Emery finished thinking about his daughter as he approached his dogs. Lulu was sitting on top of the doghouse. This was a source of amusement for Emery. Smoky jumped the fence as he approached, head-butting Emery’s thigh.

The dogs had been good for Emery. It was a simple thing. They were detached from his personality of detachment. Emery had been long accustomed to having a sense of duty, something that he was much better at providing for others than he was for himself. The dogs required something, and he could attend to it without complaint. It was simple. It was discipline long lost.

Lulu was barking at something around the corner of the metal garage. Emery shushed her. They were overactive dogs, desperate for any kind of stimulus, and often invented interlopers in order to warn them off. Emery turned the corner expecting critters, and as his eyes focused in the dark for something, anything, to justify his dog, Lulu shot past him into the dark, and Emery began yelling. He saw the flood light reflected in the dull yellow eyes of a polecat as it squared itself up to Lulu’s happy barks. Pfft. The spray seemed almost mechanical, like it was a nozzle to be flicked. Lulu sneezed and loped back with her teeth bared, nipping forward one last time to get caught with a final spray, until she retreated to a sensible distance and began to look at Emery for guidance. Emery was yelling “Lulu!” repeatedly, for what reason he wasn’t quite sure, because he knew he didn’t want the dog to approach him. The stench was invading him already, making him gag, so he meandered back to the fence and after a few moments Lulu appeared behind, sneezing repeatedly, rubbing her face into the grass.

Smokey began rubbing his head into his leg only to collapse ungracefully begging for a belly rub. Emery obliged and tried to decide if he wanted to wash the dog or not.

He waited for the hour to reset in the metaphorical hope it would take this with it.

“I’ll wash her tomorrow,” he said, staring at the empty pile of dirt that his truck used to sit on, recollecting, remembering, but definitely not thinking, if there is such a thing. He stared and remembered and petted Smokey and processed no new information about his life.

•••

Carrie closed her eyes as she leaned on her boyfriend in the subway train.

“So when was this?”

“What?”

“The story with your mom and dad and the dogs,” he said.