The Dog Log

by Richard Lucas

  All I have right now is this journal.

  I did do charity once. I helped deliver Thanksgiving meals to poor families around my hometown, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, as part of my duties as sophomore class president at Bishop Hoban. Four of us climbed into the green and gold school van with feisty Sister Bernardo, and she drove us around to the poorest neighborhoods. I felt like Robert Kennedy. A lot of these people lived in shanty trailers at the foot of the Pocono Mountains. I’d no idea that there were so many destitute people. Wilkes-Barre had been on its knees for many years as anthracite coal, its main industry, had died decades before and nothing replaced it but the many tall, barren, rolling dunes of culm—the black, useless waste grains left over from mining. Streets were even paved through those gigantic culm banks like lifeless mountain passes on a dusty black planet. There’s something about a smaller town that makes you think that no one can hide. People surviving on welfare checks. My parents bitched about the “welfares” all the time. My mother once took a Polaroid of a neighbor mowing his own grass and sent it to President Carter as proof the guy could work. But often, when we were out of the van and had gotten the people to open their doors, we were greeted with tears. Food can make people cry.

  I didn’t hear Irene leave at all today. I wonder if she had no Thanksgiving to go to, or if hospice was closed or something. It’s hard to know when Irene comes and goes now without Sophie barking about it. What a sad state we’re all in—on a day for giving thanks . . . for what? It was all about dreams when I first came here, escaping, building something, but now I’m long past the chance. Los Angeles has a way of letting you know.

  I admit it, I wanted to be a rock star, Sheriff. I have to laugh, now that I’m pushing forty and nearly twenty pounds overweight. As the years have gone by, I’ve seen real dreams of real friends come true. I know that it does work sometimes. My friend Nick has become a very successful actor in commercials and TV. He now has a beautiful little house in North Hollywood with a great wife and two kids. My friend Dan was a stand-up comedian, and not a great one, just loud. Dudes do this! Chicks do that!, blah, blah . . .—ugh—but he got a gig writing on Penny’s Play Date, a kids’ show, for God’s sake, and now he has a two-bedroom condo in Reseda and a new used Harley. It can work.

  I got close, but it just didn’t happen for me. I used to have great stuff. When I first came to town, I could teach during the day, and write or record or play out at night. A perfect plan. I’d never be a destitute songwriter living on people’s sofas. I’d have a benefits package and a great story for interviews. “Teachin’ and rockin’—rockin’ and teachin’,” I used to say.

  That’s the guy Roxy fell in love with. I was working on my album in a studio in Hermosa Beach, making plans for a possible small West Coast tour. The album was taking forever, and would take much longer than that. I was in my sixth year teaching at Crenshaw High when Roxy arrived there as a counselor. She’d graduated from UC Davis and spent two years working at a junior high. Out to save the world. She has straight shoulder-length hair, a midnight black that shined like the onyx of Cleopatra, pulled back in a tight ponytail to cover her flowing youth with seriousness and efficiency. I melted like a nickel in a foundry when I saw her. We’d assembled in the library on the morning of the teachers’ in-service, the day before the first day of classes in late August. All the sullen, coffee-sipping teachers’ faces glistened with frustrated sweat, because the district refused to turn on the air-conditioning with no students in attendance. But Roxy was cool, her stunning blue eyes shimmering like a refreshing backyard pool.

  She introduced herself. “I’m replacing Mr. Burke in our diligent team of three,” she said. There was a startlingly sexy slight British accent. (Her mom was born in Canterbury; she’s half English and half Russian.) “My areas of concentration are identifying at-risk students and organizing outreach programs for families in need of bridging the gap between home and school.”

  “They’re all at risk,” Mr. Monroe, next to me, whispered.

  “Shut the fuck up, you cynical, old windbag fuck,” I said out of the side of my mouth. I felt like punching him in his pleats for disturbing the reminder of the virgin idealism we’d each once possessed. She was a young robin singing in the morning sunshine. Love had conquered me already, and we hadn’t even gotten to the faculty team-building exercises yet.

