Sleeps with Dogs (12 page)

These dreams made my job a twenty-four-hour ordeal. During the day, I tried to avert normal disasters, but it seemed I couldn't ever be prepared or creative enough to anticipate the amazing array of mishaps that could occur. So at night, my subconscious went wild with the possibilities. I battled the inconceivable. Just as other people dreamed of missing a final exam or showing up to work without pants or forgetting they had a baby, I dreamed about killing hamsters and neglecting dogs; killing dogs and neglecting hamsters. As yet, the dreams didn't include domestic disasters within the households I was staying. I was sure it was just a matter of time.

On the second night, I planned to leave Charlie's crate and my bedroom door open. That way, he could get up in the night and let me know when he needed to go out.

Or so I assumed.

My sleep was fraught with the sound of toenails on hardwood and agitated yips from the hallway. I got up some time in the night, stiff-limbed and off-balance, to take Charlie to the garden for a potty break. I stood in the courtyard in my trout-print boxers and a tank top, teeth chattering while Charlie posed in the moonlight and stared at me. He didn't pee. He just stood there.

I brought Charlie's freshly laundered bed into the guest bedroom. If he was in the room with me, he'd have nothing to distract him from the seemingly simple task of sleeping. If he had to go outside, he could let me know with a polite nudge, or maybe a lick.

Instead, I woke up to Charlie's big black nose in my face, snuffling little flecks of dog snot into my mouth and—when I reluctantly opened them—my eyes. I only resorted to this scenario as a last-ditch attempt at all because Charlie, for all his many charms, had another habit that was distracting, to say the least.

Given his unusually protein-rich and dairy-laden diet, it shouldn't have been any surprise that Charlie was a stunningly gassy animal. His MO in my short time with him had been to fart and then leave the room. The smell was so potent that I had to leave the room also. No big mystery, then, that when he was in the bedroom with me, he gassed us both.

Sleeplessness seemed inevitable.

It was back into the crate with Charlie. On the third night, we went out again before bed, and instead of trying to engage in any kind of walk, I just waited. And waited and waited. At last, Charlie found something of interest to sniff on the monkey grass by the mailbox and finally delivered.

In the morning, he was curled on the hard black plastic molding of his crate, the cushion shoved to the front against the door. It was soaked.

To the Laundromat I went, his bed in a trash bag I found under the sink. It was a scented garbage bag, of course, and so sturdy you'd think it was made of stretchy fabric instead of plain old plastic.

That night, I gave Charlie free rein of the house, leaving my door firmly shut and the kitchen door to the patio cracked so he
could get in and out as he pleased. I'd brought my own pillow from home to cover my ears, blocking out the
tap tap tap
of his nails as he trotted through the house.

And, glory be, it worked! I slept, deeply and uninterrupted, though I had another nightmare. I was supposed to keep two dogs separated—one on the porch, one in the house—or else they would kill each other. Then the maids came to clean the house and opened the screen door. By the time I figured out what had happened, the dogs were beyond repair. I had to send them downriver, like those Viking funerals where they float the corpse out onto the water in a boat or atop a twiggy raft.

In the morning, I couldn't find any evidence that Charlie went out in the night. But neither could I find any evidence that he went to the bathroom anywhere in the house. So long as he wasn't wetting the bed, though, I was growing less and less concerned about the regularity of his BMs.

On one of our limited morning jaunts around Katherine's front walk, I met a neighbor picking up her morning newspaper. She was embarrassed because I caught her in her pajamas. She chatted with me in a cryptic but very friendly manner: “How is your work going?” “I love your new shutters!”

Finally, in response to my puzzled silence, she said, “You're Katherine, right?”

“Oh, I am just the dog sitter. Katherine is in Italy.”

“Oh, god! I'm sorry. You're both so tall, and with short hair. I thought . . .”

I was flattered that she'd mistake me for the elegant Katherine. But perhaps this neighbor in her cowboy-print pajamas, standing in front of a multimillion-dollar mansion with a newspaper in her immaculately manicured hand, did have cause to be embarrassed
after all. How do neighbors living across the street not even recognize each other?

