Fiction Fix Sixteen

Cathleen Calbert
I peered into the box. On strips of newspaper sat a mongrel no bigger than the
Shih Tzu but a hundred times uglier: a body too lengthy for its squat legs, fur a brighter
red than auburn, and on its rat-like snout absurdly long, black whiskers.
“Quite a find you’ve got there,” I told the woman. Thinking of that urban legend
about a family mistaking a rat for a dog until it eats the baby, I strode into The Precious
Pooch, forked out thirty dollars for something more precious than steak, then stepped
back outside.
“Forty,” the woman told me, adjusting her haunches. “I have to get rid of him today.
My landlord says I can’t have a dog. That asshole. Some people don’t know what it
means to love.”
“It’s a he then?” I asked.
She squinted up at me. “I said ‘she.’”
“What’s her name?”
The woman paused. “Brandy?”
“You’ve got a deal,” I said and fished out my wallet again.
I hurried to the car, a small bag of dog food under one arm, the rat-faced mutt
under the other. I dumped the food in the front and Brandy in the back. Her whiskers
twitched as she lifted her thin nose in the air. Then she devoted herself to chewing the
tips of her black-nailed paws as I drove.
I was a man with a plan.
Eve adored dogs so much, she’d have to take this one in. I guess there was an element
of meanness on my part, a bit of payback: you love dogs; here, love this one if you can.
But I also pictured the two of us deliciously screwing all over the white expanse of her
bed while Brandy and the Peanut went for it elsewhere in the house. After all, something
had to give if this relationship were going to continue. I couldn’t be the perfect boyfriend
forever.
“Look what I found at the store!” I sang out as I walked through Eve’s front door.
“Oh my God,” Eve said, her eyes bluer than usual as she gazed at the horrible Brandy.
“I got her for you,” I told her. “Well, for Petey, too. A little girlfriend of his own. So
everybody will have somebody.” Our house, it’s a very, very fine house… As Eve took in the
hideousness of my present, I cooled in fear: maybe Petey already had a girlfriend. Maybe
in our three-ways, I was the guest player, he the main man. I remembered Eve’s boyfriendsummary:
Keith was a jerk, Steve insensitive, Jerry not very understanding. What the hell
had that dog done to them?
“You are the most thoughtful man.” Eve blinked back a quick splash of tears, and
her mouth stretched into a smile. “And she’s the . . . she’s the cutest little thing.”
I put the mutt on the floor in front of Petey. Fuck him or kill him, I thought. I figured
either way I was free of the Peanut.
Fiction Fix 19