Chapter Twenty-Four

Smells Like Team Spirit

Shit, shit, shit,” I kept saying as I dragged Joanne the four blocks back to our house. On the way, still holding on tight to her leash, I pulled out my phone and furiously googled “what the hell do I do if my dog and I get sprayed by a fucking skunk?”

The answer came back: don’t bring your clothes or the dog inside and mix up a concoction of hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and dish detergent.

“Well,” I told Joanne, who appeared fazed not at all by her now-overwhelming stench, “this is going to be a DIY de-skunking.”

I led her into my small backyard and shut the gate behind us. It was only just now six o’clock in the morning, and the street around us was still quiet and dark. “At least it’s July,” I told her. “Trying to give you a bath outdoors would be an even bigger disaster if you’d pulled this nonsense in October or March.” I tied her leash around the pole at the base of my back deck. “You’re not going anywhere, my friend. I don’t want you getting covered in dirt, too.”

She didn’t fight it. Joanne sat serenely in the flower bed, the picture of innocence.

Though the ingredients for the anti-skunk funk solution were inside my house, I went into the garage first to see if I could find anything to use as a tub. Right away, I spotted an old baby pool I’d bought a few years ago when my brother came up from Texas with my niece. I dragged the plastic Dora the Explorer tub out onto the grass and set the nozzle of the garden hose inside it.

“Now for the other stuff.” I peered into my neighbors’ yards. Dark. Quiet.

Joanne watched me as I slipped out of my clothes, down to my underwear, dropping my shirt and shorts in a puddle on the sidewalk. I smelled my bra. Not too bad. My T-shirt had taken the brunt of the spray. I scurried up the steps to the sliding glass door on the deck. Locked.

Crud.

I’d have to go in the front door. I saluted Joanne, slipped out the front gate, locked it, and made a mad dash around the side of the house and up the front steps. A light hit me, and I turned to see a cab idling in front of my house. He honked and flashed his lights at me. I flipped off the driver and yanked open my front door.

Panting hard, I shut the door behind me (and locked it to keep out the lecherous cabbie) and tiptoed upstairs, trying not to wake Dax. Up in my room, I changed into my bathing suit—a navy blue bikini covered in a neon feather pattern—and chucked my underwear out the back window and down onto the deck. I checked on Joanne—still just hanging out. She’d given up on sitting and had curled up in my hostas.

I grabbed a few towels and the ingredients for the shampoo. After I’d mixed up the concoction in an old pitcher, I let myself out the back door onto the deck. “Joanne, what the heck are you doing?” She was on her back, happily wriggling in the dirt and, no doubt, rabbit feces.

“Let’s get you cleaned up.” I turned on the hose and then untied Joanne, leading her on her leash over to the pool. Once she figured out where I was taking her, she froze. I yanked her leash. “Come on, girl. There’s no way out of this.”

She would not budge.

“Joanne,” I told her. “You smell like ass, and you’re not going inside again until we rectify that.”

She flopped down in the grass, growing limp.

“Okay, then.”

I was a medical doctor. I had gone through years and years of school and training, but nothing had prepared me for trying to bathe a stubborn ninety-pound beast made of solid muscle.

I tried reasoning with her. “We’ll get this over with so quickly you won’t even know it’s happening, and then I’ll give you a treat.”

Her ears perked up at that momentarily, until she realized I didn’t actually have said treat on me.

Damn it. She was too smart for her own good.

“Joanne.” I stood firm, hands on hips. “Get in the pool.”

She licked her undercarriage.

“Fine.” One hand still holding the leash, I pulled the hose toward me. “We’ll have to do this the hard way.”

She jumped up and attempted to drag me up the back steps.

“Joanne, no! Relax!”

“What’s going on?” Dax, in a T-shirt and athletic shorts, appeared along the side of the house, just beyond the back basement steps. He scratched the top of his head, making his bedhead more pronounced.

“We got sprayed by a skunk.”

