You Lucky Dog

by Julia London

  How the hell had she gotten her days mixed up? How could it be Tuesday? She thought it was Monday. Where did Monday go? How did a person forget a Monday . . . unless, maybe, you were working every day, including weekends. The last time she and Lydia spoke, Lydia had insisted Carly was the one with the scheduling problem. “You work all the time,” she’d complained.

  Wait—Tuesday was also the day her dog walker took Baxter on his walk. “You have got to be kidding me,” she muttered as the imposter dog padded out of the kitchen, water dripping from her jowls and leaving a trail across Carly’s hardwood floors.

  She texted Phil back, said she’d see him at the studio at five, which was impossible, then squatted down and started shoving things back into her tote bag. She had schedules to keep. Deadlines to meet. These photos of a young fashion designer’s collection were going to Ramona McNeil, the influential creative director at Couture magazine. Couture was one of the premier fashion magazines in the country, and it was the holy grail for someone like her client Victor Allen.

  It was the holy grail for her, too. Carly currently had two applications submitted for vacant positions at the magazine. One, in marketing and publicity. One, in the creative department. In the meantime, she’d worked her ass off to get Victor noticed, and considered it a feather in her cap that she’d succeeded.

  Carly needed these photos and she was not going to be derailed by an imposter dog. She shoved her bag onto her shoulder and ran down the hall to find the dog, grabbing a leash off a peg in the entry on her way.

  She found the basset hound in the bathroom with one of Carly’s very expensive shoes between her paws. Carly cried out with alarm. She dove for the shoe as the dog’s tail wagged. “Are you crazy? You must have a death wish,” she said, and tossed the shoe onto her bathroom counter. “Come on. You’re riding along. I obviously can’t leave you here alone and, by the way, you owe me a couch pillow,” she said as she hooked up the leash on the dog’s collar. “An expensive couch pillow, too, because I bought that one when I had a job.” She rubbed the dog’s head and caressed its back a moment. “We have to get out of here before you eat my house.”

  The dog responded with excited tail wagging as she trotted alongside Carly on their way down the hall. “If you’re wondering who is responsible for this disaster? It’s Brant, your former dog walker.” She opened her front door. “Just so you know, he’s a dead man walking, so FYI, you may not be romping around Lady Bird Lake next week. He’s dead just as soon as I get Baxter back.” The dog gazed up at her with adoration. “No offense, Bubbles.”

  Judging by the wag of her tail, it didn’t appear that any offense was taken.

  * * *

  On the way to the studio, Carly cautioned Little Miss Sunshine in the back seat to be on her best behavior when they arrived. Her client, the youthful and phenomenal fashion designer Victor Allen, was doing some different and colorful things with his hair these days and, on occasion, he appeared to be dressed for Halloween.

  “So no barking,” Carly said. “I have only two clients and I can’t afford to lose either of them. Got it?” She looked in the rearview mirror, but all she could see was the back half of the dog and that furiously wagging tail. Bubbles had her head out the window.

  “Victor is going to be huge in the fashion world if I can get him through the New Designer Showcase without killing him. And, yes, that is why I am wearing this mess,” she said as they inched across town in heavy traffic. “Don’t judge.”

  Bubbles surged forward to lick her face. “Yeah, okay,” Carly said. She pushed the dog back before she wiped her cheek of her slobbery kiss. “I still can’t believe this happened, can you? I mean, having the wrong day, the wrong dog . . .” She sighed. “Well, whatever, it happened, and, like Megan says, I don’t have time to dwell on it because I am dwelling on solutions.” She glanced in the rearview mirror to see if the dog bought any of that. Bubbles was sitting in the middle of the seat now. Her tongue was hanging from one side of her mouth. She was panting as she stared out the front windshield like she hadn’t heard a word.

  For what it was worth, Carly didn’t buy it, either.

  The light turned green, but the cars stacked up at the light in front of her didn’t move. Carly instructed her car to call Brant. Not surprisingly, given the magnitude of his screwup, the call rolled to his voice mail.

