well, late twenties, but no single woman ever says she is in her late-anythings. I have many friends at work, some closer than others. There is a group of us single women who do things socially—dinners, movies, even host a party now and again. Some of us attended a large, almost mega-church, whose singles group is large and notorious for being a Christian singles meat market. As much as I pooh-poohed the image before I attended, I discovered that it was exactly that—attractive, stylish single men eyeing the new women with a critical tilt of their heads, and you could see them dismissing the ones, out of hand, who did not meet their criteria. A small contingent of less-attractive men—with less attractive haircuts and who shopped at Target and did so badly, who had a lower standard—looked for women who were at least breathing and if they were lucky, semi-sentient.

  And occasionally a woman from work—one of the single ones—would meet a man, start to date, then get married. Go figure. It did not happen for me, and while I was not nervous about it, I did think about such things. I heard the echo of my mother, when not as close to dementia as she is now, telling me not to be so picky. I would have argued with her; I’m not picky at all. There just weren’t that many men who orbited about me to be picky over.

  That was until Jacob Fassler joined the company. He worked in marketing—smooth-talking, glib, always with a ready smile. You know, one of those marketing types. And he was handsome, in a Bohemian sort of way. He stood a few inches taller than me—and in flats, I was an even five feet, five inches tall. He had an almost dark look about him, dark hair with waves that he sort of pushed back from his forehead with a calculated insouciance that made it look as though he had just stepped away from the beach. I would have wagered that he smelled of salt water. He had dark eyes—deep, expressive, more brown than any other color—in contrast with my Nordic-looking blue eyes, my blond hair in a limp bob. He had a dangerous look to himself, opposite from me and my gingham-and-lace-apron aura. I could wear a leather jacket with leather chaps and studs in my nose and ears, and someone would ask me where the Sunday school social is being held. I have that sort of nice, nearly angelic face. I’m not that way, really. I can be bad. Seriously. I have done bad things.

  Sort of.

  Well . . . not really bad. Maybe naughty is a better word. Mischievous perhaps.

  So Jacob joined the company, and he became the talk among the single ladies—or shall I say, single girls, or single women—in the company for weeks. He was a safe subject because none of us women had actually talked to him. And I am pretty sure that, in the deepest, darkest, remotest part of our hearts, we all figured that we had no shot at him.

  He was that handsome.

  Most of us in editorial did not lack intelligence, but we did lack self-confidence.

  I would have considered my situation, my chance with Mr. Jacob Fassler, as long of a shot as shots could go—until that one fateful Saturday.

  I tend to do my editorial work quickly and usually left work at the official quitting time. There were other editors who always worked late, and my opinion is that they simply worked slower. To me, desk time had always been less important than a job well done.

  But, owing to the neurotic behavior of our latest good-but-not-great-selling author, his deadline had been shredded. He had held on to his manuscript six weeks longer than scheduled, the edits were more extensive than usual, he became more anxiety-ridden as he worked through the suggestions, and now it fell to me to get the final manuscript ready for typesetting by the end of the following week.

  That’s why I worked in my tiny office on Saturday. I was there because I knew I could work faster there than at home, where I would be distracted by my roommates and the availability of cable television and mah-jongg on the computer.

  Midway through a particularly confusing shift in voice and tense in the manuscript before me, I heard a voice from the end of the hall.

  “Anyone here? Anyone know how to fix this machine?”

  There was a copy room at the end of the hall. It used to hold the fax machines as well—and most of those have long since disappeared.

  I stood up and sidled around my desk. That’s how you had to do it—sidle past it. I told you my office was small.

  I stepped into the doorway of the copy room.

  There stood Jacob Fassler in all his dangerous glory. He wearing a white T-shirt and worn jeans—actually worn, and not just purchased new and worn. He had on sneakers—white Converse high-tops. I had, up to that moment, considered high tops to be an affectation on anyone but actual basketball players. But on Jacob, they looked good.

  His hair was slicked back more than usual; it appeared as if he had just come in from working out.

  “How do I fix this thing?” he asked, holding a sheet of paper in his hand. “Is it turned on?”

  I nodded. “It is. But it’s temperamental.”

  “Do you know how to fix it?” he asked.

  “I don’t,” I said. “Usually when it stops working, I sneak out of the room and go to another floor, looking for a copier that works. Eventually someone shows up who knows what to do—or they call the service guy.”

  Jacob smiled at me, a knowing secret smile.

  “That’s what I’m doing. The copier in the marketing area went down, and I’m wandering about the building looking for another that works.”

  I liked it that he smiled at me.

  “I don’t think anyone else is in the office today,” I said. “The finance person—Rita, the lady who pays the bills—she came in here earlier. But I don’t think she turned on the copier in her area.”

  “Rats,” said Jacob.

  “Is it important?”

  He offered a half smile, half grimace.

  “No. It’s just a . . . a recipe that I promised I would get for my landlady. I can do it Monday, but I happened to be in the area.”

  He cooks. And I don’t think he’s married. No ring. And married people don’t usually talk about landladies. And the temp in HR said he wrote “single” on his employee file—but no one can trust a temp.

