Unsightly Bulges Page 4

  “Dale, listen, if you have time before you go, could you do me a favor? I have something big and heavy that needs to be moved from one side of the yard to the other. Could you take care of that for me?”

  Dale jumped up. “Man, it is late! I’d like to help, Salem, but I think we’re going to have to put that on hold for next time.”

  Frank and I watched him go, and I leaned against the sofa for a while.

  “You’re not that great a liar,” he said, eyes still focused on the program.

  “I’m a bit out of practice,” I said. “Don’t forget to lock up,” I told him, unnecessarily, as I turned and headed for bed.

  Two

  “Love is patient, love is kind. Love never fails.”

  I sat criss-cross on the floor pillow in the tiny second bedroom of my trailer. I had my three-wick candle lit and had just read the Bible verse from the devotional Les and his wife had given me. When I’d decided to become a Christian, I’d started a routine of reading the devotional every morning, then meditating on the verse, then praying. Nine times out of ten, something in that verse or in the meditation and prayer that followed held some significance for what was going on in my life. Les said that was God speaking to me through his word.

  I wasn’t sure what to think about the tenth time out of ten, but figured it probably had to do with user error.

  I was all for God speaking to me through whatever means he felt necessary. I was in theory, at least. Sometimes it seemed like God’s messages to me were heavily tilted to the you’re-doing-it-wrong side of things.

  Take this verse, for instance. It was one of the most well-known in the entire Bible, recited at eighty-five percent of all Christian weddings since the beginning of...well, of the New Testament. Sometimes it irritated the crap out of me, because it reminded me that my own wedding had been of the shotgun variety, the marriage doomed to failure (the relative longevity of said marriage notwithstanding) and if this verse had been recited, I had no recollection of it. Mostly on that day I had been hoping my mom and her drinking buddy (who, along with my G-Ma, made up the bride’s side) didn’t insult Tony’s family too badly.

  So, yes. I was a bit bitter.

  Sometimes verse made me happy. When I actually lived it, and saw that love, in fact, never did fail, love was kind and patient, and when I acted with kindness and patience, I didn’t fail. I was actually doing love. Cool, how things worked that way.

  That only made me more annoyed this morning, because the verse was a definite condemnation of my behavior the night before.

  I had slept horribly. I felt like a complete jerk for the way I’d treated Dale and Viv. I told myself to keep in mind that a) I had a right to want to be alone in my own house and b) Dale and Viv had been blatantly leaving me out of things, and it was only natural that I was bothered by that and c) I could have been a lot more unkind and impatient if I had set my mind to it. I had, in fact, exhibited far greater rudeness at various times in my life and had slept just fine, thank you very much.

  None of it worked. I woke at 3:00 a.m., unable to go back to sleep, feeling impatient, unkind, plus petty and stupid to boot.

  All of that made me hate Dale even more. Clearly, this was his fault.

  I started out my prayer that way, explaining to God how everything was really Dale’s fault and I should get points for taking compassion on him in the alley and for allowing him into my home in the first place.

  Did you know that you can actually feel God raising one eyebrow at you with a, “Is that what you’re sticking with?” smirk? You can.

  It didn’t take me long to completely roll over. “I know,” I said glumly. “I screwed up. I got jealous and I let that take over and do my acting for me. I wish I hadn’t done it. I won’t do it again. If I had another chance to be friends with Dale, I’d definitely act differently. I’d be patient and kind. I’d be loving. I would be.”

  I lay there a long time, maybe long enough to make me late for work, but I didn’t mind too much. I felt better. I figured I probably wouldn’t see Dale again, but I thought about how much Viv meant to me and realized that she was just being Viv. Of course she and Dale had hit it off. Of course she’d included him in the discussion. That’s the way she was, or the way she could be, if she didn’t take an instant dislike to someone. I had always been grateful for the fact that Viv had decided she liked me, the first time we had had an AA meeting together. She was open and friendly and that was part of what I loved about her. Once she decided we were friends, we were friends. I couldn’t very well fault her for those qualities now, just because it was someone else we were talking about.

