Junk Shop: A Dog Memoir

by Jennifer Erickson

  Huh? You say.

  Well, hold your horses. I'm going to explain.

  Forty-five minutes late to his mother's birthday party, Corey flourishes the Crinoline Lady. Corey figures it's better than no gift at all. He figures if he makes a big deal out of how much it cost, of how he lucked upon it in an Antiques Shop, she will pretend to be more grateful. He doesn't know it will make him a hero. He doesn't know it is the figurine that Completes Grandmother's Collection.

  But he rides it out like he knew all along, and tolerates the moist kisses on his cheeks, and smiles until his face aches at all the boring old people. And then it is over.

  Because of the Crinoline Lady, Corey starts to think more respectfully of me. So when I need him, it makes him easier to control.

  Around that time, Corey finds the limits of his cocky facade.

  His corporate career ends with a write-up for absenteeism and sloppy paperwork.

  "You have no balls!" Corey shouts as he slams past the HR lady and heads for the elevator, trailed by security.

  For the next few weeks, Corey has a lot of time to take yoga classes and try to pick up girls in clingy workout clothes. Several times a day, he passes the shop on his way from his car to the yoga studio and to Latte Love next door.

  Where's Your Owner?

  Things were getting sketchy for Virgil and me. Virgil wouldn't leave the apartment, and he seemed suspicious when I reminded him that I was a dog. I used Nelson's Glare to control him. We lived on burgers from the Zoom Burger drive-thru.

  I needed a personal assistant even more desperately. And Corey, unfortunately, was my only prospect.

  One morning when he came out of the yoga studio I waited in the doorway of my shop, and as Corey passed on the way to his car, I twitched my tail. "Hey," I said.

  Corey ignored me. I followed him past Latte Love next door. "I know you heard me."

  Corey glanced down, glanced around the street.

  "No one is watching," I said.

  He readjusted his yoga mat under his arm and scanned the storefronts.

  "I just need a quick favor. Would you open the door?" I jerked my head back toward the shop.

  Corey tried to speak without moving his lips. "Where's your owner?"

  "All you have to do is open the door. Key's under the mat."

  Corey hesitated. "And then you'll stop talking to me?"

  I didn't deign to reply. I just trotted back, put my nose to the door jamb, and waited.

  Corey followed, leaned back to scan the street. Squatted and peeled up the door mat. He slid the key into the lock and pushed the door. It opened with a clatter of a cowbell.

  "Yeah, that was super-stealthy," I said, pushing past him. "Just leave the key on the counter, will you? And if you could, prop the door open on your way out."

  A few customers that day left cash on the counter. I buried it under my dog bed.

  Just before close, a gust of wind blew the door shut, trapping me inside.

  I sat in the display window, watching for a helpful face. There went Corey, from yoga to the cafe, with a girl. I could tell he liked her from the way he trailed her like a puppy. He ignored me, but I could tell he saw me from the one eye that slid my way. Yeah, he saw me. When he passed by again an hour later, the girl was gone.

  "Come on, Pal, let me out," I whined.

  Corey sighed and opened the door.

  I pogoed out and wobbled, peeing awkwardly through the grate at the base of the tree.

  "Do you want me to lock it?" he asked.

  "Leave it."

  He rolled his eyes.

  "What?" I said.

  "You could at least thank me."

  "For what? For leaving me locked in while you conned some girl into buying you a Bhakti Chai?"

  "I'm not your personal doorman."

  "You just didn't want her to know you talk to dogs."

  "I only talk to you," he said.

  I sniffed him over in the glow of the street lamp. He smelled of desperation. I scratched my ear and cocked my head up at Corey. "You need a little cash, come by in the morning. I might have a job for you." Then I trotted around the building and home.

  I could see clearly what happened next. I wasn't there, exactly, but I know that it went pretty much like this:

  All night, Corey wrestles with his sheets. What is happening to him? Why is he suddenly talking to animals? It's very disturbing. He thought he was doing so well, riding the crests of the waves and not going too deep. Just smile like a motherfucker, no matter what. As long as he kept smiling, he was invincible, adorable, irresistible.

