So my dry spell—bothprofessional and sexual—is apparently over. There are two voicemails waiting for me when I get back in my truck, families asking about training, and the next day, when a woman calls me in a panic because her husband has pulled the “it’s me or the dog” card about her pampered Yorkie who still isn’t house trained at age four, I tell her I’ll be right over.
It’s only when I arrive at her sprawling home with the manicured garden in the front and the in-ground pool in the back that I discover she completely neglected to mention her husband’s two Neapolitan mastiffs. They thunder to the door, baying like the hounds of hell. They have also—another new discovery for me—essentially trapped Pamela the Yorkie in a small bathroom on the second floor, where she cowers behind the sink and, yes, relieves herself.
When I tell people I train dogs, none of them ever guess that sometimes I feel more like a couple’s counselor. Pamela’s human parents spend two hours hurling accusations and bartering for their dogs’ affection while the mastiffs take up all the room on what is no doubt a very expensive leather sectional sofa, and Pamela tries to make an escape, but only succeeds in running into the screen door that separates her from the backyard and freedom. No one but the mastiffs seems to even notice as she bounces back to the floor and slinks away.
It’s the first time in a while I’m seriously tempted to take a client’s dog home with me, because Pamela is not the problem here. Her owners have put themselves in time out—one in the dining room at the table that seats sixteen, the other in the den that has a TV almost as big as my bed—while they cool off over what is already the third round of “it’s not my fault that you...” since I arrived.
People like this, the dog is never the problem. In all circumstances, the dog is hardly ever the problem. Just look at Charlie and Athena. He made some great progress with her yesterday, just by calming his own energy.
I expected him to fight me more, after, when he was on his knees. I could practically hear him thinking the whole time. He wasn’t a rookie when it came to the basics of submission. He waited for my instructions, but I could see him resisting and hiding his discomfort. For a guy who said he didn’t like pain, I don’t like that he wouldn’t tell me when he wasn’t enjoying what we were doing. Eventually, submission is about pushing beyond boundaries, but you can’t do that until you have trust, and keeping secrets is the fastest way to break that trust.
Still, I’m so screwed. Because the sight of him, grinding into his palm, giving himself to the pleasure because I told him to, it’s not something I’ll be able to forget and definitely something I’m going to be wanting more of, and very soon.
Which is why, as I put Pamela and her family in my rearview mirror, I’m irritated that I haven’t heard from Charlie. Not that we made any promises, and twenty-four hours is not nearly enough to decide to throw the whole thing out the window. But now that I’ve had a taste of him, I want more. I want him to trust me enough that I can take him where we’re both enjoying ourselves, instead of him trying to grin and bear it.
My phone rings on my way across town. I expect—okay, maybe I hope—to see Charlie’s number, but it’s not.
“Hi, Mrs. O’Laughlin,” I say. “How’s Pepper?”
“Mason, how many times have I told you to call me Stella?”
“I’ll remember next time,” I say, though we both know I’ll call her Mrs. O’Laughlin forever. Something about her commands that kind of respect.
She laughs, a crackly sound that comes from a lifetime of laughter and a few too many cigarettes that she swears she only indulges in when she’s playing bridge or dominoes or whatever.
“Mason,” she says, her voice getting serious. “Have you heard from West lately?”
“No. Everything okay?”
“Oh, probably.” She’s trying to sound breezy, but the edge of tension is plain. “Only I’ve called him a few times, and he hasn’t called me back. I was hoping he’d come by this afternoon and help me put up my storm doors.”
“Well, I can do that.”
“Oh, hush. I can hire a couple kids from campus and have it done in an hour. I just like to keep West busy, you know?”
“I can swing by his place,” I say. “Make sure everything’s okay.”
“Oh, would you?” Her relief is obvious, and the odds West has fallen and can’t get up and is now subsisting on tap water and dust bunnies is pretty thin, but if it will help Mrs. O breathe easier, I don’t mind doing it.
“No problem at all.”
Really, I should go back to my house and let the dogs out first. The odds that West has fallen and can’t get up are pretty slim, but the odds that Juniper’s geriatric bladder is about to give up the ghost are increasing all the time.
But if, in fact, West’s just been busy and forgot to call his grandmother back, then my visit will be brief, so I wheel the truck around and head over to West’s.
When I knock, the pause before I hear footsteps feels long, but that’s probably my own apprehension. Except when the doorknob finally turns, West only opens the door a crack, peering out at me through squinted eyes. His hair hangs limp over his eyes, and his jaw is unshaven.
“Mason.” His voice is rough. “What are you doing here?”
“I, uh.” Shit. I hadn’t planned for this. He was going to open the door looking healthy and alert, not like he just woke up from a three-day bender, and I was going to say I was in the neighborhood. So I reach for a deflection. “Sorry. Were you asleep?”
He coughs. The puff of breath that escapes from behind the door is sour. “I, uh, I haven’t been feeling well. What time is it?”
I relax. See? Perfectly reasonable explanation.
“You come down with something?”
“Yeah.” He smiles weakly. “Yeah. Must be some kind of bug.”
