“She got me that dog because I liked the one on Frasier,” L.T.
would say. “That kind of dog’s a terrier, but I don’t remember now what they call that kind. A Jack something. Jack Sprat? Jack Robinson? Jack Shit? You know how a thing like that gets on the tip of your tongue?”
Somebody would tell him that Frasier’s dog was a Jack Russell terrier and L.T. would nod emphatically.
“That’s right!” he’d exclaim. “Sure! Exactly! That’s what Frank was, all right, a Jack Russell terrier. But you want to know the cold hard truth? An hour from now, that will have slipped away from me again – it’ll be there in my brain, but like something behind a rock. An hour from now, I’ll be going to myself, ‘What did that guy say Frank was? A Jack Handle terrier? A Jack Rabbit terrier?
That’s close, I know that’s close. . .’And so on. Why? I think because I just hated that little fuck so much. That barking rat. That fur-covered shit machine. I hated it from the first time I laid eyes on it. There. It’s out and I’m glad. And do you know what? Frank felt the same about me. It was hate at first sight.
“You know how some men train their dog to bring them their slippers? Frank wouldn’t bring me my slippers, but he’d puke in them. Yes. The first time he did it, I stuck my right foot right into it. It was like sticking your foot into warm tapioca with extra big lumps in it. Although I didn’t see him, my theory is that he waited outside the bedroom door until he saw me coming – fucking lurked outside the bedroom door – then went in, unloaded in my right slipper, then hid under the bed to watch the fun. I deduce that on the basis of how it was still warm. Fucking dog. Man’s best friend, my ass. I wanted to take it to the pound after that, had the leash out and everything, but Lulu threw an absolute shit fit. You would have thought she’d come into the kitchen and caught me trying to give the dog a drain-cleaner enema.
” ‘If you take Frank to the pound, you might as well take me to the pound,’ she says, starting to cry. ‘That’s all you think of him, and that’s all you think of me. Honey, all we are to you is nuisances you’d like to be rid of. That’s the cold hard truth.’ I mean, oh my bleeding piles, on and on.
” ‘He puked in my slipper,’ I says.
`The dog puked in his slipper so off with his head,’ she says. ‘Oh, sugarpie, if only you could hear yourself!’
” ‘Hey,’ I say, ‘you try sticking your bare foot into a slipper filled with dog puke and see how you like it.’ Getting mad by then, you know.
“Except getting mad at Lulu never did any good. Most times, if you had the king, she had the ace. If you had the ace, she had a trump. Also, the woman would fucking escalate. If something happened and I got irritated, she’d get pissed. If I got pissed, she’d get mad. If I got mad, she’d go fucking Red Alert Defcon I and empty the missile silos. I’m talking scorched flicking earth. Mostly it wasn’t worth it. Except almost every time we’d get into a fight, I’d forget that.
“She goes, ‘Oh dear. Maple duff stuck his wittle footie in a wittle spit-up.’ I tried to get in there, tell her that wasn’t right, spit-up is like drool, spit-up doesn’t have these big flicking chunks in it, but she won’t let me get a word out. By then she’s over in the passing lane and cruising, all pumped up and ready to teach school.
‘Let me tell you something, honey,’ she goes, ‘a little drool in your slipper is very minor stuff. You men slay me. Try being a woman sometimes, okay? Try always being the one that ends up laying with the small of your back in that come-spot, or the one that goes to the toilet in the middle of the night and the guy’s left the goddam ring up and you splash your can right down into this cold water.
Little midnight skindiving. The toilet probably hasn’t been flushed, either, men think the Urine Fairy comes by around two a.m. and takes care of that, and there you are, sitting crack-deep in piss, and all at once you realize your feet’re in it, too, you’re paddling around in Lemon Squirt because, although guys think they’re dead-eye Dick with that thing, most can’t shoot for shit, drunk or sober they gotta wash the goddam floor all around the toilet before they can even start the main event. All my life I’ve been living with this, honey – a father, four brothers, one ex-husband, plus a few
roommates that are none of your business at this late date-and you’re ready to send poor Frank off to the gas factory because just one time he happened to reflux a little drool into your slipper.’
” ‘My fur-lined slipper,’ I tell her, but it’s just a little shot back over my shoulder. One thing about living with Lulu, and maybe to my credit, I always knew when I was beat. When I lost, it was fucking decisive. One thing I certainly wasn’t going to tell her even though I knew it for a fact was that the dog puked in my slipper on purpose, the same way that he peed on my underwear on purpose if I forgot to put it in the hamper before I went off to work. She could leave her bras and pants scattered around from hell to Harvard –
and did – but if I left so much as a pair of athletic socks in the corner, I’d come home and find that fucking Jack Shit terrier had given it a lemonade shower. But tell her that? She would have been booking me time with a psychiatrist. She would have been doing that even though she knew it was true. Because then she might have had to take the stuff I was saying seriously, and she didn’t want to. She loved Frank, you see, and Frank loved her. They were like Romeo and Juliet or Rocky and Adrian.
“Frank would come to her chair while we were watching TV, lie down on the floor beside her, and put his muzzle on her shoe. Just lie there like that all night, looking up at her, all soulful and loving and with his butt pointed in my direction so if he should have to blow a little gas, I’d get the full benefit of it. He loved her and she loved him. Why? Christ knows. Love’s a mystery to everyone except the poets, I guess, and nobody sane can understand a thing they write about it. I don’t think most of them can understand it themselves on the rare occasions when they wake up and smell the coffee.
“But Lulubelle never gave me that dog so she could have it, let’s get that one thing straight. I know that some people do stuff like that – a guy’ll give his wife a trip to Miami because he wants to go there, or a wife’ll give her husband a NordicTrack because she
thinks he ought to do something about his gut – but this wasn’t that kind of deal. We were crazy in love with each other at the beginning; I know I was with her, and I’d stake my life she was with me. No, she bought that dog for me because I always laughed so hard at the one on Frasier. She wanted to make me happy, that’s all. She didn’t know Frank was going to take a shine to her, or her to him, no more than she knew the dog was going to dislike me so much that throwing up in one of my slippers or chewing the bottoms of the curtains on my side of the bed would be the high point of his day.”
L.T. would look around at the grinning men, not grinning himself, but he’d give his eyes that knowing, long – suffering roll, and they’d laugh again, in anticipation. Me too, likely as not, in spite of what I knew about the Axe Man.
“I haven’t ever been hated before,” he’d say, “not by man or beast, and it unsettled me a lot. It unsettled me bigtime. I tried to make friends with Frank – first for my sake, then for the sake of her that gave him to me – but it didn’t work. For all I know, he might’ve tried to make friends with me … with a dog, who can tell? If he did, it didn’t work for him, either. Since then I’ve read-in ‘Dear Abby,’ I think it was – that a pet is just about the worst present you can give a person, and I agree. I mean, even if you like the animal and the animal likes you, think about what that kind of gift says. ‘Say, darling, I’m giving you this wonderful present, it’s a machine that eats at one end and shits out the other, it’s going to run for fifteen years, give or take, merry fucking Christmas.’ But that’s the kind of thing you only think about after, more often than not. You know what I mean?