“I actually only graduated from veterinary school a year ago. But my parents’ve owned the animal hospital my whole life. I was basically born in that stinking place.”

“You must get along with your parents pretty well.”

He examined the top liquor shelf with what appeared to be despair.

“We … collaborate.”

I wanted to keep going, but Liz and Saul came down the steps into the bar.

“Do you guys know Cameron?” I said. “The veterinarian?”

“Oh, we’ve met,” Liz said. “We go back.”

“Ha,” said Cameron. “What up, Liz?”

Saul turned away.

“We’re going to get a table,” I said. “I’ll call you tomorrow about the dog.”

“Better yet, I’ll call you,” he said in a deep, cartoony voice.

We sat down in the back corner of the room, as far from the vet as possible.

“That guy’s the creepiest bastard in this town,” Saul said.

“He seems okay,” I said.

“No, Saul’s right,” Liz said. “He dated my friend Margot for a while. He was really nasty and possessive, and meanwhile he was cheating on her the whole time with her friend Lacey. He was feeding Margot all this insane garbage about how she was a damaged soul, and incapable of real love and whatever, and he’d somehow convinced her that he was some kind of charismatic intellectual or something. He’s troubled, dude.”

“Funny, Liz, how you’re leaving an important person out of this story,” Saul said.

“Okay, and when I first moved to town I had a very, very brief thing with him, too,” Liz said. “Until I realized—very quickly—what a creep he was. Probably around the time he tried to have sex with me, like, in the immediate vicinity of his father’s grave.”

“Yikes,” I said. “He’s kind of young for you, no?”

“He’s, like, thirty? That’s a normal age.”

“He just told me he was twenty-three. And that his father still runs the animal hospital.”

“Well, he was definitely insisting that we were visiting his father’s gravestone, and that he needed to be comforted,” Liz said. “He was certainly crying enough about it. I guess it’s even more awful if it wasn’t true.”

“He convinced me to adopt an injured dog today,” I said. “Will you guys take him if Julia doesn’t want him?”

“Allergies, bro,” Saul said. “Maybe now that she’s a doctor, or almost a doctor, she’ll take pity? Like on a medical level?”

“If I were you, I’d bail now,” Liz said. “Just like, nip that bud.”

“I already paid a thousand dollars for his surgery,” I said.

“So you’ve done your part,” Liz said. “Pass the baton. Nobody wins a relay race by himself.”

“But I want him,” I said.

“Don’t be a child,” Saul said. “That’s what I’ve been telling myself when I want things I shouldn’t have, like other women.”