But while I’m here, I’ll help the best I can. I won’t say that I owe it to anyone; I don’t owe anyone anything. I’ll do it because I know how.

20

Alice and the dog come in from their morning walk. She hangs the leash on one of the back door pegs they use for keys, raincoats, and grocery bags, as if it had always hung there. “He really is a good boy. He never pulls.”

Ed looks up from the eight-and-a-half-by-fourteen-inch poster board that he’s working on. In nearly perfect block lettering, he’s written: FOUND, GRAY-AND-WHITE LONGHAIRED DOG. NO COLLAR. ONE BLUE EYE AND ONE BROWN EYE. He turns the poster so that Alice can see it. “What do you think?”

Alice thinks that she hates him. “I don’t know. I guess it’s all right.” Her good mood of the morning is gone.

“We should try to get a picture of him to put on it.”

“He’s so beautiful—how will we prevent people from just claiming him?”

Ed shrugs. “I doubt that anyone would actually do that, but even so, won’t we be able to tell by the way he reacts when his old owner shows up?”

“Not he if was abused.”

“Alice. Really. Does he strike you as an abused dog?” Ed waves a hand toward the dog, who is daintily licking his forepaws like a cat.

“He got left by the side of the road, hungry and thirsty. That’s abuse enough.” Alice knows that her tone is verging on hostile. She doesn’t mean to be, but it’s an easy tone to take instead of just saying what she wants to say. Instead of just telling Ed that, goddamn it, they’re going to keep the dog because she wants him and she takes care of the house and, like everything else, it will be her responsibility. But she doesn’t. Instead, she wrenches open the refrigerator door and begins shoving GladWare containers around, trying to assemble an idea for supper hours before anyone wants it.

“I’m going to go hang these.” Ed scrapes back the kitchen chair, a sound that makes Alice grind her teeth. There are permanent tracks burned into the tile. As soon as Ed pulls his keys off the pegs, the dog gets to his feet and dances to the back door as if planning on taking the ride with Ed.

“You want to go?”

The dog tap-dances, front paws doing a high step.

“Think I should?”

Alice shuts the refrigerator door, leans back against it, and studies the pair. “He looks like he wants to go. Maybe he likes car rides.”

Ed pats his leg. “Let’s go.”

The dog yips, an easily translatable Yippee sort of sound.

“Leash him.” Alice says that exactly as she might have reminded him to fasten a child’s seat belt. A reflexive maternal remark, unnecessary but vital to say so that the protective charms of ritual are in effect.

Equally reflexive, Ed replies, “Of course.”

And to their mutual amazement, the dog pulls the leash off the peg himself and brings it to Ed, sits in front of him with the black nylon leash dangling from his sharp muzzle, his plumed tail swishing back and forth on the tile.