For years he and I shared a happy home—I didn’t worry. I’d work long hours and arrive home late, yet he was always happy to see me. Did I ignore the depressed expression he sometimes wore? Why didn’t I wonder when he’d suddenly be soft and scented with lavender, as though he’d just had a bath?

On a damp Tuesday, he was gone. I put on my leash and went out, shouting his name. Finally, I came to a little white house with red shutters and potted pink petunias on the porch. A woman was on her hands and knees on the lawn. She shoved a spade beneath a weed, then lifted the clotted, rooty clump and dumped it in a bucket. BJ was behind her—his face deep in a large bowl.

Why are you feeding my dog? I asked the woman. She stopped her work to look at me.

She shrugged. He comes here every day, she said. He’s always hungry.

He gets plenty to eat at home, I said. Please don’t feed him. As you can see, he has a weight problem.

You sound like my ex, she said.

BJ, I called. Here, boy.

BJ? the woman said. That doesn’t suit him at all. I call him Jonathan.

BJ, I said, let’s go. But he either did not hear or did not care and continued to eat. I took the leash from my neck, pushed the clasp open. Where is his collar? I said.

Oh, I threw it away, she said.

This little woman turned out to be much stronger than she looked, and I to be weaker than I’d thought, and the taste of the mud and weeds she jammed into my mouth while we rolled in her yard was not as bad as you’d expect.

Meanwhile, he didn’t look up, and he never came back.

Later, when I got my new job, I had to drive past the little white house with the red shutters and pink petunias every day—there was no other way—and although I would remind myself of what a big boss I was now, nonetheless, there they’d be, the two of them, out there together on the lawn, basking in a love like the biggest fuck-you yet seen.

COOLLY, BLUELY

When we got in I found the bathroom first, but she was at the door by the time I sat down.

I have to go to the bathroom, she yelled, pounding.

So do I, I said.

I really need to go, she said, jerking the knob.

When I finished, I picked a citrus scent from the soap heap and peeled it slowly, humming.

They were already in the bedroom with the door shut. Our things were slumped in a pile on the ground. I pulled the food from the sacks and stacked it on the shelves.

I’m hungry, she said, coming in.

Eat this, I said, and set a box in front of her.

She was busy a while unwrapping and chewing, looking out the window over the sink into the dark.