Stay-with-Me-Wisconsin-EBOOK

Doggie Stay

Shelby Barkingham was a dog trainer. She was a groomer first, a business she started in La Crosse, Wisconsin at the age of twenty-three with a broken-down orange and white VW van her father had left her in his will, and six thousand dollars she’d saved from waitressing at a local bar called The Cap Gun. The place was an annoying hell-hole–battered clapboard, peanuts in barrels with piles of shells all over the floor, the constant stench of stale beer and bleach–where customers got cap-guns and a roll of red, textured cap tape at their tables, then blasted the firecracker sounds at incessant intervals from their fake firearms. Shelby hated it.

When she hit her longed-for savings mark of six thousand, she moved out of her mother’s tiny two-bedroom house, got herself a single basement apartment off Fifth and Winnebago in the Washburn neighborhood, and set up shop. The place was walking distance from Houska Park on the Mississippi and the “World’s Largest Six-Pack,” a giant replica of beer cans which reached a height of eight-times a human being’s stature and whose sign boasted, “Would provide one person a six-pack a day for 3,351 years.”

She named her first business Pretty Dog, and after getting the van painted a bright turquoise blue, she hand-stenciled letters in a vibrant red on the side of it:

PRETTY DOG
Mobile Dog Grooming Studio

And, in smaller letters, just below:

Shelby Barkingham, owner
(Yeah, I get it)

Shelby’s best friend Kelsie, a six-foot, curvaceous production assistant on the local News 8 Morning Show and an occasional weekend waitress at The Cap Gun–always acerbic and edgy–burst out laughing the day Shelby drove up in her newly hand-lettered canine-washing van.

“Barkingham? Bark, bark–you’re a dog groomer? That’s fucking hilarious!”

“Hey! It’ll get me outa that scum-bag bar,” Shelby said.

Kelsie screwed up her face and squinted at Shelby. “I thought you liked it in there,” she said with delighted facetiousness. “Career path and all that.”

“Shit, yeah,” Shelby said, playing along. “See myself at fifty with some drunk asshole reaching his hand around my back to grab my ass. Can’t wait.”

“Keeps a girl young.” Kelsie laughed loudly–a big guffaw.

“It’s not that funny.”

“Funny is funny, baby,” Kelsie chortled. Then she looked at Shelby, smiling. “Your own business at the age of twenty-three?”

“Fuck, yeah,” Shelby said and patted the side of her van. “I’m gonna be stellar at this.”

Within six months Shelby had married Judd–‘Judd the dud’ her mother called him–a stunningly good-looking six-foot-four ex-basketball player from UW Madison with a shock of shoulder-length blond hair who never held a job longer than five weeks. He could palm a basketball, and his huge hands were a marvel to Shelby in bed.

He mostly sat around in Shelby’s single apartment reading sci-fi novels while she hustled all over town washing grime and dirt off the pelts of slithering and lurching canines.

“Why you ever married that man is beyond me,” Shelby’s mother Evvy (short for Evelyn) snorted one day when she came by to wash Ruff, her mom’s fifty-pound Shepherd-and-Labrador mutt. Ruff had been Shelby’s dog, but when she moved out, her mother had badly needed the company, so she let Evvy keep him.

“Mom, give me a break, okay?” Shelby was in the van with the back and side door open, elbow deep in dirty water, hovering over Ruff in the specialty tub she used for bathing dogs. It was hot, humid, and she was sweating. “It’s not like the string of schmucks you date is any better.”

“Hey! At least I don’t marry them!” her mother huffed. “And I haven’t had good luck since your father died. Not my fault.”

Her mother, at fifty-five, was still beautiful–tall and curvaceous and olive-skinned with thick black-brown hair that cascaded down to her waist, and a perfect set of thick bangs that grazed her lashes and made men stare into her eyes when they met her. Shelby felt plain and ordinary next to her mother, having inherited her father’s thin face and watery blue eyes, her own long limbs appearing useful, while her mother’s looked graceful.

Ruff lurched, and Shelby caught him quickly by the waterproof collar she always used when bathing dogs–a skill she’d pretty much mastered in the first few months of washing and grooming.

“Judd’s looking for a job, okay?” Shelby said, scrubbing Ruff’s flanks.

“No, he’s not! He’s a moocher!” Evvy said. “All he does is lay around while you work–”

“Mom, please–”

Ruff leaped and Shelby leaped with him, throwing her five-foot-seven thin frame on top of the dog, hunkering him back into the tub. In an instant she was sopped with dirty dog water and suds.

“Jesus! I don’t know how you do this all day long!” Evvy said, jumping back from the splashing water. “I really don’t.”

Shelby drained the tub into the street gutter and began brushing Ruff’s matted brown-and-white-spotted coat. “You’re a mutt,” she said into the dog’s eyes, smiling. “Plain and brown-haired, just like me. But you’re lovable.”

The dog licked her face–a big, sloppy slap with his tongue across the front of her mouth, nose and forehead.

“Ugh! Seriously, Ruff?” Evvy exclaimed to her dog.

“That’s how I do this all day long,” Shelby said to her mother. “I love dogs.” She kissed Ruff on the nose.

“Yes, you do,” Evvy said, reaching up into the van for Shelby’s leg, patting it.

Ruff shook his damp coat in one electric shake, sending a fine spray of water into Shelby’s face.

“Oh, Ruff!” she said and pressed her cheek to the top of his wet head.

Two years later Judd was gone. Shelby had finally kicked him out. More than his joblessness, she’d caught him having phone sex with an old girlfriend in the middle of the afternoon on their bed.

“Good riddance,” her mom said when she and Shelby went to the county clerk together to file the papers. They walked over to a little Mexican cantina afterward and gulped down three oversized shots each of good tequila, getting a little teary-eyed from the booze.

“Where am I gonna find another guy as handsome as him?” Shelby moaned into her mother’s shoulder. A man on Evvy’s right kept trying to lean in and catch her mother’s eye, and Shelby gave him a dirty look.

