“Your wife has no control over your dog!” she barked.
I raised an eyebrow in Lia’s direction over the marital status assumption but didn’t correct the woman. Lia seemed too upset to notice.
“I tried to hold onto him, Evan—I swear!” Lia started to cry harder. “I couldn’t keep my grip, and he ran off! The next thing I know, he’s…he’s…”
“He violated my baby!” the woman roared as she indicated the well-groomed dog now sitting on the ground next to her, licking at her own nether-regions.
I looked over to my dog, who sat panting in front of Lia’s feet, looking very proud of himself. It wasn’t difficult to assess the situation for what it was, and I had to grin and waggle my eyebrows at my buddy.
The woman continued to fume.
“We couldn’t pull them apart,” Lia said meekly.
“You were hardly trying!” the woman shouted. “It was all I could do to keep Gretta calm!”
“He growled at me!”
“Hey!” I snapped at Odin, who immediately dropped to the ground and put his nose on his paws. I pointed over at Lia. “Don’t growl at her!”
“You should have been here earlier!” the woman said as she turned to me. “He was completely out of control! Do you realize what he did?”
It was pretty obvious.
“He fucked your dog?” I tried to make it sound like a question though I didn’t have any doubt. I folded my arms across my chest and glared at the woman.
“She was supposed to be bred with another Caucasian Shepherd later this week!”
I leaned to the side to peer around the woman at the dog in the grass, who was still concentrating on her own after-care.
“You mean you brought your in-heat bitch out here in the open for any other dog to smell and go nuts about her?” I cocked a thumb toward Odin. “And now you’re surprised he got a little horny?”
“She was on her leash and in my control the whole time!”
“Then why didn’t you stop her from spreading her legs?”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” she snapped back at me. “We were just standing there when your beast attacked!”
“She kinda looks like she enjoyed it,” I pointed out. The bitch was still licking herself but seemed just as happy about the whole thing as Odin did.
Lia was visibly upset; the woman was irate, and I thought the whole situation was hilarious.
I reached out and took Odin’s leash from Lia, then stepped in front of her a bit so I was between her and the woman with the—very likely impregnated—dog.
“You are as insolent as your mutt!” the woman informed me.
“Probably more so,” I said with a nod. “Look, it happened—can’t change that now. If she does have pups, I’ll pay for it, okay?”
“You’ll pay the cost of the litter she was supposed to have!” the woman demanded.
“How much is that?”
“She could have had as many as ten of them,” the woman said with a smirk. “At two thousand a piece, you do the math!”
“Twenty grand for a bunch of dogs?” I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. I’ll pay you based on how many pups she does have.”
“I would have bred her multiple times with the stud dog,” the woman informed me. She gave me a nasty little smirk to go with her attitude. “She would have had more.”
“Then let him fuck her a couple more times,” I suggested. “He could use the action.”
“Most certainly not!”
“Then the deal stands.” I took a step forward and leaned closer to the woman. I made sure I was right up in her face and staring down at her before I dropped my voice low. “I suggest you take it because the humor of this situation is starting to wane a bit. You don’t want me pissed off, or I might decide to just take a clothes hanger and fix the whole situation. Capisce?”
I didn’t tend to use Italian as much as my co-workers, but quite frankly, sometimes it made the point better than English. The woman took a step back as I lifted my eyebrows and stared her down. She obviously picked up on my meaning, huffed her agreement, and then hauled her dog back toward the apartment entrance.
“Jesus, Evan!” Lia whispered as the woman scurried away.
“It’s all right,” I said, trying to sound reassuring. “I don’t know if I could have cock-blocked him under those circumstances either.”
I snickered a little, grinned down at Odin, and started back to the apartment.
“That’s not what I meant,” Lia muttered as she fell into step with me.
“What, then?”
“You practically threatened her!”
I shrugged one shoulder.
“It shut her up, didn’t it?”
“Not the point.”
“What is the point?” I sighed and opened the door for Lia and me to enter with Odin prancing behind me, still looking self-satisfied and downright cocky.
“What if she calls the police?”
“For what? Me offering to pay her for her fucking dogs?”
“No, for threatening to violently abort them!”
“I wouldn’t have done that,” I scoffed. “Besides, at that point, it would be her word against mine.”
“I was a witness you know.”
I stopped for a minute and looked at her.
“Are you saying you’d speak out against me?” I watched her carefully, wondering if she would really do that. I was used to running in the kind of circles where that offense would be punishable by death, and I was a little taken aback that she’d consider it. My skin went a little cold at the idea.
“Are you saying you would ask me to lie for you?”
“Yes.” I kept looking at her, waiting for her to respond, but she just seemed dumbfounded. I was a little pissed but figured the conversation was over and she understood where I was coming from, so I made my way back to the apartment with Odin trailing behind and Lia remaining silent.
At least, she did until we got inside.
“I have no idea whether you’re serious or not,” she said.
I walked into the kitchen and started to rummage around in the fridge. I didn’t reply to her because I didn’t see any point in answering. The whole conversation was making me mad, and I honestly didn’t know how to deal with it.
My idea of conflict resolution just didn’t fit the situation.
Avoidance was my next best option, but Lia seemed hell-bent on keeping me from doing that.
“You said you wouldn’t really hurt that dog, but then you would expect me to lie for you. How am I supposed to know when you mean it and when you don’t?”
I opened up one of the drawers in the refrigerator, but I only looked in the direction of the food that was in there. None of the actual contents were registering inside my agitated brain. I closed the drawer and then pushed some of the containers around to see what was behind them.
“Are you even listening to me?” Lia asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Then why aren’t you saying anything?”
“I’m hungry.”
“Do you think this might be a little more important?”
I backed away and slammed the fridge door hard enough that the contents rattled.
“No,” I said, “I don’t. I think this is total bullshit.”
Lia started to open her mouth, but that’s when my phone rang. I was thrilled for the interruption and grabbed it out of my pocket immediately. I didn’t recognize the number, but I answered just to get myself out of the argument with Lia.
“Yeah?” I said into the phone.
“Open the fucking door,” the unfortunately familiar voice on the other end said.
As if I wasn’t pissed off enough.
Trent stood in the hallway looking like the rat-bastard he was when I opened the door, but I blocked him from coming inside.