Dog Day Afternoon

She looked over at him and gave a silent look of reproach. He saw the look; he always saw the look. He asked her, “what?”

“You smell like urine,” she said. He responded with, “you mean piss!” She shook her head, gave him a different look for a moment, and said, “I mean what I say.”

“Well my love,” he told her, “that’s cause I got peed on.” She frowned in a mix of confusion and distaste. For his part, he broke out with a big grin, and said, “it was great!”

“Couple of things,” she told him; “first off, Gross!” He continued to grin, and she said, “I thought you told me you can’t end a sentence with a preposition.” 

His grin did not go away, even as she played the role of Grammar Police. 

A slight smile lit up her pretty face as she waited for a response.

He leaned toward her and said, “that’s cause I got peed on; my love.” The last part was said with a slight pause and big emphasis.

“Hmm;” she hmmed at him and continued with, “and how exactly is that great?”

“I will tell you;” he said as he proceeded to tell her.

“While you were here helping to prep for dinner later,” he pointed to the big chopping block and piles of veggies and what not that she had created with her enthusiastic, if not necessarily skilled use of an eight inch Miyabi black chef knife that retailed for $650, back in the day. “I went out to get firewood.”

She nodded her head slowly and told him; “I told you we don’t actually need wood.” He frowned slightly as she continued; “you know the house is supposed to last a thousand years, and that includes enough natural gas for all household needs, including the fireplaces, upstairs and down.”

He said, “sure gas is fine for cooking and heating, but I like a wood fire.” He watched her as he continued, “and I like using wood on the grill.”

She was not going to tell him that despite the house having enough gas to have a fire all day, every day for probably six to seven hundred years; she did like the crackling of a wood fire.

She sniffed and asked, “what does that have to do with urine?” 

“Like I was saying,” he said “I went out to get firewood.” She smiled as he spoke because he made it sound like he had fetched himself a double bladed wood axe, and gone out to a forest primeval. She knew that he had taken their dented solar car fifteen miles down the road to an extensive area; several acres wide, that had many fallen trees. He could literally pick firewood off the ground and toss it into the little trailer that they would hitch to their future car.

“On the way there, I spotted something in the road and it was small, and you know how narrow that road is?” She listened to this and asked, “did you run over it?”

His brow furrowed and he said, “it’s not like I ran over it with my tires.”

She asked, “did it get stuck under the car?” His brow remained furrowed as he continued, “well I started to hear this sound from the undercarriage.” She interrupted, “it got stuck under the car!”

He did not answer the question: “so I pulled over and was looking under the car,” she interrupted again with, “so it did get stuck under the car!”

He chose not to acknowledge her and said, “so I was investigating the under carriage and felt moisture on my legs.”

“Piss!” she exclaimed. “Urine, my love,” was his response. “So what was it?” she asked.

At this point he was bouncing slightly like a little boy doing the pee pee dance: “Come see,” he said excitedly. 

With this, he turned and hurriedly left their kitchen without waiting to see if she was following.    

She followed her husband outside and noticed that he had left his father’s pistol in it’s holster hanging from one of the kitchen chairs. He used to always have it belted around his waist when ever they left their future house. After the incident with the crazy and his samurai sword, and Molotov cocktail, he didn’t carry it anymore.

She was pondering on this as she exited the house and was startled to see him standing next to their solar car. What she saw in the back seat shocked her to a halt.

Jumping about the back seat and sticking it’s head out, and back in the car, then out again, was a medium sized grey dog.

Ten years ago this would have been so common a thing as to be not worth noticing. But they hadn’t seen a living animal in; she had to think a moment, maybe six years.

She looked at the beast, and then at her husband who was grinning ear to ear. It took her a moment to realize that her mouth was open; her jaw had literally dropped, and her mouth was dry.

She slowly closed her mouth, took a breath and said; at the same exact time as her husband; “it’s a dog!”       

He; being him, said “Jinx!”

“Oh my god!” she exclaimed as she watched him reach into the window and place a makeshift leash about the dog’s neck.

“Babe,” she asked, “where did it come from?” 

He told her, “He!” She looked confused for a moment and asked, “What?”

“It is a he,” her man told her. He continued, “Fido is a he.”

“Babe,” she told him, “if we’re going to have a dog, I think we might want to talk about a name for him.”

He opened the door and Fido leapt from the back seat and then proceeded to pee on her husband.

“Eww!” she exclaimed, as he laughed; long and loud.

“Fido’s a good boy!” he told the Pee Master as the dog started to leap and bounce around the both of them.

“There is no If my love.” He told her; “we have a dog!” he got down on one knee and Fido proceeded to shower him with kisses. 

She was not going to miss out on this; so she got on one knee and was immediately assaulted with a very slobbery tongue.

They were both laughing and he said, “he’s only been around for an hour, but Dammit! I love him!”

“Are you sure about that name babe?” she asked him,

He looked at her and told her, “it’s derived from a latin word- his name means Faithful”

She smiled at that and nodded in agreement as he stated, “so Fido is his name.”

Later; after an extensive, pee filled investigation of their future house, the three of them lounged on the couch in front of a crackling wood fire. And everyone was happy.

Much later: he made his way to the bathroom, the one room where he could have true privacy. He always locked the door; even if he was alone. It was a quirk that she still would occasionally kid him about.

Alone in the bathroom he wondered why he didn’t tell his wife everything about finding Fido. He reached into his pocket and pulled out something to examine it more closely.

It was a worn leather collar: scratched in very careful writing on a little tarnished silver tag in the shape of a comic style bone was one word. FIDO