  “Brant! This is Carly Kennedy. You know, the one with the depressed basset hound? Well, guess what? You put a happy basset hound in my house! I want my depressed hound back! How could you do that? Where is Baxter? Whose dog is this? Call me back immediately!”

  She ended the call and muttered her opinion of Brant the Dog Walker. The line of cars began to move, and she shot forward. In the back seat, Bubbles had stuffed her nose into a crack between the two back seats, snorting loudly. But then something outside caught her attention and she surged to the window and released a deep, baying howl of joy.

  When they reached the studio, Carly grabbed her tote bag, the dog’s leash, and dashed inside.

  She didn’t know what she expected—probably Victor and Phil pacing around each other, the models antsy . . . but no. Victor, with his rainbow hair and hand-painted jeans, was on a skateboard, slowly moving around the two models who were sitting on plastic chairs, their gazes on their phones. Phil was sprawled on his back on the beat-up earth brown couch that looked as if it had been picked up off the street.

  “I made it!” Carly shouted, as if she’d just swum across the English Channel to get here.

  “Great.” Phil slowly rolled up to a sitting position. He yawned.

  Victor stopped skating and maneuvered his board around to face her. He looked her up and down and shook his head. “That’s not how you’re supposed to wear that.” He hopped off his board and strode across the room to her. He forced her arms into a T and began pulling and tugging at the weird wraparound jumpsuit thingy she was wearing.

  Victor was twenty years to her twenty-eight, but sometimes the age gap felt much greater. He was still at that young and dumb age about so many things in life. The sole exception was fashion, and in that he had the talent to lead the charge into fashion-forward designs like a boy king. He was a creative genius, and that was not hyperbole.

  “Hey, Bax,” Victor said to the very interested basset who was sniffing around his sneakers.

  “That’s not Baxter,” Carly said as Victor jerked her around so that her back was to him. She had to drop the leash so as not to get tangled in it.

  Victor snorted. “Yeah, it is. I’m looking right at him.”

  “So funny thing,” Carly said. “This dog looks like Baxter, but it’s—”

  Victor put his hands on her waist and made her twist again.

  “But it’s not Baxter. There was a mix-up with the dog walker and somehow I—”

  “Hey, are we going to do this, or are we going to talk about dogs?” Phil asked, and unfolded his lanky self from the couch.

  “Yeah,” Victor said. He stood back and examined her for a moment, then gave a nod of approval. “But listen. I’m hungry.”

  Carly waited for him to finish his thought. That apparently was the entirety of his thought.

  “Hungry for what?” Phil asked.

  Victor shrugged. “Whataburger?”

  “I’d be down for that,” Phil said.

  Victor looked at the models. “How about you ladies?”

  “Fries,” one of them said without looking up from her phone. The other one held up two fingers to indicate two orders.

  “What . . . you mean like now?” Carly asked, looking around at her assortment of fashion people.

  “Now,” Phil said.

  “You told me you’d give me thirty minutes,” she reminded him. “You said not a minute longer.”

  “I’ll give you an hour if there is a Whataburger in my future,” Phil said, and crouched down to
pet Bubbles.

  “Car-ly.” Victor often said her name like that, as if he’d just remembered who she was. “I’m like, so hungry.”

  He couldn’t have told her this on her way in? He had to wait until everyone was assembled and Phil was donating his free time to decide he wanted a burger? This was the thing that drove her crazy about Victor and his rainbow hair—he could be so creative and yet act like an impetuous teen.

  Sometimes Carly couldn’t help but wonder how he had managed to accomplish what he had. Victor was an Austin phenom. When he was eight, he was creating looks in the family’s game room. When he was fifteen, he was working on a team to design juvenile looks for Gucci. At the age of eighteen, he’d become the youngest contestant to ever win Project Runway. He’d designed a red-carpet look for a popular television actress that had garnered a lot of national attention. But that attention came with a price—Victor couldn’t handle the fame. He’d been caught drinking underage at a bar in Nashville. He’d made a comment that some mistook as body shaming. His response to media inquiries about his behavior was to threaten to punch people. He gained a reputation for not showing up when he was supposed to, for not delivering on his designs when he’d given his commitment. And then, he’d just disappeared.