  He gets out of bed and takes two Tylenol PM's, and in the bathroom mirror, he sees his real face, the slack one, and it scares him.

  Yeah, he needs a job. And he has an offer. From a talking dog.

  The facade is slipping.

  When he rolls onto his side the next morning, the sun is already angling through the blinds. He can hear children playing and a lawnmower and traffic. His throat is thorny.

  He reels out of bed and stumbles into silky synthetic sweatpants, turns on the TV, makes coffee and eggs. Restless and fuzzy. He can't stay still, but there is nothing he feels like doing. He has the TV on, his old company laptop out (Yeah, he kept it. Screw them.), web searching on "Why Are Dogs Talking To Me?" and "Easy Money". Sometimes, he does this, using Google as an oracle.

  He leafs through a Harbor Freight catalog between screens, eyes darting from the TV to the catalog to his silent phone to the computer. Smoke billows from the stove. As he scrapes his burnt eggs onto a plate his hands tremble. He has been swept from the shallows, and the current is sucking him deep, deep, into scary waters.

  So that's how he ended up being chewed out by a dog at eleven a.m.

  "If you're going to work for me, you're going to show up on time. You think you can jerk me around? I was sitting out there for an hour waiting."

  "Has this place ever been cleaned?" Corey wrinkled his nose.

  "What for?"

  The cattle bell clattered and I smelled cinnamon and flowery shampoo. I knew instantly who it was.

  Corey scowled at me and mouthed, "Quiet!"

  I growled, "It's just that bitch from the coffee shop. She can't Hear me."

  Robyn from Latte Love marched up to the counter and said to Corey, "You work here?"

  I could tell he wanted to deny it, but he was trapped.

  The woman went on, "You need to keep your dog under control."

  "She's not my dog," Corey blurted.

  "Well, who-ever's dog it is, she needs to be leashed. She poops all over the parking strip and she's aggressive."

  "Then don't try to pet me!" I barked.

  Corey gave me a look. I turned my back and flopped down on my bed.

  "I'll see what I can do," Corey said.

  "I sure hope so, because otherwise, someone might call animal control." She flounced, yes flounced, out of the shop. I had an urge to chase her out, maybe nip her heels.

  I explained the job to Corey, told him what to put in the bag, what to charge. He had a hard time comprehending the irrelevance of price tags.

  Corey's job was not to sell anything. Corey's job, other than opening the door and operating the credit card machine, was to charm customers into coming back, because every time someone came into the shop, it was an opportunity for them to find meaning.

  "Charm is my middle name," he said.

  "Real charm, not the fakey-fakey kind."

  "Charm is always fake," said Corey.

  At that point, my new employee was looking worse than ever.

  But I managed to get through the day without lunging for his throat, and then every day after that it got a little easier. Humans can be so hard to train.

  If I could have found another person who could Hear, Corey would have been out on the street. But no other opportunities came along, and we got used to each other. And then he made his first sale.

  I put him on commission. At the end of each day,
I would tell him how much money to take from the till, depending not just how much he sold, but his overall value to the company. It varied. Some days, I wanted to take money from him.

  Corey spent it all on yoga and chai.

  He started to get the hang of the job. Started to even like it a little. His "charming" smile was getting a workout.

  There were happy customers, of course there were. They were the ones who had been there before. But Corey handled the unhappy ones better than Virgil had ever been able to. Especially the women.

  "Why do you do this?" Corey asked once, after a customer marched in and threatened to burn the place down.

  "Why is not the right question," I said.

  "That's bullshit," said Corey.

  Corey Posts Bail

  I was concerned about Virgil Rosenberger, upstairs all alone all day every day, but the sound of the blaring TV reassured me. It filtered through the ceiling, muted at the commercials.

  On Thursday, as Corey counted his two-hundred-twenty-seven dollars out of the till, the cowbell clanked. Corey looked up as he was stuffing the wad of bills into his front pocket, and I realized that I hadn't heard the television in several minutes.

  Virgil shuffled through in slippers, silver hair sticking up on the back of his head.

  "Who are you?" Virgil asked Corey.

  Corey froze, guiltily.

  "Sophie, who's this?" Virgil asked.

