Nacho Unleashed

by Laurence Shames

  But okay, enough of that.

  Master eventually pulls his sweater on. It musses up his hair, and of course he won’t be seen in public until he fixes it. This burns another ten minutes, but by the time he’s finished he looks pretty spiffy. He always does. And no one but me sees the effort that’s gone into it.

  Later that same day we finally head to Albin’s. After all the delays, I’m so eager to get there that I barely stop to sniff at anything. Favorite bushes, hydrants, telephone poles—I blow right past. I barely even stop to pee. Couple of places, I come to a sort of half-halt, lift a leg, start the stream, then I’m pulling at the leash again before I’ve even finished. I’m dribbling all the way down the street. I realize this is what some people would call TMI. I’m just trying to convey my urgency. ‘Nuff said.

  Eventually we reach the high, wooden compound gate and Master rings the bell. The gate swings open and standing there is…Albin. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely fond of Albin and the last thing I would want to do is hurt his feelings by making it seem like I’m not happy to see him. So I manage a couple of tail-wags and an ankle lick, just to be polite. But, the whole time, I’m inching my way along the gravel path, kicking back pebbles as I go, straining forward and hoping, with a lover’s aching hope, that Rita is around.

  Then, at long last, I see her, sitting at a small table by the pool, a kibble bowl and coffee cup in front of her. She’s wearing a blue jumper. Her short black hair is glistening in the damp air. She notices me and her face lights up. I don’t just mean she smiles. Her eyes get wider, the lids translucent; her jaw softens, her forehead and the skin at her temples take on a glow. Trust me, dogs know how to read a human face. I feel the realness of her welcome and a thrill goes all through me.

  I bolt. I’ll never know for sure if Master means to let go of the leash or if I yank it from his hand by the sheer force of my desire. Doesn’t matter; either way, I’m free. I sprint straight toward Rita, but at the last moment I have to negotiate a hard left turn around a lounge chair. The chair is right next to the pool and the tiles are damp and slick. This I hadn’t counted on. I go into a major skid. My body starts slipping sideways, my momentum squeezing my vital organs against my ribcage and bending me like a sausage, my toenails ticking uselessly against the ground, going faster and faster but getting me nowhere. For a panicked moment I’m pretty sure I’ll be landing in the pool, which would be a complete humiliation and disaster. I can’t swim worth a damn. I’d probably need to be fished out like a dead rat in the skimmer. I’d look like an idiot. What a pathetic way to make a courtship entrance.

  But thank God for my low center of gravity. My paws finally regain a grip; once again I’m heading where I’m facing, and I arrive, panting, at Rita’s feet. She reaches down to pet me before I’ve even quite stopped moving.

  Finally the payoff! Ecstasy! Rapture! She’s scratching me behind the ears and on the little cleft at the top of my head. Her bold and affectionate fingers reach right inside my vest to cup my torso; my heart is pounding in her palm. She stoops low and brings her face down close to mine. We’re almost touching eyeballs; I can see the bright flecks in her dark blue eyes. She makes a cooing sound. I flick out my tongue and lick her on the lips; I taste coffee, human-style kibble, the sweetness of banana.

  Then, a bonus, more than I’d even dared to wish for. She wraps me in those firm but gentle hands and scoops me up into her lap. Her lap! I’m so thrilled to be there that I fidget and wriggle for a moment, but then, quite suddenly, my long-held excitement melts into a delicious languor. I go limp and lie there very still, immobilized by contentment. All I want from life right now is to stay exactly where I am, my body sprawled across the nest of Rita’s thighs, my head pillowed by her tummy. Surrounded by her. I can feel her breathing in and out. I hear the soft gurgling of her stomach, comforting and secret. I take in a whole garden of yummy smells. The salt-and-sunshine smell of laundry dried on a clothesline. Eucalyptus soap, peppermint shampoo, skin lotion redolent of aloe and papaya. And underlying all those delicious fragrances, one that’s so much harder to describe. The smell of Rita. How can I explain it? A healthy smell? A smell like laughter? The clean smell of a clear conscience? Anyway, it’s the smell that would be left if all the added-on ones were scrubbed away, leaving only the essence of this one person’s skin and bones and blood and breath and personality; this one person’s and nobody else’s.