At the other end of the leash was Katherine's best friend, and wherever she was—probably staring at a relic from antiquity—she probably wished that this fickle, gassy beast were there at her side. For the first time, I saw her life with Charlie as isolated and potentially very lonely. Like Katherine, I had a single candidate for companionship, and he had four legs and a collar—a scenario that was all too familiar to me of late.

Once I reconciled that Charlie was my best and only antidote to loneliness, I tried to buddy up to him. He wasn't having any of it. Given my inability to pamper him in the manner that Katherine seemed expert at, Charlie largely ignored me and got even more cantankerous as our time together wore on. He ate less but farted more. I imagined him cutting his eyes meanly at me as he left the room in the wake of his outrageous flatulence. He spent most of his time prostrate in the corner of the living room, dangling his head at an unnatural angle out of his bed, his tongue lolling.

Feeling rejected and bored, I attacked the four-month-old stash of Halloween candy in the freezer, tucked in the back behind the rows of dog treats. I carefully rearranged the remaining candy to disguise the large dent I put in it. It was the only thing in the house to eat, except of course for Charlie's cottage cheese and hard-boiled eggs. I'd already eaten as much of the peanut butter in the cabinet as I dared without it being obvious. Of course, I could grocery shop for myself and keep food in her fridge, even cooking my meals in her fully functional kitchen. But, aside from avoiding further ways I could destroy her perfect house, I was also trying to save money from my narrow profit margin to eventually get an actual apartment.

As it was, crashing with my mom's best friend and her family on those nights that I didn't have overnights was undeniably
convenient and economical. They were very generous to let me use their attic bedroom, and I was more than happy to help them out with domestic errands and the like in repayment. But six months of nomadic overnight nannying interspersed with what amounted to semi-permanent couch surfing had me longing for a room—or two or three—of my own.

When I went to work in the morning to do my usual rounds, Charlie refused to go outside to the garden. Instead, he ran around the house, dodging and barking shrilly when I came close. No amount of wheedling, bribery, petting, or kissing seemed to win Charlie over to my favor, and I suppose I deserved it.

It's not like he was the first animal I hadn't seen eye to eye with. Most recently, there'd been Cha Cha, a Chihuahua living in a duplex occupied by her owners—a couple, each living on their own side. Two people in a relationship living next door to one another and sharing the dog between them. That should have been the first flag.

Throughout the entire meeting, convened on Her side of the duplex but attended by Him as well, the tiny dog barked viciously and lunged at me, baring her miniscule but very sharp teeth.

“Oh, she is just protecting us,” they'd both blustered. Cha Cha was little bigger than my foot, and I could've easily punted her through the living room window. The intensity of her apparent hatred for me was unnerving. I was trying to assure the clients of my competence but couldn't help jumping visibly at every bark. Any sudden movement on my part elicited a pointed snapping of her jaws, alarmingly close to my exposed wrists. I took very few notes during that meeting and tried not to move any more than I had to.

I managed to remember, however, that I was to come in through the back door of Her apartment, where I'd find a plate of cut-up hot dog. I would microwave that, tantalize Cha Cha with the
treat, and hook her up to her lead for a walk while she was distracted by the hot dog pellet.

Upon my first—and only—visit with this pint-sized killer, I did manage to enter through the back door and microwave the hot dog. I attempted the distract-and-clip maneuver earnestly, offering the hot dog with one hand while aiming to hook the leash to the tiny D-ring at the back of Cha Cha's neck with the other. But that was met with more barking, bared teeth, and growling. Failing that, I tried tossing the hot dog and then sneaking up behind her with the leash. It all ended when she bit me and then peed all over the floor.

