by Rick R. Reed
“Oh, of course she did,” Virginia said. “But we both expected you to sell it and take the money. Maybe use it to get yourself an education or somethin’.”
“We should get inside for the wake, shouldn’t we? People will want to talk to us.”
“They will, won’t they?” Virginia finished her cigarette, flicked it out the window, and then, very deliberately, put her head on the steering wheel and sobbed. After a moment she stopped and let loose a laugh, a hoarse sound that was way too close to a donkey’s braying. “Too bad I don’t want to talk to them!”
Mac rubbed her back. “She was a great lady.”
“She was my sister.” And the laugh turned again into a strangled sob. “She was all that was left. I’m alone now.”
“You’re not alone, Aunt Virginia. You have me. And you have her—always.” Mac reached over to wipe a tear from her cheek. “We need to go inside now, okay?”
Virginia nodded and then wiped her eyes with a Kleenex that was in the console. She fixed her makeup and smiled at Mac. “Let’s go.”
MAC SAT alone in the trailer. It was somewhere around ten thirty at night, and Virginia had been right—he was exhausted. He wore nothing but a pair of plaid flannel boxers. His third beer of the night, a bottle of Iron City, sat sweating before him on the coffee table. He’d gorged himself on the baked ham, lasagna, and casseroles family, friends, and neighbors had brought by. Even now the kitchen table was covered with food he could never possibly finish.
He knew it was only seven thirty in Seattle, and that was the reason he clutched his smartphone in his right hand. Flynn. He needed to hear his voice. He wondered too how Barley was getting on, if he was missing Mac too much. He grinned. It was a bittersweet prize, knowing deep in his heart that he, Mac, was the one the dog truly favored—even looking at things from a very objective standpoint, as Mac believed he was.
He touched the screen to connect him—he hoped—to Flynn. The ringing sounded distant to Mac’s ears, probably because he knew it was clear across the whole expanse of the country.
“Mac.” Flynn’s answer was like honey, sweet, and the delight in his voice was obvious. “I was hoping you’d call. How’s everything out there?”
“Tiring. We had calling hours today, and tomorrow we bury her.” Mac was surprised at the catch in his own voice, but he held it together. “I’m going to read a little something before she’s—what’s the word?—interred. I turned her on to Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet when I was a teenager, and she always loved what he had to say.”
“Going to read ‘On Death’?” Flynn asked, his voice quiet.
“Yeah, I guess that’s the obvious choice, but it’s so perfect. Are you familiar with it?”
“Yeah, I’ve read it.”
“Then you might remember how that part ends, with his talk about the earth claiming your limbs, but then you’re able to truly dance, or something like that.”
“That sounds beautiful. I’m sure your grandma would appreciate it.”
“She will,” Mac said. “I know she can hear me.” Mac sucked in his lower lip, feeling the ball in his throat expand. He picked up his beer and took a long swallow before changing the subject. “So how’s our boy?”
“You mean me? Or Barley?” Flynn chuckled.
“I was asking about Barley.”
“Of course you were. He’s good. He’s back to the way he was when I first brought him back home.”
“How’s that?”
“Looking for you. Everywhere. Sitting by the front door again.”
“He probably just wants to go outside.”
“At four in the morning?” Flynn laughed. “It’s okay. I know he loves us both.”
And it was on the tip of Mac’s tongue to say “I love you both.” But he caught himself, questioning from where the notion had come. Why do we do that? he wondered. Why do we stifle ourselves when we feel love? Why do we ask if it’s too soon? Or if it’s inappropriate? Or that we might scare the other person away? Why?
Before Mac could say what was in his head, Flynn moved on. “So, uh, when do you think you’ll be back? We can pick you up at the airport if you want.”
Mac was all ready to say no, it was too much trouble, but he caught himself and held back the impulse to be self-defeating. “Thinking day after tomorrow.”
“Good. That’s soon. Text me your flight info, and I’ll meet you at baggage claim. I’ll be the handsome dude with visible excitement in his shorts.”
Mac chuckled. “Cool.” They went silent then, and Mac thought about telling Flynn about his decision to leave Seattle and move back to West Virginia. It was the sensible thing to do so Flynn wouldn’t get his hopes up. But Mac couldn’t quite bring himself to say the words.
