You walk Ajax the Dog three times a day, minimum. Often five times, up and down the cobblestones — you chose this neighborhood because it was historically registered, after all. The uneven stones make it impossible to push a baby carriage but you don’t have to worry about that. All you need to do is walk a dog. Across the antique brick crosswalks three, four, five times a day. Your personal world record is nine. Ajax the Dog still hates you for that day, gives you that eyebrow look whenever you jingle the leash after dinnertime, like, Let’s go easy, boss, and looks around the room, maybe to see what you’ve been drinking and how much of it.
World Record Day was a Thursday, the night your favorite prime time show ended forever and the last time you forgot to re-up your twice-a-day meds. You needed walking more than the dog. Damned animal refused even a single backyard outing on Friday, just whizzed right there in the kennel like every book and TV show and trainer assured you dogs never do. Pissed in his own bed, like, That’ll teach you.
So now you walk him three times a day, never less. Sometimes five, never more. You let him guide you. He’s part bulldog and part something else that gives him the energy and temperament of the sun. And you’ve moved the TV to the room above the garage that scares you because it’s full of spiders. You try not to spend nights up there. You succeed here and there. You miss Derek. Your mail has been delivered by Naomi for three weeks while he’s on vacation. You ask Naomi where Derek is but all she’ll tell you is “away” though one time she lets you know that he’s somewhere “stingrays are an ever-present danger.” You imagine New Zealand. You imagine South Africa, Indonesia, East Timor. You imagine Derek shooting laser beams out his eyes underwater and flying home on wings he grew from his shoulders to come back and deliver your mail. You imagine New Jersey and then think “stupid” but turn on the TV and see a clip about a guy from Trenton whose father paid for him to get feathers implanted in his biceps, triceps, and all the other -ceps you’ve never had time to learn about. He died after jumping off Independence Hall in Philadelphia. “Investigators are operating on the assumption that it was a suicide, but the County Coroner tells Fast News Nine that, ‘You never know what’s in a person’s head.’”
You spend the whole night awake, trying to dream harder and softer at the same time.
***
For a while the Beast walks Ajax the Dog but never as much as you. You adopted Ajax the Dog on the same day your friends got their baby, which tangled the emotions even more. And the Beast was the one who wanted a dog in the first place but for the most part it’s been you who picks up his shit piles, mounds, snakes, kernels, bowling pins. The Beast doesn’t even know how many shapes Ajax the Dog’s shit takes, the names you have for the shits. The Beast never calls Ajax the Dog by his full name. It’s always “Ajax” or “the dog.” One time “A.J.” but you said, “No. That name is reserved, asshole.” The Beast didn’t raise an eyebrow, much less a hand, so you know you were right. You deserved that baby. Maybe the Beast didn’t but you did. Your friends — Slam and Slap — didn’t even want one but they got one. You got a dog but they already had three of those. They didn’t even get a bill from the hospital but you did. Here’s your prize, you imagine the doctor saying, handing over the baby and then, Here’s another prize, when the outtake secretary handed over a bill that read Nothing due. For you, no one said anything but you saw the looks, like, Sorry for you, I guess, but also sorry for us for having to bear your tragedy with you for two seconds when we could be giving prizes out down the hall.You didn’t even get a note of condolence from the one kind nurse. Just the bill. Overdue. The irony of that word.
Being all about fairness is your Achilles heel. It’s the wrong world to be all about fairness. It was you, after all, who came up with the idea that whoever plates the food for dinner, the other person gets to choose first. You never eat the larger sliver of an oddly segmented orange. When it’s your turn to pump gas you don’t complain, even if you’re on the passenger side. Even if you’re sitting in back, because you already gave up the front seat for the Beast’s visiting whoever, not even a real mother, who refers to the Beast as “Sweetbeast,” as if that’s ever been true. Even if you’re asleep in the back seat when the car pulls to a stop under the rusted pump awning. You always wake right up when the Sweetbeast says “Sammy!” and stumble out of the car and pump the gas, half asleep, full mad.
