That night, I say to Rosa, I will work for Mr. Petropoulos. He needs my help. He’s in a wheelchair, but he doesn’t let anyone push him around. I think he can understand people who just need a little help sometimes. And I can tell you, for these five years, Mr. Petropoulos, he never pays me by check or takes any taxes. He says to me, Carlos, anything I pay you is not counted for Social Security, so until you are a legal resident, it is not right for you to pay for mine. And he never tells me what to say or how to say it. Now when Rosa calls me late at night, I don’t say to her, May I take your order, please? I’m sure Mr. Petropoulos will give me more time off than I need to attend my daughter’s quinceañera, because I never take extra vacation before. No, not even one day.
No, I don’t need to ask him — I know. He is good man.
I know you’re thinking, Carlos isn’t coming back. Or maybe you’re wondering how will I get back. I show you. Same way I got back the last four years.
Here is my Notice of Removal — safe in my wallet. See what it says? Look carefully — see the cross in the box here, beside where it says Permission to Stay Granted. They gave me this after my last deportation hearing — yes, many years to get it.
It’s a little faded. It got wet last week when I was feeding the ducks by the lake. I was pulling bread from my pocket, my wallet fell in the water, I had to jump in to find it. But you can read it. Anyone can see the cross, if they look carefully like you.
Okay, I make a copy.
So what do you say? You’ll come to the party, yes?
Yes, it’s a beautiful invitation and no, no, do not thank me, my friend. I missed my Ingrid’s Primera Comunión, so I say at her quinceañera she will be like Cinderella and Snow White and Princess Jasmine and Pocahontas. I even sent Rosa a wand with sequins in it. You will see, we will present it to Ingrid as her sceptre.
Yes, it’s hard for you to leave your clients, but Mrs. Arlene, she will like you to take leave, right? It’s easy to get there. From here you go up and in four hours you are in Cancún. Americans like Cancún, she will like Cancún. Cancún to Merida — just one bus ride. So. You come to the party. Afterwards, I take you to the temples at Chichén Itzá. Have you seen El Castillo there? It’s big pyramid, with four sides and ninety-one stairs on each side. And every step, it is one day in the year, so three hundred and sixty-four stairs, and with the top, three hundred and sixty-five! For Mayans, every little thing — even a moving shadow — it means something much bigger.
Of course you have money. You are the biggest tipper. Always I see it. One small plane ride to Mexico? One or two hours of work is all — that’s cheap for you.
Oh, you think I invite you because I want to ask for money? You think this is how I ask you for money? Mr. Jimmy, if I need your money, I ask you. No. I ask only friendship.
You must come for the quinceañera. You must see Chichén Itzá. And tell Mrs. Arlene: after the party, I’ll rent a car — air conditioned! — and take you to Pisté with my whole family. Say she must bring her swimming suit, so she can swim in a cenote! Have you ever done that? You will feel the water — so cool after the sunshine — and you will look up and see just a little blue circle of sky. And birds will be flying in, and when we laugh, it will echo.
I will call Rosa tonight. I will say you are thinking about the celebration. In my country, we never say no to a friend. Now I get back to work. You tell me next time you come.
Hasta pronto, Mr. Jimmy.
Fletcher
A growl rises into Fletcher’s throat the moment the Sunday bullhorn sounds. He jumps off Colette’s bed before she can yell, “No!”
“Repent! Repent, ya sinners!” roars the voice of the Apocalypse Man.
Fletch barks and skitters downstairs. In a second his claws are scraping at the metal strip he has almost torn from the base of the front door.
“Come to Jesus and be saved! Stop sinning! The end is NEAR!”
Fletcher knows just what’s on the other side of that door — a rusty black Pontiac station wagon covered in dripping white graffiti, with a dead Christmas tree and a sandwich board tied to its roof. And he knows who is making the half-circle turn in the cul-de-sac in the godmobile, pounding his message at the living with a fervour to wake the dead. The wall between Colette’s home and the adjoining vacant apartment trembles.
He has only a minute while Colette places her bookmark between the pages of Guide to Landlords’ Rights and Responsibilities and pads down to swat him.