  We met for drinks and jazz on the patio at the Cat ’n’ Fiddle on Sunset that very night. Our first year together was amazing. Roxy loved everything about her “domesticated rock star . . . you’re a snapshot of masculine duality, a modern Dionysus,” she’d tease me over her pinot noir, “the rebellious artist yet conforming caretaker.” She used to joke that I had “bipolar professional disorder.” “How many other budding rock stars have a college degree and health insurance?” But she also had two sides, working that soft hair, the bright red lips, and that little ass in a short skirt plenty at my gigs, make no mistake. My Persephone—goddess of Hades, goddess of spring growth.

  I recorded just the one album—L.A. Never Dies, it was called. I loved this city, even with its inherent contradictions. I wrote the lyrics to the title track during the riots. Two of the songs are about Roxy. By that time I’d been through three different managers: one who only wanted to translate my songs and sell them to singers in Eastern Europe, one who tried to lure me into the Church of Scientology, and one who gave the weekend manager at Luna Park a hand job under the table—while I was stuck there dumbfounded—so I could get a Saturday-night gig. Not the most powerful players.

  I taught myself web and design skills when I decided to leave teaching, because the work could be flexible and at home. That way I could play more gigs here and overnights out of town, for what my managers could get me.

  Almost a third of us at Crenshaw High were young and inexperienced. They nicknamed the five of us new, white male teachers “the Osmond Brothers.” Every faculty member faced challenge after challenge with the kids. I had to send one of my students, Monique, to Roxy because she’d told me about her plan to shoot her mother in the face when she got home. They found the gun under her bed exactly as she’d described. Her mother had a revolving door of men, drugs, and alcohol, and was forcing Monique into their sexual circus. Roxy helped get her into foster care and worked with her throughout that year. Another of my students, Dae-Ho, when I’d kept him after class to ask about why he hadn’t had his reading exercises book for three straight days, begged me not to call his home about it and then lifted his shirt, revealing crisscrossed welts on his back from his collar to his waist. His alcoholic uncle/caretaker had beaten him with a golf club for breaking a dish. Roxy got him out that night with the help of Child Services. She was such strength for the kids. But it was tough to bear sometimes—endless gang activity, so many students so many years behind grade level, countless dysfunctional and dangerous homes for her “outreach.” A lot of hard hours, breaking points, but we rode the monster waves and managed to laugh and drink together, allowing ourselves some avoidance in each other’s arms.

  Even though I was young, I had a pretty good sense of authority with the kids. One of my tricks was to have them stand outside of the classroom, single file along the lockers until they could achieve complete silence, as a unit, for sixty seconds straight before being allowed to come into the room. It was about respecting the space and one another. They complained, banged on lockers, threatened me. But they eventually progressed to lining up quietly with a sense of pride and ownership of what was rightfully theirs.

  Roxy and I endlessly debated my brilliant methodology. “You’re minimizing their growing sense of authority within themselves by overreaching your own,” she’d say.

  “I am the only authority in the classroom.”

  “Yes, but young adolescents need to experience their natural progression toward adulthood, and you’re still treating them like children.”

  “I’m getting them to act like adults more quickly than anybody else.”

  �
��Mr. Mesa’s going to have a talk with you about it very soon, I bet.”

  “That’s fine. Whenever he does, I’ll ask him if he thinks that these ninth graders in South Los Angeles, reading at a fourth-grade level—at best—are really itching to read The Call of the Wild, which is what’s next up. They don’t give a fuck about a dogsled team carrying mail across the Klondike. I’m going to make it a team effort, so they understand that learning for themselves is important, but others learning equally around them is just as important for the community and for society.”

  “OK, Buck.”

  “Hmmm. Sarcasm is the intellectual white flag.”

  “You’re not impressed that I remembered the name of the dog from The Call of the Wild?”

  “I’d be more impressed if you agreed with me.”

  “You’re out on the Klondike with that fantasy, poor thing. Is it cold way out there—so all alone?”

  This shit might make your stomach turn, Sheriff, but you have no idea how much I miss it. How can she not miss it? I want to call her, but I can’t.

  Anyhow, happy Thanksgiving. I guess I shouldn’t be keeping this log anymore now that Sophie’s thawing in the nether regions, so this is also “so long.” And thank you.

