“Yeah, yeah, but can you handle Excel?”
“I can excel at anything,” I told him. “Just put me to work.”
Truth was, my father’s fear that “you aren’t capable of doing anything” was turning out to be true. I couldn’t get a temp job because I couldn’t type and couldn’t master a phone system to be a receptionist. I worked for one day at a law firm and was asked not to come back because I wasted five reams of paper trying to figure out how to use the copy machine. I went home that night and spent the money I’d made that day on Band-Aids for all the paper cuts.
Every night, during my first month in Los Angeles, I just cried.
After signing the lease for my apartment and buying a used Saab that was missing a backseat and leaked transmission oil and brake fluid, the money that my mother had slipped me was down to $800. For the first time in my life, I understood the value of a dollar. I was surviving on a diet of ramen noodles and cheese popcorn. My body was turning into one ball of carb mush.
“I think you should just move home,” Pen told me. “Tell your father that he was right, you can’t take care of yourself, and start working in his office again.”
“How can I tell him I was wrong?” I cried to her. “He’ll never respect me.”
The one fortunate light in all my sorrow was that the apartment I found was just a few blocks away from the Beverly Center mall. The apartment faced another building, so it had no light, and the guy who lived next door smoked so much pot that it seeped into my apartment, which made me even more paranoid since I was sure it was making me stoned. Needless to say, the Beverly Center mall would become my refuge. Something about Gaps and Banana Republics made me feel more at ease, a home away from home; like an embassy that helps you if you lose your passport, the Gap is right there to comfort you with comfy cotton T-shirts and jeans.
There was one shop, however, that I was continuously drawn back to. This shop was the catalyst for one of the best days of my life (the seventh best day in this essay).
Every time I’d come home from a bad interview, or if I was sad because I couldn’t get an interview at all, I found myself heading into the Beverly Center pet shop, Pet Love. Pet Love is a pet store that sells dogs and cats and birds and rabbits and an occasional guinea pig or mouse. All of the animals, with the exception of the rabbits and occasional guinea pigs, who had their own freestanding wire pens in the middle of the store, were housed in these glass cages. More than any other store in the mall, the place was always packed with people tapping on the cages at the little Chihuahuas or chocolate Labs. (Even though signs on the glass instructed people not to, I think it’s a human instinct. Who could possibly walk by a cute puppy in a cage without tapping on its window?)
Anyway, there was one particular pup that struck me. She was this tiny miniature beagle. I don’t know what it was, the way she looked at me, like she always knew me every time I went in to tap on the glass cages. Her little brown eyes would suddenly perk up when I walked in. I loved the way she wiggled her brown coat with the one white circle on her back. It wasn’t that other people weren’t looking at her, she was the cutest little thing in the place, but it was like she knew me in some way. (Did she?)
One Thursday night, sitting in my sparse apartment after being turned down for yet another job at one of the movie studios, I started to think about that little dog in the cage.
I needed a new life. She needed a new life. I knew I needed a couch and a table and chairs to eat breakfast. I needed some new clothes to interview for jobs. There were a lot of things I needed but only one thing I really wanted, and when you think about it, which would you rather get with your last $800—something you need or something you want?
So with the last $800 I had, I went to purchase the little miniature beagle.
As I walked in, there was this girl, my age, trying to stuff my little dog into a Fendi dog bag.
“If she fits,” the woman wearing too much frosted lipstick told the salesperson, “I’ll take her. If not, I’ll take a look at the teacup poodles.”
“That dog’s not going to fit in there,” I told the girl, reacting quickly. “That bag is too small. Get a teacup poodle.”
“No, she’ll fit,” she grunted, stuffing Peaches’s butt into the little bag.
That’s when this little beagle looked up at me with those big brown eyes that made me fall in love with her in the first place. She so did not want to be in that bag, and I knew it. She just looked at me with those eyes that said, “Get me the hell out of here.” Suddenly, nothing was more important to me than getting that dog.
“She doesn’t fit,” I told the woman, like a friend. “You’d be better off with a smaller dog, maybe one of those teacup poodles. I hear beagles have psycho personalities anyway.”
“I heard that too,” she said, “but this dog is so cute.”
“Trust me,” I told her, taking the little dog from her, “get a teacup poodle. They’re cuter. I only wish I could get a teacup poodle.”
“No,” she said, taking Peaches back from me, “everyone has teacup poodles. This one is different.”
“Beagles will ruin your life,” I told her, taking Peaches out of her hand and back into mine. “My cousin had a beagle and the thing ripped her place to shreds.”
“You know,” she said, trying to take Peaches from me again, but this time I held firm, “I know what you’re up to and I saw her first.”
“I don’t think so,” I said as I searched for a salesperson. “Can someone ring up this dog for me?”
“I saw the dog first,” the woman shouted at the approaching salesperson.
“No, I did. I’ve been coming in here for a month for this dog.”
“Give it to me before I rip it out of your hands!” the woman screamed.
“Try it and I swear I’ll deck you so hard you won’t even know what hit you!”
“Ring her up!” I shouted, throwing my wallet at the salesperson.
“I hope the dog pisses all over your apartment!” the girl said, storming out of the store.
