The final afternoon Maria came by with Willis, I decided to do something about the dogs. When she moved out of the house into a little efficiency on the other side of town, she left them at my Aunt Gladis' place on Madeira Beach. Twelve of them, unidentifiable breeds and mutts, all strays Maria rescued from the roads around here in St. Petersburg. I'll be honest, I never cared for them that much, and the thought of Aunt Gladis coming back from her European vacation early, discovering all these dogs roaming the house, made me uneasy.
My one and only friend in town, Lance, asked me why I didn't get rid of the dogs. He lived a mile down the road in a little one-room cottage. Whenever the mood struck, I walked to his place at night and sat with him on his porch, drinking cheap redneck beer straight from the can and bitching about women. "Women," Lance would say, and as for the rest — well, you can probably imagine. Like me, Lance was a do-nothing grad student living off government loans. He had gray in his sideburns and swollen black gums, even though he claimed to be thirty, only a few years older than me. His wife, Charlene, had left him, but it wasn't something he cared to talk much about. Sometimes I examined him closely when he wasn't watching and tried to figure out if something inside of us went wrong when a woman wasn't around. Who knows, but maybe it was possible. I don't mean to make Lance sound that bad, but it scared me that I might turn out like him. That is, if I hadn't already.
"Why don't you just take the goddamn dogs to the pound?" He'd ask once in a while, because he knew about my situation. Well, easier said than done, I wanted to say. I mean, yes, technically I could have taken them to the pound, but there was no denying what would happen to them then. It would mean instant death, and I just couldn't have that on my conscience. If you took one look at these dogs, you'd know that nobody would take them in. Nobody but Maria, at least.
Besides, the dogs kept me company. Lance notwithstanding, you might even say they were the extent of my social life. Sometimes whole days passed when I spoke to no one, and it had been a month since Maria left the house. Maria had split in the past and I thought there was a possibility she might come back again, even though this time when she left it was worse than before. Okay, then, much worse. This time, Maria told me she was sick of me, just sick of me.
Her friends certainly didn't help matters either. Her friends, those art students from Tampa who took classes with Maria, bronze-haired and Nordic-looking and perennially clad in black, who had a way of looking at me as if they knew I wasn't good enough for Maria. Take this one guy Willis, for instance. A week or so before Maria left, he came over to see some of her charcoal sketches and Kirlian photography in the rec room. Amazing, a guy who even looked like an art student, tall and handsome-boned with a thick crown of combed-back hair, the kind of guy who resembled old boyfriends of Maria's I'd seen in pictures. I wasn't going to have the wool pulled over my goddamn eyes. "Jack, this is Willis," Maria said. Willis stood there with his hand out, making his eyes wide, as if to say, "Do you know whose hand you just refused to shake? The greatest undiscovered artist's this side of the Mason-Dixon line, that's who." Hilarious. What I really wanted to do was bite his nose off, an unequivocal "You can't get away with this, motherfucker," but Maria would have never forgiven me for that. Besides, even I had my limits.
As you can probably imagine, Maria wasn't too happy about the way I'd behaved. I made all kinds of lame excuses. I even told her that I didn't have my glasses on and couldn't see his hand, which was perfectly true. The first part at least. "I've had enough of your attitude," she told me that night. "I'm sick of this. I'm sick of you."
If Maria became only a memory, the thing I'd remember most about her, I knew, were these dogs. I would be driving along in my shitbox Gremlin when she'd spot a stray on the shoulder of the road as it nosed the edge of the black-top, contemplating a leap into the back and forth of traffic. If I even tried to drive away, she'd start crying, and as much as I tried to ignore it, it got to me. Maria is a fine-looking Latina with eyes as dark as India ink and all this romantically curly hair, black and falling in ringlets down her skinny back. You try saying no to someone as sweet as Maria who looks the way she does. Impossible. So I ended up chasing the dog around, sometimes for an hour, sometimes for two. Sometimes right into traffic, sometimes more than a mile down the beach.
In the back yard under the palm trees was an antique claw-footed bathtub Aunt Gladis used to bathe her nieces and nephews in after summer swims in the ocean. Together Maria and I ran the garden hose from the side of the house, filled the tub with soap and water, and scrubbed the dog from head to tail. Its fur would be full of sand burrs and sticky pea-shaped seeds and sometimes even ticks. The animals inside crowded against the windows and wrestled each other out of the way, their wet black noses smudging the glass as they barked and bayed. Who knows what the poor neighbors thought.
