To amplify the situation to an eardrum-bursting level, Maye hadn’t been getting many freelance jobs, and she realized she had actually spent more time following dessert-loving women around Whole Foods than she had working. While she had ample contacts in Phoenix, it had proved a little harder than she’d thought it would be to secure employment long-distance. So far, she had taken what she could get, which was copyediting a medical-insurance manual, which could tuck any brain in good night more effectively than Ambien and a pint of whiskey in combination. After that, Maye’s days were essentially free for her to eat lunch alone, wander the public market by herself, and wait for her lawn man to show up and see if he had lost any teeth to decay and rot since the week before.
It was Charlie that broke Maye out of her fog of thought (not a second before it became a fully blown pity party with hats and horns) when he turned off the car and announced, “We’re here!” Maye looked up to see that they had arrived at the pet-food store, where Mickey’s obligatory obedience training class was held. Mickey, in the backseat, began to whine and pant with anticipation.
“He must recognize it from last week,” Maye said with a laugh as she got out of the car. “He’s so excited!”
Indeed, Mickey was. He barreled out of the car the moment Charlie opened the back door, and he charged toward the store with unbridled glee.
“At least someone’s excited about this,” Charlie spat out as Mickey dragged him along.
Unfortunately, Mickey’s community-service requirement was not a friendship well from which Maye wanted to drink. Before their first class began, several unruly dogs and their owners had sat in a circle of folding chairs in the center of the pet store, separated from shoppers merely by plastic mesh netting—and if Mickey had not been ordered by the government to attend Bad Dog School, she would have dragged him out of there as soon as she saw who their fellow classmates were. Mad Dog, a “lively” tiger-striped pit bull with yellow eyes, and his Hells Angel owner were the dog/human pair Maye and Charlie saw as they entered the mesh corral and sat down. The owner, who never made eye contact with anyone, either by choice or lack of available coordination, provided the instructor with a genuine court order from a judge, not a pansy-ass letter from the post office, due to Mad Dog’s midnight snack of a Domino’s delivery guy’s shin, which required not only a skin graft but allegedly a prosthetic. The Hells Angel now referred to the dog’s presence in the class as “doing time.” The realization that the only thing protecting an unsuspecting public from a dog that had digested a man’s leg was essentially a volleyball net was not only alarming but strangely exciting when Maye wondered innocently if her mailman ever shopped there. This clearly knocked Mickey right from the equivalent of the Charles Manson of dogs to something along the ranks of Ratso Rizzo, or a shady character out of Lady and the Tramp. Speaking of Lady, the dog class provided two: Lady One, as the class was required to call her, a Pomeranian terrified of people who spent the first class hiding underneath her owner’s shirt—which Maye assessed was certainly a more gruesome place than feeding time in a cell at the pound with Mad Dog—shaking and crying; and Lady Two, a decaying cocker spaniel whom the owner communicated with via baby talk and song. Next up was Grand Duchess Anastasia, a bichon frise show-dog hopeful who was not allowed near the other dogs per her uptight and Lincoln Continental–driving and BluBlocker-wearing owner. Then there was Sammy, Mickey’s favorite, a nice but excitable and wiry greyhound brought to class by his stripper mom, Pebbles, and her unfortunate eight-year-old son, who apparently was a product of a skinny dip in the shallow end of the gene pool or one egregiously faulty Friday-night judgment call—the child sported a large head and odd, bulging, Don Knotts eyes.
It was Charlie who had whispered in that first class, “If you slapped some orange paint and some water wings on that kid, he’d be Finding Nemo.”
Halfway through that first class—as Lady One quaked under her owner’s fat roll, the owner of Grand Duchess Anastasia simply refused to put her on the floor, where she might get dog germs; Lady Two sat once, then lay down and refused to get up; Sammy broke free of Finding Nemo’s grip, easily soared over the volleyball net, and ran immediately to the cookie aisle; and Mad Dog was deciding which of their limbs looked fleshy and juiciest—Mickey became the star of the show. He sat on cue, shook paws, lay down, stayed when told. He was a good boy, as good as he was when he tackled Bigfoot to the ground to protect his master. Maye was proud, and now she was happy to see that her dog was eager to return. At least he had made a friend in Sammy.
