The cop stared at me for a solid half a minute, soaking in all my crazy. I’m sure the dog barf in the cup holder didn’t help. Not that it did much to take away from the original ambiance of my dilapidated car. I hadn’t washed it in two years. Still, he must have seen something he believed on my face because he entertained my story for a moment.
“Okay. Well, I’ll just put a call in to animal control.” He leaned toward the radio mic on his shoulder. “Get this dangerous stray off your hands.”
I sobered in a second, dropping my finger from my eye. “No! You can’t send him to the shelter!”
His hand froze on the mic, and he arched an eyebrow. “Because this is your dog?”
“No, because he’d be terrified. Haven’t you seen those ASPCA commercials? With the sad dogs in cages? And the Sarah McLachlan song?”
The cop laughed the whole way back to his squad car to write me a ticket.
When the dog and I got home, I stuck my ticket to the fridge with the flip-flop magnet Brandon and I had picked up in Maui. Both the ticket and the magnet made the lump rise in my throat, but the dog pushed his head under my hand and I somehow muscled down the urge to sob. It was 10:00 a.m. on The Day, and I’d so far kept my vow not to ugly-cry.
Yay me.
I called Kristen, who was probably freaking out and gathering a search party since I hadn’t answered her last five calls. She picked up on the first ring. “What the hell happened? Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m okay. I have the dog. He’s at my house. I got a ticket for stopping in the middle of the street.”
“Are you fucking serious?”
“Unfortunately, I am,” I said tiredly.
She made a tsking noise. “You didn’t push your boobs up, did you? Next time use your boobs.”
I pulled my tank top out and rolled my eyes at the scratches between my breasts. “I think I’d rather have the ticket and what’s left of my dignity, thank you very much.”
I grabbed a blue plastic bowl from the cabinet, filled it from the tap, and watched as the dog drank like he hadn’t had water in days. He pushed the bowl across the tile of my dated kitchen, sloshing as he went, and I pinched my temples.
Ugh, today sucks.
This was way too much excitement for me. Most days I didn’t even leave the house. This was why I didn’t leave the house. Too many people and things. I wanted to hiss at the sun and go back to sleep.
“I’m gonna call the number on his collar. Let me call you back.”
I hung up and looked at his tag. Weird area code. Tucker, A Good Boy.
“A good boy, huh? That’s debatable. Well, Tucker, let’s see what excuse your people have for letting you run around in traffic,” I muttered as I punched the number into my cell phone.
The call went right to voicemail and a deep male voice said, “Jason. Leave a message.”
I left my contact information, hung up, and shook my head at the dog sloshing water all over my kitchen floor. “You’re probably hungry too. Well, I don’t have any dog food, so we need to go to PetSmart.”
I might have a half-eaten Starbucks lemon loaf in the car, but it was probably petrified.
I didn’t have a leash, so I made one from the belt of my black Victoria’s Secret robe, the one Brandon had given me the Christmas before his accident. Tucker immediately began to gnaw through it.
Just perfect.
When we got to PetSmart, I took him to the store vet to see if he was microchipped. He was, but the number on file was the same as the one on his tag. No address.
This was seriously so inconvenient. I kept checking my cell phone to make sure the volume was up.
No calls or texts.
I was contemplating my limited options when, like the cherry on top of the sundae, Tucker peed on the floor of the vet’s office.
The vet looked unfazed. She pulled paper towels from a dispenser without looking up from her chart and handed them to me. Tucker retreated under a chair and looked on with sorry puppy dog eyes.
“He was eating grass too.” I crouched and dropped towels on the mess. “I think he has a stomachache.”
“He might have a bladder infection. We should test the urine.”
I whirled on her from my pee puddle. “Wait, me? You want me to pay for this test? Seriously? This isn’t even my dog.”
She shrugged over her clipboard. “Well, just be aware that if he has an infection he won’t be able to hold his urine. Tomorrow’s the weekend, so it’ll cost more to bring him in then if he doesn’t get picked up. Plus he’s likely in pain. If you can’t afford it, you could always take him to the Humane Society. They might treat him there.”
The shelter was out. And the pain thing bugged me. With my luck I would end up with him until tomorrow and I’d be back here paying double, begging them to make the peeing stop. I put a finger to my twitching eyelid. “Fine. Test him. Maybe the owner will pay me back?”
God, I was already tired tomorrow, just from today.
My cell phone pinged, and I looked at it wearily.
Kristen: Did the cop have that porn-stache they always have?
Ping.
Kristen: You should have cried. Machine gun sobbing always gets me out of tickets. Just sayin’.
I snorted. She was trying to make me smile. She and her husband, Josh, were on Sloan watch today. High alert, code red. Keeping an eye on me in case I flipped out or broke down.
It was probably a good idea.
Two hundred dollars and one expensive bladder infection later, we left with our dog antibiotics. On top of Tucker’s vet bill, I bought a leash and a small bag of dog food. I needed enough supplies to at least get me through tomorrow in case this ended up being a sleepover. I also grabbed a chew bone and a ball to keep him busy. I didn’t need this Tasmanian devil destroying my house.
I wasn’t familiar with his breed. I forgot to ask the vet. He looked sort of like a small golden retriever. It wouldn’t surprise me if he turned out to be half honey badger. He was a little wild. What dog jumps through a sunroof?
Whatever he was, he was not what I was supposed to be doing today.
Today I was supposed to be with Brandon.
Setting a bottle of Woodford Reserve against his headstone. Sitting on a blanket on the grass next to where we laid him to rest, telling him how much I missed him, how the world was worse for him not being in it, how hollow I was and it wasn’t getting better with time like they said it would.
April eighth was the two-year anniversary of his accident. Not the date of his death—he lived a month before he succumbed to his injuries—but the date of the crash. That was really the day his life was over. My life was over. He never woke up. So today could never just be some day.
The year held a lot of days like that for me. The day in December when he’d proposed. His birthday. My birthday. Holidays, the date of the wedding that never happened. In fact, most of the calendar was a minefield of hard days. One would crest, I’d live through it, and then another one would roll toward me in the constant ebb and swell that was the year.
Another year without him.
So I had planned to distract myself today. Have my visit to the cemetery and then be productive. Get some paintings done. Eat something healthy. I’d committed to not sleeping through the day like last year. I’d promised myself I would ignore that the month of April smelled like a hospital to me now and reminded me of fixed pupils and beeping machines with tempos that never changed.