Easy for you : stories by Shannan Rouss

Author:Shannan Rouss
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks
Published: 2010-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

dog people

We were expecting company and Adam had wanted to put Lucy outside, but Lucy wasn’t an outside dog. She had never been an outside dog. Besides, it wasn’t company company. It was Paul and his friend, his “good friend.”

Paul and I had dated years ago—ages ago—when I lived in New York and had just adopted Lucy from the shelter on Ninety-second Street. While the other dogs barked desperately and shook their cages, like prisoners about to revolt, Lucy cowered in the corner. She was a puppy then, a five-month-old Lab mix with a gold coat and black eyes. The shelter said she was crate-trained. She wasn’t.

Paul, Lucy, and I had all shared one bed back then. And after we broke up, he maintained visitation rights. The split had been entirely mutual. We were both in our early thirties and reasonable people. We had spent one good year together and neither of us felt ready, not marriage-ready, at least not about each other. We decided we were better off as friends and congratulated ourselves for being so mature about the whole thing.

Since then Lucy and I had moved to Los Angeles, where I met Adam. And now I was pregnant with Adam’s child, and Paul was in town for a wedding. He would be coming over for drinks with his “good friend,” who was probably his girlfriend or close enough to it, but Paul was forty-one and so used to being a bachelor that the best he could do was call a woman he was dating a “good friend.”

“So I finally get to meet Lucy’s father?” Adam said. He had opened a bottle of red wine and drank while I arranged miniquiches on a plate.

“He was more like an uncle,” I said. “The fun uncle.” I picked up Adam’s wine and took a sip. I was seven months pregnant and had chosen to believe the studies that said moderate alcohol consumption in the third trimester was okay, as opposed to the studies that said it wasn’t.

Adam opened the refrigerator and took out the prosciutto meant for our guests. Lucy, who had been hovering close to me, always angling for a scrap of food, hobbled over to him. She was seven now, which meant in dog years she was about forty, a year older than me. We were both beginning to feel our age. She had a limp, which the vet said could have come from a strain or a bruise. She may have been in pain, but appetite overruled. She sat at Adam’s feet and looked up at him imploringly. This was my fault. I had spoiled Lucy from the beginning. She was my baby.

“I don’t think so,” Adam said, taunting her as he tilted his head back and dangled the sliver of pink meat over his mouth.

Lucy whined and let out a muffled bark, a warning bark, to let him know she was ready for a fight.

“Give her a piece,” I said. “Please.”

“Erin,” he said, looking at me sideways, a reprimand.

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