  As for Dale, there was really no reason for him to be back. Probably I’d scared him off with the heavy object moving thing. But I promised God that the next time I encountered someone who annoyed me so much, I would be patient and kind.

  I dressed and grabbed my keys off the bar. That was the cue Stump waited for every day. She jumped off the bed and hit the floor with a thud, her stubby little legs moving remarkably fast to the front door.

  I opened the door to find Dale on my front deck.

  “Gah!” I shouted, jumping back.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, but he was laughing and didn’t seem particularly sorry at all. “You see the news? I was right. That was the guy, in my truck. The one who stole the money and ran.”

  I had not seen the news. What’s more, I didn’t feel at all emotionally prepared to deal with Dale yet. My heart pounded and I put my hand to my chest, confused and still feeling residual fear, plus annoyed as all heck. “Wha—the guy?”

  “Yeah, the dead body in the dumpster? He’s the gay guy that took the Hope for Home money and ran.” He nodded with a sneer. “Called it.”

  It was not a surprise, but it was sad. From what I’d read the night before, CJ Hardin was a great guy – had been, anyway.

  I blinked and tried to figure out what that had to do with Dale being on my front deck. “You came over to tell me that?”

  He laughed again. “No, I came over to work. You ready?”

  “Work?” I blinked stupidly.

  “Yeah. You said you could get me a job at the place where you work.”

  “I said I could see.” And I meant later, I thought. So much later that it turned into never.

  He nodded. “So let’s go see what we can see.”

  I looked around but didn’t see a car for him. “How did you get here?”

  He pointed to his feet. “These babies. I left at 5:30 this morning so I could make sure I got here before you left.”

  “How did you even know what time I would leave?”

  He made a you’re-kinda-stupid face at me, and said, “I didn’t. I got here about an hour ago and waited.”

  You see what I mean about him being annoying? He was leaving me no possible way to tell him no.

  I hated that.

  I stood there and looked at him stupidly for a few seconds before I thought, “What the heck.” I had asked God for an opportunity for a do-over with Dale, and he had immediately delivered. I pushed down the thought that if God was going to be so timely with granting my requests, he could have started with that miraculous weight loss I’d been begging for, but whatever. His ways were above my ways, and all that crap.

  I lifted Stump to my hip and said, “Let’s go. I can’t guarantee anything, you know, but we can certainly give it a shot.”

  “Hey, I’d do just about anything for a paycheck right now,” he said. I thought back to how he passed out in the alley yesterday, and felt sorry for him again. If anyone knew what it was like to be broke and out of luck, it was me. I could just keep that in mind if he started to bug me. Surely I could get along with him well enough to work with him.

  He opened the passenger door and folded his long legs in, talking the entire time.

  I looked at Stump, who was looking up at me with this “Wait. What?” expression on her face. He was sitting in her seat.

  “Just this once?�
� I pleaded under my breath. I moved the driver’s seat forwarded and deposited her in the back.

  She glared at me, then at Dale. I shrugged helplessly.

  Stump began to whine and scratch at the console between the seats as soon as we pulled away from my trailer.

  “What’s the matter, girl?” Dale asked her.

  “She’s upset because she normally rides where you’re sitting,” I said. Probably he would do the right thing and offer to let her ride in his lap.

  “Oh, sorry,” Dale said, scratching her head. “Doggies gotta take a back seat to the two-legged friends, you know. Ouch,” he said as I swung the car onto the street. “That light is gonna blind me. Boy, you like to drive straight into the sun, don’t you?” He lowered the visor.

  I frowned, wondering if he actually credited me with the layout of the roads. Love is patient, love is kind, a voice in my head chided.

  Flo was busy checking in a Bichon Frise when we got there, so I got Dale a cup of coffee and Stump claimed her bed under my table while we waited. Dale chatted nonstop about how weird the shop smelled (a combination of flea dip, wet dog, and FurrEver Lovely dog cologne,) how funny he thought it was that people paid good money for someone else to bathe their dog, how good it was that they did because, after all, “we can’t all be bankers and lawyers, right, haha.” By the time Flo got through I had mentally recited “Love is patient, love is kind,” seventeen and a half times.

