Dog, Dog, Dog
short fiction
I ask Arthur’s sister, Henrietta, about what to do—she has a propensity to make the sad even sadder, whereas I make the sad funny, but I don’t want funny right now. She also lost her wife a couple of years back, so she knew. They were high school sweethearts, and the wife got hit by a truck on their anniversary. It was like a Hallmark movie. I ask her how to cope, what her experience was like. She says the obvious: wait. As for her experience, she says it was loud, she keeps using that word, Loud. She says her wife’s absence was loud. Arthur’s absence is not loud—it’s quiet. It’s the quietude that’s so painful and annoying, I would prefer loud. But then again, Henrietta is a poet, so I suppose it’s in her nature to employ dramatics and unfaithful adjectives.
“But, seriously, what do I do? Like how do I, literally, fill my days?”
I ask this over lunch at the only restaurant in town that allows indoor smoking. It’s a Japanese restaurant, before noon on a Wednesday. We’re the only patrons. Henrietta has the yellowtail and spicy tuna. I have the Shochu and my Camel Blue.
“I don’t know. Hobbies. Reading. Knitting. Stamp-collecting!”
Pink raw fish spills out the corner of her mouth, like an auxiliary tongue. She doesn’t wait to finish chewing before talking, just like her brother.
“Ugh, shut up.”
I have taken up a hobby, though: blacking out. Actually, it was the only thing I truly liked after Arthur’s death. Drinking, a former hobby, is now only a symptom of blacking out. I don’t drink to be drunk. I drink to no longer be awake. So my body can be someone else’s chore. Control is paralyzing. This was the only way I found that I could give it up. I can’t tell her this, though. Obviously. I nod at the waiter and tilt my head towards my empty glass. I have two more refills and Henrietta, a plate of matcha-flavored mochi before she drives me back to my house.
I climb into my artificial bed on the couch and open the warm wine bottle waiting for me on my coffee table. I have created a very sustainable bedroom in the living room. Bedside lamp, duvet, candles—the works. My bedroom felt as creepy as a haunted house, and the bed was like a dungeon. My last real memory of it was from the day he passed. I didn’t want to go to sleep that night because it meant I’d be technically, officially, sleeping alone, sleeping without him. Sleep only seemed useful if he was by my side, so I felt very little motivation. I didn’t crawl into bed until six a.m. that night—the bedroom felt more populated, more humid with his heat, with the extra blanket of the rising sun. When I was finally able to fall asleep, I had a nightmare that I was on fire—I could actually feel the numbing burn of my bones, hear the sizzle of my eyeballs, smell the cauterized meat of my flesh. I swore off the room after that, moved my clothes into my attic, exclusively used the guest bathroom. The bedroom was dead to me, and I liked it that way.
The wine is not toxic enough for me—no acidity, no flavor. It tastes like water. I drink and drink and drink and wake up at eleven p.m. to a call from Henrietta.
“Hey, bitch.”
I yawn and check the wine bottle. Empty. I push it off the table. It doesn’t shatter. It just rolls around, mockingly.
“Sorry—were you asleep? I know it’s late—”
“No, no, it’s fine.”
I hear crunching, then a dry swallow. Then a burp, or possibly a bout of acid reflux.
“Well, there’s this poetry reading tomorrow. I think it would be good if you came. I’m not reading, but a friend is so—”
“I’d love to.”
I didn’t really want to, but I always found a way to escape Henrietta’s poetry readings, usually blaming it on my job or Arthur in the process. I didn’t exactly have that luxury being temporarily unemployed and widowed. She texted me the address and time and I found a half-empty bottle of whiskey to aid me back to sleep.
The venue turns out to be the town’s library. There are string lights, streamers, and a crackling radio playing slow jazz. There are only twelve people here, and most of them seem to be PTA moms with their blonde bobs, knockoff Valentino bags, and gummy smiles. They keep using the words “after-hours” to let me know that this is no longer a children’s place, this is a cool place where you can plagiarize Dickinson and drink cheap red wine from plastic solo cups. I feel safe here—I will admit that.
I find Henrietta by the snack platter—chocolate-covered popcorn and sardines on crackers. One hand is pounding down warm fish and the other is hovering over the back of a young girl with frizzy purple hair. I tap her fish-holding arm.
“Oh my god, you came!”
I laugh, offended.