  December

  December 12, 10:20 AM

  Only two weeks have passed, and you’re not going to believe this: Irene has a new dog, and it’s another fucking Yorkie—and it barks! She got it for herself as an early Christmas present—“to beat the rush.” Do people actually give Yorkshire terriers to other people as presents?

  It had been here for a week—and barking—but I hadn’t seen it yet, because I was laid up with the flu. When I finally went outside and caught them on a walk, I asked, “What is this, Irene? Are you babysitting?”

  “Meet Lauren,” she smiled. “Lauren Bacall. She was already named that. I just got her. Isn’t she gorgeous? Don’t you just love her tail?”

  “Bark. Bark, bark, bark,” Lauren interrupted.

  What have I done to deserve this cursed life?

  Lauren is younger than Sophie was—but bigger, stronger, louder, and already mangy looking.

  “She’s a Yorkie, and she barks. You’re not going to keep her, Irene?” I implored. “We’ve been through this.”

  “She’s just nervous. Excited to meet you. Say hi to Richard, Lauren.”

  Lauren said hi, all right. She wouldn’t shut up with saying hi, displaying with great enthusiasm the full-throated vigor of youth. It gave me a cramp in my neck. She’ll be around for years, I thought. What a selfish—

  “Don’t you love her gray hair? That’s a sign of pedigree. It crushed me when Nelson’s hair went blond,” Irene said.

  Lauren’s bushy tail spun in a blur of raw energy that could power four city blocks. For a moment, she stopped barking and looked at me. Her eyes were young, wide, and innocent like a rabbit’s. This one’s a manipulator. “She’s not going to bark uncontrollably though,” I warned. “Right?”

  “Oh, she’ll be all right. You’re so uptight. She’s just a little dog,” she snorted, “and I need to feel safe.”

  Lauren stood there panting, overheated already from the cardio of the full-body barking and that thick hair insulating her like a space suit. Nelson the Mute chewed on weeds in the cracks of the sidewalk. Off on his own, he seemed indifferent, an aloof Bogie to his new Bacall.

  “Keep your windows locked, don’t open your door to strangers, and you’ll be safe,” I directed. But my speech fell on a deaf ear. There’s a new dog in town, Sheriff. I have a bad feeling.

  11:15 PM

  Just a note: it was my birthday on December 7, while I was fighting off the flu and blissfully unaware that the respite that followed Sophie’s death was officially over. It was a hard one. I got a few texts from friends, but I didn’t want to be around anyone. I did get a funny text from Ally saying, “Happy birthday from the Ghost of Sophie—arf arf.” And Roxy sent me one: “Wishing you a happy birthday. Have a great one!” How fucking restrained—and generic—is that? Why even fucking bother? Except she did think of me. I don’t know. It was just obligatory bullshit, right?

  December 13, 1:00 PM

  Yep—Lauren’s a barker. Holy shit, she’s as aggressive as a razorback. Barks at anything that moves.

  How long do Yorkies live? For that matter—how long do decrepit old ladies live? Is Irene just fucking with me? Did Lauren’s dog pen have a sign on it that read ESPECIALLY LOUD?

  I have a question, Sheriff: I can just continue with this log where it left off, right? I shouldn’t have to start over just because it’s a different dog. It’s the same owner, same address, same breed for damn sake. I’ve been continuing it anyway. It wouldn’t be fair to make me begin again. I can’t. I won’t. I’ve put in my time. Please let all those weeks with Sophie count toward something, or I’ll fall apart.

  December 15, 9:15 AM

  I’ve given up. Depression is an inertia, an emotional numbness that spreads over your body through the painful decay of being who you are, and everything that’s been hurtful in your life is evidence of all the hurt that’s sure to come. Now this. I’ve already started walking over to Irene’s door to yell at Lauren. I know Irene’s home, but she doesn’t react. Lauren just barks back at me. Nelson jumps up and down and chomps at the invisible hamburger. I hate them all. I’m staying in bed today.