  Anyway, I’m more than a little bit drunk with everything I’m feeling, so I barely notice the conversation that’s started up around me. By the time I zone back in, Albin is sort of teasing Rita about a certain appointment she has that evening. Master, nosey as always, wants to know what kind of appointment. Turns out it’s a date. I hear that word and I feel a sudden stab of jealousy. This is ridiculous, I realize. She’s a woman, I’m a dog. Ridiculous. Then again, when is jealousy not ridiculous?

  Like it’s any of his business, Master now wants to know who the date is with. Rita pauses before answering, and all kinds of revealing things happen in the pause. Her lap gets warmer, the muscles in her legs tense up a bit. Her aromas get more vivid, sharper. The hand she’s petting me with grows just slightly damp. Truth is, whether it’s visible to the human eye or not, she’s blushing all over, head to toe, blushing everywhere, and my stupid jealousy goes through the roof. Who is this guy who gets her so excited, and what’s he got that I don’t have—except maybe testicles, a human genome, and the ability to walk on his hind legs?

  Finally, she says, “His name is Anthony.”

  “Works at the distillery,” Albin explains. “Sort of an office romance except there isn’t any office.”

  “And it isn’t a romance,” Rita says. I badly want to believe this, but I can’t. Laps don’t lie. “We’re just having a drink.”

  “That’s how it started wit’ my wife,” says Master. “Coupla highballs, couple more, jumped inta the sack, married fifty-seven years. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.”

  “I don’t need warning, thank you.”

  So they’re bantering back and forth, and at some point I jump down from Rita’s lap. This is not planned, it just sort of happens, and for a moment I don’t even know why. Why did I trade the best seat in the house—the best seat in the world!—for a spot on the hard, dank pool tiles? Gradually, I figure it out. I left Rita’s lap because it hurt too much to stay there, knowing that I’d never be her one and only. I was just too wounded in my vanity, disappointed in my preposterous hopes. Crestfallen, I guess the word is. Or maybe heartbroken comes closer.

  But who was I spiting down there on the clammy ground? Only myself. And it’s not like Rita had done anything unfair or unkind or even could have been expected to understand my feelings. Romance-wise, she preferred a male of her own species. That’s biology, I guess. Insane to take it personally.

  So I’m lying on the tiles in my sodden vest, trying to get over my defeat and readjust my expectations a little more in line with reality. I will never be Rita’s sweetheart. I will never make her blush all over. She likes me as a dog, but that’s as far as it goes. I get that now and I’m okay with it. Sort of. Up to a point.

  Problem is, I’m still in love with her—the way she smells, the way she pets, her posture as she sits there at her little table—so there’s my big dilemma. Do I let my pride and hurt feelings come between us, or do I try to rise above my disappointment and find a way to keep us close? A human suitor, I expect, would walk off in a huff and that would be the end of it. Luckily, though, we dogs have a humble but very useful knack for accepting what is offered and not spoiling the gift by insisting on more. So I look at the bright side of my relationship with Rita. What has she offered me? Affection. Lots of affection, and a warm greeting whenever I show up. These are no small things. How could I not be grateful for them? What sort of churlish mutt would refuse to return them in kind just because his wildly unrealistic hopes had once upon a time been dashed?

  So there, I’ve made my peace with it. Most
ly. Sort of. If I can’t be Rita’s sweetheart, I will be her friend. Her most devoted friend, unfailingly selfless, endlessly loyal, always cheerful in her presence. True, it’s type-casting for a dog, but at least it’s a role in which I can’t be casually aced out by some guy on two legs. With what I hope is chivalry or at least good sportsmanship, I accept that that’s the deal.

  But jeez, it had sure felt wonderful being in her lap.