The honour of all Lhasas is at stake; he starts yapping his head off. His first and only owner, Colette’s grandmother, would say the Apocalypse Man provokes him. Colette scoops him up and scratches behind his ears.
Very soothing.
Fletch refuses to be soothed. He will continue barking till the Apocalypse Man goes away. The guy is a lot worse than the mailman.
Colette struggles to hold Fletcher and scratch behind his ears. She gets him to wriggle outwards, so he isn’t clawing into her nightie. He probably thinks the house is his, having lived here with Grandmère, then Colette’s mom and now Colette.
Except for mailmen, Fletch is very discriminating about the people he detests. Colette too distrusts the beatified look in the Apocalypse Man’s eyes. What does he do, eat hash brownies for breakfast? Colette had one in the eighties that made her sick for days; she hasn’t had one since.
The Apocalypse Man is a small annoyance, even if he gets under Fletch’s fur. Colette’s home in this subdivision is way nicer than her old bachelor apartment downtown. Her French-Canadian grandparents built the house years ago. Few people they knew still live here — too expensive. But Colette can’t find many condos where a peppy little dog would be welcome, and she’s sentimental about him.
Fletch’s bangs are falling over his eyes. He’s so cute when he’s angry.
Grandmère treated him like a grandson. Played him audio books, public radio and classical music. On Sundays when Colette would come to visit her, she’d be sitting in the kitchen, reading the newspaper to her puppy. Poor little guy was probably forced to watch hours and hours of Chicago Public Television, the History Channel, Discovery and National Geographic.
Grandmère’s house is still in good shape, an asset Colette dangles before Tim. A dowry, Grandmère would have called it.
Colette’s mom once said, “You need to make it worthwhile for a guy to take a plain Jane.” Always so frank. Mom was convinced that Colette wasn’t trying hard enough to date, find a man, get married. As she got sicker, she often said to Colette, “Live here when I’m gone and rent out the other half.”
Colette would give this house and the world to hear her mother say that again.
Fletcher would give the same to smell his mother again — he tries not to dwell on that. He does dwell on the fact that the house includes an adjoining apartment above the two garages. Plenty of room for him and a live-in girlfriend, if Colette would ever consider his needs and let him invite one.
No one builds homes designed like that today. Anyone who buys it will have to tear it down and rebuild it in compliance with a zillion new regulations. And if she’d inherited from anyone else, Colette would have sold the place. But she keeps it, and Fletcher.
Fletch fawns all over her for that.
He might even stop barking, just to make her happy. But now she’s scooting all over the kitchen with her forearm pressing against his delicate stomach. He’s sailing over linoleum — whoa — she opened the refrigerator. Nearly knocked out his eye. Oh the fragrance, the fragrance! But he’s not even salivating; his paws itch for solid ground.
The morning after Colette moved in — summer of ’98 — she cried out that she saw her neighbour pissing on her newly planted flowerbed. Fletch rushed downstairs, only to find the man holding a hose at fly level, watering her flowers. Cedar Gables is that kind of helpful community.
The new generation of neighbours all agree it’s “really neat” to be living here. Colette often says, while watching suffering people in third
-world countries on TV, that such camaraderie exists only in America. But Fletcher knows how hard you need to wag your tail when all you’ve got before you is an empty bowl.
Where is his bowl? Colette’s swinging him around, she’s looking for it too. He’s barking, so maybe she’ll find it behind the bag of dog food — and please put him down.
He misses Grandmère, and not only because she was kind. The quantity and quality of food scraps has slipped to an all-time low: Colette usually zaps a Weight Watcher Smart One or heats up Campbell’s soup.
Actually, he’s barking because he’s been worrying. What if Colette marries Tim? What if she sells Grandmère’s home, the house he’s protected since he was a pup? But Colette has lived at Cedar Gables for three years now, and Tim, who reserves finesse for the business of business, has come no closer to proposing marriage. A house like this one might have been incentive enough for a man a few years ago, but with stocks skyrocketing over the nineties … well …
What if she does marry Tim and Tim doesn’t want Fletcher? Colette might give Fletcher away to the pound. It’s too early to think. Besides, a bowl of milk has appeared before him, and oh boy, is he hoarse.