  “Hi, I’m Jacob Fassler. Marketing.”

  He extended his hand and I took it. It felt warm and firm, but not painfully firm like some men I have met who make it their mission to cripple others with their Gigantor Death Grip.

  “I’m Mary Knopf. Editorial.”

  “Like the publisher?” he asked.

  “I wish. Well, yes, like the publisher, but no relation. At least not that I’ve been able to ferret out so far. If I turn out to be a long-lost cousin or daughter of Alfred Knopf . . . well, you won’t see me again. I’ll move to New York and edit books while looking out over Central Park.”

  Jacob laughed, his laugh melodic and not monkeylike, as in some men I have met.

  And from there, I am not sure where the conversation went. Dreamy would be a word I would use if I ever used the word dreamy—which I don’t. All I know is that twenty-five minutes later, we were in the Starbucks down the street, both with small lattes—“I hate ordering a small coffee as a tall”—and sat there and talked for another two hours.

  That’s when he asked me out to dinner and that’s when I accepted.

  And that’s the night I fell in love with Jacob Fassler.

  3

  I’m a novelist because of that same Jacob Fassler.

  I have always been a writer, I suppose. Back in fourth grade, I wrote an essay about what I did over the summer vacation that so impressed my teacher that she had me read it aloud in the fourth grade class—and after I finished, they all applauded. Of course, that has never happened before or since then—the applause thing, I mean—but that started my writing career. I wrote for school newspapers and the school’s overly dramatic “literary” magazines. I, of course, was just as guilty of emotionally overreaching back then as any other pubescent writer. I believe I have matured some since then.

  An avid reader, I often blustered
at bad novelists, sputtering to anyone in the vicinity that I could do better than what I’d just read.

  I blustered that way to Jacob one day, in a Starbucks, my ire fueled by a second small latte.

  “Then write something better,” he said. “I mean—you do work for a publishing company, you know. If anyone has an inside edge to finding a receptive editor, it would be you.”

  He was charming when he said that, and I should have reacted differently, but I recall scowling at him. We were at that point in our relationship where one or the other could offer a pretty-much-fake scowl in response to being called on something.

  “Well, maybe I will then.”

  A few sips passed. Silence.

  “What do you think I should write about?” I asked.

  Jacob shrugged. He was reading the fifth article on the most recent Chicago Bears’ loss. Why anyone would need to go into such great depth over a stupid game—a game that they lost by multiple points—was beyond me. You would think that losing would be suffering enough. No, they had to revel in the gory, painful details of just how they lost and who they could hold responsible for the latest loss.

  I am not a sports fan. Obviously.

  Jacob looked up from his coffee.

  “I dunno. Something about somebody who’s Amish? Or doesn’t want to be Amish anymore? Maybe somebody who wants to become Amish again? Amish seems to be a hot genre.”

  He resettled into the sports pages, his glum eyes fixed on the grading system for a bad team in a death spiral, I guess.

  “Amish?” I replied.

  I sat there, mulling over his words, and the story came to me, just like that: a beautiful woman who grew up in a traditional Amish farm family has to leave the faith—or better yet, abandon her culture—to go to New York to be a model because she’s so beautiful and models spectacularly well. She makes a lot of money, gets famous and into People magazine, finds the modeling/famous people world horribly shallow and degrading, seeks to return to her roots and find a husband, and live a quiet life, but she meets great resistance from everyone on both sides until she discovers the kindness of Kurt Franz, a bachelor Amish who’s semi-outcast because he’s sort of a rebel. They find love and eventually are reaccepted by their Amish community and everyone lives happily ever after.

  Really. That’s the story. It came out of my head, that well formed, in as much time as it took to type the paragraph. Her name . . . was Gretchen—uh—Gretchen Stolz. That sounds Germanish.

  By the end of the next day, I had written twenty-three pages of the novel, done a two-page synopsis, and the company agreed, by the end of the week, to take a chance and publish it.

  Go figure.

  It did not sell huge numbers out of the gate, but it got reprinted six times.

  And with that, I became an editor and a novelist.

  Being a mid-level novelist (and I’m being generous with the grading system here) pays about the same as you would get if you worked the same hours at the local 7-Eleven, except at the 7-Eleven, the hours would be better and you probably get benefits with it. And all the Slurpees you care to consume. The company graciously signed me to a three-book contract after the first one came out. I became their go-to Amish writer.

  And the truth is, I didn’t know all that much about the Amish. I was born in western Pennsylvania and our family visited the Pennsylvania Dutch country several times—before it morphed into a family-friendly tourist attraction. And I saw some old movie on TV with Tony Perkins playing a Quaker a few years ago. And I read a lot. My research may not be encyclopedic, but it has been said that my dialogue was “very believable” and that my characters “face true-to-life problems” and that my plots “keep you guessing to the end.” The last praise is both wonderful and quite flawed, because in gentle Amish fiction, one seldom has the hero or heroine dying before they communicate their love for each other. Endings are usually pretty happy affairs for all concerned.