These are not your rules alone. Rules don’t exist for a single person. Only an insane person makes rules for a community of one. Rules are made so that communities can thrive. What better community than a marriage? What better rule than fairness? You think about this when you walk the dog. The Beast never walks the dog, but does other things you don’t do. Like…? You think about this when you plate the food evenly and the Beast makes a show of weighing the plates, one in each hand, before choosing the heavier one. Is that supposed to be some kindness? You lost the baby but not the baby weight yet. Maybe it’s supposed to be a kindness but it doesn’t feel like one, especially when the Beast says, “I don’t even know how you managed to gain baby weight. I’m the one who should have gained the weight.”
The Beast got a job that involves driving eighty miles away twice a week. The Beast thinks this is just beyond the threshold (79 miles?) of sanity and no sane person would drive that far in the morning and back that night so the Beast lives in a hotel down in Lucedale twice a week. You’ve been to Lucedale. There’s nothing there. No supermarket, no mall, just a misspelled Kwik Shawp. No gas station, just a year-round fireworks stand. No hotel, just an Extended Stay America. Who wants to extend a stay there? And according to the plastic alphabet sign on the rusted pole looming over the highway, the shortest stay that qualifies as extended is one week. Does the Beast rent long-term? The Beast won’t say. The Beast does your taxes and says that’s all the accounting for that’s required.
You find a receipt in the Beast’s jeans pocket. It says, “Big Bosses Storage Fortress.” It says, “$64 monthly.” The handwriting under the printed section of the receipt reads, “5 X 10, approx studio apartment.” You say, “I didn’t know you were an artist” and the Beast doesn’t get the joke and you let it stew and say, “Nothing, nevermind, forget I said anything.”
Your jaw still hurts where your college girlfriend (your first one) kicked you while you were tickling her, thinking that was sexy. You still wonder if there’s a chipped bone in there. Lately it’s begun hurting on the other side too. You wonder if that means it’s cancer. Didn’t you hear that Bob Marley died of cancer after stubbing his toe playing soccer? Pathetic. At least Peter Tosh got assassinated. But who remembers him? Keith Richards is still alive, making more money than ever for playing the same old tunes. Sadness all around. Maybe you’re just grinding your teeth. Or maybe that stupid girl broke your jaw all the way around and it’s taken all these years for the fracture to travel behind your skull. Maybe your head will just fall clean off one of these days. Maybe everything is only held together by skin. Skin slowly growing brittle in the increased, throbbing sun. You spend days in thoughts like these, walking the dog, cooking dinner, cleaning dishes, Googling Lucedale, zip codes, hotels, calling 1-800 numbers and putting on varying foreign accents and asking for Room number 101, 102, 103, 104, 107, forgetting where you left off, falling asleep to the sound of ringing on the end of the line when the man, woman, or whatever at the front desk figures out your gig, probably in cahoots with the Beast, and just hangs up the phone without speaking.
When the Alley Cats you took in over the Beast’s objections piss on the bath mat, the Beast tells you for the fortieth time what a bunch of bad ideas you harbor. Ajax the Dog eats your glasses case and you go crazy and the Beast says, “The glasses weren’t even in there, right?” and you can’t even get the breath to claim that’s not the point. The Alley Cats hate Ajax the Dog and the Beast hates conflict but when you’ve got the house alone you let Ajax the Dog in the bathroom when the Alley Cats are pissing on the bath mat and watch the fur, claws, and shit fly. You fight with yourself over not cleaning the place up before the Beast comes home but you always leave the house shining brighter than ever.
You’re not a cat person. You hope no one thinks you are. You’ve never had a dog before Ajax the Dog but you always felt like a dog person. Before you had one, that is. The Beast isn’t an anything person and that’s part of why you got along so well to begin with but then you started to feel like not being an anything person might mean not really being a person at all. Or at least not a person person. You’re willing to accept that you’re not a person person but you’re not sure you want to be with someone who’s not a person person. Why would someone like that want to be with you, who are, after all, supposedly, another person?