“Any day of the week,” Evvy said with a bite in her tone. “Seventeen of ’em sitting around The Cap Gun waitin’ for a sucker like you to let ’em loaf on your couch while you sweat bullets trying to make rent.”

“I mean it!” Shelby cried, and tears began to roll down her cheeks.

Her mother hugged her. “You’re just bemoaning not having sex with him.”

“His hands–”

“You’ve told me,” Evvy said, patting her drunken daughter’s head.

“I’m plain.”

“You’re not.”

“I look like Dad.”

Evvy sighed, then took Shelby’s face in her hands. “Listen to me. Your father was good and kind and he was beautiful to me every single day of our life together. You understand me?”

Four months later, Shelby met Lance at a friend’s birthday party–a big beer garden scene with lots of people she didn’t know dressed in upscale clothing and shiny, expensive shoes. She had been leaning against a wall–hiding, really–in a space between four giant ferns with a 3 Sheeps IPA in her hand, texting her cousin in Kewaskum.

She had let Kelsie cut and shape her hair with long bangs that morning, and she was self-consciously pulling and twirling a piece of her hair across her forehead when Lance sauntered over and tried to strike up a conversation.

Once, when Shelby was fifteen, Evvy had cut Shelby’s flat and shoulder-length hair into a kind of longish pageboy, and instead of being cute–her mother’s intention–her hair had lain flat and plastered to her head and had made her look ridiculous. She had grown it all out as fast as possible and had never bothered with hairstyling again. But Kelsie had come over that morning and feathered bits of Shelby’s hair into place for the party, and she had to admit it looked pretty good. Lance stared at her.

“I hear you’ve got a dog training business,” he said, trying hard. He was cradling a Heineken, turning it around in his hands.

“Who told you that?” Shelby said.

Lance pointed to Kelsie, who was dancing across the room with a thick-bodied man a whole head shorter than her. Kelsie waved, smiling wickedly.

“Well, okay, maybe I do,” Shelby said defensively. I suck at this, she thought. I’m a friggin’ train wreck.

“I’m Lance.” He stuck out his hand and shook hers, very intently, like he was on a job interview.

Shelby laughed. “Shelby.”

“So?” Lance said.

“What?”

“Dog training?”

“Oh. Right. I used to have a dog grooming business, but I kicked my husband out and I got a training certificate, too. I do both now.”

“You’re married? You don’t look old enough–”

“Was married. Deadbeat husband. Gone–thank fucking God,” Shelby spit out. She said it with just enough venom to remember that she wasn’t quite over her breakup, figuring, after a crack like that, Lance would beat a path across the room from her in less than ten seconds. But he stayed put.

Shelby was wearing tight black bell bottoms, boots and a lightweight print blouse, while every other woman in the place was in an expensive dress and high heels. She felt outclassed, but Lance didn’t move.

She looked at him, took him in. He was genuinely good-looking, in a sort of geeky way–little wire-rimmed glasses, shaggy black hair falling over his ears, slim but with pouty red lips. Ridiculously soft brown eyes. He smiled, and those pouty lips turned up sweetly. She was immediately smitten.

“Wanna dance?” he said, reaching out a long-fingered hand.

“Yes I do,” Shelby said.

Lance had a great job as an engineer for a local industrial supplier–he was in charge of hydraulics; impressive–with a weird techie name that Shelby could never pronounce correctly. Within six weeks, he’d moved in with her. Two months later, Lance proposed.

“You’re like a goddamned Labrador,” her mother said when she told her about getting married. They were having lunch at the Dipsy Diner, Ruff at their feet at an outside table, the sixties tune Don’t Let Me Down blaring on the outside speaker. The early autumn heat was winding down, just-turning leaves on the trees above them wavering and threatening to drop.

“I mean, for God’s sake!” Evvy shoved French fries into her mouth while she spoke, ramping up her volume. “You like every man that smells good! What–he licked your hand and you knew it was love? Why can’t you just wait?”

Shelby dropped her burger onto her plate, the tomato and lettuce sliding out the side of the bun. “What’s so great about waiting, mother? I mean, any one of us could drop dead tomorrow…” She sucked hard on the straw in her chocolate milkshake, taking a huge gulp.

“So this is about your father dying?” Evvy leaned forward off her red plastic chair. “Shelby, marrying a man is not supposed to be a reaction to–”

“He’s beautiful! He’s sweet! And he wants me!” Shelby said, stomping her long feet under the table.

“You can’t marry every man you have a crush on! I swear to God, you sniff every man who’s good-looking!”

“Mom–“

“You just met him–”

“Be happy for me, will you please?”

Evvy sighed loudly, flipping her lustrous hair over one shoulder. “How can I be happy when you have no filter?”

Evvy had been right. Lance lasted all of eighteen months. He left on the day of Shelby’s twenty-seventh birthday. He became depressed–about what Shelby could not figure out–within three months of their tiny, backyard wedding in the green space behind her mother’s house. By their six-month anniversary he’d stopped having sex with her altogether, just wouldn’t respond. Shelby tried, but he got worse in winter when it was snowy and gray; refused to take meds, refused to get help. He was like a cat, she decided–withdrawn, never initiating, isolated–staring out the window when he was home, never speaking. She needed a dog kind-of-man, that much she knew: warm, enthusiastic, lapping her face. Lance wasn’t it.

During Lance’s bouts with depression, she’d gone back to school to get a veterinary technician certificate, so once she was on her own again–“Strike two,” Evvy had said, “and time to get a grip”–she thought she’d better get her act together and stop spending her energy on lethargic men.

“I’m not marrying anyone for a long time, okay? You happy?” Shelby said sitting across from her mother at their favorite little gyros place. They were perched under a bright red umbrella on the sidewalk, a metal sampler of six different sauces plopped between them. Ruff sat at their feet, having just been walked at Houska Park on the river’s edge, and Shelby slipped her foot out of her flip flop, rubbing his coat.