Now, as Charlie, Maye, and Mickey approached the class corral, Sammy and Mickey came together like magnets, sniffed butts, and then immediately started playing.
“I have a sad announcement to make,” said the dog trainer, the pert retirement-aged, Buster Brown–coiffed woman named Gwen. “Lady One has quit and will not be returning to class.” She then dropped her arms straight to her side, cocked her head to the left, and contorted an exaggerated frown for two seconds until she perked back up and added, nodding to Lady Two and her owner, “But the good news is that Lady Two—Lady Two? Is she sleeping again? Well, she’s alive at least, she just piddled underneath your chair there. Oh, golly. Oh boy. It just spread to your shoes. Well, Lady Two will now be known in class as Lady One!”
There was a smattering of applause, mostly emanating from Gwen herself.
“Couldn’t she just be Lady?” asked the owner of the dog formerly known as Lady Two. “Just like she is in real life? She weawy wikes to be called by hew weal name, don’t you, Wady? Don’t you?”
“Poor First Lady One,” Charlie said, shaking his head. “A dog-school dropout. Before you know it, she’ll be pregnant with a litter and on federal assistance, just another sad statistic.”
Maye burst out laughing, and even Mickey smiled, but everyone else just turned their heads and stared—everyone, that is, but Mad Dog’s owner, who was too busy nibbling like a dirty squirrel on the filth from under his fingernails. Then the now-one-and-only Lady’s owner bent down to Lady’s tear-mucked face and cooed, “‘Wuv child, never meant to be…’”
Lady’s drippy eyes barely opened as she lifted her head off the ground and responded with a “WooooOOOOOOOOOHHHHHH!”
“‘Wuv child, always second best,’” Lady’s keeper continued as Lady howled, far more on key than any of Maye’s neighbors. “‘Wuv child, different from the rest!’”
“WoooooOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!! Hoooo Hoooo!” Lady belted out.
“That’s beautiful,” Gwen spurted, given that the only accomplishment One and Only Lady had made in class was releasing her bladder.
“You should put that dog on TV!” Pebbles exclaimed (almost jumping up from her chair to find a pole to express her enthusiasm). “You’d make a million dollars! I swear! You’d make a million dollars! You could quit playing Lotto! I would, at least. I’d call David Letterman and put that dog on TV!”
“I wish Sammy could sing,” Finding Nemo said woefully as he moved his huge lips. “All he can do is jump a fence and lick his own nu-nu.”
“Lady is singing the blues!” Charlie cried out, and again, only Maye laughed at her husband’s joke as the rest of the class sat silently and looked puzzled.
“Woooo-hoooooo,” another wayward howl began, and the class turned its collective head again, but this time all eyes were on Mickey. Apparently, not to be outdone except in the bloodlust category, Mickey had begun to howl, or rather, sing.
“Did you teach him that?” Charlie asked Maye, a look of wonderment on his face.
“Why would I teach our dog to howl?” she shot back. “Do you think I just sit at home all day, singing and howling with the dog?”
“I don’t know,” he replied with a little laugh. “You sat at home all day with the dog for almost a week trying to capture Bigfoot, and as a result, we are HERE.”
“It’s pack behavior,” Gwen said. “Mickey is answering Lady’s call. It’s like doggie telephone. But Mickey has a beautiful
voice, I must say. He’s a tenor. There’s even a hint of vibrato in there.”
It was true, actually. Mickey was a pretty good howler, and he seemed like a natural.
“Sing, Sammy, sing!” Pebbles urged, nudging the greyhound with her knee, though he was otherwise occupied with his nu-nu. “Woooo-hoooooo! Wooooo-hooooo, Sammy!”
“Did everyone bring their homework?” Gwen asked. “Last week I asked you to bring the toy your dog loves the most, the thing that is hardest to get away from him. Anyone? Anyone?”
Gwen looked over a sea of blank faces. “Sammy’s people?” she asked the stripper, to which Finding Nemo replied sadly, “I forgot.”
