What would you endure jail for, Dora said, I would endure jail for my daughters, Antonio said, I’m not telling you this so you think I’m a good person, father, etc., this is simply the first answer that comes to mind, and because Dora withheld her response for too long, and because he knew she might not offer him another audience, Antonio continued, speaking to her of I’ve Loved You So Long, a French movie they’d seen together in which a mother endures jail for killing her son (the revelation toward the end of the movie that the mother knew that her son was dying, and that she had injected her boy to spare him because she was a doctor and knew how painful his terminal illness would be, had been so unbearable to Antonio that he had to rush to the bathroom of the Nuart Theatre to conceal his sobbing from Dora — in my own so-called fiction I skirt the verb to sob because of its melodramatic acoustics, Antonio writes, nevertheless to weep aloud with convulsive gasping was what I did at the Nuart Theatre—), I think jail in that movie is the mother’s equivalent of killing herself, Antonio said, the question has been on my mind because I did go to jail, Dora said, because apparently her new former boyfriend had gifted her a dog, a dachshund she was carrying with her that Sunday outside of Menotti’s Coffee Stop on one of those BabyBjörn carriers that are popular in Abbot Kinney among fathers who want to showcase to the world that they, unlike their own fathers, are good fathers, keeping their newborns close to their chests, after I ended the relationship we enrolled in couples therapy to mediate custody of our dog, Dora said, I’m going to need most of your cigarettes to hear this story about you and your dog, Antonio said, last winter he traveled to Miami with Bailey and did not return him, Dora said, so she filed charges in small-claims court, won, but apparently the judge didn’t have the jurisdiction to issue an injunction for her new former boyfriend to return her dog, I called the police anyway, Dora said, but the police informed her they couldn’t enter his house without a court order so she put up flyers with pictures of her dog and of her new former boyfriend in the neighborhood in Manhattan Beach where she used to live with him and her dog, did you tape or hammer your flyers to the telephone poles there, Antonio said, why are you asking me these questions are you going to write about this, Dora said, the story of you and your dog is compelling to me because it externalizes what during breakups often remains, against one’s will, internalized, Antonio said, elaborating his point by recounting a story by Charles D’Ambrosio in which a screenwriter at an insane asylum asks a ballerina at the same insane asylum why she burns herself with cigarettes, because it externalizes her pain, the ballerina says, I actually handed out most of the flyers, Dora said.
The expectation of unconditional love should be reserved for the relationship between parents and children, Antonio said, because it’s unreasonable to expect adults to burden one another with unconditional love, and since Dora did not reply Antonio continued, telling her that after he was surprised by the news that he was going to be what he never wanted to be, a father, his former therapist said that one of the most wonderful aspects of being a parent was that you could love someone without worrying about them leaving you, that is absolutely not true, Dora said, children do leave their parents — I knew what she meant, Antonio writes, so I didn’t attempt to amuse her with insouciant counterarguments — and perhaps because Dora used to complain he purposefully excluded his life as a father from their relationship, which lasted almost a year, he softened his tone and told her how in his life now he pined after Saturday afternoons, when Ada has her soccer matches, and that to watch Ada score three or four goals per game was beautiful to him, as if he was watching an apparition of himself as a boy playing soccer in Bogotá but much better, although he didn’t connect Ada and himself across time until his mother visited and said she’s just like you, Antonio, running furiously after the ball — Ada, Antonio writes, my sensitive eight-year-old who paints I’m Sorry canvases for her mother when she splashes too much bathtub water — I am still seeking that kind of unconditional love, Dora said, admitting this probably made her a romantic, it does, Antonio said, but there’s nothing right or wrong about being a romantic.