Colette watches Fletcher trying to bark and lap at the same time. She won’t let the Apocalypse Man annoy her today. “You’ll never guess what I did, Fletch.”
At Land’s End last night, over soup, while waiting for the every-Saturday prime rib and mashed potatoes, Colette told Tim that after years as his paralegal assistant and girlfriend, she was going to find a guy who could transition from fiancé to husband in something less than seven years. She was about to add, “a professional kind of guy, someone who can see himself saying I do without fifty-plus clauses and subclauses in a pre-marital agreement, and true, maybe I can’t find such a wonder, but it’s worth a try” when she saw Tim had splashed clam chowder over the hundred-dollar Brooks Brothers tie she’d recorded as a business expense only the day before.
Which was the kind of shock Colette hoped for. “You should have seen him, Fletch. His face turned even redder than usual. He asked if I was planning to quit the firm. Now, I ask you, why would he think the girlfriend and administrative assistant positions were coterminous?”
Fletcher looks up from his bowl, cocks his head and whines, as if considering.
“If I quit, Tim will never find a case or a file or be on time for a single appointment. And you know what — I care about that. And if I don’t see Tim ever again, who else is there? You, a couple of girlfriends from high school, maybe. So I said, I don’t know. I might quit. I’m going to rent out the apartment. Been meaning to do that ever since I moved in.
“So he says, ‘How ’bout I give you a raise’ — like he was going full steam into negotiation mode — ‘effective immediately?’”
Colette squeezes down on a can opener, the can’s lid splits to reveal the dog food inside. She spoons it into Fletch’s bowl and recalls, as she had the night before, the scripted office days of the past years. The dinner and movie nights (with Tim usually too cheap to spring for popcorn) when she’d paid for her own tickets, the one clinging night per week if work allowed, and her growing despair that the land of Happily-Ever-After would ever grant her a visa. She recalls the ever-spreading rumps of girlfriends who have worked fewer years than she in Tim’s firm, the screen-hours of real estate cases she has plowed through on Westlaw, the deals, the shareholder meeting minutes, the limited partnership documents, the investment brochures, the financing plans entered at seventy to eighty words per minute. Invoices mailed and collected, checks deposited, the many times she’d kept her mouth shut about certain clients who paid with cash.
“And you know what I thought, Fletch? I thought, You’re darn right you should pay for all that, so I said, Thank you.”
“And you know what he did, Fletch? He left his usual three-buck tip for the Liberian waiter, telling him, ’ See you next Saturday.’ And he meant both of us, in spite of all I’d said. Tim just can’t imagine Saturday nights at Land’s End without me. That’s sweet. Endearing, don’t you think?”
“Repent! Repent!” the bullhorn blasts faintly as the godmobile retreats till next Sunday. Colette pats Fletcher’s hackles down.
If she doesn’t do something, anything, and soon, the end of the world might come and find her at Land’s End Inn every Saturday night with Tim and the prime rib and mashed potatoes. Still living alone with only a Lhasa apso for company. That would be something to repent.
Fletcher wouldn’t call Tim endearing — he’s infuriating.
Rrrrff! A man who thinks he can buy Loyalty.
Why did Colette have to accept that raise? Now Tim is going to believe he owns her again. Same way Colette’s mom thought she owned Fletch, just because she fed him.
If Fletcher had been under the table, he’d have bitten Tim’s ankles, chewed him to bloody bits and spat him out. Too bad Americans don’t learn a thing or two from the French — like allowing dogs in restaurants.
Fletch would look after Colette — he promised Grandmère — even though he’d prefer Yoriko, a poodle who flirted with him on Sundays when Grandmère had left him tied to her church fence. Maybe they could take in another old lady like Grandmère. Why bother with Tim?
Colette says some women still need men. Or maybe they just need husbands, unlike Gloria Steinem’s generation. Perhaps, genetic mutation being what it is, there are by now fish who need bicycles and Lhasas who need snowboards. Maybe it’s just that she has so many years invested in Tim. That’s it — she’s in-habit with him, and getting close to forty.
