Charisma grinding against me. Her toes stretch. Her crotch needing attention from me. She grabs my arm and pulls herself up to me and she says: “Have you seen my dog?”
“No.”
“Oh. Sorry. I was dreaming. I was thinking of Rembrandt.” (Charisma’s old dog—Charisma has a tattoo of the painter Rembrandt’s face—a self-portrait etching—on her left hip, front side.) “And it wasn’t really a dream,” she said. “It was a replay of what happened to him. Do you remember what I told you happened to Remmy? Do you?”
“Yes—yes. Of course.”
“The way he died at my parents house. He was such a good dog. Did tricks with me and everything.”
“He was a golden retriever, right?”
“Yes he was. Super smart dog. I did tricks with him in the back yard. Nothing like what’s on America’s Got Talent—but I mean those people all have black labs. Those are almost the smartest dog alive—after border collies but still very smart dogs. I didn’t buy Remmy thinking, This is going to be a trick dog. I mean, Rembrandt was a rescue. I picked him out from rows and rows of dogs. I made my mom and Faith come with me when we walked down every row and every column of that place. I learned the name of every dog and talked to every trainer I saw and I asked them, Where is this guy from? and How soon till execution? for each dog 🐶 who was wrapped up in that place that was like a prison where everyone was on death row except they didn’t know it. All they were surrounded with was death 💀 and all they knew was death, they just didn’t know its name. It was like a dog holocaust—but where even the prison guards didn’t want any of their dogs to die. It was like terminal judgment was legal in the state but none of the citizens wanted it to happen but it was the law—it was mandated and everyone followed the rules, even when they didn’t agree with them.”
Charisma has crawled up my body and is speaking from my chest, looking up at me. She continues:
“So Rembrandt. Did you get to know him well?”
“Not too well,” I say. “I mean, I knew him.”
“I know! I remember you two playing together in the back yard..” She breaks into tears. I knew where her story was going and I figured we were taking the long way home on this one. “In my dream or whatever Rembrandt was back near the fence at the end of the yard and you know the way our yard bends down as it gets to the fence?”
“Yeah, it slopes down,” I say. I’ve been roped into this conversation with Charisma. Anything I say will extend her story by a factor of two.
“One day Rembrandt was playing in the back and Mary and Manny had gone to take Faith to the Rite Aid ‘cause Faith needed pens and mom and Manny needed prescriptions so I was in the two-seater on the side of the house and I closed his gate! To the back yard, you know, that gate—”
“That separates the side of the house from the back, sure.”
“Exactly. So I was lying on the two-seater texting Brooklyn and I heard this low, low sound. Like when our teapot, it’s made by Poliviar and it makes this low sound when your water’s ready like “oohhhhwww” and I was listening to the water boil with this Polivar tea kettle and I was listening and listening and trying to listen through it—right through that kettle sound and it was like an acid trip where everything always reaches one tone and that’s the tone, the tone of that Polivar kettle..I don’t know how the engineers who designed that kettle knew that sound. All I can think is they must have tripped on acid and also heard that sound and then, somehow, they brought the sound back with them from their trip—which is about like bringing that sound with you out of a dream. You know when you dream of a stack of money or some cool device and then you realize, Oh, shit. I’m in a dream, and you know you won’t be able to take this cool nothing with you when you wake up—Well I was in that sort of dream and I was hearing it from the kettle on the waking stove in the waking light and I had tea 🍵 coming to me in my waking world and if I hadn’t gone inside to fill my tea cup if I hadn’t gone inside to make myself that tea..well there wouldn’t be a story. Would there? No. So I’m in the kitchen and I’m rooting through the cabinet and I’m finding my bags of tea and I’m stirring the cup and sipping the tea and I realize that if I had been listening to Remmy—if I had been listening for Rembrandt to make a sound (I should have been listening for him)—of course not for the sound he did make, but for any sound he made. I should have expected it. Not the exact sound he made, but any expected sound.”
“Expected sound.” I mimicked these last words.
“That’s right” —she caught me— “any expected sound. That’s what I would have to do if I was a parent. Be listening. Then I wouldn’t have to have been startled by the lack of sound. I would not have had to drop my teacup Kobayashi-style. I would not have choked myself at what I saw out the back. On the back fence. With his collar slipped around—you know those twists at the top of a chain link fence?—those. With his blood running down the side of his face. His body almost done twitching. You know how they say drowning is always done wrong in the movies? In the movies it’s always flailing and obvious that the person is drowning but they say in real life it’s not so obvious. The person doesn’t even make a sound. They move their arms like this” (climbing a ladder) “not this” (waving wildly)! “Don’t you wonder who it is that writes these articles? Is it a serial killer—named the ocean—who sets a drowning in place while they sit on the sidelines taking notes, videoing, noticing how quiet drowning is? Who is doing that? But anyway my dog, poor Rembrandt, after living with me six years in that downstairs room..in the basement..he drowned himself, impaling himself on a fence post! That poor dog! I ran up to him and tried to pull him off it but I couldn’t I couldn’t even move him..dumb dog..you know how you can leave a cat on vacation with extra food but you can’t do that with a dog because the dog will eat and eat and that will be the end of your dog..no..it’s not food, it’s leashes..it’s why you can’t leash a cat and walk away because a dog knows not to push too hard or he’ll suffocate himself but a cat..it just lacks the smarts to stop pushing..anyway this dog he just killed himself by jumping over that fence. Poor fuck. I was standing with him as he died—that’s the worst part. He was hurt, yes, but he wasn’t dead yet. I was looking him in the eyes when he died and—and—he never closed his eyes. They just went dead when he stopped breathing. I put my fingers over them—the way they do in movies—I didn’t know what else to do. I put my index finger and my middle finger like this on his face. And I pressed down, so gentle, and I could feel how warm he was. So warm, like a chicken pot pie when it first comes out of the oven. Not that hot but you know what I mean. He wasn’t going to be there with us for dinner—that’s what I was thinking. Not that night. Not any other night from here to the end of eternity. I couldn’t even lift him off the fence. My arms weren’t strong enough. You know how many push ups I couldn’t do back then? One. Not even one. This is maybe five years after I was in ROTC—they had gotten me up to three. When Remmy died, though, I was down to one. I know you know I struggle with my weight—”
“You’re fine.”
“You never have to say that—you never do. I know we haven’t fucked yet this trip and it makes me so sad that you don’t want to.”
“Charisma, I don’t not want to—”
“To fuck me? That’s all the currency you and I ever had, isn’t it? It’s the first thing you ever wanted from me and the last thing you’ll ever not want from me. Don’t speak. I love you and you loved me and I was lying here thinking of us and the story of Remmy’s death reminded me of our love (or lack thereof) or our lust is more probably the thing..that I missed..so much about you.”
“You just dreamed that? You dreamed about us and that made you dream about Rembrandt?”
“I was thinking about it in my sleep. You and me. Then Remmy.”
“Oh.”
“It’s a bad sign, though, that I thought of it at all.”