“I mean, yeah, of course, I—”
The young girl looks at me. She is gorgeous, Indian. Soft, tight skin that looks like it’s never been touched. Dark eyes, full lips, long nose. She smiles with her big, white, rabbit teeth.
“Well, who’s this?” I ask. Henrietta answers, her hand finally brave enough to grace the young girl’s waist.
“This is my friend, Elaine. Elaine, this is Jamie. She’s a writer for this great column—how is the column, by the way?”
I wrote for a satirical literary magazine. I usually describe it as The Onion but worse. I took some much-needed time off, though, which she knew. I don’t know why she was bringing it up—possibly to embarrass me.
“Fine, yeah, fine.”
A bell rings throughout the room. I believe it to be a school bell considering the setting, but turn to see one of the blonde-bobbed women wielding a gold handbell and a microphone.
“Okay, ladies, it’s showtime!”
As she makes a little speech about the importance of poetry and female-led arts, I fill two plastic cups with wine. I take a seat near the back. Elaine loiters near the “stage” which is just the empty nook near the self-help section. Henrietta pushes the girl’s purple hair behind her ears and straightens out her dress, then comes to sit by me.
“God, I need to fuck her tonight,” Henrietta whispers. A woman in her seventies hears this and looks our way with a grimace and a disapproving head-shake.
“How do you know her?”
Elaine is twiddling a folded-up piece of paper in her hands. She looks nervous.
“She read my work online and reached out. She only lives a few towns away. She is my biggest, and possibly only, fan. Making her the hottest woman in the world.”
“Okay, first up: Elaine Beaufort!” the woman exclaims with a giddy smile.
Elaine takes the microphone from the woman. Her hands are shaking. She clears her throat.
“Hi, I’m Elaine, so I’m going to start now. Oh—this is a poem, by the way. It’s called ‘Pink and Blue.’”
She clears her throat again and her eyes zone in on Henrietta.
“She’s hot, isn’t she?”
Henrietta whispers this to me. Her makeup is done, I’m just now noticing, a rarity: red lipstick, purple eyeshadow, mountains of blush. She looks pretty, in a mime kind of way. I love watching her watch Elaine, her dilated pupils, her slightly agape mouth, her curved red lips. She’s really a stunner when she’s in love.
“I’m pink and blue for you, baby. I’ll spray cologne into the wound so I can make it about you and I’ll lick up your tears so I can make it about me. Pink flesh, blue air. Pink thighs, blue eyes. Pink, blue, pink, blue, pink, blue. I want you to breathe in my body like a drug. Praise it like a god. Feed it like a dog.”
I mean, it’s not terrible—I don’t think. I clandestinely hit my vape and breathe out the smoke into my shirt. The old woman stares at me, derisively.
“Drug, god, dog.”
Henrietta seems on the edge of her seat. I scooch upwards and chug my wine.
“Dog. Dog. Dog.”
Okay, she’s done now, I’m going to start clap—
“Dog.”
God. Fucking poets, man.
“Thank you, thank you, everyone.”
Henrietta is about to fall off her chair. Before she can, she stands up, claps wildly, and chants affirmations. She has mastered the art of ostentation. I’m about to stand up and clap as well when I see out of the corner of my eye, a new audience member standing by the philosophy section. A woman. It’s her. And she’s late.
I leave quickly, ungracefully, not saying goodbye to Henrietta or her child of a girlfriend. I walk home and consume the last of my wine. She looked good—she did. She was wearing a skintight silver dress, a leather jacket, and buckle slingback heels. It looked like she got a blowout and lip filler. She didn’t see me—or, at least, I don’t think she did.
Arthur was seeing another woman in the year before his death. I found them in bed together after coming home early from a night out. He was inserting himself in her asshole—a rather compromising and embarrassing position for all of us. After a month-long silent treatment, I came crawling back to him and suggested we “open up” our marriage. He conceded but admitted that he was in love with that other woman. I told him that it was fine as long as he was also in love with me. I also insisted on not knowing any more details about her: her name, her age, her occupation, anything. I didn’t need it. I saw and slept with a few other people, but I left most of my promiscuity and bisexuality in college. But I was happier knowing that he was happier.
