Mr. Yay

Bradford and the Dog

Maybe This Random Dog was why he dreamed of the dog. Him and the dog on a boat, waves sloshing all around them, water the color of a blue-raspberry slushy. A pod of dolphins swam alongside the boat, except the dolphins were also dogs. Dogphins. A man rode one of the dogphins. He wore a denim jumpsuit and a fat gold chain. He waved and said, We’re making it stronger! The Dream Dog gave a thumbs-up, even though he didn’t have thumbs. The Dream Dog wore a captain’s hat. Bradford had seen this dog before. This dog got to captain his own ship. The dog decided when to set sail. Which port. What they ate next. No one said C’mere, boy. Roll over. No one said he had to be a Good Dog.

Maybe he was a good dog, but that was beside the point.

This Random Dog had a cold wet nose. It used the nose to wake him up.

Not a good-dog move.

Bradford opened his eyes. The dog’s eyes stared back. The dog’s eyes were glossy brown, and way too fucking close.

“What . . . the . . . fuck,” Bradford managed to say, before his brain caught up with his eyes and mouth. He scrambled back, into the corner of his bed, up against the peeling wallpaper.

“What the fuck.”

The dog’s tongue slopped out. The dog’s bright pink tongue had two black spots, and later he named these spots Zoey and Ernestina. But right now, the spots were both called: What the fuck.

The dog was a pit bull type. A full-bred pit bull? He didn’t know. He hadn’t majored in dogs at Canine Academy. It had the stocky bod of a pit. The I-will-crush-you jaw. Floppy triangle ears. Its fur was sleek, dark brown with a white tuxedo.

The thing was, Bradford Pierson didn’t have a dog.

The thing was, Bradford Pierson lived in a studio apartment on the third floor of an old building on the boarded-windows-and-graffiti side of downtown, with a big sign in the lobby that said no smoking – no pets.

In case the sign wasn’t clear enough, the month-to-month lease that Bradford had signed in exchange for a key to that craptacular apartment said no pets, and then specified all the animals a pet might be. He couldn’t even own a fish or a hamster.

Ironic, given the rats in the basement and the cockroaches in the walls.

But Rules were Rules. Just like his dad always said. Son, the Rules are the Rules. You can’t just pick up your golf ball and drop it in the hole.

Bradford had tried to tune out the Dad Platitudes and get on with his life, and yeah, maybe in his heart he’d always wanted a dog, but he didn’t have the cash to feed a dog or de-flea a dog or get the bones and treats that a dog deserved.

He didn’t own a dog.

This Random Dog seemed to disagree. It stared at him like, You know you want to feed me now. Let’s take a walk. I know I’m a good dog, so you don’t need to say it.

It stared at him like it knew him well, and why was he getting so weird about their morning routine?

Technically, it was afternoon.

Bradford inched around the side of the bed. He slipped out. He walked over to the sink. The dog trotted after him, tongue out, goofy smile.

“Dude. Dude, stop. You’re freaking me out.”

He turned on the faucet. It gurgled out some brown water, but after a minute the water turned clear. He filled a glass, drank. The dog sat. It stared up at him.

“What, you want water?” The dog didn’t answer. “Fine. But I’m warning you—I know it tastes bad, but you better not spit it out. This isn’t a resort. Dogs don’t get bottled water.”

He opened the cupboard. On the shelf, next to the bowls, was a bag of dog food.

“What . . . the . . . fuckity fuck . . .”

Bradford reached for the bag. Value-Kibbles. Lamb flavor.

“Really? That’s what you like? Lamb flavor?”

The dog barked once.

“Shhhh! Shut up! You can’t bark in here! You tryin’ to get me kicked out?”

The dog gave a pathetic whimper. Oh, woe is hungry dog. Bradford filled one bowl with food and another with water. He set them on the floor. The dog scarfed down the kibble. It slurped up the water. It got water all over the floor.

Bradford shook his head.

This dog.

It followed him around the apartment, even though there wasn’t much apartment to follow him through. Just a box with two dirty windows, a kitchenette, a tiny bathroom tiled in pastel pink and blue. There was one dresser that Bradford had found discarded on the street, a couch abandoned by the prior tenant, and an air mattress that a dog’s claws could easily pop.

“Hey, you!” He turned to the dog. “Yeah, you. You better not get on my bed. That’s my bed. Capisce?”

Bradford had moved to the apartment from a dorm. He had moved to the dorm from his parents’ house. He had taken nothing from his parents’ house, because he was doing this himself. Whatever this happened to be. He didn’t want their strings. Their guilt. Their disdain.

He had, as a child, wanted a dog. He drew a picture of said dog on the front of his letter to Santa. He was nine. He had, he thought, been good enough at least, despite what anyone said. He had good grades and washed his dishes and made his bed. He didn’t set fire to ants with a magnifying glass or pour salt on the garden slugs for fun.

He had found the letter to Santa in the trash, crumpled up, beneath a sprinkle of coffee grounds. He dug it out, brushed it off, and stuck it in the mailbox. But he forgot about postage, and no dog ever came. Until now.