Her mother sucked the ice cubes out of her iced tea and chewed, sopping up some spilled sauce with a rust-colored paper napkin. “Thank god for that,” she said under her breath, crunching ice. Evvy pulled a piece of lamb out of her Gyro and dangled it above Shelby’s mouth, then popped it in. “Taste this!”

“I’m turning over a new leaf. A new paw, as it were,” Shelby said, chewing the lamb and forking a green pepper.

Evvy laughed, then turned serious. “But what’s that really mean, Shelby?”

“It means I’m starting a new business. I found a cheap piece of land with some old farm buildings up near Rice Lake. I’m going to take people’s dogs to–I don’t know what you call it–but, like, a doggie camp. On weekends. Let them run.”

Her mother dropped her gyro and sat back in her plastic chair, looking Shelby straight in the eyes. “That’s a dead-to-rights, fabulous idea! Bingo!” she said, clapping her hands.

Shelby smiled. She truly loved her mother. All her life, they had palled around together–she and her mom; her dad and mom together with her–as if they were all friends. And though that brought some weirdo issues (“Who’s the parent, anyway?!!” she’d once screamed at her mother when Evvy befriended one of Shelby’s friends), she largely felt blessed that she’d gotten to have a genuine and human relationship with both of her parents. They were honest, too. “Oh, come on, mother!” Shelby had once hollered at Evvy. “I don’t get to see my cousin Dory because Dad didn’t become an attorney? Isn’t that a bit stupid?” “It’s not my fault!” Evvy yelled back. “It’s them! They act like he betrayed them by becoming a teacher and your father can’t stand all those snide comments every time we’re over there!”

She had watched her parents’ marriage with fascination: goof-ball pranks on each other, witty barbs and jabs, boisterous laughter and open affection, and, Shelby suspected, lots of good, healthy sex. It pained her that she couldn’t find the same thing for herself.

Ruff licked Shelby’s hand under the table, sniffing for food, but Shelby was glad for his touch. “You know what? Ruff is like Dad was. Loyal and true.”

Her mom leaned over the table and patted her hand, reading the arc of her thoughts. “You’ll find someone nice. I swear to God, you will.” She said it intently, her eyes wide open and glistening.

Shelby teared up. “Mom, I’m not looking, okay?” she whispered. “After all the shit you’ve given me about marrying loser men–”

Her mother’s eyes caught someone’s behind Shelby.

“Shhh! There he is. Be nice, okay? I like him.” Evvy had begun seeing a dentist named Avery–kind of lackluster and solid, Shelby thought, like a lapdog that never wants to move from the space on top of your thighs. But her mother found him comforting, she could tell.

Avery sat and joined them, “Hi, hi, all around,” he said nodding at Shelby, then leaned in to kiss her mother. “Evvy. What’s the good news?”

It made Shelby bristle to hear him speak her father’s nickname for her mother. Not Evelyn. Evvy.

Shelby got up. “Well, I should go…”

“No, no, stay!” her mother exclaimed. She reached for Avery’s hand. “She’s starting a doggie camp up in Rice Lake! Isn’t that a great idea?” Her mom clapped her hands together again.

“That’s just fine,” Avery said, the timbre of a grandfather’s approval in his voice. He was older.

Shelby leaned over and kissed her mom. “See you next week. Ruff’s bath week.”

“You don’t have to–“ Evvy said.

“But I do,” Shelby smiled. “See ya, Avery.” She forced a smile then turned to go.

When she arrived at her client’s house to bathe and train Argo, one of her favorite little lap dogs, Shelby’s head was spinning, and she was chewing on her lip–a newly acquired tic in which she sucked in the right side of her mouth and gnawed on it like a chew toy. The client’s house was a huge five-bedroom down WI-35 sitting right on the Mississippi.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said to Felicity, Argo’s owner. “I was at lunch with my mom. And her boyfriend.”

Felicity’s peroxided hair was cut short in two-inch bleached blond spikes that were sculpted into place with a seriously strong hair gel, framing the tiny, delicate features of her face. It never ceased to amaze Shelby how people chose dogs who resembled them. Felicity looked just like her Pomeranian.

Felicity wrinkled her little nose, and said, “No worries. Just so everybody’s happy.” She laughed, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, like short, staccato Pomeranian barks. “You’re happy for her?”

“Sure–I guess…Maybe not. We’ll see.”

“Have a little faith in people, Shelby,” Felicity chirped, tilting her pert, white-blond head to the side. Argo stood behind his owner and tilted his little head exactly the same way, staring in Shelby’s direction. It took all her effort to not burst out laughing.

In the van, she plopped Argo into the tub, filling it with warm water from her mobile tank, and in two seconds he went from a white fluff ball to a drowned rat. She scrubbed him a bit too vigorously as she thought about her mother, and Argo yipped.

Yip, yip! Stop it! He was saying. Too hard!

“Oh, Argo!” Shelby said, patting the dog’s matted little head. “Sorry! I’ll ease up.”

Argo stuck his wet nose on Shelby’s, and she laughed, softening her scrubbing motion.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like her mother’s boyfriend, and if he made her mom happy, then all the better. Her father’s death had been grueling for Evvy–a drunk driver, on the way to Goose Island to fish–and she wanted her mom to be easy in her heart, the way she once was with her dad. She didn’t know if Avery could muster the same kind of partnered enthusiasm.

Argo looked up at Shelby sheepishly and forlornly, as if being wet somehow took away all of his doggie-charm.

“Don’t worry, Argo,” she said to him, leaning over the tub with her eyes very close to his. “I promise you’ll be fluffier than a puff ball when I’m through with you.”

Argo nipped her nose lightly and barked–a sing-song sound–and Shelby stared at him, amazed. I want my poof back! Argo seemed to be saying. Dogs did talk, she was certain; you just had to learn to hear their language.