I take the long way home so I can pass the lake. It’s the place where I first saw Arthur—he and his sister were fishing, and I came with my then-boyfriend to look at the fancy houses. I now live in one of those fancy houses—Arthur’s fancy house. I don’t even remember his name—the boyfriend. I don’t remember much about the relationship either. It seems that life only shifted into focus with Arthur, or maybe that’s giving him too much credit. It’s late enough, so no one is around, just the buzz of horseflies and the occasional splashing of whatever creatures live below. I often hypothesized, fantasized, about the other woman’s supposed “better” qualities, but now I have a real image of her—outside of sodomy, that is. She is cool—she looks cool. Cool, but put-together. She probably smokes cigarettes exclusively instead of vaping and buys new underwear every few months and never surpasses her self-imposed three-drink limit. She probably doesn’t even have a self-imposed drink limit. She probably feels drunk off one martini. That bitch.
I walk on the muddy sludge, not even minding the residue that creeps its way onto the tops of my boots. I can remember that day clearly. Henrietta and Arthur were mostly just pushing each other into the water, they were always a violent pair, but in a playful way. Arthur would duck her head under and she’d fight her way to the surface, spitting up water and coughing for air. I remember feeling jealous of their teasing; when I first saw them, I assumed they were dating. But even after I found out the truth, I was still jealous: he never teased me like that. I scour the lake. Cigarette butts, crushed soda cans, and the full moon’s yellow reflection. I’m thankful for the moon, the only source of color. Everything seems black. Black ground, black lake, black sky. I toss my two plastic cups in the water. The red plastic even looks black. I take one final hit of my vape and I throw that in, too. I hear a barking from somewhere, but don’t see anything. Dog, dog, dog.
I get home to find Henrietta waiting by my doorstep. Her red lipstick is smeared, her mouth pouty.
“What are you doing here?”
She stands up. Her sequined skirt hugs her hips perfectly. Her massive breasts spill out of her cinched corset. Her figure in the moonlight—it’s like a dream, or a high-class hooker.
“How are you?”
I try to kick the mud off my shoes, to no success, and light my last Camel Blue.
“I need a drink,” I spit.
She nods, timidly. I head inside, and she follows. I pour us each a glass of whiskey—me, a double, her, a single—and toss the empty jug into my trash can. We each find a seat on my pseudo-bed. Her presence is warm, prickling, next to me, like a living thing—and then I remember, she is a living thing. Her breathing feels pleasantly invasive, like she’s touching me. I don’t remember her being this naked in the library—maybe she was wearing a jacket? Maybe I was too drunk to notice? I feel an urge to grab one of her breasts, or any other fleshy body part, but I just sip. She sips, too, and makes a sour face.
“Do you think the universe is punishing us for getting married so young?”
I laugh. More poetry.
“Maybe. Twenty-nine isn’t that young, though,” I argue.
She burps. I can smell the puke that climbed into her throat.
“Today it is. In this age, it is.”
I want to tell her about the lake. I want to ask if she still goes there. I finish my drink and find another warm bottle of wine in my alcohol cabinet.
“What the fuck was she doing there?” I ask. I shut the cabinet door. Henrietta burps again—she looks on the precipice of projectile vomiting. And she barely even touched her drink.
“I don’t know. I guess she’s a patron of the arts,” she offers raspily.
She’s hunched over on the couch, her skin white with discomfort. I let the bottle slip from my hands, hoping for dramatics. No shattering, just a dull thud, and a sharp pain in my left toe.
“Oh, god, could you shut the fuck up, Henrietta? Could you just shut the fuck up?”
I sigh. I wonder if she even remembers that day. It’s not like I went up to them. I only summoned the courage a year later when I ran into him at the post office and wrote down my number on one of the complimentary envelopes. The most unromantic of stories—maybe the demise was fated. I pick up the bottle, pop off the cap, and chug. She squirms in her seat, not looking offended, only nauseated.
“Fuck, dude. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I sit back down next to her prickling warmth. I cradle her exposed right knee. Not as fleshy as I need, but I take it. I can’t see much with the lights off, but her face looks old, her skin dry and contorting with unease. But her lips. They’re quivering, I’m just now noticing, but they look so young and plump and pink, eerily similar to Elaine’s. I feel like I can see steam blowing from her mouth, like her insides are a freshly baked pie.
“In all honesty, I am friends with her—or was. It’s complicated, Jamie, it is. She’d come to all my poetry readings, but I didn’t invite her to this one—but I suppose she still heard about it. Her name is—”
Before she can finish, I kiss her. Looks are an illusion, I’ll tell you, because those lips feel as dry as the rest of her looks, but I keep kissing anyway. I kiss until I can taste her skin, her teeth, her fish of a tongue. Wet and warm and perfectly acidic from the bile. I imagine her mouth is a vagina, and I am eating her out with great agility. I am eating out Henrietta. She pulls away before I can find the clit.
