“Right there,” said the cashier, pointing to them. Jillian put her arms around the dog while Adam picked out a neon green collar and a red nylon puppy leash that was maybe a little too short. Jillian attached these items to the dog and stood up. She stretched her back and Crispy shook her skin. They walked to the dog food aisle and picked out the food, two plastic bowls, and a fifteen-inch rawhide bone.

“This is our first dog,” said Jillian to the cashier. She looked around and half picked Crispy up. “Can you just ring up these things while they’re on her?”

“Can you just rip the tags off and hand them to me?”

“Oh, yeah, duh,” said Jillian. She ripped the tags off and the cashier beeped them onto her total. Everything was a little over a hundred dollars. It was more than the adoption fee, but fuck it.

“Ok, ok,” said Jillian in the car.

She walked the dog up the stairs to her apartment. “Welcome home, Crispy.” Crispy walked around the apartment and sniffed things and looked generally confused. Every minute or so she would stop and jump backwards, take a few steps sideways, look around, and then continue sniffing.

Jillian turned on the tv and gave Adam the remote. “Just let her sniff around a second, but let me know if she starts squatting.”

The house wasn’t picked up yet.

Jillian opened the kitchen window and walked around the house opening up the blinds. She set the Petco bags on the kitchen counter, got some scissors, cut off the little plastic loops from where the price tag had been and hung the leash over the kitchen door. She walked around the apartment picking up dishes, then she picked up stray clothing and put it in the hamper in the bathroom. She moved the damp towels from the floor to the hamper. She wiped the crumbs off the kitchen counters and the kitchen table and put the fistfuls of crud in the trashcan under the sink. She felt like she had to do this quickly, and she pivoted several times while she was holding the crud. Then she swept crud off the coffee table and side tables, then she went around picking up little wrappers and pieces of paper. She used a squirt bottle of all-purpose cleaner to dampen the counters and table, coffee table, and side tables. She glanced at Crispy, who was sitting underneath the living room’s dining table.

We’ll eat there tonight.

Then she got paper towels and went around the apartment, wiping in the order she’d sprayed. It took nine paper towels, more because of how much cleaner she’d used than how much dust and crud was on the surfaces. It hadn’t been that messy.