Why, he asked himself again, are you considering coming back here?
Mac wasn’t sure he knew the reason. He only knew he felt a pull deep in his bones to return to his roots once more.
“Yeah… cool,” Flynn answered back. “I’m looking into having a little surprise waiting for you when you get here.”
“What?”
“No, no. I said a surprise. If I told you, it wouldn’t be one. Besides, I’m not at all sure I can make it happen.”
And now Mac was puzzled because he immediately thought the surprise would be that he’d have Barley with him when he picked him up.
“Oh, you’re gonna drive me crazy,” Mac said.
“That’ll be later, in bed.” Flynn chuckled softly.
“I’ll count on it.” Mac found himself yawning and tried to hide it.
“You need to get to sleep,” Flynn said. “Tomorrow will be tiring too. I want you to come back to me with lots of energy.”
But I’m not coming back to you, Mac thought. I’m coming back to pack up, to tie up loose ends. You’re a hot guy and a sweet one too, but the time just isn’t right. Mac imagined the smile vanishing by degrees from Flynn’s face as Mac broke the news to him. He pictured them being in bed. And everything about it seemed all wrong.
Ah! He was too tired to work things out right now. “You’re right. Thanks for taking care of Barley.” Mac tried to reel the words back in, but they were out of his mouth before he could think better of saying them.
But Flynn didn’t berate him or remind him who the dog belonged to. He said only, “Sure thing. We’ll see you soon.” And he made a little kissing noise into the phone that touched Mac’s heart and made him hard.
Flynn was gone before he had a chance to say anything else.
Chapter 15
“SO YOU can’t tell me where she is? Her picture’s on the website.” Flynn spoke to a woman at the front desk of the Seattle animal rescue. She was cute, pixie haircut dyed cobalt blue with strands of fuchsia and round hipster glasses that virtually screamed Warby Parker. She tapped on the keys a few more times as he stood there, and Flynn honestly believed she was doing it just for show.
“If you’re interested in the dog, I can contact her foster owner and let her know. Then we can arrange a visit. Easy-peasy.” She looked up from the monitor and smiled. “It’s just that I can’t give out our foster parents’ personal information. You can understand that, right? It makes sense,” she said, nodding, agreeing with herself. “Security.”
“Yeah. I guess it does.” Flynn shifted his gaze to his left, where a large picture window looked out on a maze of kennels. Dogs of every breed, shape, size, and description filled them, barking, sleeping, or saddest of all, just staring with hopeless eyes through the chain link.
Flynn wished he could take them all home, give them the lives they deserved.
“Yeah, even though it makes perfect sense, in a protective kind of way, I still wish I could see her right now and maybe bring her home. I was hoping to arrange a surprise.”
“Oh? So you’re thinking the dog would be a gift?” She giggled. “Just so you know—we don’t gift wrap.”
Flynn ran a shaky hand through his hair, unsure about how he should respond. Wa
s giving a dog as a gift a no-no? “Is giving someone a dog a problem?” he asked in the end.
“No, no, not really. We would just want to meet with the potential owner and make sure everything checked out. We’re very protective of our cats and dogs.”
“Wow. It seems like you sure set up a lot of roadblocks when the alternative is that these dogs, most of them, are going to be put down. Is that what you call ‘protective’?”
Ms. Warby Parker didn’t look so nice anymore. She stopped smiling. “Listen. We try our best. We care deeply about every animal that comes through our doors. That’s why we have the foster program—to extend the time some of these dogs have to be adopted. It doesn’t always work, and we sometimes have to face harsh realities. There just isn’t enough room for every stray dog or cat out there. I wish it wasn’t so, but life is life.” She tapped on her keyboard again, and Flynn wondered just what the hell she was doing.
She finally asked, “Do you want me to get in touch with her foster parent?”
Flynn nodded eagerly. “Yes! And if I could take her for just a day or two with me, that would be great.”
She blew out an exasperated sigh. “I don’t think we can do that. Not when the dog is a gift.”
