Molten

Sarah had been melting for some time. Months before the heatwave, and the policing of garden hoses, and the road surface warping and cracking like chocolate sponge left in the oven too long. Way before we felt summer’s hot, menacing breath and scurried indoors to the breeze of our fans and our clandestine showers. Long before people began dripping like candles just walking to the mail box. That girl was way ahead of us.

She had begun her meltdown in August, when everyone else was scraping ice off their windscreens. By January, she was turning to liquid on the outside too, burying her face into my neck so hard that I vibrated with the force of her sobs. At times I wished she’d irrigate something more deserving, like the yellowing lawn or the desiccated flower bed. But of course I didn’t really mind. It was just frustrating, being unable to say anything of comfort.

And it was only on that blowtorch of an afternoon, watching her heave her tiny form over the rusted iron gates with such ferocity, gripping the topmost spikes and swinging her legs over then dropping cat-like into the bleak concrete yard, that I knew she was going to be okay. Despite the colossal dog now rising to its feet as she invaded his space. She was so light, so agile. So fluid… almost molten. Molten but becoming solid. Not the other way round.

She’d calmly told Ryan to ‘watch Toby’, coolly ignored his what-the-fucks, and began her climb.

I say she was ‘okay’ but there was still the issue of the beast. An brutish, enormous thing – what Ryan would no doubt consider ‘a proper dog’. Upholstered in matted fur the colour of the gate rust, possibly rottweiler – crossed with a rabid sofa. Unkindly, but also mercifully, it was straining at the end of a chain attached by a metal plate to an ugly stippled wall. Its water bowl was empty.

Ryan was yelling now. “What the bloody hell are you doing!! I thought we were… We’ve talked about this… Jee-SUS!!! That’s it, that’s it… I’ve had it with you!! You, you… fucking crazy bitch…”

To be fair to Ryan, which I try never to be, Sarah did look a bit unhinged at that moment – tomato-faced from the searing heat and the effort, smeared with orange where the rusted metal had bled onto her white singlet, wisps of hair stuck to her sweaty face like a daddy-longlegs splattered across a windscreen. When Ryan had spat out his final “Fuck” and stormed back to the car, Sarah crouched and said to me gently through the railings, “Shh, Toby. It’s fine. I’ll be fine. You just wait right there.”

I watched Ryan receding into the distance, becoming the small man he truly was. It was almost a relief to see him lose it like that. I knew from our first meeting that he was less human, more dormant volcano – composed chiefly of bile, sulphur and silent hot rage.

I don’t know what Sarah ever saw in him, frankly. It began with bouquets and twice-weekly visits, then the visits multiplied and the flowers grew sparser before disappearing altogether. Finally he moved in, and began to establish his presence, subtly and not-so-subtly. The oversized TV – crass and hideous, Sarah’s bookshelf shunted to the hallway to make space; the empty cans in the bin that Sarah, wordlessly, transferred to the recycling. The offensively dominant black leather lounge chair, Ryan’s throne, that I wasn’t allowed near.

But good people have dubious taste and bad habits too, so ultimately it was none of those. It was, mostly, a change of energy. Something pernicious at a molecular level. He was scary in a way that never quite manifested. Sarah sensed it too, because she compromised constantly. And sometimes the flowers appeared again, because a woman can only take so much. Yet she ceded more and more territory until finally it only remained for him to put a flag on her head, draw a border around her, and the colonisation would be complete.

I was her final frontier, the one she’d go to war over. He’d given up insisting I sleep in the kitchen rather than on the bed, or better still, in the yard ‘like a proper dog’. He had mocked her, just that morning, scrutinising her from the front steps as she felt the footpath with the back of her hand to ensure I wouldn’t scald my paws. She had formulated a response, taken a deep breath, and then swallowed her words. And it was on that morning walk that we, she and I, had seen the dehydrated beast. It was only 9am but already the air was thickening. This gentle warmth was merely the sun’s polite small talk; by midday it would be screaming in our faces. Sarah had looked at the dusty, empty bowl and said, “That’s not right. Poor baby."

