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“Yo, yo, yo,” I said as he picked up the phone. “I have some bad news.”
“What?”
“I’m dog-sitting for some friends of mine you’ve never met, and probably never will. They have a house in Brentwood and I have to sleep there for the next three nights.”
“Why are you doing that?” he asked.
“Because I’m an asshole.”
“Well, why do you have to sleep there?”
“Because their little Peekapoo can’t be left alone at night or he cries.”
“What’s a Peekapoo?” he asked.
“Like a Chihuahua, but worse.”
“I hate Chihuahuas.”
“I know, she caught me off guard when she called, so I’m just fucked. You can sleep here too,” I told him. Mohammed had a beautiful house in the Palisades, so there was definitely no draw for him to be sleeping in a stranger’s house down the road.
“Great,” he said with the same excitement you’d exude after finding out that Lionel Richie was performing in your hometown. Mohammed was very sarcastic, which is what drew me to him in the first place. He was a real-estate attorney who made his own hours, worked sparsely, and managed to make a fortune, three qualities I am always drawn to in a Persian.
“Do we have to play with them?” he asked.
“Well, no, but it’s not like we can hit them,” I told him. “I have to take them for walks and stuff, and make sure they’re fed, but they’re kind of high maintenance, so I totally understand if you don’t want to sleep there.”
“Uh-huh.” He sighed. “Well, I’m going to a rifle range, wa
“Why are you going to a rifle range?” I asked him.
“I don’t know, I thought it might be interesting to learn how to use a firearm. It might be a good idea for you to learn also, just in case I ever decide to backhand you.”
“That’s an excellent point, but I think I’m going to go home and pack some stuff for the next few days. And then Fantasia is coming over to clean my apartment, and I have to be there so she doesn’t take anything.” A month earlier I had come home after my cleaning lady had been there to find my TiVo missing. After refreshing my español via telefonica with a busboy I had kept in touch with since my waitressing days, I mustered up the courage to confront her.
She picked up after three rings and I went for it. “Hola, Fantasia, this is Yelsea.”
“Hola, Yelsea!”
“Donde esta TiVo?”
Her response was “Okay, bye,” and then a dial tone. Fantasia had hung up on me.
The following Monday she brought my TiVo back with major attitude. “Aqui!” she yelled as she slammed it down on the table. I didn’t understand what her problem was, or why I was then stuck watching twenty-five episodes of ¿Donde Esta Selena?
The next day I drove over to Lesley’s around noon to begin my dog-sitting duties, and the dogs went absolutely nuts the minute I opened the door. You’d think they’d been left alone for an entrire week already.
“Jesus,” I moaned as both of them jumped up and down, and Pepper barked in his signature high pitch. “Hi, guys.” I feigned enthusiasm as I bent down and pet them both, paranoid that Lesley and Jerry had installed some sort of neighborhood pet-watch video cameras.
I took the dogs outside to the backyard and found a te
“All right, guys,” I a
Just as I was falling into a deep sleep on the sofa, I heard loud barking. After fifteen more minutes of this, I creaked my head up and saw a lawnmower at the top of the hill in their backyard with no one operating it. Daisy was nowhere to be found, and Pepper, of course, was doing her usual musical number, which was about as soothing as an Ozzy Osbourne concert.
“Fuck!” I groaned, and jumped up to go outside. I could hear Daisy barking but couldn’t see her anywhere.
“Daisy,” I called as I tried to catapult myself over the rock base leading to the woods.
“Daisy!” I screamed. “Daisy!”
I looked over into the neighbor’s yard and saw Daisy at the base of the tree, barking at a gardener who was hanging above her with his wrists and his feet wrapped around a branch, positioned a foot apart. Like a koala bear.
“Daisy,” I hollered as I ran along the side of the incline over to the tree, through thick branches and dirt, and along a side incline that made for very unlevel footing. Why a grown man would be afraid of a golden retriever made about as much sense as Janet Reno casually dating Kanye West.
“Lo siento!” I said. “I’m so sorry! Daisy, get over here!” Daisy turned around and saw me, then ran in the direction of the street at a speed upward of the typical ten miles per hour I’ve known most dogs to be capable of.
The descent down into the street was a steep one since both homes were set high up on a hill. Boarding a sled and heading downhill on solid pavement would have been less frightening than ru
Daisy was at the bottom of the hill ru
“Let’s go!” I said, and clapped my hands. Then she walked right over to me and sat down. I grabbed her collar and dragged her over to Lesley’s driveway and back up the hill. Luckily, I had left the garage door open, and was able to get in through there.
After I brought Pepper in from the back, I went into the bathroom to clean myself up and look for some Band-Aids. Of course, the dogs couldn’t be left alone for more than thirty seconds, so instead of using disinfectant or rubbing alchohol, I was treated to the two of them alternately licking the blood off my knees. “Stop it,” I yelled, and then before I knew it, I started crying like a baby.
Without collecting my thoughts or gathering any composure, I called Mohammed while simultaneously spitting up.
“Please come over here,” I cried, and gave him the address.
Twenty minutes later he was knocking on the front door, which, of course, made both dogs jump up and down like a couple of lunatics. I opened the door feeling incredibly sorry for myself and, once again, burst into tears.
“These dogs are go
“What happened to your knees?” he asked, noticing I had a piece of bathroom tissue covering each knee, both soaked in B-positive blood.
“Daisy escaped and I had to run down the hill in my shoes, and it wasn’t pretty.”
He was very sweet with me, giving me a hug and then taking the dogs into the living room and letting them jump all over him in an effort to allow me some time to comport myself. I went in the bathroom and cleaned myself off, and when I came out, Mohammed was outside throwing the te
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I can’t understand why I am always falling all over the place,” I said, sitting down on the sofa. “You’d the think the advantage of having eight years of tap on my side would help me with some of the coordination challenges I seem to regularly find myself up against.”
“I take it you’re feeling better. Do you think you might cry again?”
“Yes,” I said, as the dogs ran over to me, jumping up and down. The big one was at least cute, and as a