  “Dale needs a job,” I said shortly. “Do you need a bather?” I had planned to make it sound more appealing than that, but that’s what ended up coming out of my mouth.

  “I might,” Flo said. “Let’s have a donut and talk about it.”

  Sometimes – not very often, but sometimes – Flo stopped at Sunrise Donuts and bought a couple dozen to share with the group. We usually scarfed them up as soon as we got there, because it didn’t take long for donuts to get really disgusting once the dog hair started flying.

  “Get ‘em while they’re hairless,” Flo said, holding the open box like a tray.

  I reached for my favorite, cinnamon cake.

  “None for her,” Dale said, hooking a forefinger around the edge of the box and drawing it back his direction. “Not on your upset stomach,” he said to me, then took a bite of my donut. He looked at Flo and cocked his head at me. “She was up half the night with the runs.”

  I drew my head back with indignation. “I was not!”

  “Either bad mushu or a stomach bug she caught here,” he said.

  Flo looked at me, confused.

  “It was the mushu,” I said. Because I didn’t want him to repeat the pastrami sandwich lie. “I feel better now.”

  “I’m glad,” Dale said. “But you don’t want fried sugar to be the first thing on a tender stomach.”

  It was exactly what I wanted on my tender stomach, I thought sourly as Dale rudely folded the cinnamon donut into his own face hole.

  I let Flo show Dale around the shop and ask him some questions, feeling mounting despair at how chummy they, too, seemed to be getting along. I had had a feeling, though, that Flo would be willing to give him a shot. As strong as Tammy and I were, it was still nice to have a guy around sometimes to lift German Shepherds into the tub and onto the grooming table.

  Flo showed Dale around the shop and explained the duties (it is, actually, a lot more involved than people think, although it’s still not rocket science) while I checked in a few more dogs and roughed in the Bichon, a fluffy white furball named Bear.

  As I trimmed toenails and brushed white fur, I realized Bear was the perfect dog for Dale to learn on. Not because he was easy, but because he was hard. Bichons had to be fluff dried so that every strand of their curly white hair was perfectly straight. I doubted Dale had the patience to learn to do it correctly, and Flo would not tolerate imperfection for long.

  Flo and Dale came back into the room, Flo said, “If this guy is anywhere as great as he sounds, we are in luck.”

  Dale grinned widely and rubbed his hands together. “I’m gonna give it my best shot. Where do I start?”

  “This one,” I said, tucking Bear under my arm. “Bichon Frise. Your first lesson in fluff drying.”

  He followed me into the tub room and I put Bear into the tub. I kind of wished he was one of those dogs that flipped out and started screaming and biting in the tub, just to scare Dale off, but Bear was pretty good natured. He didn’t look particularly thrilled, but usually by the time they got to Bear’s age, foofoo dogs were accustomed to the foofoo treatment. For them, bathing, brushing, bows in the hair, were all part of a normal day.

  I turned the hose and let it warm in my hand. “First, we’re going to get him thoroughly wet,” I said.

  “Total waste of time,” Dale said firmly.

  “What?”

  “Waste of time. And water. The shampoo has water in it, does it not?” He lifted a bottle of blue shampoo from the edge of the tub and shook it. “See? Look how thin it is. I’ll bet this is 90 percent water already. Why start with water when you’re just going to add more water?”

  “You can’t get a good suds-up if you don’t have water,” I said. “Dog won’t be clean if you don’t start with water.”

  “Did you know that the amount of suds has absolutely nothing to do with how clean you’re getting? Soap and shampoo manufacturers actually add the sudsing ingredients so their rube customers will think it’s working better. Studies have proved it.”

  I gritted my teeth and reminded myself that he was a person in need. “Okay, so once we’ve got the fur completely wet all the way down to the skin, we add shampoo. It’s important you don’t get it in their eyes.”