  Now, at twenty, he was ready to make a comeback. He was going to have his first solo show at the New Designer Showcase in the run-up to New York Fashion Week in February. It was by invitation only, and Victor had been asked to participate because his work was on fire.

  One would think that Victor would have had a publicist in place after all his early success. Someone to help guide him. But he didn’t until Carly came along.

  She was still working at DBS when she came across Victor’s pop-up shop on South Congress Avenue. She’d thought his aesthetic was very interesting and had googled him out of curiosity. That’s when she’d learned about his antics outside the fashion world. “Wow,” she’d muttered as she’d perused the Google listings about him one rainy evening. “Way to blow it, dude.”

  It wasn’t long after seeing his pop-up that Carly was laid off. At first, she’d been shocked. Then incredibly pissed. And then she’d skipped over a few steps of the grieving process and gone straight to determined to make it, thanks to the encouragement of her former college roommate, Naomi Burrows.

  At Naomi’s insistence, Carly had flown to New York to hang out with her for a couple of weeks. “You can’t mope,” Naomi had advised her. “You can’t walk around like the little match girl, all downtrodden and shit. You’ve got to get out of your own head. What you need is a change of pace and a change of location.”

  Carly knew better than to argue. Naomi was used to telling people what to do. She was the assistant to a big-time literary agent, and she worked with authors, which, Naomi said, turned a person into a boss. “It’s amazing,” she’d once told Carly, “these people write such incredible books, but can’t put a schedule together. You have to take them by the hand and lead them.”

  Carly didn’t know what that meant exactly, but Naomi loved her job and she was always talking about publisher parties and book launches, and she was good at taking people by the hand and leading them. So Carly took Naomi’s advice and flew to New York.

  She’d only ever been to New York for quick work-related trips, but until she stayed with Naomi and her roommates in Manhattan, she had never really been to New York. For those two glorious weeks, Carly lived more, partied more, slept more, and genuinely laughed more than she had in her whole life. She felt like she was living inside a Sex and the City episode. She was Carrie Bradshaw! Well, maybe Miranda . . . but still.

  Naomi and her roommates went out every night, and every night, there were guys around, flirting and teasing and, wow, Carly had never been around so many eligible men. Naomi and her friends did not seem to care that they were crammed into a two-bedroom apartment where they’d converted a dining alcove into a third bedroom. Carly spent the entire two weeks sharing a bed with Naomi.

  But it was worth it. Carly accompanied Naomi to a book launch at a swank hotel that made her feel like she’d hit some jackpot. She attended a book signing at the Strand with a famous author and felt very cosmopolitan. While Naomi worked, Carly took in all the tourist sights and visited museums, and even stopped in at the Ritz-Carlton for a thirty-dollar cocktail.

  Naomi was right—Carly had needed the change of scenery. She began to believe her mistake was limiting her life to Austin, whereas in New York, she could see endless possibilities stretching before her. What did she have holding her at home besides a crazy family? And, frankly, a break from them would be good for everyone.

  By the time Carly returned from that two-week sabbatical, she knew what she wanted. She was going to get a job in New York and live entirely on her own. She was going to go out every night and visit museums, and read lots of books and go to book signings and art openings. She was going to dine out and order in and laugh with colleagues about how she didn’t even own a frying pan. She was going to work out and look great and wear the latest fashions so that when she dashed across the street, people would stop and look and wonder Who is that girl?

  Carly had marched into this new vision for herself with a lot of optimism and this-was-meant-to-be chutzpah. Back in Austin, in her eagerness to get on with it, she’d discovered Big Girl Panties. After glomming the podcast backlist, her enthusiasm for New York and the unlimited possibilities for a woman her age with her skill set only grew.

