Sleeps with Dogs (24 page)

Besides, I was distinctly not litigious. I lived in fear of being sued—or audited, or even scolded—and had recently been threatened with legal action for the first time. She was a potential client; no contract had as yet been signed. She owned two French bulldogs, and I'd met with her to go over what services she was in need of, and to familiarize myself with the dogs I'd potentially be sitting for. It was a tricky job—just pet-sitting, no overnights, but two visits a day, and she lived thirty minutes away. A classic case of the time and fuel canceling out any profit, but a sacrifice I was making more and more just to stay afloat.

Within minutes of our meeting, I knew this was not going to work out. Her specificities for the dogs were so many and so insane—from the temperature of their drinking water to the temperature of the house, the length of time they could be exercised and how vigorously, their body temperature when they finished, and the foods that I fed them, the quantities for each, and in what order—which telegraphed to me in big, flashing, neon letters that somewhere in there I was going to screw something up. Never mind the fact that every room in the house, from the hall to the living room to the kitchen to the dining area, was baby gated to manage which room they remained in when. Depending on the time of day and the activity at hand, she moved them through from one space to the next like steers being herded from pen to pen. The owner attributed the exacting nature of their care to health issues, claiming they had severe asthma and, if they got remotely overheated, they'd keel over and die.

I could already foresee their almost certain death at my hands, and I wanted no part in it. When I told her I couldn't take the
job after all, she threatened legal action, as they'd already booked their tickets and were relying upon me to be there for the dogs in their absence. I consulted with my colleagues to see if she had a foot to stand on, terrified that either way, I was going to be facing a lawsuit—this way, for an unfulfilled obligation and the cost of plane tickets purchased, or, if I took the job, for unwittingly overheating her French bulldogs to death. That neither of us had signed any form of care contract entirely exonerated me, and she ended up employing another pet sitter after all. Whoever they were, I worried for them.

I didn't share any of this with Patrick. To my great surprise, he was interested in and impressed by my self-employment and the unusual way I spent my days (and many nights). Were it up to him, I wouldn't do overnights at all, since—devilishly—he declared that if anyone was sleeping with me, it should be him and not a dog. But he respected my work and thought it was extraordinary. (Though he also fully supported my decision to go out on the date with him rather than escorting Baxter to the vet.) I wondered at how he'd been on the market, unclaimed, for so long before he met me, and how I'd been the one to change his status from “single” to “in a relationship.” But I also knew better than to stick my head too far into the horse's mouth looking for answers.

I didn't have the heart to say anything that might change his rosy view of my job; it felt too good to be admired. He didn't need to know how much that $150 meant to me, how afraid I was of clients like the French bulldog lady, how easily one mistake or one more lost client could take me from self-employed to unemployed. He'd find out soon enough that this job—fun and kooky as it sounded, and often felt even to me—wasn't all good times, cute pets, and intrepid entrepreneurialism. Sometimes it was just hard.

 

To: “Mom”, “Dad”

Subject: Lindsey Versus the World: Episode 3

Dear Mom and Dad,

YYYYYYah! Whack. Ker-plow!
(This is the sound of super-hero me using my good sense and catlike reflexes to battle back against the humiliation of being cowed by the she-bear of life.)

Success #1: I have obtained functioning, legitimate Internet in the apartment and can stop sitting in the car outside the Internet café to use email! (While superheroes are super, they also need technology.)

Success #2: The client whose Bernese mountain dog ate my glasses is going to reimburse me for their replacement after all! Technically they don't have to, since I had “full understanding” that the dog eats anything and everything in sight (underwear, remotes, magazines, napkins), but they decided to be awesome instead of evil.

Success #3: I took y'all's advice and have started looking into grad school. Yesterday, as I was lunching on the samples at Andronico's, I thought about what you said—about realizing my full potential. Maybe if I aim beyond eating free cheese cubes and day-old bread, I'll break the glass ceiling and be able to buy a baguette of my own . . .

Lindsey the Conquerer

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Forty Days

I
was having a hard time getting out of bed. Having lived in the Atlanta area up until two years prior, I was used to the weather patterns of the southeast. On the edge of the old-growth forest where my family lived, I could sit on the screened-in porch and wait for the coming storm. The sharp earthy smell of ozone permeated the air as the tall trees began to bend and moan in the wind. Those storms were usually wild and exciting, leaving a blanket of broken branches and leaves across the lawn. Within an hour the storm would pass, the thunder rolling on, the cardinals and chickadees and tufted titmice coming out to forage in the new landscape.

In Berkeley, however, I quickly learned not to hope for any thunder and lightning. Here, rain was just rain. Whether it soaked or misted, it tended to come straight down without spectacle. It had been coming down nonstop now for almost a month.

Such uninterrupted rain was unusual in the East Bay. That's
what everyone said, at least. Having lived there for such a relatively short time, I had little historical knowledge of regional weather trends to compare this wet spell to. Initially, the soft spraying sound of the rain in the bottlebrush outside my bedroom window was comforting; I happily burrowed further into my bed, relishing the knowledge that it was wet out there but I was dry and warm inside. Over a month later, I was still waking up to the patter of water on bough and branch, on the dumpster beneath my window, on cement. I knew that I'd be out in it soon enough, just as soaked as everything else in spite of my rain gear.