On the back lawn of Felicity’s grand five-bedroom, Shelby put Argo through his training paces. Sit, heel, sit-then-heel-then-sit-then-heel. And though Felicity didn’t like Argo to be trained for party tricks, Shelby couldn’t resist. He was smart, so she taught him to roll over, walk on hind legs while she held his paws, do a somersault on the grass, do a little dance to Michael Jackson’s old classic, Thriller.

She gnawed the side of her right lip, mulling over Evvy. What if my mother marries that guy?

For months she’d harbored a ridiculous and self-serving fantasy that her mom would hook up with a woman–some iconoclastic, artist-type who would meld right in with the two of them, an extension of mother and daughter, a bridge. She knew the fantasy was born of her need to make her father irreplaceable, or maybe it was her own sublimated desire, that old bantering that always crept into conversations with girlfriends after a bad breakup.

“Maybe I should try women,” Shelby had said to Kelsie after Lance finally left, “since I sure-as-shit am failing at men.”

“But then you’d have no unh, unh, uh,” Kelsie said with a rhythmic grind of her hips.

“I think you can simulate, Kelsie–”

“Oh, Shel, you’re just bummed out. Two down, and all that. Go sleep with some hot, young thing and you’ll feel better. Don’t you dog trainers have some meetups or something? There’s gotta be at least one do-able guy in that crowd, right?”

She had slept with someone. A romp with the guy who worked at the doggie supply store. It hadn’t helped.

“Lonely is the word for this,” she said to Argo on Felicity’s back steps. “I’m better off with your kind.”

Argo stood on his hind legs and balanced for a quick second before Shelby caught his paws. When she kneeled down, he licked her right ear, then her left.

“That does it,” Shelby said to Argo. “Next time, I’m marrying a dog.”

Leaps and Bounds, Shelby’s day camp for dogs, was a robust success, almost right from the start. No one was more surprised than Shelby. She was used to living on very little, had kept her tiny single basement apartment on Fifth Street through both marriages–she’d never bothered to put either husband on the lease. The mortgage on her piece of property in Rice Lake was small, and as the business grew, she built out the land with new, dog-friendly barns for her weekend canine visitors, and remodeled a couple of chicken coops for herself and Idella, a twenty-two-year-old Honduran worker she had hired who was ridiculously strong and terrific with dogs. Her cousin Dory came up from Kewaskum a handful of times with her boyfriend Cord and helped, too.

She passed her business card out wherever she went. It read:

LEAPS AND BOUNDS
Doggie Day Camp
Shelby Barkingham
Certified Trainer and Vet Technician

And, on the back side:

Bark, bark.
The pun is not lost on me.

On weekdays, she trained and groomed in town, and on weekends, she took her canine charges up to Rice Lake, letting them do what dogs do best: run and play. Her mom dubbed Shelby, “Dog Trainer to the Stars,” since word of mouth had gotten out at City Hall and at the UW Campus in La Crosse, and she now had a cadre of City Council members’ and Professors’ dogs on her roster. Many had become weekly regulars–a little grooming or training during the week, and then a piling into the van for a yipping and bark-friendly excursion up to Leaps and Bounds camp.

Shelby had a method, too, proven over months and months of hard work. Clients had to pay for four weeks of bi-weekly training in town, then three sessions of “socialization” (essentially a haul-ass trek to the dog park with four, then ten dogs), and if the new canine did not try to bite or tear into another dog, only then was the pet allowed to attend Leaps and Bounds.

She had thought putting restrictions on her doggie camp would deter; instead, it had heightened her cachet.

“Shit, yeah!” Kelsie said to her over dinner. “They think you’re exclusive. That’s so take-no-prisoners!”

They were having gin martinis and steaks, celebrating at Digger’s Sting, a steakhouse downtown, for Shelby’s twenty-eighth birthday and Kelsie’s recent engagement. The place was dark and oak-planked, a dropped ceiling with yellow and white stained-glass lamps overhead and beer taps poking out of antique barrels on top of the bar. Kelsie was beaming brightly, lit from the inside like a hot fire in a brick oven, gazing every sixteen seconds or so at the one-and-a-half carat on her left finger.

“Now all you need is a good guy in the picture!” Kelsie lifted up her left hand and wiggled her fingers, flashing the ring.

“Fuck, Kelsie! Would you stop it?!” Shelby said, pulling a face. She gulped her gin.

“Sorry!” Kelsie said, flushing, quickly putting her left hand in her lap. “I just never thought I’d–”

“Okay, I get it. But could you just–”

“–Tamp it down a little? Sure .” Kelsie reached between the martini glasses and grabbed Shelby’s hands. “Sorry.”

Shelby’s eyes went wet, and she wrapped her fingers around her friend’s hands. She opened her eyes very wide, arching her eyebrows and then pulled in her lips, tight, inverting them, chewing on her right side.

“What?” Kelsie said, looking intently at her.

“That guy from last month–the one with the huge Great Dane? Said he wanted to see me, slept with me, disappeared.”

“Not again…” Kelsie groaned, rolling her eyes.

“You said sleep with some hot guy–” Shelby said, tilting her head sideways.

“I meant for fun.”

“I tried that! It didn’t work!”

“Who?” Kelsie said with deep-throated authority, leaning in.

“Aaron Beekham.” Shelby grinned, a bit mischievously.

“Really! You slept with the Beek-Man? The guy who works at the doggie supply store? And you didn’t tell me?”

“He’s fucking gorgeous.” Shelby drew lines in the air with both hands, delineating a set of broad shoulders and a tiny waist.

“Intellectual as a box of nails, though,” Kelsie said, chewing a large piece of her rare steak. “Was he any good?”

Shelby laughed. “Terrible! Scuttled out the door at three a.m. with his tail between his legs. Barely even said goodbye. But, oh my god, what a body–”

“Couldn’t use his equipment, right?” Kelsie snorted, rolling her fork in her mashed potatoes. “And not a ‘let’s-have-breakfast,’ morning-after sort of guy, I’m guessing.”