  Unfortunately, she wasn’t having much luck on the job front. She scoured the job listings every day in search of a good fit. Hell, she’d even take a mediocre fit. All she needed was a foot in the door. But until she could insert that foot into some door, she was going to need a source of income. Megan said one should never underestimate her own power. Maybe, Carly thought, she could build some sort of portfolio to help her on the job front. Gain more experience to attach to her résumé. She would have to create this experience, she realized, and thought maybe she could pick up a couple of local clients, and . . .

  And the idea of Victor just popped into her head. If anyone had ever needed expertise in public relations and marketing, it was that young diamond in the rough. So armed with her determination and those episodes of Big Girl Panties, Carly had hunted him down and had convinced him to hire her.

  Actually, she’d convinced Victor’s mother to hire her.

  June Allen was slender and statuesque. She was always impeccably dressed in tailored clothes, the polar opposite of her son’s aesthetic. She’d been a lawyer, but when Victor’s career had begun to develop, she’d stopped practicing to manage him. Victor’s parents were divorced, and his father lived in Boca Raton. Carly didn’t have the impression that Victor had much contact with him. The only thing he’d ever said was that his dad “didn’t get him.”

  But his mother got him, and Carly convinced June to take the meeting where she made her well-rehearsed pitch: Victor needed help with his press and his public image. He needed great publicity for his fashion show. He needed Carly Kennedy Public Relations, and she’d laid out all the reasons why.

  Victor had sat on the brown couch in the studio, his long legs spread insouciantly, surrounded by his creations in various stages of construction. He kept twirling his ball cap on the edge of his forefinger. He seemed at times to be somewhere else. But June was intent on everything Carly had said that day. She’d agreed that Victor needed help. She’d urged her son to give Carly a shot.

  Victor said nothing to all of it, and, honestly, Carly thought it was a bust. She told herself she’d given it her best shot. No one can ask more from you than you do your best, Megan had whispered in her ear. But then, Victor raised his arms overhead in something of a stretch, pushed himself up to sit straighter, and asked one question, “Can I dress you?”

  Carly’s heart had begun to pound with excitement. He had heard her. “Are you kidding? I would insist.”


  And that was why Carly was wearing Victor Allen right now. She wore it every chance she could. Victor was so talented! He would be a huge success! It was her job to promote him wherever she went! But . . .

  But.

  His clothes were not her style. Lord, not even close. She’d thought his aesthetic was interesting, but she’d never wanted to actually wear it. He was an avant-garde designer, a Betsey Johnson on steroids with his giant shoulders and superlong sleeves. Nonetheless, Carly wore his clothes. She worked hard for Victor.

  Carly really did love the challenge of getting a talented person noticed for the right reasons, and Victor definitely was a challenge. It had taken her exhaustive hours to get his image rehabilitated. She’d booked magazine interviews, blog tours, appearances on regional morning talk shows. She’d talked June into paying for a website and had negotiated a rock-bottom price for a top-dollar design of it. She’d gotten him in front of YouTube vloggers and Instagram influencers and written so many press releases for so many different channels of publicity that she felt she’d given birth to him herself. And the cherry on the top of her sundae, she had the invitation to share his designs with Ramona McNeil.

  With only a few weeks to go to the showcase, Victor was being heralded as the next great designer. Thank you, Carly Kennedy! She’d almost single-handedly elevated his image, for very little money, and she was very proud of that, particularly because Victor had been absolutely no help. To this day, after months of working together, he still didn’t see the difference between a publicist and a lackey.

  “So . . . you’re going to get burgers, right?” Victor asked.

  “You really want me to go get burgers?” It was less a question than a statement.

  “Maybe you could have them delivered,” one of the models suggested.

  “Nah, she can go. It’s just a mile or so down the road,” Victor said. He hopped on his skateboard and began to move around the studio. Bubbles thought that was super exciting and began to bark and romp alongside him.