So I bought the dog and I named her Peaches, which I’ve always regretted. Later on, I wished I had named her something better, like Euripides or Shakespeare. You know, something a little more intellectual sounding, something with a little more substance so I wouldn’t be yet another dumb twentysomething girl with a dog named for a fruit stuffed into a Fendi dog purse, even though I couldn’t afford a Fendi dog purse or any purse for that matter. Well, at least I didn’t go with Princess or Queenie or something even dumber.
“You bought a dog?” Dana soured when I presented the latest addition to my family. “That was a dumb move. You hate to get up before noon, how are you going to get up and walk a dog?”
“I’ll get up,” I told her. “If I have to get up, I’ll get up.”
“I don’t think that was the best course of action you could have taken right now,” my mom admonished. “Maybe you could give it back.”
“Mom, if anything, the dog is helping me get acclimated,” I told her.
“Alex, you’ve never taken care of anything in your life.”
“The dog is no problem,” I lied. “She’s the sweetest thing around. I can’t wait for you to meet her.”
“Yelp, yelp, yelp, yelp, yelp,” was all I needed to hear, a thousand times a day, to figure out that they were right. My apartment was starting to have the distinct odor of urine, and how could such a little thing shed so much hair? She ruined not only my Christian Louboutin velvet sling-backs but my favorite Juicy sweats, the Pucci bathing suit top I’d stolen from my mother, one pair of earrings I was sure she’d swallowed (which, before I found them mangled, cost $300 in X-rays at the vet to prove otherwise), and, it kills me to even think about it, the velvet fringe dress I bought with Pen on the night of the Plaza Hotel fifth-best-day/nightmare fiasco.
I had bought a book, Dog Training for Dummies, and after instructing her over and over to “sit—Sit, JUST SIT ALREADY!” she never sat once.
>
Finally, one night at about three in the morning after my landlord called and said Peaches was disrupting the building yet again, I gave up. It took me a half hour to figure out that she was barking at a moth that had gotten stuck between the window and the screen after I’d closed it for the night. I knew that I couldn’t handle Peaches anymore.
“It’s not the end of the world, you just can’t handle having a dog,” Pen told me on my cell phone as I came back from yet another interview for a job I did not get. “That’s not a put-down, it’s just what is,” she said. “You made a mistake. I’m not saying you won’t be able to take care of a dog at some point, but not right now.”
“I know, you’re right,” I told her. “I’ll give back the dog.”
I had one piece of mail, my credit card statement, which came to $2,000 and none of that was for clothes or shoes or any other miscellaneous items, it was all food for Peaches and things I really needed like food, soap, shampoo, and gas for my car. As I entered the apartment, I saw that an upper closet shelf I’d stuffed with the last of my clothing that wasn’t ruined had fallen in an avalanche and there was Peaches gnawing her way through the last of it.
“Damn you!” I screamed at Peaches as I ran over to the pile.
So now I had no clothes, no money, and this dog that was making everything worse. That was enough for me.
I picked up the one thing Peaches hadn’t ruined, the dog crate she came in, got her into my car, and took her back to Pet Love.
“Hi,” I said, holding the crate. “I need to return a dog to you. I’m sorry, this was a mistake.”
“Which dog is it?” the saleswoman asked, looking in the crate.
“She’s a little miniature beagle. I bought her about a month ago,” I said, showing her the crate.
“We don’t take dogs back after thirty days. Do you know the exact date of purchase?”
I didn’t know the exact date. Peaches had eaten the receipt.
“Can I ask why you want to return the dog, ma’am?”
“Well,” I paused as I started to cry, “I just can’t take care of her.”
“There are shelters where you can take the dog.”
“Will they find another owner for her?”
“I can’t guarantee that, but at least she’ll be in more capable hands.”
I suddenly envisioned this little dog in one of those shelters. What if no one took her? I couldn’t begin to think of the consequences.
“Listen, there was a girl I fought to get this dog. I think she ended up getting a teacup poodle. Maybe you can find her number and ask if she still wants her?”
“Oh wait, you’re the girl who fought with that other girl?” she said, laughing. “Hey, Pedro,” she said, calling over her fellow worker, “this is that girl who fought with the other girl for the dog! She wants to return her.”
“Damn! All that fighting and you couldn’t take care of the dog,” Pedro laughed.
“Well, it’s not that I can’t take care of her,” I said, humiliated, “I’m just going through a really hard time.”
“And you can’t take care of the dog? You wanted her so badly. You used to come in here all the time.”
“I know, and I made a mistake.”
“You girls who come in thinking these dogs are just going to be cute and sweet. You girls just don’t realize it’s a responsibility.”
“No, I knew she’d be a responsibility, like I said, it’s just too much for me to handle right now.”
I’d never felt like a worse person in my life.
“Forget it,” I said, taking the crate, “forget I said anything.” I walked out.
I took Peaches with me back to my car. I turned the ignition; it wouldn’t start. That was all I needed. I started banging on the steering wheel. “Why can’t anything go right? Why can’t one thing go right in my life?” That’s when I lost it in the middle of the parking garage. I just sat there crying into the steering wheel, moaning and with slobber all over me. It felt good to cry like that, like I needed to get everything out. All those words people said, “You just can’t take care of anything,” kept going through my mind.