“How come you always know this stuff beforehand, and I never do?”

“Because you’re a magnet for beautiful men without a decent set of brain cells or an ounce of grown-up, adult character.”

“Ouch! Fucking hell, Kelsie! That’s harsh!” Shelby pointed her fork across the table.

“Sorry! But, c’mon! You know that’s what you do, right? You choose these guys who–”

“Why do they like me? I’m hardly a knock-out–”

Kelsie popped another bite of meat into her mouth. “They smell sex on you, you idiot! You like the sack, they smell it and they wanna rub up against you. They sniff you out like a border collie sniffing urine on a lamp post.”

“Nice. Thanks, Kelsie,” Shelby snorted.

“Men have a high-strung nose for women who want to bed them. That’s all I’m sayin’.”

A tiny little tear rolled down Shelby’s cheek. She stared down at her uneaten steak, knife poised in the center of the meat.

“Look,” Kelsie said, sincerely. “There’s nothing wrong with you. You’ve just gotta stop saddling up for the beauty pageant and find a nice guy who’ll just love you. That’s all.”

“He doesn’t fucking exist,” Shelby snapped and downed her drink. “Only dogs love me.”

“That’s the whole goddamned point, Shelby! Get your head outa your own ass and find yourself a good, loyal mutt to settle down with!”

Six weeks later, her mother’s boyfriend Avery did Shelby a huge favor. The owners of the house that topped her basement apartment decided to sell and move to Maine, and Shelby wanted to buy the place–a classic, old, two-story house with a darling front porch twelve steps up from the sidewalk. It had a big backyard with a handful of fruit trees, a wide sundeck with a viny bunch of morning glory growing over it, as well as a terrific kitchen. She had the down payment and could show barely enough income, but since she never used credit cards (she always bought used vans for her business with cash), she had almost no credit history. Avery stepped in and co-signed her loan. She was touched.

“It’s nothing, nothing…” he’d said, standing over the desk at the bank with a pen in his hand, Evvy behind him, beaming. “It’s just a little help. Everybody needs that once in a while, right Evvy?” He smiled broadly, his white and gray hair lit up from behind by a bit of sunlight angling in through the bank’s window.

Shelby nervously pushed and pulled her hands in and out of her jeans’ pockets. She kept looking at her mom’s face, then back at Avery’s. “I mean…just so you’re sure…”

“You’re a responsible business-woman,” Avery said levelly, bending over and signing his name. “Why wouldn’t I do it?”

Shelby chewed her right lip. “It’s just that I could get hit by a bus or something, and then where would you be?” She saw her mother flinch and watched Evvy’s face go instantly white–she hadn’t meant to say that; she knew her mom couldn’t stand the thought of losing her, in a car accident no less, but it had just popped out.

“Oh–God, Mom! I only meant–”

Avery dropped the pen and turned and wrapped his arms around Evvy. “Don’t worry, sweetheart,” he purred into her ear. “She’s going to be fine . I promise. Just fine.” He patted her back, an older man’s assurance in his velvety tone.

Shelby dropped her arms to her side, sighed, then smiled at her mom in Avery’s arms. She had got her house, yes, and she knew–it wouldn’t be long–a stepdad, too.

It was the fall of Shelby’s thirtieth year when she met Barclay. She’d taken to volunteering at the Coulee Region Humane Society, out past Onalaska, on weeknights–at Kelsie’s insistence.

“Do something that eats up some nighttime hours so you don’t end up shacking up with guys who are shitheads, will you please?” Kelsie was pregnant, four months, and the pregnancy had made her both more insistent and more edgy.

“Like what?” Shelby had said.

“Oh, come on! Volunteer or something. Do something with dogs. Maybe you’ll even meet a nice guy instead of another slam-and-jam jerk who’s going to screw you and then walk out on you!”

They had hired her on the spot at the Humane Society, and Shelby found she enjoyed it. Each Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday night, she walked the insanely bark-filled corridors of the dozens of dog kennels, talking to each canine in turn…and, when no one was looking, slipping small chunks of Swiss cheese into their mouths from her pocket. She had a gray shirt they’d given her to wear that read Shelby Barkingham in bright blue embroidery on her chest.

She had favorites: Fife, the high-strung Samoyed, whom she had trained to calm down with the silky tone of her dog-training voice; Bella, the blue nose Pitbull who had once been abused, who was slowly, under her tutelage, becoming sweet and docile; Axel, a roguish reddish-brown mutt of indeterminate parentage (probably Setter and Shepherd) who liked to chew shoelaces and the hem of her jeans; and Rory, a yippy unlikely mix of Dachshund and Lab.

She was squatting, leaning over Rory, had him out of his kennel and was petting him on the flanks of his hot-dog-shaped brown body, yapping back at him as he yipped.

Rory wriggled. Yap, yap! Yap-yap-yap-yap!

“Yes, yes, Rory,” Shelby purred. “Good dog. You’re a perfect ball of joy, you know that?”

Yap-yap-yappity-yap! He licked her neck.

“Yes, yes, you good little thing!” Shelby held him up off the cement floor with both hands, still squatting, and Rory immediately nuzzled into her chest and quieted, a low, contented growl coming from his mouth.

“You’re goddamned good with him, aren’t you?” a voice said from behind her.

Shelby jumped. She hadn’t heard anyone enter the kennels, and she hopped on her haunches then leapt up quickly, Rory still in her arms.

Barclay stood in front of her, not two feet away, a short, compact man with warm brown eyes and a receding blond hairline, the gray Humane Society shirt stretched over his belly and broad chest.

Rory went crazy, Yapppp, yapppp, yapppp, yap-yap-yap-yap-yaaaaaapppp!

Shelby turned away, but Rory wriggled in her arms, ready to pounce.

“Hey! What the fuck? You scared the living daylights outa me!”