And so here we were, back again. We had been in the ute, next to Ryan, the ute’s tray piled high with towels and bags and a surfboard, headed to the glorious relief of the ocean. But Sarah had pleaded with him, ‘Stop… stop the car!” as we passed the house again, seeing the dog still there in the blistering afternoon sun. Ryan had protested, of course, said we had to be at the beach by 3pm, as if the surf operated on a strict reservations-only basis. But then he figured the only way to get her to calm down and stop grabbing his arm was to pull over. She snatched up her full water bottle, flung open the car door before we’d even come to a halt, and legged it back to the house with the big metal gates. I leapt after her, leash flying, and Ryan followed, panting hard and swearing under his breath.

“Hello!!! Anyone home? Oi… your dog is suffering out here!!!” Sarah was shouting at the house, a squat stucco construction with a bad case of acne. Yelling as if the house was complicit in not just the dog’s misery, but her own. The house didn’t answer back, but the mutt lifted its head and replied in a low growl. That’s when Sarah began to climb, and Ryan escalated the swearing.

Several things then happened in quick succession. Ryan went to kick me in frustration, but I leapt backwards. He swore yet again – how he had a job as a copywriter, Lord only knows – and thundered off down the road. Sarah grabbed a broom propped up against the wall to nudge the water bowl away from the dog and towards her, so she could fill it without losing a limb. The front door swung open… not surprising in itself, since this is the general nature of doors. But this one had been half-boarded up, like a door that had taken early retirement due to injury. A youngish woman emerged, with a small child of about four clutching at her leg. She looked tired, confused. A clip was perched on top of her head but most of her hair had escaped and tumbled down to curtain one side of her face. Her towelling dressing gown, probably once white but now the defeated hue of a laundry mishap, had lost its belt and she held it closed with one hand.

Sarah glanced up, but only for a second. She was too busy clearing the bowl of dead insects and filling it with water. “It’s 34 bloody degrees,” she snapped, seemingly talking to the bowl. “What were you thinking?!”

Not a word of apology for essentially trespassing.

“It’s not okay, you know… if you can’t treat a living creature properly…” And then she burst into tears. “Then you shouldn’t… “ Her shoulders were heaving, and the water bottle shook in her hand.

The child came over and gestured for Sarah to give him the metal bowl. He stretched his arms wide to hold it then carried it over to the dog, setting it down with great care and gravitas, like a Michelin chef waiting on a food critic. The beast licked the boy, before demolishing the water in great slurps, and the child giggled. The woman rubbed her eyes, let the dressing gown fall open to reveal bare legs and a uniform top of some sort, name tag still clipped to her chest. “Fell asleep, didn’t hear the alarm. Snoops was barking, so put him outside. Had to sleep. But yes, sorry… stupid… “ She looked beaten down and badly upholstered too. “I forgot to set my alarm,” she said again.

And then – smiling at the child, nodding and raising her eyebrows to signal “untie him” – she turned to Sarah. “Got time for a cuppa?”

Sarah wiped her nose on her sleeve and pointed to me. The woman, who had introduced herself as something that sounded like Lycra – Lyra? – ambled over to open the gate and Sarah scooped me up.

“Snoopy, come!” said the child, and the dog lumbered after us – to my initial alarm – but once inside, immediately slumped onto the tiled floor of the hallway.

It was dark in the house. Dark but calm, like a church. Little shoes lay in a chaotic jumble by the door, tiny jandals and miniature gumboots with Spongebob Squarepants on the side. Sarah was apologising now, and holding the boy’s hand as he showed her a toy plane, and she was telling Lyra something about always wanting a second dog but her ex-boyfriend wasn’t keen.

I listened to the chatter, their words drifting lazily like dust motes: Dogs… I can… Love them... Easier than men, haha… Yes, so hard… Not far… Neighbours.

The two women were in the kitchen now, so I padded back to the hallway, keeping a safe distance from Snoopy, his huge form silhouetted against the beige wall like a mountain range in the distance. I slid down onto the refreshing cool of the ceramic tiles, settled my head between my paws and let the afternoon’s stillness coax me into sleep.