I took Peaches out of the crate, put her on the leash I had with me, and we left the car in the garage.
I could not go back to that apartment. I needed some air, so Peaches and I walked up La Cienega Boulevard. Again, we were the only ones on the street in the middle of the day, but I didn’t care. I just needed to walk and clear my head.
I think we must have been walking for about an hour, past stores and cars, on the street. I was numb to all of it. All I wanted to do was walk until I couldn’t walk anymore and try to make some sense of everything. The sun was pretty hot that day, and both Peaches and I were starting to get tired after the long trek so I took a seat at a table outside a coffee place.
I wasn’t even thinking of my failure anymore. All I could think of was how tired I was. I was too tired to worry about anything anymore. When I look back at it now, I think I just surrendered.
We must have sat at that coffee place for over two hours. The people who worked there were kind enough to give Peaches a bowl of water, and after she finished that, she curled herself into a ball on the sidewalk and fell asleep. I could see the people inside looking at me from time to time, wondering whether or not I was going to leave there already, but I just couldn’t. I would have bought a cup of coffee, but I didn’t have the money even for that so I just sat frozen with my thoughts, hoping maybe I’d become invisible.
There was no one who was going to make my life better but me. I thought I was at the worst moment of my life on the day I left Charles, but now I realized that was just the beginning. I couldn’t, and I didn’t want to, ask anyone for help then, and I knew I couldn’t ask now either. I would have to make this work. I would make this work.
As the sun was beginning to set, I picked up Peaches and walked the three miles back to my apartment with her in my arms.
The two of us slept right through the night. Normally, Peaches would have woken up and started yelping, but this time she didn’t. I realized she was as I tired as I was.
We both woke up at about seven the next morning. I was actually surprised to see that she hadn’t peed on the remaining clothes I had left out. She was just staring at me on the edge of the covers with those eyes, so I took her out again for another big walk.
During the day I bought her some chew toys on my already overdue credit card and sat with her in the apartment, teaching her to chew on the toys instead of my Gucci pumps. I learned that scratching on the front door was her cue to go out. As the days passed, I barely took phone calls from anyone and concentrated on training Peaches.
Dana had told me about Runyon Canyon. A lot of people with dogs went there to exercise, so I got a bus pass and started taking Peaches up there for morning walks. After a couple of days of going there, you start to know the other people with their dogs. At first you give a smile then say a little something about their dog. “Your dog is so cute.” Something like that.
After a month of going there, I had made some friends. It was just like Dana said, you need to go with a group. The group in this case was Peaches and me.
I was even starting to look better from all the walks. The carb mush had started to turn strong and lean.
Then, one day, on one of our hikes, I saw a woman who looked familiar, but it was one of those things where for the life of me I couldn’t place her. Her chocolate Lab didn’t look familiar, but once I got a little closer to her and saw her frosted lipstick, it dawned on me.
“Hey, don’t I know you?” she said to me.
“No, I don’t think so,” I lied.
She looked at me again and then at Peaches.
“Wait a minute, you’re the girl from the pet store. That’s the dog we fought over!”
“Oh yeah,” I acknowledged sheepishly. “I remember you now.”
“You know, I’ve thought of you since then,” she said.
&nbs
p; “She has,” the guy with her concurred. “She’s totally mentioned you and that dog. She thinks you two were meant to be together.”
“I do,” she added. “You were so determined to have that dog. I saw the way that dog looked at you.”
“You think?” I said, looking down at Peaches, who jumped up as I petted her head.
“Yeah, she loves you. You can totally see it.”
“That’s why I didn’t even take the teacup poodle. I ended up getting this big thing,” she said, petting her Lab.
“I don’t think she fits in that Fendi bag.”
“No, I gave the bag to Peter and Lucky,” she said, pointing to her friend and his shih tzu. “This is my dog. This is the dog I’m supposed to have.”
“Whew,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I feel much better now.”
“Oh, this is Bambi by the way,” she said, petting her dog.
“This is Peaches,” I said, picking her up.
“I’m Morgan,” she said as I shook her hand. “Peter and I take our dogs here every morning. Why don’t you start joining us?”
“Yeah,” Peter said, “join us!”
And that’s how we made our first friends in Los Angeles. From then on, Morgan and Bambi and Peter and his dog Lucky and Peaches and I met at Runyon Canyon and walked. After that, we took our friendship beyond the canyon and started spending evenings together. Peter and Morgan, as it turned out, worked in the shoe department at Barneys and Morgan had plans to go back east.
“You’ve got to take my job when I leave,” she said. “Barneys is the best place to work.”
And that’s how it happened. The day after Morgan’s going-away party, I started working with Peter in the CO-OP Shoes section at Barneys. I wasn’t making loads of money, but at least it was a start and I was able to pay my rent and put a dent in the credit card bill.
“Mom,” I said when I called her one night, “Peaches is fine. I’m fine. I’m really happy here.”
“I’m so proud of you, sweetheart,” she said.
The Ten Best Days of My Life Page 16
