Year of the Dog by Shelby Hearon

somebody you’re seeing?”
    I nodded, reaching out to pat the two good dogs, and throw the ball.
    â€œJust don’t get married again. You give them that, theyown the store.”
    I gathered up my things. “Thanks for letting me bring her,” I said. “I hate having to leave her at home all by herself—.”
    â€œYou’re cute with that dog,” she said. “You can tell you don’t have kids.”
    We walked together out to the driveway as a sudden wind whipped across the lake, turning the sky a deep flat gray. Surely not snow ? While we were still on Daylight Saving?
    â€œThanks for the shampoo,” she said again. “You didn’t have to do that.”

18
    WHEN WE GOT home, figuring Beulah would want to head out to her shady privy under the black locust, I let her down the back stairs. Just as we got into the yard, with her loose on the leash, we nearly ran into one of the scary guys from upstairs in the act of pissing on a small lilac bush in Beulah’s corner of the yard. She started to come back to me, startled, and then headed right in his direction, needing, I guess, to get to her spot.
    The scroungy tenant, the burly one who looked like a serious drinker, with stringy hair and dark bags under his eyes, turned around and shook his dick off, air-drying it before tucking it in. “Didn’t expect company,” he said, not seeming to be bothered.
    â€œMy dog pees in that corner.” I felt territorial.
    He turned around to look. “Sorry, I didn’t see the sign.” He bent down and addressed Beulah, “Don’t mind me, it’s just family.”
    I shook her leash a little to let her know it was OK, though how she could have gone right over there and done her business with this menacing guy standing there, I had no idea. I couldn’t have blown my nose with him around. I could feel the back of my neck prickle. “Doesn’t your place come with a bathroom?” I felt like scolding him, for embarrassing me, mostly.
    â€œHell, Roland’s in the can. I tell him he’s impacted and oughta see a doctor.”
    â€œYou just have one bathroom upstairs?”
    â€œYeah, you could say. They divided the room, toilet over here, shower over there, like it’s two rooms. They rented it up there calling it two apartments, but what can you find this close? The answer’s zip.” He adjusted his belt. “He know you got a dog?”
    â€œWho? The guy that rented it to me?”
    â€œLavoie.”
    â€œI guess if he wants to know, he can.”
    â€œHe don’t know.”
    â€œHe could know.” Did this jerk mean to report on Beulah and take my apartment?
    He peered at me. “You’re not blind; Roland says he bet you could tell when we’re around by the smell, he said he thought you couldn’t see. I said, By your smell maybe, not mine.”
    I laughed. “When she’s grown, she’ll go to a blind person.”
    â€œI told him you weren’t.”
    Beulah had come back but I kept the leash loose so she could check out the scary guy and see that we didn’t have to run away. Not yet. “What do you guys do?”
    â€œYou mean besides nothing much? We’re back in school, the both of us. Roland took a little sabbatical from his studies to fuck himself up real bad, and I got my hide fried getting a nasty divorce as a change from a nasty marriage. You don’t look like you know much about that, but I got myself together with a get-down ugly bitch. Once I’ve got my piece of paper, I can go back to having my own place. My dad was a roofer. It fit him just right. He liked the hard work, and he liked doing it on his own time. He stayed fit; he didn’t look a day older when he died. He gave me good advice. When I got into this mess with who’s now the former wife, he said, You’re thinking with your dick. I said, You got something better to thinkwith?