"Maria," I'd sometimes say, serious at first, but then it would hit me. It would hit me and I'd sit down in the grass as the dog peered over the edge of the tub, watching me with dumb, grateful eyes as I laughed with Maria. Afterward we went inside and took a shower together. Then, our bodies cooled by the ocean breeze blowing through the upstairs window, we rolled around on top of the four-poster bed and made love.
After Maria left Aunt Gladis' place, she moved into an efficiency where dogs weren't allowed. Sometimes, especially when I got crocked, I borrowed Lance's pick-up and drove there late at night. He left the keys under the mat as a favor because he knew I didn't want to be seen snooping around in my own car. I parked in a faraway spot and watched her through the window, hunched over her schoolbooks at the little Formica-topped kitchenette table. Now and then she stopped reading to squint at the darkness outside, and I'd sit rigid and still until she let her eyes fall again.
Seeing her, I couldn't help but remember the way things used to be, all the things she used to do for me: leaving little homemade cards made from crayons, glue and glitter on the kitchen table; coming home with a grocery bag full of rare records from my favorite music store in Tampa; cooking elaborate dinners with candlelight and good red wine. Jesus Christ, I told myself, get a grip. She'll be back. There's no way you go from that to nothing overnight. But then I'd think of her in someone else's arms and something inside of me would snap. I imagined jimmying the window and sneaking into the apartment with a pair of scissors in my pocket, snipping off all that long magical hair while she slept. Crazy, I know, but what can I say? It's the truth.
After Maria finally went to bed, I drove back home where the dogs waited around the front door. Once they saw it was only me, they pawed away disconsolately, glancing back with their noses down and their ears flat, as if knowing exactly where I'd been. "Yeah," I said, "it's only me, you sons of bitches, so you can just go to bed." Their nails snicked over the floor and you could see the dull little patches where their paws had scuffed the wood. Not to mention the hair all over the place, sticking on the cushions of the couch and in the corners of the rooms where the broom bristles never reached. Not to mention the smell, that musty fur odor that clung to the curtains and the oriental rugs. And while we're at it, how about the million piles of dog shit stinking up the yard? Enough was enough. Here I was with all these stupid dogs while Maria slept all the way on the other side of town, and if she didn't think she was going to hear a choice word or two about it, then she had another think coming.
The final afternoon Maria came by with Willis, I was sitting in the wicker swing on the porch with a tallboy in my hand, watching the dogs sniff and ramble through the weeds in the yard. Every Tuesday after her photography class, Maria visited my aunt's house and played with the dogs for a couple of hours. But that afternoon, instead of Maria's car, I spotted a pumpkin-colored VW Bug putter up the driveway. When the Bug came close enough, I recognized the people inside. Maria and Willis the art student in his black turtleneck sweater and stupid-ass horn-rimmed spectacles. I rose from the swing and stepped off the porch.
Maria got out but Willis stayed in the car, staring out the windshield with his mouth pinched, as if sucking a lemon. I don't know why, but I waved to the guy, probably just to prove to Maria that I was still capable of doing that sort of thing. Grudgingly, he lifted his hand off the steering wheel and held it up in the air for a few seconds before letting it drop again. Prick.
"Hey, Jack," Maria said. I nodded. She wore a baby-blue sweater and a black ankle-length skirt. Squatting down, she let the dogs lick her face as she patted their backs. "I'm not going to be long today," she said.
Suddenly I remembered the hat on my head, a wide-brimmed straw hat I wore to keep the sun out of my eyes. It wasn't usually the kind of thing I minded, but now I was aware of its ridiculousness. "New boyfriend?" I asked. I didn't plan on mentioning him, but I couldn't help it.
"I knew you were going to say that," she said. "My car broke down."
"Well?"
"Well what, Jack?" she said. "Don't start."
"Don't start what? I think I have a right to know, don't I? This is my house."
"Actually, it's your aunt's house."
I sighed. "So what are you going to do about these dogs?"
"I'm working on it," Maria said. "Willis' friend has a big back yard with a fence, so I'm working on it. I'm going to figure out something."
"You'd better."
"Fine," she said and lifted her chin defiantly, crossing her arms.
"And he can't even come out of the car?" I said. "Willy?"
"His name is Willis, and no, he probably won't get out of the car. Not after last time."
"I'm being civil," I said. "I waved."
"Sometimes you're too much, Jack," she said in her wary, I-don't-know-what-to-do-with-you way.
"Tell him to come out of the car. I'd like to shake his hand. Really. I'd like to meet him. I'm being civil. See?" I waved again, but instead of waving back, Willis stared down at the dashboard and fiddled around with one of the knobs.