Someone called me about my dog, Dora said, was it a man or a woman, Antonio said, guessing it had to be a woman because only a woman would understand the plight of another woman in search of her dog, or at least that’s what Antonio thought at the time, sitting next to Dora and her dog outside Menotti’s Coffee Stop, a woman, Dora said, a store owner who had seen her dog with a blond woman who happened to be the new girlfriend of Dora’s new former boyfriend, that just proves how benighted he is because white girls are the worst and they age horribly, Antonio said, I drove by the store owned by the woman who had called me about my dog, Dora said, what kind of store was it, Antonio said, I’m not telling, Dora said, but I found my dog nearby and snatched it from her, how did you manage to snatch your dog away from the blond woman, Antonio said, for legal reasons I can’t tell you too many details, Dora said, did the blond woman chase after you, Antonio said, no, Dora said, the blond woman did not — Dora didn’t tell me if the blond woman was already pregnant when she snatched her dog from her, Antonio writes, but the blond woman was pregnant — I’m glad I didn’t have children with him, Dora said, obviously the blond woman didn’t love your dog enough to chase you and therefore did not deserve to keep your dog, Antonio said, he filed charges against me, Dora said, assault and theft, she didn’t think the charges would go through, months passed and nothing happened, but then they did go through and she had to hire a criminal attorney and place her dog in a witness protection program, I’ve heard of dog therapists and dog dentists so I guess a dog witness protection program isn’t too far-fetched, Antonio said, that’s just what I called me hiding Bailey outside of California, Dora said.
One night at the apartment Dora was sharing with her sister and her brother, a night Antonio would prefer not to forget, Dora shared with him the video her soon-to-be-new father had recorded of her, her two siblings, her soon-to-be-former mother, and her soon-to-be-new mother, all of them in what looked like a train station in Beijing at the moment the adoption transaction was taking place, her brother pretending to be delighted, her older sister as enraged as she was when Antonio met her years later, little Dora smiling in confusion about what was happening to her, her new father recording a video that years later he was to share at a family gathering as a tribute for Dora’s former mother, whom he was to bring back from Beijing to marry soon after leaving Dora’s new mother — Dora’s family history is more complicated than I or anyone can even attempt to reconcile, Antonio writes, and to this day I would not wish it on anyone — enough, Antonio thinks, closing the file entitled Dora & Her Dog and scanning the messages that have been arriving since he began writing about Dora two hours ago, at 7:00 a.m., messages that contain words like autoregressive forecasting, intraday transaction posting, we are now accepting submissions for our Nature issue, the principal assumption of the geometric distributed lag model (GDL) is that the maximum impact of marketing occurs in the period in which it takes place and that its influence declines geometrically to zero thereafter, your suboptimal SQL query is slowing down the Teradata box, pursuant to the terms of the Bail Bond contract and promissory note you agreed to indemnify Any Day Bail Bonding Inc. against any and all claims incurred due to Estela Jiménez’s failure to appear in Baltimore’s Superior Court you are hereby given ten days to pay $110,000 for failure to appear, attorney fees, interest, and recovery expenses, and as Antonio removes his headphones, which have been transmitting Eight Lines by Steve Reich on repeat, he hears his work phone ringing inside his cubicle at Prudential Investments, Ron Graebel here, Ron Graebel says, I’m the owner of Any Day Bail Bonding I just sent you an email how are you today, you shouldn’t call this phone I need to, give me a minute I’ll call you from a conference room, Antonio says as he hurries toward Bermuda, the conference room without windows so that no one in the office can see him, okay, Antonio says, I hate making these calls, Ron Graebel says, you have a business to run I understand, Antonio says, do you know your sister’s whereabouts, Ron Graebel says, no I, Antonio says, no, you and your mother are responsible for her I know you know that, Ron Graebel says, my mother and I, Antonio says, my sister isn’t well she hasn’t talked to us in a year, as owner and the one directly responsible to pay the court I would feel a lot better about this case if you would submit the full bond amount to be held in our security deposit account to cover the liability or at a minimum proof of funds, Ron Graebel says, we reserved Bermuda for 9:00 are you almost done, Antonio’s coworker says, I’m done I’ll call you back, Antonio says, I do expect you will, Ron Graebel says.