  24

  T hat evening it was sweater weather in Key West, which made it easy to tell the locals from the tourists at the Schooner Wharf bar. The locals were the folks with sweaters on. The tourists had no sweaters. They’d left them home in Ohio or Michigan or Toronto. They’d gone to Florida to be warm and never even imagined a person could be cold there. Now they were freezing and trying to pretend they weren’t as they drank their beers and shuffled their stiff sandaled feet underneath the tables.

  Rita, being more than a tourist though not yet a full-fledged local, had one sweater to her name, a fuzzy blue mohair whose wispy fibers tickled her neck. Anthony, who’d lived in Key West longer, owned several sweaters, but he was seldom sure where any of them were, and besides, he was not a person who gave a lot of thought to what he wore. He was dressed this evening in an old fleece pullover the color of drying mud. It was thin at the elbows and Rita could see the underlying weave there. Since she’d already decided she liked him, she found his indifference to clothing artistic and cool.

  They sat at a small table midway between the bandstand and the glinting black water of the Bight. A guy with a guitar was playing all the usual Jimmy Buffett songs, serviceable covers, neither good nor bad, loud enough to give the place a buzz, not too loud for conversation. Blenders whined; shakers rattled. They ordered beers. Anthony was craning his neck and blinking around at everything, sort of like a man who’s just been released from a hospital. Finally he said, “Thanks for inviting me out. Definitely something I should do more. I seem to need reminding, though.”

  “Happy to help,” she said. The beers arrived. They clinked and drank straight from the bottle. “So if you don’t get out much, what do you do when you’re not at work?”

  He gave a little shrug, mostly with his eyebrows. They rode up and crinkled his forehead, which in turn moved his crown of unruly hair. “Not too damn much. Read a little. Study a little. Try to get a little better at what I do. But usually I’m way too tired to accomplish much.”

  “I envy how hard you work.”

  He laughed and his Adam’s apple shuttled up and down. “Envy it? That I work fourteen hour days and obsess about it the other ten?”

  “That you have something to care about that much. I don’t think many people do. People use their talents kind of half-assed. Kind of a waste, really.”

  Anthony said nothing, looked off to the side.

  “Something to care about that much,” she went on. “That’s what I’m hoping to find. Been hoping to find it for as long as I can remember. Never even entered my mind that maybe I’d find it in the rum business.”

  She looked straight at him as she said this but his eyes slipped away from her gaze.

  “The tasting room thing,” she continued. “At the start it just seemed like one more job. Now I’m starting to wonder if maybe there’s a future in it.”

  “Juanita, listen—”

  “Rita.”

  “Rita. I’m sorry, I really should have it straight by now. Just have a shitload of stuff on my mind. Rita, listen, for your own good, I don’t think you should be banking on a future in the rum business right now.”

  “Why do men keep telling me what my own good is?”

  “Did I make it sound that way? I’m sorry. All I’m saying, I’m saying I don’t think you should be planning your future at Wreckers.”

  She took that in, looked down at her beer, sipped a little. “I’m not good enough? I don’t know enough? Is that it? Look, I’m a newbie, I’ve never denied it, but I’m a helluva good worker. And even you said—”

  “That you have amazing instincts. Which you do. It’s not your fault. It’s just the situation. The situation isn’t great right now. I really can’t say more about it.”

  She crossed her arms. Some fibers from the fuzzy sweater tickled her chin. Music and bar noise rose up to fill the gap in conversation. After a moment she said, “We’re not selling much rum, are we?”

  “You work the tasting room. You have a pretty good idea how much we sell.”

  “There must be more we can do to promote, advertise, get the word out.”

  “Promotion takes a lot of money. Getting the word out takes a lot of time.”

  “So we’re going down the tubes?”

  “Please don’t ask me that. I can’t say more.”

  “That paycheck pays my rent. I think I have a right to know.”

  He ran a hand through as much of his hair as he could get it through, then blew out some air between tense lips. “I guess this is why I don’t go out much. Especially with a pretty woman from work. I don’t know which way to go with this. I really shouldn’t be here.”

  “Sorry, I don’t mean to put you on the spot.”

  “Well, you’re doing a terrific job of it.”