“And poor little Rory here, too,” Barclay said calmly, pointing to Rory’s stick-on nametag over his kennel. “Let me have him.” He stood behind Shelby’s back and cooed at Rory, then gently guided him over her shoulder into his own arms. “That’s it, little guy. You’re okay! You just didn’t hear me come in, that’s all!”

Rory went calm in an instant, whimpering softly.

Shelby knew a dog person when she saw one. Everyone in her trade did. Dogs knew instantly when a human being was kind or warm, when they were not afraid, and when they listened.

“So, you’re a canine-lover–I get it,” Shelby said with a bite in her tone, still annoyed over being startled. “You wanted to prove that to me or something? Who are you?”

Barclay held and patted Rory, the dog gently licking the back of his neck. “They say you’re the best…”

“Who says that?” Shelby crossed her arms over her chest, kicking the toe of her battered brown suede boot on the cement floor.

“Front desk, volunteer coordinator, board members–everyone.” He put out his hand. “I’m Barclay Snahrall.”

Shelby stood back, grabbing the chain link kennel door with one hand. “No way. Your name is not Barclay Snarl. As in, bark, snarl? Nobody would name their kid that.”

Barclay put Rory down on the floor and gestured to his embroidered name on his shirt. “Snah-RALL. In the flesh. Witness the idiot parents’ idea of a good pun.”

Shelby’s eyes softened. “You must’ve gotten massacred in elementary school.”

“Had three dogs. Big ones, and nobody messed with me. Came to love dogs, though. Saved my ass.”

Shelby put out her hand and he shook it. “Shelby Barkingham.”

“So, if we ever got married, we’d be Bark-Bark-Snarl!” He let out a huge guffaw–a truly warm laugh. Rory ran circles around his ankles.

“Ha, ha,” Shelby said sarcastically. “You thought that up just now?”

Barclay grinned. “Pretty proud of myself, actually.”

Shelby stepped sideways and took him in. He was built a bit like a compact car: wide-set, strong and full through the middle but not fat, thick arms and short fingers. Shelby gazed at his feet, fleshy and thick in black canvas lace-ups. Not her type, she knew, but for ten years, her type had only gotten her into more and more trouble. She looked up and Barclay was smiling–a full, warm grin, with a dimple in his left cheek that softened his face into pure, boyish charm. The dimple was, Shelby had to admit, adorable.

Barclay chuckled. “What? You like my shoes? Or you’re checking out the girth of my–”

“Hey! Don’t get any ideas, Barclay,” Shelby said, purposely over-enunciating his name. “I’m not getting married ever again anyway. Two ex-husbands and I’m only thirty. So there.”

“Three ex-wives, thirty-nine, no kids, two dogs. We’re more than even.” Then, off Shelby’s stunned look, “I was young. So, do you date?”

“Jesus! You think you can just walk in here and–”

“If I like you, and I can tell that I do.”

Shelby picked up Rory and put him back in his kennel. “Yeah, well, I don’t date. I marry. And I screw that up, so I’m not doing anything. Got it?”

She turned sharply and walked down the corridor, with a chorus of attendant canine barks shooing her out the door.

Barclay was nothing if not insistent, but respectfully so. He worked his board contacts at the Coulee Humane Society to get himself assigned to all three nights that Shelby worked, which meant that for months they took their breaks together in the linoleum-tiled, gray break room, a situation Shelby at first resented.

“Hey, I told you I don’t date,” she said two months into his shadowing of her weeknight volunteering. “So why the hell are you following me around like a twelve-week-old Beagle? You’re always here. Don’t you work?”

Barclay was leaning over the microwave in the break room, staring through the glass oven window at a something he had spinning inside it. “My folks died, left me and my sister a small chunk of change, and I make it last. Okay, Barkingham? That alright with you?”

“Sorry,” Shelby said sincerely. “You have a sister?”

“Yeah, Jillian. On the Chain of Lakes over in King. Turned out her husband was cheating, got the woman pregnant. She didn’t know.”

“Ouch.”

“She’ll be okay. Just needs some time.”

“I wouldn’t be.”

“Yes, you would, Barkingham. You’re formidable. A force of nature.”

She stared at him, stunned. A force of nature?

He took the top off his dinner, something in a glass container with a Tupperware top, then smiled his dimpled smile, flashing his warm brown eyes at her.

Shelby was eating a burrito out of a yellow paper wrapper that she’d brought from home–cold beans and cheese in a flour tortilla–and he was feeding himself some kind of rice dish, warm from the microwave, that smelled rich and wonderful.

“What is that?” Shelby said, leaning in.

“Risotto. Seafood with white wine, broth and butter.”

“Where the hell did you get that on a Wednesday night in the lost dog club where we’re babysitting?”

“I made it, Barkingham. I like to cook.” He opened his eyes at her surprise and tilted his head. “What–you think guys can’t cook?”

“I…uh, most guys, in my experience…” She screwed up her face, considering him, chewing on her burrito.

“Most guys have no finesse. They can’t romance for shit. They pull away before the kiss is done, they leave before the night is over, they snuff the candle before they even light the fire. I’m not most guys.”

Shelby stared at him. His confidence bowled her over. Who the hell feels that sure about themselves?

“Wanna taste it?” He offered her a forkful from his own fork. Shelby stared at it: the intimacy of it struck her, his mouth having been on the tines, and she took in a sharp breath.

“I don’t have fleas, Barkingham. Taste it!”

Shelby leaned in and slipped the risotto into her mouth. The rice was perfect–al dente, buttery, shrimp and baby scallops with…what? Tiny bits of lemon rind? It melted in wine-infused perfection in her mouth.

“Damn, this is good,” she said.

“It is, right?” he said, sure of himself. “Food is romance, Barkingham, plain and simple. Any idiot with a sensual bone in his body knows that.”

