Mark, There's a Beagle in My Bedroom!

by Michael Ciardi

Lawyers represented the only segment of society who greedily anticipated divorce, unless it happened to be their own. Kip disobeyed the cardinal rule in the book of courtship: never marry a woman who studied law or associated with anyone remotely connected to the profession. Peg was a paralegal, which by extension afforded her free, unlimited access to the most pernicious attorneys in New Jersey. As many victims ultimately discovered in the aftermath of their botched marriages, adultery wasn’t a violation of the law in the Garden State.

  “Are you telling me that she could cheat on me as many times as she wanted without any legal consequences?” This was a question Kip volleyed to several lawyers over a span of three months. The answer was unvaryingly similar.

  “She could screw an entire football team on the hood of her car right in your driveway while the priest who married you supervised, and it still wouldn’t matter to a judge in court,” one lawyer said.

  “The whole team?” Kip cringed at the idea.

  “Even the punter,” the lawyer replied. “And you could throw in the priest for good measure.”

  Reconciliation was never truly an option, although Peg briefly entertained the possibility that therapy may have delayed the inevitable. Kip even agreed to sign up for a session or two, but that imploded when he discovered the absurd number of lovers Peg had tallied over the past few years. Mr. U.P.S. was merely a footnote in her volume of extramarital escapades.

  “At least that explains all those showers,” a deductive co-worker said. “Look on the bright side, your water bill is gonna be a hell of a lot cheaper.”

  Maybe she’s a sex addict? Kip grappled with Peg’s insatiable hunger for, as he determined, anything unrelated to him. Since children weren’t part of the financial equation, the bureaucratic barracudas chewed their pound of flesh from superficial wounds. In the end, Peg departed with a sizable payoff, and Kip kept the house and whatever little dignity he had left.

  Bachelorhood’s luster oxidized well before a man surpassed the age of forty, and Kip spent countless nights alone readjusting to the doldrums of divorce. He thought about dating, if nothing more than to distract himself from his present depression, but it never seemed like the right time to mingle. In other words, no single women worth the price of dinner and a movie paid much attention to him. After a shortage of income became more than just another inconvenience, Kip confronted an obstacle that he couldn’t hurdle alone. He needed a roommate.

  “I swear by the Internet,” said Ben Baylock, the store manager at Bed Mania. “There’s always people looking for a room to rent.” What Baylock neglected to convey to Kip was that he had experienced a few deadbeats in his stint as an apartment manager. Baylock’s left eye was gouged from its socket in a scuffle over a rent check; he now wore a patch over that eye and often role-played as a pirate.

  “Aren’t there a lot of crazy people on the computer?” Kip sounded dreadfully naïve asking such a question, but it was designed as a confirmation more so than a genuine query.

  “Aye,” Baylock said in his unpatented Long John Silver impersonation. “A bevy of scallywags await ye, matey.”

  “Talk normal, Ben.”

  Baylock looked deflated. “People suck in general, Kip. And renters suck just a little bit harder. But whether you find someone on the computer or not, half the people you meet will have something wrong with them.”

  Although Baylock dispensed practical advice less frequently than a politician on Xanax, Kip elected to at least conduct a preliminary search on his PC. His ad was artless and matter-of-fact: ‘Roommate Wanted: clean, drug-free, no pets, male or female.’ Fourteen people inquired in two days. Two of them were gainfully employed; the others were in the midst of “finding themselves.” After a dizzying exchange of phone-tag, Kip arranged an interview with one of the two prospects at his townhouse. Jeff Crowley sounded like a suitable fit over the phone.

  Jeff showed up forty minutes late in a taxi. Apparently, his car had crapped out on him the night before. If he had access to a shower or bar of soap, he kept them secret. Obviously, he never adhered to the tenet of first impressions. His arrival in tattered jeans and reeking like a spoiled slice of meatloaf didn’t exactly set an encouraging tone. Naturally, Kip was confused by this bohemian’s disposition.

  “I thought you said you worked on Wall Street?” Kip asked.

  “No, bro,” Jeff said. “I said I work on a street next to the mall.”

  “My mistake.”

  “So do you have party chicks hang out and shit like that?”

  “Party chicks?”

  “Yeah. It’s cool if we all hang and bang, right?”

  “Uh, I’m a little beyond the party chick phase, Jeff. Besides, I think I’d attract more hens than chicks at my age. And the only thing I bang nowadays is my head against the wall whenever I think about my life. I was married for fifteen years. I’m looking for someone who’s already flown the coop, so to speak.”

  “That’s kosher,” Jeff said. “Babes drive you crazy, right? You know, I work about fifteen hours a week at the Sunglass Shoppe. Just got me a bad ass raise, too.”

  “Fifteen hours? That’s only part-time. You told me on the phone that you worked fulltime.”

  Jeff snorted and wiped a line of stringy snot away from his nose. “Well, I’m takin’ what they’re givin’. Ain’t we all? Nowadays, fifteen hours is like fulltime.”

  By this point, Kip was flagging down the cab before it sped away. He suddenly felt obligated to pay Jeff’s fare back from wherever he came from. The first interview ended there. Kip was down to his last option.

  Chapter 3