  “Sorry, it’s just…it’s just…Well, you’re very loyal to Carlo, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I am. Totally.”

  “And you have a lot of responsibility. I get it. You have secrets to keep.”

  “Doesn’t everybody?”

  “I guess. And I respect that. Except…except maybe some of your secrets aren’t really secrets.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Listen, Anthony, I don’t know if this makes anything easier, but I know some things that you don’t know I know. About Carlo. His past. Prison. Where he got together with his chemist partner. I’m sure there’s plenty I don’t know. But I’ve heard the basic story.”

  Anthony was leaning forward now across his threadbare elbows. “You have? How the hell you know this? From who?”

  “His brother.”

  The distiller’s voice jumped up an octave. “His brother?”

  “His brother is my neighbor.”

  “Are you serious? The phantom brother? The elusive Alvino?”

  “He goes by Albin and he’s a very nice man.”

  “Wow,” said Anthony, wrapping his hands around the edge of the table and pushing back a bit as if he needed more room to take all this in. “The phantom brother. Here. Wow. So what’s he like?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Never met him in my life.”

  “Families,” she said, shaking her head. “Weird, huh? Well, he’s smart. Kind. Elegant. Funny.”

  “Gay?”

  “Yeah. You got a problem with that?”

  “No, of course not. Just curious. I mean, all I’ve ever heard about the guy is mysterious little bits and pieces now and then. I guess my Mom knew him a little in high school. But mainly what I’ve heard is that he went off to college one day, cut his ties, basically just vanished.”

  “He thought Carlo disapproved of him.”

  “Really? It’s possible, I guess. That was never really my impression.”

  “And that he’s still angry with him after all these years.”

  Anthony sipped some beer and thought it over. “No, that’s not really my impression either. Don’t think I’ve ever heard Carlo sounding angry toward Alvino. More just mystified and sad. Like someone was there for a while and then he wasn’t.”

  “I think Albin misses Carlo, too. Doesn’t like to admit it, but he does.”

  “Kind of a shame,” said Anthony.

  Rita shrugged in agreement. Her sweater climbed up and tickled her earlobes. Needing a time out, they listened to the music for some seconds. Familiar chords, simple and soothing. The life of the bar went on around them.

  Her voice was soft but still seemed abrupt when she spoke again. “So Anthony, look, what I’m trying to let you know is that I’m well aware that Carl
o hasn’t always been a saint, and I wouldn’t be exactly shocked if the rum business…well, if it wasn’t exactly what meets the eye. I’d just like to know how long I’m going to have a job.”

  He pretended he was still listening to the song.

  “Should I start looking for a different one?”

  He talked into his chin. “Yeah, probably. Not tomorrow, but soon.”

  “That kind of sucks.”

  “Yeah, it does.”

  She drank some beer. A few chords played. Chairs scraped against the floor. “Can I ask you one more thing?”

  “I wish you wouldn’t, but yeah, you can.”

  “The problem with the company. I just can’t believe it’s with the rum. And I don’t think you believe that either. So what’s the problem?”

  “I can’t answer that.”

  “There’s the rum and there’s the lab.”

  “Please, I really can’t say more.”

  “But this great chemist—”

  “The great chemist didn’t do his job. Or he did it very half-ass. Worked out some formulas and then he dropped the ball. So that’s that. Please, no more questions.”

  He turned away and pretended he was suddenly intent on listening to the music. She watched him. His Adam’s apple was quivering. His jaw was tense. She searched for something she could say or do to help, but it’s hard to help a stoic.

  Finally she said, “Okay, no more questions. But how about a favor? Can I still come in and work with you at the distillery? For as long as it lasts, I mean?”

  He licked his lips. His jaw relaxed a little. “Yeah. Sure. I’d like that.”

  “Thanks. Me too. I should go for now.”

  She stood up, not hurriedly but quickly, smoothly, then suddenly bent toward him, almost swooping, and kissed him on the corner of his mouth, not quite on his lips but very close. More than a peck, less than a promise. And a complete surprise to Anthony.