I had made up my mind to leave Doug. It’s these Thursdays. They’re killing me.
Thursday is date night. Every Thursday we go to Outback Steakhouse and start with one of those fried onions. First course, Doug tells me how they have the best croutons here. Then he asks our waiter what all the different sauces are and what’s in them and still orders the sirloin. I complain when my salmon comes out dry. After we share the molten cake it’s off to the video store. Then we go home for popcorn and as the credits start to roll I wait for Doug to make his move, pressing down on my shoulders, holding his breath with the hope I’ll give him a blowjob.
The only variety on date night is the movie. Being civil adults and all, we have joint custody of who gets to pick. On my weeks, I’ll spice it up with a foreign film, or something classic that won a bunch of awards. But this is Doug’s week, which means we’re getting something stupid.
I went my own way at the video store. I didn’t care to be around Doug as he was picking out his movie, so I browsed the romantic comedy section. All the titles had covers with women frozen in silly poses. A lady leaning over and laughing so hard all her teeth were showing. Or another with a couple holding each other, but the girl is pulling away and making this face right at the audience, telling us she has commitment issues. There were rows of them. All those faked emotions, everything painfully staged.
“Think I got a winner,” Doug said. He came up behind me, tapping a video case in his hand.
“Let me guess. There’s a situation and some agent comes out of retirement for one last job.”
He looked at the back of the video. “Nope.”
“Is there Justice or Executive in the title?”
He showed me the cover. A man held a pistol next to his face and squinted at some unseen danger. Marked for Vengeance.
“Great,” I said.
“You might like it. See, he’s a DEA agent and his partner gets murdered. But the twist is, his partner was a K-9 dog.”
“Can a dog get murdered? Isn’t murder reserved for people?”
Doug shook his head. “He’s an officer of the law. People get life for that.”
As we waited to pay, I thought about those dumb pictures on the movie boxes. It reminded me of when Doug and I got engaged. We had to take engagement photos and the photographer told us we should go to the woods. He took us to a place where the trees fell away and there was a clearing. We stood there and laughed and kissed. All the while the photographer snapped away with his camera. The whole time all I could think was, why I am in the forest wearing my best party dress? And who in their right mind would stand in a field making these stupid faces? The photographer kept shouting at us, “Yes. Yes.” Then he’d adjust my posture. “More of that,” he said. “What a perfect looking couple,” he said, when he didn’t know a thing about us. The whole time we were out there the brush was scratching my legs to hell. But I had grinned through it all.
“This is going to be a bad film,” I said.
“Like you know.”
“It’s a movie,” Doug said. “You don’t have to get all uppity.”
“We’re watching it together.”
“I sit through your week too, you know. That black and white bullshit. That foreign shit.” Doug set his jaw. “You think I want to read subtitles while I’m trying to watch a movie?”
I thought of a thousand things I had done for him and hated. It made me mad enough to spit on him. But we were in public and I wasn’t sure who was watching. So I gave the store an easy smile.
On the way to our car I saw a mix of teenagers hanging their legs off the edge of a truck bed. One of the boys passed a bottle to a girl. She leaned away but he pushed it on her anyway. As she tilted the bottle, the group cheered and the boy slid his arm under her breasts and around her ribs. He ensnared her and licked at her ear. Liquor spilled down her chin. She gagged a little but kept at it. For her effort they cheered even more.
I wanted to warn that girl. I wanted to tell her she couldn’t take back what they were going to do to her. But I felt Doug pulling my arm, steering me clear of them.
Most of the way home we didn’t speak. We listened to the radio until I couldn’t take the noise any longer. I turned it off.
“I like that song,” Doug said. He turned it back on.
I cranked the volume down. “Why’d you pull me to the car like that?”
“What?” He forced a playful laugh.
“I’m serious.”
“They’re just kids, Lauren. It’s not like we’re their parents.”
“I feel sorry for their parents. That poor girl.”