How did you meet the Beast? Where was your first date? When did you first kiss? You remember all of this, but it doesn’t mean anything anymore. When did you first fight? When did you stop listening? What was the thing the Beast said that first made you roll your eyes? Walk out of the room? Slam the door? Wake up angry? How did it get to be like this? You don’t remember any of this and this is all that matters anymore.
At 11:17 AM, while you’re rewashing the hall mirror, the Clerk of the Court Calls. That’s what it says on caller ID. You say hello and the clerk starts his end of the conversation with a rising, “Heyyyyyyyyy” as though he just caught you in a compromising position. You say, “Who is this?” and he responds with, “Who is this?” You identify yourself. He says, “Oops, sorry,” laughs, and hangs up. Probably not the actual clerk. Probably a secretary. Does the Beast know any secretaries? Mailboys? Legal interns? You wonder if the Beast is in trouble with the law. You should really get a job. This is one of many reasons it’s bad to be home all day by yourself.
Your neighbor to the east has twice as much engine as car. He leaves for work at 5:15 AM, six days a week. Your neighbor to the west has a dog who whimpers when the sun comes up. You always sleep through the whimpering, never through the growling, the hollered threats from the facing window. Across the alley behind your bedroom window lives a couple with an infant. You heard that new families make the best neighbors and you find this to be true until your neighbor to the west tells you she hasn’t enjoyed a meal since her dog died six months ago. You never noticed how high her voice is. The whimpering and the deep hollered threats continue, echoing oddly from the alley. Sometimes they seem to be coming from directly above your bed. Sometimes from under it. In it.
You bought two floor lamps at IKEA. Faux rice paper shades, long cylinders, from about Tall Man height down to ankle level, with step-on power switches and nondescript black bases. You bought one but realized upon plugging it in that your living room needed another for balance. It was two weeks before you got back to IKEA. The box was the same. The price. The picture. The assembly. But the second lamp is two inches taller than the first one. Taller enough that you can tell the difference unless they’re at least fifteen feet apart. You performed tests. Fourteen feet isn’t far enough. Fourteen feet is the diagonal span of your living room. You did the fifteen foot test in the driveway. Couldn’t tell the difference. But your driveway doesn’t need light. The neighbor across the street, to the south, has had his security light pointed in your direction ever since Ajax the Dog busted out the screen and ended up turning his purple hyacinth vines into very temporary chew toys.
You read an article in the New Yorker titled “A Case for Apathy” that profiles a number of couples that are so involved in the political revolution in Washington that their personal lives have dissolved as a direct result. You wish you had followed politics.
You walk Ajax the Dog thrice daily. Maximum. No more five walk days. You’ve got a routine and Ajax the Dog lives by it and likes it. Or doesn’t. You don’t care, try not to notice.
The Beast now spends every other weekend in Lucedale. Sometimes more than that. Maybe not even in Lucedale. You don’t even ask for room numbers anymore. Sometimes you daydream about the moment you realize the Beast is never coming home, but you don’t know what that would feel like. If it would feel any different than now. How could you know the Beast is really never coming back?
You don’t daydream for Ajax the Dog to disappear. You’re not that cold. You’re colder, by not even daydreaming about it. You know it’s coming, know the only power you have is to decide to fail to keep the dog safe. You feel your hand loosening its grip on the leash when Ajax the Dog tenses up upon spotting a squirrel on the opposite sidewalk. You ease down to two walks a day, then one. Then once every other day. You have it in your power to make Ajax the Dog rebel, tear up the sofa, the curtains, you. But Ajax the Dog just looks at you like, You’re in charge. So you up the walks to five, six, nine. You walk once around the block, return home, take off the leash, wait for Ajax the Dog to lie down, jingle the leash, start the process over. Twelve times. Nineteen. Thirty. Your calves throb and you’ve got blisters on your left wrist where you wrap the leash end. You jingle the leash and Ajax the Dog stands up dutifully on wobbling legs. You see yourself in that dumb face, hate what you’ve become, and keep on being it.