“Oh no.” He rushed over, reaching for his dog’s leash. “Damn it, Joanne. Are you okay, Annie?”

“It just got on my clothes, I think,” I said. “Joanne took the brunt of it. Have you ever dealt with this before?”

He shook his head.

“Google says we have to bathe her with that concoction over there.” I gestured toward the pitcher I’d set near the pool.

“Joanne’s terrified of water.” Dax wrinkled his nose as he caught a whiff of his dog’s current eau de parfum.

“So I gathered.” I paused. This was his pet, after all. I should let him take the lead. “What do we do?”

“She’ll just have to bear through it.” He appraised his dog. “I can’t remember the last time I gave her a bath on my own. Usually I just trick her into going to the groomer at the pet store once in a while.” After a moment, he turned to me, eyes determined. “I’ll hold her down. You scrub.”

I got to work prepping our instruments—the shampoo, a big sponge, a few towels—as Dax carried his beast over to the pool. Joanne seemed calmer in his arms. She even gave him a quick lick on the cheek, as if to say all was forgiven.

“Okay,” Dax said. “Here we go.” His grip tight around her torso, he stepped over the lip of the pool and then lowered her into the water. She squirmed as soon as her feet hit the cold bath, but Dax held her there. “Try to avoid her face as much as possible.”

“But she probably got sprayed there.”

He leaned in and sniffed her head, wrinkling up his nose. “Yup. Definitely did.” He turned his nose away from his malodorous dog. “Let’s save that for last, then; start with something less traumatic. Get the rest of her body first.”

I gingerly hit Joanne’s back with the hose. She flinched, and Dax grabbed on tighter.

“That’s it,” he said calmly. “Nice and easy.”

After I’d wetted most of her body, I grabbed the pitcher and poured the concoction over her back. Smiling sheepishly, I knelt down next to Dax and started scrubbing Joanne’s fur with the sponge.

“Good girl,” he kept whispering in her ear as her body tightened, ready to flee. I couldn’t help smiling, watching him soothe his dog with such tenderness.

Like playing a stinky game of Twister, I tried to wash every bit of Joanne’s body without invading Dax’s personal space and without falling over. “Sorry,” I said as my arm grazed his.

“It’s okay,” he said softly. I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or if that was meant for Joanne.

When I moved around to Joanne’s front, Dax and I were suddenly face-to-face. I softly and gently soaped up Joanne’s head. “Good,” he said, “easy.” His warm breath hit my cheek, sending waves of heat to my core. Carried away by my body’s response to his calming whispers, I kept rubbing and rubbing and rubbing the top of her head.

“I think you got it,” Dax said.

I straightened up. “Right. Yup. I think that’s it.” I pressed my legs together in an attempt to stanch the flow of blood to that area.

“You need to rinse her off first.”

“Of course.” A task. I grabbed the hose, trying to ignore the flush rising up the back of my neck. I aimed the hose at Joanne, and she flinched again, now struggling harder against Dax’s grip.

“Get closer,” he said. “Make sure you wash off all that peroxide.”

I aimed the stream at her back, and Dax wiped away the soap as much as he could. Joanne bucked hard against him, finally breaking loose and sending him flying, onto his back, into the pool. His feet kicked my legs out from underneath me, and I landed flat on top of him, my palms pressed into his chest. The two of us burst out laughing.

“Sorry.” The top of my bare foot rubbed against his, and I realized quickly that his hands were gripping my hips and his eyes were locked on mine. The laughter had stopped as quickly as it began.

“Um, Joanne,” I said breathily.

“Shit, you’re right. She probably just undid all our hard work.” He struggled under me, so I rolled off him and stood. I offered him a hand to help him up.

“Thanks.” He grabbed his dog’s leash and led her away from the bushes where she was now hiding. “Maybe I’ll just try rinsing her off in the shower with me. If that’s okay.”

“It’s fine.”

I watched him, tight white T-shirt, see-through and clinging to his back muscles, walking his dog down the basement steps and out of sight.