“No, stop. You’re just confused. You’re confused.”
The next morning, I wake up—sadly—plagued with severe anxiety, substantially worse than my usual post-black-out anxiety. I’m still wearing my muddy boots. And the mud has transferred to my duvet, my couch. White sheets and fabric cloaked in stripes of brown. And the smell—straight dog shit. I remember the important part: I had kissed Henrietta. But I don’t remember the most important part, which is what happened after that.
I don’t seem to care, though, about any of it, after my morning half a bottle of wine, that is. I’ve switched to the ten-dollar stuff—more economically feasible this way. As I walk to the local liquor store for my next pack of cigarettes, I try to think of titles for the article I’ll inevitably write about the poetry reading. Poets and Philistines—Sorry, I Don’t Know Why I Just Said Poets Twice. No, that’s shit. Book Club Moms And Their Eternal Quests For Something Worth Doing. Fucking hell. I haven’t been funny since he died. Not once have I made someone laugh, not even myself. He had to take it all, didn’t he?
I pass the lake but don’t make eye contact, treating it like a hook-up I’m trying to avoid. I pass the post office—I look but don’t reminisce. No time. I finally arrive. I swing open the door with ease: kid in a candy store.
“Hi.”
“Hi!”
The twelve-year-old Albanian boy is working today. He doesn’t know my name, nor I his, but he knows I have an alcohol addiction and a crush on the store owner/his father, and I know he’s flunking Algebra and has a crush on his babysitter/his cousin, so it’s actually my healthiest relationship yet, intimacy-wise.
“Pack of Marlboro Golds, please.”
“No wine, today?”
He asks this every time. It’s a kind charade we both partake in.
“Fuck it. Yeah. Give me that discounted four-pack of rosé behind you. Throwing a party tonight, so.”
That’s the lie I tell every time. After paying, I pluck my cigarettes and wine from his hands and wink—trying to sexually impress a prepubescent boy might be my low point. He winks back—so maybe not. On the way out, I stumble on the unraveled edge of the stained carpet lining the entrance, making him laugh his little boy laugh. I feel unsure if that laugh counts.
When I get back to my house, I’ve already downed two mini wine bottles and three cigarettes. I see her sitting at my doorstep. Her her. Wearing beat-up tennis shoes and a tank top of a washed denim romper, as if she is trying to impress me with her fabricated humility. And what is it about my doorstep that screams sit here? Loiter here? I feel a need to get my broom and beat her with it, sweep her off my patio like a rat or a patch of dust or broken glass. She’d probably like it, too, that slut.
“I can’t even believe what I’m seeing.”
She stands up. Her romper falls across her chest like an ironing board. She is skinnier and shorter than the twelve-year-old cashier—I couldn’t tell just how skinny she was with that leather jacket on, I guess. She has lost a significant amount of weight since I saw her last—her naked body, that is. Boyish hips, a metal pole of collarbones, prominent pubic bone that juts out like a small dick: I’d be much angrier if I didn’t want to fuck her so much. Or maybe I’m jealous. No, no: I definitely want to fuck her.
“Okay, I get it, okay, I’m sorry. I’m crazy—this is crazy, and I’m selfish, but, just hear me out, please. Can you? Please.”
I throw my cigarette at her, but it doesn’t even clear her feet. She steps off my patio and stomps out the flame with her dirty sneaker.
“Fine. But let’s go somewhere. I know a place.”
I make her drive me to that same Japanese restaurant. I get in the passenger seat and try not to think about the fact that Arthur has likely sat here—many times. I think, Well, it’s not warm or anything, so at least he wasn’t in here today and then I remember that he’s dead, so that would’ve been awfully hard for him to do. On the way there, she talks. About herself. And I strangely feel no urge to stop her. Her name is Clementine. Cool name for a cool girl. I honestly should’ve just guessed it. She could’ve been like, “What do you think my name is?” and I would’ve guessed Clementine or Olive or Margarine or some other random food. She is twenty-nine, same as me. She is a nutritionist. I keep my mouth shut for that last one. I light a cigarette and open another bottle. I indulge in both.
“Want one?”
“Oh, no, I don’t smoke. And I’d appreciate if you didn’t—”
“Turn left here.”
