I'm at a wine shop in Detroit. The owner is a doll, flirting, tells me to grab a bottle and he'll open it up."She doesn't like wine," says my friend.
"WHAT?" says the owner.
I tell him I don't drink much, but the bond is broken. A dog runs down the aisle, toenails skittering on the tile. It has an odor. My friend pets the dog; I ignore it. I'm not going to adaptively pet a smelly dog as if to say, "Oh, look at me, I'm a cutesy animal lover," and have my hand reek. Dogs have to earn my love.
"I suppose you don't like dogs either," the wine shop owner says.
"Dogs don't like me," I say, "They sense the violence in my soul."
He stares at me.
The dog is a beagle and reminds me of this horrible beast from a canoe trip many years ago. 20 or 30 couples went. One couple I didn't know very well brought their dog. We all shove off and soon my ex-husband and I are way, way far behind. I suck at paddling. I get bored, I'm weak, I'm lazy. Did Cleopatra have to schlep down the Nile? We decide I should sit in the back and steer. This results in simply crashing from one bank to another.
"Are you steering?" my ex yells, paddling furiously.
"YES!" The oar is across my knees and I'm applying suntan lotion. Right then, I look up and see that couples' dog standing on the sandy shore.
"Are you sure that's their dog?" my ex asks.
"Positive."
We get out and carry the dog into the canoe. Once we start paddling, the dog leaps out and starts swimming for shore. We zigzag to the dog and I haul it back into the canoe by its collar. It's wheezing. The idiot dog hops out 8 more times before we finally reach the meeting point. We're the last people to arrive. Everybody grilled and ate, we see the dog couple at a picnic table WITH THEIR DOG. They have a lab and the wet hound in my canoe is a beagle. Whoops.
"Whose dog?" someone asks.
"What dog?" I say.
"The one in your canoe."
"I don't know," I answer honestly. My ex is looking for beer, I went to look for a hamburger to feed the dog. I got distracted and forgot about it. By the time I went back to feed the dog, it already escaped.
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