Aside from finishing law school I’m acting now, Dora said — Dora, Antonio writes, the least expressive woman I’ve met — she had discovered acting was her calling and acting is about portraying our reactions to dramatic circumstances, life and death, just like in fiction, and Antonio disagreed and said that he subscribed to António Lobo Antunes’s belief that we should remove the dramatic charge from fiction because nothing’s really that dramatic, someone is always leaving us or dying or going to the insane asylum, these miseries just happen to us and will continue to happen to us, to which she replied by speaking of metaphorical icebergs, the surface of things, etc., but Antonio did not refute these handed-down notions of narrative because he wanted to be amenable so she would agree to a handful of Fridays with him during summer #8, I’ve changed, Dora said, explaining that her former therapist had encouraged her not to be so black-and-white, to be more comfortable with the gray aspects of life, which included seeing Antonio again, and Antonio said I am Dora’s gray area, but Dora didn’t laugh, I have begun to see myself again as I was as a three-year-old, Dora said, so open and cheerful, ambling with her new father to the neighborhood ice cream shop, it’s remarkable to see oneself as a three-year-old again, Antonio said, across twenty-seven years of life, I would do things differently now, Dora said, and Antonio interpreted this as a reference to her cruelty after she ended their relationship, a topic Antonio had no interest in pursuing (what good would it do now? — besides, Antonio writes, cruelty is embedded in the structure of endings — the day after Dora ended their relationship, Antonio revealed to her, despite his distaste for the hackneyed language of so-called love, that he loved her — I did not conceal my sobbing from her, Antonio writes, and she was taken aback because while we were together she hadn’t known — I love you too, she said, but it’s too late, she was already seeing the older man who was to steal her dog — just last summer I heard the same response to my untimely revelation of so-called love from Silvina, Antonio writes, the other former girlfriend I wish I could have kept—), if I have learned anything about breakups, Antonio said, and I haven’t really learned anything about breakups, and here she interrupted him and said why do you always qualify yourself like that, and he said because I believe this business of learning is a mirage we impose on ourselves to feel better about our fated lives, does that include what I just said about changing, Dora said, that wasn’t my intention but yes, Antonio said, reaching across the table to rest his hand on her forearm, wanting her to believe he could believe she could change, why shouldn’t we nurse our delusions, Antonio said, if we find consolation in them?
I thought it through, Dora said, all the possible angles, whether I was in the wrong and should let Bailey go, or whether I was willing to abide by my principles and endure jail for what truly matters to me, and since Antonio remained quiet she continued, telling him a friend of her new former boyfriend had contacted her and told her that her new former boyfriend was enjoying himself with this business of the dog, getting even with her through her dog, how did his friend know about her dog, Antonio said, I emailed his friends and coworkers, she said, pleading with them about her dog, and as Dora removed her baseball cap to rearrange her hair, Antonio could see what looked like scabs on her forehead and the excessive makeup she had applied to cover them — in my own so-called fiction I don’t provide descriptions of people because I don’t remember what people look like, Antonio writes, but I remember Dora’s forehead because I became concerned Dora wasn’t well — she must have intuited that he was considering whether she’d derailed aspects of her mind as a consequence of spending a year plotting the recovery of her dog because she changed the topic and asked him about his relationship status — no way I’m risking a summer affair with Dora, being what I was thinking, Antonio writes — and so Antonio spoke to her about his child custody proceedings and how he had to attend a mandatory orientation where a man described how he had to enter a special building from one door, and how the mother of his child had to enter the same special building through another door, on the other side of the building, and how the man was only allowed to see his son in a special room inside that special building for a limited number of hours — I dream of that building often, Antonio writes, or perhaps I no longer dream of that building and it has simply become one of the images I have to contend with, in other words it is my building now, a building shaped like the Pentagon or the doomed fortresses of Jacques Austerlitz — he spoke to Dora about resignation and how his daughters need a lot of attention, and how he has come to define happiness collectively, and that it was ridiculous, given that most adult relationships end anyway, to pursue a relationship with another adult at the expense of his daughters, who were so little still — I thought I knew the effect my monologue would have on Dora, Antonio writes, the narrative of self-sacrifice, etc., but we were both wearing sunglasses, so I couldn’t tell how she was feeling, although even if she hadn’t been wearing sunglasses I wouldn’t have known how she was feeling — I think your mother giving you away for adoption so you wouldn’t die of hunger after your father died in a motorcycle accident is your mother’s equivalent of killing herself, Antonio didn’t say.