When we arrive, it’s three p.m., so we are, once again, the only patrons. Or maybe the emptiness has actually nothing to do with the time, I’m just noticing—maybe people don’t like the restaurant because of the smoke and shitty food. I get a plate of edamame just to make the sake go down easier. Clementine gets the miso soup and two glasses of Shochu.
“So, what? What do you want, Clementine? I’m feeling very unsure of how to even feel right now. I want to hate you, but I mostly don’t, but the ambiguity is making my head hurt. So, tell me.”
She chugs her drink, then the second, coolly, easily, as if it were water. She nods at the waiter and he refills both of her glasses. I chug mine and nod at the waiter as well, but he doesn’t see me.
“God, Jamie. I don’t know.”
She’s laughing now, which just feels rude. I wish I knew what the joke was.
“It’s selfish—like I said, I’m selfish. I just really wanted to meet you. I did. Seeing you the other night, you just looked so… different and, I don’t know. I really wanted to meet you.”
I haven’t really judged my appearance in the last year or so, so I have no idea what she’s talking about, but I nod anyway.
“Plus, I hear from Henrietta that you’re planning on selling the house.”
She places her hand on my left knee and pats it patronizingly. Her thin lips squirm into a pitying smile. She’s pretty in a soft, subtle, unremarkable way—she looks like the dead wife that’s shown only in flashbacks in the first ten minutes of a rom-com. We really look nothing alike: Arthur evidently doesn’t have a type.
“Well, yeah, I am. I can’t exactly afford it, especially not right now. Plus, it has too many bad memories—I’m sure you get what I’m saying.”
“I do. I do.”
The waiter refills my glass—maybe he did see me. I chug. It tastes like nothing, not even water. I may be drinking from an empty glass. She takes a bite of her food and chews carefully, covering her mouth with her hand as she does so, just like Arthur used to.
“Where did you guys even meet?” I ask.
“I met him at the post office, actually. He gave me his number.”
She finishes her third drink and keeps on sitting and breathing and living, as if this were a completely normal thing for her to say, as if I should be reacting as sedately as she is. And the waiter continues to gawk at her as if she deserves to be seen after saying that. And the building around us doesn’t crash down, killing us both, painfully and slowly, and none of that makes sense to me. She may not be a “bad” person, but she is the worst kind of person: unaffected in a way that invites you to be the same. I sip my nothing-drink until the clear of the sake is replaced by the clear of the air, and then I sip the air as well. When I look back up to her, she’s crying, silently. Tears drip from her cheeks onto her jean romper, her tiny frame shivers, her mouth hangs open. Bony fingers trace my knee, creeping towards my inner thigh. She’s suddenly close, so close that I could smell her breath if I tried. Her lips dissolve into a frown and she kisses me. She kisses me. Lips nothing like Henrietta’s, or what I remember of them. I pull away before I can find out what her insides taste like.
“Stop. We—you're confused. It’s okay. But, no. You’re just confused.”
I walk home—the long way, to the lake, on the cusp of my greatest black-out yet. I drink the last bottle of rosé. It’s light enough out that I can see color. Blue sky, blue lake. I walk in, let the water disintegrate my cigarettes and envelop my body—cold has never meant much to me. I look out to the muddy shore and see bobbing faces all around me: the Albanian boy, Elaine, Henrietta, Clementine. They’re swimming, they’re trying to catch up to me, they’re yelling at me to come back to shore, where it’s safe. I try to imagine Arthur, but I can’t. As if he is more name than face. I toss my now-empty bottle to the dock to hear a very satisfying shatter. Broken shards of glass sprinkle into the lake, but it’s not my problem now. I dunk my head underwater. Pink fish like flesh, yellow fish like the moon. Bubbles stretch their anatomies out inside my ears, and for a second, I can hear everything—everyone is speaking, all the time, it seems. The fish tell me to go deeper. They tell me to open my mouth, so I do, I open my mouth, I stick out my tongue, and I drink. I drink like it’s a warm bottle of white wine. I drink it like a salivating dog. Dog, dog, dog. I drink and I drink and I drink the toxic waste: salty and sour. I don’t care about the potential diseases, about the horrid taste, it’s not about any of that. I want the entire ecosystem of the lake to live inside me. Besides—nothing can hurt me now. I’d simply laugh if it tried.
Cover art: Malcolm T. Liepke, Like a Dream (2022)
Those damned poets 😁. Sounded a bit like Bukowski there (a good thing imo). Loved your story and the puke in the throat bits.
Very good