What would I have told him? What would I tell the other people in here if asked? Why was I so nervous about being caught without a dog? I was sick of being an outsider. I just wanted to belong. I looked over at a tall, waiflike woman with an Italian greyhound who wore a wide-brimmed hat that made her look like a human umbrella. Her dog had the same terrified expression that was on her own face. They were both clearly hyperaware of their surroundings. I imagined she was a CIA agent, or a former assassin who was trained to kill within seconds (I obviously had been binging too much Netflix). Or maybe she was an ex-ballerina whose trust fund went to her meth habit. When her greyhound pranced over to sniff my legs (what was it about my legs?), I gently touched her impossibly delicate face. If I had a dog like this, I would always be afraid of snapping it in half. I like big dogs. Ringo, the blond lab I grew up with, was huge—you could literally use his body as a pillow. Jack didn’t like dogs, but he kind of took the place of one. I’d spent many nights asleep on that big, booming chest of his, thinking it was all heading somewhere other than nowhere.
After moving from New York to DC, getting a dog was not an option. I needed a job before anything else. I had sent out some résumés, but the market was kind of depressing in terms of what was available, so I started going to the EDP at the ten and two o’clock hour every day, to have a schedule. Sometimes I read, sometimes I drank a cappuccino, and more often than not, the dogs would interact with me, bringing a little brightness to an otherwise bland existence. It was like therapy. Not only could I interact with my favorite animals, I could people watch too. The problem was, I’d have to come clean at some point. There were some folks who were starting to study me, wondering what I was actually doing there.
On the Thursday after I first pseudo-met Barkley, his snooty Scottie was at the dog park again, this time with a young man in a faded pink T-shirt and distressed jeans. It was the sort of outfit that was made to look like it cost $30 but was probably $300. Was he Barkley’s son? Boyfriend? Dog walker? He sat down in the same place Barkley had, right near me on the circular bench. Immediately, Sumner trotted up to me, wanting another sniff at my legs.
“Oh, I see how it is, Sumner . . . ,” I said. “Now you like me?” Sumner was clearly a snob, but there was no denying he was cute.
“Hey! You two know each other?”
I smiled. “You could say that.”
It’s amazing how some people thrust a door open when you merely crack it an inch. After that simple sentence, this kid went on a massive tirade about growing up, moving here, meeting Barkley, and the fact that he felt like a “total houseboy.” I wanted to say, It’s that or your aunt’s house in Ohio. Do the math.
“And don’t get me started on Sumner, who’s a full-on hashtag nutjob,” he said. “So is Barkley. Do you know he takes him to the dog spa every Friday, where he gets his nails clipped and his coat hand-sheared and, are you ready, a massage! I’m like, hello, I’m the boyfriend, where’s my fucking massage?”
I laughed, and he rolled his eyes.
“Sumner freaks out every Friday ’cause he hates the spa. It’s so weird, he totally knows when it’s Friday. How in the world does the dog know it’s Friday?”
I was a little confused. His train of thought was so tangential, it was difficult to decide which subject to comment on.
“You know he only got Sumner ’cause he saw a Scottie in a Polo ad?”
“Why not?” I offered.
He shook his head and sighed.
“And then there’s Barkley and his suits. He wears them in the dead of summer. Even if he’s just going to, like, the bank. It’s his armor. Anything to hide the major issues underneath.”
I nodded, even though I had no idea what he was talking about.
“It’s sort of the same with Sumner. Barkley thinks if he just keeps the dog and himself perfect, everything will just turn out fine. Forget about global warming, or the refugee crisis, just make sure life looks glossy like a magazine.”
I thought of my brother’s apartment, mostly designed by his girlfriend. The bamboo plants in the blown glass pots, the gleaming Italian espresso maker, the thirty-dollar candles. He had done well for himself. In our twenties, Brady was just a dude working odd jobs. He would drag me to indie rock shows where I struggled to hear the lyrics, and I’d drag him to museums where he’d make silly remarks about the paintings. “He looks constipated,” he’d say about a Van Gogh self-portrait, or, “I’d smoke a pipe, too, if I had to wear those flowers on my head,” about Picasso’s Garçon à la pipe. Then he got his act together, moved to DC and dabbled in real estate, made some seed money, and now the Post just gave his restaurant four stars.
“It’s so sad, though,” Barkley’s boyfriend went on, “because the man has tried everything. You know, I’ve been dating him for almost two years? Before that, he had four years of Freudian therapy, like major, five days a week. That didn’t work, so he became a Buddhist. Yeah, right. Then it was Yoga and Pilates—that lasted maybe a weekend. Now it’s juice cleanses. I’m like, honey, look inside yourself! Your internal happiness is not going to come from cashew milk! Didn’t you see Eat Pray Love? Hashtag get over yourself.”
I felt a little accosted by his jabbering, but also slightly intrigued. He looked like he had just graduated high school, and the hashtag thing was weird. I considered asking his age, but before I could open my mouth, he started in again.
“Did you know Barkley’s father was Bill Clinton’s adviser?”
I took my hand away from Sumner and said, “No, that didn’t come up.”
“Well . . . are you ready? He was closeted! The man had sex with his wife once in his life, to have Barkley. Am I oversharing?”
I let out a noise not unlike a yelp.
“Sorry. Anyway, the guy hung himself when Barkley was thirteen. So his psycho mother just puts away the pictures, and they don’t even have a funeral. Total batshit.”
He put his hand on my shoulder and looked me right in the eye, as if we’d known each other for years.
“The scary thing is, Barkley never grieved. The man is pushing fifty, and it’s like he’s still that thirteen-year-old boy. A filthy rich, traumatized, scared-as-hell teenage boy.”
He sighed again and pulled out a vape pen. “Super fun times. Anyway, I’m Preston. And I’m dying to know . . . Where’s your dog?”
CHAPTER 3
BLANK CANVAS
Post college, I worked in a lot of restaurants in the Boston area, the kind with laminated menus and flat-screen TVs everywhere, just in case you needed five angles of a baseball player from where you were sitting. I dated the bearded bartenders with great smiles, popped Adderall with the skinny hostesses, let the busboys flirt with me. All my friends started getting married, and I was a bridesmaid a few times until I couldn’t handle it anymore. Weddings were supposed to be these joyous occasions, but I sometimes felt they were kind of sad, with the gimmicky taco stations, the cupcake towers, the old-school photo booths, the inebriated confessions from random family members, all steeped in a sense of forced merriment. So I just stopped going, which ended up alienating a lot of my former friends. Even then, I was sick of the boyfriend/husband question. Somehow, “I screw bartenders who still wear themed pajamas” didn’t seem like good conversation fuel.