As Katherine's return approached, I got paranoid that she would psychically know about the candy, the washing machine, and everything else that had gone wrong during my stay. Even at twenty-two, I still lived in fear of “getting in trouble” or being accused of not doing something to perfection. For as long as I could remember, I placed unrealistic expectations upon myself—to be agreeable, amusing, unobjectionable in all ways. In school, an A– was not acceptable to me. The scholarship I received in college wasn't the best available, and thus I deemed it a failure. This pressure and these judgments came from me alone, and not my parents. They rejoiced over my one B grade, reading it as a sign that I was normal. They celebrated my fallibility, hoping this counterintuitive form of encouraging mediocrity would help me relax.

I recognized in Katherine a similar demand for excellence. Though where I strove, she seemed to succeed. Her standards, in fact, far exceeded mine, for I felt keenly while I was in her home with her dog that I fell obviously and irredeemably short of good enough in everything from having to use a towel to protect her bed linens from my zit cream, to my inability to bond meaningfully with Charlie as she had.

Rationally, I knew that if Katherine fired me, I wouldn't have my business license revoked or go to jail, and I wouldn't be heartbroken to never see Charlie again. But it really chafed me that I didn't nail this assignment. Even if Katherine couldn't tell—even if she never knew what went on in her house those days that I was there—I knew. I'd done everything expected of me where Charlie was concerned, yet I still had the distinct feeling of failure.

I spent a lot of time worrying about the tiny hairless patch left by the tree sap I'd yanked out, too. I saw a
Beavis and Butt-head
episode once where they gave themselves beards of head-hair, trimmed and then glued onto their chins. I thought that maybe I could trim some of his haunch fur, where it grew thicker, and glue it to the bald spot.

I wondered if three to four days' time was enough for Rogaine to take effect on a dog. But then I was afraid it would have some reverse effect on dog fur and make the bald spot bigger. I brushed the area compulsively, trying to arrange the surrounding hairs to mask the little spot, like a canine comb-over. Late into the evening, I stood across the room, and then closer in two-foot increments, trying to determine how close one had to be to notice the missing fur in Charlie's otherwise-perfect coat. He definitely looked thinner and was sleeping more. Or was he sleeping less and eating more?

Either way, it was clear to me that my isolation from people and near-exclusive interaction with dogs was taking its toll. I'd realized how singular the focus of my life had become at Christmas, during a visit from my parents. They'd occupied the pullout in Annie's den for the better part of a week, visiting with the family while I traveled hither and thither, my schedule crammed to overflowing due to the high volume of out-of-town clients over the holidays. I was beyond touched that they'd foregone their own deeply entrenched
Christmas traditions to be with me. I made a portion of sauerbraten, marinating it for the minimum three days beforehand, so my dad could have his usual yuletide dinner. On Christmas Eve, before I departed for my final pet-sitting visit of the night, we'd upheld the long-standing ritual of reading “The Night Before Christmas.”

Christmas morning, I stole a few short hours to open presents with them, and every single gift was dog related. I received a pair of “Up on the Woof Top” socks depicting a dog-Santa dropping presents down the chimney; a CD carrying case in the shape of a dog's head, his mouth the zipper; a matching glow-in-the dark leash for dog and handkerchief for me (safety was a big thing for my parents that year, and always); pajamas from my sister and brother-in-law, sent with my parents, that read “Sleeps with Dogs” across the chest; a dog-themed address book, the dogs themselves illustrated as gumshoes, society molls, thespians, and roughnecks; a plastic purple poop-bag dispenser in the shape of a dog bone; a coffee-table encyclopedia of dog breeds; yet another subscription to
Bark Magazine
(my third); and a dog-paw-print “From the desk of” notepad, my name misspelled with an
a
instead of an
e
. My mom was profusely apologetic about that, claiming the manufacturer misread her personalization.

It was quite a haul. For a brief and surreal moment, I wondered that I hadn't been given any dog treats or a chew toy, as though I myself had pulled a canine metamorphosis and turned into a dog over the past five months. Other interests and dimensions, and certainly some human companionship, seemed immediately in order, lest I should actually start growing fur and barking.