A few days ago, Fletcher tugged the personals page from the newspaper and trotted it over, hinting she should advertise there. At his third attempt, she did look at it. But she said she’d heard too many horror stories around the office and much repentance about Personals in the paper and on the net.
“Too in-your-face obvious,” is what she said.
Colette stays home from work for the Open House, and Fletcher goes after the mailman. This time he has the satisfaction of ripping the mailman’s pants. Which causes the mailman to swear, while calling Colette “lady.”
It’s high noon and there’s been only one call for an appointment to see the adjoining unit; Colette apologizes to the mailman, smacks Fletcher’s butt, then lets him take her for a walk.
The incident, she says as Fletch snuffles grass, has discom-bobulated her. Will the mailman sue? She says she should have asked if he was bleeding. She says if Fletcher does that again, the police could make her lock him up or get rid of him.
Fletch grovels and whines, but right this minute he doesn’t care. He finds the right grass to settle his stomach. The hell with the mailman — must have fed me a piece of junk mail.
Where are they? Here’s a path they haven’t taken before.
Fletch peeks into the model home adjoining a developer’s office. Overstuffed sofas and corded window “treatments.” A normative tale hovers just out of reach, challenging all who enter to live it: the unstated presence of a spouse and two-point-two children.
He can see Yoriko and himself living here too. He hasn’t made her any promises, though.
The scent of chocolate chip cookies wafts past; Fletcher pulls Colette inside.
A man in a bowling shirt stands beside a high-heeled, brightly scarved and gilt-brooched broker, asking for the same interior decor as the model, scaled down for a bachelor.
Bowling shirt. Not Colette’s type. And he must have eaten all the cookies; Fletcher can’t find a crumb. He leads Colette outside again.
Halfway across the park, Fletcher spots Yoriko. Colette, angled like a leaning pen, follows his straining, sniffing form.
“Fletch the letch,” she says.
When he gets close enough to take in a whiff of Yoriko’s poodle perfume, Fletcher struts past as if she’s any other dog. Yoriko’s master restrains her. She’s suffering, Fletch can tell. She’s pining for him.
An hour later, Fletcher’s legs are rea
dy to fall off, and he’s lagging as far behind Colette as his leash allows. She comes panting around the corner and back to the cul-de-sac, four minutes late for the rental appointment. She stops; Fletch stops. He blinks at the sight of a sleek black limousine parked at her front door. Not a stretch limo, but a limo all the same.
Oh no! Tim has come around. He’s making up. This is the beginning of his proposal.
Nah. Tim wouldn’t rent a limousine to take Colette out. He wouldn’t try to surprise her — he knows zilch about surprise. Flowers, maybe. And there’d never be an apology or proposal to go with, so — a limo? Black. Tim would have chosen white. Colette stands there. Fletch is half expecting those tinted windows to drop, Mafia-style. It takes him lots of scraping at the ground to pull her up to the limo and around it.
A man in a leather bomber jacket leans against the gleaming black body, looking up at Grandmère’s two-storey house with an appraising eye. Fletcher goes for his ankles just to sniff him out. His throat closes immediately as Colette yanks him away.
She nearly choked him! Fletch whines. His growls were merely informational, approving, friendly.
“Martin Roseman.” The guy offers her a handshake. Tall, hairline slightly receding at the temples, wavy hair, tanned. Fletcher can tell Colette’s thinking: moustache à la Tom Selleck. Tom Selleck in the eighties, that is, playing Magnum P.I.
“You must be Colette. We have an appointment?” says the tenant.
Prospective tenant. As Grandmère used to say, “Slow down, Fletcher.”
“Yeah, sorry I got delayed.” Colette juggles her keys and the leash. Martin’s socks smell of just-cut grass and pond water — pleasing. Fletch jumps up to his knee. He even allows Martin to ruffle his pooch-cut.
• • •
“I used to work for the nuclear weapons industry,” says Martin. He pronounces it “noocyular,” Fletcher notes. Not Colette’s type. And he’s Jewish. Which, even in fantasy matchmaking, is like being non-Lhasa apso — less acceptable. But cross-breed loving isn’t impossible, considering himself and Yoriko.