I had to turn myself in, Dora said, trying to lighten up her anecdote about jail by saying that she had tried to turn herself in on a day the computer registration systems were down, so she decided to come back another day because if the systems were down she wouldn’t know when she was getting out, now would she, I was in jail for one night, Dora said, what was jail like, Antonio said, apparently where you first sit gives away whether or not you’ve been in jail before, Dora said, and because Antonio didn’t want to think about or share with Dora how a year ago his sister had also been in jail after threatening to shoot her neighbors, he asked Dora if walking her dog had become stressful to her, in other words was she worried about running into her new former boyfriend or his future former girlfriend, no, Dora said, showing him her dog’s new, difficult-to-snatch harness, I knew I would have to live with this new burden of worry before deciding to snatch my dog from that woman, Dora said, plus she also knew her new former boyfriend was still in Miami, and as Dora and Antonio watched the sun come down outside of Menotti’s Coffee Stop — in my so-called fiction I never describe landscapes or weather, suns coming up or going down, Antonio writes, what’s the point? everything’s searchable online and metaphorical weathers are a bore, but that Sunday the sun was coming down and I didn’t know how I was feeling about seeing Dora again — Antonio said this is my favorite time of day, things coming to an end, and since Antonio didn’t want her to think he was being metaphorical about endings, he mentioned that these particular colors of sundown reminded him of sundown at Burning Man, a weeklong party in the desert he used to attend when he was in his twenties, speaking to her of people standing atop RVs, the sense of anticipation, the biggest party of their lives about to begin, the fluorescent lights on art cars and the wonderland castles about to be animated by portable generators, and because Dora wasn’t smiling he said next time I will add puppetry to my Burning Man story to amuse you better, and Dora said what makes you think I’m not amused?
In retrospect I have assumed she didn’t want me to leave just yet because she had suggested we walk her dog along the beach toward Santa Monica, Antonio writes, but unfortunately I had to go because my oldest daughter Ada had taken money from her mother without asking and upon being caught had cried for almost two hours, afraid of what I would say to her, I don’t want to make Ada wait any longer, I said, I’m also worried about handing out a fair punishment, a lesson about consequences, I explained to Dora, without getting too upset at Ada, and yet Dora seemed upset that I was done with her and her dog, hugging me politely, sideways because of the dog on her chest, our torsos barely touching, kissing each other’s cheeks too quickly, letting her dog lick me and playacting at licking him back, neither of us saying let’s meet again soon, awakening, later that night, at least three or four times, worried that the excessive smoking I’d done with Dora might have corroded my new tooth implant, ambling, the next morning, from the extra-small studio apartment my daughters call The Other Home, across the laundry room that connects my building with their building, to the apartment where I used to live with my former wife and my two daughters, who were almost done packing for their annual summer trip to Czechia — my former wife and I have nothing in common besides our daughters and perhaps a proclivity for buffoonery, Antonio writes, so our relationship should have ended before we conceived Ada and it has, many times, including a divorce proceeding that led me to write to an acquaintance dear John, thank you for your invitation to join your book club but my life has been reduced to four-way settlement meetings in which a family attorney lectures me about the deleterious impact of pizza on my daughter so he can assign an additional $25 to my former wife’s spousal support, but stay tuned, even Moses Herzog recovered — my former wife has tried to date others and I have tried to date others but we both want to see Ada and Eva every day, Antonio writes, so we’re not dating anybody anymore — last week my former wife bought me a bookshelf so I wouldn’t have to lug my books between Home and The Other Home but didn’t tell me it was for me so she was upset I hadn’t remarked on it, Antonio writes — I bought you a beautiful bookshelf and you don’t say anything, Ida said — perhaps that’s the only way adult relationships can last, Antonio writes, by exhaustion, although I wouldn’t take relationship advice from me.