  I don’t mind writing those sorts of books. I guess I never considered myself a serious novelist. A serious modern novelist is one whose books leave you really depressed at the end. A truly great, modern novelist is one who leaves you wanting to kill yourself at the end of the book. I am a popular modern novelist. People who read my books know pretty much what they are getting, and I deliver a finely crafted, and mostly intelligent, novel. I write believable stuff—the truth, I call it.

  Jacob said he loved the cover of my first book. He took me out to a very expensive restaurant to celebrate the publication.

  “Did you like the book?” I asked him, just before the crème brûlée arrived.

  Jacob seldom looked to be at a loss for words. But at this moment, his tongue appeared to be tied.

  “You did read it, didn’t you?”

  He looked away.

  “I will,” he said in a very small voice. “I planned on it. I just got busy.” We both knew that he was a terrible liar. “I’m not much of a reader.”

  “But you work at a publishing company,” I countered.

  “I work in marketing,” he replied. “We don’t have to read books to sell them.”

  I narrowed my eyes and said as drily as I could. “Really?”

  He squirmed. “Some of us do, I think, read them. Or some of them, I guess. But reading takes a lot of time. We sell a lot of books. Other people said your book was really, really good. Much better than any other Amish stuff on the market. I trust them. I bet it’s great. And I really liked the cover. That woman is hot—even in the goofy bonnet and all that.”

  And that’s when I knew I would marry Jacob Fassler. He told the truth when a lie would have been so much easier—and more productive, if you know what I mean.

  I knew Jacob would marry me after one particular moment during our first spring together. That’s when I knew he loved me. He really, really loved me. I had come down with a cold, or the flu, or dengue fever. My eyes puffed, my nose turned red, I went through an entire box of tissues in one evening. My hair ratted into a Medusa-like do. I felt wretched and looked every bit a wreck.

  I awoke, just after 5:00 p.m., to hear my front door squeak open. Jacob called out to tell me it was him. He had an “emergency” key—just for situations like this. He called up and said he would be upstairs in a few minutes. I heard rattling and clanging from the kitchen, but could not rise out of bed under my own power.

  The noise stopped. And in my doorway, Jacob appeared, carrying a tray. He closed his eyes.

  “Are you decent?” he asked softly.

  “No, but I am clothed,” I responded with a sneeze.

  He carried in a tray with a glass of orange juice. (He must have brought it with him, because I never bought the stuff.) On a plate was a grilled cheese sandwich. And a pot of hot tea, with a freshly sliced lemon.

  Jacob had a red beach towel wrapped around his waist. He saw me staring at it.

  “These are good pants,” he explained. Then added by way of further explanation, “Your stove spatters.”

  I had to smile, weakly and sickly.

  He placed the tray on the bed, helped prop me up, helped feed me the grilled cheese sandwich—overdone on one side (the side he placed face down on the plate) and a bit light on the other side.

  “You don’t have Velveeta. How can you make a grilled cheese without Velveeta? It’s un-American, I think.”

  He helped me drink the tea, now strong and hearty, sweetened with honey.

  He sat beside me on the bed as I nibbled. He scooped the tray away when I finished, came back up—without the towel this time—and sat with me, holding my hand, until I managed to fall asleep.

  I staggered out to the kitchen the next morning and found him asleep on my couch.

  “I didn’t want to leave you alone,” he said, wrinkled and groggy.

  How could I not marry him after that?

  Jacob and I were married by the Fox River, west of Chicago. Neither of us had any strong ties to the river, except that autumn had come and the foliage along the r
iver would provide a good backdrop to our wedding pictures.

  The day before the wedding, a storm passed through, with high winds and thundering rain, and when the sun peeked through the following morning, virtually every tree along the river had been denuded of all its colorful leaves. We could have just as easily gotten married in somebody’s backyard for all the scenic beauty the river provided.

  Despite that, the wedding and reception were lovely—another word I do not use often. Here I was, a plain, semi-attractive woman, edging toward the end of my prime, almost mousy, snagging the best, most attractive man our company had seen in years.

  You might be wondering how I managed to do that.

  I asked myself the same question. And often.

  I didn’t do it with a “come-hither” look, nor smoldering sex appeal or sexual antics, I can assure you of that. I mean, I was super attracted to Jacob, in every way, and I mean that both literally and figuratively. But we were both brought up by very strict parents with horribly strict interpretations of the moral depravity that marked premarital relations—thus, we maintained a fairly pure dating relationship.

  There were moments, however, when the spirit and the flesh were very weak. Or would that be willing?

  But as we edged toward whatever abyss we were edging toward, one of us, or the other, would draw back, take a deep breath, push away, and say something inane, like, “We need to slow down.”

  And we did.

  The waiting and self-denial did make for a wild honeymoon, however. And incredibly satisfying.

  The wedding was wonderful, but coming back to work, quite problematic. The company had no rule about two married people working at the company, but there were those sidelong glances that followed us—as if what I did could help Jacob’s career or vice versa.

  I suppose that Jacob could steer more advertising dollars toward my books, but he did not set budgets.