Everything's Eventual

   "Frank would come to her chair while we were watching TV, lie down on the floor beside her, and put his muzzle on her shoe. Just lie there like that all night, looking up at her, all soulful and loving, and with his butt pointed in my direction so if he should have to blow a little gas, I'd get the full benefit of it. He loved her and she loved him. Why? Christ knows. Love's a mystery to everyone except the poets, I guess, and nobody sane can understand a thing they write about it. I don't think most of them can understand it themselves on the rare occasions when they wake up and smell the coffee.

   "But Lulubelle never gave me that dog so she could have it, let's get that one thing straight. I know that some people do stuff like that— a guy'll give his wife a trip to Miami because he wants to go there, or a wife'll give her husband a NordicTrack because she thinks he ought to do something about his gut—but this wasn't that kind of deal. We were crazy in love with each other at the beginning; I know I was with her, and I'd stake my life she was with me. No, she bought that dog for me because I always laughed so hard at the one on Frasier. She wanted to make me happy, that's all. She didn't know Frank was going to take a shine to her, or her to him, no more than she knew the dog was going to dislike me so much that throwing up in one of my slippers or chewing the bottoms of the curtains on my side of the bed would be the high point of his day."

   L.T. would look around at the grinning men, not grinning himself, but he'd give his eyes that knowing, long-suffering roll, and they'd laugh again, in anticipation. Me too, likely as not, in spite of what I knew about the Axe Man.

   "I haven't ever been hated before," he'd say, "not by man or beast, and it unsettled me a lot. It unsettled me bigtime. I tried to make friends with Frank—first for my sake, then for the sake of her that gave him to me—but it didn't work. For all I know, he might've tried to make friends with me . . . with a dog, who can tell? If he did, it didn't work for him, either. Since then I've read—in "Dear Abby," I think it was—that a pet is just about the worst present you can give a person, and I agree. I mean, even if you like the animal and the animal likes you, think about what that kind of gift says. 'Say, darling, I'm giving you this wonderful present, it's a machine that eats at one end and shits out the other, it's going to run for fifteen years, give or take, merry fucking Christmas.' But that's the kind of thing you only think about after, more often than not. You know what I mean?

   "I think we did try to do our best, Frank and I. After all, even

though we hated each other's guts, we both loved Lulubelle. That's why, I think, that although he'd sometimes growl at me if I sat down next to her on the couch during Murphy Brown or a movie or something, he never actually bit. Still, it used to drive me crazy. Just the fucking nerve of it, that little bag of hair and eyes daring to growl at me.

   " 'Listen to him,' I'd say, 'he's growling at me.'

   "She'd stroke his head the way she hardly ever stroked mine, unless she'd had a few, and say it was really just a dog's version of purring. That he was just happy to be with us, having a quiet evening at home. I'll tell you something, though, I never tried patting him when she wasn't around. I'd feed him sometimes, and I never gave him a kick (although I was tempted a few times, I'd be a liar if I said different), but I never tried patting him. I think he would have snapped at me, and then we would have gotten into it. Like two guys living with the same pretty girl, almost. Ménage à trois is what they call it in the Penthouse 'Forum.' Both of us love her and she loves both of us, but as time goes by, I start realizing that the scales are tipping and she's starting to love Frank a little more than me. Maybe because Frank never talks back and never pukes in her slippers, and with Frank the goddam toilet ring is never an issue, because he goes outside. Unless, that is, I forget and leave a pair of my shorts in the corner or under the bed."

   At this point L.T. would likely finish off the iced coffee in his Thermos, crack his knuckles, or both. It was his way of saying the first act was over and Act Two was about to commence.

   "So then one day, a Saturday, Lulu and I are out to the mall. Just walking around, like people do. You know. And we go by Pet Notions, up by J.C. Penney, and there's a whole crowd of people in front of the display window. 'Oh, let's see,' Lulu says, so we go over and work our way to the front.

   "It's a fake tree with bare branches and fake grass—AstroTurf— all around it. And there are these Siamese kittens, half a dozen of them chasing each other around, climbing the tree, batting each other's ears.

   " 'Oh ain' day jus' da key-youtest ones!' Lulu says. 'Oh ain't dey jus' the key-youtest wittle babies! Look, honey, look!'