And then Jen’s voice resonated in my ears. “Blake, I found him! He was hiding in the guest bathroom and is fine.”
Whoot for the fricking dog. I was the last thing from fine.
“Jen, leave him there and close the bathroom door. I need you!” Desperation filled my every word.
Sensing my urgency, Jen dashed into our bedroom. “Blake, what’s wrong?”
Rising to my feet, I loped over to the bed and held up the box. “This!”
“It’s just an old chewed up box.”
“No, Jen. It’s not just any old box. Your birthday present was inside it and now it’s gone! I can’t find it anywhere!”
“Scout must have hidden it. It’s got to be somewhere.”
“Well, trust me, it’s not in this room! I’ve searched everywhere.”
“Let me help.” She brushed some feathers off her shoulders. “What should I be looking for?”
“A small platinum and diamond broach. A unicorn.”
“Oh, Blake it sounds beautiful!”
“It is.” Was.
Ten minutes later, Jen was covered from head to toe with feathers. Her search as futile as mine.
“Blake, Scout could have hidden it anywhere. I have an idea. Let’s systematically check the entire apartment.”
Our two-bedroom, two-bathroom condo was almost two thousand square feet. That was a lot of territory to scour. With feathers scattered everywhere, it was like looking for a needle in a haystack, but Jen’s plan made sense. I’d get down on my hands and knees, looking under all the furniture and rugs while she’d run the vacuum, hoping to suck it up.
One painstaking hour and ten feather-filled vacuum bags later, still nothing. Zippo. We’d scoured every square inch of the apartment and I’d even emptied out the stinky trash and dug through it piece by piece with my bare hands.
“Blake, it’s got to be here,” insisted my wife, optimism in her voice.
“Where!?” I barked, then apologized for sounding so gruff. I was so pissed off I could punch a wall. Or strangle that dog.
My compassionate tiger forgave my wrath and gave me an encouraging kiss on my cheek. “Why don’t we ask him?”
Was she serious? Before I could utter a word, all sixty pounds of him came bounding into the kitchen, creating a maelstrom of feathers. He made a beeline for the emptied trash.
“Sit, Scout,” Jen commanded.
Amazingly, he did as she asked and then Jen squatted down in front of him and pet his head affectionately.
“Good boy. Now, show Mommy where you hid Daddy’s present.”
The beast cocked his head. He stared at her with wonderment, his big brown eyes as round as marbles. He belched. Then, farted. The stinkiest, most repulsive fart I’d ever encountered. I’m talking gas mask worthy. A ten on the Richter Scale of Farts. Silent but deadly.
“Oh my God! What’s that smell?” gasped Jen. Contorting her face, she looked at me and the second her gaze met mine, it hit me. Hard like a brick to my head.
“Holy shit! He ate it!” My hand flew to my forehead with a thunderous palm slap. I didn’t know if I wanted to scream, cry, or bang my head against a wall. Or kill the goddamn dog!
Before I had the chance to do the latter, Scout scampered off, his tail between his legs. Panic set in.
“Blake, are you sure?” asked Jen.
“Positive!”
“What are we going to do?”
I paced the room. Scout’s flatulence lingered. “I don’t know.”
Darkness fell over my tiger like a storm cloud. She curled her fingers against her mouth as if she was going to bite off her nails. “Blake, he’s going to die! We need to get him to a vet!”
My wife seemed way more upset about the loss of the stupid dog than the loss of the beautiful bauble. Her eyes began to water.
“Call your mother! Please! She must know someone!”
Sixty seconds later, my mother was on my cell.
“Well, hello darling! How nice of you to call your dear old mother!”
I had no time for niceties.
She continued. “Mother told me she saw you last night.”
And I had no time—or desire—to get into the regrettable Grandma incident. What happened yesterday seemed like a century ago.
“Mom, I have a medical emergency.”
“Blake, darling! You should be calling 911, not me!”
“It’s not me. It’s our dog.”
The alarm in her voice morphed into curiosity. “Oh, you and Jennifer got a dog? How wonderful! What’s its name?”
“Scout.” It was time to cut to the chase. “Mom, I need the name and phone number of the vet you used to go to.”
“You mean, Dr. Rowland?
How the hell should I know? “Yeah.”
“Do you know he was the vet to the stars?”
I raked my free hand through my hair. Who gives a shit? “Mom, I just need his number.”
“I could give it to you, darling, but it’s worthless.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s retired! Marty lives in Palm Springs now.”
Standing next to me, her face taut as a stretched rubber band, Jen mouthed for me to ask her to recommend someone else. I did as she asked.
“Darling, even if I could, no regular veterinarian would be open at this hour on a Saturday, no less. You need to take your new dog to an emergency animal hospital.”
I inwardly blew out a breath of frustration. Why was extracting information from my mother always so difficult?
“Can you tell me one to go to?”
“Your father and I adore the West Los Angeles VCA. We took Mitzi there one time after she ate the entire box of Valentine’s Day chocolates he bought me. They treated her like a princess! Complete with a paper crown. And then another time, we took Monique in after she stepped on a shard of glass. The poor darling! Yelping like—”
I cut her off. My mother could go on for hours with stories about her beloved, pampered poodles. I think she spent more time talking about them than about my sister and me combined.
Five minutes later, still dressed in what we’d worn out to dinner, my anxious tiger and I were back in my car. Scout in the front seat, squeezed in beside her. On our way to the animal hospital.
“Blake, can’t you go any faster?”
“Baby, I’m going as fast as I can.” Though the hospital was just a few miles away, the Saturday night traffic on Wilshire Boulevard—in fact anywhere in LA—was impossible. With cops waiting to issue DUIs littered everywhere.
“Please hurry!” Tears in her voice, she wrapped her arm around the beast. “Hang in there, baby boy!”
What about me? My cock, Mr. Burns, was as deflated as our once fluffy pillows.
Getting laid tonight was no longer part of the plan.
Then, another silent but deadly fart saturated the air.
Chapter 12
Blake
The VCA Animal Hospital was a large, non-descript three-story building on Sepulveda, just south of Santa Monica Boulevard. We parked the car in the underground garage and took the elevator up to the third floor reception area, me holding a rambunctious, sniffing-everything Scout tightly by his leash. I was surprised by how many people and their pets—dogs, cats, rabbits, and more—were sitting anxiously on the scattered seating. I even heard a bird chirping. Pulling me, Scout led us to the check-in desk.