"I don't think that's a good idea today," she said. "Willis and I need to get going." She stepped toward me, rested a small hand on my shoulder and then turned away, getting back into the car.
I stepped to the driver's side and Willis rolled down the window cautiously, not even an inch. "What is it?" he said. "I'm not here to start any trouble. What do you want?"
I stood there, not knowing what to say. There was something I needed to tell Maria, but what was it?
"Okay, well, we're going now," Willis said. "Her car broke down and I offered to drive her here, so if that's it. I don't want any trouble."
"What is it, Jack?" Maria asked, irritated.
"That day you came over," I said, "that day you came over and I didn't shake your hand, I just wanted you to know I didn't have my glasses on. I didn't see you hold your hand out. I can hardly see anything without my glasses."
"That?" Willis said. "I completely forgot about that before you mentioned it."
"Why don't you both get out of the car and have a drink?" I smiled, but I felt it quickly leave my face. "Come on, have a cocktail or something."
"Oh God, Jack," Maria said.
"Hey, you," I said, pointing at her. "Shut up." I stared at Willis. "Get out of the car, asshole." I saw my wild reflection in the window, lips curled back and teeth bared.
Willis took his foot off the brake and quickly backed down the driveway, ripping up a cascade of crushed shell and sand. I sprinted after the car, but my shoe caught on something and I fell backward on my ass, hitting concrete. I stayed there and watched the car back into the road. "Crazy son of a bitch," I heard Willis shout from the bottom of the driveway.
Catching my breath, I drew my knees up to my chest and put my head down. When I looked up again, the dogs still stood nearby. They stared at me with their eyebrows raised and their back legs tense with trepidation, ready to break into a run. "What are you looking at?" I shouted.
I struggled to my feet and limped slowly down the driveway, starting toward Lance's house. By the time I got there, it was already dark, but thankfully all the lights were out in his cottage; I wasn't in the mood for one of his asshole lectures. His pickup sat in the driveway and I found the keys under the floor mat. I cranked the truck up and eased back into the road, waiting for the door to fling open, for Lance to come hobbling down the steps with a remark to make, but he didn't, thank God. He would have had some smart-ass thing to say about Maria, I'm sure, and then I would have run him over.
Back at Aunt Gladis' house, the dogs still waited in the yard. I stumbled out of the cab and dropped the tailgate. Some of the dogs hopped right up into the bed, gazing at me expectantly, but others I had to pick up and shove into the back with the rest. You'd be surprised how long it took to corral them all in the back of the truck. For every one that I forced in, one would slink out and trot sheepishly away with its tail between its legs. There were a few times I almost threw a shit fit. "If you don't stay back there and shut up, I swear to God," I screamed. I knew I was acting crazy. I shut my eyes and looked away from them, trying not to think about what I was doing.
When I finally got all the dogs inside, I shifted into high gear away from the house and headed south, where I knew there were beaches where the retirees and tourists didn't go.
After I figured I had driven enough, I eased off the road and drove up onto an empty beach. It was a thin strand of shoreline surrounded by storm-shuttered high-rises, deserted until snowbird season. A bright quarter moon gleamed down on the sand and the murmuring, white-topped breakers. As I walked to the back of the truck, I could hear my breath shaking out, my pulse ticking behind my eyes; it was that quiet. I opened the gate and once on the ground, the dogs circled around and whimpered, as if suspecting something.
"Get," I said, trying not to look at them. If I looked at even one of them or thought about Maria a moment too long, I knew it would be over. "Get," I said again, louder this time. I lunged and stomped my shoes into the sand, chasing the dogs down the shoreline. They scampered back and switched their heads back and forth, from me to the truck and then back again. "Get," I screamed. "Did you hear me? Are you stupid? I said leave! I'm sick of you!"
At that moment, a silver sports car hurtled past the beach and briefly the dogs turned and stared in its direction, sullen-eyed with their heads hung low. I knew what they were thinking. Standing there still, watching the car as it sped on the road back to St. Petersburg, they were waiting for it to stop, waiting for someone to come out and save them like the first time, just as Maria had.
Thomas Cooper lives with his wife, Carol, in Largo and is a graduate student and instructor at University of South Florida. He is the recipient of several recent awards for his writing, including the 2001 Florida Suncoast Writers' Conference Fiction Award. He hopes to be done with a collection of stories, The Next Great Ice Age, and a novel, Henry Brown, next year.
This article appears in Dec 20-26, 2002.