That morning especially, I could not bring myself to peel back the layers of blankets—flannel sheet, down comforter, and mossy green thrift-store quilt—to put my feet flat on the wood floor and start the day. I dreaded the moment I had to don my perpetually damp rain gear with its earthy fungal smell. I felt pretty sure I was starting to smell that way, too, even when I was showered and wearing warm, dry clothes.

The exposed brick wall in my bedroom gave the space a cavernous feel even in the best of weather, but, with the constant rain, I felt the moisture all the time, no matter how many blankets I slept beneath, or how warm my pajamas were. I'd already tried to move the bed away from that brick wall with its wide window, but there was nowhere else to put it. The bite of the saturated air seeped through the poorly sealed window and onto my head while I slept. When I woke up, the cold was inside the bed as well. Even an inch away from where I lay, the sheets were chilly. What a waste of bed, not to be able to spread out on the wide mattress. What that bed really needed was another warm body, and I was grateful that that was increasingly a prospect these days.

I'd been seeing Patrick more and more, usually at his San Francisco apartment, as he worked long hours and got home late.
The additional commute by BART to Berkeley to see me put him at my place around the time I usually went to sleep. Better to just meet him there on his turf when he got home and have a few alert hours with him before I turned into a pumpkin. I was extra exhausted at the end of these dreary, drenched days. Still, the reward of seeing him at the end of the slog was incomparable, the best and only carrot to lead me out into the never-ending rain once more.

Patrick had been over to my apartment a few times, usually on weekends, when the time-consuming commute was less of an issue. He claimed that he preferred my place to his. He often said dear things like that, having no idea the effect it had on me—that he should like Ian's and my humble, dark little apartment, furnished almost entirely in thrift-store finds or sidewalk salvages. For the first few months that Ian and I lived there, Ian had slept on a mattress we'd collected from outside a house in Hayward, thanks to a post in Craigslist's Free Stuff section. Eventually, the smell and its dubious provenance—and then his new, well-paying job—prompted him to buy a new, unsullied one from Ikea.

For my part, I was still sleeping on the generous queen mattress donated by Annie when I'd moved to Berkeley. It was used, having been stored in their basement for guests to sleep on in the den, but it was wonderfully comfortable and didn't smell one bit.

Growing up, I'd always slept on a twin mattress. At nearly six feet tall by the time I was fifteen, I felt like a hot dog in a bun sleeping in that narrow bed. So here, on this luxuriously large mattress, it pissed me off that I was rooted to the spot, held captive within the small imprint of body heat. Stupid Berkeley apartments with one ancient, fire-hazard radiator, situated nowhere near the bedrooms.

While I lay there trying to muster the will to get up, get up, get up, I ran over my list of dogs for the day. With Baxter so recently out of the picture and no new regularly scheduled walk taking his
place, I was on the hunt for additional work. Whether it came from drop-in visits for folks who were traveling or a second job that had nothing to do with animals at all, I was ready to take anything I could find.

I'd had some success picking up some extra pet-sitting gigs, and these thirty-minute drop-in visits for out-of-towners' cats and fish and assorted other low-maintenance companions helped me tremendously in my monthly quest toward meeting the bottom line. But they didn't offer the stability of daily walks, week after week, for clients that needed frequent and ongoing service. Income I could rely upon month after month after month, barring disaster.

I'd gone so far as looking for a second job, a night job, as I wasn't taking on nearly as many overnight clients and could presumably pick up some shifts as a bartender. Learning from my past math mistakes, I'd crunched some numbers and concluded I would make far more in tips from a night of pouring pints than I would sleeping with someone else's pet.

So far, the only place I'd felt confident enough to apply was the bowling alley off 880, a place I'd visited many times with the newcomers' group. Even the bowling alley bar had never called me back, which I admit could've been due to my answer in the “Why do you want this job?” field. I'd said I needed extra money, which is not the most eloquent or inspirational answer. What kind of answer were they expecting, though? Pouring pitchers at a bowling alley wasn't exactly a lifelong career aspiration of mine.

I'd had the prospect of a new five-days-a-week walk dangled in front of me, only to have it bizarrely and unexpectedly disappear days before. That was certainly compounding my inability to throw back the covers and leap enthusiastically into my sodden schedule.

The couple was engaged and had just moved into a low
ranch-style house north of Berkeley. They'd adopted a German shepherd mix, still a puppy, who had boundless energy and would need an hour-long visit Monday through Friday. I was trying to contain my euphoria and relief; such an addition to my roster could be a game changer.

I walked him once without incident, going through the routine training for commands: heeling, sitting, staying, and waiting at corners until I indicated he could continue. I got a call the next day, a Saturday, from the wife-to-be that he'd jumped their back fence and chased a man on a bike around the block, scaring him so badly that he'd called animal control. Animal control, in turn, mandated that the owners build the fence higher, which they couldn't afford to do right away with the impending wedding. So they'd taken him back to the shelter. I was crushed. Crushed, and back to the drawing board.

If all else failed, I was grateful that my parents had leaned on me so hard to complete my grad school applications a few months back. I don't know that they were entirely sold on my choice of creative nonfiction as my master's focus, but I wasn't fluent enough in Spanish to fulfill the required bilingual status for pursuing Comparative Literature, my major in undergrad. I could claim, legitimately, I thought, that writing was a more promising vocation than film, which had been my minor and the likeliest alternative for continued study.