When Kelsie and Shelby’s mom got wind of Barclay, they couldn’t resist harassing her. Shelby now had a tell: she was being charmed, and she couldn’t stop talking about him.

“Barclay this, Barclay that,” Evvy said to her one night over dinner with Avery. Her mom and Avery had married, moved into his beautiful house up in Brice Prairie off Lake Onalaska, and her mom was happy. “When are we meeting this guy?”

“We’re just friends, mom,” Shelby said, embarrassed.

“Like hell you are!” Evvy exclaimed. “You’re intrigued!” Her eyes went wide. Shelby turned and tossed the salad, avoiding.

“Give her some room, Ev,” Avery said evenly. “It’s good to start as friends–we did. But you’ve still got to find the attraction, right Shelby?” He smiled and winked at her, delivering pork chops to a platter.

At the park, Kelsie was edgier. “Fuck yeah, try him, Shel,” she said pushing her toddler, Jasper, in a baby swing. “C’mon! This guy has chops. He’s waiting. Any man that can wait can…uhn, uhn, uhn.” She ground her hips in the air.

“You still gonna talk like that when Jasper’s chatting away in full sentences?”

Kelsie grimaced. “I have to clean up my mouth–I know it,” she said, pulling a face. She gave the baby swing a good shove, and Jasper let out a loud and delighted shout that sounded like, Gaaaaaawd!

“And how’s that working out for you?” Shelby said, bursting into laughter.

“Oh shit,” Kelsie said, chuckling. “Hey. Seriously. Just don’t let the good one get away, alright? You’re more than due.”

Shelby found, after a time, that she couldn’t keep her hands off Barclay. She’d pick at some piece of lint on his sweater or nudge him in the ribs when he made a joke (usually at her expense) or touch him on the forearm when she asked him something, staring into his warm brown eyes when she did it. She liked his smell, too . When she got up near him she’d take a deep breath, taking in his earthy scent. You’re sniffing the man–get a grip already! But she couldn’t stop. She wasn’t attracted to him, she was certain, but then, why couldn’t she keep her hands and her nose to herself?

Barclay received these gestures calmly, evenly, it seemed to Shelby. He would stop, standing very still–eerily still, like the first time he had snuck up behind her in the kennels, seeming, to Shelby, as if the world had stopped spinning for him or the air had stopped circulating. He didn’t move and he didn’t try for her: he simply stood stock-still and let her come closer. It mesmerized her.

He teased her one day when they were standing in the light-blue hallway to the kennels about her dog-training voice. “You coo, Barkingham. Like you’re talking to a baby.”

“I do not,” Shelby said, squinting her eyes at him.

“You do. You’re a dog coo-er! You want everyone to think you’re so tough, but you’re a big ball of jello inside for anything that loves you.”

“Maybe I am,” she said, dropping her guard. She reached up to tussle the hair on the back of his head. What had made her do that?

Barclay froze, breathing evenly and staring at her, and she retracted her hand, looking down at it as if it wasn’t attached to her body.

Then, Barclay kissed her. Just up and did it. If Shelby was honest about it, she knew he had been waiting for a moment of encouragement from her. She had given it to him.

It was a Wednesday, after they had cleaned kennels and visited with each canine, and she had stepped in close to him after their dinner break and whispered, “Come here.”

He moved in and stood a few inches from her face–he was exactly her height–and she had breathed on him. Stared into his eyes, inches away, and stood there.

“Here? This close?” he said, letting his eyes lock with hers.

“Yes,” she said. “Right here.”

It was what she did when she was training her most resistant canines, staring down, close-in, seeing who would flinch first. But it was more than that, she knew. She was allowing herself to get near him. Very near.

The next night she was excited and giddy–she was adopting Rory at the end of the week, the little Lab and Dachshund mix, bringing him home to her own house–and as she put him back into his kennel and stood up to attach the clasp, Barclay turned her around and pressed her up against the chain-link fencing, leaning into her, slowly.

He slipped one strong arm around her back, protecting her from the press of the metal fencing, kept his face back from hers, and looked at her. “You’re beautiful,” he said, with a purr in his voice.

“No, I’m not,” Shelby said quietly, staring back.

“You’re beautiful to me,” he said, and then pressed his lips to hers. His mouth was like melting butter on hers–warm, not overly pressing, but firm and, of course, because it was Barclay, confident. What was it about confidence that was so compelling in a man?

He smelled like fresh linen and clean-scented bar soap. His lips were full as she kissed him, and as she felt the sensual press of them on hers, she opened her mouth to him and pulled him closer.

Shelby was used to men who moved their arousal up against her in three seconds or less–thickening in jeans pressed up against her legs or pelvis–but Barclay didn’t. He held his hips back, keeping his strong arm around the small of her back, and made her wait for it. She arched her lower body toward him, lifting herself away from the chain-link, but he pulled his hips back farther, still kissing, not letting her connect.

“Not yet,” he breathed into her ear. “You’ll have to wait.”

On the night they went to bed together for the first time, Barclay cooked for her. Nobody Shelby had ever dated had cared to draw her out, not by cooking for her, certainly, and not sensually either. Her dating was all “slam-and-jam,” as Kelsie dubbed it, fast and visceral, and her marriages had happened so quickly that she’d hardly gotten to know her husbands before she was living with them. Barclay–the ‘not-her-type,’ shorter-than-her-preference, receding hairline and thick-bodied man she thought she could never warm to, had aroused her. And he had done it by waiting for her. Like a good dog trainer, he had done it by listening. By learning about her. By liking her.

“You don’t go to a man’s house for dinner unless you’re ready to have sex with him,” her mother had said gently the week before, her eyes trained on Shelby’s. “Are you ready?”

Shelby smiled. “I am,” she said.

“Okay then!” Evvy said and hugged her daughter.

Barclay made her a seared scallop appetizer, then beef bourguignon, and for dessert, a home-made preserved-lemon ice cream topped with crème fraiche that he had made by hand. She was touched. He had flowers as a centerpiece, a good wine, and checkered cloth napkins on the hardwood table.

