With leash in mouth, she scratched at the door.
“Aren’t you the perky one?” said Mrs. Waverly. “I’ll just get my clutch and we’ll be off.” They trotted outside. Mrs. Waverly said, “Once around the building should do it,” but Olivia dug in her heels and strained against her leash. She held out for the jogging trail at Riverside Park.
“Oh, you stubborn thing,” said Mrs. Waverly. “Well, okay. Let’s go to the park.”
Olivia broke into a jog the second they reached the sawdust trail. The old lady tried to keep up, but after a hundred paces, she dropped the leash and said in an out-of-breath voice, “Go on without me, Checkers.”
Olivia watched Mrs. Waverly sink onto a park bench to fan her brow, then ran five miles before returning. Mrs. Waverly was waiting on the bench, pretending not to notice the scruffy midget in a white, rough-coat dog suit who sweated and grunted as he humped her left leg.
“What are you, some sort of terrier?” growled Olivia. She bared her teeth, but didn’t snap.
“A Dandie Dinmont,” said the fellow, seeming quite proud of himself.
He was perfectly disgusting. She growled and opened her eyes wide so that the whites would show. She foamed at the mouth, and leapt toward him.
“That’s enough! Down, girl!” ordered Mrs. Waverly in an angry voice. She boxed Olivia’s ear.
Olivia whimpered, and hung her head in shame.
“Sorry about all this,” said the terrier’s owner, a man wearing a double-breasted suit. “Been meaning to get him fixed.” At that, the Dandie Dinmont yelped and took a few steps backward.
“He’s an adorable little pup,” said Mrs. Waverly with a sigh.
From then on, Mrs. Waverly instigated their walks. She conveniently dropped the leash at about the same spot near the bench every day, ordering Olivia to run on alone. Olivia wasn’t sure she liked this tactic. On the plus side, she lost a few pounds and her leg muscles became hard as biscuits. She tried not to be jealous of the Dandie Dinmont, though whenever she saw him, a growl escaped her lips. Mrs. Waverly seemed to call her “bad dog” more than she called her “Checkers.”
Olivia was finding it difficult to contain her growing resentment. The repetition that had once seemed comforting now caused boredom. The menu never varied: water and unseasoned chopped sirloin. The clip clop of her toes across the floor gave her a headache. One night, she refused Mrs. Waverly’s cajoling to be licked on the face. Mrs. Waverly punished her by sending her to bed without a biscuit.
The next afternoon, as Mrs. Waverly watched a syndicated rerun of Frasier, laughing especially hard when the little dog came onstage, Olivia wondered if she might be depressed. She called the vet, who assured her it was normal to spend large parts of her day napping. She called Buzz to ask if he had any other jobs, but he reminded her she still owed fifty dollars on the suit. In agony, she hung her head out the window and howled at the moon.
“I don’t need your moping, you bad dog,” said Mrs. Waverly after dinner. “Take the night off.” She gave Olivia ten dollars and directions to a neighborhood bar. “Go get drunk, why don’t you?” she said.
Olivia carried the money in her mouth. She jogged to the bar, but when she arrived, a familiar feeling of timidity overwhelmed her. She did her best to blend into the woodwork. This was much easier than she might have guessed, considering her size and the fact that she was wearing a dog suit. She sat at the bar and tried to order a Black and White, but the bartender said to slow down, that he could not understand her woofing. A smart-aleck in a loose green bird suit sat beside her, and introduced himself as Paulo. The music was so loud she didn’t catch his last name. In his squawky voice he told the bartender to bring them both drinks.
When she spit out the wad of green, Paulo waved his hand and said, “I don’t want your money. Please.”
She smiled and barked her thanks. He seemed to understand every nuance of her voice.
“Shall we dance?” he asked, and she agreed. He stood several inches shorter than she, and was walking stick-skinny, with pale, almost translucent skin. He danced across the dance floor like a cloud wafting across sky. He let her spin him around a time or two. She realized with a blush that she could easily lift him up and carry him out the door anytime she wanted. She wanted that very much right now. Her face felt hot with embarrassment and longing. He asked what was wrong, and she confessed her thoughts.
“Why don’t you?” he said, with a gap-toothed smile, so she did.
He took her to his place. Paulo worked as a parrot for a nearsighted professor in Southeast, who was away birding at the moment on an overnighter with the Audubon Society. The poor professor was a widower, a bird enthusiast who was severely allergic to mites and dander. All that flying around the house had sculpted Paulo’s pectorals into unbelievable shape, considering. When she flexed her own muscles for Paulo he whistled. His whistle was the most beautiful music she had ever heard.
They sat on a swing in his bird cage and talked for what seemed like hours. They kissed good night, and just before breaking apart, Paulo let his hand slide from her shoulder to the small of her back and then downward to her buttocks. A shiver ran from the base of her spine up to her neck as he gently petted her fur. She blew a kiss against his neck, a symbolic ruffling of his feathers. Reluctantly, she left for home.
He called the next morning.
Mrs. Waverly seemed upset, but let Olivia use the phone, though she wiped down the receiver with alcohol after.
Olivia had arranged to meet Paulo at the park. On their walk, Mrs. Waverly dropped the leash near the bench. Instead of her usual resentment, Olivia felt a lightness flowing through her. She ran forward and spotted Paulo. They fell upon each other, and rolled across the jogging track. She got a sawdust bum on her behind, but kissing him was worth it.
Maybe people needed pets for the same reason people needed to be pets—because they couldn’t bear to be alone, yet couldn’t bear to be with other people. Her feelings for Paulo frightened her, but he was so persistent, she so needy, that she could not hold them back. She told him her real name.
She began to suspect Mrs. Waverly had stopped caring for her after the biscuit jar ran dry and wasn’t refilled. Her suspicions were confirmed when the chopped sirloin degraded into ground round—15 percent—and soon after to canned Iams, then Purina, then the store brand. One morning, as Olivia lay on her mattress lazily snapping at flies, Mrs. Waverly sneaked up beside her and smacked her rump with the paper. It all happened so quickly there was no time to react.
“Buzz says I can’t put you down or I would,” said Mrs. Waverly. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
Her woof failed her; she resorted to words. “But why?” asked Olivia.
“Let’s just say I want something a little smaller and cuter,” said Mrs. Waverly.
Olivia understood that she was talking about the Dandie Dinmont. That hurt, badly enough that when Mrs. Waverly wasn’t looking, Olivia peed in one of her fuzzy pink slippers. She left a message on Buzz’s voice mail, saying she’d be in touch, and walked out the door. She stood on the sidewalk, unsure of which way to go. She was an actress! Not a possession to be discarded. In a flash of anger, she found herself chasing a grey squirrel into the street. She watched with horror as the little beast was run down by a car.
Tears would not come to her; she howled inconsolably. A man walked by and yelled at her to be quiet. She crept down an alley to look for food in the garbage bins, and there she found a half-eaten Polish sausage, a package of oyster crackers, and a sliver of leather from an old wallet. She bit down on the leather and trotted away to the park. Curling up beneath the park bench, she chewed the leather into mush. Eventually, she fell asleep.