“It’s the summer. They’re having fun. We used to do the same thing.” Doug looked at me and I couldn’t tell if he winked or if the muscle twitch in his cheek was acting up again. “Remember that? Those hot summers.” He put his hand on my thigh and squeezed.
It seemed as good a time as any to tell him I was leaving him. But I wasn’t sure how to start. And I didn’t want things getting heated while I was trapped in the car. I turned the volume up on the radio. The rearview mirror shook and distorted the road. That girl, that howling pack of boys, must have been gone by now. I wondered where they’d take her.
After the movie was over, and after Doug was finished and sleeping, I stole out the front for a cigarette. I went down past the steps to the flower bed, so I wouldn’t get ash on the porch. It was late and the heat still hung in the air. I could smell Doug on my skin. And my fingers trembled as I smoked.
Down the sidewalk, I saw my neighbor coming in from a walk with his little dog. The dog pulled at the leash, but my neighbor kept him reined in. When the leash snagged at his collar the dog shuddered and pulled a tight circle before trying to run ahead. “Easy,” he kept telling the dog as he tugged the leash.
I waved as he passed the edge of our yard.
“Ms. Lauren.” He stopped and rested his foot on our steps. “Didn’t see you at the homeowners meeting.”
“Miss anything good?”
He grazed his hand along our bush. “Shrubs no higher than thirty-six inches. Smoking is now designated to back porches only.”
“Really.” I ashed my cigarette. “You going to tell on me?”
“We didn’t see anything,” he said to his dog. “Did we?” He picked him up and let him lick his face.
A man and his dog. It seemed like a good thing. And I wanted to know how he came about such a good thing. “Are you happy?” I said.
“Sorry?”
“You and Marvin.” I tilted my head toward their house. “You guys seem to have it together.”
He closed both eyes and flattened his mouth. “Child, please,” he said. “We keep appearances, but we keep better fences.” The dog tried to jump from his arms, but my neighbor held him tight. “How’s Douglas these days?” “Same,” I said. I watched the dog shiver in the heat. It looked at me with wide, nervous eyes. “You ever let him off the leash?”
“Out back we do. But he’d dart off out here.”
“My whole life I’ve had one dog.”
“Didn’t think you and Douglas were dog people.”
“When I was a kid. Her name was Pepper.”
“Pepper.” He stroked between the dog’s eyes. “How cute.”
“She was half German shepherd, half something else. But she was a good dog. Knew tricks and everything.”
“That’s great.” He kept petting his dog as he looked past me, trying to see into our house.
“Back then we lived next to a pasture. And if we didn’t tie her up, Pepper would run off our property, jet out to the neighbor’s field. So one day she’s out there, off the leash and running, and her paw gets snapped in one of those fox traps.”
My neighbor made a sour face. “Oh, no,” he said. He shifted the dog to his other arm. “Poor thing.”
“Know what a dog does when it’s stuck like that?”
The dog was licking his master’s knuckle now. My neighbor shook his head.
“You’ll love this.” I twisted my cigarette into the flower bed. “Somehow a dog knows when it’s hopeless. So she gnawed it off. Beneath the knee, right through the bone. And she still had the sense to limp all the way back home.” He stopped petting his dog and gave me a feeble smile. He looked concerned. Just not enough to ask.
“We had to put her down after that,” I said. “Don’t know why my father insisted on shooting her. She’d have been fine on three legs. Wouldn’t have had to tie her up anymore. But he put her down anyway. Said it was the right thing to do with a lame dog.”
My neighbor’s mouth fell slightly ajar. As his focus shifted from my house to his, the dog leapt from his arms, blasting for the street. For a moment I thought the dog just might break free. A surge to the road and no looking back. Those ratty little claws clicking away on the asphalt, past the last light post, and gone, faded and free into an unknown darkness. But my neighbor yanked the leash tight and kept the thing near. “Come on, boy,” he said. “We’d better get inside. Daddy’s waiting.”