“What? Why do you keep staring? Why are you following me around? Bozo.”

On his heels. Would not leave him be. That damned tongue with its two black spots.

Then it occurred to him that, of course, the dog wanted to go out. And if he took it out, it would be out instead of in here, threatening his lease.

He didn’t own a leash because he didn’t own a dog. But whoever this shitty apartment belonged to—not him—had dog food, so maybe they had a leash too.

Oh, damn. They did.

Right there, hanging from a nail by the front door.

“This is fucked up,” he told the dog. “You get that, right? You and me, we’re not a thing.”

The dog had a collar, plain blue, nondescript, no name or address tag. Bradford clipped the leash to the collar. But he couldn’t just march out the door, down the stairs, past the No Pets sign in the lobby. He and the dog would have to sneak out.

In his closet, he found an old hiking backpack that looked big enough to fit a pit bull–type dog. He picked up the dog. He slid the dog, hind legs first, into the backpack. The dog didn’t struggle. It hung limp, like it knew how this worked. Like it rode in this backpack all the time.

Bradford buckled the top, leaving a gap for the dog’s eyes and snout to peek out. He put the backpack on.

“Damn. You weigh like a thousand pounds. You need to chill on the dog food.”

He opened the window. Cold air plowed through. He had forgotten his coat. He took off the backpack and set it on the couch. The dog didn’t try to escape.

He put on his coat, shoes, and hat. He checked his pants pockets. His phone and wallet were both still there, where he had left them. He checked his phone. The screen said 2:19 p.m., December 21.

He had not jumped forward in time to a magic, dog-filled future.

As far as he knew.

He strapped on the dog-backpack. He stepped out the window onto the fire escape. He climbed down the ladder, one floor, two floors, ready for each rusty step to crack beneath his weight, which was, his dad said, not appropriate for a man his size. This was a generous translation of Helena Pierson’s words. Grotesque, she said. Not to his face, but in earshot. Disgustingly fat.

Yeah, but no. He was not. He straddled the line between standard-fat and chubby. Big-boned. Impressively boned, Tommy said. He tried to embrace it. His parents had named him Bradford Pierson III. But screw them, he was Fatty Bratty.

Bradford—or Bratty—hopped down from the last ladder rung. He shoved his frozen hands in his pockets. He walked around the building, to the street. The sky was drizzle gray. The ground was damp and littered with cigarette butts and broken bottles. Cold wind whistled through the boards that covered the windows of the building across the street.

“Festive as fuck,” Bratty said, remembering the date. December twenty-first. The winter solstice.

* * *

“He has to go,” Bratty told the receptionist at Happy Paws Veterinary Clinic. “I mean, he’s all right. But I have no idea where he came from. He just showed up. And I can’t have pets. So can I just like, leave him here?”

“Um, no,” the receptionist said. “Sorry. We’re just a vet. We don’t take strays.”

“Oh. You know where I can take him? ’Cause like I said, I can’t keep him.”

“Hmm.” The receptionist looked at the dog head poking out of Bratty’s backpack. “Yeah. So. The thing is . . . he’s a pit bull.”

“Yeah. So? I mean, is he?”

“Looks like a pit bull to me,” the receptionist said. “And most of the shelters don’t take pit bulls.”

“Oh. That’s, what, they’re like, anti–pit bull?”

“That’s just their policy.”

“So they’re prejudiced against pit bulls.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“So what, they just turn them away? Or—”

“Um, not exactly. . . .”

The receptionist didn’t want to say it. But Bratty knew exactly what she meant.

“That’s fucked,” he said.

“Yeah. Yeah it is. Pit bulls get a bad rap. But they can be really nice. Unfortunately, there’s only one shelter around here that takes them, and they’re full right now.”

“Oh. So, um . . . you want a dog?”

The receptionist laughed. “I’d take all the dogs if I could. But I already have two at home.”

“What am I supposed to do with him?” Bratty asked.

“You said he just showed up?”

“Yeah.”

“But he looks healthy. Maybe he’s not a stray. Maybe he’s lost. Let’s see if he has a chip and we can scan him.”

Bratty took off the backpack. He let This Random Dog out. The receptionist scanned the dog with some scanner. Bratty shuddered at the thought of under-skin microchips, body scanners, registries of numbers embedded under the skin. The dystopia toward which they were all headed, dogs first.

“Yep,” the receptionist said. “He’s got a chip. Let’s look him up. I bet someone’ll be glad to have this nice boy home for Christmas.”

Bratty rubbed the nice boy’s head. The receptionist looked him up in Big Brother’s National Doggie Database, or whatever it was called.

“Yep,” she said. “There he is. Looks like he lives less than a mile from here. It says his owner is Bradford Pierson. Should I—”

“Stop.”

Bratty froze. He looked over his shoulder, down at the dog, up at the receptionist. This was the moment he wondered whether he had somehow accidentally ingested an entire sheet of acid and hallucinated this new reality.

“What?”

“You said— What was the name. Say it again. Please.”

“Bradford Pierson,” she said, slowly.

“Bradford Pierson.”

“Yeah. What, do you know him?”