“Mad Dog’s person?” Gwen continued.
“I woulda brought it, but that woulda been considered evidence,” the biker answered in a voice laden with a lifetime of bad living and swallowing big bugs. “One thing’s for sure, that pizza guy ain’t usin’ it. Hippity hoppity. Heh heh heh.”
Gwen looked horrified, then moved on to Maye and Charlie, whom she stared at wide-eyed without saying anything.
“Um, well,” stammered Maye, who had forgotten Mickey’s ball. “You know, I put a pair of my dirty underwear in my purse, but Mickey ate his own homework on the way over here when I wasn’t looking.”
Gwen’s lack of response to Maye’s attempt at levity was a little less than pitiful, and she moved on to the next dog owner. Charlie donated the sock off his foot to substitute as the favorite toy, and it never really was established if Mickey dropped it because he was given the command or because it tasted like day-old foot cramped in a sneaker with fungicide sprayed all over it.
As soon as they got back to the car, Charlie turned on the radio and the three of them sang the whole way home.
The moment Maye opened the door, she knew something was wrong. The creaking of stairs, the groaning of old beams, the knocking of hot-water pipes, was all standard stuff in the little English cottage, but the hissing was not.
It sounded different. It sounded expensive.
Maye followed the sound directly to the kitchen, Mickey at her side. She carefully knelt down and then slowly opened the cabinet doors under the sink. And there the monster was—a quivering pipe that was spitting and dribbling water, and evidently had been for quite some time, flooding the whole bottom cabinet. Maye suddenly heard footsteps behind her, and Charlie crouched down to take a look at the impending disaster.
“That doesn’t look good,” he said, and before Maye could even emit the first three syllables of her scream, as in, “Charlie, NO!” her husband’s hand reached out and touched the pipe, which apparently was simply waiting for human contact with a man who knew nothing about plumbing before it actually erupted and began spraying water into the kitchen like a fountain at the Bellagio.
Maye’s hair was dripping enough to melt the tissue-thin paper of the Yellow Pages together, and when the plumber arrived, it was still clinging to her skull like a lunch lady’s hairnet.
“Hmmmm,” the plumber said as he sprawled out in front of the kitchen sink and looked at the pipe. “Hmmmm.”
Maye didn’t say anything. She was too busy shooting Charlie death rays, although he knew all too well that they couldn’t hurt him if he closed his eyes and pretended they weren’t there.
“Not good,” the plumber informed them gruffly. “You have old galvanized down there; it’s coming apart like a celebrity marriage.”
“How serious is it?” Maye asked, praying they had enough in the savings account to cover it.
“Well, it’s not good, but it’s nothing that can’t be fixed,” the plumber assured them, nodding toward Charlie. “Is he blind?”
“Not yet.”
It took the plumber twenty minutes and a hearty check to fix the problem.
“I’m sorry, who should I make this out to?” Maye asked, pen poised in hand.
“Here you go,” the plumber said, reaching into his shirt pocket and pulling out a business card. He handed it to Maye just as a burst of loud static shot through the room and made her jump. It even made Charlie open his eyes.
“Dispatch,” the plumber informed them, as he reached into another pocket and pulled out what looked like a walkie-talkie. “Smith, 10-2.”
“We’ve got a possible 11-26 over on Elm and Sixth,” a garbled, nasally voice replied from the other end. “Can you respond? 10-4.”
“Affirmative,” the plumber confirmed into the walkie-talkie. “ETA four minutes, depending how fast this lady can write a check. 10-4.”
It was then that Maye looked at the business card, which read clearly, “Big House Plumbing, John Smith. Drains, Restraining Orders, and Restaurant Recommendations.”
She looked at the plumber and didn’t know where to begin.
“I’m a cop during the day, a plumber at night, and I’ve been in every restaurant kitchen in this town,” Officer Smith explained. “You wanna eat somewhere, you call me first. I’ll let you know if it’s okay. It’s just a thing I do.”
“Jade Garden?” Charlie asked of his favorite lunch joint near campus.