“You’ve entranced me,” he said at dinner, lifting his wine glass and looking at her through the rounded lens of the reflection in it.

“I have not. That’s just sex-talk,” Shelby said, looking down at her napkin in her lap. But she said it softly.

“You have,” he said, reaching for her hand, “and you always will.” With her fingers in his palm, locking eyes with her, he led her to his bedroom, laying her back on the bed. Then he balanced himself over her on his elbows, kissing her.

Shelby wanted to rip her clothes off and get naked next to him as fast as she could, and she reached for the buttons on her shirt, unbuttoning quickly, but Barclay stopped her. “Let me,” he said, and proceeded to take his time undressing her.

He unwrapped her like a longed-for birthday present, kissing each bare space the unbuttoning revealed, pressing his hips to her through their jeans for a second or two between each button, then pulling back. By the time he got them both naked, she was arching her whole lower body toward him, aching for pressure.

He lifted her on top of him, and said, “Where I can see your eyes…” then gently guided her down on top of his arousal.

She rocked, and he slowed her several times–“Go slow; I don’t want to miss one second of this”–easing her back from the rise in her excitement. Then, after a heated bit of making her hang on a ledge, he grabbed her hips and pressed, a rush of bright flashes exploding in her brain and groin, and she cried out, closing her eyes tightly.

She caught her breath and began moving on top of him again, slowly. “Now, you…” she whispered.

But he stilled her, pulling her into his chest. “Just for you, tonight…I’ll wait.”

“No! I want to–I mean, for you–”

“It’s a gift. So you know I mean it, Shelby,” Barclay said, reaching up and stroking her cheek.

She slipped him out of her and curled into his chest, then put her hand on his belly, patting him. “Stay with me?”

He lifted her head with both of his hands and looked at her solemnly. “You really want me to?”

She gazed longingly into his warm brown eyes. “Stay, doggie. Please? I want you to.”

“And be your loyal hound?” Barclay teared up.

“Yes, please?” Shelby asked plaintively, kissing his dimple.

“Already am,” he said, and pulled her to his chest.

Their wedding invitation read:

Bark, Bark, Snarl:
You are Cordially Invited to the Canine Lovers’ Wedding Celebration

Shelby wore a simple sheath dress in ivory, with a long veil that, up-close, had lace dogs woven into the sheer tulle. Their cake was in the shape of an oversized dog bone–chocolate with fudge frosting with a handful of dogs drawn in blue and pink frosting on top of it.

Kelsie was her maid of honor, and at the reception she stood, a little tipsy on Prosecco, and said, “It’s been a decade-long quest, but, thank fucking God, Shelby finally found her mutt and it turns out he’s a prince!”

Her mom and Avery stood up and sang the Beatles’ tune All You Need is Love, all in dog-barks, which brought the house down.

Shelby’s favorite cousins showed, Dory with her wrangler boyfriend Cord, and Will Henry with his redheaded girlfriend Alisa, and they’d all danced until midnight. It was a true celebration.

After the wedding, Shelby and Barclay moved into her little house on Fifth and Winnebago, and Barclay brought his two hefty dogs, Shep and Grover, and along with Rory, her adopted little Dachshund and Lab mix from the Humane Society, the five of them settled in to a domesticated contentment. A hand-painted wooden sign over their front door read, “Snarl all you want, but love rules here.”

Five months into their marriage, Shelby ran into both of her ex-husbands in one week. She hadn’t seen either of them since her divorces.

She walked into Vinyl House on a Monday afternoon–a retro record store near UW that she and her first husband Judd used to frequent when they were getting along–and there he was, standing in the eighties section as if he’d materialized out of thin air, a Tears for Fears album propped under his right arm.

“I wanted to say I’m sorry, Shel,” he said to her when they sat down on a bench outside the store. He looked down at his massive hands in his lap and wrung them. “I fucked up. You were good to me and I screwed it up.”

His jaw had gotten harder, his mouth a little thinner–he looked more like a man–and though she knew he was probably just as good-looking as when she had been with him, something had changed. She felt no pull.

When they parted Shelby shook his hand. Though it seemed strange not to hug him, she felt no need.

Two days later, her second ex-, Lance, walked up behind her in the grocery store checkout line and tapped her on the shoulder. She had heard he’d gone to South Carolina for a job, but he stood in front of her, his black hair still shaggy and his pouty red lips still full. Funnily enough though, when Shelby looked at him, she didn’t find anything compelling about him.

They stood outside the grocery store for a few minutes, Shelby shifting her paper bag full of food from arm to arm, and Lance said, “You’re happy. I can tell.”

“I am,” she said, dipping her head and smiling. “Things are good.”

When he left, he kissed her on the cheek, and there was no charge in it, the old electricity of him tamped down to the level of an acquaintance’s greeting.

When she got home from the store, she could hear Barclay cooking something in the kitchen, and the smell of sweetly herbed meat sautéing made her smile. Shep, Grover, and Rory yapped and licked her hands.

“I’m home!”

“Hey, Barkingham! Get in here! I’m making you meatballs–by hand!” He came down the hall and handed her a glass of red wine.

“Missed you,” he said, and nuzzled her neck, the dogs running circles around their legs underfoot.

She put her wine glass down on a side table and took Barclay’s face in her hands, suddenly serious.

“What?” he said.

“Nothing,” Shelby said, her eyes filling. “It’s…you’re the most gorgeous thing I see all day.”

“Naw…” he said, shaking his head and smiling. “Not me. I’m just a mutt.” He brushed a tear off her cheek and reached both of his arms around her.

“You’re so beautiful to me,” Shelby said, holding him and setting her face down on his shoulder. “You always will be.”

He pulled her back from his chest.

“Always? For all our dog years together?” Barclay’s dimple creased his face, and his eyes glistened.

Shelby smiled. “Always,” she said. %