“How do I know you’re not just going to make up a number and charge me more money?” I said.

“That would be really despicable,” said the boy vet. Then, as if considering it: “Probably illegal. If somebody, like, investigated it.”

“Call and tell me how it goes,” I said. “Do I still have to pay if it dies?”

“Yes,” he said.

I texted Julia: “Have to pay $2K to save dog, not Kiki, got kind of tricked, we might have new dog, love you.”

I walked Kiki back to the house. We’d gotten her from a rescue group hawking puppies in front of a Petco the previous September. Julia had been the one crazy for a dog, but I was wary, knowing the bulk of its care would fall to me while she got her education in gore. But puppies are manipulative shits; that’s how they stay alive. Kiki—well, proto-Kiki, alias “Buttercup”—fell asleep in my arms in the trash-strewn field behind the Petco, and I no longer had a choice about it. An hour later, and an exorbitant “adoption fee” poorer, the three of us were on the road in a car weighed down with a thirty-six-pound bag of puppy food, two bowls, three leashes, ten toys, and a large metal cage. Excuse me, “crate.”

“There’s an animal in our car,” Julia had whispered, trying not to wake her up.

At home, I started on the dishes as a preemptive karma strike. Julia was working long hours, and I’d been, you’ll remember, useless, so there were a lot of dishes. My phone rang and I hoped it would be the vet, but, no, it was my friend Kenny, calling to invite us over for dinner later in the week. I gave him a tentative but optimistic yes. Kenny was my best friend in Virginia, a self-employed mechanic-poet who lived half an hour outside of town. He only had a couple of years on me, but he’d already been a touring jazz guitarist, high school janitor, editorial assistant, line cook. Kenny told me he’d only recently reached his ideal state, which was drinking beer on his back porch in an oil-stained T-shirt while bitching about the hunters on his property, and I was grateful to be party to it. Out of pure decency and/or want of company, he’d hooked me up with occasional summer work, pet-sitting and hauling junk away from people’s houses. He let me pretend to be a roughneck when I wanted to.

Now, I drank coffee and watched Kiki root around in the backyard. Bring the stick here. Dig a hole there. Race across the fence barking at the dogs in our blessedly forbearing neighbor’s yard. Urgent stuff.

A few hours later, the boy vet finally called.

“Did he make it?” I said.