RUNE THE IDENTITY-CRISIS GUY
RUNE CAN HARDLY BELIEVE this spotted dog likes him so much. Every time he strokes her smooth, white head, she thumps her tail on the floor. He never had a dog when he was a kid. He asked his old man for one once and got slapped down for it. “You think I want another dog eating me out of house and home?” his dad had yelled. “One dog is enough.” He’d meant Rune because they’d never had a dog. Rune thinks he was about six at the time.
Fran, Rune’s wife, has nagged him for years to get a pet for the boys. She and Rune fought about it last week, he’s pretty sure. They fight about so many things it’s hard to keep track. More times than not, Fran and the boys, Miguel and Stefan, end up crying, and Rune slams the door on his way out, the way he did tonight. That’s why he volunteered to close for Louie. He wasn’t looking forward to going home for another round with his wife. He doesn’t know how many more rounds either of them can last.
He’s afraid to move his leg. He doesn’t want to disturb the dog.
That girl in her party dress clears her throat, like she’s finally going to get going on Eve’s story.
“What kind of a host am I?” Louie says. “Here you’re doing all the talking, and you don’t even have a glass of water to show for it.” He starts to get up.
“I got it,” Colt says, beating the old man to it. The kid carries that white mutt with him to the kitchen.
“Good thinking, Ace,” Rune calls after him. “Now the health inspectors will really come down on us.”
“Sorry, Rune,” the kid calls back. He shifts the dog under one arm and brings back a glass of water that he sets in front of the girl, Bailey. “There you go.”
Rune doesn’t know much about the kid, except that he always orders apple juice and hogs the newspaper. He reads that paper like he’s looking for clues. Rune never saw anybody read a paper like that. Colt’s not a bad guy, though. And he tips more than the cost of the juice.
“So?” Rune presses. It surprises him that he wants to know about this dog as much as he’s wanted to know about the girl in the party dress.
“So,” the girl, Bailey, says. “Eve. Looking back, I guess my second fall all boiled down to a case of mistaken identity. But I’m getting ahead of myself.”