  I heaved myself out of my dog bed, wagging stiffly. "That's just Corey," I soothed. "You remember Corey, right?"

  I cast Corey a glance to keep him from introducing himself. It would just confuse Virgil. Leaving Corey to lock up, I escorted Virgil back to his television.

  The next morning, Corey met me on the sidewalk.

  "So what's up with the old guy?" he asked, unlocking the door.

  "He's retired," I said.

  "Does he own this place?"

  "Look, Corey, it doesn't matter."

  Corey pressed, "But what if he knows I'm taking money from the till? I mean, you and I know the truth, but…"

  I pricked my ears and gave him a doleful stare. "You want me to tell him he's fired and you're taking his place? Will that make you feel better?"

  "Not really."

  I stared him down. "Then what do you want?"

  Corey fidgeted. "I don't know," he mumbled.

  The next morning, I bounced down the stairs from the apartment, left a nice sized pile of Business on the patch of dirt by the tree on the parking strip, and was prancing toward the store in satisfaction when a woman in a uniform jumped out of a van, shouted a war cry, and swooped down on me with a noose.

  As she wrestled me into the van, Robyn peeked from behind the Coffees of the World display in the Latte Love window, and she met my eye, for just a moment.

  And then I knew: she had sold me down the river.

  Here's what happened next:

  Corey spends a couple of hours in the shop, selling random crap to people and charging the prices on the price tags. Then, when he starts to feel uneasy, he goes around the corner and up the stairs to Virgil's place.

  Corey bangs on the door with the blaring TV behind it, then, when no one answers, he arms himself with his smarmiest smile and lets himself in. The apartment smells of garbage, and faintly of dog poop (not my fault).

  Virgil scrambles out of his chair, terrified, and tries to flee into the bedroom.

  Corey shouts over the History Channel. "Wait! I'm looking for Sophie, the dog. Remember? Can I turn this down? Thanks."

  "She went to work this morning." Tears rise in the old man's eyes.

  "She's not there now."

  Both men scan the apartment, as though expecting me to appear.

  "But where else would she be?" Virgil mashes his lips together.

  "Maybe you'd better sit down. Can I bring you--ah--a Kleenex?"

  The bathroom has no toilet paper. Dog hairs and globs of toothpaste and dust texture everything. Torn shower curtain. Black grout. Dirty dishes and pizza cartons stacked in the kitchen.

  Corey brings Virgil a stiff dishrag and a glass of water with floaters in it.

  "Here, blow your nose. I'm sure she's...playing at the park or something." Corey backs toward the exit, a knuckle to his nose to filter the stale air. Without another glance, he slips out.

  Back downstairs in the shop, Corey considers his options. What he really wants to do is scoop the cash out of the till, lock the door and run.

  Instead, a few minutes later he is walking the neighborhood, calling "Sophie! Sophie!"

  What does he care whether a sausagey three-legged dog comes back again? It's none of his business. He feels ridiculous. Plus, it's boring and he is hoarse from yelling. After half an hour, he decides to reward himself with a chai and a pita at Latte Love.

  But as Corey approaches the counter, Robyn says in a rush, "I warned you, you have to control her."

  Corey tucks his wallet back into his back pocket. "Where is she?"

  That's how Corey ended up at the Pound to post bail. As he drove me home, he lectured me:

  "The old guy is living in filth, and he's got nothing to eat," he said. "Isn't there somebody to take care of him?"

  "We're doing fine," I said.

  "No, you're not, actually. Doesn't he have any family?"

  "They're jerks. They don't write thank-you notes," I said quickly.

  He raised an eyebrow, but let it go when I didn't elaborate.

  "And you've got to suck up to Robyn. This all happened because you growled at her when she tried to pet you."

  "Would you want random strangers petting you? No, don't answer that."

  "You're going to have to pretend to be a normal dog if you want to get along in the real world."

  "What do you know about getting along in the real world? If it weren't for me, you'd be destitute."

  Corey rolled his eyes.

  He showed up at the apartment the next morning with coffee and lemon scones, and a leash.

  I saw it right away. "No way!" I barked.