Flynn breathed in deeply, trying to rein in his temper, trying to avoid rolling his eyes. “She’s not a gift,” he lied. “She’s for me.”
The woman behind the desk smirked at him, as though to say “Really?”
“I’m serious,” Flynn protested. “The idea of a gift was only because, uh, because I was thinking of giving her to a friend of mine whose grandmother just passed away.”
He smiled at the woman, and she went back into sympathetic mode. She even took her hands off her keyboard to show, Flynn guessed, that she was listening.
“But I think the best course of action is for me to take her. My dog, Barley, could use a companion, and we can visit my friend with the dogs, let him enjoy them without, you know, all the work. Kind of like being a grandparent.” Flynn gave her what he thought of as his most dazzling smile. It was the one he used in the bars when a guy was on the fence about coming home with him. It worked every time.
She smiled back, and Flynn knew he was “in like Flynn,” so to speak, because she even looked a bit flirtatious. That’s okay. But sister, you are barkin’ up the wrong tree.
She picked up the phone on the desk next to her. “Let me just check and see if the foster mom’s home.”
Flynn wanted to say “Atta girl!” but settled instead for a very polite thank-you.
THE NEXT day, Flynn stood in the baggage claim area at Sea-Tac, near carousel thirteen. Although he knew Mac hadn’t checked a bag, this was where they’d agreed to meet. Flynn told Mac thirteen was his lucky number, even though he didn’t know if that was true or not. It just sounded cool and memorable to him.
He’d dressed carefully for Mac’s arrival, in a pair of faded and ripped jeans that gripped his lower half in all the right places, one might even say suggestively. Atop the jeans he wore a pale blue Penguin retro-style polo that complemented his eyes, ratcheting up the blue factor. He completed the ensemble with a pair of black flip-flops. His hair, freshly washed, was still a little damp. And he knew his cheeks were aglow, reddish with anticipation.
Two dogs strained at their leashes at the end of his arm. Passersby either smiled, wanted to pet them, or conversely, wanted nothing whatsoever to do with them, veering away as far as possible. These latter people, Flynn decided, were not people he wanted to know.
A burst of hurrying passengers exploded into baggage claim. They all walked purposefully, arms swinging, eyes ahead, many dragging carry-ons behind them. Flynn scanned every face, watching hopefully for Mac.
And there he was!
Flynn swore his heart skipped a beat. Mac hadn’t yet seen him, and this gave Flynn a moment to glory in the view. Mac had an army-green T-shirt on, with the sleeves cut off, and a pair of camo cargo shorts. He too wore flip-flops. His pale skin, coppery freckles, beefy build, and ginger hair and beard made Flynn want to swoon. It was all he could do to stop himself from simply running to Mac, maybe even in slow motion with swelling violin strings to accompany him. They would collapse into one another’s arms and, right there on the dirty tile floor, with hundreds of world-weary travelers around them, would strip off and get down to business. The soundtrack would change to some kind of sultry electro beat.
Flynn grinned. He shook his head to clear it of the pornographic imagery that had snuck in unbidden. But I can’t help it! It’s Mac’s fault. He just trips a switch! It was true. Mac was his idea of the perfect man. And he was kind, to boot! And he loved dogs! What more could Flynn ask for?
He stared at Mac, imagining he could see the green of his eyes, even though he was really too far away to discern color.
When their eyes met, there was a little glimmer of recognition, an electric spark that caused Flynn’s heart to flutter.
And when Mac saw the dogs, his mouth dropped open. He stopped in his tracks, dropping the handle of the duffle bag he’d been dragging along behind him.
He was still a good one hundred feet away. And even though Flynn couldn’t hear the words, he could read Mac’s lips as he said them.
“No, you didn’t.”
Mac then burst into a smile that was pure joy and sunshine.
Ecstatic.
And Flynn knew he had done the right thing.
Mac walked slowly to them. “You can’t. You didn’t.” He stared at Flynn for a full minute, green eyes welling with tears, a broad grin on his face. Flynn thought of rain coming down in sunshine.