Officer Smith’s face was suddenly awash in disgust as his mouth curled and he shook his head. “Everything you don’t eat,” he informed Charlie, “goes back in the pot. I wouldn’t drink an unopened soda in a can from that place.”
Maye didn’t need the death rays for her flooded-kitchen revenge after all.
“God, I hope the toilet’s working,” Charlie said, sprinting toward the bathroom.
“Call me if it’s not!” Officer Smith yelled after him as he took Maye’s check and headed out to his squad car/plumber’s van, where he took off his plaid flannel shirt and replaced it with a blue button-down with a shiny brass badge on it.
Maye and Mickey were learning the words to Nazareth’s “Hair of the Dog” when the phone rang.
“So,” Kate said into the receiver as soon as Maye picked it up. “Do you feel like having some company?”
“Are you kidding?” Maye absolutely squealed. “Are you serious? You’re coming up? When? When can you come?”
Maye hadn’t seen Kate since the night of the surprise going-away party. The prospect of having her friend come to visit was such a welcome and happy one that Maye fought hard against jumping up and down.
“How does end of the month sound?” Kate asked. “I have some time off coming and my boss wants me to take it, so I thought I’d head up for a visit. Sara’s coming, too. She’s got a week or two before she starts setting up her new restaurant. I think it’s time for a road trip!”
“I am so excited,” Maye’s voice spilled with delight into the phone. “I can’t believe I’ll be seeing you guys in just a couple of weeks! Charlie will be excited, too. I am so happy!”
Having two of her friends to hang out with for several days was just the shot in the arm that Maye needed. She was so joyful that she didn’t mind eating lunch alone that day, and she celebrated the good news by eating at a new café green-lighted by Officer Smith.
“I’d drink an open soda there, but stay away from the pork roast. It’s a little dry, although a nice condiment like chutney would really fill that gap,” he’d advised. “How’s that pipe holdin’?”
“Holdin’ strong,” Maye had replied.
“Gotta go,” Officer Smith clipped quickly. “Got a 10-98 happening here in broad daylight in front of the organic bakery!”
“Is that serious?” Maye asked.
“I’ve got a Prius obstructing a loading zone in front of the Hoo Doo Donuts,” he intoned. “Now where am I going to park? After three of their donuts, you go straight to heaven. The rest of the day floats by like you’re in a dream, even if you have to bust a meth lab and fight off a three-legged pit bull whose jaws are hanging off your right forearm! Yes, it’s serious.”
My friends are coming, Maye sang in her head as the hostess at the clean café asked, “Only you?”
“Affirmative,” she replied with a broad smile. “Only me.”
Following
the hostess, Maye passed a rack of free, local arts-and-entertainment periodicals and picked one up to read before her lunch came. The hostess showed her to the smallest table in the place, facing out onto Broadway, the main strip in Spaulding.
My friends are coming, she told herself again, smiling as she saw two older women across the street in front of the flower shop, walking together arm in arm and laughing and admiring a magnificent orchid so full of flowers it looked like it was blooming popcorn.
Table for three, please, Maye thought, and almost giggled at the wonderful phrase. She couldn’t wait to show Kate and Sara her new town, with its incredible flower shop, the vast Saturday farmers’ market that gobbled up most of downtown with produce stalls and craft booths, and the pine-tree-blanketed vistas from every direction, from every window, of her house. Spaulding was a wonderful place, she finally let herself believe. The streets were almost as perfect as movie sets, pristine and clean, lined with Victorian-era architecture and fronted with generous tree boughs that would transform into green, lush canopies over the pavement in the spring. Now that the leaves were changing into brilliant fall shades, she was eager for her friends to see it. Phoenix didn’t have such seasons; when winter came, the blazing sun simply retreated a little, whatever flowers had survived through the brutal summer died, and the grass turned brown. That was it. Here, leaves exploded in bursts of yellow, crimson, and amber, almost as if they were the fireworks of the season, detonating in the last, major finale. The wind kicked up a little, carrying a slight chill like a single ice cube in a drink, and the leaves that had already fallen whipped, fluttered, and twirled down the sidewalks, then huddled together against the curbs. It was fall.