  December 19, 9:15 AM

  Still not over the flu. Got an e-mail from that client who’d called me at the café. They’re officially “moving on,” going “in-house,” which amazes me because it’s more expensive to hire someone full-time. Anyhow, usually clients just disappear, so at least they sent me a disappointment note.

  Not a great day for the inbox. Also got a “How are you doing?” e-mail from Roxy out of the blue. As much as I’d wanted to hear from her, I didn’t anticipate this generic crap. Very distant. Condescending, too. How am I doing? If not “well,” then what would she do about it? I’m not doing well, and it’s greatly because of her. She’s menacing me with a random shot like that. She’s obviously thinking about me, but it’s from residual guilt because she left. I don’t care how her conscience feels. I don’t want her remorse. I want her. I miss everything. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe she misses me a little.

  I’m jealous of the world, because every single man on the planet has a chance at her now—except me. I’ve gained seven pounds since Lauren showed up. Yorkie weight. My face is breaking out. I can’t let Roxy see me. Why bother cleaning the peanut butter off my hands when I’m just going to get more on them in a minute? Life is simpler this way. Crunchy Cheetos. Trader Joe’s red wine in a box. Everyone just go away.

  December 21, 10:15 AM

  I just stepped out to see if Irene was home so I could complain to her about Lauren. No answer. I walked around back to see if her car was here, but it wasn’t. Casino was back there in his section of the garage, which he’s converted to a workout room, and on hot days he works out with his area’s door open and his shirt conspicuously off. He was spinning slowly on his exercise bike when he saw me. “What’s a matter, Richard? Everything OK?”

  That’s a crappy, judgmental thing to ask. I mentioned Lauren, and Casino spit out his go-to advice: “You’ve got to drop a dime to Randall.” He continued pedaling. “This shit is tearing you apart. Look at yourself. You’re white as cream cheese. You’ve got big circles under your eyes. You look like the Hamburglar. And—you’re fat all of a sudden. What have you gained, like, thirty-five pounds? You’re single now. This should be the best time of your life. But now you’re back here, looking around, trying to see if Irene’s home, talking to yourself: ‘That goddamned dog. That goddamned little Lauren.’ C’mon, man, you need to figure out how to solve your own problems.”

  He continued with a great deal of unsolicited advice, sitting there, as he was, looking down at me from high atop his exer-cycle. All the while, I was stuck there listening, trying not to tell him to go fuck himself.

&nb
sp; “Life’s about choices, man. You’ve got to learn to be happy within yourself. The Dalai Lama said, ‘The purpose of our lives is to be happy.’ I know Roxy left you and all, but if you continue to be miserable and just let everything around you control your life, you’re never going to be happy.”

  “Yeah, you’re right, Casino.” What else could I say? I was choking back a vomit of grief at the mention of Roxy’s name.

  “You ought to get out and see some girls. That’s what you need. See some ass. Be reminded how crowded the ocean is. Give some skirt a nice, cold uppercut. I’m going to be at Lola’s tonight around ten thirty. My buddy Brooklyn is tending bar. We’ll hook you up.”

  “What does the Dalai Lama say about uppercuts?”

  “He has his happy. I have mine.”

  I have none.

  Then he generously added, “The ladies need to be happy, too.” With that, his pedaling picked up speed, and I slunk back under my exer-rock.

  December 25, 1:00 PM

  Santa brought me barking for Christmas. Drinking Jack Daniel’s so it won’t feel like a holiday. Work for yourself you don’t get holidays anyhow. Live next to a horror-dog, you don’t get holidays. God . . . Christmas. Roxy.

  4:45 PM

  My neighbor Stasya saved me again. She’s seen me many times in the evenings when I step outside, either fuming because of Sophie or Lauren or now suffocating from solitude. She stands in the driveway next to the shrubs, wearing her Dodger blue housecoat and slippers, smoking Virginia Slims. Midsixties. She’s from Russia and carries the intensity of escaping Communism in her ever-squinting, musty gray eyes. She’s proud. She’s five feet tall and has the hearty, low-weighted stature of a corner mailbox. She steps outside to smoke, she says, because her husband has emphysema. “My poor Nikolai . . .” Marriage is all about compromise.