“How did you manage?” Mac didn’t wait for an answer. He dropped to his knees, and both dogs, beagle and Peruvian Inca Orchid, rushed to him. Barley immediately began giving Mac’s face a tongue bath, causing him to giggle, while Luz looked on, her expression reading appalled. She sat near them but turned her head from this embarrassing public display of affection.
Mac didn’t care. He grabbed the hairless dog in a big hug she struggled mightily to free herself from. “Luz!” he cried. “I thought you were gone.”
Finally, mercifully, he let her go. She moved three or four steps away from him, to regard Mac as though he were a lunatic while licking her lips and yawning. Barley jumped up on his chest and began licking his face again. He almost caused Mac to topple over.
Flynn couldn’t help but laugh—hard—at the scene before him, a scene he’d engineered. There was Mac, legs sprawled out before him, practically flat on his back with his bag behind him. The other passengers either swarmed around him like he was a boulder in a human stream or paused to stare. One girl, a teenager with masses of curls and huge brown eyes, got out her cell phone to take some video.
And Luz, looking above it all!
Finally, with some difficulty, Mac managed to scramble to his feet. He threw his arms around Flynn, squeezed him briefly, then moved in for a kiss. The kiss was no chaste, safe-for-public-viewing one either. It was full-on passion with lots of tongue. When Mac finally pulled away, both of them were panting.
“How did you do it? How did you find Luz? I was sure she was dead.” Mac gazed down at the aloof dog with something like love and something akin to awe, like the witness to a miracle.
Flynn shrugged. “I just checked at the animal shelter. Fortunately, Luz was one of the lucky ones. They’d placed her with a foster parent—a nice woman over in Fremont who already had her own hairless pooch. I managed to ‘adopt’ her, but I wanted her to be a surprise for you.” Flynn bit his lower lip, suddenly nervous. What he’d done, he thought, had been rash, reckless. You don’t just give people dogs. “Is it okay?” he asked softly.
“Oh, it’s wonderful, Flynn!”
Mac grabbed him and hugged him again, so hard Flynn heard a crack in his back. It felt good, like a release of tension. And suddenly Flynn was reminded Mac had other ways to relieve tension. Expert-level ways. And that spurred him on to get out of this airport. He looked d
own at Mac’s duffle. “That’s all you have, right?”
“I travel light,” Mac said. He squatted down again by Luz, petting the little tuft of hair on the top of her head.
Barley nosed in, sticking his face in between them. “Jealous boy,” Mac admonished.
“I’m the jealous boy,” Flynn said. “I want to get you home.”
“I can’t believe you did this. I love you for it!” Mac stopped, looking a bit surprised at himself, at the words that had just slipped from his lips.
“I love you too, Mac. That’s why I did it. We might be sharing Barley, but I knew you were torn up about Luz. I’m glad it wasn’t too late.”
Mac took Luz’s leash from Flynn’s hands, and as he did so, Barley jumped up on Mac’s legs. Mac looked helplessly at Flynn. “Would you mind grabbing my bag?” He took Barley’s leash from Flynn’s hand too.
“I’ll grab your bag anytime, bud,” Flynn said with a Groucho Marx wag of his eyebrows. He lifted the handle of the duffel and started pulling it. “C’mon, let’s get out of here.”
IT WAS morning, and Flynn was the only one awake in Mac’s attic bedroom. Next to him, Mac lay curled up on his side, his red hair lightly brushing Flynn’s bare shoulder. His mouth was open, and he snored loudly, which made Flynn snicker softly to himself.
The snores were part of a symphony. At the foot of the bed, both dogs—Barley and Luz—stretched out, leaving no room for human legs. They were also, the pair of them, snoring, Luz’s high-pitched, almost like a sneeze, and Barley’s a baritone that matched Mac’s in vibrato and volume.
Flynn closed his eyes, reveling in all the body heat, the snores, the sunshine, and the warm, mossy breeze blowing in through the window.
He was in heaven.
Chapter 16
MAC ROSE into wakefulness all at once with a jerk and a snort. Embarrassed, he looked over at Flynn, who stared at him, delirious with love. Delirious with love? No, Mac was no mind reader. Yet Flynn’s expression was as plain as if he had taken a Magic Marker and written “smitten” on his forehead.
