Buddy/Mack just doesn’t understand why Justine wasn’t there. Ed took him there, as if he also expected that Justine would be waiting in that place to pick up the end of the leash and take him home. So why wasn’t she there? Buddy/Mack doesn’t have the capacity to think, Maybe next time. For him, there is no hope beyond a few minutes, a hope contrived by human action. He cannot hope that Ed will go back to the cemetery, to “there,” because it’s not in his power to hope. He can only expect. He has begun to expect the ride in the car to Lil’s. He expects two meals a day. He expects a walk, because Alice is a creature of habit.

When Alice accidentally signals a movement—a spin or a stand, a bow or a rump wiggle—Buddy/Mack doesn’t hope that she will dance with him; he expects that she will. And when she doesn’t, he has to be satisfied with her laugh. Sometimes he thinks that these new people are hard of hearing. They don’t understand his very simple requests, suggestions, and comments.

The good news is that lately, at night, after Alice finishes banging around in the kitchen and Ed has taken the trash out, they sit side by side on the couch so that he can lie between them. He takes turns resting his chin on their legs. First, Ed strokes him, and then, when Ed gets up to get a drink or use the bathroom, Buddy/Mack shifts over to Alice. She twiddles his ears in just the same way that Justine does, so he stays longest on her lap. They have begun talking over him. Talking about him. He hears the Buddy word over and over, sometimes with that little sound in the throat that means people are in a good mood. Once in a while, he lets them know that he’s listening by thumping his tail. Ed plays with the thing that Justine calls a “clicker.” Buddy/Mack doesn’t know what Ed calls it, because he hasn’t asked him to fetch it. If Ed had the word, the command, then he’d get a big surprise when Buddy/Mack dropped it in his hands. But Ed doesn’t ask, so Buddy/Mack doesn’t fetch.

Buddy/Mack stretches out between Ed and Alice; the distance between them is exactly wide enough for him to have his head on her lap and his back legs on Ed’s. They’ve stopped talking now, but Alice’s fingers still tickle the inside of his ear and Ed’s hand still strokes Buddy/Mack’s rump.

Chapter 30

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