  “No duh,” Dale said.

  “We use the blue shampoo for white dogs only.”

  “Hey, that’s like the blueing my grandma used to use in her whites, right? She swore by it. You know why she put blueing in her beans?”

  I wrinkled my forehead. Gross. “No, why?”

  “So we could fart a blue streak!” He elbowed me in the ribs, then ran to the front room to tell Flo that beauty of a joke. Then Flo told him one of her favorite crude jokes, and they went back and forth like that for a while. I waited for him to come back, but then Bear started to shiver so I rinsed him off and towel dried him.

  I had him on the drying table by the time Dale came back, humming and happy. He rubbed his hands together again. “Okay, what’s next?”

  “Next we towel dry the dog. Get as much water out as we can before we have to turn that thing on.” I rubbed a towel briskly over Bear and nodded toward the stand dryer by the table. Bear actually seemed to enjoy the towel drying process. I figured it felt kind of like a massage to him.

  “Now this is the tricky part,” I said. “You see how curly his hair is when it’s wet? It has to be completely straight when it’s dry. Every hair needs to be brushed and dried with the warm air so it straightens out completely. That’s how they get that fluffy look.” I kept my voice as stern as possible so he would grasp the importance of this. It would be impossible for me to do a good scissor job if the hair was curly. I lifted Bear up and brushed gently at his chest and the inside of his legs. “Even these hairs here, on the inside – they all have to be as straight as you can get them.”

  “Man, people really need to get a grip,” Dale said. “Dogs are scrounging for their next meal out of a trash can and these people are concerned about a curly hair in their dog’s armpit.”

  “Anyway, that’s how you do this job. Think you’re up for it?”

  Dale gave a snort. “Please. Give me the brush.”

  I handed him the brush and turned on the stand dryer to our right.

  Dale started, but he was doing it all wrong. “Brush with the flow of the air,” I said over the low roar of the dryer.

  “I dry my own hair every week,” Dale said loudly. “I think I can handle this.” Then he started to sing.

  I couldn’t say why it freaked me out that he was singing, but it did.
He should have been the embarrassed one – he could not carry a tune – but I was embarrassed for him. It was like watching someone when they didn’t know they were being watched. Except I was standing right there, he knew I could hear him, and yet he sang anyway, off-key. Not only that—frigging “Rhinestone Cowboy.” He was singing “Rhinestone Cowboy.” Jeez-o-Freaking-Pete.

  I reached for the brush a couple of times to change the way he was doing it, but Dale just held it out of my reach and sang on.

  I couldn’t handle it. I reached in my pocket for a piece of gum and stuffed it into my mouth. Then I added a second piece, chomping away at the nervous energy. Flo had the radio going in the front room, light classical music that she played to keep the dogs calm. And here was Dale singing away at classic country. Seriously, way off-key.

  Dale flipped off the dryer. “There,” he said with a flourish of the brush in the air. “How’s that?”

  The middle of Bear’s back was completely dry. The rest of him had damp patches all over – his ears were bedraggled looking, the inside of his legs hadn’t been touched (and after I just said), and his tail was limp and practically dripping wet.

  I chomped on my gum and nodded. “This is a good start. Now you just needed to finish up these damp areas.”

  “You gotta be frigging kidding me,” Dale said.

  I thought it was just an expression, but he stood there waiting, apparently, for me to tell him I was, in fact, kidding.

  “Umm, no,” I finally said. I chewed harder on my gum. This was my punishment, I thought, for being jealous of him last night. Now I was getting another chance to be a friend to him, and it was going to keep getting harder until I got good at it. “Not kidding.”

  “They really expect the entire dog to be completely fluffy?”

  I blinked and chomped, mentally playing back the entire lecture I’d given him not ten minutes before, then nodded. “Completely. The entire dog.”

  “You are aware that this is a dog?”

  I nodded.

  “This is not Tyra Banks.”

  I nodded again.

  “And you’re aware this hair is going to dry eventually on its own?”