  Virgil accepted the Latte Love bag with trembling hands. "Sophie doesn't like leashes," he quavered.

  "I can talk to him myself," I said.

  Virgil glanced down and shrugged, then shuffled back to his chair.

  "I don't do collars, I don't do leashes," I said.

  Corey said, "Can't we just pretend? You know, make it look like you're leashed? I can't afford to keep bailing you out. Just hold this a sec."

  I sighed and took the leash in my mouth. My voice was muffled when I said, "This is idiotic."

  "Humor me," he replied, as he swung open the door.

  So we went down the stairs and paraded ostentatiously back and forth in front of Latte Love. I spat out the leash as soon as we got inside my store.

  "You owe me."

  "I'm just trying to save your ass."

  Dumpster Guy

  Over the next few days, we did some really good business. I could feel the future closing in, and I scrambled to wrap things up the best I could. Even Corey seemed to be trying harder. His smile had less of a hard edge. When he realized how well the new smile worked, he started cultivating Genuineness and Authenticity, so that he could manipulate people better.

  The guy who lived behind the dumpster wandered in one rainy day. He lurked in the book section, looking around guiltily.

  "He's stinking up the whole shop," Corey whispered. "Not that it smelled so great to start."

  "Leave him," I said. I thought back to the homeless days with Nelson. Rainy days were the worst. Once you got wet, there was no way to stay warm.

  I wondered whether Nelson had fought his way out and escaped back to his Calling, and where he had gone next. Did he have a new Good Luck Charm now?

  When Dumpster Guy finally slipped out, with barely a tinkle of the cowbell, I lurched upright.

  I sniffed among the books and pulled down the one that smelled of scalp and crotch.

  Corey strolled over to look. "Fe
arless Loving?" he read. "I think he's got bigger problems than that."

  It took a few tries to get the book in my teeth. Carrying it over to the sales counter, I stuffed it into a dusty plastic bag.

  I dragged an olive drab tarp off the shelf by the surplus rack. It landed with a thud at my feet. A cloud of mouse droppings puffed into the air.

  Corey held his breath when he picked it up. "So what's this? A care package?"

  Corey trailed me back to the sales counter.

  "I have a job for you," I said.

  Corey looked wary.

  "I want you to bring this stuff to Dumpster Guy."

  He rolled his eyes. "Fine. It's crap anyways."

  "And then I want you to take him to Latte Love and buy him anything he wants, and sit there and eat with him. My treat."

  "Fuck, no! Robyn will have a shit fit! Have you smelled the guy?"

  For me, that's what made it a win-win.

  "What if she throws us out?" he said.

  "She can't if you pretend to be Authentic and Genuine. Because then she would look bitchy, right?"

  "She's gonna hate me."

  "No, she'll think you have a soul. And fetch me one of her macadamia cookies."

  "What if I refuse?" He had his hands on his hips.

  "I could fire you. Hire Dumpster Guy to take your place."

  Doubt flickered in his eyes.

  "Your job's not that hard, Corey."

  So, a few minute later, Corey is sitting behind the Coffees of the World display with raindrops nestled in his perfect hair, gritting his teeth through a haze of BO at Dumpster Guy.

  "Anything I want?" says Dumpster Guy, for the third time.

  "Yup." He can feel Robyn's eyes on him. He studiously avoids her gaze, coughs politely into his shirt sleeve when the urge to gag sneaks up on him.

  "I want everything!" smiles Dumpster Guy.

  Corey leaps to his feet. "You can't--" he cuts himself off. Digs deep for Genuineness.

  "Just kidding," says Dumpster Guy.

  Corey is relieved that the guy isn't pushing it, because if they ordered Everything, he could be trapped there all day.

  "Pastrami." the guy announces. "And...the soup and a Coke and a cinnamon roll...chips?" he adds, pushing his luck.

  "Excellent," says Genuine Corey. He straightens, turns on the charm.

  He is invincible. He is Smile Man.

  His smile blasts Robyn's tense, tight-lipped look to smithereens.

  "My buddy and I are having a feast!" Corey announces. He withdraws a twenty from his wallet and slips it ostentatiously into the tip jar.