He doesn’t say anything else for a while, just lies there breathing shallowly. Finally, he hoists himself onto his feet.“I’m going to take a shower. You can be on the bed if you want. It doesn’t matter.”
While I’d love to accept his long-overdue invitation, he’s going to shower only because he needs to cry. Which is my fault, because I get upset when he’s upset and that makes him feel even worse.
He’s in there for a long time, oblivious to the fact that the crack under the bathroom door allows me to listen to his labored sobbing. When he finally emerges, I try to huddle close to him, but he pats me and wanders downstairs to the kitchen. He serves me my food, but instead of making a bowl of cereal for himself, he stands beside the counter and watchesme.
“Harold, I’m okay,” he says when I don’t immediately stick my face in my bowl. “Really, go ahead and eat. I just…” He squeezes his lids shut for a second, and his shuddering sigh sounds more horse than human. “I still don’t have any ideas, but one thing’s for sure.”
I lift my head, waiting for him to reveal this so-called certainty.
“It’s going to involve as few people as possible. No people, no pain.” He nods decisively, then adds, “Thank goodness you’re a dog. You’d probably have me committed if you could understand half of what I’m saying.”
Oh, Miguel,I think, inching closer to him.Sometimes you have the sense of an inbred turkey.People are the opposite of pain; Amelia taught me that. And if Miguel interacts with them even less than he already does, then the man will truly be marooned on misery island.
AndI—
I will have failed.
Seven
I don’t have to wake Miguel the following morning. “Team meeting today, dog,” he says, pulling on the same shirt and shorts he wore yesterday. “But are you sure you’re up for walking to the store? It’s cooler than it has been, but it’s still a little swampy out here.”
I stare up at him. Does a cat piss in a pan full of gravel? I may be old, but I amnotabout to miss the opportunity to sniff dog puddles and munch on rabbit droppings.
Wait, forget about snacks—this is a chance to find Miguel a mate! We’re out and about so infrequently that I must remind myself of what I’ve been charged with. I tug on the leash to tell him I’m raring togo.
Raina’s pulling into her driveway as we’re leaving. Miguel’s never been big on small talk, but he used to be the one neighbors turned to if, say, they needed help hauling an oversized Christmas tree into the house. Now Raina pretends not to see Miguel, who either pretends not to notice or simply doesn’t care, and I can’t decide which is worse.
As we make our way down Main Street, he grumbles about this rickin’ frickin’ sidewalk and that family that hasn’t mowed their lawn since May. I ignore him and busy myself by searching for suitable partners. A cheerful woman on a bike whizzes past us, and while I’m guessing she’d like her smile returned, perhaps she prefers the brooding type. Unfortunately, Miguel doesn’t even seem to register her. Nor does he notice the woman in a pantsuit who’s clearly checking him out as we stroll past the little café with the big metal spoon over the door. I personally can’t tell what makes humans hot for each other, but Amelia often told Miguel how handsome he was; I don’t think the shadows under his eyes or the rug on his face or even the cloud of grief hanging over his head have negated that.
No, the trouble is that Miguel lost a fundamental part of himself when Amelia passed. Because once upon a time—well, he loved love, too. He’d hum salsa songs and spin Amelia around the kitchen as she laughed and laughed because even with his help, she had the rhythm of one of those capybaras I saw on Animal Planet, which Miguel leaves on for me when he goes out for groceries. Sometimes he’d tuck a tiny note under the guava cakes he baked for her and deliver them with an espresso while she was wrestling with a tough chapter. And though they’d been together for years, his face lit up when she walked into the room. Every time!
Just like most of the characters Amelia wrote about, they were a pair of opposites who couldn’t help but attract. While Miguel would have lived in a book if he could have, people loved to talk to Amelia—and she loved to listen. “That’s half a novelist’s job,” she told Miguel over dinner one evening afterhe’d been teasing her about collecting “randos.” “How am I supposed to write convincingly about the lives of others if I don’t know how they live?”
“Read about them like I do and call it a day,” said Miguel with mock seriousness, and she threw her napkin at him and laughed.
Oh, but they were perfect together.
Now the oven’s cold and the house is quiet, and I can’t remember the last time I saw Miguel pick up a book outside of work. No wonder Amelia said she was asking the impossible of me; I’ll learn to meow before I find someone like her for him to love. She was the most wonderful human I’ve known. She was irreplaceable.
I’ll just have to find Miguel a person who understands this. Someone who won’t mind that he can’t be the way he once was. Except…who would accept being loved a little when you could be loved all the way?
I’d better not think about it too much, lest I get discouraged.
We turn the corner, and he ties me up outside the bakery that sells the good donuts. Excellent—he’s getting food for everyone. He hasn’t done that since Before. “Have to get the team revved up. We need all hands on deck now,” he says, patting me before he heads inside. “I’ll be as fast as I can, Harold.”
He returns a few minutes later holding a box full of something doughy and delicious. It’s that time of year when the sky’s bright until the fireflies take over, but it isn’t intolerably warm. Still, my hips feel like they’re on fire as I rise from the pavement. I can’t let the pain bother me, though. Not when Miguel’s actually trying. It’s unfortunate that it took a series ofcalamities to get him to care, but at this point, I’ll take what I can get.
When we reach Lakeside, Riley unlocks the front door forus.
“Sorry I’m late,” says Miguel. Under his breath, he adds, “I didn’t want to come.”
She laughs. “I heard that. I also noticed you brought provisions, so all is forgiven.”
“Don’t thank me yet—we’ve got a lot to discuss,” he says as we make our way to the reading nook. He sets the box in the center of the wood coffee table that Amelia bought at a garage sale back when I was still young. Someone, probably Dane, has set out a pot of coffee and brought over my water bowl from the stockroom. I slurp down its contents, splashing Natalie’s toes in the process. She’s a college student who’s worked here the past few summers, and she’s on the couch beside Brenna. Riley and Brenna used to sit together, but that was before they broke up. Now they act like a couple of people who can’t stand the smell of each other. Dane’s seated in a folding chair across from them. Riley takes the folding chair next to him, and Miguel takes the last one in the row.
No one sits in the yellow armchair. That’s where Amelia used to sit.
“Good to have you here, chief,” says Dane, reaching for a donut.
